Storia do Mogor 361.1.7

361.1.7

but when a bishop of France [256] — that is, Monsignor of Tiripoli — tries to justify us and prove us not guilty, it should become necessary for a captain and a whole company to be put in motion before allowing a passage to a humble Capuchin father on his way to see his Holiness and report to him his whole conduct, to be followed by chastisement in case of his meriting it. Gentlemen, if we were invoking your aid in an unjust cause, it would be open to you to deny it to us ; but since we ask you only reasonable things, listen at least to our arguments, and, after having heard and thoroughly considered them, if we are guilty, punish us ; but if we are innocent, for God's sake do us justice. Here, then, are the great crimes we have committed; examine into them well, I implore you. Observe the want of justice that has been shown to us, the calumnies against us in the letter written by Monsignor to your Council, in which his Lordship begs you to proceed against us with all possible severity. The same is the case with the petition that the Reverend Father Tachard presented to Monsieur de Flacourt, judge at Pondicherry, in the hope of hindering the decrees. Having beheld, I say, conduct in direct opposition to the maxims of the Gospels, and so little agreeing with the ordinances of the Supreme Pontiff, we have cited the reverend Jesuit fathers to Rome for using violence to us and refusing to do us justice. This is the great crime we have committed, gentlemen.