With these orations and letters, Eugubinus gives a
Latin translation of a letter, "on religious affairs in the
Indies," written by a Jesuit father twenty years after Xavier's
death. Though the letter came from a field very distant from that
in which Xavier laboured, it was sure, among the general tokens
of Divine favour to the Church and to the order, on which it
dwelt, to have alluded to miracles wrought by Xavier had there
been the slightest ground for believing in them; but no such
allusion appears.[[14]]
So, too, when in 1588, thirty-six years after Xavier's
death, the Jesuit father Maffei, who had been especially
conversant with Xavier's career in the East, published his
_History of India_, though he gave a biography of Xavier which
shows fervent admiration for his subject, he dwelt very lightly
on the alleged miracles. But the evolution of miraculous legends
still went on. Six years later, in 1594, Father Tursellinus
published his _Life of Xavier_, and in this appears to have made
the first large use of the information collected by the
Portuguese viceroy and the more zealous brethren.
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