European Union To Honour Goan Priest With Commemorative Post Card By Bosco de Sousa Eremita
PANAJI, Goa (SAR NEWS) -- The European Union is honouring a pioneering Goan Catholic priest scientist on the occasion of his 250 birth anniversary with a commemorative post card scheduled to be issued on 31 May, according to media reports here. The priest Jose Custodio de Faria alias Abbe Faria (1755 -1819) is the second Goan accorded the distinction after Portugal commemorated Blessed Joseph Vaz with a postal stamp on the occasion of his 300th birth anniversary Faria was a hypnotist, revolutionary, professor and scientist. He participated in the French Revolution and in the first revolt in India against any colonial power, after the Portuguese in Goa (1510-1961) disallowed local priests from becoming bishops. Faria was born on 31 May at Colvale, 15 kilometers north of the state capital Panaji, to a priest and a nun (parents separated after birth), but eventually ended becoming a priest himself. According to the report, initially the commemorative stamp proposal initiated by Dom Martins, a Goan artiste based in USA, was to honour the priest with a commemorative stamp, but after the world-wide internet petition signed by admirers of Fairia to the Stamp Advisory Committee of one of the European Countries crossed the deadline for submission of stamp proposals, the authorities assured to release a commemorative postcard instead. Ironically, a statue of Faria lies installed in the city's main thoroughfare since 28 September 1945, but until last year following an initative by some Faria fans not many citizens were aware of the personality. Faria put forth the theory of hypnotism and played a pivotal role in the French Revolution. The statue depicts Faria hypnotizing a woman lying at his feet, evidently an effort by the sculptor at enacting the rage at Rua de Clichy, France, when he started "hypnotic" classes in 1813, much sought after by aristocratic women seeking new sensations to entertain themselves. At the classes, Abbe Faria carried out practical demonstrations on audience, after explaining that hypnotic sleep did not depend on him (the hypnotiser), an amazing departure from theories held at that time. Explained Stanley Fernandes, a schoolteacher in Goa who researched to bring out a booklet along with Matanhy Saldanha, a Goan legislator, on Abbe Faria in 1976 in a bid to educate the public, "F Anton Mesmer from Vienna had come to Paris in 1778 and expounded his doctrine of animal magnetism, which was widely accepted,. But, the French Academy, which appointed a commission while admitting to its success of the practice, said it was due to imitation and imagination. This was a severe blow to Mesmerism, which forced its decline and neglect until Faria too it up". "It is now Abbe Faria who is today acknowledged and acclaimed even by eminent scientists like Betrand Bennheim, Brown Saquard, Crocq, Cills de la Touette and others, to have proposed the theory and method of hypnotism through suggestions to self and others", said Fernandes. After Mesmer's unsuccessful attempt to establish hypnotism (or magnetism), as a science, similar efforts were made in vain, but Faria's theory differed from the rest, explained Fernandes. "Others held that a `magnetic fluid' passed from the magnetizer to the subject. But Faria contended that nothing comes from the magnetizer. Everything comes from the subject and takes place in his imagination". It was held by Mesmer, and even before Mesmer by the early Greeks, that this type of magnetism was a gift of a few who were endowed with special qualities. Faria disagreed with the theory and boldly developed his own teaching, which said that suggestion could be passed by anyone to anyone. He then demonstrated for the first time, the existence of autosuggestion. "Faria was the first to successfully give therapeutic suggestions to subjects under hypnotism", said Fernandes, adding that writer Alexander Dumas immortalized the priest in his classic The Count of Monte Cristo as an imprisoned priest in the castle and one who knew of some secret treasure in real life. Only one volume of Faria's book saw the light of print in his lifetime. Before the other two volumes were completed, Faria died of apoplectic stroke, penniless and was buried in the cemetery of Montmartre on 20 September 1819. Last year, a US-based French translator Laurent Carre released the book entitled Jose Custodio de Faria: Hypnotist, Priest and Revolutionary, comprising works of Faria. _____________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. Goanet mailing list (Goanet@goanet.org)