FRANCIS MARY OF TOURS. - Capuchin missionary of the ancient province of Tours, d. at Patna (Nepal) in June 1709.

From Persia he passed in 1680 to the Indian missions of Surat and Pondicherry; an excellent connoisseur of the local languages, he composed an esteemed Thesaurus linguae Indianae (= Hindostanicae), which is preserved in manuscript in the Archive of Propaganda Fide; he took part in the controversies with the Jesuit missionaries of Pondicherry over the Malabar rites with a memorial sent in 1703 to the aforementioned Congregation: Questions... sur les cérémonies Payennes... (Liège 1704). Because of his linguistic expertise he accompanied the first expedition of Capuchin missionaries to Tibet, arriving at Lhasa on 12 June 1707; never broken by the hardships, he was forced to leave this mission in Jan. 1709.

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: Clemente da Terzorio, Manuale historicum missionum Ord. Min. Cappuccinorum, Isola del Liri 1926, pp. 144, 152; id., Le missioni dei Min. Cappuccini, VIII, Rome 1932, passim: A. Jann, Die katholischen Missionen in Indien, China und Japan, Paderborn 1915, pp. 386-87, 412-13, 415, 474; Felix (Fink) da Anversa, Catalogue of the reverend capuchin missionaries in the mission of Thibet, in The franc. annals of India, 6 (1915), pp. 416-417; Streit, Bibl., VI, pp. 12, 215.

Ilarino da Milano

@incollection{ec5_francesco_maria_da_tours, author = {Ilarino da Milano}, title = {Francesco Maria da Tours}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {V}, pages = {1615}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/francesco-maria-da-tours} }

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Francis Mary of Tours

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