The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present TimeCampbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
History
The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present Time
Campbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
Jesuits -- History
"Norbert," says Marshall, "was one of those ordinary missionaries who
had utterly failed to convert the Hindoo by the usual methods, and who
was as incapable of imitating the terrible austerities by which the
Jesuits prepared their success, as he was of rejoicing in triumphs of
which he had no share. Stung with mortal jealousy and yielding to the
suggestions of a malice which amounted almost to frenzy, he attacked the
Jesuits with fury even from the pulpit. The civil power was forced to
interfere, and Dupleix, the Governor of Pondicherry, though he had been
his friend, put him on board ship and sent him to America. There he
spent two years less occupied in the work of the missions than in
planning schemes to revenge himself on the Jesuits. The publication of
the mendacious work in which he treated the Society of Jesus as a band
of malefactors was prohibited by the authorities; but he quitted Rome
and printed it secretly.
"Condemned by his Order, though he affected to vindicate it from the
injuries of the Jesuits, he fled to Holland and thence to England, in
both of which countries he found congenial spirits. In the latter, he
established first a candle and afterwards a carpet factory, under the
patronage of the Duke of Cumberland. Thence he wandered into Germany,
and subsequently, having obtained his secularization and put off the
religious habit which he had defiled, he went to Portugal. Here remorse
seems to have overtaken him and he was permitted by an excess of charity
to assume once more the habit of a Capuchin, which he a second time laid
aside. Finally, after having attempted to deceive the Sovereign Pontiff,
he died in a wretched condition in an obscure village of France." The
"Biographie universelle" gives some more details which are useful as a
matter of history. After Benedict XIV had forbidden Norbert to print his
book, he brought it out either at Lucca or Avignon; in England he
assumed his old name of Peter Parisot; when he landed in Germany he was
known as Curel, and when in France his pen-name was Abbé Platel.
According to the "Biographie," "Norbert was dull and heavy, without
talent or style and would have been incapable of writing a single page
if he were not actuated by hate. All of his works have passed into
oblivion."
Americans have not been troubled to any extent by such publications,
except, perhaps in one instance, when a certain R. W. Thompson, who had
been Secretary of the Navy, though he lived 1000 miles from the sea,
warned his fellow-countrymen in 1894 that the one danger for the
Constitution of the United States was the teaching of the Jesuits. Even
the Church is in peril, because "their system of moral theology is
irreconcilable with the Roman Catholic religion." "I refrain from
discussing it," he says, "because that has been sufficiently done by
Pascal and Paul Bert." No one was excessively alarmed by the "Footprints
of the Jesuits."
CHAPTER X
THE TWO AMERICAS
1567-1673
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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