Storia do Mogor 294.5.6

294.5.6

There he had continued to live in all innocence, having acquired a high reputation, not only as an honest man, but as a most zealous priest. He was a most rigid observer of the rules of his order. Thus things remained till 1649, when he had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the commissaries of the Inquisition established at San Thomé. First of all, it must be explained what were the real reasons for his arrest, for what appeared on the surface was a mere pretext. The true reason was always concealed ; it was, as one will see later on, nothing but an irreconcilable hatred and an excessive envy entertained against him by some persons of that place, the cause thereof being his virtues, his strict conduct, and the office that he held. The first reason, then, for the detention of this excellent friar was, as admitted by the Grand Inquisitor of Goa himself on St. Mark's Day, 1651, a letter that Father Ephraim had written to Manuel Mascaregna (? Mascarenha), Governor of San Thomé, in which he objected to certain abuses then practised there and tolerated by him. The reason for this toleration was that the Portuguese took them for so many saintly acts, and consequently held Father Ephraim's condemnation to be a great liberty — nay, an attack upon religion. The reasons he alleged in his letter, hoping to bring them back to the true views of the Church, they looked on as so much damnable heresy.