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François Xavier citations

Saint François Xavier , né Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta le 7 avril 1506 à Javier, près de Pampelune en Navarre, et mort le 3 décembre 1552 sur l'île de Shangchuan , au large de Canton en Chine, est un missionnaire jésuite navarrais. Proche ami d'Ignace de Loyola, il est un des cofondateurs de la Compagnie de Jésus.

Ses succès missionnaires en Inde et en Extrême-Orient lui acquirent le titre d'« Apôtre des Indes ». Béatifié en 1619, il est canonisé trois ans plus tard par Grégoire XV. Liturgiquement, il est commémoré le 3 décembre aussi bien par les catholiques que par les anglicans. Wikipedia  

✵ 6. avril 1506 – 3. décembre 1552
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François Xavier: 6 citations0 J'aime

François Xavier: Citations en anglais

“Almost from the time of Xavier's actual presence on the Coast, the work of legend-building began, and it came to be firmly believed that he possessed miraculous powers, which extended even to the raising of the dead. Xavier never made such extravagant claims for himself.”

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Francis Xavier

Neill, S. (2004). A history of Christianity in India: The beginning to AD 1707. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

“The second necessity for the Christians is that your Majesty establish the Holy Inquisition, because there are many who live according to the Jewish law, and according to the Mahomedan sect, without any fear of God or shame of the world. And since there are many spread all over the fortresses, there is the need of the Holy Inquisition and of many preachers. Your Majesty should provide such necessary things for your loyal and faithful subjects in India.”

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Francis Xavier

Letter addressed to the King of Portugal on May 16, 1545. Joseph Wicki, Documenta Indica, Vol. IV, Rome, 1956. quoted from Goel, S. R. (1985). St. Francis Xavier: The man and his mission.

“Following the baptisms, the new Christians return to their homes and come back with their wives and families to be in their turn prepared for baptism. After all had been baptised, I order that the temples of the false Gods be pulled down and idols broken. I know not how to describe in words the joy I feel before the spectacle of pulling down and destroying the idols by the very people who formerly worshipped them.”

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Francis Xavier

Letter dated February 8, 1545, to the Society of Jesus. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (1985). St. Francis Xavier: The man and his mission.

“According to my experience, the only effective way to spread religion in India is for the King to proclaim by means of an edict to all his officials in India that he shall put trust only in those who will exert themselves to extend the reign of religion by every means in their power. The King must definitely order them to exert themselves with zeal to multiply the number of Christians in Cape Comorin [Kanyakumari] in order to attract to the faith of Jesus Christ the island of Ceylon, and to muster all the pious people, be they members of our Society [the Jesuits] or other that may seem fit for propagating religion…. If the King publishes such an edict and treats severely those who disobey it, a great number of natives will embrace the faith of Jesus Christ; otherwise no success can be expected.”

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Francis Xavier

Letter dated 20th January 1548, to Fr. Simao Rodrigues. quoted from Goel, S. R. (1985). St. Francis Xavier: The man and his mission.

“To a considerable extent the shape of Xavier's missionary work was determined by this threefold authority. Personally the most modest of men, his imagination was fired by the progress of Portuguese discovery and by the thought of lands and empires to be brought within the kingdom of Christ. He had not gone out to be the supervisor of a little handful of Jesuits in a small corner of India. His own temperament may have been restless; but there is a certain magnificence in a restlessness which led him to contain within a single glance India and the Moluccas, Japan, and, even beyond Japan, China.”

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Francis Xavier

Neill, S. (2004). A history of Christianity in India: The beginning to AD 1707. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

“Everyone who came in contact with Xavier seems to have agreed that he was a saint. Men might disagree with him; but in all the extensive records there is not a single word that runs contrary to the general verdict as to his saintliness. There are many references to the long hours that he spent in prayer and in rapt contemplation of his Lord. He disclaimed anything in the way of miraculous powers; in his devotions there was nothing that could be called mystical in any strict sense of that term. He seems to have followed the broad lines of medieval devotional practice, profoundly influenced by the Spiritual Exercises of his master Ignatius. Xavier, like Ignatius, was in all things a medieval man, untouched by any of the new currents of thought in theology or in the daily affairs of life. It is probable that, in the ten years of his sojourn in the East, he never possessed a Bible or even a New Testament. Apart from his breviary and his missal, his sole companion seems to have been the work of Marcus Marulus, Opus de religiose vivendi institutione, a thick book of 680 pages, published at Cologne in 1531. He seems rarely to have based his discourses directly on the Bible…”

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Francis Xavier

Neill, S. (2004). A history of Christianity in India: The beginning to AD 1707. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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