, famous for his adventures, and his hostility to the Jesuits, was the
, famous for his
adventures, and his hostility to the Jesuits, was the son of
a weaver at Bar-le-duc, of the name of Parisot, where he
was born March 8, 1697. He embraced the monastic life
in 1716, and the provincial of his order going to Rome, to
attend the election of a general in 1734, took Parisot with
him as his secretary. In 1736 he went to Pondicherry,
and was made a parish-priest of that city by M. Dupleix,
the governor but the Jesuits, with whom he quarrelled,
found means to remove him from the East Indies to America, whence he returned to Rome in 1744. He was now
employed in drawing up an account of the religious rites
of the Malabar Christians but, dreading the intrigues of
the Jesuits, withdrew to Lucca, where he completed his
work, under the title of “Historical Memoirs relative to
the Missions into the Indies,
” in 2 vols. 4to. As this work
contained some curious discoveries of the means made use
of by the Jesuit missionaries to increase their number of
converts, he greatly offended both his own order and them,
and was obliged to quit his country: he went first to Venice, then to Holland, and afterwards to England, where
he established in the neighbourhood of London two manufactories of tapestry. From London he removed to Prussia,
and from thence into the duchy of Brunswick. Here he
was allowed by the pope to assume the habit of a secular
priest. He now assumed the name of the abbé Plate!,
went to France, and from thence to Portugal, where, on
account of the persecutions which he endured, he obtained
a pension. Having completed his great work against the
Jesuits, he revisited France, and committed it to the press,
in 6 vols. 4to. Afterwards he re-entered the order of the
capuchins at Commercy, but, being of a restless disposition, he soon quitted their community, and took up his
abode at a village in Lorrain, where he died in 1770, at
the age of seventy -three.