PARISOT, PIERRE CUREL (PADRE NORBERTO, ABBÉ PLATEL). - Writer, b. at Bar-le-Duc (Lorraine) in 1697, d. at Commercy (Lorraine) on 7 July 1769. A Capuchin in 1716, in 1736 he was appointed procurator general of the French Foreign Missions.
Having clashed with the Jesuits over the question of the Malabar rites, he returned from Pondichéry to Rome (1741). He published Mémoire istoriche intorno alle missioni dell'India orientale, (2 vols., Lucca 1744: placed on the Index by Benedict XIV on 1 Apr. 1745), which he later recast as Mémoires historiques sur les affaires des Jésuites avec le St-Siège (7 vols., Lisbon 1766). Restless, he travelled through Holland, England, Germany, and Portugal, where he supported Pombal's anti-Jesuit policy. In 1759 he obtained a decree of secularization and adopted the pseudonyms mentioned above. In 1763 he returned to France. He also wrote: Diurnal chrétien (Marseilles 1742); Lettres apologétiques (Lucca 1746); Histoires du passage du p. Norbert à l'état de prêtre séculaire (s. l. 1759); La foi des catholiques (Lisbon 1761).