Such then is the bearing of what can be gathered from the early letters from India, written within three or four years after the death of S. Francis, on the question of his miracles; and we think that our readers will agree with us in admiring Mr. Venn for his courage in calling these witnesses into court. He has, however, another shaft in his quiver; and this time it is drawn from the letters of S. Francis himself. It should be observed that the earliest biographer of the Saint, Tursellini, was also the first translator of his letters; but he had before him only a small portion of the whole collection as we now possess it. There is one very notable addition that was afterwards made, in the shape of a series of letters to Fr. Mancias, or Mansilla, a fellow-labourer of S. Francis during his early missionary career in Southern India: some of them short notes, thrown off from day to day, and giving us a very interesting insight into the exquisite charity and large-hearted sympathies of the Saint. We have already had occasion to allude to these letters. As they were not before the early biographers, and as they mention many minute particulars of a part of the career of S. Francis which those writers had to compose, partly from other letters of his own to Europe, and partly from the documents collected after his death, it is obvious that they furnish us with an admirable opportunity of testing the accuracy of the received history. Nothing can, in reality, be more satisfactory than the result of the comparison. The letters confirm the history in many incidental and unexpected particulars, though at the same time, as is natural, they add many circumstances, and they leave out, as the letters of a saint were sure to do, some of the more heroic actions that have been recorded by other authorities. If Mr. Venn had been content to remark that they make no mention of these things, we should simply refer him to the answer we have already given to such an objection. But he is not content with this and as he ventures here to use such expressions as "shameless fabrications" of the statements of the biographers, we shall take the liberty of throwing back to him his own epithet, and of exposing the "shameless" use that he has made of the letters to Fr. Mancias. : There is a well-known anecdote of S. Francis, which Mr. Venn makes the subject of his attack. It is, we believe, still kept before the memory of the native Christians of that part of India, by the existence of a Catholic church on the spot he was at Malacca-a story, on account of which Mr. Venn is very angry afterwards with the biographers, attributing it to the "guard-room gossip of the next generation. where it happened. It is said that while he was in Travancore, the Christian neophytes were on the point of being attacked by a horde of armed ruffians, called Badages, although an army of the king of the country was approaching to their assistance; that S. Francis, at the head of a body of fervent Christians, went forth to meet the Badages with his crucifix in his hand, and, forbidding them to advance further, struck them with a sudden panic, and put them to flight. The anecdote, as thus related, is certainly very characteristic of S. Francis, nor can we see any reason why it should be rejected as impossible even by Protestant critics. The not very dissimilar anecdote of S. Leo going forth to meet Attila is not, we believe, generally questioned even by the most naturalistic historians. But it suits Mr. Venn to try and put the letters to Mancias in opposition to the story. In the first place, they do not mention it. In the second place-though here Mr. Venn travels beyond his own authorities A letter from Goa by one of the Jesuit Fathers, given by Maffei (1568, Organtinus Brisciensis), informs us that the Badages were the collectors of the royal tribute, a race of overbearing and insolent men, and commonly called Nairs, or soldiers.*-P. 60. * We do not know why Mr. Venn should translate the letter of Organtino as he does. He says that the Fathers on the Comorin coast are in danger from the Mussulmans, and "ab aliis Ethicis, quos Badagaas vocant, regiorum vectigalium exactoribus. Est etiam in primis importunum et contumax genus hominum militarium, qui Naires vulgo dicuntur." The Badages have nothing to do with the Nairs. There is no difficulty as to who they were, though there may be some difficulty-perhaps on account of the non-acquaintance with India of the translators of S. Francis Xavier's letters-as to the sovereign to whom they were subject. The question is, whether he was the king of Travancore, or some neighbouring potentate of Bisnaghur or Madura. In the latter case, there is no difficulty at all in the story; for the army sent to oppose them was that of the king of Travancore; but as the letters, as translated, seem to imply the former, we have adopted that hypothesis, and explained it by the letters themselves. The former hypothesis seems to be confirmed by a letter written in 1700, from a missionary in India, and preserved among the "Lettres Edifiantes" (x. 77). We give the passage at length, as it proves the local tradition as to the very action attacked by Mr. Venn. The writer says: "Cotate est une assez grande ville, située au pied des montagnes du Cap du Comorin, qui n'en est éloigné que d'environ quatre lieues. Elle est devenue fameuse en Europe et dans toutes les Indes, par une infinité des miracles qu'y a opéré, et qu'y opère encore tous les jours, Saint François Xavier. Cette ville, qui termine le Royaume de Travancor du côté du Sud, n'est pas plus à couvert que le reste du pays des courses des Badages, qui viennent presque tous les ans du Royaume de Maduré faire le dégât dans les terres du Roi de Travancor. La plaine où Saint François Xavier, le crucifix à la main, arrêta lui seul une grande armée de ces barbares, n'est qu'à deux lieues de Cotate du côté du Nord. Je ne scais si lorsque le saint fit ce prodige, les Rois de Travancor étaient différens de ce qu'ils sont aujourd'hui; mais à moins que leur puissance n'ait étrangement diminué, Therefore, says Mr. Venn, Bouhours expands the story of Acosta and Tursellini,-who do not relate every particular as it is found in the later accounts-into the legend given above, making the king of Travancore raise an army to oppose his own tax-gatherers. And this legend has served its purpose; for it has often been cited by Protestant eulogists as a proof of Xavier's Christian heroism, and of his commanding powers over the minds of savages. This shameless fabrication by Xavier's biographers lies within a very small compass. Any one who will take the trouble of reading the letters to Mansilla, and compare them with the biographies, may satisfy himself on the subject.-P. 86. We have taken the trouble of reading these letters. They say nothing about the Badages being "tax-gatherers" (nor does Organtino describe them as such in our sense of the word), but they sufficiently confirm the whole story, and contradict it in nothing. In the first place, they speak of the Badages as pillaging the Christians of the Comorin sea-coast, and even of the danger in which Mancias himself might be from them. Then they show clearly that they were subject in some sense to the authority of the king of Travancore, for he is begged to forbid their ravages. Then they attack the Christians of Tuticorin, and the king sends a Brahmin to order them to desist. On this, they go off inland, and there is no hope of their being induced to desist from plundering except by the royal authority. If we may connect their cruelties with similar conduct on the Adigares, who seem to have been native subordinate rulers, and about whom complaint is also made to the "king" of Travancore, it becomes easy to understand that they were an armed force, whose business was to collect dues for the sovereign-whoever he was-of that part of India, but who often plundered on their own account, and were not very obedient to the royal edicts. In fact, a little later on in the Letters we come to the very state of circumstances under which the anecdote which Mr. Venn calls a shameless fabrication is said to have taken place. His objection is that the king could not have made war on his own "tax-gatherers." S. Francis writes to Mansilla about a fresh rising of these turbulent men, on account of the abduction of a relative of their chief, Beterbemalis, by the Portuguese. They vowed to destroy all the Christians. He then speaks of the king :-" I celui en faveur duquel Saint François Xavier mit en fuite les barbares, n'avait assurement nulle raison de prendre la qualité de Grand Roi, puisqu'il est un des plus petits princes des Indes, et qu'il est tributaire du Royaume de Maduré. Mais, comme il ne paie ce tribut que malgré lui, les Badages sont obligés d'entrer quelquefois à main armée dans ses terres pour l'exiger.” learn that there is a report among the Badages that I have some influence with Iniquitiribimus, whom they call their king, though they do not much obey him, and indeed some of them, with Beterbemalis at their head, have openly thrown off allegiance." The king sends to beg S. Francis to come to him, and the latter thinks his object is to obtain through his influence the assistance of the Portuguese. The next letter mentions a state of open hostilities between the king and Beterbemalis; and then the tone of the letters suddenly changes-we hear no more complaints of the danger of the Christians from the Badages. If the letters to Mancias do not actually mention the flight of the latter before the face of S. Francis, at least they mention every circumstance that is required by the story, and they give no other explanation of the cessation of the danger. So much for the confutation of this "shameless fabrication " by the Letters. And let us in conclusion ask, why Mr. Venn did not mention to his readers the facts which we have just now cited. Why did he argue upon the absurdity of supposing a war between the king and "his own tax-gatherers," when the Letters distinctly bear witness to the fact of their revolt against his authority? We shall take leave of Mr. Venn with a few words on one more attack made by him on the biographers. It relates to the "gift of tongues," which is usually attributed to S. Francis Xavier. Here again Mr. Venn assumes a triumphant air, and casts his favourite epithet "shameless "at men a thousand times more honest as well as more learned than himself. One species of miracle may be taken as an example of palpable contradiction between Xavier and his biographers; namely, the gift of tongues. Bouhours asserts, during Xavier's labours among the Travancore fishermen—“ It was at this time that God first communicated to Xavier the gift of tongues." Then follows the recital of the Badages. Yet a letter written to Mansilla, in the midst of these events, contains the confession already quoted in a former chapter, of Xavier's total incapacity of making himself understood, and of his dependence on his interpreter Anthony. . . . In a letter written to Ignatius Loyola, immediately after his arrival at Cochin, January, 1554, giving an account of his labours for the last year, he says, “I have no news to tell you, except that we have so few labourers, that you should send us as many as possible." No news! though, as his biographer asserts, he had then just received the gift of tongues! So shamelessly do the biographers of Xavier contradict Xavier's own narrative.-Pp. 88, 89. The date is misprinted in Mr. Venn's pages. It should be 1545. The statement that it was written "immediately after his arrival at Cochin," is calculated to deceive the reader. It implies, we suppose, that it was soon after the beginning of Xavier's preaching on the Comorin coast, and that therefore it ought to have contained anything of importance that had happened. But it was written between two and three years after his mission began. The recklessness of Mr. Venn's statements, and the absurdity of his inferences, may be judged of by the fact that the letter does not say a word about "his labours for the past year," and that he had written a long letter to the Society at Rome from the same place a year before, in which he had given an account of his labours, and from which, unless we are mistaken, it is easy to see, by the way in which he speaks of his controversies and conversations with the Brahmins, that he was able perfectly to talk their language.* We will, if he wishes it, strengthen Mr. Venn's argument for him. There are other passages, not in the letters to Mancias, which the biographers may not have seen, but in letters to Europe which they must have seen, in which S. Francis speaks of the pains he was at to learn the language of the country from which he wrote. So that the biographers must not only have made an unfounded assertion, if S. Francis had not received the gift in question, but they must have done what Mr. Venn himself is a great adept at doing they must have contradicted direct assertions of the authorities to which they had access. But men like Lucena, Tursellini, Bartoli, and Massei were not quite of the same stamp as the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society. What is the fact? The Letters do not, in so many words, assert that their writer had the gift of tongues, any more than they do the same about the gift of miracles; but it is perfectly easy to see, from the Letters, that one gift as well as the other had been bestowed upon S. Francis. Just as he speaks of what never happens without good reason-a vast concourse of people thronging Our readers must by this time understand what sort of a writer they have to deal with in Mr. Venn. We have limited ourselves, in exposing his misstatements, to the earlier portion of the career of S. Francis; but the rest of the history is just as full of the grossest errors and most flagrant misquotations. We shall expose one more, because it bears on this same subject of the gift of tongues. Mr. Venn says, "There is reason to doubt whether Xavier's catechumens understood so much as the meaning of the words put into their lips: for, after all the baptisms recounted above, Xavier informed Mansilla that they had mistranslated the very first word of the Creed, and that instead of the word "I believe" (credo), they had been using the expression "I will" (volo) (p. 38). Mr. Venn has simply altered the pronoun. S. Francis has been looking over a translation made by Mancias, and he says "In your version of the Apostles' Creed there is something as to which I think it well to warn you" and then he corrects this and another mistake. Thus, a passage in which S. Francis shows his knowledge of the language by correcting the mistake of another, is used to show his own ignorance of it! |
