Malabar Rites

A conventional term for certain customs or practices of the
natives of South India, which the Jesuit missionaries allowed
their neophytes to retain after conversion, but which were
afterwards prohibited by the Holy See. The missions concerned are
not those of the coast of southwestern India, to which the name
Malabar properly belongs, but those of inner South India,
especially those of the former "kingdoms" of Madura, Mysore and
the Karnatic. The question of Malabar Rites originated in the
method followed by the Jesuits, since the beginning of the
seventeenth century, in evangelizing those countries. The
prominent feature of that method was a condescending accommodation
to the manners and customs of the people the conversion of whom
was to be obtained. But, when bitter enemies asserted, as some
still assert, that the Jesuit missionaries, in Madura, Mysore and
the Karnatic, either accepted for themselves or permitted to their
neophytes such practices as they knew to be idolatrous or
superstitious, this accusation must be styled not only unjust, but
absurd. In fact it is tantamount to affirming that these men,
whose intelligence at least was never questioned, were so stupid
as to jeopardize their own salvation in order to save others, and
to endure infinite hardships in order to establish among the
Hindus a corrupt and sham Christianity.

The popes, while disapproving of some usages hitherto considered
inoffensive or tolerable by the missionaries, never charged them
having adulterated knowingly the purity of religion. On one of
them, who had observed the "Malabar Rites" for seventeen years
previous to his martyrdom, the Church has conferred the honour of
beatification. The process for the beatification of Father John de
Britto was going on at Rome during the hottest period of the
controversy upon the famous "Rites"; and the adversaries of the
Jesuits asserted beatification to be impossible, because it would
amount to approving the "superstitions and idolatries" maintained
by the missioners of Madura. Yet the cause progressed, and
Benedict XIV, on 2 July, 1741, declared "that the rites in
question had not been used, as among the Gentiles, with religious
significance, but merely as civil observances, and that therefore
they were no obstacle to bringing forward the process". (Brief of
Beatification of John de Britto, 18 May, 1852.) There is no reason
to view the "Malabar Rites", as practised generally in the said
missions, in any other light. Hence the good faith of the
missionaries in tolerating the native customs should not be
contested; on the other hand, they, no doubt, erred in carrying
this toleration too far. But the bare enumeration of the Decrees
by which the question was decided shows how perplexing it was and
how difficult the solution.

Father de Nobili's work

The founder of the missions of the interior of South India,
Roberto de Nobili, was born at Rome, in 1577, of a noble family
from Montepulciano, which numbered among many distinguished
relatives the celebrated Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine. When
nineteen years of age, he entered the Society of Jesus; and, after
a few years, the young religious, aiming at the purest ideal of
self-sacrifice, requested his superiors to send him to the
missions of India. He embarked at Lisbon, 1604, and in 1606 was
serving his apostolic apprenticeship in South India. Christianity
was then flourishing on the coasts of this country. It is well
known that St. Francis Xavier baptized many thousands there, and
from the apex of the Indian triangle the faith spread along both
sides, especially on the west, the Malabar coast. But the interior
of the vast peninsula remained almost untouched. The Apostle of
the Indies himself recognized the insuperable opposition of the
"Brahmins and other noble castes inhabiting the interior" to the
preaching of the Gospel (Monumenta Xaveriana, I, 54). Yet his
disciples were not sparing of endeavours. A Portuguese Jesuit,
Gonsalvo Fernandes, had resided in the city of Madura fully
fourteen years, having obtained leave of the king to stay there to
watch over the spiritual needs of a few Christians from the coast;
and, though a zealous and pious missionary, he had not succeeded,
within that long space of time, in making one convert. This
painful state of things Nobili witnessed in 1606, when together
with his superior, the Provincial of Malabar, he paid a visit to
Fernandes. At once his keen eye perceived the cause and the
remedy.

It was evident that a deep-rooted aversion to the foreign
preachers hindered the Hindus of the interior, not only from
accepting the Gospel, but even from listening to its message. But
whence this aversion? Its object was not exactly the foreigner,
but the Prangui. This name, with which the natives of India
designed the Portuguese, conveyed to their minds the idea of an
infamous and abject class of men, with whom no Hindu could have
any intercourse without degrading himself to the lowest ranks of
the population. Now the Prangui were abominated because they
violated the most respected customs of India, by eating beef, and
indulging in wine and spirits; but much as all well-bred Hindus
abhored those things, they felt more disgusted at seeing the
Portuguese, irrespective of any distinction of caste, treat freely
with the lowest classes, such as the pariahs, who in the eyes of
their countrymen of the higher castes, are nothing better than the
vilest animals. Accordingly, since Fernandes was known to be a
Portuguese, that is a Prangui, and besides was seen living
habitually with the men of the lowest caste, the religion he
preached, no less than himself, had to share the contempt and
execration attending his neophytes, and made no progress whatever
among the better classes. To become acceptable to all,
Christianity must be presented to all, Christianity must be
presented in quite another way. While Nobili thought over his
plan, probably the example just set by his countryman Matteo
Ricci, in China, stood before his mind. At all events, he started
from the same principle, resolving to become, after the motto of
St. Paul, all things to all men, and a Hindu to the Hindus, as far
as might be lawful.

Having ripened his design by thorough meditation and by conferring
with his superiors, the Archbishop of Cranganore and the
provincial of Malabar, who both approved and encouraged his
resolution, Nobili boldly began his arduous career by re-entering
Madura in the dress of the Hindu ascetics, known as saniassy. He
never tried to make believe that he was a native of India; else he
would have deserved the name of imposter; with which he has
sometimes been unjustedly branded; but he availed himself of the
fact that he was not a Portuguese, to deprecate the opprobrious
name Prangui. He introduced himself as a Roman raja (nobleman),
desirous of living at Madura in practising penance, in praying and
studying the sacred law. He carefully avoided meeting with Father
Fernandes and he took his lodging in a solitary abode in the
Brahmins' quarter obtained from the benevolence of a high officer.
At first he called himself a raja, but soon he changed this title
for that of brahmin, better suited to his aims. The rajas or
kshatryas, being the second of the three high castes, formed the
military class; but intellectual avocations were almost
monopolized by the Brahmins. They held from time immemorial the
spiritual if not the political government of the nation, and were
the arbiters of what the others ought to believe, to revere, and
to adore. Yet, it must be noted, they were in no wise a priestly
caste; they were possessed of no exclusive right to perform
functions of religious cult. Nobili remained for a long time shut
up in his dwelling, after the custom of Indian penitents, living
on rice, milk, and herbs with water, and that once a day; he
received attendance only from Brahmin servants. Curiosity could
not fail to be raised, and all the more as the foreign saniassy
was very slow in satisfying it. When, after two or three refusals,
he admitted visitors, the interview was conducted according to the
strictest rules of Hindu etiquette. Nobili charmed his audience by
the perfection with which he spoke their own language, Tamil; by
the quotations of famous Indian authors with which he interspersed
his discourse, and above all, by the fragments of native poetry
which he recited or even sang with exquisite skill.

Having thus won a benevolent hearing, he proceeded step by step on
his missionary task, labouring first to set right the ideas of his
auditors with respect to natural truth concerning God, the soul,
etc., and then instilling by degrees the dogmas of the Christian
faith. He took advantage also of his acquaintance with the books
revered by the Hindus as sacred and divine. These he contrived,
the first of all Europeans, to read and study in the Sanskrit
originals. For this purpose he had engaged a reputed Brahmin
teacher, with whose assistance and by the industry of his own keen
intellect and felicitous memory he gained such a knowledge of this
recondite literature as to strike the native doctors with
amazement, very few of them feeling themselves capable of vying
with him on the point. In this way also he was enabled to find in
the Vedas many truths which he used in testimony of the doctrine
he preached. By this method, and no less by the prestige of his
pure and austere life, the missionary had soon dispelled the
distrust and before the end of 1608, he conferred baptism on
several persons conspicuous for nobility and learning. While he
obliged his neophytes to reject all practices involving
superstition or savouring in any wise of idolatrous worship, he
allowed them to keep their national customs, in as far as these
contained nothing wrong and referred to merely political or civil
usages. Accordingly, Nobili's disciples continued for example,
wearing the dress proper to each one's caste; the Brahmins
retaining their codhumbi (tuft of hair) and cord (cotton string
slung over the left shoulder); all adorning as before, their
foreheads with sandalwood paste, etc. yet, one condition was laid
on them, namely, that the cord and sandal, if once taken with any
superstitious ceremony, be removed and replaced by others with a
special benediction, the formula of which had been sent to Nobili
by the Archbishop of Cranganore.

While the missionary was winning more and more esteem, not only
for himself, but also for the Gospel, even among those who did not
receive it, the fanatical ministers and votaries of the national
gods, whom he was going to supplant, could not watch his progress
quietly. By their assaults, indeed, his work was almost
unceasingly impeded, and barely escaped ruin on several occasions;
but he held his ground in spite of calumny, imprisonment, menances
of death and all kinds of ill-treatment. In April, 1609, the flock
which he had gathered around him was too numerous for his chapel
and required a church; and the labour of the ministry had become
so crushing that he entreated the provincial to send him a
companion. But then fell on him a storm from a part whence it
might least have been expected. Fernandes, the missioner already
mentioned, may have felt no mean jealousy, when seeing Nobili
succeed so happily where he had been so powerless; but certainly
he proved unable to understand or to appreciate the method of his
colleague; probably, also, as he had lived perforce apart from the
circles among which the latter was working, he was never well
informed of his doings. However, that may be, Fernandes directed
to the superiors of the Jesuits in India and at Rome a lengthy
report, in which he charged Nobili with simulation, in declining
the name of Prangui; with connivance at idolatry, in allowing his
neophytes to observe heathen customs, such as wearing the insigna
of castes; lastly, with schismatical proceeding, in dividing the
Christians into separate congregations. This denunciation at first
caused an impression highly unfavourable to Nobili. Influenced by
the account of Fernandes, the provincial of Malabar (Father
Laerzio, who had always countenanced Nobili, had then left that
office), the Visitor of the India Missions and even the General of
the Society at Rome sent severe warnings to the missionary
innovator. Cardinal Bellarmine, in 1612, wrote to his relative,
expressing the grief he felt on hearing of his unwise conduct.

Things changed as soon as Nobili, being informed of the
accusation, could answer it on every point. By oral explanations,
in the assemblies of missionaries and theologians at Cochin and at
Goa, and by an elaborate memoir, which he sent to Rome, he
justified the manner in which he had presented himself to the
Brahmins of Madura; then, he showed that the national customs he
allowed his converts to keep were such as had no religious
meaning. The latter point, the crux of the question, he elucidated
by numerous quotations from the authoritative Sanskrit law-books
of the Hindus. Moreover, he procured affidavits of one hundred and
eight Brahmins, from among the most learned in Madura, all
endorsing his interpretation of the native practices. He
acknowledged that the infidels used to associate those practices
with superstitious ceremonies; but, he observed, "these ceremonies
belong to the mode, not to the substance of the practices; the
same difficulty may be raised about eating, drinking, marriage,
etc., for the heathens mix their ceremonies with all their
actions. It suffices to do away with the superstitious ceremonies,
as the Christians do". As to schism, he denied having caused any
such thing: "he had founded a new Christianity, which never could
have been brought together with the older: the separation of the
churches had been approved by the Archbishop of Cranganore; and it
precluded neither unity of faith nor Christian charity, for his
neophytes used to greet kindly those of F. Fernandes. Even on the
coast there are different churches for different castes, and in
Europe the places in the churches are not common for all."
Nobili's apology was effectually seconded by the Archbishop of
Cranganore, who, as he had encouraged the first steps of the
missionary, continued to stand firmly by his side, and pleaded his
cause warmly at Goa before the archbishop, as well as at Rome.
Thus the learned and zealous primate of India, Alexis de Menezes,
though a synod held by him had prohibited the Brahmin cord, was
won over to the cause of Nobili. And his successor, Christopher de
Sa, having thought fit to take a contrary course, remained almost
the only opponent in India.

At Rome the explanations of Nobili, of the Archbishop of
Cranganore, and of the chief Inquisitor of Goa brought about a
similar effect. In 1614 and 1615 Cardinal Bellarmine and the
General of the Society wrote again to the missionary, declaring
themselves fully satisfied. At last, after the usual mature
examination by the Holy See, on 31 January, 1623, Gregory XV, by
his Apostolic Letter, " Romanae Sedis Antistes", decided the
question provisionally in favour of Father de Nobili. Accordingly,
the codhumbi, the cord, the sandal, and the baths were permitted
to the Indian Christians, "until the Holy See provide otherwise";
only certain conditions are prescribed, in order that all
superstitious admixture and all occasion of scandal may be
averted. As to the separation of the castes, the pope confines
himself to "earnestly entreating and beseeching (etiam atque etiam
obtestamur et obsecramus) the nobles not to despise the lower
people, especially in the churches, by hearing the Divine word and
receiving the sacraments apart from them". Indeed, a strict order
to this effect would have been tantamount to sentencing the new-
born Christianity of Madura to death. The pope understood, no
doubt, that the customs connected with the distinction of castes,
being so deeply rooted in the ideas and habits of all Hindus, did
not admit an abrupt suppression, even among the Christians. They
were to be dealt with by the Church, as had been slavery, serfdom,
and the like institutions of past times. The Church never attacked
directly those inveterate customs; but she inculcated meekness,
humility, charity, love of the Saviour who suffered and gave His
life for all, and by this method slavery, serfdom, and other
social abuses were slowly eradicated.

While imitating this wise indulgence to the feebleness of new
converts, Father de Nobili took much care to inspire his disciples
with the feelings becoming true Christians towards their humbler
brethren. At the very outset of his preaching, he insisted on
making all understand that "religion was by no means dependent on
caste; indeed it must be one for all, the true God being one for
all; although [he added] unity of religion destroys not the civil
distinction of the castes nor the lawful privileges of the
nobles". Explaining then the commandment of charity, he inculcated
that it extended to the pariahs as well as others, and he exempted
nobody from the duties it imposes; but he might rightly tell his
neophytes that, for example, visiting pariahs or other of low
caste at their houses, treating them familiarly, even kneeling or
siting by them in the church, concerned perfection rather than the
precept of charity, and that accordingly such actions could be
omitted without any fault, at least where they involved so grave a
detriment as degradation from the higher caste. Of this principle
the missionaries had a right to make use for themselves. Indeed
charity required more from the pastors of souls than from others;
yet not in such a way that they should endanger the salvation of
the many to relieve the needs of the few. Therefore Nobili, at the
beginning of his apostolate, avoided all public intercourse with
the lower castes; but he failed not to minister secretly even to
pariahs. In the year 1638, there were at Tiruchirapalli
(Trichinopoly) several hundred Christian pariahs, who had been
secretly taught and baptized by the companions of Nobili. About
this time he devised a means of assisting more directly the lower
castes, without ruining the work begun among the higher.

Besides the Brahmin saniassy, there was another grade of Hindu
ascetics, called pandaram, enjoying less consideration than the
Brahmins, but who were allowed to deal publicly with all castes,
and even hold intercourse with the pariahs. They were not excluded
from relations with the higher castes. On the advice of Nobili,
the superiors of the mission with the Archbishop of Cranganore
resolved that henceforward there should be two classes of
missionaries, the Brahmin and the pandaram. Father Balthasar da
Costa was the first, in 1540, who took the name and habit of
pandaram, under which he effected a large number of conversions,
of others as well as of pariahs. Nobili had then three Jesuit
companions. After the comforting decision of Rome, he had hastened
to extend his preaching beyond the town of Madura, and the Gospel
spread by degrees over the whole interior of South India. In 1646,
exhausted by forty-two years of toiling and suffering, he was
constrained to retire, first to Jafnapatam in Ceylon, then to
Mylapore, where he died 16 January, 1656. He left his mission in
full progress. To give some idea of its development, we note that
the superiors, writing to the General of the Society, about the
middle and during the second half of the seventeenth century,
record an annual average of five thousand conversions, the number
never being less than three thousand a year even when the
missioners' work was most hindered by persecution. At the end of
the seventeenth century, the total number of Christians in the
mission, founded by Nobili and still named Madura mission, though
embracing, besides Madura, Mysore, Marava, Tanjore, Gingi, etc.,
is described as exceeding 150,000. Yet the number of the
missionaries never went beyond seven, assisted however by many
native catechists.

The Madura mission belonged to the Portuguese assistance of the
Society of Jesus, but it was supplied with men from all provinces
of the Order. Thus, for example, Father Beschi (c. 1710 - 1746),
who won so high a renown among the Hindus, heathen and Christian,
by his writings in Tamil, was an Italian, as the founder of the
mission had been. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century,
the French Father John Venantius Bouchet worked for twelve years
in Madura, chiefly at Trichinopoly, during which time he baptized
about 20'000 infidels. And it is to be noted that the catechumens,
in these parts of India, were admitted to baptism only after a
long and a careful preparation. Indeed the missionary accounts of
the time bear frequent witness to the very commendable 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 brethren, even of lowest castes, their zeal
for the conversion of pagans. In the year 1700 Father Bouchet,
with a few other French Jesuits, opened a new mission in the
Karnatic, north of the River Kaveri. Like their Portuguese
colleagues of Madura, the French missionaries of the Karnatic were
very successful, in spite of repeated and almost continual
persecutions by the idolators. Moreover several of them became
particularly conspicuous for the extensive knowledge they acquired
of the literature and sciences of ancient India. From Father
Coeurdoux the French Academicians 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 Karnatic
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 century.

The Decree of Tournon

This second phase, which was much more eventful and noisy than the
first, originated 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 working for the conversion
of the natives. With a view to forwarding the latter work, the
Bishop of Mylapore or San Thome, to whose jurisdiction Pondicherry
belonged, resolved, in 1699, to transfer it entirely to the
Jesuits of the Karnatic mission, assigning to them a parochial
church in the town and restricting the ministry of the Capuchins
to the European immigrants, French or Portuguese. The Capuchins
were displeased by this arrangement and appealed to Rome. The
petition they laid before the pope, in 1703, embodied not only a
complaint against the division of parishes made by the bishop, but
also an accusation against the methods of the Jesuit mission in
South India. Their claim on the former point was finally
dismissed, but the charges were more successful. On 6 November,
1703, Charles -Thomas Maillard de Tournon, a Piedmontese prelate,
Patriarch of Antioch, sent by Clement XI, with the power of
legatus a latere, to visit the new Christian missions of the East
Indies and especially China, landed at Pondicherry. Being obliged
to wait there eight months for the opportunity of passing over to
China, Tournon instituted an inquiry into the facts alleged by the
Capuchins. He was hindered through sickness, as he himself 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 interpreters; 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 consisted of sixteen articles
concerning practices in use or supposed to be in use among the
neophytes of Madura and the Karnatic; the legate condemned and
prohibited these practices as defiling the purity of the faith and
religion, and forbade the missionaries, on pain of heavy censures,
to permit them any more. Though dated 23 June, 1704, the decree
was notified to the superiors of the Jesuits only on 8 July, three
days before the departure of Tournon from Pondicherry. During the
short time left, the missionaries endeavoured to make him
understand on what imperfect information his degree rested, and
that nothing less than the ruin of the mission was likely to
follow from its execution. They succeeded in persuading him to
take off orally the threat of censures appended, and to suspend
provisionally the prescription commanding the missionaries to give
spiritual assistance to the sick pariahs, not only in the
churches, but in their dwellings.

Examination of the Malabar Rites at Rome

Tournon's decree, interpreted by prejudice and ignorance as
representing, in the wrong practices if 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 Congregation of the Holy Office, on 7 January,
1706, a provisional confirmation of the decree to be sent to him,
adding that it should be executed "until the Holy See might
provide otherwise, after having heard those who might have
something to object". And meanwhile, by an oraculum vivae vocis
granted to the procurator of the Madura mission, the pope decree,
"in so far as the Divine glory and the salvation of souls would
permit". The objections of the missionaries and the corrections
they desired were propounded by several deputies and carefully
examined at Rome, without effect, during the lifetime of Clement
XI and during the short pontificate of his successor 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 Karnatic " the execution of Tournon'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, commanded 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 their final conclusions upon all
the articles of Tournon's decree, declaring how each of them ought
to be executed, or restricted and mitigated. By a Brief dated 24
August, 1734, Clement XII sanctioned this resolution; moreover, on
13 May 1739, he prescribed an oath, by which every missionary
should bind himself to obeying and making the neophytes obey
exactly the Brief of 24 August, 1734.

Many hard prescriptions of Tournon were mitigated by the
regulation of 1734. As to the first article, condemning the
omission of the use of saliva and breathing 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 Hindus felt so strangely loath.
Other prohibitions or precepts of the legate are softened by the
additions of a Quantum fieri potest, or even replaced by mere
counsels or advices. In the sixth article, the taly, "with the
image of the idol Pulleyar", is still interdicted, but the
Congregation observes that "the 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 overzealous legate 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 emblems 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, '
Romanae Senis Antistes ', be observed throughout ". By that
Constitution, as we have already seen, some signs and ornaments,
materially similar to those prohibited by Tournon, were allowed to
the Christians, provided that no superstition whatever was mingled
with their use. Indeed, as the Congregation of Propaganda explains
in an Instruction sent to the Vicar Apostolic of Pondicherry, 15
February, 1792, "the Decree of Cardinal de Tournon and the
Constitution of Gregory XV agree in this way, that both absolutely
forbid any sign bearing even the least semblance of superstition,
but allow those which are in general use for the sake of
adornment, of good manners, and bodily cleanness, without any
respect to religion".

The most difficult point retained was the twelfth article,
commanding the missionaries to administer the sacraments to the
sick pariahs in their dwellings, publicly. Though submitting
dutifully to all precepts of the Vicar of Christ, the Jesuits in
Madura could not but feel distressed, at experiencing how the last
especially, made their apostolate difficult and even impossible
amidst the upper classes of Hindus. At their request, Benedict XIV
consented to try a new solution of the knotty problem, by forming
a band of missionaries who should attend only to the care of the
pariahs. This scheme became formal law through the Constitution
"Omnium sollicitudinum", published 12 September, 1744. Except this
point, the document confirmed again the whole regulation enacted
by Clement XII in 1734. The arrangement sanctioned by Benedict XIV
benefited greatly the lower classes of Hindu neophytes; whether it
worked also to the advantage of the mission at large, is another
question, about which the reports are less comforting . Be that as
it may, after the suppression of the Society of Jesus (1773), the
distinction between Brahmin and pariah missionaries became extinct
with the Jesuit missionaries. Henceforth conversions in the higher
castes were fewer and fewer, and nowadays the Christian Hindus,
for the most part, belong to the lower and lowest classes. The
Jesuit missionaries, when reentering Madura in the 1838, did not
come with the dress of the Brahmin saniassy, like the founders of
the mission; yet they pursued a design which Nobili had also in
view, though he could not carry it out, as they opened their
college of Negapatam, now at Trichinopoly. A wide breach has
already been made into the wall of Brahminic reserve by that
institution, where hundreds of Brahmins send their sons to be
taught by the Catholic missionaries. Within recent years, about
fifty of these young men have embraced the faith of their
teachers, at the cost of rejection from their caste and even from
their family; such examples are not lost on their countrymen,
either of high or low caste.

JOSEPH BRUCKER
Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas

In Memory of Roberto de Nobili S.J.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.

Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the  entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
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