May the grace and charity of Christ our Lord always help and favor us! Amen.
It is now the third year since I left Portugal. I am writing to you for the third time,
having as yet received only one letter from you, dated February 1542. God is my witness
what joy it caused me. I only received it two months ago, later than is usual for letters
to reach India, because the vessel which brought it had passed the winter at Mozambique.
I and Francis Mancias are now living amongst the Christians of Comorin. They are very
numerous, and increase largely every day. When I first came I asked them, if they knew
anything about our Lord Jesus Christ? but when I came to the points of faith in detail and
asked them what they thought of them, and what more they believed now than when they were
Infidels, they only replied that they were Christians, but that as they are ignorant of
Portuguese, they know nothing of the precepts and mysteries of our holy religion. We could
not understand one another, as I spoke Castilian and they Malabar; so I picked out the
most intelligent and well-read of them, and then sought out with the greatest diligence
men who knew both languages. We held meetings for several days, and by our joint efforts
and with infinite difficulty we translated the Catechism into the Malabar tongue. This I
learnt by heart, and then I began to go through all the villages of the coast, calling
around me by the sound of a bell as many as I could, children and men. I asembled them
twice a day and taught them the Christian doctrine: and thus, in the space of a month, the
children had it well by heart. And all the time I kept telling them to go on teaching in
their turn whatever they had learnt to their parents, family, and neighbors.
Every Sunday I collected them all, men and women, boys and girls, in the church. They
came with great readiness and with a great desire for instruction. Then, in the hearing of
all, I began by calling on the name of the most holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
and I recited aloud the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Creed in the language of the
country: they all followed me in the same words, and delighted in it wonderfully. Then I
repeated the Creed by myself, dwelling upon each article singly. Then I asked them as to
each article, whether they believed it unhesitatingly; and all, with a loud voice and
their hands crossed over their breasts, professed aloud that they truly believed it. I
take care to make them repeat the Creed oftener than the other prayers; and I tell them
that those who believe all that is contained therein are called Christians. After
explaining the Creed I go on to the Commandments, teaching them that the Christian law is
contained in those ten precepts, and that every one who observes them all faithfully is a
good and true Christian and is certain of eternal salvation, and that, on the other hand,
whoever neglects a single one of them is a bad Christian, and will be cast into hell
unless he is truly penitent for his sin. Converts and heathen alike are astonished at all
this, which shows them the holiness of the Christian law, its perfect consistency with
itself, and its agreement with reason.
As to the numbers who become Christians, you may understand them from this, that it
often happens to me to be hardly able to use my hands from the fatigue of baptizing: often
in a single day I have baptized whole villages. Sometimes I have lost my voice and
strength altogether with repeating again and again the Credo and the other forms. The
fruit that is reaped by the baptism of infants, as well as by the instruction of children
and others, is quite incredible. These children, I trust heartily, by the grace of God,
will be much better than their fathers. They show an ardent love for the Divine law, and
an extraordinary zeal for learning our holy religion and imparting it to others. Their
hatred for idolatry is marvellous. They get into feuds with the heathen about it, and
whenever their own parents practise it, they reproach them and come off to tell me at
once. Whenever I hear of any act of idolatrous worship, I go to the place with a large
band of these children, who very soon load the devil with a greater amount of insult and
abuse than he has lately received of honor and worship from their parents, relations, and
acquaintances. The children run at the idols, upset them, dash them down, break them to
pieces, spit on them, trample on them, kick them about, and in short heap on them every
possible outrage.
I had been living for nearly four months in a Christian village, occupied in
translating the Catechism. A great number of natives came from all parts to entreat me to
take the trouble to go to their houses and call on God by the bedsides of their sick
relatives. Such numbers also of sick made their own way to us, that I had enough to do to
read a Gospel over each of them. At the same time we kept on with our daily work,
instructing the children, baptizing converts, translating the Catechism, answering
difficulties, and burying the dead. For my part I desired to satisfy all, both the sick
who came to me themselves, and those who came to beg on the part of others, lest if I did
not, their confidence in, and zeal for, our holy religion should relax, and I thought it
wrong not to do what I could in answer to their prayers. But the thing grew to such a
pitch that it was impossible for me myself to satisfy all, and at the same time to avoid
their quarrelling among themselves, every one striving to be the first to get me to his
own house; so I hit on a way of serving all at once. As I could not go myself, I sent
round children whom I could trust in my place. They went to the sick persons, assembled
their families and neighbours, recited the Creed with them, and encouraged the sufferers
to conceive a certain and well-founded confidence of their restoration. Then after all
this, they recited the prayers of the Church. To make my tale short, God was moved by the
faith and piety of these children and of the others, and restored to a great number of
sick persons health both of body and soul. How good He was to them! He made the very
disease of their bodies the occasion of calling them to salvation, and drew them to the
Christian faith almost by force!
I have also charged these children to teach the rudiments of Christian doctrine to the
ignorant in private houses, in the streets, and the crossways. As soon as I see that this
has been well started in one village, I go on to another and give the same instructions
and the same commission to the children, and so I go through in order the whole number of
their villages. When I have done this and am going away, I leave in each place a copy of
the Christian doctrine, and tell all those who know how to write to copy it out, and all
the others are to learn it by heart and to recite it from memory every day. Every feast
day I bid them meet in one place and sing all together the elements of the faith. For this
purpose I have appointed in each of the thirty Christian villages men of intelligence and
character who are to preside over these meetings, and the Governor, Don Martin Alfonso,
who is so full of love for our Society and of zeal for religion, has been good enough at
our request to allot a yearly revenue of 4000 gold farlams for the salary of these
catechists. He has an immense friendship for ours, and desires with all his heart that
some of them should be sent hither, for which he is always asking in his letters to the
King.
There is now in these parts a very large number of persons who have only one reason for
not becoming Christian, and that is that there is no one to make them Christians. It often
comes into my mind to go round all the Universities of Europe, and especially that of
Paris, crying out everywhere like a madman, and saying to all the learned men there whose
learning is so much greater than their charity, "Ah! what a multitude of souls is
through your fault shut out of heaven and falling into hell!"
Would to God that these men who labor so much in gaining knowledge would give as much
thought to the account they must one day give to God of the use they have made of their
learning and of the talents entrusted to them! . . .
We have in these parts a class of men among the pagans who are called Brahmins. They
keep up the worship of the gods, the superstitious rites of religion, frequenting the
temples and taking care of the idols. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can
anywhere be found, and I always apply to them the words of holy David, "from an
unholy race and a wicked and crafty man deliver me, O Lord." They are liars and
cheats to the very backbone. Their whole study is, how to deceive most cunningly the
simplicity and ignorance of the people. They give out publicly that the gods command
certain offerings to be made to their temples, which offerings are simply the things that
the Brahmins themselves wish for, for their own maintenance and that of their wives,
children, and servants. Thus they make the poor folk believe that the images of their gods
eat and drink, dine and sup like men, and some devout persons are found who really offer
to the idol twice a day, before dinner and supper, a certain sum of money. The Brahmins
eat sumptuous meals to the sound of drums, and make the ignorant believe that the gods are
banqueting. When they are in need of any supplies, and even before, they give out to the
people that the gods are angry because the things they have asked for have not been sent,
and that if the people do not take care, the gods will punish them by slaughter, disease,
and the assaults of the devils. And the poor ignorant creatures, with the fear of the gods
before them, obey them implicitly. These Brahmins have barely a tincture of literature,
but they make up for their poverty in learning by cunning and malice. Those who belong to
these parts are very indignant with me for exposing their tricks. Whenever they talk to me
with no one by to hear them they acknowledge that they have no other patrimony but the
idols, by their lies about which they procure their support from the people. They say that
I, poor creature as I am, know more than all of them put together.
They often send me a civil message and presents, and make a great complaint when I send
them all back again. Their object is to bribe me to connive at their evil deeds. So they
declare that they are convinced that there is only one God, and that they will pray to Him
for me. And I, to return the favor, answer whatever occurs to me, and then lay bare, as
far as I can, to the ignorant people whose blind superstitions have made them their
slaves, their imposture and tricks, and this has induced many to leave the worship of the
false gods, and eagerly become Christians. If it were not for the opposition of the
Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ.
The heathen inhabitants of the country are commonly ignorant of letters, but by no
means ignorant of wickedness. All the time I have been here in this country I have only
converted one Brahmin, a virtuous young man, who has now undertaken to teach the Catechism
to children. As I go through the Christian villages, I often pass by the temples of the
Brahmins, which they call pagodas. One day lately, I happened to enter a pagoda where
there were about two hundred of them, and most of them came to meet me. We had a long
conversation, after which I asked them what their gods enjoined them in order to obtain
the life of the blessed. There was a long discussion amongst them as to who should answer
me. At last, by common consent, the commission was given to one of them, of greater age
and experience than the rest, an old man, of more than eighty years. He asked me in
return, what commands the God of the Christians laid on them. I saw the old man's
perversity, and I refused to speak a word till he had first answered my question. So he
was obliged to expose his ignorance, and replied that their gods required two duties of
those who desired to go to them hereafter, one of which was to abstain from killing cows,
because under that form the gods were adored; the other was to show kindness to the
Brahmins, who were the worshippers of the gods. This answer moved my indignation, for I
could not but grieve intensely at the thought of the devils being worshipped instead of
God by these blind heathen, and I asked them to listen to me in turn. Then I, in a loud
voice, repeated the Apostles' Creed and the Ten Commandments. After this I gave in their
own language a short explanation, and told them what Paradise is, and what Hell is, and
also who they are who go to Heaven to join the company of the blessed, and who are to be
sent to the eternal punishments of hell. Upon hearing these things they all rose up and
vied with one another in embracing me, and in confessing that the God of the Christians is
the true God, as His laws are so agreeable to reason. Then they asked me if the souls of
men like those of other animals perished together with the body. God put into my mouth
arguments of such a sort, and so suited to their ways of thinking, that to their great joy
I was able to prove to them the immortality of the soul. I find, by the way, that the
arguments which are to convince these ignorant people must by no means be subtle, such as
those which are found in the books of learned schoolmen, but must be such as their minds
can understand. They asked me again how the soul of a dying person goes out of the body,
how it was, whether it was as happens to us in dreams, when we seem to be conversing with
our friends and acquaintance? (Ah, how often this happens to me, dearest brothers, when I
am dreaming of you!) Was this because the soul then leaves the body? And again, whether
God was black or white? For as there is so great a variety of color among men, and the
Indians being black themselves, consider their own color the best, they believe that their
gods are black. On this account the great majority of their idols are as black as black
can be, and moreover are generally so rubbed over with oil as to smell detestably, and
seem to be as dirty as they are ugly and horrible to look at. To all these questions I was
able to reply so as to satisfy them entirely. But when I came to the point at last, and
urged them to embrace the religion which they felt to be true, they made that same
objection which we hear from many Christians when urged to change their life---that they
would set men talking about them if they altered their ways and their religion, and
besides, they said that they should be afraid that, if they did so, they would have
nothing to live on and support themselves by.
I have found just one Brahmin and no more in all this coast who is a man of learning:
he is said to have studied in a very famous Academy. Knowing this, I took measures to
converse with him alone. He then told me at last, as a great secret, that the students of
this Academy are at the outset made by their masters to take an oath not to reveal their
mysteries, but that, out of friendship for me, he would disclose them to me. One of these
mysteries was that there only exists one God, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth,
whom men are bound to worship, for the idols are simply images of devils. The Brahmins
have certain books of sacred literature which contain, as they say, the laws of God. The
masters teach in a learned tongue, as we do in Latin. He also explained to me these divine
precepts one by one; but it would be a long business to write out his commentary, and
indeed not worth the trouble. Their sages keep as a feast our Sunday. On this day they
repeat at different hours this one player: "I adore Thee, O God; and I implore Thy
help for ever." They are bound by oath to repeat this prayer frequently, and in a low
voice. My friend added, that the law of nature permitted them to have more wives than one,
and their sacred books predicted that the time would come when all men should embrace the
same religion. After all this he asked me in my turn to explain the principal mysteries of
the Christian religion, promising to keep them secret. I replied, that I would not tell
him a word about them unless he promised beforehand to publish abroad what I should tell
him of the religion of Jesus Christ. He made the promise, and then I carefully explained
to him those words of Jesus Christ in which our religion is summed up: "He who
believes and is baptized shall be saved." This text, with my commentary on it, which
embraced the whole of the Apostles' Creed, he wrote down carefully, as well as the
Commandments, on account of their close connection with the Creed.
He told me also that one night he had dreamt that he had been made a Christian to his
immense delight, and that he had become my brother and companion. He ended by begging me
to make him a Christian secretly. But as he made certain conditions opposed to right and
justice, I put off his baptism. I don't doubt but that by God's mercy he will one day be a
Christian. I charged him to teach the ignorant and unlearned that there is only one God,
Creator of heaven and earth; but he pleaded the obligation of his oath, and said he could
not do so, especially as he was much afraid that if he did it he should become possessed
by an evil spirit....
Source:
From: Henry James Coleridge, ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 2d
Ed., 2 Vols., (London: Burns & Oates, 1890), Vol. I, pp. 151-163; reprinted in William
H. McNeil and Mitsuko Iriye, eds., Modern Asia and Africa, Readings in World
History Vol. 9, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 4-11.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton.
This text is part of the Internet
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© Paul Halsall, October 1998
