Jesuits Were An Easy Prey To Cholera In India

"In 1841 the Jesuits in Madura never tasted meat or wine, but lived entirely on rice and fish; and often so little of these, that some now living can remember repeatedly fainting from exhaustion as they said mass in the morning.

Even bread was a luxury almost unknown, for in every respect they lived as the poorer class of natives. This, joined to the excessive toil which they often underwent, spending hours in the confessional, and in giving instructions, riding long journeys from one Christian village to another, and having no better resting-place on their arrival than the wretched hut

which has been described, was too much for the strength of men accustomed to better food, and in sufficient quantity, and made them an easy prey to cholera, or any other disease by which they might be attacked"

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Engraving is of St John de Brito, S.J.

Father de Brito worked in Madura, in the regions of Kolei and Tattuvanchery. When he studied the India caste system, he discovered that most Christians belonged to the lowest and most despised caste.

He thought that members of the higher caste would also have to be converted for Christianity to have a future.

He became an Indian ascetic, a pandaraswami since they were permitted to approach individuals of all castes. He changed his life style, eating just a bit of rice each day and sleeping on a mat, dressing in a red cloak and turban. He established a small retreat in the wilderness and was in time accepted as a pandaraswami.

As he became well-known, the number of conversions greatly increased. His success in converting Prince Tadaya Theva indirectly led to his death. The prince was interested in Christianity even before the prayers of a catechist helped him recover from a serious interest.

De Brito insisted that the prince could keep only one of his several wives after his baptism; he agreed to this condition, but one of the rejected wives complained to her uncle, the raja of Marava who sent soldiers to arrest the missionary on January 28, 1690. Twenty days later the raja exiled de Brito to Oriyur, a neighboring province his brother governed. The raja instructed his brother to execute the troublesome Jesuit who was taken from prison on February 4 and led to a knoll overlooking a river where an executioner decapitated him with a schimitar.

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