Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/608

 MALABAR

561

qualities of these Christians, their fervent piety, their steadfastness in the sufferings they often had to endure for religion's sake, their charity towards their breth- ren, even of the lowest castes, their seal for the con- version of pagans. In the year 1700 Father Bouchet, with a few other French Jesuits, opened a new mission in the Kamatic, north of the River Kaveri. Like their Portuguese colleagues of Madura, the French missionaries of the Kamatic were very successful, in spite of repeated and almost continual persecutions by the idolaters. Moreover several of them became par- ticularly conspicuous for the extensive knowledge they acquired of the literature and sciences of ancient In- dia. From Father Cceurdoux the French Academi- cians learned the common origin of the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin languages; to the initiative of Nobili and to the endeavours of his followers in the same line is due the first disclosure of a new intellectual world in India. The first original documents, enabling the learned to explore that world, were drawn from their hiding-places in India, and sent in large numbers to Europe by the same missionaries. But the Kamatic mission had hardly begun when it was disturbed by the revival of the controversy, which the decision of Gregory XV had set at rest for three quarters of a cen- tury.

The Decree of Tournon. — ^This second phase, which was much more eventful and noisy than the first, ori- ginated in Pondicherry. Since the French had settled at that place, the spiritual care of the colonists was in the hands of the Capuchin Fathers, who were also work- ing for the conversion of the natives. With a view to forwarding the latter work, the Bishop of Mylapore or San Thom6, to whose jurisdiction Pondicherry be- longed, resolved, in 1699, to transfer it entirely to the Jesuits of the Kamatic mission, assigning to them a parochial church in the town and restricting the min- istry of the Capuchins to the European immigrants, French or Portuguese. The Capuchins were dis- pleased by this arrangement and appealed to Rome. The petition they laid before the pope, in 1703, em- bodied not onlv a complaint against the di\4sion of parishes made oy the bishop, but also an accusation against the methods of the Jesuit mission in South India. Their claim on the former point was fhially dismissed, but the charges were more successful. On. 6 November, 1703, Charles-Thomas-Maillard de Tour- non, a Piedmontese prelate, Patriarch of Antioch, sent by Clement XI, with the power of legatue a latere^ to visit the new Christian missions of the East In- dies and especially China, landed at Pondicherry. Being obliged to wait there eight months for the oppor- tunity of passing over to China. Toumon institutea an' inquiry into the facts alleged by the Capuchins. He was hindered through sickness, as he hmiself stated, from visiting any part of the inland mission; in the town, besides the Capuchins, who had not visited the interior, he interrogated a few natives through intei^ pret^rs; the Jesuits he consulted rather cursorily, it seems.

Less than eight months after his arrival in India, he considered himself justified in issuing a decree of vital import to the whole of the Christians of India. It con- sisted of sixteen articles concerning practices in use or supposed to be in use among the neophytes of Madura and the Kamatic; the legate condemned and pro- hibited these practfces as defiling the purity of the faith and religion, and forbade the missionaries, on pain of heavv censures, to permit them any more. Though dated 23 June, 1704, the decree was notified to the superiors of the Jesuits only on 8 Jnly, three days before the departure of Toumon from Pondicherry. During the short time left, the missionaries endeav- oured to make him imderstand on what imperfect in- formation his decree rested, and that nothing less than the min of the mission was likely to follow from its execution. They succeeded in persuading him to taiw

off orally the threat of censures appended, and to sus- pend provisionally the prescription commanding the missionaries to give spiritual assistance to the sick pariahs, not only in the churches, but in their dwell- ing.

Examination of the Malabar Rites at Rome. — ^Tour- non's decree, interpreted by prejudice and ignorance as representing, in the wron^ practices it condemned, the real state of the India missions, affords to this day a much-used weapon against the Jesuits. At Rome it was received with reserve. Clement XI, who perhaps overrated the prudence of his zealous legate, ordered, in the Congr^ation of the Holy Office, on 7 Janu- ary, 1706, a provisional confirmation of the decree to be sent to him, adding that it should be executed '' un- til the Holy See might provide otherwise, after havinz heard those who might have something to object. And meanwhile, by an oracidum vivce vocis granted to the procurator of the Madura mission, the pope de- clared the missionaries tabe obliged to observe the de- cree, " in so far as the Divine glory and the salvation of souls would permit". The objections of the mis- sionaries and the corrections they desired were pro- pounded by several deputies and carefully examined at Rome, without effect, during the lifetime of Clem- ent XI and during the short pontificate of his succes- sor Innocent XIII. Benedict XIII grappled with the case and even came to a decision, enjoining '' on the bishops and missionaries of Madura, Mysore, and the Kamatic " the execution of Toumon's decree in all its parts (12 December, 1727). Yet it is doubted whether that decision ever reached the mission, and Clement XII, who succeeded Benedict XIII, com- manded the whole affair to be discussed anew. In four meetings held from 21 January to 6 September. 1733, the cardinals of the Holy Office gave tneir final conclusions upon all the articles of Toumon's decree, declaring how each of them ought to be executed, or restricted and mitigated. By a Brief dated 24 Au- gust, 1734, Clement XII sanctioned this resolution; moreover, on 13 May, 1739, he prescribed an oath, by which every missionary should bind himself to obey- ing and making the neophytes obey exactly the Brief of 24 August, 1734.

Many hard prescriptions of Toumon were mitigated by the regulation of 1734. As to the first article, con- demning the omission of the use of saliva and breath- ing on the candidates for baptism, the missionaries, and the bishops of India with them, are rebuked for not having consulted the Holy See previously to that omission; yet, they are allowed to continue for ten years omitting these ceremonies, to which the Hin- dus felt so strangely loath. Other prohibitions or precepts of the legate are softened by the addition of a Quantum fieri potest, or even replaced by mere coim- sels or advices. In the sixth article, the taty, ''with the image of the idol Pulleyar", is still interdicted, but the Congregation observes that *Hhe missionaries say they never permitted wearing of such a taly*\ Now this observation seems pretty near to recognizing that possibly the prohibitions of the rather over- zealous le^te did not always hit upon existing abuses. And a similar conclusion might be drawn from several other articles, e. g. from the fifteenth, where we are told that the interdiction of wearing ashes and em- blems after the manner of the heathen Hindus, ought to be kept, but in such a manner, it is added, " that the Constitution of Gregory XV of 31 January, 1623, ' Ro- mans Senis Antistes', be observed throughout '\ By that Constitution, as we have already seen, some signs and ornaments, materially similar to those prohibited by Toumon, were allowed to the Christians, provided tnat no superstition whatever was mingled with their use. Indeed, as the Congregation of Propaganda explains in an Instruction sent to the Vicar Apostolie of Pondicherry, 15 February, 1792, **thc Decree of C^urdinal de Toumon and the Conatvtv\.t\a^ ^<o:t«i5sri