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The Enigmatic Abbe Faria

by Luis S. R. Vas

     May 31 is the birthday of a mysterious son of Goa, Jose Custodio de Faria (1756-1819), better known as Abbe Faria (in French) and Abade Faria (in Portuguese), 'abbe' and 'abade' standing for abbot.

     There is a striking statue of him in Panjim, next to the Government Secretariat, sculpted in 1945 by Ramchandra Pandurang Kamat of Madkai. The mental hospital in Altinho, Panjim, was named Hospital Abade Faria and there is a road in Margao called Rua Abade Faria.  But who is Abbe Faria and what did he do to deserve three landmarks in his honour during Portuguese times? If you don't know, it's not very surprising since his life is like a detective thriller with many of the clues missing!

     A century ago Dr. D. G. Dalgado, his biographer, wrote: "Abbe Faria is known in the medical and scientific world, particularly in France, as having signalled the end of the era of animal magnetism and of magnetized trees and the beginning of the era of the lucid sleep or of hypnotism, which is a very interesting branch of knowledge of physiology and psycho-physiology, with practical applications, specially to therapeutics and paediatrics.

     His book,  Of the Cause of Lucid Sleep, published in 1819, and to which he owes his reputation as a scientist, has been out of print for a long time. There are authors -- some of them authorities! -- who know about it only through a few quotations cited in other works. I am of the opinion that the reprinting of this book would generate a lot of interest among those who dedicate themselves to the study of hypnotism and whose number is increasing every day.  Dr. Dalgado himself reprinted the book in 1906, on Faria's 150th birth anniversary, in the original French and published it along with his own biography and assessment of the man, also in French. These, too, again went out of print and have remained so during the next century. And nobody has ever bothered to translate into English either Faria's or Dalgado's work!

     Since May 31, 2006, is Faria's 250th birth anniversary, the whole year, from May 31, 2005, should be earmarked for the celebrations, with appropriate events organised during the year.  Fortunately for us, Dr. Laurent Carrer, Ph.D., a French hypnotherapist established in the US, is currently completing an annotated English translation of Faria's opus, to be featured in his Jose Custodio de Faria: Hypnotist, Priest and Revolutionary along with the translation of two studies on the Abbe written in 1906 by Dr. D. G. Dalgado, the Goan biographer and scientist of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon.

     Laurent publishes his writings through Trance-lations (http://www.trance-lations.com.  However, the book will cost $49.95, that is nearly Rs. 2500.00. Will the government of Goa or a public spirited businessman come forward to sponsor the publication of a cheaper and affordable Indian edition?  Why should they?  Here is why.

     Jose Custodio de Faria was the son of Caetano Vitorino de Faria of Colvale and Rosa Maria de Souza of Candolim, both native Goans. He was born in his mother's house in Candolim and lived there along with his parents and his adopted sister, Catarina, an orphan. Perhaps appropriately, the house is now an orphanage. 

     Faria's parents could not get on with each other and decided to separate. They obtained the Church's dispensation, the father joining the seminary to complete his studies for the priesthood which he had interrupted to get married. The mother became a nun, joining the St. Monica convent in Old Goa were she rose to the position of prioress.

     Jose's father had great ambitions for himself and his son. He assembled a vast array of letters of introduction to everybody who was anybody at the Portuguese Court and together they set sail for Lisbon aboard the ship S. Jose when the son reached the age of 15.  Nine months later they were in Lisbon befriending all those who mattered in the Portuguese Court, particularly the Pope's Nuncio or Ambassador to the Court. They managed to convince the Portuguese Sovereign to send them to Rome for Faria Sr. to earn a doctorate in theology and the son to pursue his studies for the priesthood.

     In 1777, the father returned to Lisbon, now a Doctor in Theology. Eventually, the son too earned his doctorate, dedicating his doctoral thesis to the Portuguese Queen, D. Maria I, and another study, on the Holy Spirit to the Pope. Apparently His Holiness was sufficiently impressed to invite Jose Custodio de Faria to preach a sermon in the Sistine Chapel which he himself attended.

     On his return to Lisbon, the Queen was informed by the Nuncio of the Pope's honour to Faria Jr. So, she too invited the young priest to preach to her as well in her chapel.  But Faria, climbing the pulpit, and seeing the august assembly felt tongue tied. Whereupon the father, who sat below the pulpit, whispered to him in Konkani: Hi sogli baji; cator re baji.

     Relieved by the exhortation, the son lost his fear and preached fluently.  Faria Jr., from then on, often wondered how a mere phrase from his father could alter his state of mind so radically as to wipe off his stage fright in a second. The question would have far reaching consequences in his life. Apparently convinced that Portugal had no future for him, Faria Jr. departed for France, and just as well, because his father found himself implicated in the Pinto Conspiracy of 1787 hatched in Goa in which some priests, who believed that they were discriminated against, in favour of the Portuguese clergy, planned a revolt. But the revolt was discovered in the planning state with fatal consequences for the conspirators.

     "In Paris, they both [father and son] pursued clerical activities but they did not please the authorities and the son was imprisoned in the Bastille. He spent several months there. One of his guards was fond of playing draughts; however, each game only lasted a short time and had to be started again. Jose Custodio de Faria often played with this guard and to prolong the pleasure, he invented hundred-square draughts. This was his first contribution to history," writes Dr. Mikhail Buyanov, President of the Moscow Psychotherapeutic Academy and author of A Man Ahead of His Times, a study in Russian of Abbe Faria, which he researched at Panaji's Central Library and to whom he presented a copy of his book in gratitude.  Unfortunately he couldn't find a sponsor for a translation of his book into English and it, too, has remained untranslated and unread except by Russians!

     During the French Revolution, Faria Jr., led a battalion against the French Convention. He also met the Marquis of Puysegur, a disciple of Anton Mesmer, the founder of a school or hypnotism known as mesmerism.  Faria Jr., now known as Abbe Faria, proceeded to develop his own ideas about hypnotism and why it worked. He decided that hypnotic trance was caused, not by animal magnetism, but by suggestions from the hypnotist, just as his father's suggestion 'cator re baji' had had a dramatic impact on him.

     In 1797 "he was arrested in Marseilles, taken in a barred police carriage and sent to the Chateau d'If by a law court. He was shut up in solitary confinement in the Chateau d'If. While imprisoned in the Chateau, he steadily trained [himself] using techniques of self-suggestion. It appears that this helped him retain a sound mind and memory," writes Dr. Buyanov.

     After a long stint in the Chateau d'If, Faria was released and returned to Paris. Here he met Alexandre Dumas, the novelist, who was so impressed with the Abbe that he used him as a character in his novel, The Count of Monte Cristo.

     In Paris Faria conducted lessons in hypnotism, or somnambulism as he termed it then, for whoever could afford 5 francs for the course and achieved spectacular results, as described by his first pupil, General Noizet in his book Memoire Sur le Somnubulisme et le Magnetisme Animal.  But he also became the object of envy and ridicule and the anti-hero of a vaudeville play which ran to full houses in Paris. Although he had been a professor of philosophy at two establishments in Marseilles and Nimes, his reputation did not survive the onslaught on his character and abilities. So he retired as chaplain to an obscure religious establishment and set out to write a defence of his theory that hypnosis, or lucid sleep, as he now termed it, was caused by the force of suggestion appropriately applied and which himself had mastered and demonstrated.

     He published the first volume of his book, De la Cause du Sommeil Lucide, in 1819 but suddenly died of a stroke before he could complete his opus.  Unfortunately, his valuable contribution to the science of hypnosis has been lost in the midst of other hypnotists' claims: "In Europe, mesmerism continued to develop at the hands of a number of major figures such as the Abbe Jose Custodio de Faria, General Francois Joseph Noizet, Etienne Felix, Baron d'Henin de Cuvillers, and Alexandre Bertrand. Faria, in his De la cause du sommeil lucide (1819), developed the modern trance induction ("fixation") technique, emphasized the importance of the will of the subject rather than that of the magnetizer, recognized the existence of individual differences in susceptibility to somnambulistic sleep, and first articulated the principle of suggestion, which he believed to be effective not only in magnetic sleep but in the waking state as well.

     In 1820, Noizet, in a Memoire sur le somnambulisme presented to the Berlin Royal Academy but only published in 1854, and Henin de Cuvillers, in his Le magnetisme éclairé, presented more extended accounts of mesmeric effects in terms of suggestion and belief; while Bertrand's Traité du somnambulisme (1823) was the first systematic scientific study of magnetic phenomena. 

     Here is a final assessment of Faria by the Moscow Psychotherapeutic Academician Dr. Buyanov: "[Faria was] great, because he had no fear andfought for truth rather than for his place at the vanity fair. The Abbot de Faria's mystery does not lie in the circumstances of his life that are unknown to historians and lost forever (a detail more or a detail less, is unimportant); his mystery lies in his talent, courage, and quest for truth. His mystery was the mystery of someone who was ahead of his time and who blazed a trail for his descendants due to his sacrifice."

     Meanwhile interest in Faria worldwide seems to be growing. An avant-garde exhibition-cum-play-cum-novel was recently held in Amsterdam titled The Death of Abbe Faria. Italian litterateur, Luciana Stegagno Picchio, specialising in Portuguese studies and honoured in 2001 by Instituto Camoes is writing on Abade Faria e Goa.

     Perhaps the occasion of his 250th birth anniversary can be used, at least in Goa, to draw public attention to his life and achievements and build a permanent memorial to him and them.  Contemporary portrait of:  Abbe Faria; Chateau D'If where Faria was incarcerated; Abbe Faria and Edmond Dantas in Alexandre Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo.

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