PARISOT, Pierre Curel (Father Norbert, Abbé Platel). - Writer, b. at Bar-le-Duc (Lorraine) in 1697, d. at Commercy (Lorraine) on 7 July 1769. Capuchin in 1716, in 1736 he was appointed procurator general of the French Foreign Missions.
Coming into conflict with the Jesuits over the Malabar rites question, he returned from Pondicherry to Rome (1741). He published Memorie istoriche intorno alle missioni dell'India orientale (2 vols., Lucca 1744; placed on the Index by Benedict XIV on 1 April 1745), which he later reworked into Mémoires historiques sur les affaires des Jésuites avec le St-Siège (7 vols., Lisbon 1766). Restless, he took to travelling through Holland, England, Germany, and Portugal, where he supported the anti-Jesuit policy of Pombal. In 1759 he obtained the decree of secularization and assumed the aforementioned pseudonyms. In 1763 he returned to France. He also wrote: Diurnal chretien (Marseille 1742); Lettres apologétiques (Lucca 1746); Histoires du passage du p. Norbert à l'état de prêtre séculaire (n.p. 1759); La foi des catholiques (Lisbon 1761).