Oct 1714

The vows of Veeramamunivar

That year permission came from Rome, and the Provincial named the priest who was to act on it: the father of this church. Constantine Beschi — the Italian Jesuit whom Tamil would come to know as Veeramamunivar, and whose Thembavani is counted among the classical poems of the language — was to make his profession of four vows, the last and gravest promise a Jesuit makes, and Fr Antonius Brandolini was to receive them, being “his neighbour in the district of Vadakenkulam.” On the feast of Saints Simon and Jude, the twenty-eighth of October 1714, the poet made his vows and the priest of Vadakkankulam received them. This village has said ever since that it was done here, and that Beschi brought his own catechist with him for the day. He was young in the mission then, and not yet the poet Tamil remembers. The annual letter written a few months later says he had given himself entirely to the study of Tamil poetry, and had gone further in it in the space of a few months than any missionary since the mission was founded — because in this country, it explains, nothing is held in higher esteem.

DocumentedThis moment rests on 3 sources.

Bertrand 1847p. 353

Général la lettre suivante : — Mon Très-Révérend Père en J.-C. P. C. J’ai reçu, le 16 décembre dernier, avec un profond respect et une immense consolation de mon âme, deux lettres de Votre Paternité, l’une datée du 7 octobre, et l’autre du 30 décembre de l’année 1713. Je remercie infiniment Votre Paternité de l’amour qu’elle m’y témoigne malgré mon indignité, et des indulgences qu’elle m’a obtenues du Souveraiu Pontife pour le bien et le salut de ces chers néophytes rachetés par le sang précieux de notre bon Jésus. Je vous dois et vous rends aussi mille actions de grâces pour l’insigne faveur d’avoir admis un si indigne et si inutile enfant de la Compagnie à la profession solennelle des quatre vœux, que. j’ai faite, d’après les ordres du R. P. Provincial, et ave. un bien vif sentiment de mon bonheur, le jour consacré à la mémoire des apôtres saint Simon et saint Jud . C’est le P. Ant. Brandolini, mon plus proche confrère de mission, qui a reçu mes vœux. Mais puisque Votre Pater- IV. 23

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In English

"I owe you, and render you, a thousand thanks for the signal favour of having admitted so unworthy and so useless a child of the Society to the solemn profession of the four vows, which I made, by order of the Reverend Father Provincial, and with a most lively sense of my happiness, on the day consecrated to the memory of the apostles Saint Simon and Saint Jude. It was Fr Ant. Brandolini, my nearest confrère in the mission, who received my vows."

What this source establishes

Beschi's own letter of 12 January 1715, in a French translation made seventy-one years before Besse's English one — and it gives the same three things and no more: the day, the order of the Provincial, and Brandolini as the priest who received the vows. No place. Two independent translators of the same Latin original, a lifetime apart, both produce a letter with no venue in it, which is why no venue can be read off this letter by anybody.