Part 10

After the death of Charles VIII., on April 7th, 1498, the Duke of Orleans ascended the throne, as Louis XII. He at once obtained a divorce from Pope Alexander VI., by taking an oath that his marriage with Joan was not complete. Joan offered no opposition, rejoicing to see herself at liberty; and her husband at once concluded another marriage with Anne of Brittany, the widow of the young king. As some recompence to his divorced wife, Louis XII. gave her the Duchy of Berry, besides Pontoise, and other townships. She resided at Bourges, where she spent her time in the exercise of charity, to which she devoted her large revenues.

In 1500, she founded the order of the Annunciation, for women. S. Joan took the habit herself in 1504, but died on the 4th of February, 1505; and was buried at Bourges. Her body was torn from its resting place, in 1562, and burned by the Calvinists.

S. JOSEPH OF LEONISSA, C.

(A.D. 1612.)

[Roman Martyrology Authority:--The Acts of his Beatification, which took place in 1737, and those of his canonization in 1746.]

This Saint was born at Leonissa, in the States of the Church, in 1556. He entered the Capuchin Order, and laboured at the redemption of Christian slaves. He died of cancer, at the age of fifty-eight. As the doctors desired to perform a painful operation on him, to remove the cancer, they ordered him to be bound, but he placed his crucifix before him saying, "this is the firmest of all bonds; it will hold me immoveable. Cut deep, I shall not flinch."

B. JOHN DE BRITTO, M., S.J.

(A.D. 1693.)

[Roman Martyrology. Beatified on August 21st, 1853. The following account is epitomised from his life in "Pictures of Christian Heroism."]

John de Britto was born at Lisbon, March 1st, 1647; he was the son of Don Salvador de Britto Peregra and Beatrix his wife, both of whom were of noble birth. His father dying when he was only four years old, he was committed by his mother to the care of the Jesuits; and under them grew up full of the grace of God.

At the age of nine he was sent to court in the capacity of page to Don Pedro, the youngest son of the king, and probable heir to the throne of Portugal. During the six years he spent at court, he persevered in the pious habits he had formed under his mother's roof, and in the Jesuit school, frequently retiring for private prayer, and attending mass daily.

By this exemplary course of life he incurred the hatred of his fellow pages; for his rigid rule of life was a check upon their profligacy. They ridiculed his piety, and heaped upon him persecution, not only by words, but also by blows. He bore their ill-treatment with great patience; but it produced an illness which brought him into hourly danger of death. At the very moment of his agony his patron, S. Francis Xavier, at the earnest prayer of his mother, restored his health. She had from his birth dedicated her son to the apostle of India, and she now vowed that if her child were to recover, he should wear the Jesuit habit for the whole year in honour of his deliverer. When, therefore, he appeared at court again after his recovery, it was in a little black robe, with a chaplet of the Blessed Virgin hanging by his side; and in this garb he served the Prince, and attended the Jesuit college of S. Antony of Padua. The people stopped in the streets to see him pass; not on account of the strangeness of such a dress on a child, but to mark his holy and edifying demeanour. When the term of his vow had expired, he put off the dress, but with the intention to assume it one day for ever. Notwithstanding his infirm health, he had long resolved to leave the world, and lead an apostolic life as a Jesuit, and at the age of fifteen he carried this resolution into effect. He applied for admission into the society to the father-provincial, Michael Tinsco, by whom he was placed in the novitiate at Lisbon. The Prince, Don Pedro, opposed his resolution, but the mother rejoiced that her son should possess a vocation for the Company of Jesus.

It was on the 17th of December, 1662, that John de Britto entered the novitiate at Lisbon. A novena had just commenced in preparation for Christmas. At its close each postulant had to present the Infant Jesus with a petition, according to his wants. De Britto wrote his petition with the others. It was that he might be sent as a missionary to Japan, there to live and labour, and at length obtain the crown of martyrdom. After two years he took the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, having passed through the novitiate a very model of holiness.

On leaving the novitiate at Lisbon, he went to Evora for two years, and thence to Coimbra, to study literature and philosophy. He then removed to Lisbon to teach grammar; and while thus employed, his thirst to go out as a missionary received an additional impulse from the visit of Father Balthazar da Costa, who had just returned from Madura to find recruits. To him he stated the wish of his heart, and he promised to plead his cause at Rome; the consequence of which was that a few months afterwards orders were received by the father-provincial to despatch John de Britto, along with several other young missionaries, in the first ship which should sail for Madura.

John returned hearty thanks to God for the favour, but his mother was distracted at the thought of losing her child. She appealed to the provincial, to her son himself, to the papal nuncio, and to the king, but without effect; and at length, fearing to offend God by persisting in her opposition, she offered him up as the dearest sacrifice she could render. His departure was fixed for the 25th of March, 1674. The night before, he paid a visit to his mother; but to save her the pang of parting, he forebore to tell her that it was the last. He carefully avoided any thing which might interfere with his object; and therefore, instead of joining the other missionaries, when, with a great crowd of people, they attended church on the banks of the Tagus, he embarked secretly, and only appeared when all danger of being delayed was over. He was ordained priest just before leaving.

During the voyage he won the favour of the captain, and took advantage of it to exercise his ministry with the utmost freedom. He had to preach every Sunday, taught the catechism to the ignorant and the children on board, and continually engaged the passengers and sailors in exercises of devotion.

Scarcely had the father set foot on shore, than he ran to embrace the brethren of the college. Having then paid a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, he prostrated himself at the tomb of S. Francis Xavier, thus gathering fresh ardour for his apostolic course. At Goa he commenced the austere life of the Madura missionaries,--which consists in neither eating flesh-meat nor fish, in sleeping on the ground, and walking bare-foot,--that he might be ready for his apostolate when his summons should arrive. In April, 1674, orders arrived from the father-provincial that he should set sail for Malabar, with Father Emmanuel Rodriguez and some other companions.

The mission of Madura, to which Father de Britto was called, comprised a tract of country two hundred leagues long by eighty broad. It presented the most arduous field of labour for the missionary, on account of its extent, the denseness of the population, the climate and nature of the country, and the wild beasts with which it is infested.

The inhabitants generally are very intelligent; they have made great progress in many sciences, and their Brahmins are perfectly able to sustain an argument in defence of their religion. To holiness, devotion, energy, and courage, the essential qualities of an apostle, the Indian missionary must add the advantages of a logical mind and a ready wit. But perhaps the opposition of the Brahmins is less to be feared by the missionary than the popular veneration for caste.

The first missionaries in India, not possessing caste, found it impossible to obtain a hearing. With all their holiness, earnestness, and zeal, no one would listen to a pariah. It was reserved for Father Robert de' Nobili to surmount, or at least show how to surmount, this obstacle. He was a Roman Jesuit, nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine, and grand-nephew of Pope Marcellus II. After carefully studying the peculiarities of the Brahmins, their laws, traditions, customs, and tenets, he saw the rock on which his predecessors had split. He determined to lay aside whatever should denote his European extraction, and adopt the dress and mode of life of some class of the natives possessing caste. First he appeared as a rajah, then as a secular Brahmin, with a long flowing robe and a silk shoulder-knot; but without success. He then discovered that, over and above caste, a mortified exterior is required to influence the Indians. He appeared, therefore, partly in the dress of the Samasks, or Brahmins of Penance; and in this he was completely successful. This class is in the highest repute among the natives; they are regarded as the masters of the law, and their word is final. They are distinguished by their ascetic life, and their renunciation of the pleasures of the world. They live on a little boiled rice, which they receive only once a day, at sunset. In this character Father de' Nobili converted a vast number of Brahmins.

Father de Britto approved the principle of his great predecessor, but somewhat varied his practice. He adopted the dress of the Pandarists, a sect in very great estimation on account of their ascetism; they are not held in equal honour with the Samasks, but they mix more with the various sects, and their garb therefore affords greater opportunities of intercourse with the natives. The reader then must imagine our blessed martyr for the future not in his own black habit, but in the long yellow wrapping of the Pandarist.

The Pandarists wear no other garment than a piece of yellow cloth enveloping the whole figure. This dress guards them from the dangerous rays of the tropical sun, to which they are exposed the whole day. They sometimes wear a cap, an addition absolutely necessary to the European who would avoid a stroke of the sun; but they walk barefoot, except on occasions of ceremony, and in crossing the burning sands of the country, when they adopt a sandal of a peculiar construction. It is not fastened by a strap, but attached to the foot by means of a wooden peg between two toes. This clog is of little value for purposes of travelling, as it produces violent swellings of the legs and feet; but it is useful in crossing the deserts. The Pandarists allow the beard to grow, which is a mark of distinction in India, and carry a staff as a symbol of authority. Their diet is of the plainest kind, and entirely vegetable; animal life being held too sacred among them for the purposes of food, and therefore of course interdicted to all who would adopt their mode of life.

This rigorous rule might have discouraged souls less ardent than John de Britto; but to him no sacrifice, no painfulness, seemed too great in his Master's service; and he cheerfully entered upon it, in spite of his feeble health and European constitution for the love he bore to Jesus Christ, and his yearning for the salvation of the idolators.

Father de Britto set sail from Goa for the coast of Malabar, and landed at Ignapatam; then through Tanjore, where he was detained nearly a year by illness, he passed on to Ambalgata. In the college at this station Father de Britto, after a retreat of a month, took his monastic vows, and received his appointment to the Madura mission.

He set out immediately with one other missionary and a few neophytes for Colli. They suffered excessive hardships on the route: they had to climb steep and rugged mountains, to pass through forests dense with briers and brushwood, and swarming with reptiles, to cross swollen rivers and pathless deserts; but at length they reached Colli, on the festival of S. Ignatius.

There he found the plague raging, and he made it the means of converting very many to the faith by his intrepidity in relieving the sufferers. After the pestilence had ceased, the conversions increased so rapidly, that it became necessary to divide the northern and southern district of the mission, and the latter was committed to Father de Britto.

His plan was to send on before him two or more catechists to get the work ready; so that when he arrived himself, he might proceed without loss of time. On arriving, he assembled the Christians and catechumens, and preached a sermon; then he visited the sick and dying, and baptized the infants of Christian parents; after which he entered the tribunal of penance, in which he sat often for twelve consecutive hours, for the whole neighbourhood flocked, and made their confessions to him. He preached on all Sundays and holidays, catechized the children, and passed from house to house to warn bad Christians, or to resolve the doubts of inquiring idolators. In the evenings he assembled the whole congregation to recite the rosary of the Blessed Virgin, and in this way he made a vast number of converts; and when he had stayed long enough in one place for the requirements of the people, he passed on to some other station.

In his dress of a Pandarist, De Britto always obtained a ready hearing, and hence perhaps the great success of his preaching. But in all these labours he was obliged, by the universal prejudice against the pariahs, to direct his endeavours mainly towards the conversion of the upper classes. To his great sorrow, he found that even as a Pandarist he could not openly make proselytes among that caste without exposing his religion to universal contempt. He therefore was compelled to recognise their distinctions in society for the present, in order to establish Christianity on the broader basis ultimately. But, notwithstanding, he took care to advance the cause of the pariahs, or lowest and most despised caste, by showing to the converts the universality of the Gospel of Christ; and secretly he effected many conversions among the pariahs themselves. But the caste-prejudices of the natives were so strong, that he found it impossible to overcome them; and he did not consider them incompatible with the most sincere acceptance of Christianity. As the Apostles had for a time consented to circumcision, the more effectually to recommend the new faith,--so the Indian missionaries judged it right to waive for awhile, in the infant state of Christianity in India, their objection to the social distinctions between man and man.

In addition to the natural obstacle from caste, and the ability of the Brahmins, which the Indian missionary has to encounter, the saint had to labour at a time when the whole country was convulsed with civil war. Hordes of savage Indians from the interior traversed the country; fire and the sword destroyed whole villages; and the inhabitants, being unable to take vengeance on the real aggressors, the tide of popular fury set in against the Christians. Thus it was that in many cases prosperous missions had to be given up, and the trembling Christians fled to celebrate the rites of religion in secret places. Solitary chapels rose up in the depths of the forest, or by the lone riverside, and thither the faithful repaired with their beloved pastor. But here they were exposed to a danger from which they had been free in the cities. The fury of the inundations rendered their retreats exceedingly perilous. An instance of this occurred near the river Corolam, where the Christians, who had been driven from Ginghi, erected a chapel. De Britto was praying in the chapel with sixteen of his flock, when the cry was raised that the building was surrounded with water. They tried to dam the water out, but unsuccessfully; and were compelled to construct a raft out of the beams of the roof, and upon that they floated to a wood at a little distance, situated on an eminence. There they intended to remain till the flood subsided; but they had no food; and even their place of security threatened to fail them, for the waters ran with terrible rapidity, and almost covered the hill; so one of the Christians, at the risk of his life, swam back to the chapel, and succeeded in obtaining a little rice; this, along with some bitter herbs, which they procured with difficulty, was all their sustenance during the three days they were encompassed by the floods. But this was not all; they were attacked by a number of serpents, which, driven out of their holes by the water, sought the same place of safety. But throughout his missionary career, the blessed De Britto enjoyed that power over venomous beasts which our Saviour promised to His followers, and the band of Christians were unhurt. Power over serpents gives its possessor an unbounded influence with the Indians; and this terrible situation of the little band of Christians, being perfectly well understood by the idolaters, procured for De Britto a wonderful reputation. When the waters subsided, the Christians returned to their chapel, and found it almost swept away; but the foundations remained, and they set to work with such vigour, that in a short time the walls were raised again, and the chapel was ready for the Christmas solemnity. Father de Britto, with streaming eyes, thanked God for their escape, and besought him to look down with pity upon the struggling society, and prosper the cause of Christ in his hands.

In consequence of the wonderful success of De Britto, his superiors would have made him rector of Ambalucata. This preferment he evaded; but he accepted the post of superior of both districts of the mission. His journeys now became longer and more arduous. He travelled on foot, and was detained neither by the heat of the sun nor by the floods in the rainy seasons. Rocky mountains, sandy plains, dense forests, broad and rapid rivers were traversed. At Madura, as he was preparing 200 catechumens for baptism, a band of armed men rushed upon him and took him prisoner. They struck him with their fists and with sticks, and kicked him, and threw him into a dungeon with his hands tied behind his back. But God suffered them not to hurt him; and after trying to terrify him with threats of death, they at length let him go.

Journeying northward, he made a stay at Marava of three months, in the year 1686, during which he baptized more than 2000 idolaters; but not withstanding his success he was anxious to get on, in consequence of the accounts which reached him of the ripeness of the natives for Christianity still farther north. This anxiety was the cause of a long and painful imprisonment.

At Mangalam the idolaters laid wait for the missionary, and seized him as he was entering the gates of the city. They bound him hand and foot with iron chains, and conducted him immediately to the presence of General Conmara, the first minister of state of the King of Marava. This man had an implacable hatred of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The father was first accused of being a magician; but he meekly answered that he was under no guidance of the spirit of darkness, but that he preached the law of the true God, the Maker of heaven and earth. The judge then addressed the two catechists and other churchmen who were taken with him:

"And you," he said, "what do you say?"

"We say the same," they replied.

For which answer they were all condemned to be scourged. And so cruelly were they scourged, that some of them died from the effects. The tyrant then ordered the others to be confined in dungeons, and loaded with irons. Afterwards he tried to shake the constancy of De Britto, believing that if he could gain over the leader the rest would follow. After heaping upon him insults and reproaches, he desired him to sprinkle his forehead with ashes consecrated to the idols, as that would have been tantamount to an acknowledgement of their divinity; the saint of course refused, and the judge in a fury exclaimed that he would have him torn limb from limb.

He was then beaten again, and taken back to his dungeon, laden with irons, and tied to a pillar.

On the fourth day, the persecutors tried a new kind of torture, common enough in that country. The sufferer is taken to the bank of a river, and a cord is fastened to his feet; his hands are tied behind his back, and he is then allowed to fall into the water; then an executioner jumps upon his back, and with his whole weight presses the poor victim to the bottom, where he is kept till he is almost dead; next he is dragged out gasping for breath, and before he has recovered is cast in again; and so on, at the pleasure of his executioners, always being dragged out before life is extinct. It is a torture enough to overcome the staunchest courage. Up to this moment all the companions of the blessed father had remained stedfast; but now one of them, unhappily, entreated the executioners to let him loose. The wretched man saved his life at the expense of his faith.

After enduring farther hardships for some days, the father and his fellow-sufferers were brought into the judgment-hall, where all sorts of instruments had been laid out to terrify their minds,--axes, scourges, torches, pincers, knives, and all the horrible apparatus of torture. The sight of these things, however, inspired them with fresh courage, and a more vehement desire for martyrdom; and as the spectacle had only been produced to impress their minds, they were led back again, the better rather than the worse for what they had seen. But the next day an order came for the execution; and they were taken to Paganari to be tortured and put to death. The executioners began with Valentine, a catechist; whom they led full of wounds and with one of his eyes forced out, to De Britto, and taunted the father with being the cause of the poor man's sufferings.

"He is a happy man," said Father de Britto; "when will you do the like for me?"

Amazed at fortitude such as this, the executioners perceived that while the father lived they could effect nothing by tormenting the disciples; and leaving Valentine alone, they cast themselves upon Father de Britto. Valentine's sufferings had been very great, but they had reserved a special torture for the blessed father. Hard by was a flag of pumice-stone, which the sun had heated up to blister-heat; after beating the missionary violently, they stripped off his clothes and laid him down upon this burning stone; eight of the executioners then jumped upon his body, so as to press the sharp and heated points into his back, already raw with the scourges; and then they took him by the feet and shoulders, and rubbed him up and down till his back was entirely excoriated. In this miserable plight he was left to scorch in the sun; but a charitable idolater dragged him into the shade; and a storm coming on, his murder was deferred till the following day, and he was thrown back into his dungeon, more dead than alive. Valentine's eye was miraculously cured by the blessed father.