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 theland 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 wargave 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 inthe 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, orGrand 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 tradeschools; 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 itsdominions. 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 inthe 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 theDelta 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 FatherDelplace, 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 hadessayed 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 wasmaster 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 werein 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 instructionsrespectively 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, priestsfrom 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 earlyas 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 infifteen 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 samedivided 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 theformer 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 requestof 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 aprobatica 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, andsexual 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. Precedingand 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 thesechildren 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 bishopin partibus, for the purpose of advancing the enterprise. But the "eminent personage" was not to be found either there orin 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 werefilthy, 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 azaouifor 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 communityof 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 conditionof 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 thempermission 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 toremain 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 lateststatistics 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 betweenUpper 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 layalong 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 hopeof 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 wasthe 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.
Responsibility of the Society for loss of Faith in Europe — The Loi Falloux — Bombay — Calcutta — Beirut — American Colleges — Scientists, Archæologists, Meteorologists, Seismologists, Astronomers — Ethnologists.
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 thescholæ 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 ofour 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 Societyhad 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 theLoi 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 anypart 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.