XXVI. MODERN MISSIONS
During the Suppression--Roothaan's appeal--South America-- The Philippines--United States Indians--De Smet--Canadian Reservations--Alaska--British Honduras--China--India-- Syria--Algeria--Guinea--Egypt--Madagascar--Mashonaland --Congo--Missions depleted by World War--Actual number of missionaries.
Besides its educational work, the Society of Jesus has always been eager for desperate and daring work among savages. At the time of the Suppression, namely in 1773 three thousand of its members were so employed; and the ruthless and cruel separation from those abandoned human beings was one of the darkest and gloomiest features of the tragedy. To all human appearances millions of heathens were thus hopelessly lost. Happily the disaster was not as great as was anticipated. In his "Christian Missions" Marshall says:--It would almost seem as if God had resolved to justify his servants by a special and marvellous Providence before the face of the whole world, and had left their work to what seemed inevitable ruin and decay only to show that neither the world nor the devil, neither persecution, nor fraud nor neglect could extinguish the life that was in it. And so when they came to look upon it, after sixty years of silence and desolation they found a living multitude where they expected to count only the corpses of the dead. Some indeed had failed, and paganism or heresy had sung its song of triumph over the victims; others had retained only the great truths of the Trinity and the Incarnation while ignorance and its twin sister, superstition, had spread a veil over their eyes, but still the prodigious fact was revealed that in India alone that there were more than one million natives who, after half a century of abandonment, still clung with constancy to the faith which had been preached to their fathers, and still bowed the head with loving awe when the names of their departed apostles were uttered amongst them. Such is the astonishing conclusion of a trial without parallel in the history of Christianity, and which if it had befallen the Christians of other lands, boasting their science and civilization, might perhaps have produced other results than among the despised Asiatics. The natural inference would be that besides this special Providence in their regard these neophytes had been well trained by their old masters (I, 246).
For a time, of course, there were some Jesuits who lingered on the missions in spite of the government's orders to the contrary. Thus we find a very distinguished man, a Tyrolese from Bolzano, who died at Lucknow on July 5, 1785. His name was Joseph Tiffenthaller and he had lived forty years in Hindostan. His tombstone, we are told, may be still seen in the cemetery of Agra where they laid his precious remains. He was a man of unusual ability and besides speaking his native tongue was familiar with Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hindustanee, Arabic, Persian and Sanscrit. He was the first European who wrote a description of Hindostan. It is a detailed account of the twenty-two Provinces of India, with their cities, towns, fortresses, whose geographical situations were all calculated by means of a simple quadrant. The work contains a large number of maps, plans and sketches drawn by himself and the list of places fills twenty-one quarto pages. He also made a large atlas of the basin of the Ganges, and is the author of a treatise on the regions in which the rivers of India rise; a map of the Gagra which Bernoulli calls "a work of enormous labor" is another part of Tiffenthaller's relics.
In the field of religion he wrote books on "Brahmanism," "Indian Idolatry," "Indian Asceticism," "The religion of the Parsees and Mohammedanism with their relations to each other." He also published his astronomical observations on the sun-spots, on the zodiacal light, besides discussions on the astrology and cosmology of the Hindus, with descriptions of the flora and the fauna of the country. He was besides all that an historian, and has left us an account in Latin of the origin and religion of the Hindus, another in German of the expedition of Nadir Shah to India; a third in Persian about the deeds of the Great Mogul, Alam, and a fourth in French which tells of the incursions of the Afghans and the capture of Delhi, together with a contemporary history of India for the years 1757-64. In linguistics, he wrote a Parsee-Sanscrit lexicon and treatises in Latin on the Parsee language, the pronunciation of Latin, etc., He was held in the highest esteem by the scientific societies of Europe with which he was in communication. During the greater part of his life in India, the struggle was going on between the French and English for the possession of the Peninsula.
Of course he was not alone in India, at that time, for Bertrand tells us in his "Notions sur l' Inde et les missions" (p. 30) that "the Jesuits had a residence at Delhi as late as 1790", but, unfortunately, he could say nothing more about them. It is very likely, however, that when Pombal's agents attempted to crowd the 127 Jesuits who were at work in the various districts of Hindostan into a ship which had accommodations--and such accommodations--for only forty or fifty, many of them had perforce to be left behind, or perhaps failed to report at the place of embarcation. By keeping out of Goa, they could easily elude the pursuivants. The jungle, for instance, was a convenient hiding place. However, as they received no recruits the work went to pieces when the old heroes died, so that there were, most likely, no Jesuits there at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was just at this time, that England took possession of the greater part of Hindostan and, as a consequence, the country was soon swarming with Protestant parsons of every sect, eager to fill their depleted ranks with new converts from the East.
Marshall had been employed to report on their success, but as every one knows, the investigation brought him to the Church. His researches furnish very reliable and interesting information about the conditions prevailing in those parts among the old proselytes of the Jesuits. Quoting from the "Madras Directory" of 1857, he shows that in the Missions of Madura, founded by de Nobili, there were still 150,000 Catholics, and in Verapoli as many as 300,000, with an accession of 1000 converts from Mohammedanism every year. Nor were these Hindus merely nominal Christians. Bertrand who knew India thoroughly, writing in 1838, says of the Sanars: "One might almost say that they have not eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil with Adam, and that they were created in the days of original innocence. Among these Hindus there are numbers who when asked whether they commit this or that sin, answer: 'Formerly I did, but that is many years ago. I told it to the Father, and he forbade me to do it. Since then I have not committed it.' We reckon more than 7000 Christians of this caste." Father Garnier, S. J. wrote in the same year as follows: "The Christians of this country are, in general, well disposed and strongly attached to the Faith. The usages introduced among them by the Jesuits still subsist; morning prayer in common, an hour before sunrise; evening prayer with spiritual reading; catechism for the children every day given by a catechist; Mass on Sunday in the chapel. But in spite of these excellent practices there still remains much ignorance and superstition, and we shall have a good deal to do to form them into a people of true Christians before we turn our attention to the pagans. We shall do that when we are more numerous."
Of course these testimonies of Jesuits may be rejected by some people, but the Protestant missionaries in Hindostan, at that time, leave no room for doubt about the actual conditions. Buchanan, for instance, who was particularly conspicuous among his fellows and was greatly extolled in England says: "There are in India members of the Church of Rome who deserve the affection and respect of all good men. From Cape Commorin to Cochin, there are about one hundred churches on the seashore alone. Before each is a lofty cross which like the church itself is seen from a great distance. At Jaffna, on Sundays, about a thousand or twelve hundred people attend church and on feast days three thousand and upward. At Manaar they are all Romish Christians. At Tutycorin, the whole of the tribe, without exception, are Christians in the Romish Communion. Before they hoist sail to go out to sea, a number of boatmen all join in prayer to God for protection. Every man at his post, with the rope in his hands, pronounces the prayer."
One of these parsons who bore the very inappropriate name of Joseph Mullens and whose writing is usually a shriek against the Church says that "in 1854, the Jesuit and Roman Catholic missions are spread very widely through the Madras Presidency. At Pubna there is a population of 13,000 souls. It is all due to the Catholic missionaries. I allow that they dress simply, eat plainly and have no luxuries at home; they travel much; are greatly exposed; live poorly, and toil hard, and I have heard of a bishop living in a cave on fifty rupees a month, and devoutly attending the sick when friends and relatives had fled from fear. But all that is much easier on the principles of a Jesuit who is supported by motives of self-righteousness than it is to be a faithful minister on the principles of the New Testament."
The bloody persecution of 1805 in China showed how fervent and strong those Christians were in their faith. Very few apostatized, though new and terrible punishments were inflicted on them. Dr. Wells Williams, a Protestant agent in China, says that "many of them exhibited the greatest constancy in their profession, suffering persecution, torture, banishment and death, rather than deny their faith, though every inducement of prevarication and mental reservation was held out to them by the magistrates, in order to avoid the necessity of proceeding to extreme measures." It came to an end only when it was discovered that Christianity had even entered the royal family, and that the judges were sometimes trying their own immediate relatives. In 1815, however, the very year that the Protestant missionaries arrived in China the persecution broke out again. Bishop Dufresse was one of the victims, and when the day of execution arrived he with thirty-two other martyrs ascended the scaffold. In 1818 many were sent to the wastes of Tatary, and 1823 when pardon was offered to all who would renounce their faith, after suffering in the desert for five years only five proved recreant. In the midst of all this storm one of the missionaries reported that he had baptized one hundred and six adults.
That a great many Chinese had remained faithful Catholics during the long period which had elapsed after the Suppression was manifested by a notable event recorded by Brou in "Les Jésuites Missionaires."
"On November 1, 1903," he writes, "a funeral ceremony took place in Zikawei, a town situated about six miles from Shanghai. It was more like the triumph of a great hero than an occasion of mourning. The people were in a state of great enthusiasm about it, and assembled in immense throngs around the tomb of the illustrious personage whose glories were being celebrated. The object of these honors was Paul Zi or Sin, a literary celebrity in his day, the prime minister of an emperor in the long past, and one of the first converts of the famous Father Ricci, whom he had aided with lavish generosity in building churches and in establishing the Faith in the neighborhood of Shanghai.
"The celebration of 1903 was the third centenary of his baptism, and all his relations or descendants who were very numerous, had gathered at Zikawei for the occasion. Among them, the Fathers discovered a great number of Christians who had remained true to the teachings of the Church during those 300 years; and there were many others throughout the country who resembled the Zi family in this particular. In Paul's district, that is in the neighborhood of Shanghai, there were, 60 years after the baptism of the great man, as many as 40,000 Christians, and in 1683 the number had risen to 800,000, but a century later the persecutions had cut them down to 30,000 though doubtless there were many who had succeeded in concealing themselves."
With Cochin the Jesuits never had anything to do, except that their great hero, de Rhodes, was its first successful missionary in former days. It was at his suggestion that the Society of the Missions Etrangères was founded and took up the work which the Jesuits were unable to carry on alone.
About Corea, Marshall furnishes us with two very interesting facts. The first is that England had the honor of giving a martyr to Corea, the English Jesuit, Thomas King, who died there in 1788, that is fifteen years after the Suppression. Unfortunately the name "King" does not appear in Foley's "Records."
The second is vouched for by the "Annales" (p. 190) which relate that a French priest, known as M. de Maistre, had for ten years vainly endeavored to enter the forbidden kingdom and had spent 60,000 francs in roaming around its impenetrable frontier. He assumed all sorts of disguises, faced every kind of danger in his journeys from the ports of China to the deserts of Leao-tong, asking alternately the Chinese junks and the French ships to put him ashore somewhere on the coast. Death was so evidently to be the result of his enterprise that the most courageous seaman refused to help him. It required the zeal of an apostle to comprehend this heroism and to second its endeavors. Father Hélot, being a priest, understood what the Cross required of him, and as a member of a society whose tradition is that they have never been baffled by any difficulties or perils, felt himself at the post where his Company desired him to be. The Jesuit becomes the pilot of a battered ship, safely conducts his intrepid passenger to an unknown land, and having deposited him on the shore, looked after him for a while and returned to his neophytes with the consoling satisfaction of having exposed his life for a mission that was not his own.
From the Catalogues of the Society, we find that Louis Hélot was born on January 29, 1816. He was a novice at St. Acheul, in 1835, and in the same house there happened to be a certain Isidore Daubresse, not a novice, however, but a theologian who was well-known later on in New York. The master of novices was Ambrose Rubillon who was subsequently assistant of the General for France. By 1850 Hélot was in China and spent the rest of his life hunting after souls in the region of Nankin. He died sometime after 1864. De Maistre succeeded in entering the country and we find him waiting one Good Friday night to welcome the first bishop who had three priests with him, one of whom was a Jesuit.
Before the re-establishment the few Jesuits in White Russia had kept up the missionary traditions of the Society. Their missions extended all along the Volga and they were at Odessa in 1800. In 1801, thanks to the Emperor Paul's intercession, they had returned to their ancient posts on the Ægean Islands, which were in the dominions of the Grand Turk; by 1806 they had reached Astrakhan; and in 1810 were in the Caucasus. Before Father Grassi came to America, he was studying in St. Petersburg to prepare himself for the missions of Astrakhan.
In America, in spite of the Suppression, the work of the old Jesuits did not fail to leave its traces. Thus in Brazil where Nobrega and Anchieta once labored, over 800,000 domesticated Indians now represent the fruit of their toil. Deprived during sixty years of their fathers and guides and too often scandalized by men who are Christians only in name, the native races have not only preserved the Faith through all their sorrows and trials, but every where rejected the bribes and promises of heresy. In that vast region, which stretches from the mouth of the San Francisco to the Isthmus of Panama, watered by the mightiest rivers of our globe, and including the district of the Amazon with its 45,000 miles of navigable water communication, "the natives who still find shelter in its forests or guide their barks over its myriad streams," says a Protestant writer, "push their profession of the Catholic religion even to the point of fanaticism."
The Paraguayans of course could be counted upon not to forget their fathers in Christ. Both Sir Woodbine Parish and d'Orbigny testify that the effects of the preponderating influence of the monastic establishments are still visible in the habits of the generality of the people. One thing is certain, they say, and ought to be declared to the praise of the Fathers, that since their expulsion the material prosperity of Paraguay has diminished; many lands formerly cultivated have ceased to be so; many localities formerly inhabited present at this day only ruins. What ought to be confessed is this--that they knew how to engrave with such power, on their hearts, reverence for authority that even to this very hour the tribes of Paraguay beyond all those who inhabit this portion of America are the most gentle and the most submissive to the dictates of duty.
In "La Compañía de Jesús en las Republicas del Sur de America," Father Hernández tells us that there were three former Jesuits in Chile at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Father Caldera, Vildaurre and Carvajal. The first two died respectively in 1818 and 1822, the date of Carvajal's demise is not known, nor is there any information available as to whether or not they ever re-entered the Society. In the old Province of Paraguay, there was a Father Villafañe who was seventy-four years old in 1814. Hearing of the re-establishment, he wrote to the Pope asking to renew his vows when "in danger of death." The request, of course, was granted but he continued to live till the year 1830. Whether he waited till then to renew his vows has not been found out. In that same year there died in Buenos Aires an Irish Jesuit named Patrick Moran. His name is inscribed not only on the headstone over his remains, in the Recolta graveyard, but on a slab inserted in the wall of the church. He was probably a chaplain in some distinguished family or what was more likely exercising his ministry in the Irish colony of that place.
Coming to the northern part of the hemisphere we are told by Mr. Russell Bartlett that the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, the fishermen and pearl divers of California are invariably honest, faithful and industrious. They were among the first to be converted by the Jesuits. Originally extremely warlike, their savage nature was completely subdued on being converted to Christianity, and they became the most docile and tractable of people. They are now very populous in the southern part of Sonora.
Anyone who has visited the Abenakis at Old Town in Maine, or La Jeune Lorette in Quebec, or Caughnawaga on the St. Lawrence, or the Indian settlements at Wekwemikong and Killarney on Lake Huron will testify to the excellent results of the teachings implanted in their hearts by the old Jesuit missionaries who reclaimed them from savagery.
A most remarkable example of this fidelity to their former teachers was afforded by the Indians of Caughnawaga. They were mostly Iroquois from New York who after their conversion to the Faith were sent or went, of their own accord, to the Christian village that was assigned to them above Montreal. Long after the Suppression of the Society, namely in the first third of the nineteenth century, a party of these Indians headed by two chiefs with the significant names of Ignace and François Régis tramped almost completely across the continent, and without the aid of a priest, for none could be got, converted an entire tribe to Christianity and did it in such wonderful fashion that the first white men who visited these converts were amazed at the purity, honesty, self-restraint and piety that reigned in the tribe. Over and over again, Ignace travelled down to St. Louis, thus making a journey of two thousand miles each time to beg for a Black Robe from the poor missionary bishop who had none to give him. The devoted Ignace, at last, lost his life in pursuance of his apostolic purpose. He fell among hostile Indians, and though he might have escaped, for he was dressed as a white man, he confessed himself an Iroquois and died with his people.
Father Fortis, the first General after the re-establishment of the Society, was rather averse to any missionary enterprise for the time being, because he judged that he had not as yet any available men for such perilous work. Father Roothaan, his immediate successor, was of a different opinion, and when in 1833, he appealed for missionaries the response was immediate. Hence Bengal was begun in 1834; Madura, Argentina and Paraguay in 1836, and the Rocky Mountains and China in 1840. In 1852 at the request of Napoleon III the penal colony of French Guinea was accepted as were the offers of Fernando Po in Africa and the Philippines from Queen Isabella of Spain.
The Spanish missions in Latin America were the least successful of any in the Society. The Fathers were debarred from any communication with the native tribes, even those formerly Christianized and civilized by them, or if permission were granted it was soon under some frivolous pretext or other rescinded, as we have mentioned above.
The Belgian Jesuits went to Guatemala in 1843, but only after considerable trouble was their existence assured by a government Act, in 1851. In 1871, however, they were expelled and withdrew to Nicaragua, from which they were driven in 1884. The Brazilian Mission was inaugurated by the Jesuits whom Rosas had exiled from Argentina. They were acceptable because priests were needed in the devastated Province of Rio Grande do Sul, which had been the theatre of an unsuccessful war of independence. Of course, the usual government methods in vogue in that part of the world were resorted to.
The suppression of the Society wrought havoc in the Philippines, and we are told that in 1836 as many as 6000 people were carried off into slavery by Mohammedan pirates, a disaster that would have probably been prevented had the missionaries been left there. They would have made soldiers out of the natives as they did in Paraguay. It was only in 1859 that they returned to that field of work. They resumed their educational labors in Manila and at the same time evangelized Mindanao with wonderful success. In 1881 there were on that island 194,134 Christians and in 1893, 302,107. Inside of thirty-six years, the Fathers had brought 57,000 Filipinos to the Faith and established them in Reductions as in Paraguay. Great success was also had with the Moros, who were grouped together in three distinct villages. The Spanish War brought its disturbances, but little by little the Jesuits recovered what they had lost and there are at present 162 members of the province of Aragon at work in the Islands.
In the United States, the native races have largely disappeared except in the very far West. With the remnants, the Jesuits are, of course, concerned, and perhaps the most reliable official estimate of the success they have achieved was expressed by Senator Vest during the discussion of the Indian Appropriation Bill before the United States Senate in 1900:
"I was raised a Protestant," he said; "I expect to die one. I was never in a Catholic church in my life, and I have not the slightest sympathy with many of its dogmas; but above all I have no respect for the insane fear that the Catholic Church is about to overturn this Government. I should be ashamed to call myself an American if I indulged in any such ignorant belief. I said that I was a Protestant. I was reared in the Scotch Presbyterian Church; my father was an elder in it and my earliest impressions were that the Jesuits had horns and hoofs and tails, and that there was a faint tinge of sulphur in the circumambient air whenever one of them crossed your path. Some years ago I was assigned by the Senate to examine the Indian schools in Wyoming and Montana. I visited every one of them. I wish to say now what I have said before in the Senate and it is not the popular side of the question by any means, that I did not see in all my journey a single school that was doing any educational work worthy of the name educational work, unless it was under the control of the Jesuits. I did not see a single Government school, especially day schools where there was any work done at all. The Jesuits have elevated the Indian wherever they have been allowed to do so without the interference of bigotry and fanaticism and the cowardice of politicians. They have made him a Christian, have made him a workman able to support himself and those dependent on him. Go to the Flathead Reservation in Montana, and look at the work of the Jesuits and what do you find? Comfortable dwellings, herds of cattle and horses, self-respecting Indians. I am not afraid to say this, because I speak from personal observation, and no man ever went among these Indians with more intense prejudice than I had when I left the city of Washington to perform that duty. Every dollar you give to the Government day schools might as well be thrown into the Potomac under a ton of lead." (Congressional Records, Apl. 7, 1900, p. 7. 4120.)
The most conspicuous of the missionaries among the North American Indians is Father Peter de Smet. He was born in Dendermonde on the Scheldt, and was twelve years old when the booming of the cannons of Waterloo startled the little town. He came out to Maryland in 1821 and after remaining for a short time at Whitemarsh in the log cabin which then sheltered the novices of the Province of Maryland, set out on foot with a party of young Jesuits for the then Wild West. They walked from Whitemarsh to Wheeling, a distance of 400 miles, and then went in flat boats down the Ohio to Shawneetown and from there proceeded again on foot to St. Louis. It was a journey of a month and a half.
His first work was among the Pottawotamis, and then he was sent to the wonderful Flatheads, whom the Iroquois from Caughnawaga had converted. From that time forward his life was like a changing panorama. In the story, there are Indians of every kind who come before us. Gros Ventres and Flatheads and Pottawotamis, and Pend d'Oreilles and Sioux; their incantations and cannibalism and dances and massacres and disgusting feasts are described; there are scenes in the Bad Lands and mountains and forests; there are tempests in the mid-Pacific and more alarming calms; there are councils with Indian chiefs, and interviews with Popes and presidents and kings and ambassadors and archbishops and great statesmen and Mormon leaders, always and exclusively in the interests of the Church. The great man's life has been written in four volumes by two admiring Protestants, and another biography has lately come from the pen of a Belgian Jesuit. In them appears an utterance from Archbishop Purcell about the hero, which deserves to be quoted. "Never," he says, "since the days of Xavier, Brébeuf, Marquette and Lalemant has there been a missionary more clearly pointed out and called than Father de Smet." Thurlow Weed, one of the most conspicuous American statesmen of the day, said of him: "No white man knows the Indians as Father de Smet nor has any man their confidence to the same degree." Thomas H. Benton wrote to him in 1852: "You can do more for the welfare of the Indians in keeping them at peace and friendship with the United States than an army with banners."
Again and again he was sent by the government to pacify the Indians. His mission in 1868 was particularly notable. Sitting Bull was on the warpath and was devastating the whole regions of the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone. They were called for a parley, and de Smet went out alone among the painted warriors. He held a banner of the Blessed Virgin in his hand and pleaded so earnestly with them to forget the past, that they went down into the very midst of the United States troops and signed the treaty of peace that brought 50,000 Indians to continue their allegiance to the government. De Smet in his journeys had crossed the ocean nineteen times and had travelled 180,000 miles by sailing vessels, river barges, canoes, dogsleds, snow shoes, wagons, or on horseback or on foot. "We shall never forget," said General Stanley of the United States Army--and this eulogy of the great man will suffice--"nor shall we ever cease to admire the disinterested devotion of Reverend Father de Smet who at the age of sixty-eight years did not hesitate, in the midst of the summer heat, to undertake a long and perilous journey across the burning plains, destitute of trees and even of grass, having none but corrupted and unwholesome water, constantly exposed to scalping by Indians, and this without seeking honor or remuneration of any sort but solely to arrest the shedding of blood, and save, if it might be, some lives and preserve some habitations."
In Canada, the Indian reservation of La Jeune Lorette, which was established in the early days by Father Chaumonot, is now directed by the secular clergy of Quebec. The Caughnawaga settlement near Montreal was, of course, lost to the Society at the time of the Suppression, but of late years has been restored to its founders. The Canadian Jesuits also look after the Indians of Lakes Huron and Superior. Their latest undertaking is in Alaska which began by a tragedy.
The saintly Bishop Charles John Seghers, who was coadjutor to the Bishop of Oregon, had himself transferred to the See of Vancouver in order to devote his life to the savages of Alaska. In 1886 when he asked the Jesuits to come to his assistance, Fathers Tosi and Robaut were assigned to the work. In July, the bishop, the two Jesuits and a hired man started over the Chilcoot Pass for the headwaters of the Yukon. It was decided that the two Jesuits should spend the winter at the mouth of the Stewart River, while the Bishop with his man hastened to a distant post to forestall the members of a sect, who contemplated establishing a post at the same place. During the terrible 1,100 mile journey the servant became insane and in the dead of night killed the bishop. The result was that new arrangements had to be made and Father Tosi was made prefect Apostolic in 1894. His health soon gave way under the terrible privations of the mission and he died in 1898, although only fifty-one years of age. He was succeeded by Father René of the Society who resigned in 1904, and the present incumbent Father Crimont, S. J., took his place.
The condition of Alaska has greatly changed since the advent of the missionaries. The discovery of placer gold deposits with the influx of miners robbed a portion of Alaska of its primitive isolation. The invading whites had to be looked after, and hence there are resident Jesuit priests at Juneau, Douglas, Fairbanks, Nome, Skagway, St. Michael and Seward. A great number of posts are attended to from these centres. The Ten'a Indians and Esquimaux are the only natives whom the missionaries have been able to evangelize thus far. There is a training-school for them at Koserefsky, where the boys are taught gardening, carpentry and smithing of various kinds, and the girls are instructed in cooking, sewing and other household arts. This work is particularly trying not only because of the bodily suffering it entails, but because of the awful monotony and isolation of those desolate arctic regions. Some idea of it may be gathered from a few extracts taken from a letter of one of the missionaries. It is dated May 29, 1916.
"The Skúlarak district of 15,000 square miles, depending on St. Mary's Mission," says the writer, "is as large as a diocese. It has seventy or eighty villages. The whole country along the coast is a vast swamp covered with a net work of rivers, sloughs, lakes and ponds. There is only one inhabitant to every ten or twelve square miles. There is no question of roads except in winter and then as everything is deep in snow, it is impossible to tell whether one is going over land or lake or river. When we started the thermometer registered 28° below zero, Fahrenheit. We had nine dogs; but two were knocked out shortly after starting. Eleven hours travelling brought us to our first cabins. We rose next morning at five, said Mass on an improvised altar and set out southward. At noon we stopped for lunch, which consisted of frozen bread and some tea from our thermo bottle. It was only at seven o'clock that we reached a little 'village' of three houses at the foot of the Kusilwak Mountains, which are two or three thousand feet high. They served as a guide to direct our course." At another stage of the journey he writes: "At sundown as we lost all hope of reaching any village we made for a faraway clump of brushwood intending to pass the night there. It is full moon and its rays light up an immaculate white landscape, there is a bright cloudless sky, and everything is so still that you cannot even breathe without a plainly audible sound."
What kind of people was he pursuing? Not very interesting in any way. "I came upon a new style of native dwelling, a low-roofed miserable hovel about twelve feet square; in the centre, a pit, about two and a half feet deep, was the sink and dumping ground for the refuse of the house. There we had to descend if we wanted the privilege of standing erect. That is where I placed myself to perform a baptism of the latest arrival of the family whom the mother held on her lap squatted on the higher ground which served as a bed. The habits of the natives cannot be described." "Our dogs were so exhausted," he says in the course of his narrative, "that they lay down at once without waiting to have their harness taken off. We fed them their ration of dry fish, they curled up in the snow and went to sleep. As for ourselves we tried to build a fire but could not succeed in boiling enough of melted snow for even a cup of tea; a box of sardines, the contents of which were so frozen that I had to chop them up with the prong of a fork constituted my royal supper. A hole was soon dug in the snow, by using the snow shoes for a shovel and a few sticks thrown in to prevent direct contact with the snow. I opened my bag of blankets, put on my fur parkey and tried to keep the blankets around me to keep from freezing. After a couple of hours I felt my limbs getting numb, and I was compelled to crawl out and look around for a hard mound of snow where I began to execute a dance that would baffle the best orchestra. I jigged and clogged around for fifteen or twenty minutes, and feeling I was alive again sought my blankets once more, but the cold was too intense and I could only say a few prayers and make a peaceful application of the meditation 'de propriis peccatis.'
"Another time, after fruitlessly scanning the horizon for a sign of a village, we found ourselves compelled to pass the night in the open air. This time I constructed a scientific Pullman berth for myself. Selecting the leeward side of an ice block, I dug a trench in the snow, using the fire-pan as a shovel. I hewed out the pillow at the head and made the grave (indeed it looked like one) about two feet wide and two deep and my exact length. Stretching my cassock over it, with the snow shoes as a supporting rack, I crawled into it and passed a tolerably comfortable night, though I awoke dozens of times from the violent coughing that had stuck to me since my stay in Tumna. So it went on till April 8. We had been three weeks on the road. Never had the trip to Tumna lasted so long. This was due to the fact that the dogs were exhausted and we had to walk back for about 250 miles in the snow."
The missionaries of the old Society would recognize this light hearted modern American apostle as their brother.
Another example in a region which is the very opposite of Alaska will convince the skeptic that the modern Jesuit retains the old heroic spirit of the missions. This time we are in the deadly swamps and forests of British Honduras and the apostle there is Father William Stanton of the Missouri province. As a scholastic he was teaching the dark skinned boys of Belize and incidentally gathering numberless specimens of tropical flora and fauna for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. From there he went to the other end of the earth and was put at scientific work in the Observatory at Manila. He was the first American priest ordained in the Philippines, and his initial ministerial work was to attend to the American soldiers, who were dying by scores of cholera. After that we find him again in Honduras, no longer in college but in the bush with about 800 Maya Indians, whose language he did not know but soon learned. He was still a naturalist but first of all he was absorbed in the care of the lazy and degraded Indians. His hut was made of sticks plastered with mud and thatched with palm leaves and he was all alone.
"Roads! Roads!" he writes, "they are simply unspeakable. It's only a little over nine miles from Benque Viejo to Cayo but it took me five hours to do it on horseback. Rain and the darkness caught me. It was so dark I could not see my horse's head but my Angel Guardian brought me through all right.... The only beasts that bother me are the garrapatas (ticks). I have to spend from an hour and a half to two hours picking them out of my flesh and my whole body is thickly peppered with blotchy sores where they have left their mark. But one can't expect to have everything his own way in this life even in the paradise of Benque. By the way, before I forget, would you try to send me a wash basin or bowl of glazed metal. I have nothing but the huge tin dishpan of the kitchen to wash my face in. It's a little inconvenient to scour the grease out every time I want to wash and I don't want to fall into real Spanish costumbres." His table was a packing case, his chair a box of tinned goods, his bed four ropes and a mat woven of palm leaves. He had one cup, plate and saucer.
"I have forty stations to get around to, and I haven't a decent crucifix, or ciborium, and only one chalice. I am not squealing for my house but for the Lord's. My good little mud house is a palace, even if the pigs and goats of the village do break in now and then to make a meal off one's old boots or the scabbard of one's machete. My bush church is fine; same architecture as my house, only larger. In church, the men stand around the walls, while the women and children squat on the clay floor and the babies roll all over, garbed only in angelic innocence."
Of one of his journeys he writes: "I have just returned from a river trip, after being away from home thirty-one days moving about from place to place among my scattered people on the river banks and in the bush. My health was good until last week when I got a little stroke from the heat, followed by several days' fever which put me on my back for four days, but I am now myself again. Fortunately I had only three more days' journey, and with the help of my two faithful Indians I arrived safely at Benque." These "three days," though he does not say so, were days of torture, and his Indians wondered if they could get him back alive. "I am now back as far as Cayo, arriving at 1.30 this morning. Everything is flooded with mud and water. I must get a horse and get out to Benque today, as I hear Father Henneman is down with fever. I have ten miles more to make, and over a terrible road through the bush, with the horse up to his belly in mud and water most of the time; but with the Lord's help I hope to be safe at home before night. I have been away only a week, having made some hundred and sixty miles on horseback, the whole of it through a dense jungle. I had to cut my way through with my machete, for the rank vegetation and hanging lianas completely closed the narrow trail."
He had gone out to visit a village and crossed a ford on the way. The river was high and the current strong. His horse was swept off his feet and Father Stanton slipped out of his saddle and swam beside the animal. Some quarter of a mile below there was a dangerous fall in the river, but they managed to reach the bank a hundred feet above the fall. He caught hold of a branch, but it broke and he was swept down the stream. With a prayer to his Guardian Angel he struck out for the deepest water and went over the fall. Some Indians near the bank saw the bearded white man go over the roaring cataract and they thought he was a wizard, but he went safely through, and then with long powerful strokes (he was a marvellous swimmer) he made for the bank. Then waving his hand to the startled Indians, he cut his way with his machete through the bush to look for his horse. Another time we find him returning after what he calls a "stiff trip," soaking wet all the time, for he had to swim across a swift river with boots and clothes on, he was all day in the saddle, was caught one night in the jungle in a swamp, pitch dark, knee deep in the mud--"Clouds of mosquitos and swarms of fiery ants had taken their fill of me," he writes, "while the blood sucking vampire bats lapped my poor horse. We got out all right and I had the consolation of being told by an Indian that three big tigers (jaguars) had been killed near the place last month."
On April 13, 1909, he says: "Just at present I am flat on my back with an attack of something, apparently acute articular rheumatism." He felt it, the first time while he was working in the garden. "I simply squirmed on the ground and screeched like a wild Indian." And yet he starts off to Belize on horseback to see the doctor, which meant a distant journey of four days, and he had to sleep in the bush one night. From Belize he returned by water in a "pitpan," a freight boat for shallow rivers that can easily upset in the slightest current. That meant eight weary days without room even to stretch himself out at night; with no awning in the day to shield him from the sun and frequently drenched by torrential rains. In September he is following his horse through the mud of the jungle. In October he was sent for again by the doctor at Belize, and returns a second time to his mission which meant eight days in the forest alone.
Finally, Father Stanton was ordered home to St. Louis, and it was found that his whole body was ringed around with a monstrous growth of cancer. He died in intense agony, but never spoke of his sufferings. In his delirium he was talking about Honduras. Only once he said "I am so long a-dying." He finally expired on March 10, 1910. He had just completed his fortieth year, but his missionary work was equal to anything in the old Society.
When the Jesuits resumed work in China in 1841 they found that all over the country there were great numbers of natives who had kept the Faith in spite of the bitter persecutions to which they had been subjected during the absence of the missionaries. The Province of Kiang-nan, the capital of which is Nankin, and the city where Ricci began his apostolic labors, welcomed back the great man's brethren.
Kiang-nan is a territory half the size of France. In the west and south-west it is hilly, but the rest of it is an immense plain watered by the Yang-tse-Kiang and by countless lakes, streams and canals. It is marvellously fertile and furnishes a double crop every year. The rivers swarm with fish, and the land with human beings. In it are many large cities such as Shanghai with its 650,000 inhabitants; Tchen-Kiang with 170,000, Odi-si with 200,000 and so on. Nankin is the residence of the viceroy, and was formerly the "Capital of the south," and the rival of Pekin, but later it had only 130,000 people within its walls. At present, however, it is reviving and is credited with three or four hundred thousand inhabitants. Before the Jesuits arrived, the country had been cared for by other religious orders, chiefly the Lazarists and the Fathers of the Missions Etrangères.
In the neighborhood of Shanghai, there were 48,000 Catholic Chinese who dated back through their ancestors to the time of the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century. Perhaps four thousand more might have been found in the rest of the province, but they were submerged in the mass of 45,000,000 idolaters. The outlook on the whole was consoling, for the vicar Apostolic, Mgr. de Besi, had founded a seminary, which before 1907 furnished more than one hundred native priests. The work of the Holy Childhood was enthusiastically carried on, with the result that in the years 1847-48, 60,963 names appear on the baptismal registers. In 1849 the Jesuits had establishments at Nankin, Ousi and along the Grand Canal. That year, however, was made gloomy by floods, famine and sickness. Nevertheless the trials had the good result of compelling the erection of orphanages where the Faith could be taught without difficulty. In 1852 the revolt against the Manchu dynasty broke out, and in 1853 Nankin and Shanghai were sacked. Everything Christian disappeared in the general carnage; but in 1855 the imperial troops with the aid of the French Admiral Laguerre entered Shanghai, but Nankin and the provinces remained in the hands of the rebels.
Certain ecclesiastical changes also occurred at that time. Pekin and Nankin disappeared as dioceses, and the province of Kiang-nan became a vicariate Apostolic, whose administration was entrusted to the Jesuits of Paris under Mgr. Borgniet. He was appointed in 1856. The vicariate of South-Eastern Tche-ly was given to the province of Champagne and Mgr. Languillat began his work there with three Fathers and 9,475 old Christians, the descendants of the neophytes of Pekin.
In 1860 the Chinese war broke out and the Taipings availed themselves of it for another rising. The English and French, who were fighting the emperor, held different opinions about what to do with the rebels, and finally contented themselves with defending Shanghai; leaving the rest of the country to be ravaged at will. Father Massa was thrown into prison and was about to be executed, but contrived to make his escape. His brother Louis, however, was put to death at Tsai-kia-ouan, along with a crowd of orphans whom he was trying to protect. In 1861 Father Vuillaume was killed at Pou-tong and others were robbed, taken prisoners and ill-treated. In 1862 an epidemic of cholera broke out in the province and lasted two years; the vicar Apostolic, Mgr. Borgniet, sixteen religious and four hundred of the faithful succumbed to the pestilence. In the following year six more Jesuits died. At this time General Gordon was beginning his great career. He was then only a major but he reorganized the imperial army, crushed the rebels and took Nankin. This gave a breathing spell to the missionaries; but in 1868, the Taipings were out again, under another name, and anarchy reigned for an entire year.
In the mean time the cities of Shanghai and Zikawei had relatively little to suffer, and the end of the war gave the missionaries the right to build churches, to exercise the ministry everywhere, and even to be compensated for the destruction of their property. But the rights were merely on paper, and fourteen or fifteen years of quarrels with every little mandarin in the country followed. Nevertheless the work went on. At Zikawei, for instance, schools were established, a printing-establishment inaugurated, and in 1872 the observatory which was soon to be famous in all the Orient was begun. Progress was also made at Shanghai. Of course the usual burnings and plunderings, with occasional massacre of groups of Christians continued, but not much attention was paid to these disturbances until 1878, when the Church at Nankin was set on fire, and Sisters of Charity, priests, and Christians in general, among whom was the French consul, were all ruthlessly murdered. The imperial government then took cognizance of the outbreak, and eleven alleged culprits were put to death. That helped to calm the mob, and evangelical work was resumed, so that Kiang-nan, which had 70,685 Christians in 1866 counted over 100,000 in 1882. In the year 1900 there were 124,000 of whom 55,171 were adults. There were also 50,000 catechumens preparing for baptism. The number of priests had grown to 159, of whom 42 were Chinese. The 940 schools had an attendance of 18,563 children.
The Boxer uprising was the most formidable trial to which the mission has so far been subjected. It was organized in the court itself by Toan, the emperor's uncle, General Tong-Fou-Siang and the secretary of state, Kangi-i, and its rumblings were heard for years before the actual outbreak. In Se-tchouan, a third of the churches were destroyed, villages set on fire, missionaries thrown into prison and many Christians massacred. A priest and his people were burned in the church at Kouang-toung; and at Hou-pe, another was put to death. These outrages were as yet local, but there was every evidence that a general conspiracy was at work for the expulsion of all foreigners from the empire. Finally the Boxers, or Grand Sabres, declared themselves, and by order of the viceroy, Yu-heen, 360 Christian villages were destroyed. That was only a beginning. Tche-ly suffered most. It was the stronghold of the rebels. In the autumn of 1899 there were conflagrations and riots everywhere. In 1900 the northern part of the mission was in flames, and forty-five Christian centres were reduced to ashes, but there were few, if any, apostacies, although thousands were put to death in the most horrible fashion. On June 20 Fathers Isore and Andlauer were murdered at the altar. On July 20 Fathers Mangin and Denn were killed, and on April 26, 1902, after peace had been concluded, Father Lomüller with his catechist and servant suffered death.
In this storm, five missionaries had been killed; Mgr. Henry Bulté died of exhaustion; 5,000 Christians had disappeared from the country; 616 churches had been destroyed along with 381 schools and three colleges. But that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church was shown by the fact that there are now more Christians in the district than there were before the persecution. The churches have been rebuilt; priests and catechists are more numerous; the seminary is crowded, and schools and pupils and teachers are at work, as if nothing had happened. The exact figures may be found in Brou's "Jésuites missionaires au xix siécle." Shanghai and Zikawei form the center of the Vicariate of Kiang-nan. In Shanghai are a cathedral and three parish churches which provide for a Catholic population of 9,724. There are three hospitals; an orphanage with trade schools; six schools; a home for the aged; conferences of St. Vincent de Paul. At Zikawei there is a scholasticate of the Society; a grand and little seminary; a meteorological and magnetic observatory; a museum of natural history; a college with 266 students, of whom 105 are pagans; a printing-house; a bi-weekly publication, and the beginnings of a university which it is hoped will head off the tendency of the natives to go for an education to Japan or to the Japanese schools founded in China itself.
When Gregory XVI sent the Jesuits to China, it was thought that from there it would be easy for them to go to Japan to resume the work in which they had so distinguished themselves in former times. Eighty years have passed since then, and only lately, a few Jesuits have shown themselves in that country. The Fathers of the Missions Etrangères have occupied the ground and have succeeded in establishing a complete hierarchy of five bishops and have won praise for themselves by their work in missions and parishes, in polemics and conferences. A school has been attempted and an American Jesuit has lately been placed on the staff of the University of Tokio. Only that and nothing more. What the future has in store, who can tell?
It was a happy day for the new Society when in 1841 it was ordered by Gregory XVI to undertake the missions of Hindostan; the country sanctified by the labors of Francis Xavier, de Nobili, de Britto, Criminali and a host of other saintly missionaries. No work could be more acceptable. The chief obstacle in the way of success was the protectorate which Portugal exercised over the churches of the Orient. In Catholic times its kings had the right not only to nominate all the bishops of the East, but to legislate on almost the entire ecclesiastical procedure within its dominions. Not even a sacristan could be sent to the Indies without the official approval of the Portuguese government. Such a state of things was bad enough in Catholic times, but when the politics of Portugal were in the hands of infidels and enemies of the Church, it could not possibly be tolerated, no matter how persistent was the claim that the right still adhered to the crown. Another abnormality in the pretence was that the country no longer belonged to Portugal but was to a very great extent English and hence if there were to be any dictation it should come from the government of that country.
The first act of the Pope was to create a number of vicars Apostolic who were to be independent of the Archbishop of Goa. This started a war which lasted sixty years. It was called the Goanese schism, or the fight of the double jurisdiction. The vicar Apostolic of the Calcutta district was Robert St. Leger, an Irish Jesuit, who came to India with five members of the Society after his appointment on 15 April, 1834. St. Leger's jurisdiction was disputed by a number of the adherents of Goa and he retired in December, 1838. The Jesuits with him had begun a college, which was enthusiastically supported by his successor, Bishop Jean-Louis Taberd. Unfortunately he died suddenly in 1840, and the same encouragement was not given by Dr. Patrick Carew, the third vicar, with the result that the college which had begun to prosper was closed. In 1846 the Jesuits left Calcutta, but in 1860 they were recalled by Mgr. Oliffe, the successor of Dr. Carew.
The missionaries came under the leadership of Father Depelchin, who when he had finished his work in Calcutta was later to add to his glory by founding the mission of the Zambesi in Africa. They found everything in ruins. Out of a population of 2,300,000 in the city and suburbs, there were no more than seven or eight thousand Catholics, many of whom were Tamouls from Madras. Only a few of the faithful were in easy circumstances and their influence in the city amounted to nothing. There was no help for it, therefore, but to resuscitate the College of St. Francis Xavier, which had been suppressed fourteen years before. It had no furniture and its library consisted of a few books with the covers off. The college was opened nevertheless and had, on the first day, eighty students on the benches. When Bishop Oliffe died there was a dreadful possibility of the appointment of a Goanese bishop, which, for the Jesuits, meant packing up a second time and leaving Calcutta. An appeal was therefore made to Rome and Father Auguste Van Heule was named, but he died in 1865 shortly after his arrival, and in 1867, Bishop Walter Steins was called over from Bombay to take his place. By this time the college had 350 students; a new building and another situation were imperative, but Depelchin was equal to the task, and before he left Calcutta for Africa he had 500 students on the roster.
The initial work of the missionaries was the development of the colleges but they subsequently addressed themselves to the evangelization of the whole population of the city and suburbs, and to-day they have six parishes with a population of 13,000 souls, who are provided with schools, hospitals, asylums and the like. The native population, the Bengalis as they are called, were found to be hopeless. Contact with the whites has made them skeptical in religion, and morally worse than they had been originally. The only Christian Hindoos in Calcutta are Tamouls from the South.
Not finding the Bengalis apt for evangelization, they sought out their countrymen, the Ourias in the Delta of the Ganges. Their home had the unhappy distinction of being called "the famine district," the dreadful calamity being caused either by too much water or by none. In 1866 there was a drought that withered all the crops, and then came inundations that covered 68,000 acres of land, swept away hundreds of villages, and diminished the population by half a million. Orphans, of course, abounded, and in 1868 an asylum was built for them in Balasore, which served also as an evangelical centre for missionary expeditions into the interior. But this venture was not very successful, for only about 1,600 conversions resulted after years of hard labor. The Ourias, it was found, had all the bad qualities of their friends the Bengalis. Perhaps also the movement was halted because their territory was a sort of Holy Land for Hindooism. Every year 500,000 pilgrims arrived there to pray at the shrine of Vishnu, and idolatry of all kinds, from the bloody ancestral fetichism to the refined cult of the Vedas and undiluted Brahmanism, took root and flourished there. Hence a mission was begun among the Orissas still further south.
Better than anywhere else one can see at close range among the Ourias how formidable are the moral, intellectual, social and historical obstacles that oppose the progress of Christianity in Hindostan. To add to the difficulty, Protestantism with its jumble of sects had established itself there and claimed at this time 15,000 adherents. But when cholera swept over the land in 1868, the Protestant missionaries fled and many of the native converts came over to the priests who, of course, did not imitate their non-Catholic rivals in deserting their charges. Father Goffinet especially distinguished himself in this instance, going everywhere in his narrow canoe and lavishing spiritual and corporal aid on the victims. In 1873 he was joined by Father Delplace, who went still nearer the sea. Others followed, lived in the huts of the natives, satisfied their hunger with a few handfuls of rice varied by a fish on Sundays to break the monotony of the diet, with the result that, in three years, there were thirty Catholic missions between the Hoogly and the Mutlah with 3,000 converts in what had been previously a stronghold of Hindoo Protestantism.
In the same year, Father Schoff went north of Calcutta to Bardwan--"The Garden of Western Bengal." He kept away from the rich, and devoted himself to the dregs of the populace. Over and over again the superiors doubted if it were worth while, but to-day the Haris, who were previously so degraded, live in pretty villages, and the order, piety and honesty for which they are noted make one forget the ignorance, debauchery and dishonesty of the past. A group of over 5,000 Catholics may be found there at the present time.
In these parts, the caste system prevails in all its vigors but if you go still further west into the heart of the Province of Chota-Nagpur you come upon a half-savage people, the offscouring of humanity who have been driven into the hills and forests by the conquering Aryans of the plains. They are the Ouraons of Dravidian origin; small, black as negroes, filthy, often wrapped in cow-dung and tattooed all over the body, but nevertheless light-hearted, robust and proud of their ability to perform hard work. With them also lives a more ancient race known as the Koles: men of broad flat faces which recall the Mongolian type. They are probably the aborigines. Their religion is grossly elementary--a vague adoration of the Supreme Being, superstition and ancestor worship; but with a shade of the pride that characterizes the horrible caste system of the Hindoos. The German Lutherans had essayed to convert them. Fifty rupees were paid for each adhesion, and fifty ministers devoted themselves to this apostolate. They are credited with having disbursed 3,700,000 francs by the year 1876. Then came the Anglicans who claimed 40,000 of them. In 1869 Father Stockman arrived and opened a mission at Chaibassa. In 1873 he had only a group of thirty converts. Nine years later, he had succeeded in baptising only 273, but by 1885 there were four residences in Chota-Nagpur with one out-mission. Five priests were engaged in the task.
The progress of the work, however, was comparatively slow until the young Father Constant Lievens made himself the champion of the natives in the courts. This gave it a phenomenal impulse. For years, these poor mountaineers had been cruelly exploited by Hindoo traders from Calcutta. As soon as the natives had contrived to cultivate a bit of land they were loaded down with taxes and enforced contributions, haled before the magistrates and flung into jail to rot. Unfortunately the police regulations were all in favor of the aggressors. Hence there were incessant riots and massacres, and when the English authorities tried in good faith to remedy matters, they could find no one among these poor outcasts fit to hold any position of responsibility. The Lutherans presented themselves and promised protection for those who would join the sect, and many went over to them, but the government disapproved of these unworthy tactics, as calculated only to make things worse in the end. It was like the temptation on the mountain.
At this point Father Lievens stepped into the breach. He could speak all the languages: Bengali, Hindoo, Mundari and Ouraon; and he then plunged into a study of the laws and customs of the land; an apparently inextricable maze, but in less than a year he was master of the whole legal procedure then in force. Thus armed, he appeared in court whenever a victim was arraigned, and almost invariably won a verdict in his favor. His reputation spread, and the victims of the sharks flocked to him from all sides. He argued for all of them, without however, omitting his ministerial occupation of preaching, teaching, composing canticles, helping the needy, and seeking out souls everywhere. He cut out so much work for his associates that his superiors were in a panic. But he succeeded. The native Protestants came over in crowds, and there was a flood tide of conversions to the Faith. It cost him his life, indeed, for he died in 1892, overcome by his labors and privations, but he had started a great movement and two years after his death, the flock had grown from 16,000 to 61,312, with more than 2,566 catechumens preparing for baptism. To-day the district is absolutely unlike its former self. Sacred canticles have taken the place of the old pagan chants and immoral dances are unknown. Even the pagans who are in the majority do not dare to perform certain rites of theirs in public.
In a district of Chota-Nagpur other than that in which Lievens labored, the conversions are still more pronounced. Six missionaries are at work, and their catechumens number more than 25,000. They offered themselves in spite of the fact that the Rajah was in a rage with his subjects about it; beat many of them unmercifully, and flung them into jail. Indeed the English government had to intervene to stop him. If there were a sufficiency of priests, there would be no difficulty in converting the whole countryside. The last accounts available tell us that the inhabitants of fifteen villages have declared themselves Christians, and cut off their hair to let the world know that they have renounced idolatry. Fifty years ago there were in all Western Bengal only a few thousand Catholics. In 1904 there were 106,000; in the following year, 119,705; in 1906, 126,529. Chota-Nagpur alone has another 102,000 and the number could be doubled if twenty new missionaries were on the spot. Western Bengal has now 27 churches, 346 chapels, 124 schools and two great colleges. Working there, are 101 priests, 55 scholastics and 27 coadjutor brothers of the Society, along with 34 Christian Brothers and 158 Sisters.
When Bishop Steins left Bombay, his successor Mgr. Jean-Gabriel Meurin built the college already planned, and called it St. Francis Xavier's. The undertaking was a difficult one, for the schismatical Goanese numbered 40,000 out of the 60,000 Catholics in the city, and their ecclesiastical leaders were not only indifferent to the project but refused to contribute anything to carry it out, just as if it had been a Moslem or a heretical establishment. The people, however, were better minded. Every one, Catholic, heathen and heretic, was eager to build the college, for Bombay was proud of being a great intellectual centre; and hence when the government promised to double what could be collected, the enthusiasm was general and money poured in. The Observatory still bears the name of the rich Parsee who built it.
The Bombay mission included Beluchistan up to the frontiers of Afghanistan; its southern limit was the Diocese of Poona. In this vast territory were native villages, military posts, Anglo-Indian settlements, Indo-Portuguese, and pure Hindoos. There were only about 33,000 Christians to be found in this amalgam, excluding the 70,000 people of the Goanese allegiance. Four colleges were erected in the various districts of this territory, but, unlike the great establishments of Bombay and Calcutta, they were exclusively Catholic. They gave instructions respectively to 500, 690, 298, and 306 pupils. The girls of the two dioceses were also provided for and the high school population exceeded 10,000. The great advantage of this scheme was that it ate very rapidly into the schism through the children of the insurgents.
The Carmelites had been in Mangalore; but found it too hard to hold out against the Calvinists from Bâle who, in 1880 had twenty stations, sixty-five schools and an annual budget of half a million; consequently they begged the Holy See to call in the Jesuits. When the new missionaries arrived in December, 1879, the Carmelites went out to meet them in a ship hung with flags and bunting and, on landing, presented them to the enthusiastic multitude waiting on the shore. The college of St. Aloysius was immediately begun and opened its classes with 150 students. Thus it happened that the greatest part of St. Francis Xavier's territory had come back to the Society; German Jesuits being in Bombay, Belgians in Calcutta, French in Madura and Italians in Mangalore. In the latter mission out of a population of 3,685,000 there are to-day only 93,000 Catholics, but there were 1,500 Christian students in St. Aloysius' college in 1920. It might be noted that Mangalore has acquired a world wide reputation for its leper hospital which was founded by Father Müller, formerly of the New York province. In that district also there are more native priests than in any other part of India. They number 60 all told and take care of about 32 parishes. They are not pure-blood, however, for they bear distinctively Portuguese names, such as Coelho, Fernandes, Saldanha and Pinto. This growth of the native clergy is encouraging, but it would be a mistake to regard them as useful for spreading the Faith. They make relatively very few conversions. They leave that to outsiders. They merely hold on to what has been won for them by others.
In 1884, the college of Negapatam was transferred to Trichinopoly, the reason being that in the latter there was a Catholic population of 20,000. Of course, the Anglican educators of the city tried to prevent the move but failed. The college at one time had 1,800 pupils, and although there was a drop to 1,550 in 1905, because of new rivals in the field, the latest accounts place the attendance at 2,562. St. Xavier's high school in Tuticorin, in the Madura mission had 563 pupils in 1920, and St. Mary's erected in 1910 in the very heart of Brahmanism has 441. In Trichinopoly, the discipline and work of the students have attracted much attention, but especially the enterprise of the sodalists, who have formed twenty groups of catechists and are engaged in giving religious instruction to 700 children. Most notable, however, is the success of the college in overthrowing the caste barriers. Indeed the missionaries of the old days would look with amazement at the grouping in the class rooms of Brahmins, Vellalans, Odeayans, Kallans, Paravers and twenty other social divisions down to the very Pariahs, all studying in the same house and eating at the same table. There were walled divisions, at first; then screens; then benches, and now there is only an imaginary line between the grades which formerly could not come near each other without contamination.
Among these castes, the Brahmins display the greatest curiosity about things Christian, but like the rich young man in the Gospel when they hear the truth they turn sadly away. "Why did God permit me to meet you," said one of them, "if I am going to suffer both here and hereafter?" One of them at last yielded and took flight to the ecclesiastical seminary at Ceylon. When the news spread abroad, priests from the pagodas and professors from the national schools came to the college and stormed against the other catechumens but without avail. Another Brahmin declared himself a Christian the next year; three in 1896, three in 1897, four in 1898, six in 1899 and two in 1900. They all have a hard fight before them; for they are thrown out of their caste and are disinherited by their families. Two of these converts died, and there is a suspicion that at least one was poisoned. Already 60 Brahmins have been baptized and India is in an uproar about it. To those who know the country, these conversions are of more importance than that of a thousand ordinary people and it is almost amusing to learn that the well-known theosophist leader, Annie Besant, hastened back to India to denounce the Catholic Church for its effrontery. The incident, it is true, gave a new life to idol-worship but possibly it was the last gasp before death.
The Madura district had been taken over by the Fathers of the Foreign Missions, after the Jesuits had been suppressed in 1773. When the Pope, Pius VII, re-established the Society, insistent appeals were made by those devoted and overtaxed missionaries to have the Jesuits resume their old place in that part of the Peninsula. The petition was heeded and the Jesuits returned to Madura in 1837. They were confronted by a frightful condition of affairs. In spite of the heroic labors of their immediate predecessors, there were scandals innumerable, and a large part of the population had lapsed into the grossest superstition and idolatry. The missionaries were well received at first, but a fulmination from Goa incited the people to rebellion. Moreover their labors were so crushing that four of the Fathers died of exhaustion in the year 1843 alone. Little by little however a change of feeling began to manifest itself, and as early as 1842, there were 118,400 Catholics in the mission, many of them converts from Protestantism and paganism. In 1847 Madura was made a vicariate Apostolic under Mgr. Alexis Canoz, a year after the Hindo-European college was established at Negapatam.
Madura has another great achievement to its credit. The English government had put an end to the suttee: the frightful and compulsory custom of widows flinging themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands who were being incinerated. The prohibition was universally applauded but the Fathers started another movement. It was against the enforced celibacy of widows, some of whom had been married in babyhood, often to some old man, and were consequently obliged to live a single life after his death. The moral results of such a custom may be imagined. It was difficult at first to convince a convert that it was a perfectly proper thing for him to marry a widow, but little by little the prejudice was removed. Of course there are orphanages, old people's homes, Magdalen asylums, maternity hospitals, industrial schools, and other charitable institutions in prosperous Madura.
The work among the lower classes in the country districts is of the most trying description. There is no place for the itinerant missionary to find shelter in the villages except in some miserable hut. Indeed, 1,853 of these hamlets out of 2,035 have no accommodations at all for the priest, who perhaps has travelled for days through forests to visit them. Moreover, though the people have their good qualities and a great leaning to religion, they are fickle, excitable, ungrateful, unmindful as children at times, and hard to manage. In certain quarters, especially in the south, conversions are multiplying daily. The movement began as early as 1876, after a frightful famine that swept the country, and in one place the Christian population grew in fifteen years from 4,800 to 68,000. In 1889 around Tuticorin whole villages came over in a body. In December, 1891, 600 people were clamoring for baptism in one place, and they represented a dozen different castes. In 1891 one missionary was compelled to erect thirty-two new chapels. "I said we have 75 new villages;" writes another, "if we had priests enough we could have 75 more."
In 1920, there were in the Diocese of Trichinopoly besides the bishop, Mgr. Augustine Faisandier, 119 Jesuit priests of whom 28 are natives. There are a number of native scholastics. Besides this group there are 27 natives studying philosophy and theology in the seminary at Kandy. Add to this 32 Brothers of the Sacred Heart, an institute of Indian lay religious, who assist the missionaries as catechists and school teachers; 75 nuns in European and 346 in Indian institutions; and 75 oblates or pious women who devote themselves to the baptizing of heathen children; and you have some of the working corps in this prosperous mission. The Catholic population was 267,772 in 1916. There are 1,100 churches and chapels, 2,620 posts, a school attendance of 27,378 children, and 7 Catholic periodicals.
The missions in Mohammedan countries were particularly difficult to handle, because Turkey is a veritable Babel of races, languages and religions. There are Turks, and Syrians, and Egyptians and Arabians, along with the Metualis of Mount Lebanon and the Bedouins of the desert. There are Druses, who have a slender link holding them to Islamism; there are idolaters of every stripe; there are Schismatical Greeks, who call themselves Orthodox and depend on Constantinople; and there are United Greeks or Melchites who submit to Rome; Monophysite Armenians, and Armenian Catholics; and Copts also of the same divided allegiance. Then come Syrian Jacobites and United Syrians, Nestorians, Chaldeans, Maronites, Latins, Russians, with English, German and American Protestants, and to end all, the ubiquitous Jews. The missionaries who labor in this chaos are also of every race and wear every kind of religious garb. What will be the result of the changes consequent upon the World War no one can foretell. There is nothing to hope for from the Jews or Mohammedans; and only a very slight possibility of uniting the schismatics to Rome, or of converting the Protestants who have nothing to build on but sentiment and ingrained and inveterate prejudice. There is plenty to do, however, in restraining Catholics from rationalism and heresy; in lifting up the clergy to their proper level, by imparting to them science and piety; forming priests and bishops for the Uniates; promoting a love for the Chair of Peter; and all the while not only not hurting Uniate susceptibilities, but showing the greatest respect for the jealous autonomy of each Oriental Church.
Before the Suppression, the missions of the Levant were largely entrusted to the Jesuits of the province of Lyons. The alliance of the Grand Turk with the kings of France assured the safety of the missionaries and hence there were stations not only at Constantinople, but in Roumelia, Anatolia, Armenia, Mingrelia, Crimea, Persia, Syria, Egypt and in the Islands of the Ægean Sea. The work of predilection in all these places was toiling in the galleys with the convicts, or in the lazar houses with the plague-stricken. Between 1587 and 1773, more than 100 Jesuit missionaries died of the pest. In 1816, that is two years after the re-establishment of the Society, the bishops of the Levant petitioned Rome to send back the Jesuits. Thanks to Paul of Russia, they had resumed their old posts in 1805 in the Ægean, where one of the former Jesuits, named Mortellaro, had remained as a secular priest, and lived long enough to have one of the Fathers from Russia receive his last sigh and hear him renew his religious vows. This was the beginning of the present Sicilian Jesuit missions in the Archipelago. The Galician province has four stations in Moravia, and the Venetian has posts in Albania and Dalmatia.
In 1831 Gregory XVI ordered the Society to undertake the missions of Syria; but at that time Mehemet Ali of Egypt was at war with the Sultan, and the Druses and Maronites were butchering each other at will. Finally, in the name of the Sultan, Emir Haidar invited the Fathers to begin a mission at Bekfaya on the west slope of Mount Lebanon and about 10 miles west of Beirut. Simultaneously Emir Beckir, who was an upholder of Egypt, established them at Muallakah, a suburb of Zahlé on the other side of the mountain. At Hauran, on the borders of the desert, they found a Christian population in the midst of Druses and Bedouins. They were despised, ill-treated and virtually enslaved. They had no churches and no priests, were in absolute ignorance of their duties as Christians, and were stupefied to find that Rome had come so far to seek them. The work of lifting them up was hard enough, but it was a trying task to be commissioned by Rome to settle the disputes that were continually arising between Christian, Orthodox, and Turk, and even between ecclesiastical authorities. Father Planchet was the chief pacificator in all these wrangles, and for his punishment was made delegate Apostolic in 1850, consecrated Bishop of Mossul in 1853, and murdered in 1859 when about to set out for Rome.
Father Planchet was a Frenchman; with Father Riccadonna, an Italian, and Brother Henze, a Hanoverian, he went to Syria in 1831, at the joint request of the Melchite bishop, Muzloum, Joseph Assemani, the procurator of the Maronite patriarch and the Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo, Germanus Harva. A hitherto unpublished document recently edited by Father Jullien in "La Nouvelle Mission en Syrie" gives a detailed account of the journey of this illustrious trio from Leghorn to Syria.
"The vessel was called 'The Will of God,' and the voyage was," says Riccadonna, "an uninterrupted series of misfortunes,--fevers, faintings, rotten water, broken rigging, shattered masts, wild seas, frightful tempests, a sea-sick crew and escapes from English, Turkish and other cruisers on the high seas. When they came ashore the cholera was raging throughout the country." The narrative is full of interest with its picturesque descriptions of the people, their habitations, their festivals, their caravans, their filth, their fanaticism and the continually recurring massacres of Christians. The travellers journeyed to Beirut and Qamar and Bagdad and Damascus, and give vivid pictures of the conditions that met them in those early days. The medical ability of the lay-brother was of great service. He was the only physician in the country, with the result that, according to Riccadonna, each stopping place was a probatica piscina, every one striving to reach him first. "In Arabia," says the Relation, "as in the plains of Ba'albek, there is nothing but ignorance and sin. There are sorcerers and sorceresses in every village; superstitions of every kind, lies, blasphemies, perjury and impurity prevail. It is a common thing for Christians to bear Mussulman names and to pray to Mahomet. They never fast, and on feast days never go to Mass. Of spiritual books or the sacraments they know nothing; clan and personal vengeance and murder are common, and sexual immorality indescribable." Such was the state of these countries in 1831.
In 1843 the mission, which until then depended on the general, was handed to the province of Lyons. In that year a seminary for native priests was begun at Ghazir, in an old abandoned castle bought from an emir of the mountains. It began with two students, but at the end of the year there were twenty-five on the benches, and in that small number, many Rites were represented. A college for boys soon grew up around it, and a religious community of native nuns for the education of children was established. The latest account credits the Sisters with nearly 4,000 pupils.
New posts were established at Zahlé and ancient Sidon and also at Deir el Qamar. The prospects seemed fair for the moment, for had not the French and Turks been companions in arms in the Crimea? But in 1860 the terrible massacres in Syria began as a protest of the ultra-Mussulmans against the liberal concession of Constantinople to the Christians. In the long list of victims the Jesuits counted for something; for on June 18, four of them were butchered at Zahlé and a fifth at Deir el Qamar. In that slaughter eight thousand Christians were killed; 560 churches destroyed; three hundred and sixty villages devastated and forty-two convents burned. Three months later the Turkish troops from the garrison at Damascus butchered eight thousand five hundred people, four prelates, fifty Syrian priests, and all the Franciscan Friars in the city. They levelled to the ground three thousand eight hundred houses and two churches, and would have done more; but the slaughter was stopped when the Algerian Abd-el-Kader arrived on the scene. They still live on a volcano. Preceding and during the war of 1914, massacre of the Christians continued as usual.
Armenia is the Ararat of Scripture. Little Armenia, in which the Jesuits are laboring, is an irregular strip of territory that starts from the Gulf of Alexandretta and continues on towards the Black Sea. Its principal towns are Adana, Cæsarea, Civas, Tokat, Amasia, and Marswan, about two or three days' journey from each other. The country is mountainous, without railroads or other means of transport. The highways are infested with brigands; and the climate is excessively hot and excessively cold. The difficulties with which the Church has to contend in this inhospitable region are first, the government which is Turkish; second, the secret societies which are continually plotting against their Turkish masters; and third, the American Protestant sects which are covering the country with churches, orphan asylums, schools and dispensaries, and flooding it with anti-Catholic literature, and money. In 1886 all the schools were closed by the Turks, but when the French protested they were reopened. In 1894 two of the priests died while caring for the cholera victims and that helped to spread the Faith, for, of course, there are never any parsons on the scene in such calamities. Under Turkish rule also, massacres are naturally chronic, but Brou informs us that on such occasions the Protestants suffer more than the Catholics; for the latter are not suspected of being in the secret revolutionary societies, while the others are known to be deeply involved.
The population of this region consists of 500,000 Christians, of whom 14,000 are Protestants and 12,000 Catholics. The rest are Monophysite schismatics. In the mission besides the secular priests there are 57 Jesuits and 50 teaching sisters from France. There are 22 schools with 3,309 pupils, but only 504 of these children are Uniate Catholics. They are what are called Gregorians, for the tradition is that Armenia was converted to the Faith by St. Gregory the Illuminator. There are few conversions, but the schismatics accept whatever Catholic truth is imparted to them. They believe in the Immaculate Conception; pray for the dead; love the Pope; say their beads; and invoke the Sacred Heart. For them the difference between Romans and Gregorians is merely a matter of ritual. In several places, however, whole villages have asked to be received into Roman unity. As a people they look mainly to Russia for deliverance from the Turk, but neither Turk nor Russian now counts in the world's politics and no one can foresee the future.
Father Roothaan had long been dreaming of sending missionaries to what until very recently has been called the Unknown or Dark Continent, Africa. Hence when the authorities of the Propaganda spoke to him of a proposition, made by an ecclesiastic of admitted probity, about establishing a mission there, Roothaan accepted it immediately, and in the year 1846 ordered Father Maximilian Ryllo with three companions to ascend the Nile as far as possible and report on the conditions of the country. Ryllo was born in Russia in 1802 and entered the Roman province in 1820. After many years of missionary work in Syria, Malta and Sicily he was made rector of the Urban College in Rome on July 4, 1844, and was occupying that post when he was sent by Father Roothaan to the new mission of Central Africa.
In 1845 Ryllo was at Alexandria in search of "the eminent personage" who had suggested the mission and had been consecrated bishop in partibus, for the purpose of advancing the enterprise. But the "eminent personage" was not to be found either there or in Cairo. Hence after waiting in vain for a month, Ryllo and his companions started for Khartoum which was to be the central point for future explorations. After a little rest, they made their way up the White Nile. They were then under the equator, and had scant provisions for the journey, and no means of protection from the terrible heat, and, besides, they were in constant peril of the crocodiles which infested the shores of the river. The first negro tribes they met spoke an Arabic dialect, so it was easy to understand them. The native houses were caves in the hillsides, a style of dwelling that was a necessity on account of the burning heat. Their manner of life was patriarchal; they were liberal and kind, and seemed to be available foundation stones for the future Church which the missionaries hoped to build there. Satisfied with what they had discovered, they returned to Khartoum, but when they reported in due time to Propaganda, the mission was not entrusted to them. It was handed over to the Congregation of the Missionaries of Verona.
In 1840 the Jesuits went to Algeria. The work was not overwhelming. They were given charge of an orphan asylum. But unfortunately though they had plenty of orphans they had no money to feed them. Nevertheless, trusting in God, Father Brumauld not only did not close the establishment, but purchased 370 acres of ground, in the centre of which was a pile of buildings which had formerly been the official baths of the deys of Algiers. In 1848 the asylum sheltered 250 orphans. Fr. Brumauld simply went around the cafés and restaurants and money poured into his hat, for the enterprise appealed to every one. He even gathered up at the hotels the left-over food and brought it back to the motherless and fatherless little beggars whom he had picked up at the street corners. They were filthy, ragged and vicious, but he scraped them clean and clothed them, taught them the moral law and gave them instructions in the useful trades and occupations. Marshal Bougeaud, the governor, fell in love with the priest and when told he was a Jesuit, replied "he may be the devil himself if you will, but he is doing good in Algeria and will be my friend forever." One day some Arab children were brought in and he said to Father Brumauld "Try to make Christians out of these youngsters. If you succeed they won't be shooting at us one day from the underbrush."
The Orphanage stood in the highroad that led to Blidak and permission was asked to get in touch with natives. Leave was given Father Brumauld to put up a house which served as café for the Arabs. It had a large hall for the travellers and a shed for the beasts. Next to it was a school the upper part of which gave him rooms for his little community. It was a zaoui for the Christian marabouts, a meeting place for the French and natives, and a neutral ground where fanaticism was not inflamed but made to die out. All the governors, Pelissier, the Duc d'Aumale, MacMahon, Admiral de Guéydon and General Chanzy were fond of the Father and encouraged him in his work. One day General d'Hautpoul praised him for his success, and advised him to begin another establishment. The suggestion was acted on immediately. The government was appealed to and soon a second orphanage was in operation at Bouffarik further South. Finally, as the number of Arab orphans was diminishing in consequence of better domestic conditions, Brumauld asked why he could not receive orphans from France? Of course he could, and he was made happy when 200 of them were sent as a present from Paris. There would be so many gamins less in the streets of the capital.
Meantime, residences and colleges were being established in the cities of Al-Oran, Constantine and Algiers, but when at the instance of the bishop, Father Schimbri opened a little house in the neighborhood of Selif and was ingratiating himself with the natives, the authorities demanded his immediate recall. Later, when the bishop solicited leave to begin a native mission he was denounced in Paris for influencing minors, because he had asked some Lazarists to teach a few vagabond Arab children; but the government, whose disrespect for religion was a by-word with the natives, had no scruple in building Moslem schoolhouses, allowing a French general to pronounce an eulogy of Islamism in the pulpit of a mosque. While it forbade religious processions, it provided a ship to carry Arabian pilgrims to Mecca. It was so scrupulously careful of the Moslem conscience that it forbade the nuns to hang up a crucifix in the hospital when these holy women were nursing sick Mohammedans.
In 1864 there were Jesuit chaplains in two of the forts, and from there they ventured among the natives with whom they soon became popular. That was too much to put up with, so they were ordered to discontinue, because, forsooth, they were attacking the right of freedom of conscience. The result of this governmental policy was that in the revolt of the Kabyles in 1871 the leaders of the insurgents were the Arab students who had been given exclusively lay and irreligious instructions in Fort Napoleon. Father Brou says (viii, 218) that MacMahon who was governor of the colony was opposed to Cardinal Lavigerie's efforts to Christianize the natives, but that Napoleon III supported the cardinal, who after his victory, installed the Jesuits in the orphanage and also made Father Terasse novice master of the community of White Fathers, which was then being founded; two others were commissioned to put themselves in communication with the tribes of the Sahara and when they reported that everything was favorable the new Order began its triumphant career. That was in 1872. When Vice-Admiral de Guéydon was made governor he willingly permitted the cardinal to employ Jesuits as well as White Fathers in the work among the Kabyles, but de Guéydon was quickly removed from office and the old methods of persecution were resumed. When the year 1880 arrived and the government was busy closing Jesuit houses, the single one left to them in Algeria was seized.
Portugal graciously made a gift to Spain of the Island of Fernando Po in the Gulf of Guinea. Brou calls it "an island of hell," with heat like a lime-kiln, and reeking with yellow fever. It was inhabited by a race of negroes called Boubis, who were dwarfs, with rickety limbs, malformed, tattooed from head to foot, smeared with a compound of red clay and oil, speaking five different dialects, each one unintelligible to speakers of the others; they had been charged with poisoning the streams so as to get rid of the Portuguese and were trying to kill the Spaniards by starvation. It cannot have been brotherly love that suggested this Portuguese present. To this lovely spot Queen Isabella of Spain invited the Jesuits in 1859, and they accepted the offer. They lived among the blacks, unravelled the tangle of the five dialects and won the affection of the natives. Their success in civilizing these degraded creatures was such that whenever a quarrel broke out in any of the villages the governor had only to send his staff of office and peace descended on the settlement. In other words the missionaries had made Fernando Po a Paraguay. This condition of things lasted twelve years, but when Isabella descended from her throne the first act of the revolutionists was to expel the Jesuits from the mission.
Leo XIII had ordered the General, Father Beckx to begin a seminary at Cairo. It was opened with twelve pupils. Three years afterwards occurred the Turkish massacre of Damascus and Libanus and the bombardment of Alexandria by the English. In consequence of all this the seminarians fled to Beirut, and after the war a college was begun at the deserted establishment of the Lazarists at Alexandria. Cairo was near by, but there was such an antagonism between the two cities that two distinct colleges with different methods and courses had to be maintained. Cairo was Egyptian in tone; Alexandria was French. Meanwhile, a mission was established on the Nile at Nineh which was some distance south of Cairo. In this mission the young priests trained at Beirut were employed, and they proved to be such excellent apostles that Leo XIII made three of them bishops and thus laid the foundation of the United Coptic hierarchy. In 1905 there were 20,000 United Copts in Egypt, four-fifths of whom had been reclaimed from the schism. This is all the more remarkable because the Protestants had spent enormous amounts of money in schools, hospitals, and asylums.
Madagascar was originally called the Island of St. Lawrence, because it was first sighted on the festival day of the great martyr by Diego Diaz, who with Cabral, the Portuguese discoverer, was exploring the Indian Ocean in the year 1500. A Portuguese priest was massacred there in 1540; in 1585 a Dominican was poisoned by the natives, and in the seventeenth century two Jesuits came from Goa with a native prince who had been captured by the Portuguese. Their benevolence toward the prince secured them permission to preach Christianity for a while, but when their influence began to show itself, they were, in obedience to a royal order, absolutely avoided by the natives so that one starved to death; the other succeeded in reaching home. The Lazarists came in 1648, but remained only fourteen months, two of their number having died meantime. Other attempts were made, but all ended in disaster to the missionaries. Nothing more was done until the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1832 Fathers de Solages and Dalmond were sent out, but they had been anticipated by the Protestant missionaries who, as early as 1830, had 32 schools with 4,000 pupils. De Solages soon succumbed and Dalmond continued to work on the small islands off the coast until 1843, when he returned to Europe to ask Father Roothaan to send him some Jesuits. Six members of the Society together with two Fathers of the Holy Ghost responded to the call, but they could get no farther than the islands of Nossi-Bé or St. Mary's and Réunion, or Bourbon as it was called.
The Queen Ranavalo, who was a ferocious and bloodthirsty pagan, had no use for any kind of evangelists, Protestant or Catholic, but there was a Frenchman named Laborde in the capital, who was held in high esteem by her majesty, because he was a cannon-founder, a manufacturer of furniture and a maker of soap. Besides these accomplishments to recommend him, he had won the esteem of the heir-apparent. Incidentally Laborde put the prince in relation with the missionaries off the coast. A short time afterwards, there appeared in the royal city another Frenchman who could make balloons, organize theatrical representations, and compound drugs. He was accepted in the queen's service. He was a Jesuit in disguise. His name was Finaz, and he continued to remain at Tananarivo until 1857, when the violence of the queen, who was insanely superstitious, brought about an uprising against her which was organized by the Protestant missionaries. She prevailed against the rebels, and as a consequence all Europeans were expelled from the island, and among them Father Finaz. He could congratulate himself that he had at least learned the language and made himself acquainted with the inhabitants.
Four years later (1861), the queen died, and King Radama II ascended the throne; whereupon six Jesuits opened a mission in Tananarivo. They soon had 2 schools with 400 pupils and numberless catechumens, but their success was not solid, for the Malgassy easily goes from one side to another as his personal advantage may dictate. Radama was killed, and then followed a forty years' struggle between the French and the English to get control of the island. The English prevailed for a time and, in 1869, Protestantism was declared to be the state religion. The number of evangelists multiplied enormously, but they were merely government agents and knew next to nothing about Christian truth or morality. The confusion was increased, when to the English parsons were added American Quakers and Norwegian Lutherans. The Evangelical statistics of all of them in 1892 were most imposing. Thus the Independents claimed 51,033 and the Norwegians 47,681, with 37,500 children in their schools. The names were on the lists, but the school-houses were often empty, and in the interim between the different official visits of the inspectors often no instruction was given. Against this the Catholics had only 22 chapels and 25 schools, and they were mostly in the neighborhood of Tananarivo.
France was subsequently the dominant influence in Madagascar but, as in the mother country religion was tabooed, there was little concern about it in the colonies. When the Franco-Prussian war showed the weakness of France, the respect for the alleged religion of France vanished, especially when a crusade began against the Catholic schools. Nevertheless the faithful continued to grow in number, and in 1882 they were reckoned at 80,000 with 152 churches, 44 priests, 527 teachers and 2,000 pupils. War broke out in 1881, and the missionaries were expelled but returned after hostilities ceased, and found that their neophytes, under the guidance of a princess of the royal blood, had held firmly to their religion, notwithstanding the closing of the schools and the sacking of the churches. After these troubles, conversions increased, and in 1894 there were 75 Jesuit priests in the island; and, besides the primary schools which had increased in number, a college and nine high schools as well as a printing house and two leper hospitals were erected. Added to this, an observatory was built and serious work began in geographical research, cartography, ethnography, natural history, folklore and philology.
Just at the height of this prosperity, a persecution began. The missionaries were expelled, their buildings looted, and the observatory wrecked. In 1896 the bishop counted 108 of his chapels which had been devastated, but in 1897 General Galieni arrived, and the queen vanished from the scene. After that the faith prospered, and in the year 1900 alone there were 94,998 baptisms. In 1896 Propaganda divided Madagascar into three vicariates: one entrusted to the Lazarists; another to the Fathers of the Holy Ghost; and a third to the Jesuits of the provinces of Toulouse and Champagne. In the Jesuit portion, the latest statistics give 160,080 Christians and 170,000 catechumens, with 74 priests, 8 scholastics and 11 lay-brothers. The chief difficulty to contend with is the gross immorality of the people who are, in consequence, almost impervious to religious teaching, and at the same time easily captured by the money that pours into the country from England and Norway. The French officials, of course, cannot be expected to further the cause of Catholicity.
In 1877, when Bishop Ricards of Grahamstown in South Africa asked the Jesuits to accept the Zambesi Mission, Father Weld ardently took up the work, and in April, 1879, Father Depelchin, a Belgian, started from Kimberly, with eleven companions for Matabeleland, over which King Lo Benguela ruled. It was a five months' journey and the missionaries did not arrive at the royal kraal until September 2. But as the prospects of conversion of the much-married king and his followers were not particularly bright, only one part of the expedition remained with Lo Benguela, while two others struck for the interior. There several of the strongest missionaries sickened and died. The work went on, however, for ten weary years when the king told them to stop teaching religion and show the people how to till the soil. Otherwise they must go. They accepted the offer, of course, for it got them a better means of imparting religious instruction.
Then a quarrel broke out between the British, the Portuguese, the Boers and Lo Benguela for the possession of Mashonaland. The British as usual won the fight, but when Cecil Rhodes came to the kraal, to arrange matters, Lo Benguela ordered all the whites out of his dominion and the Fathers withdrew. A new difficulty then arose between the English and Portuguese, and the mission was divided between Upper and Lower Zambesi, the latter being assigned to the Portuguese Jesuits. There was trouble with the natives of both sections for some time, and then the Anglo-Boer war broke out, so that for twenty-five years very little apostolic progress was made. In Upper Zambesi or Rhodesia, as it is called, there are at present 40 Jesuit priests and 24 brothers, and 3 missionaries of Mariannhill, with 115 nuns, 20 churches or chapels, and 30 schools of which 26 are for natives, and about 5,000 Catholics. Naturally speaking the result scarcely warrants the outlay but the purpose is supernatural and intelligible only from that point of view. In Lower Zambesi, which was given to the Portuguese Jesuits, there have been no troubles because it is garrisoned by Portuguese soldiers; the four stations in that district with their thirty-five Fathers were doing splendid work when the Portuguese revolution occurred; the Jesuits were then expelled, but twenty-six Fathers of the Divine Word took their place.
The early days of the Zambesi mission evoked splendid manifestations of the old heroic spirit of the Society. Thus we read of one of the missionaries, a Father Wehl, who was separated from his companions and wandered for twenty-six days in the bush, luckily escaping the wild beasts and finally falling into the hands of some Kaffirs who were about to put him to death, when he was saved by the opportune arrival of an English gold-hunter. But starvation and disease had shattered his health and his mind was gone. Six months afterwards he died.
Meantime his two companions Father Law and Brother Hedley found shelter among the natives, but had to live in a clay hut which was a veritable oven. They both fell sick of fever; little or no food was given them, and they slowly starved to death. They lay along side of each other, neither being able to assist his companion, and when finally the Father breathed his last, all the poor lonely brother could do was to place a handkerchief on the face, but when he removed the covering in the morning, he found that the rats had been eating the flesh. The dead missionary lay there for some time because the superstitious natives would not touch the corpse; when finally a rope was tied around it, they dragged it out of the hut and left it in the forest. For three weeks after this horrible funeral the poor brother had to fight off the rats that were attacking himself; at last the chief took pity on him and had him carried on a litter to a band of other missionaries who were approaching. When his friends saw him they burst into tears. He had not changed his clothes for five months and they were in tatters. His whole body was covered with sores and ulcers and the wounds were filled with vermin. He was in a state of stupor when he arrived, but strange to say he recovered. His dead companion, the priest, had been a naval officer, and was a convert to the Faith and the grandson of one of the lord chancellors of England.
The Congo mission was organized by the Belgium Jesuits in 1885, under the auspices of Leopold II of Belgium, who had established the Congo Free State. His majesty requested the Fathers to assist him, but he gave them no financial aid whatever, though he was pointedly asked to do so. The Congo Free State begins 400 miles from the Atlantic ocean and extends to Central Africa. Leopold's plan was to abolish slavery within the boundaries of this domain; then to make the adult male population his soldiers, and meantime to place the orphans and abandoned children in asylums which the missionaries would manage. Some of these establishments were to be supported from the public revenues, others by charity. The whole hope of the mission was in these orphanages, for nothing could be expected from the adult population. The boys were to be taught a trade and then married at the proper time. These households were to be visited and supervised by the missionaries.
It was an excellent plan, but it was opposed by the Belgian anti-clericals, who objected to giving so much power to priests. A number of English Protestants also busied themselves in spreading calumnies about these settlements and brought their accusations to court, where sentence was frequently given without hearing the accused. The charges were based on alleged occurrences in three out of the forty-four mission stations. The persecution became so acute that the Jesuits appealed to the king and received the thanks of his majesty and the government for the work they had performed, but the calumnies were not retracted, until May 26, 1906, when a formal document was issued by the Free State declaring that it greatly esteemed the work performed by the Catholic missionaries in the civilization of the State. In the following year on May 22, it added: "Since it is impossible to do without the missionaries in the conversion of the blacks, and as their help is of the greatest value in imparting instruction, we recommend that the mission be made still more efficacious by granting them a subsidy for the upkeep of their institutions." At the beginning of 1913, the Jesuits had seven stations and forty missionaries. In spite of all this, however, the work of systematic calumniation still continues.
The great war of 1914 brought absolute ruin on all the missions of Asia and Africa. Thus France called to the army every French priest or lay brother who was not crippled by age and infirmity, and made him fight in the ranks as a common soldier or a stretcher bearer in the hospital or on the battlefield. This was the case not only with the Jesuits, but with other religious orders and the secular priesthood. Nor was this call to the colors restricted to those who were in the French colonies; it affected all priests or brothers of French birth who were laboring in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Belgian Congo, Angola, Zambesi, Canada, Haiti, the United States or South America. Sixty priests or brothers had to leave Japan. Out of forty-three missionaries of the Society of African Missions who were in Egypt, half had to leave. Of the twenty-two who were on the Ivory Coast sixteen were mobilized. Indeed, four bishops were summoned to the ranks, Mgrs. Moury of the Ivory Coast, Terrien of Benin, Perros of Siam, and Hermel of Haiti. There were at the outbreak of the war thirty-five Jesuits from the Levant in the army, besides others from Madagascar, Madura and China.
XXVII. COLLEGES
Responsibility of the Society for loss of Faith in Europe--The Loi Falloux--Bombay--Calcutta--Beirut--American Colleges --Scientists, Archæologists, Meteorologists, Seismologists, Astronomers--Ethnologists.
The Society of Jesus is frequently charged with being responsible for the present irreligious condition of the Latin nations, of France in particular, because, having had the absolute control of education in the past, it did not train its pupils to resist the inroads of atheism and unbelief.
In the first place, the charge is based on the supposition that the Society had complete control of the education of Catholic countries, which is not the case. Thus, for instance, Montesquieu, one of the first and most dangerous of the assailants of the Church in the eighteenth century, was educated by the Oratorians. As much as thirty-seven years before the French Revolution, namely, in 1752, Father Vitelleschi, the General of the Society, addressed the following letter to the Jesuits throughout the world:
"It is of supreme importance that what we call the scholæ inferiores (those namely below philosophy and theology) should be looked after with extreme solicitude. We owe this to the municipalities which have established colleges for us, and entrusted to us the education of their youth. This is especially incumbent upon us at the present time, when such an intense desire for scholastic education everywhere manifests itself, and has called into existence so many schools of that kind. Hence, unless we are careful, there is danger of our colleges being considered unnecessary. We must not forget that for a long time there were almost no other Latin schools but ours, or at least very few; so that parents were forced to send their sons to us who otherwise would not have done so. But now in many places, many schools are competing with ours, and we are exposing ourselves to be regarded as not up to the mark, and thus losing both our reputation and our scholars. Hence, our pupils are not to be detained for too long a period by a multiplication of courses, and they must be more than moderately imbued with a knowledge of the Classics. If they have not the best of masters, it is very much to be feared that they will betake themselves elsewhere and then every effort on our part to repair the damage will be futile."
In the second place, after the year 1762, that is twenty-seven years before the Revolution, there were not only no Jesuit colleges at all in France, but no Jesuits, and consequently there was an entire generation which had been trained in schools that were distinctly and intensely antagonistic to everything connected with the Society. Furthermore, it is an undeniable fact, provable by chronology, that the most conspicuous men in that dreadful upheaval, namely, Robespierre, Desmoulins, Tallien, Fréron, Chenier and others were educated in schools from which the Jesuits had been expelled before some of those furious young demagogues were born. Danton, for instance, was only three years old in 1762; Marat was a Protestant from Geneva, and, of course, was not a Jesuit pupil; and Mirabeau was educated by private tutors. The fact that Robespierre and Desmoulins were together at Louis-le-Grand has misled some into the belief that they were Jesuit students, whereas the college when they were there had long been out of the hands of the Society. The same is true of Portugal and Spain. The Society had ceased to exist in Portugal as early as 1758, and in Spain in 1767.
Far from being in control of the schools of France, the whole history of the French Jesuits is that of one uninterrupted struggle to get schools at all. Against them, from the very beginning, were the University of Paris and the various parliaments of France, which represented the highest culture of the nation and bitterly resented the intrusion of the Society into the domain of education.
Not only is this true of the period that preceded but also of the one that followed the French Revolution. It was only in 1850, namely seventy-seven years after the Suppression of the Society, that the Jesuits, in virtue of the Loi Falloux, were permitted to open a single school in France. The wonder is that the incessant confiscations and suppressions which followed would permit of any educational success whatever. Nevertheless, in the short respites that were allowed them they filled the army and navy with officers who were not only conspicuous in their profession but, at the same time, thoroughgoing Catholics. Marshal Foch is one of their triumphs. Indeed it was the superiority of their education that provoked the latest suppression of the Jesuit schools in France.
It is this government monopoly of education in all the Continental countries that constitutes the present difficulty both for the Society of Jesus and for all the other teaching orders. Thus after 1872, the German province had not a single college in the whole extent of the German Empire. It could only attempt to do something beyond the frontiers. It has one in Austria, a second in Holland, and a third in Denmark. Austria has only one to its credit; Hungary one and Bohemia another. The province of Rome has one; Sicily two, one of which is in Malta, and Malta is English territory; Naples had three and Turin four, but some of these have already disappeared. All the splendid colleges of France were closed by Waldeck-Rousseau in 1890. Spain has five excellent establishments, but they have no guarantee of permanency. Belgium has thirteen colleges, packed with students, but the terrible World War has at least for a time depleted them. Holland has three colleges of its own. England four, and Ireland three.
The expulsions, however, have their compensations. Thus when the Jesuits were expelled from Germany by Bismarck, the English government welcomed them to India, and the splendid college of Bombay was the result. Italy also benefited by the disaster. Not to mention other distinguished men, Father Ehrle became Vatican librarian, and Father Wernz, rector of the Gregorian University and subsequently General of the Society. In South America, the exiles did excellent work in Argentina and Ecuador. The Jesuits of New York gave them an entrance into Buffalo, and from that starting-point they established a chain of colleges in the West, and later, when conditions called for it, they were assimilated to the provinces of Maryland, New York and Missouri, thus greatly increasing the efficiency of those sections of the Society.
When driven out of their country, the Portuguese Jesuits betook themselves to Brazil, where their help was greatly needed; the Italians went to New Mexico and California; and the French missions of China and Syria benefited by the anti-clericalism of the home government; for Zikawei became an important scientific world-centre and Beirut obtained a university. The latter was, until the war broke out, a great seat of Oriental studies.
The most imposing institutions in Beirut, a city with a population of over 150,000, made up of Mussulmans, Greeks, Latins, Americans and Jews, are those of the Jesuits. They maintain and direct outside of Beirut 192 schools for boys and girls with 294 teachers and 12,000 pupils. There is, in the city, a university with a faculty of medicine (120 students) founded in 1881 with the help of the French government; its examinations are conducted before French and Ottoman physicians and its diplomas are recognized by both France and Turkey. The university has also a seminary (60 students) for all the native Rites. Up to 1902 it had sent out 228 students including three patriarchs, fifteen bishops, one hundred and fifteen priests and eighty-three friars. Its faculty of philosophy and theology grants the same degrees as the Gregorian University in Rome. Its faculty of Oriental languages and sciences, founded in 1902, teaches literary and conversational Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopic; the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages; the history and geography of the Orient; Oriental archæology; Græco-Roman epigraphy and antiquities. Its classical college has 400 pupils and its three primaries 600. A printing-house, inaugurated in 1853, is now considered to be the foremost for its output in that part of the world. Since 1871 it has published a weekly Arabic paper, and since 1898 a fortnightly review in the same language, the editors of which took rank at once among the best Orientalists. Besides continually adding to their collection of philological papers, they contribute to many scientific European reviews. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, II, 393.)
There are Jesuit colleges, also, throughout India, such as the great institutions of Bombay and Calcutta with their subsidiary colleges, and further down the Peninsula are Trichinopoly, all winning distinction by their successful courses of study. Indeed the first effort the Society makes in establishing itself in any part of the world, where conditions allow it, is to organize a college. If they would relinquish that one work they would be left in peace.
An interesting personage appears in connection with the University of Beirut: William Gifford Palgrave. It is true that one period of his amazing career humiliated his former associates, but as it is a matter of history it must needs be told.
He was the son of an eminent English Protestant lawyer, Sir Francis Palgrave, and had Jewish blood in his veins. He was born in 1826, and after a brilliant course of studies at Oxford began his romantic career as a traveller. He went first to India and was an officer of Sepoys in the British army. While there, he became a Catholic, and afterwards presented himself at the novitiate of Negapatam as an applicant for admission. Unfortunately his request was granted, and forthwith he changed his name to Michael Cohen, as he said to conceal his identity. This was a most amazing mask; for Palgrave would have escaped notice, whereas everyone would immediately ask, who is this Jesuit Jew? How he was admitted is a mystery, especially as he proclaimed his race so openly.
After his novitiate he was sent to Rome to begin his theology--another mystery. Why was he not compelled to study philosophy first like everyone else? Then he insisted that Rome did not agree with his health, and he was transferred to Beirut to which he betook himself, not in the ordinary steamer, but in a sailing vessel filled with Mussulmans. On the way, he picked up Arabic. Inside of a year, namely in 1854, he was made a priest and given charge of the men's sodality which he charmed by his facility in the use of the native tongue; in the meantime he made many adventurous journeys to the interior to convert the natives, but failed every time. In 1860 he was sent to France for his third year of probation under the famous Father Fouillot, whom he fascinated by his scheme of entering Arabia Petrea as its apostle. He succeeded in getting Louis Napoleon to give him 10,000 francs on the plea that he would thus carry out the scheme of the Chevalier Lascaris whom Napoleon Bonaparte had sent to the East.
At Rome, he found the Father General quite cold to the proposition, and when he had the audacity to ask Propaganda for permission to say Mass in Arabic, he was told: "Convert your Arabs first and then we shall see about the Mass." The brother who was to go with him fell ill, and the General then insisted that he should not attempt the journey without a priest as companion; whereupon Palgrave persuaded the Greek Bishop of Zahlé to ordain one of the lay professors of the college, after a few days' instruction in moral theology. Fortunately this improvised priest turned out well, and he became His Beatitude Mgr. Geraigri, patriarch of the Greek Melchites.
In 1862 the travellers set out by way of Gaza in Palestine, Palgrave as a physician, the other as his assistant. They covered the entire Arabian peninsula and were back again in Beirut at the end of fourteen months. Palgrave had made no converts, and was himself a changed man. Even his sodalists remarked it. What had happened no one ever knew. In 1864 he was sent to Maria-Laach in Germany, where the saintly Father Behrens wrestled with him in vain for a while, but he left the Society and passed over to Protestantism, securing meanwhile an appointment as Prussian consul at Mossul. In the following year he published an account of his travels and the book was a European sensation. In it he made no secret of his having been a member of the Society, which he says was "so celebrated in the annals of courageous and devoted philanthropy. The many years I spent in the East were the happiest of my life." In 1884 he was British consul at Montevideo and remained there till 1888 when he died.
For twenty years he seemed never to have been ashamed of his apostasy, but three or four years before his death the grace of God found him. The change was noticed on his return from a trip to England. He had become a Catholic again. He went to Mass and received Holy Communion. Although a government official, he refused to go to the Protestant Church even for the queen's jubilee, in spite of the excitement caused by his absence. He died of leprosy. A Jesuit attended him in his last sickness, and he was buried with all the rites of the Church. These details are taken from a recent publication by Father Jullien, S. J., entitled "Nouvelle mission de la Compagnie de Jésus en Syrie" (II, iii.)
The great difficulty that confronts educators of youth in our times, is state control. In the United States it has not yet gone to extremes, but every now and then one can detect tendencies in that direction. Meantime the Society has developed satisfactorily along educational lines. According to the report of October 10, 1916 (Woodstock Letters, V 45), there were 16,438 students in its American colleges and universities. Of these 13,301 were day scholars and 3,137 boarders. There were 3,943 in the college departments, 10,502 in the high schools and 1,416 in the preparatory. Besides all this, there were commercial and special sections numbering 737. The total increase over the preceding year was 523.
The Maryland-New York provinces had 1,848 students of law, 341 of medicine, 127 of dentistry, 122 of pharmacy. Missouri had 786 students of law, 643 of medicine, 776 of dentistry, 245 of pharmacy, 126 of engineering, 530 of finance, 240 of sociology, 425 of music, 43 of journalism, and 61 in the nurse's training school. New Orleans had a law school of 81 and California one of 232 students.
It is sometimes urged as an objection to Catholic colleges that they give only a Classical education, and are thus not keeping pace with the world outside. To show that the objection has no foundation in fact, it would be sufficient to enter any Jesuit college which is at all on its feet, and see the extensive and fully equipped chemical and physical laboratories, the seismic plants and in some cases the valuable museums of natural history which they possess. If it were otherwise, they would be false to all their traditions; for the Society has always been conspicuous for its achievements in the natural sciences. It has produced not only great mathematicians and astronomers, but explorers, cosmographers, ethnologists, and archæologists. Thus, for instance, there would have been absolutely no knowledge of the aborigines of North America, their customs, their manner of life, their food, their dress, their superstitions, their dances, their games, their language had it not been for the minute details sent by the missionaries of the old and new Society to their superiors. In every country where they have been, they have charted the territories over which they journeyed or in which they have labored, described their natural features, catalogued their fauna and flora, enriched the pharmacopeia of the world with drugs, foodstuffs and plants, and have located the salts and minerals and mines.
That this is not idle boasting may be seen at a glance in Sommervogel's "Bibliothèque des écrivains." Thus the names of publications on mathematics fill twenty-eight columns of the huge folio pages. Then follow other long lists on hydrostatics and hydraulics, navigation, military science; surveying; hydrography and gnomics; physics, chemistry and seismology call for thirty columns; medical sciences; zoology, botany, geology, mineralogy, paleontology, rural economy and agriculture require eight. Then there are two columns on the black art. The fine arts including painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, music, equitation, printing and mnemonics take from column 927 to 940.
According to this catalogue, the new Society has already on its lists one hundred and sixty-four writers on subjects pertaining to the natural sciences: physics, chemistry, mineralogy, zoology, botany, paleontology, geography, meteorology, astronomy, etc. The names of living writers are not recorded. Nor does this number include the writers who published their works during the Suppression, as de Mailla, who in 1785 issued in thirteen volumes a history of China with plans and maps, the outcome of an official survey of the country--a work entrusted by the emperor to the Jesuits. Father de Mailla was made a mandarin for his share of the work.
The extraordinary work on the zoology of China by the French Jesuit, Pierre Heude, might be adduced as an illustration of similar work in later times. He began his studies in boyhood as a botanist, but abandoned that branch of science when he went to the East. While laboring as a missionary there for thirty years he devoted every moment of his spare time to zoology.
He first travelled along all the rivers of Middle and Eastern China to classify the fresh-water molluscs of those regions. On this subject alone he published ten illustrated volumes between 1876 and 1885. His treatise "Les Mollusques terrestres de la vallée du Fleuve Bleu" is today the authority on that subject. He then directed his attention particularly to the systematic and geographical propagation of Eastern Asiatic species of mammals, as well as to a comparative morphology of classes and family groups, according to tooth and skeleton formations. His fitness for the work was furthered by his extremely keen eye, his accurate memory, and the enormous wealth of material which he had accumulated, partly in the course of his early travels and partly in later expeditions, which carried him in all directions. These expeditions covered chiefly the eight years from 1892 to 1900. They took him to the Philippines which he visited three times; to Singapore, Batavia, the Celebes, the Moluccas, New Guinea, Japan, Vladivostock, Cochin-China, Cambodia, Siam, and Tongking. He carried on his work with absolute independence of method. He contented himself with the facts before him and sought little assistance from authorities; nor did he fear to deduce theoretical conclusions from his own observations which flatly contradicted other authorities. He continued his scientific work until shortly before his death which occurred at Zikawei on January 3, 1902. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, VII, 308.)
Albers in his "Liber Sæcularis" maintains that "in the cultivation of the natural sciences, the restored Society won greater fame than the old," and that "a glance at the men whom the Italian provinces alone have produced would be sufficient to convince the doubter." Angelo Secchi, of course, stands out most prominently, and a little later Father Barello, who with the Barnabite Denza established the Meteorological Observatory of Malta. Giambattista Pianciani was regarded with the greatest veneration in Rome because of his vast erudition as a scientist, as were Caraffa, Mancini and Foligni for their knowledge of mathematics. Marchi was the man who trained the illustrious de Rossi, as an archæologist, and also the Jesuit Raffaele Garrucci whose "Monumenta delle arte cristiane primitive nella metropoli del Cristianesimo" laid the foundations of the new study of archæology. The writings of Father Gondi and Francis Tongiorgi have also contributed much to advancement in those fields of knowledge.
Faustino Arévalo was one of the exiles from Spain at the time of the Suppression. He was born at Campanario in Estremadura in 1747, and entered the Society in 1761. Six years afterwards he was deported to Italy by Charles III. In Rome he won the esteem and confidence of Cardinal Lorenzano, who proved to be his Mæcenas by bearing the expense of Arévalo's learned publications. He was held in high honor in Rome, and was appointed to various offices of trust, among them that of pontifical hymnographer and theologian of the penitenziaria, thus succeeding the illustrious Muzzarelli. When the Society was restored, he returned to Spain and was made provincial of Castile. One of his works was the "Hymnodia hispanica," a restoration of ancient Spanish hymns to their original metrical, musical and grammatical perfection. This publication was much esteemed by Cardinal Mai and Dom Guéranger. It was accompanied by a curious dissertation on the Breviary of Cardinal Quignonez. He also edited the poems of Prudentius and Dracontius and those of a fifth century Christian of Roman Africa. Besides this, he has to his credit four volumes of Jouvancy's "Gospel History," the works of Sedulius and St. Isidore and a Gothic Missal. He stands in the forefront of Spanish patristic scholars, and has shed great lustre on the Church of Spain by his vast learning, fine literary taste and patriotic devotion to the Christian writers of his fatherland.
The founder of the science of archæology, according to Hurter, was Stefano Antonio Morcelli. He was a member of the old Society and re-entered it when it was restored. Even before the Suppression, which occurred twenty years after his entrance, he had established an archæological section in the Kircher Museum of Rome. When he found himself homeless, in consequence of the publication of the Brief of Clement XIV, he was made the librarian of Cardinal Albani. He refused the Archbishopric of Ragusa and continued his literary labors in Rome. His first publication was "The Style of Inscriptions." In the town of Chiari, his birthplace, to which he afterwards withdrew, he founded an institution for the education of girls, reformed the entire school system, devoted his splendid library to public use, and restored many buildings and churches. Meantime his reputation as master of epigraphic style increased and he was placed in a class of his own above all competitors. Besides his many works on his special subject, he gave to the world five volumes of sermons and ascetic treatises. When the Society was re-established he again took his place in its ranks, and died in Brescia in 1822 at the age of eighty-four. Hurter classifies him as also a historian and geographer.
Nor was Morcelli an exception. Fathers Arthur Martin and Charles Cahier are still of great authority as archæologists, chiefly for their monograph in which, as government officials, they described the Cathedral of Bourges; and likewise for their "Mélanges archéologiques," in which the sacred vessels, enamels and other treasures of Aix-la-Chapelle and of Cologne are discussed. They also wrote on the antique ivories of Bamberg, Ratisbon, Munich and London; on the Byzantine and Arabian weavings; and on the paintings and the mysterious bas-reliefs of the Roman and Carlovingian periods. Their works appeared between 1841 and 1848.
A very famous Jesuit archæologist died only a few years ago, and the French government which had just expelled the Jesuits erected a monument at Poitiers to perpetuate his memory. He was Father Camille de la Croix. He was a scion of the old Flemish nobility and was born in the Château Saint-Aubert, near Tournai in Belgium, but he passed nearly all his life in France, and hence Frenchmen considered him as one of their own. He got his first schooling in Brugelette, and, when that college was given up, went with his old masters to France. In 1877 we find him mentioned in the catalogue as a teacher and writer of music. Three years later, the French provinces had been dispersed by the government, and he was then docketed as an archæologist at the former Jesuit college of Poitiers.
De la Croix's success as a discoverer was marvellous. Near Poitiers he found vast Roman baths, five acres in extent, whose existence had never even been suspected. There were tombs of Christian martyrs; a wonderful crypt dating from the beginning of the Christian era; a temple dedicated to Mercury, with its sacred wells, votive vases etc. At Sauxay, nineteen miles from Poitiers, he unearthed the ruins of an entire Roman colony; a veritable Pompeii with its temple of Apollo, its theatres, its palaces, its baths etc. He had the same success at Nantes, Saint-Philibert, and Berthouville;--the French government supplying him with the necessary funds. The "Gaulois" said of him that "in his first ten years he discovered more monuments than would have made twenty archæologists famous." Meantime he lived in a wooden cabin, on the banks of the Clain, and there he died at the age of eighty, on April 14, 1900; and there also the French government built his monument. At the dedication, all the scientific men of the country were present, and the King of Belgium sent a representative.
Although the well-known François Moigno severed his connection with the Society, it was only after he had achieved greatness while yet in its ranks. He entered the novitiate on September 2, 1822, when he was eighteen years of age. He made his theological studies at Montrouge, and in his spare moments devoted himself to the study of the natural sciences. At the outbreak of the Revolution of 1830, he went with his brethren to Brieg in Switzerland, where he took up the study of languages, chiefly Hebrew and Arabic. When the troubles subsided in France he was appointed professor of mathematics in Paris at the Rue des Postes, and became widely known as a man of unusual attainments. He was on intimate terms with Cauchy, Arago, Ampère and others. He was engaged on one of his best known works: "Leçons de calcul différentiel et de calcul intégral" and had already published the first volume when he left the Society. He had been a Jesuit for twenty-one years. He was then made chaplain of Louis-le-Grand, one of the famous colleges owned by the Jesuits before the Suppression, and became the scientific editor of "La Presse" in 1850; of "Le Pays" in 1851, and in the following year, founded the well-known scientific journal "Cosmos," followed by "Les Mondes" in 1862, editing meanwhile "Les Actualités scientifiques." As a matter of fact, it was the Society that had formed him and enabled him to publish his greatest works.
The German, Father Ludwig Dressel, who was for many years the director of the Polytechnic in Quito, is well-known for his treatises on geology, chemistry and physics. Kramers, in Holland, is the author of three volumes on chemistry. In entomology, Father Erich Wasmann is among the masters of today, and has written a series of works which have elicited the applause of the scientific world, especially his "Die moderne Biologie und die Entwicklungstheorie." (Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution.) The writings of Bolsius on biology won for him a membership in the scientific societies of Russia, Belgium, Italy and Holland.
The first meteorological society, the "Palatina," was founded by Father Johann Hemmer in 1780, and it is noteworthy that nearly all its contributors were members of the various religious orders of Austria-Hungary, Italy and France. Its scope was not restricted to the study of meteors, for it accepted papers on ethnology, linguistics, etc. Hence we find Father Dobrizhoffer writing to it from Paraguay, Joseph Lafitaux from Canada, Johann Hanxleden, the Sanscrit scholar from Hindostan, and Lorenzo Hervás. Hanxleden and his colleague Roth were the pioneers in Sanscrit. The former was the first European to write a Sanscrit grammar and to compile a Malabar-Sanscrit-Portuguese dictionary. Hervás was one of the Jesuits expelled from Mexico, and after the Suppression was made prefect of the Quirinal Library by Pius VII. While there, he worked in conjunction with several of his former brethren in the compilation and composition of scientific works, mostly of an ethnological character. He also wrote a number of educational works for deaf mutes.
The Observatory of Stonyhurst dates back to 1838-39, when a building consisting of an octagonal centerpiece with four abutting structures was erected in the middle of the garden. But it was not until 1845 that a 4-inch Jones equatorial was mounted in its dome. Meteorological observations were begun as early as 1844, and magnetic in 1856 by Father Weld. In 1867 an 8-inch equatorial was set up. The chief workers were Fathers Stephen Perry, Walter Sidgreaves and Aloysius Cortie. All three were members of the Royal Astronomical Society and were frequently chosen to fill official positions. Father Perry achieved special prominence. He was the director from 1860 to 1862, and again from 1868 till his death in 1889. He was a member of more scientific expeditions than any other living astronomer. He was at Cadiz for the solar eclipse in 1870; he was sent as astronomer royal in 1874 for the transit of Venus to Kerguelen or Desolation Island, and for another observation to Madagascar in 1882. In 1886 he observed a total eclipse at Carriacou in the West Indies. For the eclipse of 1887 he was sent to Russia, and for that of 1889 to Cayenne. On the latter expedition he was attacked by a pestilential fever and died on board the warship "Comus" off Georgetown, Demerara, after receiving the last sacraments from a French Abbé resident in Georgetown. Father Perry was buried there in the cathedral cemetery. His death was that of a saint, and a touching account of it has been left by his assistant, a Jesuit lay-brother.
Father Perry's prominence in the scientific world may be judged by the honors bestowed upon him. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Council; also a member and Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and, shortly before he died, he had been proposed as Vice-President. At the time of his death he held the post of President of the Liverpool Astronomical Society. He was a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, a member of the Physical Society of London, and an associate of the Papal Academy of the Nuovi Lincei, the oldest scientific society in Europe. He belonged also to the Societé Géographique of Antwerp, and had received the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa from the Royal University of Ireland. For several years before his death, he served on the committee of the council on education, as well as on the committee for comparing and reducing magnetic observations, for which work he had been appointed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a body of which he was a life-member. In 1887 and 1889 he attended at Paris the meetings of the Astrographic Congress for the photographic charting of the heavens.
In the "Monthly Notices" of the Royal Astronomical Society (L, iv) the following resolution appears on the occasion of his death: "The Council having heard with the deepest regret of the death of the Rev. S. J. Perry while on the Society's expedition to observe the total eclipse at the Salut Islands, desire to put on record their sense of the great loss which astronomy has suffered by the death of so enthusiastic and capable an observer, and to offer to his relations and to his colleagues at Stonyhurst the expression of their sincere sympathy and condolence on this sad event." The list of his scientific papers covers twelve pages of his biography. Father Cortie, his associate in the Stonyhurst Observatory, says of him: "His death was glorious, for he died a victim to his sense of duty and his zeal for science. Truly he may lay claim to the title of 'martyr of science,' and a part of the story of the eclipse of December 22, 1889, will be the account of how Father Perry was carried from a sick bed to take his last observation."
Besides the Observatories in Granada and Oña the Spanish Jesuits have another near Tortosa. The main object of the latter is the study of terrestrial magnetism, seismology, meteorology, study of the sun, etc. It has five separate buildings and a valuable periodical regularly published by the observers.
The Zo-se Observatory near Zikawei in China is in charge of the French Fathers. The Observatory is about 80 feet in length. It has a library of 20,000 volumes with numerous and valuable Chinese manuscripts. They have another station in Madagascar, which is 4,600 feet above sea-level, and consequently higher by 100 metres than the Lick Observatory in California. When the Jesuits were expelled from Madagascar, the Observatory was demolished by the natives who thought it was a fortress. It was rebuilt later at the expense of the French government and the director, Father Colin, was made a corresponding Member of the French Academy. In 1890, 1895, 1898 and 1899 the observers were honored by their home government with purses of considerable value, one being of 6,000 and another of 3,000 francs.
There are other observatories at Calcutta, Rhodesia, Feldkirch, Louvain, Oudenbosch (Holland), Puebla (Mexico), Havana, Woodstock and other Jesuit colleges in the United States; these are attracting notice principally by their seismographical reports. The most conspicuous of all these North American observatories is that of Georgetown which was founded in 1842-43, about the same time as the Naval Observatory. It was built under the direction of Father Curley, whose determination of the longitude of Washington in conjunction with Sir G. B. Airy, the Astronomer Royal of Greenwich, England, was made by observing a series of transits of the moon, and was later shown by the electric telegraph to have been correct to within the tenth of a second. Fathers De Vico, Sestini and Secchi labored at Georgetown. Secchi's "Researches in Electrical Rheometry" was published in 1852 by the Smithsonian Institute. It was his first literary contribution to science. Sestini's drawings of the sun spots were published by the Naval Observatory. In 1889 Father Hagen, then the director, published his "Atlas stellarum variabilium." In 1890 Father Fargis solved the question of "the personal equation" in astronomical observations by his invention of the Photochronograph. It had been attempted by Father Braun in Kalocsa (Hungary) and by Repsola in Königsberg, but both failed. Professors Pickering and Bigelow in the United States had also given it up, but Father Fargis solved the difficulty by a fixed photographic plate and a narrow metal tongue attached to the armature of an electric magnet. It has proved satisfactory in every test.
In Sommervogel's "Bibliothèque" the list of the astronomical works written by Secchi covers nineteen pages quarto, in double columns. He was equally active in physics and meteorology and his large meteorograph described in Ganot's "Physics" merited for him the Grand Prix (100,000 francs) and the Cross of the Legion of Honor at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1867. It was conferred upon him by the hand of the Emperor Napoleon, in the presence of the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the Kings of Prussia and Belgium. The Emperor of Brazil sent him a golden rose as a token of appreciation.
The "Atlas stellarum variabilium" by Father Johann Hagen is according to "Popular Astronomy" (n. 81, p. 50) the most important event in the star world. Ernst Harturg (V. J. S., vol. 35) says: "It will without doubt become in time an indispensable requisite of the library of every observatory just as the Bonn maps have become." Father Hagen has also won distinction in the mathematical world by his "Synopsis der höheren Mathematik," in four volumes quarto.
The seismological department of Georgetown, under Father Francis A. Tondorf, has attained an especial prominence in the United States. Its equipment is of the latest perfection, and its earthquake reports are those most commonly quoted in the daily press of America.
Important in their own sphere are the books "Astronomisches aus Babylon" by Fathers Joseph Epping and Johann Nepomuk Strassmaier, and "Die babylonische Mondrechnung" by Epping. F. K. Ginzel (in V. J. S., vol. 35.) expresses the following opinion of them: "It is well known that the investigations made by the Jesuit Father Epping, in conjunction with the Assyriologist Father Strassmaier, upon many Babylonian astronomical bricks have had as a consequence that the scientific level upon which the history of astronomy had formerly placed the Babylonians must be taken considerably higher. Epping's investigations now receive a very valuable extension through the labor of Father Kugler of Valkenburg, Holland. From the communications received concerning Kugler's work the importance of his book to the history of astronomy may be inferred."
"Die Gravitations-Constante" (Vienna, 1896), by Father Carl Braun of Mariaschein, Bohemia, represents about eight years of patient work, and according to Poynting (Proc. of the Royal Soc. Inst, of Great Britain, XVI, 2) "bears internal evidence of great care and accuracy. He obtained almost exactly the same result as Professor Boys with regard to the earth's mean density. Father Braun carried on his work far from the usual mechanical laboratory facilities and had to make much of the apparatus himself. His patience and persistence command our highest admiration."
With regard to the "Kosmogonie vom Standpunkte christlicher Wissenschaft," by Father Braun, Dr. Foster says: (V. J. S., vol. 25) "this problem, mighty in every aspect, is treated from all points of view with clearness and impressiveness. One could hardly find at this time in any other book all the essential features of a theory of the sun collected together in such a directive manner."
Perhaps the famous phrase of St. Ignatius, Quam sordet tellus quum cælum aspicio, had something to do with the Society's passion for astronomy. "How sordid the earth is when I look at the sky." His sons have been looking at the sky from the beginning not only spiritually but through telescopes, and many of them have become famous as astronomers. This is all the more notable, because star-gazing was only a secondary object with them. They were first of all priests and scientific men afterwards. As early as 1591 Father Perrerin, in his "Divinatio astrologica," denounced astrology as a superstition although his Protestant friend, the great Kepler, did not admit the distinction between it and astronomy. The book of Perrerin's went through five editions. Father de Angelis published in 1604 five volumes entitled "In astrologos conjectores" (Against astrological guessers). As late as 1676, the work was still in demand, for illustrious personages like Rudolph II, Wallenstein, Gustavus Adolphus, Catherine de' Medici and even Luther and Melanchthon with a host of others were continually having their horoscopes taken.
Another eminent worker was Father Riccioli, of whom we read: "If you want to know the ancient follies on this point consult Riccioli." (Littrois in "Wunder des Himmels," 1886, 604.) The implication might be that Riccioli approved of them, but the reverse is the case, for, as Thomas Aquinas furnishes a list of every actual and almost every possible theological and philosophical error, but after each adds videtur quod non, which he follows up by a refutation, so does Riccioli in his Astrology. He was a genius. He became a Jesuit when he was sixteen, and for years never thought of telescopes. He taught poetry, philosophy and theology at Parma and Bologna, and took up astronomy only when his superiors assigned him to that study. Being an Italian, he did not like Copernicus or Kepler. They were from the Protestant North and had refused to accept the Gregorian Calendar. He admitted, indeed, that the Copernican system was the most beautiful, the most simple, the best conceived, but not solid, so he made one of his own, but did not adhere to it tenaciously.
Appreciating the deficiencies of the astronomy of the ancients, he composed the famous "Almagestum novum," which placed the whole science on a new basis. Beginning by the measurement of the earth, he produced, though he made mistakes, the first meteorolog-system. His lunar observations revealed 600 spots on the moon, which is fifty more than had been found by Hevelius. His collaborator, Grimaldi, the greatest mathematician of his age, made the maps. His remarks on libration fill an entire volume, and the writer in the "Biographie universelle" gives him the credit of experimenting on the oscillations of the pendulum before Galileo. His health was always poor, but he worked like a giant. His "Almagestum" consists of 1500 folio pages, and is described as a treasure of astronomical erudition. Lalande quotes from it continually. His "Astronomia reformata" is in two volumes folio, and he has twelve folio volumes on geography and hydrography. Its learning is astounding. Thus, for instance, in the second part of his "Chronologia" there is a list of the principal events from the creation to the year 1688, along with the names of kings, patriarchs, nations, heresies, councils, and great personages, which was really collateral matter.
What the Jesuit astronomers accomplished in China from the time of Ricci down to Hallerstein in 1774 has been continued there to the present day. The first government observatory in Europe was erected in the University of Vienna, then in the hands of the Jesuits. There were others at Vilna, Schwetzingen and Mannheim. Twelve other private ones had been built in the various European colleges of the Society. The establishment of these observatories was providential, for when the Society was suppressed they afforded occupation and support to a great number of dispersed Jesuits, who remained in charge of them during their forty years of homelessness and kept alive the old spirit of the Order in its affection for that particular study. As in the old Society this work is still a matter of private enterprise. As far as we are aware there is only one observatory where a government assists, the Observatory of Manila, in which the employees are salaried by the United States government. The equipment itself, however, was provided by the Jesuits, who reduced their living expenses to the minimum in order to build the house and buy the instruments.
On the other hand, the number of actual Jesuit observatories in the strict sense of the term already rivals that of the old Society. The Roman establishment which had been made famous by Scheiner, Gottignes, Asclepi, Borgondius, Maire and Boscovich was continued during the Suppression by the secular priest Calandrelli. In 1824 Leo XII restored it to the Society, and Father Dumouchel took charge of it with De Vico as an assistant. The latter's reputation was European. He was known as the Comet Chaser, for he had discovered eight of them. The well-known five and a half years periodic comet bears his name. He succeeded Dumouchel as director in 1840, and was holding that office when the Revolution of 1848 drove the Jesuits from Rome. He was received with great enthusiasm in France by Arago, and in England he was offered the directorship of the Observatory of Madras but he preferred to go to Georgetown in the United States. Being called to London on business, he died there on November 15, 1848, at the age of 43. Herschel wrote his obituary in the "Notices of the Astronomical Society."
Secchi had gone with De Vico to Georgetown, but was recalled to Rome in 1849 by Pius IX, and given charge of the observatory. He was born at Reggio in 1818, and, after studying in the Jesuit college there, entered the Society at the age of sixteen. He began as a tutor in physics and continued at that work when he went to Georgetown. Astronomy had as yet not appealed to him, but in Washington he met the famous hydrographer, meteorologist and astronomer, Maury, and a deep affection sprang up between them, and Secchi dedicated one of his books to his American friend. His appointment to the Roman Observatory in 1859 was due to the recommendation of De Vico, and in two years his brilliant success as an observer attracted the attention of the scientific world. He began by a revision of Struve's "Catalogue of Double Stars," which necessitated seven years' strenuous work, and he was able to verify 10,000 of the entries. Meantime he was studying the physical condition of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and the four great moons of Jupiter. In 1852 the moon became the special object of his investigations, and his micrometrical map of the great crater was so exact that the Royal Society of London had numerous photographs made of it. In 1859 he published his great work "Il quadro fisico del sistema solare secondo il piu recenti osservazioni." The study of the sun spots was his favorite task, and his expedition to Spain in 1860 to observe the total eclipse established the fact that the red protuberances around the edge of the eclipsed sun were real features of the sun itself and not optical illuminations or illuminated mountains of the moon. He began the "Sun Records" in Rome, and they are kept up till this day. No other observatory has anything like them. All this, with his inventions, and the study of the spectroscope, heliospectroscope and telespectroscope, besides the mass of scientific results which he arrived at, has put him in the very first rank of astronomers. He was equally conspicuous as a meteorologist and a physicist. When the Piedmontese took Rome, Secchi was offered the rank of senator and the superintendency of all the observatories of Italy if he would leave the Society. Of course he scoffed at the proposal; but his authority in Italy was so great that the invaders did not dare to expel him from his observatory. He died in 1878.
Clerke says of him: "The effective founders of stellar photography were Father Secchi, the eminent Jesuit astronomer of the Collegio Romano, and Dr. Huggins with whom the late Professor Mullen was associated. The work of each was happily made to supplement that of the other. With less perfect appliances, the Roman astronomer sought to render his work extensive rather than precise; whereas, at Upper Tulse Hill, searching accuracy over a narrower gauge was aimed at and attained. To Father Secchi is due the merit of having executed the first spectroscope view of the heavens. Above 4000 stars were all passed in review by him and classified according to the varying qualities of their light. His provisional establishment (1863-7) of four types of stellar spectra has proved a genuine aid to knowledge, through the facilities afforded by it for the arrangement and comparison of rapidly accumulating facts. Moreover it is scarcely doubtful that these spectral distinctions correspond to differences in physical conditions of a marked kind."
"I saw the great man," said one who was in the audience of the splendid hall of the Cancelleria, "when he was giving a course on the solar spectrum. The vast auditorium was crowded with a brilliant throng in which you could see cardinals, archbishops, monsignori and laymen, all representing the highest religious, diplomatic and scientific circles. Though an Italian, Secchi spoke in French that was absolutely perfect. Everyone was enthralled, but what captivated me was the gentleness and even deference with which he spoke to the men who were adjusting the screens. He almost seemed to be their servant and I could not help saying to myself, 'Oh! I love you.' I saw him later in the street. It was in the turbulent days of the Italian occupation. He was walking alone; his head slightly bowed. Suddenly the cry was heard: 'Death to the Jesuits!' and an excited mob was seen rushing towards him. He stood still; grasped the stout stick in his hand, glared at them; and they fled. I never saw anything like it. I loved him before. I adored him now." In brief, Secchi was a great man in the eyes of the world, but he was a greater religious. Indeed it is said that when his superiors told him to apply himself to mathematics he burst into tears. He wanted to be a missionary. He was such, while being at the same time one of the most distinguished men in the scientific world.
The Manila Observatory in the Philippines, strictly speaking, began its meteorological service in 1865, though observations had been made many years previously. In 1881 it was officially approved by the Spanish government and in 1901 by that of the United States. The meteorological importance and efficiency of the Manila Observatory overshadows its astronomical, for the reason that it is situated in the eastern typhoon path. Astronomy, however, is by no means neglected. From 1880 up to the present time it has rendered very valuable services to the world. First, the official time was given to the city of Manila and, after the American occupation, it was extended to all the telegraph stations throughout the islands. Secondly, about one hundred ship chronometers are annually compared and rated at the Observatory free of charge.
In 1894 Father José Algué began to complete the astronomical equipment and erected a new building at the cost of $40,000, equipping it with instruments of the latest and best type. Three years later he was given charge of the whole establishment, and is now rendering immense and indispensable service to the shipping interests of the Far East by his weather predictions. His barocyclonometer is carried on every ship in those waters. In 1900 he was sent to Washington by the United States government to supervise the printing of his immense work entitled "El Archipiélago Filipino," and he gave later to the World's Fair at St. Louis one of its remarkable exhibits,--a relief map covering a great expanse on the ground and representing every island, river, bay, cape, peninsula, volcano, village and city of the Archipelago. Previous to his appointment in Manila Father Algué had worked for several years in the Georgetown Observatory.
In the matter of the theological teaching it will suffice to note that the Collegium Germanicum was given back to the Society in 1829 and entrusted to Father Aloysius Landes as rector. The German government for some time forbade German students to attend its classes, but in 1848 there were 251 on the roster. Since it opened its doors to the present day, it has given to the Church 4 cardinals, 4 archbishops, 11 bishops, 3 coadjutor bishops, 1 vicar Apostolic, besides a number of distinguished professors, canons and priests.
A very notable recognition of the Society in the field of education was given by Pius IX, when he confided to it the government of the college known as the Pium Latinum. The distinguished ecclesiastic who suggested it was the Apostolic prothonotary, José Ignacio Eyzaguirre, a Chilian by birth. The college was founded in 1858 to prepare a body of learned priests for the various countries of South America. In 1908 at its golden jubilee it could show a record not only of distinguished priests but of a cardinal, Joachim Arcoverde de Albuquerque Cavalcanti, and of 30 bishops, though it began with only 15 students. The house that first sheltered them was extremely small, but the Pope saw to it that they had a larger establishment. While urging the bishops of Latin America to support it liberally--for having been Apostolic delegate in Chili no one knew better than he the urgent necessity of such a school--he himself was lavish in his gifts of money, books, vestments, etc. In 1867 a part of the old Jesuit novitiate was purchased from the Government, and although in 1870 the Jesuits were expelled from Rome those in the Pio Latino were not disturbed. In 1884 a new site was found near the Vatican and on the banks of the Tiber where there is now a splendid college with a capacity of 400 students. In 1905 Cardinal Vives y Tuto published an Apostolic Constitution which gave the title "Pontifical" to the college and confided the education in perpetuum to the Society. This Constitution had been asked for by the Latin American Bishops during the Council, it was promised by Leo XIII, and finally realized by Pius X. When formally handed over to the Jesuits there were 104 alumni present. The trust was accepted in the name of Father General by Father Caterini, provincial of the Roman province.
XXVIII. LITERATURE
Grammars and Lexicons of every tongue--Dramas--Histories of Literature--Cartography--Sinology--Egyptology--Sanscrit --Catholic Encyclopedia--Catalogues of Jesuit Writers--Acta Sanctorum--Jesuit Relations--Nomenclator--Periodicals-- Philosophy--Dogmatic, Moral and Ascetic Theology--Canon Law --Exegesis.
The literary activity of the Society has always been very great, not only in theological, philosophical and scientific fields, but also in those that are specifically designated as pertaining to the belles lettres. Thus, under the heading "Linguistics," in Sommervogel's "Bibliotheca" we find treatises on philology, the origin of language, grammatical theories, a pentaglottic vocabulary, a lexicon of twenty-four languages, the first language, etc. Then come the Classics. Under "Greek," there are two huge pages with the names of various grammars; besides dictionaries, exercises and collections of old Greek authors. Under "Latin," we find four pages of grammars and lexicons; some of the latter giving the equivalents in Portuguese, Tamul, Chinese, French, Polish, Brazilian, Bohemian, Syrian, Armenian and Japanese. After that we have: "Elegances," "Roots," "Ancient and Modern Latin," "Anthologies," "Pronunciations," "Medullas" etc. Six pages are devoted to grammars and dictionaries of European languages, not only the ordinary ones but also Basque, Bohemian, Celtic, Croat, Illyrian, Wend, Provençal, Russian and Turkish. The Asiatic languages follow next in order: Annamite, Siamese, Arabian, Armenian, Georgian, Chinese, Cochinese, Hebrew, Hindustanee, Japanese, Persian, Sanscrit and Syrian; with two columns of Angolese, Caffre, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Kabyle and Malgache grammars. The Malgache all bear the dates of the late nineteenth century, and there is an Esquimaux Grammar by Father Barnum dated 1901.
The tongues of most of the North and South American Indians are represented; the dictionaries of the South American Indians were all written by the Fathers of the old Society.
The books devoted to the study of eloquence are appalling in their number. They are in all languages and on all sorts of subjects, sacred and profane. There are panegyrics, funeral orations, coronation speeches, eulogies, episcopal consecrations, royal progresses, patriotic discourses, but only occasionally does the eye catch a modern date in the formidable list of sixty-three folio pages.
Latin poetry claims fifty-seven pages for the titles of compositions or studies. Poetry in the modern languages is much more modest and requires only as many columns as the ancients demanded pages. The English list is very brief; the Italian very long; and while the ancient Jesuits seemed to have little fear of breaking forth into verse, the modern worshippers of the Muse, except when they utter their thoughts in Malgache, or Chouana or Tagale or Japanese, are very cautious.
Pious people perhaps may be scandalized to hear that the Jesuits of the old Society wrote a great deal for the theatres; it was not, however, for the theatres of the world, but for the theatres of their colleges. Hence in the chapter entitled "Theatre," after a number of treatises on "The Restriction of Comedies," "Théatre des Grecs," "Liturgical Drama," "Reflections on the Danger of Shows," "The mind of St. Paul, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis de Sales on Plays;" etc., we come face to face with the titles of plays that crowd and blacken by their close print no less than ten huge folio pages. They are contributed by the Jesuits of all countries. Germany especially was very prolific in this kind of literature, claiming as many as four pages of titles; England furnishes only seven dramas in all, three of which are modern. Three of the ancient plays had for their author no less a personage than the Blessed Edmund Campion. They were entitled "The Sacrifice of Isaac," "The Tragedy of King Saul," while Southwell credits him with "Nectar et Ambrosia," which was acted before the emperor. All these were written in 1575, when he was professor of rhetoric in Bohemia.
Belgium has a long list to its credit, and among the dramatists appears the very eminent Ignace Carbonelle, but only as the author of the text of a Cantata for the jubilee of Pius IX in 1877. In France occurs the name of Arsène Cahours, who wrote many tragedies and even a vaudeville, which he called "L'enterrement du Père Simon, le brocanteur." Longhaye's well-known college plays are on the list.
There are many oratorios, but it is feared that the timid will be scandalized to hear that an entire column is required for the names of the authors of ballets. One of the writers is no less a personage than the distinguished historian Jouvancy. The ballets are interludes; there was no impropriety in these dances, however, for no female characters appeared, and the college boys for whom they were written had to do all the dancing themselves.
"Many of these dramas," says Father Schwickerath quoting Janssen, "were exhibited with all possible splendor, as for instance those given at La Flèche in 1614 before Louis XIII and his court. But it seems that nowhere was greater pomp displayed than at Munich where the court liberally contributed to make the performances especially brilliant. In 1574 the tragedy 'Constantine' was played on two successive days, and the whole city was beautifully decorated. More than one thousand actors took part in the play. Constantine entered the city in a triumphal chariot surrounded by four hundred horsemen in glittering armor. At the performance of 'Esther' in 1577, the most splendid costumes and gems were furnished from the treasury of the Duke; and at the banquet of King Assuerus one hundred precious dishes of gold and silver were used."
Those old Jesuits seemed to be carrying out the famous order of La Mancha's Knight when the ordinary stage was too small: "Then build a house or act it on the plain;" or as a recent writer declares "Like Richard Wagner in our days, the Jesuits aimed at and succeeded in uniting all the arts within the compass of the drama. The effect of such plays was like those of the Oberammergau Passion Play, ravishing, overpowering. Even people ignorant of the Latin tongue were captivated by these representations and the concourse of people was usually very great. In 1565 'Judith' was acted before the court in Munich and then repeated in the public square. Even the surrounding walls and roofs of the houses were covered with eager spectators. In 1560 the comedy 'Euripus' was given in the courtyard of the college at Prague before a crowd of more than eight thousand people. It had to be repeated three times and was asked for again and again."
The early German parsons denounced these dramas as devices for propagating idolatry, but on the other hand a very capable critic Karl von Reinhardstottner says: "In the first century of their history the Jesuits did great work in this line. They performed dramas full of power and grandeur, and though their dramatic productions did not equal the fine lyrics of the Jesuit poets Balde and Sarbiewski, still in the dramas of Fabricius, Agricola and others, there is unmistakable poetic spirit and noble seriousness. How could the enormous success of their performances be otherwise explained? And who could doubt for a moment that by their dramas they rendered great service to their century; that they advanced culture, and preserved taste for the theatre and its subsidiary arts? It would be sheer ingratitude to undervalue what they effected by their dramas."
Goethe was present at a play given in 1786 at Ratisbon. It was during the Suppression, but happily the Jesuit traditions had been maintained in the college. He has left his impressions in writing: "This public performance has convinced me anew of the cleverness of the Jesuits. They rejected nothing that could be of any conceivable service to them, and they knew how to wield their weapons with devotion and dexterity. This is not cleverness of the merely abstract order; it is a real fruition of the thing itself; an absorbing interest which springs from the practical uses of life. Just as this great spiritual society had its organ-builders, its sculptors, its gilders so there seem to be some who by nature and inclination take to the drama; and as their churches are distinguished by a pleasing pomp, so these prudent men have seized on the sensibility of the world by a decent theatre." (Italien Reise, Goethe Werke, Cotta's Ed. 1840 XXIII p. 3-4.)
Tiraboschi began his literary work when a young professor in Modena by editing the Latin-Italian dictionary of Monza, but he made so many corrections that it was practically a new work. Subsequently he was appointed librarian at Milan, and by means of the documents he discovered, wrote a "History of the Humiliati," which filled up a gap in the annals of the Church. While librarian in the ducal library at Modena, he began his monumental work on the "Storia della letteratura italiana." This history extends from Etruscan times to 1700, and required eleven years of constant labor to complete it.
Hurter tells us "Michael Cosmas Petrus Denis was a most celebrated bibliographer, whose almost innumerable works must be placed in the category of humanistic literature." He entered the Society in Upper Austria on October 17, 1747, and taught rhetoric for twelve years in the Theresian College for Nobles, where he won some renown by his poetry. At the time of the Suppression of the Society, to which he ever remained grateful and attached, he was given charge of the Garelli Library and devoted himself to the study of literature and bibliography. His public lectures attracted immense throngs from far and near. He was promoted to be royal counsellor by Emperor Leopold and was made custodian of the Imperial Library. By that time he was a European celebrity. De Backer in his "Bibliotheca" mentions ninety-three of his publications. Hurter classifies as the most important the "Denkmale der christlichen Glauben-und Sittenlehre." His poems which he signed "Sined," which was Denis spelled backward, won him the name of Bard of the Danube, and helped considerably to promote the study of German in Austria. He was one of a group of poets whose chief aim was to arouse German patriotism. Ossian was their ideal and inspiration, and Denis translated the Gaelic poet into German (1768-69), and in addition he published two volumes of poems just one year before the Suppression. Naturally these patriotic effusions in verse by a Jesuit attracted considerable attention. Denis died in Vienna on 20 September, 1800.
Father Baumgartner has won a high place in the domain of letters by his large work entitled "History of the Literature of the Entire World." Besides this he has to his credit three volumes on "Goethe," another on "Longfellow;" a fifth on "Vondel," a sixth entitled "Ausflüge in das Land der Seein" and a seventh called "Island und die Faröer."
Of Father Faustino Arévalo, the distinguished hymnographer and patrologist, we have spoken above.
Geographical themes appealed to many writers both of the old and the new Society, and also to those of the intervening period. The subjects relate to every part of the world. There is, for instance, "The German Tyrol" by the Italian Bresciani; "The Longitude of Milan" by Lagrange; "The Geography of the Archipelago" by F. X. Liechtlé. This archipelago was the West Indies. His brother Ignatius executed a similar work on the Grecian Islands. He went to Naxos in 1754, and died there in 1795. "Chota-Nagpur" is described in 1883, "Abyssinia" in 1896, and the "Belgian Congo" in 1897. Veiga writes of the "Orinoco" in 1789, and Armand Jean of the "Polynesians" in 1867. There is no end of maps such as "Turkestan and Dzoungaria," "China and Tatary," "The Land of Chanaan," "Paraguay," "Lake Superior," "The Land between the Napo and the Amazons." The famous maps of Mexico by Father Kino have been reproduced by Hubert Bancroft in his "Native Races."
Joseph de Mayoria de Mailla's great work called "Toung-Kian-Kang-mou," which is an abstract of the Chinese annals, was sent to France in 1737, but was not published until 1785. He was the first European to give the world a knowledge of the classic historical works of the Chinese. His work is of great value for the reason that it provides the most important foundation for a connected history of China. He sent along with it many very valuable maps and charts--the result of his work in making a cartographical survey of the country; the part assigned to him including the provinces of Ho-nan, Kiang-hinan, Tshe-Kiang, Fo-Kien and the Island of Formosa. As a reward for his labor the emperor made him a mandarin, and when he died at the age of seventy-nine very elaborate obsequies were ordered by imperial decree.
Father Joseph Fischer, a professor at Feldskirch, is known in all the learned societies of the world for his "Die Entdeckungen der Normannen in America" and also for his "Cosmographiæ introductio" of Martin Waldseemüller, on whose map the name "America" first appeared. The maps and studies of old Huronia by Father Jones have been published by the Canadian Government.
John Baptist Belot, who died in 1904, won a reputation as an Orientalist, as did his associate Father Cheiko by his "Chrestomathia Arabica," in five volumes, and also by his Arabic Lexicon. Their fellow-worker Father Lammens is now a professor in the Biblical Institute in Rome. As they lived a considerable time in Syria they have a distinct advantage over other Europeans in this particular study.
Andrew Zottoli is an authority as a sinologist. The misfortune of being exiled from Italy in 1848 gave him the advantage, which he would not otherwise have had, of becoming proficient in Chinese, for he lived fifty-four years in Kiang-nan. Besides his Chinese catechism and grammar, he has published a complete course of Chinese literature in five volumes, and a universal dictionary of the Chinese language in twelve.
To this list may be added what a recent critic called the monumental work of the illustrious Father Beccari, known as "Scriptores rerum ægyptiacarum." It consists of sixteen volumes, and includes the entire period of Egyptian history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. In this category, Father Strassmaier represents the Society by his works on Assyriology and cuneiform inscriptions. With him is Father Dahlman whose "Das Mahabharata als Epos und Rechtbuch," "Nirvana," "Buddha," and "Mahabharata Studien" have won universal applause.
Luigi Lanzi, the Italian archæologist, was born at Olmo near Macerata in 1732, and entered the Society in 1749. At its Suppression, the Grand Duke of Tuscany made him the assistant director of the Florentine Museum. He devoted himself to the study of ancient and modern literature, and was made a member of the Arcadians. The deciphering of monuments, chiefly Etruscan, was one of his favorite occupations and resulted in his writing his "Saggio di lingua etrusca" in 1789. Four years later he produced his noted "History of Painting in Italy." His other works included a critical commentary on Hesiod's "Works and Days," with a Latin and an Italian translation in verse; three books of "Inscriptiones et carmina," translations of Catullus, Theocritus and others, besides two ascetic works on St. Joseph and the Sacred Heart respectively. He died in 1810 four years before the Restoration.
Angelo Mai is one of the very attractive figures at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He had studied at the seminary of Bergamo and had as professor, Father Mozzi, a member of the suppressed Society. When the saintly Pignatelli opened the novitiate at Parma in 1799, Mozzi joined him and young Angelo who was then seventeen years old went there as a novice. He was sent to Naples in 1804 to teach humanities, but was obliged to leave when the French occupied the city. He was then summoned to Rome, and ordained a priest. While there, he met two exiled Jesuits from Spain: Monero and Monacho, who besides teaching him Hebrew and Greek, gave him his first instructions in paleography, showing him how to manipulate and decipher palimpsests. In 1813 he was compelled by the order of the duke to return to his native country, and was appointed custodian of the Ambrosian Library at Milan. There he made his first great discoveries of a number of precious manuscripts, which alone sufficed to give him an important place in the learned world. In 1819 at the suggestion of Cardinals Consalvi and Litta, the staunchest friends of the Society, Pius VII appointed him librarian of the Vatican, with the consent of the General.
From all this it is very hard to understand how Mai is generally set down as having left the Society. Albers says so in his "Liber sæcularis," Hurter in his "Nomenclator," as does Sommervogel in his "Bibliotheca," and his name does not appear in Terrien's list of those who died in the Society. In spite of all this, however, the expression "left the Society" seems a somewhat cruel term to apply to one who was evidently without reproach and who was asked for by the Sovereign Pontiff. He was made a cardinal by Gregory XVI, a promotion which his old novice master Father Pignatelli had foretold when Angelo was summoned to be librarian at Milan. He continued his work in the Vatican and gave to the world the unpublished pages of three hundred and fifty ancient authors which he had discovered.
Father Hugo Hurter calls Francesco Zaccaria of the old Society the most industrious worker in the history of literature. This praise might well be applied to himself if it were only for his wonderful "Nomenclator literarius theologiæ catholicæ." It is a catalogue of the names and works of all Catholic theological writers from the year 1564 up to the year 1894. Nor is it merely a list of names for it gives an epitome of the lives of the authors and an appreciation of their work and their relative merit in the special subject to which they devoted themselves; it thus covers the whole domain of scholastic, positive and moral theology, as well as of patrology, ecclesiastical history and the cognate sciences such as epigraphy, archæology and liturgy. It consists of five volumes with two closely printed columns on each page. The last column in the second volume is numbered 1846. After that come fifty-three pages of indexes and a single page of corrigenda in that volume alone. It is worth while noting that there are only six errors in all this bewildering mass of matter; there are, besides, three additions, not to the text, but to the index, from which the names of three writers were accidentally omitted.
So condensed is the letterpress that only a dash separates one subject from another. Nevertheless, thanks to the ingenious indexes, both of persons and subjects, the subject sought for can be found immediately. Finally, between the text and the indexes are two marvellous chronological charts. By means of the first, the student can follow year by year the growth of the various branches of theology and know the names of all the authors in each. The second chart takes the different countries of Europe--Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Germany, England, Poland and Hungary--and as you travel down the years in the succeeding centuries you can see what studies were most in favor in different parts of the world and the different stages of their history. Not only that, but a style of type, varying from a large black print, down to a very pale and small impression, gives you the relative prominence of every one of the vast multitude of authors. Such a work will last to the end of time and never lose its value, and how Father Hurter, who was the beloved spiritual father of the University of Innsbruck, whose theological faculty he entered in 1858, and who, besides publishing his unusually attractive theology and editing fifty-eight volumes of the Fathers of the Church, could find time and strength to produce his encyclopedic "Nomenclator" is almost inconceivable.
In the year 1907, the scheme of a Catholic Encyclopedia was launched in New York. The editors chosen were Dr. Charles Herbermann, for more than fifty years professor of Latin and the most distinguished member of the College of the City of New York; Mgr. Thomas Shahan, the rector of the Catholic University at Washington, and later raised to the episcopal dignity; Dr. Edward A. Pace, professor of philosophy in the same university; Dr. Condé Benoist Pallen, a well-known Catholic publicist, and Father John J. Wynne of the Society of Jesus.
The scope of the work is unlike that of other Catholic encyclopedias. It is not exclusively ecclesiastical, for it records all that Catholics have done not only in behalf of charity or morals, but also in the intellectual, and artistic development of mankind. Hence, while covering the whole domain of dogmatic and moral theology, ecclesiastical history and liturgy, it has succeeded in giving its readers information on art, architecture, archæology, literature, history, travel, language, ethnology, etc., such as cannot be found in any other encyclopedia in the English language. Only the most eminent writers have been asked to contribute to it, and hence its articles can be cited as the most recent exposition of the matters discussed. It appeared with amazing rapidity, the whole series of sixteen volumes being completed in nine years. To it is added an extra volume entitled "The Catholic Encyclopedia and its Makers," which consists of photographs and biographical sketches of all the contributors.
The encyclopedia has proved to be an immense boon to the Church in America. The chief credit of the publication is generally accorded to Father John Wynne, who is a native of New York. It was he who conceived it, secured the board of editors, and, as his distinguished associate, Bishop Shahan, declared with almost affectionate eagerness at a public session of the faculty and students of the ecclesiastical seminary of New York: "it was he who encouraged and sustained the editors by his buoyant optimism in the perilous stages of its elaboration." This information may be helpful abroad to show that the Society in America is doing something for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The apostolic character of the work is further enhanced by the fact that funds are being established in various dioceses to enable each seminarian to become the personal owner of the entire set from the very first moment he begins his studies. The effect of such an arrangement on the ecclesiastical mind of the century is inestimable. It is also being placed by the Knights of Columbus and by rich Catholics in battleships and the United States' military posts, as well as in civic libraries and club houses.
The first catalogue of Jesuit writers was drawn up by Father Ribadeneira in 1602-1608. Schott and Alegambe continued the work in 1643, and Nathaniel Bacon or Southwell, or Sotwel, as he was called on the Continent, published a third in 1676. Nothing more, however, was done in that line by the old Society, and it was not until the twenty-first congregation, at which Father Roothaan presided, that a postulatum was presented asking for the resumption of this valuable work. Something prevented this from being done for the time being, and it was not until 1853 that the work was undertaken by the two Belgians, Augustine and Aloys de Backer.
Up to 1861 a series of seven issues appeared, but as by that time the number of names had increased to ten thousand, a new arrangement had to be made, and in 1869 the work appeared in three large folios. In 1885, on the death of Augustine de Backer, Charles Sommervogel took up the work. Providentially he was well equipped for the task, for although he had been continually employed at other tasks, sometimes merely as a surveillant in a French college, he had contrived to publish in 1884 a "Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymeset pseudonymes des religieux de la Compagnie de Jésus." He began by recasting all that his predecessors had done, and it was only after four years that he had published the first volume. Others, however, followed in quick succession, and in 1900 the ninth volume appeared. The tenth volume, an index, was unfinished at the time of his death, but has since been completed by Father Bliard. Besides his articles in the "Etudes," he had also put into press a "Table méthodique des Mémoires de Trévoux," in three volumes, a "Bibliotheca Mariana S. J." and a "Moniteur bibliographique de la Compagnie de Jésus." He had intended to publish a revised edition of Carayon's, "Bibliographie historique," but was prevented by death.
As far back as 1658, Pope Alexander VIII did not hesitate to declare that "no literary work had ever been undertaken that was more useful or more glorious" than the "Acta Sanctorum" of Father Bollandus and his associates, nor did the learned Protestants of those days refrain from extolling the scientific spirit in which the work was being conducted. The "Acta," which began in the middle of the seventeenth century and which is still going on, reads like a romance. The account of it by De Smedt tells us how the first writers had only a garret for a library, and were forced to pile their books on the floor; how Cardinal Bellarmine denounced the work as chimerical; how the Carmelites were in a rage because Papebroch denied that Elias was the founder of their order; how the Spanish Inquisition denounced the work and condemned the thirty volumes as heretical, and how finally it reached its present status.
The Bollandists did not immediately feel the blow that struck the rest of the Society of Jesus in 1773. Indeed, the commissioners announced that the government was satisfied with the labors of the Bollandists and was disposed to exercise special consideration in their behalf. In 1778 they removed to the Abbey of Caudenberg in Brussels, and the writers received a small pension. In 1788 three new volumes were published. Meantime Joseph II had succeeded Maria Theresa, and the sky began to darken. On October 16, 1788, the government decided to stop the pension of the writers, and their books and manuscripts which the official inspectors denounced as "trash" were ordered to be sold. After a year, the Fathers made an offer to the Premonstratensian Abbot of Tongerloo to buy the books and manuscripts for what would be equivalent now to about $4,353; the money, however, was to be paid to the Austrian government and not to the owners of the library. Happily the writers found shelter in the monastery with their books and, though the Brabantine Revolution disturbed them for a time, they continued at their work unmolested until 1794, when they issued another volume.
It was fortunate that they had succeeded in putting that volume into print, for that very year the French invaded Belgium and both Premonstratensians and Bollandists were obliged to disperse. Some of the treasures of the library were hidden in the houses of the peasants, and others were hastily piled into wagons and carried to Westphalia, with the only result that could be anticipated--the loss of an immense amount of most valuable material; a certain number of the books were returned to the abbey, and left there in the dust until 1825. As there was no hope, at that time, of the Bollandists ever being able to resume their work, the monks disposed of most of the library treasure at public auction, and, what was not sold, was given to the Holland government and incorporated in the library of the Hague. The manuscripts were transported to Brussels and deposited in the Burgundian Library. They are still there.
In 1836 a hagiographical society in France under the patronage of Guizot and several bishops proposed to take up the work of the Bollandists and an envoy was sent to purchase the documents from the Belgian government. The proposition evoked a patriotic storm in the little country, and a petition was made to the minister of the interior, de Theux, imploring him to lose no time in securing for his native land the honor of completing the work, and to entrust the task to the Jesuit Fathers, who had begun it and carried it on for two centuries. The result was that on January 29, 1837, the provincial of Belgium appointed four Fathers who were to live at St. Michel in Brussels. The government gave them an annual subsidy of six thousand francs, but this was withdrawn in 1868 by the Liberals and never restored, though the Catholics have been in control since 1884.
There are more than one hundred volumes to the credit of the writers up to the present time, sixty-five of which are huge folios. What they contain may be learned from the most competent of all authorities, Charles de Smedt, the Bollandist director, who wrote the most complete and scientific account of the Bollandist collection for the Catholic Encyclopedia. It is sufficient to state that in the opinion of the most distinguished and capable scholars in the field, the work of the later Bollandists is in no wise inferior to the work of their illustrious predecessors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In reviewing a recent publication of a Bollandist work, the scholarly "American Historical Review" (July, 1920) has this to say: "It is to be hoped that a more widely diffused knowledge of what the Bollandists have been doing for human learning, historical and literary, may bring American aid to fill the gaps in their resources caused by the devastations of war. It is a pleasure to know that the Princeton University Press intends to issue an English translation of Father Delehaye's admirable book, which gives an account of the labors of the Bollandists from 1638 down to the present day."
It has been said that the Jesuits had a way of keeping their most brilliant members before the public eye while sending their inferior men to the missions to be eaten by the savages. That this is not an accepted opinion in America is evidenced by the publication of what are called the "Jesuit Relations," in seventy-two volumes, by a firm in Cleveland, Ohio, whose members had no affiliation with Catholics or Jesuits, and whose venture involved immense financial risks. "The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents" is the title of the work. The subsidiary title is "Travels and Explorations of Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791. The Original French, Latin and Italian Texts, with English Translations and Notes, illustrated by Portraits, Maps and Facsimiles."
The editor is Reuben Gold Thwaites, Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. In his preface he says: "American historians from Shea and Parkman down have already made liberal use of the 'Relations,' and here and there antiquarians and historical societies have published fragmentary translations. The great body of the 'Relations' and their allied documents however have never been Englished; hence these interesting papers have never been accessible to the majority of historical students. The present edition offers to the public for the first time an English rendering side by side with the original.
"The authors of the journals which form the basis of the 'Relations' were for the most part men of trained intellect, acute observers, and practiced in the art of keeping records of their experiences. They had left the most highly civilized country of their times to plunge at once into the heart of the wilderness and attempt to win to the Christian Faith the fiercest savages known to history. To gain these savages it was first necessary to know them intimately, their speech, their habits, their manner of thought, their strong points and their weak. These first students of American Indian history were not only amply fitted for their task but none have since had better opportunity for its prosecution. They performed a great service to mankind in publishing their annals, which are for historian, geographer and ethnologist our best authorities.
"Many of the 'Relations' were written in Indian camps amid a chaos of distractions. Insects innumerable tormented the journalists; they were immersed in scenes of squalor and degradation, overcome by fatigue and lack of proper sustenance, often suffering from wounds and disease, maltreated in a hundred ways by hosts, who at times, might more properly be called jailers; and not seldom had savage superstition risen to such heights that to be seen making a memorandum was certain to arouse the ferocious enmity of the band. It is not surprising that the composition of these journals is sometimes crude; the wonder is that they could be written at all. Nearly always the style is simple and earnest. Never does the narrator descend to self-glorification or dwell unnecessarily upon the details of his continual martyrdom. He never complains of his lot, but sets forth his experiences in matter of fact phrases.
"From these writings we gain a vivid picture of life in the primeval forests. Not only do these devoted missionaries--never in any field has been witnessed greater personal heroism than theirs--live and breathe before us in these 'Relations,' but we have in them our first competent account of the Red Indian when relatively uncontaminated by contact with Europeans. Few periods of history are so well illuminated as the French régime in North America. This we owe in a large measure to the existence of the Jesuit Relations."
"The existence of these Relations," to use Mr. Thwaites' expression, is due to the scholarly modern Jesuit, Father Félix Martin, the founder and first rector of St. Mary's College at Montreal, who in 1858 induced the Quebec government to reprint the old Cramoisy editions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was Martin who developed in Gilmary Shea, then a Jesuit scholastic in Montreal, the historical instinct; and gave to Parkman much if not all of the information that made that author famous, in spite of the bigotry or lack of comprehension that sometimes reveals itself in his pages. Martin's first publication consisted of three double columned, closely printed and bulky octavos in French. He never dreamed that the interest in the book would grow until the splendid edition of Thwaites in seventy-two volumes would signify to the scientific world the value of these documents "written in canoes or in the depths of the forests," as Thwaites says, "a decade before the landing of the Plymouth Pilgrims."
While these "Relations" about the Canada missions were being published Father Le Gobien began to issue his "Lettres sur les progrès de la religion de la Chine," which ultimately developed into the well-known "Lettres édifiantes et curieuses" describing missionary enterprises all over the world. During the Suppression they were issued in twenty-six duo-decimo volumes. An Austrian Jesuit began in 1720 to translate some of these letters, entitling his work "Neue Welt Bott." It soon became independent of the "Letters" and appeared in five volumes folio. It is still being published.
A certain number of periodicals are published by the Society, the most important of which are the "Civiltà Cattolica," the "Etudes," the "Stimmen aus Maria-Laach" and the "Razón y Fe."
The "Civiltà" was begun in 1850 by express order of Pius IX. Its first editors were Fathers Curci, Bresciani, Liberatore, Taparelli, Oreglia, Piccirillo, and Pianciani, a staff which would insure the success of any publication. Its articles are of the most serious kind, dealing with questions of theology, philosophy, sociology and literature. Its first issue of 4,200 copies appeared at Naples; later it was published at Rome. In 1870 the staff was transferred to Naples, but returned in 1887 to Rome. It is published every fortnight, and at present has a circulation of over 12,000 copies. It is under the direct control of the Pope, and unlike other Society publications of the same kind it is not connected with any house or college. It has received the highest commendations from Pius IX and from Leo XIII.
In 1856 the "Etudes" was begun by the Jesuits in France under the editorship of Daniel Gagarin and Godfroy. In character it closely resembles the "Civiltà." The troubles of 1876 caused its suspension for almost a year, but the various dispersions of the French provinces have not affected it, except perhaps in the extent of its circulation. It is published at Paris, but was at one time issued from Lyons. From a monthly it has developed into a fortnightly review in latter years.
The German Fathers have their monthly "Stimmen aus Maria-Laach," the first number of which appeared in 1865. The defense of the Syllabus called it into being. When the Kulturkampf drove the editors from Maria-Laach, they migrated to Tervuren in Belgium. There they remained until 1880, when they went to Blijenbeck in Holland. In 1910 we find them at Valkenburg, Holland, attached to the Scholasticate. The ability of the staff has placed the "Stimmen" on a very high plane as a periodical.
The monthly "Razón y Fe" was begun by the Spanish Fathers in 1901, and "Studies" by the Irish Jesuits in 1912. This latter, however, admits contributors who are not of the Society. The same may be said of the "Month" (London), the weekly "America" (New York), the "Irish Monthly" (Dublin) and a number of minor periodicals. There are also publications for private circulation, such as the "Woodstock Letters," the "Letters and Notices"; "Lettres Edifiantes" of various provinces of the Society, most of which are printed in the scholasticates, and convey information about the different works of the Society in different parts of the world. They are largely of the character of the ancient "Relations des Jésuites" of the old French Fathers and are of great value as historical material. Finally the American "Messenger of the Sacred Heart" publishes a monthly edition of 350,000, besides millions of leaflets to promote the devotion. There are fifty-one editions of the "Messenger" published in thirty-five different languages.
The reason why the Society has not succeeded in producing since the Restoration any theologians like Suárez, Toletus and others, is the same that prevented Napoleon Bonaparte from winning back his empire when he was a prisoner on St. Helena. Conditions have changed. Suárez, de Lugo, Ripalda and their brilliant associates passed their lives in Catholic Spain which gloried in universities like Salamanca, Valladolid or Alcalá. There those great men wrote and taught; Bellarmine and Toletus labored in Rome and Lessius in Louvain; whereas the Jesuit theologians in our day have been not only debarred from the great universities but robbed of their libraries, sent adrift in the world and compelled to seek not for learned leisure but for a roof to shelter them. They were expelled from France in 1762, and were never allowed to open a school even for small boys until 1850. At present they are permitted to shed their blood on the battle field for their country from which they have been driven into exile. They were banished from Italy repeatedly, and have never secured a foothold in Germany since 1872; they do not exist in Portugal and any moment may see them expelled from Spain. In England and Ireland Catholics were not emancipated until 1829, and it is only grudgingly that the government allows Ireland to have a university which Catholics can safely frequent, and even there no chair of Catholic theology may be maintained with the ordinary revenues. In America everything is in a formative state and what money is available has to be used for elementary instruction, both religious and secular, of the millions whom poverty and persecution have driven out of Europe. It is very doubtful if Suárez and his great associates would have written their splendid works in such surroundings.
As the eye travels over Hurter's carefully prepared chronological chart, it catches only an occasional gleam of the old glory, when the names of the Wiceburgenses, Zaccaria, Mai, Muzzarelli, Arévalo and Morcelli make their appearance in the late sixties of the nineteenth century. But those were the days of the French Revolution and of its subsequent upheavals. The Church itself was in the same straits between 1773 and 1860, and its number of great theologians of any kind is extremely small. Thus, abstracting from the Jesuits, we find in 1773 only Flórez, the Augustinian, who wrote ecclesiastical history; in 1782 the erudite Maronite Assemani, who is classed as a moralist; in 1787 St. Alphonsus Liguori; and in 1793 the Benedictine Gerbert, who is also a moralist. The Barnabite Gerdil appears under date of 1802 as an apologist, and from that year up to 1864 there is no one to whom Hurter accords distinction in any branch of divinity. Perhaps the reason is that the century was in the full triumph of its material civilization and that men derided and despised the dogmatic teachings of religion.
A study of Hurter's "Nomenclator" is instructive. In 1774, the year after the Suppression, there are only four publications by Jesuit authors; in 1775 there are nine; and then the number begins to grow smaller. In 1780 the figure rises to ten, and it is somewhat remarkable that in 1789 and 1790, the first years of the French Revolution, seventeen writers appear. The stream then dribbles along until 1814, the year of the Restoration, when we find only one book with the letters S. J. after the name of its author. The next year there is none.
The Jesuit who illumines the darkness of that period is Thaddeus Nogarola, whom Hurter describes as "a member of the most noble family of Verona." He was born on 24 December, 1729. Consequently he was eighty-five years of age at the time of the Restoration. He wrote on sanctifying grace; and in 1800 he and another Jesuit had a fierce theological battle on the subject of attrition, in which he defended his position with excessive vehemence. In 1806 he had issued his great treatise against Gallicanism. His doughty antagonist re-entered the Society in 1816. He had expressed himself very vigorously on the subject of the Napoleonic oath in France and his books were prohibited in the Cisalpine Republic.
In 1816 four books were published; but the number continues small and 1823 is credited with none. In 1824, there were two publications, one of them by Arévalo, the eminent patrologist, who composed the hymns and lessons of the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians. It is a very sad list from 1826 to 1862, with its succession of ones and zeros. Only three names of any note appear: Kohlmann in 1836, Loriquet in 1845, and de Ravignan in 1858. That period of almost forty years had seen the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and there was no stability for any Jesuit establishment. Finally, however, in 1862 came Pianciani, Taparelli and Bresciani; and in 1865 and 1866 Tongiorgi and Gury, respectively. It was only then that the Society was able to begin its theological work after its redintegration. The space is not great between 1862 and the present time, but since then there have been Perrone and the great Bollandist and theologian, Victor de Buck, who appeared in 1876; Edmund O'Reilly in 1878; Ballerini and Patrizi in 1881; Kleutgen in 1883; and in 1886 Cardinals Franzelin and Mazzella.
During that period there was no end of confiscations and expulsions, even of those who were not engaged in educational work. Thus the German Jesuits acquired the old Benedictine Monastery of Maria-Laach in 1863 on the southwest bank of a fine lake near Andernach in the Rhineland. There they organized a course of studies for the scholastics as well as a college of writers. Among them were the learned Schneeman, Riess and others who began the great work of the church Councils and the "Philosophia Lacensis," besides publishing the Jesuit "Stimmen." How long were they there? Only ten years. The Kulturkampf banished them from their native land and they had to continue their labors in exile. This has been the story of the Society in almost every European country and in the Spanish Republics of South America and Mexico. In spite of all this, however, Hurter's chart shows that from 1773 to 1894 there have been no less than four hundred Jesuit theologians who published works in defense of the doctrines of the Church, and some of them have achieved prominence.
In philosophy, for instance, there was Taparelli who died in 1863. He was the first rector of the Roman College, when it was given back to the Society by Leo XII. He taught philosophy for fifteen years at Palermo, and in 1840 issued his great work which he called "A Theoretical Essay on Natural Rights from an historical standpoint." It reached the seventh edition in 1883 and was translated into French and German. Next in importance is his "Esame critico degli ordini rappresentativi nella società moderna." Besides his striking monographs on "Nationality," "Sovereignty of the People," "The Grounds of War," he wrote a great number of articles in the "Civiltà" on matters of political economy and social rights. His first great work was in a way the beginning of modern sociology. Palmieri issued his "Institutiones Philosophiæ" in 1874, and at the very outset won the reputation of a great thinker, even from those who were at variance with his conclusions and mode of thought.
In the same branch Liberatore was for a long time preëminent, and his "Institutiones" and "Composito humano" went through eleven editions. Cornoldi's "Filosofia scolastica specolativa" was also a notable production. Lehmen's "Lehrbuch" reached the third edition before his death in 1910. Boedder is well-known to English speaking people because of his many works written during his professorship at St. Beuno's in Wales. Cathrein's "Socialism" has been translated into nine different languages, and his "Moral Philosophy" has enjoyed great popularity. Pesch's position is established; his last work, "Christliche Lebens-philosophie," reached its fourth edition within four years. Kleutgen who is perhaps the best known of these German Jesuits, was called by Leo XIII "the prince of philosophers" and is regarded as the restorer of Catholic philosophy throughout Germany. In Spain, Father Cuevas has written a "Cursus completus philosophiæ" and a "History of Philosophy." Mendive's "Text-book of Philosophy" in Spanish is used in several universities, but the writer who dominated all the rest in that country is admittedly Urráburu, who died prematurely in 1904. His "Cursus philosophiæ scholasticæ," brings up the memory of the famous old philosophers of earlier ages.
It is not only edifying but inspiring to hear that the Venerable Father de Clorivière occupied himself while in prison in the Temple at Paris during the Revolution in writing commentaries on the Sacred Scriptures. He was over seventy years of age and was expecting to be summoned to the guillotine at any moment, but he had plenty of time to write, for his imprisonment lasted five years. Sommervogel credits him with commentaries on "The Canticle of Canticles," "The Epistles of St. Peter," "The Discourse at the Last Supper," "The Animals of Ezechiel," "The Two Seraphim of Isaias," besides Constitutions for the religious orders he had founded, lives of the saints, novenas, and religious poems. He also translated "Paradise Lost" into French. Evidently the commentary written in a prison cell cannot have measured up to the scientific exegesis of the present day, but perhaps for that reason it reached the soul more readily. In any case, the Scriptural students of the modern Society made an excellent start with a saint and a virtual martyr.
Francis Xavier Patrizi distinguished himself as an exegete. He was one of the first to enter the Society after the Restoration, and was so esteemed for his virtue and ability that he came very near being elected General of the Society. His first publication on "The Interpretation of the Holy Scriptures" appeared in 1844. He translated the Psalms word for word from the Hebrew. His works are packed with erudition, of scrupulous accuracy in their citations, and of most sedulous care in defending the Sacred Text against the Protestants of the early days of the nineteenth century. The "Cursus Scripturæ" of the Fathers of Maria-Laach: Cornely, Knabenbauer, Hummelauer, and others, is a monument of erudition and labor and is without doubt the most splendid triumph of exegesis in the present century.
In 1901, the Sovereign Pontiff appointed and approved a Biblical Commission for the proper interpretation and defense of Holy Scripture. It consists of five cardinals and forty-three consultors. Among the distinguished men chosen for this work we find Fathers Cornely, Delattre, Gismondi, von Hummelauer, Méchineau, and Prat. One of the duties with which the commission was charged was the establishment of a special institute for the prosecution of higher Biblical Studies. In 1910 Father Fonck, its first rector, began the series of public conferences which was one of the assigned works of the Institute. It publishes the "Biblical Annals." The French Fathers in Syria are very valuable adjuncts to this institute, because of their knowledge of Oriental languages. One of them, Father Lammens, was for years the editor of "Bachir," an Arabic periodical.
When Father John Carroll went to England to be consecrated Bishop of Baltimore, he probably met at Lulworth Castle, where the ceremony took place, a French Jesuit of the old Society who had found shelter with the Weld family during the Revolution and was acting as their chaplain. He was Father Grou, a man of saintly life. It was while he was in England that he wrote "La Science de crucifix" the "Caractère de la vraie dévotion," "Maximes spirituelles," "Méditation sur l'amour de Dieu," "L'intérieur de Jésus et de Marie," "Manuel des âmes intérieures," "Le livre du jeune homme." These works were frequently reprinted and translated.
It is very interesting to find that, before the expulsion from France, Father Grou had been an ardent student of Plato and had even published eight books about the great philosopher. He also wrote an answer to La Chalotais' attack on the Society. Sommervogel mentions another book written by him in conjunction with Father du Rocher. It is entitled "Temps Fabuleux," an historical and dogmatic treatise on the true religion.
Among the other noted ascetical writers were Vigitello, author of "La Sapienza del cristiano," Mislei, who wrote "Grandezze di Gesù Cristo" and "Gesù Cristo e il Cristiano," Hillegeer, Dufau, Verbeke, Vercruysse, de Doss, Petit, Meschler, Schneider and Chaignon, whose "Nouveau cours de méditations sacerdotales" has gone through numberless editions; Watrigant has made extensive studies on the "Exercises;" Ramière's "Apostolat de la Prière" made the circuit of the world and gave the first impulse to the League of the Sacred Heart. Coleridge's "Life of Our Lord," consisting of thirty volumes, is a mine of thought and especially valuable for directors of religious communities.
In 1874 Father Camillo Tarquini was raised to the cardinalate for his ability as a canonist. His dissertation on the Regium placet exequatur made him an international celebrity. With him high in the ranks of canonists are Father General Wernz, Laurentius, Hilgers, Beringer, Oswald, Sanguinetti, Ojetti, Vermeersch, and the present Assistant General Father Fine.
Stephen Anthony Morcelli, who is eminent as a historian and is regarded as the founder of epigraphy, was born in Trent, in the year 1737. He made his studies in the Roman College, and there founded an academy of archæology. At the Suppression he became the librarian of Cardinal Albani. He re-entered the restored Society. He was then eighty-four years of age. He had no superior as a Latin stylist. His "Calendar of the Church of Constantinople," covering a thousand years, his "Readings of the Four Gospels" according to various codices, and his notes on "Africa Christiana" are of great value.
Possibly the Portuguese Francis Macedo might be admitted to this list of famous authors. It is true that he left the Society but as he had been a member for twenty-eight years it deserves some credit for the cultivation of his remarkable abilities. Maynard calls him the prodigy of his age. Thus at Venice in 1667 Macedo held a public disputation on nearly every branch of human knowledge, especially the Bible, theology, patrology, history, literature and poetry. In his quaint and extravagant style he called this display the literary roarings of the Lion of St. Mark. It had been prepared in eight days. On account of his success, Venice gave him the freedom of the city and the professorship of moral philosophy at the University of Padua. In his "Myrothecium morale" he tells us that he has pronounced three hundred and fifty panegyrics, sixty Latin harangues, thirty-two funeral orations, and had composed one hundred and twenty-three elegies, one hundred and fifteen epitaphs, two hundred and twelve dedicatory epistles, two thousand and six hundred heroic poems, one hundred and ten odes, four Latin comedies, two tragedies and satires in Spanish, besides a number of treatises on theology such as "The Doctrines of St. Thomas and Scotus," "Positive theology for the refutation of heretics," "The Keys of Peter," "The Pontifical Authority," "Medulla of Ecclesiastical History," and the "Refutation of Jansenism." The Society made him great but failed to teach him humility.
In most theological libraries which are even moderately equipped one sees long lines of books on which the name of Muzzarelli appears. They are of different kinds; ascetical, devotional, educational, philosophical and theological, and many of them have been translated into various languages. He belonged to the old Society, entering it only four years before the suppression. He was then twenty-four years of age. As he was of a noble family of Ferrara, he held a benefice in his native city at the time of his banishment, and a little later, the Duke of Parma made him rector of the College of Nobles. Pius VII called him to Rome and made him theologian of the Penitentiaria, which meant that he was the Pope's theologian. When the Society was re-established in Naples, he asked permission to join his brethren there, but the Pope refused. It was just as well, for Napoleon's troops soon closed the establishment. When Pius VII was carried off a prisoner in 1809, Muzzarelli was also deported. He never returned to Rome, but died in Paris one year before the Restoration of the Society. He was not however forgotten in his native city, which regarded him as one of its glories. Among his works were several of an ascetic character such as "The Sacred Heart," "The Month of Mary," and also a "Life of St. Francis Hieronymo."
There were also a few modern Jesuits who were conspicuous in moral theology. First, in point of time was Jean-Pierre Gury, who was born in Mailleroncourt on January 23, 1801. He taught theology for thirty-five years at Annecy and at the Roman College. He died on April 18, 1866. His work was adopted as a text-book in a number of seminaries, because of its brevity, honesty and solidity. It is true that his brevity impaired his accuracy at times, as well as the scientific presentation of questions, but his successors such as Seitz, Cercia, Melandri and Ballerini filled up the gaps by the help of the decisions of the Congregations and the more recent pronouncements of the Holy See. Besides his "Moral Theology" he also published his "Casus conscientiæ." That made him the typical "Jesuit Casuist," and drew on him all the traditional hatred of Protestant polemicists, especially in Germany. His work did much to extirpate what was left of Jansenism in Europe.
Antonio Ballerini held the chair of moral theology in the Roman College from 1856 until his death in 1881. In the cautious words of Hurter he was "almost the prince of moralists of our times." Besides his "Principi della scuola Rosminiana" he wrote his remarkable "Sylloge monumentorum ad mysterium Immaculatæ Conceptionis illustrandum," and in 1863 issued his "De morali systemate S. Alphonsi M. de Ligorio." In 1866 appeared his "Compendium theologiæ moralis." The style was somewhat acrid, and sharp, especially in the controversy it provoked with the out-and-out defenders of St. Alphonsus. His annotations were a mine of erudition and revealed at the same time a very unusual intellectual sagacity and correctness of judgment. His book, on the whole, exercised a great influence in promoting solid theological study; and its denunciation of the frivolous reasons on which many opinions were based and the unreliableness of many quotations decided the tone of subsequent works by other authors. Following Ballerini were other Jesuits such as Lehmkuhl, Sabbetti, Noldin, Genicot and Palmieri, who won fame as moralists.
Palmieri was not only a theologian, a moralist and a philosopher, but an exegete. He taught Scripture and the Oriental languages in Maastricht for seven years, and in 1886, published a Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians and another on the historicity of the Book of Judith. He was among the first to sound the alarm about Loisy's heterodoxy and he wrote several books against the Modernistic errors. His reputation rests chiefly on his dogmatic theology; every two years, from 1902, he issued treatises that immediately attracted attention for their brilliant originality and exhaustive learning. He died in Rome on May 29, 1909. "This superlatively sagacious man," says Hurter, "blended Gury and the super-abundant commentaries of Ballerini into one continuous text, injecting, of course, his own personal views into his seven great volumes, with the result that it is a positive pleasure to read him." The wonderful theological acumen manifested in this, as in his other works apparently restored him to favor with Leo XIII, who disliked some of his philosophical speculations. Hence, when Father Steinhüber was made cardinal, Palmieri was appointed to succeed him as theologian of the Penitentiaria.
Besides all this, Palmieri gave a delightful revelation of his affectionate character as a devoted son, when he wrote, at the request of his mother, a Commentary of Dante. Ojetti says that "he brought all the profundity of his philosophy and theology to his task and produced a work which astonished those who were able to appreciate the depth of the thought and the scientific erudition employed in the exposition of each individual canto."
The great Perrone was born in Chieri in 1794 and entered the Society on December 14, 1815, one of the first novices after the Re-establishment. He began his career as professor of dogma at Orvieto, and from thence was transferred to Rome, where he remained until the outbreak of the Revolution in 1848. After a three years' stay in England he resumed his place at the Roman College. He was consultor of various congregations, was conspicuous as the antagonist of Hermes, and also in the discussion that ended in the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception. His "Prælectiones theologiæ" in nine volumes reached its thirty-fourth edition, while its "Compendium" saw fifty-seven.
Carlo Passaglia is another great theological luminary. He entered the Society in 1827, and when scarcely thirty years old was teaching at the Sapienza and was prefect of studies at the Collegium Germanicum. The Gregorian University then claimed him, and, in 1850, he took a leading part in preparing the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception on which he wrote three large volumes. Other great works are to his credit, but his historico-linguistic method met with criticism. It was said he substituted grammar for dogma. Passaglia left the Society, however, in 1859. Pius IX gave him a chair in the Sapienza; there he came in contact with an agent of Cavour and under his influence wrote his book "Pro causa italica". It was placed on the "Index," and Passaglia fled to Turin, where he taught moral philosophy until his death and edited a weekly called "Il Medicatore," which welcomed articles from discontented priests. He also published a daily paper called "La Pace," as well as "Il Gerdil," a theological review. He was suspended from his priestly functions, dressed as a layman, and was temerarious enough to criticise the Syllabus. The Bishop of Mondovi tried to reconcile him with the Church, but he did not retract until a few months before his death. Hurter calls him "an illustrious professor of dogma who was carried away by politics, left the Society, assailed the Temporal Power, and by his sad defection cast a stain on his former glory. His quotations from the Fathers are too diffuse, and although his work on the Immaculate Conception displays immense erudition it crushes the reader by its bulk."
Carlo Maria Curci also brought grief to his associates in those days. He had acquired great fame for his defense of the rights of the Pope against the Liberal politicians of the Peninsula, but unfortunately, soon after, became a Liberal himself and left the Society. He returned again, however, shortly before his death which occurred on June 19, 1891. He was one of the first contributors to the "Civiltà" and was, besides, a remarkable orator. His "Nature and Grace," "Christian Marriage," "Lessons from the two books of the Machabees and the Four Gospels," and "Joseph in Egypt" were the most notable of his writings.
Josef Wilhelm Karl Kleutgen was a Westphalian. He entered the Society on April 28, 1834, at Brieg; to avoid difficulties with the German Government he became a naturalized Swiss, and for some time went by the name of Peters. In 1843 he was professor of sacred eloquence in the Collegium Germanicum, and subsequently was named substitute to the Secretary of Father General, consultor of the Congregation of the Index, and collaborator in the preparation of the Constitution "De fide catholica" of the Vatican Council. He wrote the first draft of Pope Leo's Encyclical "Æterni Patris" on the revival of Scholastic theology and philosophy. His knowledge of the writings of the Angelic Doctor was so great that he was called Thomas redivivus. His first work "Theologie der Vorzeit" and his "Philosophie der Vorzeit" against Hermes, Hirscher, and Günther were declared to be epoch-making. The writing of these books coincided with a remarkable event in his life, namely suspension from his priestly office for his imprudence in allowing a community of nuns under his direction to honor as a saint one of their deceased members. He went into seclusion consequently but at the opening of the Vatican Council he was recalled by Pius IX to take part in it. All his works excel in solidity of doctrine, accuracy and brilliancy of exposition and nobility of style.
Johann Franzelin was a Tyrolese. He entered the Society on 27 July, 1834, but passed most of his life outside of his country. He studied theology in Rome, and became such an adept in Greek and Hebrew that he occupied the chair when the professor was ill. He had to leave the city in the troublous times of 1848, but on his return he gave public lectures in the Roman College on Oriental languages. In 1857 he began his career as professor of dogma and his immense erudition caused him to be called for in many of the Roman congregations. In 1876 Pius IX created him cardinal. His theological works are known throughout the Church for their solidity, erudition and scrupulous accuracy. His dignity made no change in his simple and laborious life. He continued until the end of his days to wear poor garments, occupied two small rooms in the Novitiate of Sant' Andrea, rose at four every morning and spent the time until seven in devotional exercises. He kept up his penitential practises till death came on 11 December, 1886.