The Aravidu Dynasty of Vijayanagara, Vol. I v1.c24.49

v1.c24.49

5. With such a full and encouraging approval from the Archbishop, de Nobili separated himself from his confrère Fernandez, and started his new mode of life, in 1607, a year after his arrival at Madura. Let us hear again the Provincial Laerzio, in one of his letters to Fr. C. Aquaviva. "God in his mercy", he writes, "has at last heard the prayers we addressed to Him long ago and crowned our hitherto fruitless efforts with success. A new field is open to our apostolic zeal; and everything makes us hope that it will be fertile in the labour, merit and fruit of salvation, to the greater glory of God. I mean to speak to Your Paternity about the Madura Mission, by whose beginning such brilliant hopes have been raised. Fr. Roberto de Nobili was moved by the deplorable blindness of those people, who are buried in the darkness of death, and was filled with the great thought that Jesus Christ had come down for the salvation of all men, and must everywhere triumph over the devil, destroy his empire and wrench all his slaves from him. So after discovering the true cause of their obstinacy, he resolved to bring an efficacious cure to such an evil. After the example of St. Paul, who made himself all to all, and specially after that of the Eternal Word, who made himself man in order that men might be saved, Fr. Roberto said to himself: I too will make myself an Indian to save the Indians.