Storia do Mogor 359.1
Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 359.1
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359.1.1
interventu precaminum misérrimo huic nullum mortis, vel mutilationis periculum inferatis.' [Then doth the bishop, who degrades (the priest), effectively and from his heart, and with all insistence, intercede with the secular judge for that miserable castaway, that he will limit his sentence against the degraded man to something short of danger of death or mutilation, saying : 'Sir Justice, we beg of you with all the affection we can, that for the love of God, and from feelings of piety and pity, and through the intervention of our prayers, you bring no danger of death or mutilation on this most miserable person.']
359.1.2
A pontiff, gentlemen, thought it obligatory to implore mercy for a wretched priest or friar who had been abandoned to the secular arm by reason of his misdeeds. It is also held incumbent on a bishop to conjure the judge with all possible insistence, and that, too (which is the most important), when the culprit has dishonoured religion, and profaned its sacred character most disgracefully. Yet the Lord Bishop of San Thome does not think it sufficient to consign the poor Capuchin fathers to the secular arm, men who have left father, mother, country, relations, and friends, to labour within God's vineyard and win souls to Jesus Christ. He cannot bring against them the minutest fault, for they seek nothing but the doing of good to all the world ; and they have no other enemies than those who ought to be their protectors ; instead of desiring vengeance, they pray God for those who persecute them. And his lordship goes on to direct that they be treated with all severity — 'Com todo o rigor'!
359.1.3
The truth is, gentlemen, that the matter is beyond my strength, and I am overcome by the effort of avoiding words that might give offence to someone ; and certainly my senses leave me when I merely reflect upon proceedings of this sort. Why should the Lord Bishop of San Thome, a prince of the Church, who ought to cherish as the pupil of his eye the reputation of all those placed under his jurisdiction, be unable to write a letter to the Reverend Father Esprit without such an outburst of anger over the matter ? 'I will write,' says the Lord Bishop, 'for the satisfaction of you gentlemen to the Reverend Father Spirito, but I have already written him a letter wherein I exhorted him to peace. This letter, when brought to him, he threw contemptuously upon the ground, and declined to receive it. You gentlemen ought not to wish me to expose myself to his further anger and rudeness.' Gentlemen, even were what is here imputed to the Reverend Father Esprit as true as it is most false, ought not the Lord Bishop of San Thome, a prince of the Church [230], to follow on such an occasion the admirable advice of the Council of Trent? 'Illud primum eos admonendos censet, ut se Pastores non percussores esse meminerint atque ita præesse sibi subditis oportare, ut non in eis dominentur sed illos tamquam filios et fratres diligant.' [The Council thinks it meet that the bishops be first of all admonished to bear in mind that they are pastors and not strikers (Titus i.
359.1.4
7), and that they ought so to preside over those subject to them as not to lord it over them (Luke xxii. 25), but to love them as sons and brethren.] Even had the Reverend Father Esprit been wanting in respect towards his Lordship, and had also thrown the bishop's letter on the ground in anger (a thing he is incapable of doing), still, the Lord Bishop of San Thome ought to display greater love, and nourish more tenderness for all priests and friars, more even than a father could have to his own sons. He ought to have written a second letter to the Reverend Father Esprit, or, at the least, if he declined to do him that honour and afford him that consolation, he should have directed his vicar-general, or someone else he might depute, to declare to him (Esprit) his intentions. He need not have blackened the poor Capuchin fathers before your tribunal ; he need not have taken away their reputation ; he need not have loaded them with the grossest calumny that ever was heard of.
359.1.5
Gentlemen, I claim here your whole attention, because this affair touches us to the very quick, and we are so wounded by it that it is necessary for the whole world to be informed of it. On November 3, 1706, at about five or six o'clock in the evening, the Reverend Fathers De la Breuille and Turpé, both Jesuits, presented a letter to the Reverend Father Esprit of Tours, Superior of the Pondicherry Capuchins. The address was in French, in the handwriting of Father Mauricet (Moriset), also a Jesuit; the letter was sealed with the seal of the Reverend Father Tachard. The last named has testified that the letter was from him, a fact that many of you gentlemen have graciously signified to us in the shape of affidavits. Afterwards the Lord Bishop of San Thomé, who, according to jus, natural and divine, was bound to sift the matter to the very foundation before pronouncing upon it, wrote to your Council that the Reverend Father Esprit had thrown contemptuously on the ground a letter written to him by his Lordship. 'I will write to the Reverend Father Friar Spirito to satisfy you gentlemen, but there was a letter I wrote exhorting him to make peace and be quiet; taking it, he threw it to the ground with contempt, and declined to receive it. Thus you gentlemen ought not to desire me to expose myself to his further anger and rudeness.'
359.1.6
O God! how is it possible for a prince of the Church to write like this? If the Lord Bishop of San Thomé wished to honour the Reverend Father Esprit by writing to him, could he not have written direct, as done previously, without forwarding his letter to the reverend Jesuit fathers? Or if his Lordship decided to send it to them, could he not seal it with his own seal, and write the address in Portuguese, as is his habit when he writes any letter that is in his mother-tongue, instead of in a foreign language? Or if he objected to observing any restraint in regard to the Capuchin fathers because they do not deserve any respect from him, ought not the Reverend Father Esprit to have been told that this pretended letter (which apparently possessed the horse of Pacolet, since it traversed in two days and a half more miles than could be covered in six days by the best foot-runner employed by your Company) came from Monsignor, and that under the outer covering was a letter his Lordship had written, instead of saying, as they did, that it was from the Reverend Father Tachard?
359.1.7
Without a doubt, gentlemen, the Lord Bishop ought to have thus acted. But the Reverend Father Tachard meant to take the Capuchin fathers unawares. They are not so skilful as he is in such work, and it was not necessary to say that this letter was from Monsignor. It was quite sufficient to present it to the Reverend Father Esprit as coming from the Reverend Father Tachard, and assert it to be his, when the only object was to enable him (Tachard) to write to his Lordship that the Reverend Father Esprit had thrown a letter written by his Lordship on the ground with anger and contempt [232].
359.1.8
Gentlemen, who has ever seen an act like this? How could the Reverend Father Tachard, whose conscience ought to be more tender than yours, he being a regular cleric while you are not, dare all this in order to extort a Pastoral, which cannot shield him from the censures of the Church. Such a thing would not have been done by you for all the riches in the world. But since you may not, perhaps, know, gentlemen, the motive of the calumny with which they assail us, I will expose it to you in a few words. The Reverend Father Tachard, and all the reverend Jesuit fathers of Pondicherry, perceived that the decrees had been published, and that, because we had published them, we were probably in possession of Monsignor's permission, as is most fully the truth, these being the words that his Lordship appended to the petition of the Reverend Father Michel Ange, which I never tire of repeating as our justification : ' I did not give permission to your Reverence, neither in thought, much less in words ; all I said to you was that you might publish the decrees, as you could publish other orders in your church, without my permission and without anyone preventing you.'
359.1.9
Those Reverend fathers (the Jesuits) knew not what to do to prevent the bad effects, and said to themselves : ' Here are the decrees published without an express Pastoral from My Lord Bishop. Nothing else appears possible, so let us write meanwhile to the Reverend Father Esprit of Tours, who has published the said decrees. Under present circumstances he will decline to take the letter in question, if we omit on it the designation he is entitled to. When that has happened we can write to his Lordship that the said Reverend Father Esprit has thrown on the ground with contempt and anger a letter written to him by Monsignor.' Gentlemen, these words of Ps. lxiii. might with a clear conscience be applied to the reverend Jesuit fathers : ' Scrutati sunt iniquitates ' [They have searched after iniquities (verse 7)], and then might well be added : ' defecerunt scrutantes scrutinio ' [they have failed in their search (verse 7)]. For it is most certain [233] that, having invented this calumny, they said : ' Who is there who will ever find us out ? No one.' ' Illi dixerunt quis nos videbit.' [They have said, Who shall see us ?] But they have deceived themselves, because their work was of too gross a kind for the calumny they affixed to us not to be discovered : ' defecerunt scrutantes scrutationis consilia mala.'