Storia do Mogor 359.4
Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 359.4
- Language
- English
359.4.1
No one doubted, whether at Pondicherry or at Madras, that the Reverend Father Esprit of Tours, Capuchin, must be the winner in his dispute, and would return in triumph after he should have better informed the Lord Bishop of all that had passed at Pondicherry. But we, who know by experience what is the nature of the reverend Jesuit fathers, were already informed by persons of integrity that those fathers had plotted our ruin. Therefore we did not share the opinion above referred to, nor in this were we deceived. For you will see, gentlemen, something that perhaps was never seen before, something that it will be hard to credit in Europe, it being hardly credible on the spot where the thing happened. Yet this is so admittedly true that if I were in the throes of death, on the point of yielding an account to God of all the actions of my life, and if it were required of me to say whether in all I have written there is any falsehood or exaggeration, I could withdraw nothing without denying the truth.
359.4.2
If after the oath I have taken to speak the truth, and after the protest now made of rather diminishing than exaggerating events, any man still blames the Capuchins (as I know of a certainty some do, who are the cause of my issuing this manifesto), he would need to be worse than a Turk, a Hindu, or an idolater. Indeed, it is not possible, gentlemen, for a Turk to learn what I am about to recount without having some little compassion for us and doing us justice. Here I give, gentlemen, word for word, how the affair occurred, so far as I am able to recollect. Beholding the miserable condition to which the Reverend Father Esprit of Tours had been reduced by being declared excommunicated, and the injury done to our mission by the removal of a friar who can use the Portuguese, Malabãrī, and Arab languages perfectly, and has, in addition, been twenty-five years a missionary without causing any scandal or doing the slightest thing unworthy of his ministry, we resolved that we would go to the Lord Bishop of San Thomé, praying him with all possible insistence that he would be good enough to remove the excommunication fulminated by his Most Illustrious Lordship against the person of the Reverend Father Esprit, and taking with us a written petition in case he should decline to listen to our spoken arguments.
359.4.3
We had only just arrived at the house of Monsieur Guety, where we had gone to rest after the fatigues of the journey, when we found a copy of the declaration that the reverend Jesuit fathers had published and subsequently affixed to the door of their churches, adding a prohibition to the Capuchin fathers against putting their foot within the house of the Lord Bishop. It was as if the Capuchin fathers were worse than those criminals who are condemned without being told the reason ; even they, however, have never been denied a hearing [245] when they have prayed their judges to grant them one, as we shall go into farther on, in its proper place.
359.4.4
I wish to give you first a copy of the declaration, in order that everybody may know that the reverend Jesuit fathers do not confine themselves to warfare against idols, but the zeal with which they are filled is so great and so burning, that they would like not only to destroy the Capuchin fathers, but, if they could, render their memory odious to all men. Here is the copy of the declaration fulminated against the Reverend Father Esprit of Tours, apostolic missionary and Superior of the Capuchins at Pondicherry, simply for having published the decrees of the Sacred Congregation ; for having said that the reverend Jesuit fathers are not the legal pastors of the Malabãrís at Pondicherry ; for having reduced to writing the names of the Malabar gods in order to acquaint the Sacred Congregation with the number of Christians living there; finally, for having cited the reverend Jesuit fathers to the court of Rome, upon our discovering that they were acting contrary to the decrees given in favour of the Capuchin fathers.