c.1910

The wall inside the church

For a generation a partition ran down the inside of the church Fr Grégoire had built, dividing one nave from the other. About 1910 Fr Adrien Caussanel had it pulled down. When the government's gazetteer of Tinnevelly wanted the truth about this parish, it went to him and printed what he told it. In the government office the priest was reputed to mock at Authority, and the district Collector rode out, as he put it, to track “the dragon” to his lair. He found a man so thin he had never seen the like: for eighteen years, Caussanel told him, he had eaten no solid food, only milk and gruel, and there was no piety in it: it was the one way he could master his dyspepsia. He knew drugs and simples, and was doctor to that village as much as priest. A furious quarrel was running between him and a good part of his congregation, and the Collector noticed that he served them anyway: “his affection for his wayward sheep seemed unaffected by their waywardness.” When he died in 1930 his own Society's necrology said it without hedging: for nearly forty years, “the great missionary, the saint of the mission.” What the motto on the foundation stone had promised in 1855, the building was finally allowed to be: twofold, and one.

DocumentedThis moment rests on 5 sources.

Molony 1926p. 128

128 A BOOK OP SOUTH INDIA At VadakankElam I found my dragon, the object of my long struggle through the sands* I have never seen a man so thin as Father CaussaneL For some eighteen years, he told me, he had not eaten solid food : he lived on milk and gruel In this there was no idea of pious asceticism : only so could he vanquish the devil of dyspepsia which plagued him. He had called up memories of a past life, and had prepared a meal for me. He watched me eat with the anxious pride of an artist who has invited a critic to gaze upon his masterpiece. Our immediate business w^as soon transacted, and I had leisure to study the old French priest and his ways. Father Caussanel lived among his people as there live in the Old Testament Men of God and Healers of the Sick. He had picked up a working knowledge of drugs and simples, and, point most important in India, he inspired faith in those to whom he ministered. Yet at the time of my visit a furious war was raging between him and a large section of his parishioners. The Father did not seem to mind greatly; he persisted in serving to the best of his ability those who flouted his authority ; his affection for his wayward sheep seemed rmaffected by their wa3rward"* ness. The cause of the quarrel was interesting. I shall describe it later, and in its logical place. From Vadakankulam I marched on to Idayangudi, the great Protestant missionary settlement founded by Caldwell There the village choir danced the story of Daniel in the Lions' Den for my edification. The Tamilian us a comedian born i it comes natural to him to express himself through the form of drama. So Daniel danced and sang in, the sand, wliile hungry lions prowled and howled about him* ' ^ From Idayangudi I reached Tissianvalai, and thence I took dram for Kulasekharapatnam. A tramway in a desert is a phenomenon which needs some explanation. ^ At Kulasekharapatnam on ' the ' seashore a Company had set up a factory for making' sugar, from the' juice^ of the^ palmyras. The raw' material was , abundant ; the problem was the method of, getting sufficient

128

What this source establishes

⭐⭐ THE EYEWITNESS FOR THE EIGHTEEN YEARS -- and the source that corrects the page. Molony, the district Collector, asked him: "I have never seen a man so thin as Father Caussanel. For some eighteen years, he told me, he had not eaten solid food: he lived on milk and gruel. In this there was no idea of pious asceticism: only so could he vanquish the devil of dyspepsia which plagued him." So the EIGHTEEN YEARS is first-hand and safe; "bananas" comes from the French reproduction in La Mission du Maduré 1930 where the English says gruel; and "ascetic" is expressly DENIED by the only man who asked. Mismatch J14. ⚠ In copyright -- quoted, not reproduced.