Storia do Mogor 358.4.4

358.4.4

However great the injustice committed against us, which cries aloud for vengeance before God and in the sight of men, that is not, however, what most weighs down our hearts. It is a certain letter delivered to the Reverend Father Esprit of Tours on November 3, 1706, concerning which the Lord Bishop of San Thome, without reflecting upon whether what he imputed to us is true or false, has written a letter to you in such hard, cruel, sharp words that the public will hardly believe their eyes. However, I constrain myself to quote a few expressions, solely that you may satisfy yourselves, gentlemen, whether they correspond with the original in your possession: 'It concerns you, gentlemen; it is your business to preserve the peace, and uphold my jurisdiction as set forth by me, by compelling the reverend Capuchin fathers, through measures of the requisite rigour, to desist.' You gentlemen who are at Pondicherry know how the Capuchin fathers have behaved. Tell me what is the scandal they have caused, that they should be dealt with in so harsh a way and spoken of in terms so hard? If the Capuchin Fathers had refused to obey, or, rather, had they been wicked men, persons given up to every vice, could worse have been done to them than consigning them to the secular arm, with the direction [225] that they should be treated with the utmost rigour of the law?