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i 





of the 
Missions 

By BERNARD DE VAULX 

TRANSLATED BY REGINALD F. TREVETT 

This is the story of those courageous men and 
women whose tenacity and faith allowed them 
to bring "the good news" to every part of the 
globe, on the perilous journeys that began 
with the travels of St. Paul and the apostles. 
This volume is the history of the most excit- 
ing and dangerous Church vocation over the 
last two thousand years. 

It was the missionaries who spread the word 
of Christ to the ends of the Roman Empire 
and finally converted the Emperors them- 
selves. The author carries their story through 
the evangelization of northern and western 
Europe as the Faith spread in the wake of 
Charlemagne's empire. He then goes on to 
the story of the conversion of Eastern Europe 
and Scandinavia. 

An exciting portion of this volume is de- 
voted to the heroic efforts of the missionaries 
who converted the natives in the Western 

Hemisphere, fighting both the pagan' hostility 

(continued on back flap) 

jacket Design by Stefan Salter 
Santa Barbara Mission, California 
Photograph courtesy of The New York Public 
Library Picture Collection 



KANSAS CITY MO PUBLIC LIBRARY 




0001 



37ii 
Vauix 
History of the missions* 



V37h 

History of the missions* 



DATE DUE 




Edited by HENRI DANIEL-ROPS of the Academic Frangaise 



HISTORY OF THE MISSIONS 

By BERNARD DE VAULX 

Translated from the French by REGINALD F. TREVETT 
HAWTHORN BOOKS PUBLISHERS New York 



1961 by Hawthorn Books, Inc., 70 Fifth Avenue, New York 11, 
N. Y. Copyright under International and Pan-American Copyright 
Conventions. Philippines Copyright 1961 by Hawthorn Books, Inc. 
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or 
portions thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quo- 
tations in a review. This book was manufactured in the United States 
of America and published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland 
& Stewart, Ltd., 25 Hollinger Road, Toronto 16. It was originally 
published in France under the title Les Missions: Leur Histoire. 
Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1960. The Library of Congress has cata- 
logued The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism under 
card number 58-14327. Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 
for this volume: 61-12974. The Catholic University of America 
Library has catalogued this volume based on the Lynn-Peterson 
Alternative Classification for Catholic Books: BQT184T9v.99/BQT- 
3231. Suggested decimal classification: 270. 



First Edition, April, 1961 

NIHIL OBSTAT 

Andreas Moore, L.C.L. 
Censor Deputatus 

IMPRIMATUR 

E. Morrogh Bernard 

Vicarius Generalis 
Westmonasterii die xx FEBRTJARIS MCMLXI 



The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a book or pamphlet is 
considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those 
who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, 
opinions or statements expressed. 



CONTENTS 



PART I: FROM THE DEATH OF CHRIST TO 
THE DISCOVERY OF NEW WORLD 

I. THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 9 

EL THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRI- 
TORIES 19 

III. THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE BARBARIANS 30 

IV. THE EVANGELIZATION OF GERMANY AND 

SCANDINAVIA 38 

V. EVANGELIZATION OF THE SLAVS, MAGYARS 

AND RUSSIANS .48 

VI. THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 51 

PART II: FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE 

NEW WORLD TO GREGORY XVI 
VXL BEFORE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CON- 
GREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 65 
The Establishment of the New Countries 

and the Institution of the Patronato 65 

The Spanish and Portuguese Missions in 

America, the Philippines and the Congo 66 
St Francis Xavier in India and Japan 77 

Fr Ricci and the Introduction of Christianity 

to China 82 

TIL FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA 

TO GREGORY XVI 84 

The Bull Inscrutabili divinae and the Ingoli 

Reports 84 

First Missions Sent by France to Canada, the 

Orient and Madagascar 86 

Fr de Nobili at Madura 93 

Fr de Rhodes and the Establishment of 

Vicars Apostolic in the Far East 95 

The China Missions after Fr Ricci 100 

The Missions in Indo-China 106 

The Indian Missions after Fr de Nobili 109 



The Patronato Missions in Sooth and North 

America 115 

Mgr Borgia's Inquiry Reveals a General 

Decline: Its Causes 121 

First Signs of a Re-awakening of the Mis- 
sionary Spirit 126 

PART III: FROM GREGORY XVI TO BENEDICT XV 

IX. THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 131 
First Foundations on the Perimeter (1820- 

75) 131 
Penetration into the Interior from 1875 to 

1914 137 

X. THE CHINA MISSIONS 144 
The Situation Prior to the Treaties of Tien- 

Tsin (1858) and Pekin (1860) 144 
The Consequences of the French Protector- 
ate 146 
XI. THE INDOCHINA MISSIONS 148 
XII. THE INDIAN MISSIONS 154 
The Bull Multa praeclare and the Goanese 

Schism 154 
From the Synod of Pondicherry to the End 

of the Century 156 
The Evangelization of the Northern Prov- 
inces 159 

XIII. THE KOREAN AND JAPANESE MISSIONS 162 

XIV. THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 166 

The United States 166 

The Epic of the Oblates in the Far North 168 

South America and the West Indies 172 

XV. THE OCEANIA MISSIONS 176 

The Picpus Fathers in Eastern Oceania 176 

The Marists in Western Oceania 178 

The Issoudun Fathers in New Guinea 181 

XVI. THE MISSIONS IN THE NEAR EAST 184 

XVII. THE INDONESIAN MISSIONS 187 

XVIII. THE EUROPEAN MISSIONS 189 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 192 



PARTI 

FROM THE DEATH OF CHRIST TO 

THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW 

WORLD 



CHAPTER I 

THE MISSION OF THE 
APOSTLES 



The history of the Missions began when that of Christ in his 
human nature was about to end. The Gospels and the Acts of 
the Apostles make it possible for us to retrace the wonderful 
circumstances In which this memorable moment was set. 

Christ was in the Upper Room with his disciples for the last 
time. How dull their minds still were! He had foretold his 
death, resurrection and return to the Father time after time, 
yet some of them took him for a spirit! How patiently he led 
them towards the truth! "Look at my hands and my feet, to 
be assured that it is myself; touch me, and look; a spirit has 
not flesh and bones, as you see that I have." But this was not 
enough. Their real joy at seeing him again was still mingled 
with amazement and a certain amount of incredulity. Then he 
asked them: "Have you anything here to eat?" 

They gave him a piece of grilled fish and he ate it In their 
presence. Now they no longer thought they were dealing with 
a spirit. Yet they had not abandoned the earthly hopes of 
Judaism and they asked him: 

Lord, dost thou mean to restore the dominion to Israel here 
and now? But he told them, It Is not for you to know the times 
and seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. 
Enough for you, that the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and 
you will receive strength from him; you are to be my witnesses 
in Jerusalem and throughout Judaea, in Samaria, yes, and to the 
ends of the earth. 

(Acts 1. 6-8.) 



10 THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 

He did not expect them to rest but to undertake an Immense 
task. To prevent discouragement in these simple men, alone in 
the world, who had received the command to spread a new 
religion whose commandments were radically opposed to those 
of the ancient religions, Christ foretold that he would be there 
to help them: "And behold I am with you all through the days 

that are coming, until the consummation of the world 1 am 

sending down upon you the gift which was promised by my 
Father; you must wait in the city, until you are clothed with 
power from on high." 

He then took them to the outskirts of Bethany and there, as 
he blessed them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 
St Luke adds that they returned full of a great joy to Jerusalem. 

There are two points to note in this scene: the divine promise 
of continual help and the universal character of the religion 
they have been commanded to preach. The promise was ful- 
filled ten days later at Pentecost with all the startling force that 
was needed for the apostles to be certain of its origin: they 
were all gathered together in unity of purpose. All at once a 
sound came from heaven like that of a strong wind blowing, 
and filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then 
appeared to them what seemed to be tongues of fire, which 
parted and came to rest on each of them. (Acts 2. 2-4.) 

Wind and fire are the signs of the divine presence in biblical 
tradition. 

Among those who were dwelling in Jerusalem at this time 
were devout Jews from every country under heaven. . . . And 
they were all beside themselves with astonishment; Are they not 
all Galileans speaking? they asked. . . . There are Parthians 
among us, and Medes and Elamites; our homes are in Meso- 
potamia, or Judaea, or Cappadocia; in Pontus or Asia, Phrygia 
or Pamphylia, Egypt or the parts of Libya round Cyrene . . . and 
each has been hearing them tell of God's wonders in his own 
language. 

(Acts 2. 5-12.) 



THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 1 1 

They were beside themselves with amazement and did not 
know what to think. Some treated the whole affair as a joke. 
Peter then reminded them that the prophets had foretold the 
resurrection of Christ whom the Jews had recently crucified: 

God, then, has raised up this man, Jesus, from the dead. . . . 
And now, exalted at God's right hand, he has claimed from his 
Father his promise to bestow the Holy Spirit; and he has poured 
out that Spirit, as you can see and hear for yourselves. 

[Profoundly moved, they asked the Apostles:] What must we 
do ? Be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
to have your sins forgiven; then you will receive the gift of the 
Holy Spirit. This promise is for you and for your children, and 
for all those, however far away, whom the Lord our God calls 
to himself. 

(Acts 2. 37-40.) 

We learn from the Acts that some three thousand persons 
heeded these words. This first nucleus of converts appears to 
have increased rapidly. It was composed of Israelites and 
Greeks, that is, Hebrews from abroad as distinct from those 
living in Palestine. 

These first Christians sold their property and used the money 
they received for it to provide for the upkeep of the com- 
munities formed among themselves. The Acts also tell us that 
their numbers increased every day and all the more so because 
"so many were the wonders and signs performed by the 
apostles in Jerusalem". 

Since the cure of the lame man at the Gate Beautiful, who 
at the command of St Peter and in the name of Jesus Christ of 
Nazareth, had stood up and walked, since Peter again, after 
denouncing the hypocrisy and the sacrilegious theft of Ananias 
and Sapphira, had caused them both to fall dead at his feet, no 
one had dared to question the extraordinary power of the 
apostles. At Jerusalem people went so far as 

to bring sick folk into the streets, and lay them down there on 
beds and pallets, in the hope that even the shadow of Peter might 
fall upon one of them here and there, as he passed by, and so they 



12 THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 

would be healed of their infirmities. From neighbouring cities, 
too, the common people flocked to Jerusalem, bringing with 
them the sick and those who were troubled by unclean spirits; 
and all of them were cured. 

(Acts 5. 15-16.) 

These manifestations of the Spirit exasperated the members 
of the Synagogue. A violent persecution of the Infant Church 
broke out. But it proved to be to its advantage when the punish- 
ment and the conversion of Saul, Its chief persecutor, had given 
startling proof that the Spirit, as Christ had foretold, did not 
cease to protect It. 

After Paul's first preaching at Damascus and Iconium, the 
Church was still composed only of Hebrews and of Greeks. 
We must realize, and we can never do so sufficiently, how 
essential it Is that the Spirit should cure the egoism and the 
narrow-mindedness of men. At first the apostles, Jewish in 
origin, thought they would confine Christ's teaching to men of 
their own race. Before they consented to share it with the 
Gentiles, it was necessary for the Spirit to manifest himself to 
the centurion Cornelius. The angel said to the centurion: 

(God) would have thee send men to Joppa, to bring here one 
Simon, who is called Peter . . . thou wilt learn from him what 
thou hast to do. [Cornelius obeyed at once and whilst his messen- 
gers were on their way to Joppa, Peter saw the heavens open 
and] a bundle, like a great sheet ... in it were all kinds of four- 
footed beasts, and things that creep on the earth, and all the 
birds of heaven. And a voice came to him, Rise up, Peter, lay 
about thee and eat. It cannot be, Lord, answered Peter; never in 
my life have I eaten anything unclean. Then the voice came to 
him a second time, It is not for thee to call anything profane, 
which God has made clean. Peter was still puzzling in his mind 
over the meaning of his vision, when Cornelius' messengers . . . 

were seen standing at the gate ... he set out with them And 

as soon as Peter had entered . . . You know well enough, he told 
them, that a Jew Is contaminated if he consorts with one of 
another race, or visits him; but God has been shewing me that 
we ought not to speak of any man as profane or unclean. 



THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 13 

The light was beginning to dawn on Peter. Suddenly, just as 
he was bringing Ms explanation of Christ's doctrine to a close, 
the Holy Spirit conferred the gift of tongues on the Gentiles, 
that is, on Cornelius and those who were with him. When he 
saw this renewal of Pentecost, Peter cried out: "Who will 
grudge us the water for baptizing these men, that have received 
the Holy Spirit just as we did?" 

The Jerusalem Jews were still hesitant, but when Peter had 
told them what had taken place in the house of Cornelius at 
Caesarea, they too were full of wonder that redemption was 
not a treasure Intended for them alone. 

The call that came to Peter at Joppa had given the signal for 
that evangelization of the world whose early stages are revealed 
to us in the Acts of the Apostles. As soon as Paul arrived in a 
city for the first time, he went to the synagogue. At Antioch in 
Pisidia, at Iconium, Thessalonica, Philippi and Corinth, his 
first audiences were Jews engaged in commerce or victims of 
deportation orders. But many of them remained ardent adher- 
ents of the old Judaism and refused to believe in Christ, the 
universal Redeemer. When they uttered blasphemies in reply 
to Paul's teaching as he preached the universal character of 
the new religion, the Apostle replied: "We were bound to 
preach God's words to you first; but now, since you reject it, 
since you declare yourselves unfit for eternal life, be it so; we 
will turn our thoughts to the Gentiles." 

These words which were accompanied by striking charis- 
matic manifestations unleashed their wrath. During his first 
journey to Iconium where a great number of Jews and Greeks 
were converted, Paul and Barnabas, manhandled and threat- 
ened with stoning, had to take refuge at Lystra. Jews from 
Iconium and Antioch followed them there and, in the course of 
a riot, Paul was stoned and left for dead outside the city. At 
Philippi he and Silas were handed over to the praetors, beaten 
with rods and thrown into prison. The same fate befell them 
at Thessalonica and Berea. 

At Jerusalem on his return from his third journey, somp 



14 THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 

fanatical Jews took an oath not to eat or drink until they had 
killed Paul. When the tribune heard of this plot, he gave orders 
that the Apostle was to be taken to Caesarea, where he was put 
in prison. He was still in captivity two years later when a new 
procurator arrived in the person of Festus before whom he 
claimed his rights as a Roman citizen. This appeal to Caesar 
was to bring him to Rome. Shortly after he had set sail, a 
violent storm wrecked the ship at Malta, where the survivors 
received a friendly welcome. 

After spending three of the winter months on the island, 
Paul took to sea again, stayed three days at Syracuse, a week 
at Puteoli among brethren, that is, among those who had 
accepted the new doctrine, and then set out for Rome. There 
were already Christian converts in the city. They had doubtless 
come from oriental communities and, urged on by that ardent 
desire to make converts which possessed the early Christians, 
had spontaneously become apostles. As the Acts tell us, these 
brethren of Rome carne as far as the forum of Appius and the 
Three Taverns to meet Paul. When he saw them, he gave 
thanks to God and went forward with renewed courage. 

The Jewish community in Rome proved to be as divided as 
those of Greece and the Orient. On the one hand were those 
who enthusiastically embraced the new religion, on the other, 
the obdurate adherents of the old law. Yet the art of convincing 
people could hardly have been carried further than it was by 
St Paul. Whether he was speaking to Romans, Corinthians or 
Galatians, he always began by insisting that he himself was of 
no importance. He stood to one side: "Paul, an apostle not 
holding his commision from men, not appointed by man's 
means, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father. . . ." 

As the majority of his hearers were Jews, he quoted the 
prophets whose writings he knew as well as did s the best of 
the rabbis. Thus, having quoted Joel ("Every one who calls 
upon the name of the Lord will be saved"), he made clear by 
means of a series of deductions the need for Ms own preaching. 
Only, how are they to call upon him until they have learned to 



THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 15 

believe in him? And how are they to believe in him, until they 
listen to Mm. And how can they listen, without a preacher to 
listen to? And how can there be preachers, unless preachers 
are sent on their errand? (Rom. 10. 14-15.) All this clear series 
of arguments leads to the magnificent image taken from Isaias: 
"How welcome is the coming of those who tell of peace, who 
tell of good news." 

This good news is for all men; "I have the same duty to all, 
Greek and barbarian, learned and simple; . . . There is no dis- 
tinction made here between Jew and Gentile; all alike have 
one Lord, and he has enough and to spare for all those who 
call upon him." 

In any case, the Old Testament had already foretold this 
universalism. Isaias had said: "Those who never looked for me 
have found me; I have made myself known to those who never 
asked for word of me." This means that the incredulity of a 
section of the Jewish people gained salvation for the Gentiles. 
But the divine mercy remains full and entire. If St Paul recalls 
the blindness of the "people that refuses obedience and cries 
out against me", to whom God had stretched out his hands "all 
day", it is not so much to humiliate them as to emphasize the 
extraordinary importance and the outstanding value their con- 
version would have. "Why then, if their false step has enriched 
the world, if the Gentiles have been enriched by their default, 
what must we expect, when it is made good?" (Rom. 11. 12.) 

It is to St Paul that we owe the finest of all panegyrics of 
charity. 

Charity is patient, is kind; charity feels no envy; charity is 
never perverse or proud, never insolent; has no selfish aims, can- 
not be provoked, does not brood over an injury; takes no pleasure 
in wrongdoing, but rejoices at the victory of truth; sustains, 

believes, hopes, endures, to the last Meanwhile, faith, hope 

and charity persist, all three; but the greatest of them all is 
charity. 

(1 Cor. 13. 4-13.) 



16 THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 

Charity, that "bond of perfection" as he calls it elsewhere, 
was at the heart of his apostolic life. If we find it astonishing 
that nothing, prison, maltreatment, tortures 9 continual travel, 
privations, could destroy his body, so ill-endowed physically, 
we must remember that he has told us in one short but striking 
phrase all that he owed to prayer: "Though the outward part 
of our nature is being worn down, our inner life is refreshed 
from day to day." The apostolate of St Paul erudite, based 
on a wide knowledge of the texts, yet free from pedantry, subtle 
yet without affectation, fatherly, even familiar on occasion, 
overflowing with love yet always firm, is one of the finest 
examples of what can be achieved by the intellect when en- 
lightened by faith and by the love of men for God's sake. 

It is doubtful whether he went from Rome to Spain as he 
intended to do, but he certainly returned to the East. During 
the years 65-1, he stayed in Crete, at Ephesus and finally in 
Macedonia where it is believed he was again arrested and taken 
to Rome in the year 68. The Christians, on whom Nero had 
laid the blame for the burning of the city (64) to divert from 
himself the probably well-founded suspicion that it was he who 
was responsible for it, were harassed at Rome with sadistic 
ferocity. According to Tacitus "a vast multitude was thrown 
into prison". Some of the prisoners came from distant pro- 
vinces as was the case with St Peter and St Paul, but the 
majority had been rounded up on the spot, whence we may 
infer that the Christian community in Rome was already of 
considerable size. 

The cruel nature of the punishment inflicted on the 
Christians had its effect on this community. St Paul's last days 
were darkened by apostasies and defections, news of which 
reached him in gaol. He was aware that the time was near 
when he would have to bear witness to Christ whom he had 
preached so learnedly and so lovingly. He wrote to Timothy: 

As for me, my blood akeady flows in sacrifice; the time has 
nearly come when I can go free. I have fought the good fight; 
I have finished the race; I have redeemed my pledge; I look for- 



THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 17 

ward to the prize that Is waiting for me, the prize I have earned. 
The Lord . . . will grant it to me when that day comes; to me, 
yes, and all those who have learned to welcome his appearing. 

As he enjoyed the jus civitatis, he had no torture to undergo. 
He was slain by the sword on the spot where, according to 
tradition, St PauFs-outside-the- Walls now stands. 

St Peter,, a poor lower-class Jew, had no such privilege. He 
was condemned to crucifixion but, according to an ancient 
tradition, considered himself unworthy of the same death as Ms 
master and asked to be crucified upside down. 

Persecutions did not stop the progress of Christianity even 
among the upper classes which it had hitherto scarcely reached. 
We learn from Dion Cassius, author of a Roman History 
written in Greek, that the "consularis" Acilius Glabrio, Flavius 
Clemens, who was a consul In office at the time and a near 
relation of the Emperor, together with his wife Domitilla and 
other senators, were all accused of being "supporters of novel- 
ties", and suffered under Domitian's edicts. 

St John had been exiled to Patmos by Domltian. After the 
Emperor's death, he returned to Ephesus. He was nearly ninety 
years old but showed no signs of decline. His Gospel and his 
three Epistles, overflowing with charity, date from this time. 
He continued to direct all the Christian communities of Asia, 
visited the provinces bordering on Ephesus either to consecrate 
bishops there or to establish new Churches as St Paul had pre- 
viously done. The communities were to be linked to Christ 
through their bishops. "Christ comes from God", wrote St 
Clement of Rome, "the apostles come from Christ and it is 
they who, experiencing the first fruits of the Spirit, instituted 
certain men as bishops." 

This programme seems to have been quickly implemented in 
the East. From the end of the second century, a number of 
cities in Asia Minor: Jerusalem, Joppa (now Jaffa), Caesarea, 
Tyre, Antioch, Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Ephesus, Smyrna, 
Pergamum; in Greece, Corinth and Thessalonica; in Africa, 
Alexandria and Cyrene; among the islands, Cyprus and Crete, 



18 THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 

all had organized Churches, governed by episcopoi and pres- 
byters. In the West, we find scarcely any besides Rome and 
Puteoli. And both of these were the work of apostles from the 
East, so true is it that it was from the Christian East that the 
West was to receive in its turn the word of Christ. Yet we have 
no equivalent of the admirable source book which is the Acts 
of the Apostles to provide us with information on its diffusion 
throughout what was to become Europe. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND 
ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 



We should know nothing of the Christian centres founded 
throughout the Empire from the beginning of the second cen- 
tury onwards, were it not for a few passages dealing with the 
attitude of the imperial authority towards them. In the begin- 
ning this attitude was generally one of contempt based on the 
proud certitude that Graeco-Roman civilization had an out- 
standing, universal and imperishable value. It did not order 
persecutions a priori; it left Christians the choice between 
acceptance of the official worship or death. It is by means of 
the documents which give an account of the application of these 
regulations that we are able to follow the first trials and the 
first victories of Christianity. 

Were it not for the terrible persecution of 177, we should 
certainly not know that it had taken firm enough root in the 
Lyons region to give seven martyrs to the Church of Gaul: 
Blandina, Biblis, Pothinus, bishop of Lyons and a native of 
Asia Minor (he was ninety years old at the time), Maturus, 
Sanctus, Ponticus and Attalus (?). Irenaeus, Pothinus' suc- 
cessor, a Greek and also a native of Asia, suffered martyrdom 
about the year 200. A passage from one of his letters gives us 
a useful summary of the situation of Christianity in the early 
years of the third century. "There are divers languages in the 
world, but the tradition of the faith is everywhere the same. 
The belief of the Churches of Germany is in no way different 



20 THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 

from that of those in Iberia or among the Celts, or from that 
of those In Egypt and Palestine." 

Except during the reigns of Decius, Valerian and Diocletian, 
who openly persecuted the Christians, the third century was 
on the whole a period of toleration. The Edict of Valerian, 
withdrawing from the Christians the right to form burial boards 
which had been granted to them by Septimius Severas, was 
especially directed against the upper classes. Christianity was 
therefore making sufficient progress to worry the public 
authorities. The philosopher Porphyry (233-304), a commen- 
tator and disciple of Plotinus, drew attention to this and was 
scandalized by it: "We come across them [the Christians] 
everywhere." Diocletian ordered the death penalty for civil 
servants who refused to abjure the Christian faith. Constantius 
Chlorus far from adopting the same attitude showed prefer- 
ence for these recalcitrant people. In his view, their resistance 
was a proof of their uprightness and fidelity. Lactantius men- 
tions a town In Phrygia where all the inhabitants, including 
the civil and military chiefs and all the civil servants, were 
Christians. 

Egypt and the part of Africa corresponding to the modem 
Tunisia were Christian. Christianity had taken root in Illyricum 
(now Yugoslavia), in Britain, along the Moselle, at Trier and 
Metz, along the Rhine (Cologne), at Lutetia, Rheims and In 
Spain. 

The situation varied from province to province. Christians 
were in the majority in Asia Minor, southern Thrace, Cyprus, 
Armenia and the kingdom of Edessa. Their numbers equalled 
those of the pagans in Syria, Egypt, Greece, central and 
southern Italy, in proconsular Africa, southern Gaul and Spain. 
Their number was small in Palestine, Phoenicia, Arabia, the 
Danublan provinces, northern and eastern Italy, Mauritania 
and Tripolitania. Finally, they were only a tiny minority in the 
former Philistia, on the north and north-west coasts of the 
Black Sea, in the extreme north-west of Italy, the centre and 
north of Gaul, Belgium, Germany and Britain. 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 21 

Constantine's victory over Maxentius (312) brought in its 
train the public recognition of Christianity. The attempted 
rejuvenation and humanization of paganism made by Julian 
the Apostate, who was Emperor from 361 to 363, came to 
nothing. Gratian (375-83) refused the title of Pontifex Maxi- 
mus, which his predecessors, including Constantine, had borne. 
The last defender of paganism, Symmachus, prefect of Rome, 
tried about the year 383 to restore the altar of the tutelary 
goddess of the city in the Senate House. Two years previously, 
a considerable number of senators had rejected a similar 
request and made it clear that they would no longer go to the 
Senate House if it were complied with. St Ambrose had only 
to recall this precedent for Symmachus' motion to be defeated. 
It was Ambrose who told the Emperors how they should 
behave in regard to Church affairs. A few years later, Theo- 
dosius promulgated anti-pagan legislation. Paganism, devoid 
of faith, as Mgr Batiffol has written, and increasingly a mere 
matter of form, had become secularized. 

Christianity, then, was preached to begin with by a handful 
of men, most of them very simple men. True, the Holy Spirit 
dwelt in them but who was aware of this? In slightly more 
than three centuries Christianity had succeeded in taking root 
throughout the Roman Empire. Bossuet considered this was 
the result of miracles greater even than those that accompanied 
the preaching of Jesus Christ. Miracles are God's business and 
beyond our grasp, but the historian may legitimately examine 
the human means used by the divine power to bring them 
about, in a word, the play of secondary causes. 

One of these appears in the Jewish communities which pro- 
vided the apostles with their first audiences. Side by side with 
the resident Hebrews, there were, as the Acts tell us, Greeks, 
that is, Hebrews who came from abroad and were not Pales- 
tinians. They were in many cases people of importance enjoy- 
ing a kind of monopoly in the economic life of the Empire. 
The Diaspora had scattered them abroad. But Rome had 
granted them a privileged status which allowed them the free 



22 THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 

practice of their religion. Strabo, who died in 25 B.C., said that 
it would have been difficult to find a place "where this people 
had not been welcomed". Their professional activities made 
those who became converts valuable propagators of the faith. 
We might even say that they put Catholicism "on the map", 
and all the more successfully because they were in the main 
incomparable apostles. 

In any case, the characteristic mark of the early Church was 
the apostolic zeal of its converts, whether of Jewish or pagan 
origin, patricians or members of the lower classes (and these 
were by far the most numerous). Pagan writers whose evidence 
cannot be gainsaid provide us with this information. Celsus is 
one example with his description of what he had seen in 
Roman families. He despised the Christians both because of 
their inferior social status and because they could neither read 
nor write, and he shows them insinuating themselves into the 
patrician families to do their work of conversion: 

As soon as they can take to one side the children or a few 
women as senseless as themselves, they begin to exhibit their 
wonderful wares. They are the only people worth believing. The 
father of the family and its teachers are gasbags, dunderheads, 
unable either to know what is good or to achieve it. [The bolder 
spirits do not hesitate to egg the children on to rebellion. They 
are to cast off their masters as soon as they can and listen to 
the good news] in the wool carder's, the cobbler's and the 
launderer's work places. There they will learn perfect wisdom. 
This is the way the Christians set about gaining converts. 

The work of conversion was confined to one spot in the case 
of some while for others it was done from place to place as is 
made clear in the following passage from Eusebius of 
Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History: 

They [the converts] began by following the Saviour's advice 
and distributing their goods to the poor. Then leaving their 
country behind them, they went forth to fulfil their mission as 
evangelists, their ambition to preach the word of faith to those 
who had as yet heard nothing of it, and to hand on the books 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 23 

of the divine Gospels. They were content to lay the foundations 
of the faith among foreign peoples and then established other 
pastors there, and to these they gave the task of nourishing 
those they had brought to the faith. Having done so, they went 
on to other lands and other nations by the grace and with the 
help of God. 

The majority of these itinerant preachers have remained 
nameless, like all the saints whom the Church glorifies on the 
first of November. Yet a few are known to us: Timothy, son 
of a Jewish mother and a Greek father and the best loved of 
St Paul's companions; Titus, a Greek whom the great apostle 
made responsible for the collection at Corinth on behalf of the 
"saints" in Macedonia; Lucian, a Roman priest who exercised 
his zealous apostolate in the Beauvais district. It is believed 
that Diocletian ordered him to be beheaded about the year 
290. Then there is St Sebastian, a soldier, who had chosen a 
military career so that he might help persecuted Christians 
without exciting suspicion. Diocletian tolerated him for a long 
time because of his eminent professional qualities, but then, 
exasperated by his ardent faith, ordered him to be beaten to 
death. We may also mention St Hilary who fought against the 
Arian heresy far beyond the limits of his own diocese. And 
there are so many more we could name ! 

Christianity made its first appearance as it was propagated 
along the Roman roads by missionaries or simply by converts 
of various types, soldiers, civil servants, merchants in the 
convoys sent out by the Roman power. The effort at evangeliza- 
tion during the first half of the third century was confined to 
the Provincia Narbonensis and the north-eastern region crossed 
by the roads which went from Lyons towards Paris, Rheims 
and Trier. The latter city was the most important administra- 
tive and military centre on the boundary of the limes. On the 
other hand, the western area from the Pyrenees to the North 
Sea was neglected for the time being. As Canon Griffe points 
out in his book La Gaule chretienne a I'epoque romaine 
(Toulouse, 1947), bishops "from Rome or elsewhere" naturally 



24 THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 

did their work in the districts that were most ronianized "or 
at least where the Roman or Eastern element was most in 
evidence". Meanwhile, therefore, there was no question of a 
native episcopate. Trier had a bishop as early as the third 
century, says Canon Griffe. The date of the earliest known 
bishop of Autun, Reticius, is 313, but he probably had one or 
even several predecessors. 

Opinions vary as to the number of bishops in Gaul during 
the fourth century. The more prudent scholars give thirty-four 
as the figure for the year 346. In any case, at about this time 
the network of dioceses was fairly close-knit and Christianity 
was sufficiently rooted in the towns to allow a beginning to be 
made in the evangelization of the country districts. 

This new apostolate found itself up against a different kind 
of paganism from that of the towns. It arose from and was 
sustained by the hopes and fears awakened in the peasant mind 
by the elements of water, fire, earth and heaven, and it was 
part and parcel of every act in men's lives and hence all the 
more difficult to eradicate. St Martin waged a successful war 
against it. The Life by Sulpicius Severas, which Fr Monceaux 
considered to be "a historical document", gives us an idea of 
what the apostolic "rounds" of the bishop of Tours were like. 
In the story of the destruction of a sacred tree we see him at 
work, not alone but surrounded by monks, in a township where 
stood a very ancient temple. St Martin was able to have it 
demolished without encountering any opposition. But when he 
ordered the sacred pine tree to be felled, a clamour arose and 
all his efforts to convince the peasants that a tree-trunk could 
have nothing divine about it were of no avail. 

A pagan then ventured to say: "If you have any confidence 
in the God you say you adore, we will cut down this tree our- 
selves, only on condition that you stand underneath it when it 
falls. If your Lord is with you as you claim he is, you will 
escape." St Martin allowed himself to be put where the people 
wanted him to be. Just as the pine was about to crush him, he 
lifted his hand and the tree "was hurled back as though by the 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 25 

force of a whirlwind' 5 and fell on the opposite side so that "the 
peasants who thought they were safe" only just avoided being 
ground to powder. A great cry rose heavenwards, continues 
Sulpicius Severus, the pagans were dumbfounded, the monks 
wept for joy. So great was the shock that there was scarcely 
anyone "unwilling to abandon the errors of impiety". 

Several details are worth nothing in this episode. First of all 
the failure of the bishop when he tried to make his audience 
understand that a tree-trunk could not possess any divine 
attributes. Nothing however justifies us in thinking that he 
found it difficult to preach a doctrinal sermon. Sulpicius 
Severus is anxious, on the contrary, to assure us, as against 
certain ill-intentioned contemporaries of his, that St Martin's 
words were "full of learning" and his eloquence generous and 
pure. He adds: "Doubtless this is a tribute of little value when 
we think of St Martin's virtues, but the amazing thing is that 
this particular merit should have been found in an unlettered 
man." But as far as the rude and superstitious audience to 
whom he was speaking was concerned, his arguments were far 
less effective than the manifestations of power. Hence the 
change of attitude that took place when they saw the pine 
move away from the bishop and threaten themselves. 

The characteristic mark of St Martin's apostolate was the 
abundance of miraculous gifts with which he was favoured, still 
more the understanding love he showed towards the peasants. 
It caused him to limit to the strictly necessary minimum the 
sacrifices he demanded of them and the renunciations he im- 
posed. Once they had become believers, what point was there 
in causing them pain or in humiliating them? Hence St Martin 
did not hesitate to have a church built near the spring or the 
clearing which had formerly been venerated and to which their 
pagan fathers and they themselves had come. There was 
nothing to stop them returning to it on the days on which 
they had been accustomed to visit it since Christianity had 
taken the place of paganism in their minds and at the very 
places where they had been in the habit of meeting. 



26 THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 

Outside the Empire and long before its dissolution, Christian 
communities had been established during the first four cen- 
turies of the Christian era and almost exclusively in Asia. 

The boundary of the Empire at the end of the second century 
followed the upper basin of the Tigris and rejoined the 
Euphrates in the middle of its course and so included north- 
western Mesopotamia. These Aramean lands gave a hearty 
welcome to Christianity. In about the year 200, the kingdom 
of Osrhoene, whose capital was Edessa, became Christian. 
Soon after, the reformed and militant Mazdean religion set up 
a vigorous resistance but was unable to prevent Christianity 
reaching Ctesiphon on the Tigris and from establishing out- 
posts as far as the Persian Gulf by the end of the fourth 
century, and even in peninsular India where it is said to have 
been introduced by St Thomas. 

In Armenia about the year 300, a solitary apostle, Gregory 
the Illuminator, converted Tiridates II. The aristocracy and 
the common people followed the example of their sovereign. 
Soon after, thanks to the learned monk Mesrob, Armenia had 
a translation of the Bible in its own dialect and even obtained 
its own liturgy. 

In Georgia, a slave woman of unknown nationality who is 
called by her Christian name alone, Nina (cristiand), seems to 
have played a part similar to that of Clotilda among the 
Franks. Her reputation as a miracle worker, founded on several 
amazing cures, came to the ears of the queen who was wasting 
away because of a mysterious disease. She called her to her 
bedside but Nina refused to come. The queen came to her and 
was healed. She and Mirian the king offered her presents which 
she refused saying: "The only thing that can bring me pleasure 
is for you and the king to accept the Christian religion." The 
queen was converted but the king delayed his own decision 
until, threatened by death while hunting, he promised like 
Clovis at Tolbiac to be baptized If he were spared. 

Ulfilas, well known for his translation of the New Testament 
Into the Gothic dialect, converted the Goths who had settled 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 27 

in the Dobradja along the lower Danube. Later, several of his 
disciples fell into Arianism and introduced it to the West 
during their mass invasion. 

Catholicism spread to the south of the Iranian Empire 
through the Syrian desert to the tribes of queen Mawia who 
were evangelized by the monk Moses in the reign of the 
emperor Valens, and in the following century to certain tribes 
of the Yemen. 

None of these solitary apostles had turned his attention to 
Abyssinia but eventually two Tynans were taken by force to 
that country. Their names were Frumentius and Edesius. The 
Ethiopians had massacred the whole crew of the ship that had 
brought them to Africa and they were the sole survivors. They 
had been spared on account of their youth and innocence. 
Their captors offered them to the king at Axum. He made 
Edesius his butler and Frumentius his treasurer. After the 
king's death Frumentius went to St Athanasius and begged him 
to appoint a bishop in Abyssinia. The patriarch of Alexandria 
replied: "Who is more full of the Holy Spirit than you your- 
self? Who is more suited to undertake this responsibility?" 
Frumentius received episcopal consecration, returned to 
Ethiopia and established Christianity there. 

Gregory the Illuminator, Nina, Frumentius, Moses, Ulfilas 
were all solitary apostles. The first four based their apostolate 
on the conversion of the sovereign. All were foreigners in the 
countries they christianized. Some had been taken to these 
places by force and all, at least to begin with, acted without any 
mandate. In this respect they illustrate the essentially mis- 
sionary character of the early Church. These converts and we 
may learn a lesson from them regulated their behaviour and 
their whole life in accordance with the words of the Psalm, 
"because I have believed, I have spoken", and this even when 
there was grave danger in so doing. 

Ireland, the only Western country outside the boundaries of 
the Empire to receive the Gospel, was evangelized by a man 
of the same type and the same fervour as the others. Patrick too 



28 THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 

was a solitary apostle and a "displaced person". About the 
year 405, Scots pirates (the Irish were called Scots at the 
time) during a raid on the south-west coast of Britain had 
captured him and then sold Mm as a slave in Ireland where 
for a time he was a shepherd. Patrick had been brought up a 
Catholic. After six years of slavery, he managed to escape and 
crossed to the Continent. The trial he had endured had revived 
his somewhat lukewarm faith and he went to make a retreat at 
Lerins after which he returned to his native land. 

But it was Ireland he wanted to evangelize. Before going 
there, he crossed the Channel once more and asked the bishop 
of Auxerre for the diaconate. Meanwhile Palladius, the bishop 
sent by Pope Celestine to the Scots, had died. It is not even 
certain that he ever reached Ireland. Patrick, after consecration 
by St Germanus of Auxerre, was appointed to succeed Palladius 
(432). 

Thus began one of the most extraordinary missions of that 
time, even if we confine ourselves to authenticated facts and 
leave to one side the mass of legendary episodes. The Irish, 
under the influence of abundant charismatic gifts comparable 
to those enjoyed by St Martin, renounced the druids and their 
ceremonies just as the peasants of Touraine had forsaken their 
idols. 

After some ten years devoted to this miraculous apostolate, 
Patrick returned for the third time to the Continent which had 
been everywhere overrun by the barbarians during the preced- 
ing half -century. He had evidently in no sense abandoned or 
so it would seem the pressing urge to move about from place 
to place that apparently possessed the clerics of that time. 
True, Patrick's goal was Rome and his intention, a wholly 
spiritual one, was to strengthen the ties between the Christian 
communities of Ireland and the papacy. On his return he estab- 
lished his episcopal see at Armagh about the year 444. During 
the remaining ten years of his life he was to complete the con- 
version of Ireland and make it "the island of saints". 

The Church of Ireland is peculiar in the sense that it 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND ITS BORDER TERRITORIES 29 

developed in a country that had not been colonized by Rome. 
For the first time in the West, Catholicism had come into 
direct contact with a religion with customs and institutions 
that owed nothing to the Graeco-Roman civilization which so 
many considered the most favourable environment for the 
establishment of Catholicism. And it had won a complete 
victory. The first mission to Ireland therefore developed in 
surroundings comparable to those which were to be encoun- 
tered by modem missions. This is only a detail and should not 
make us forget the common and essential characteristic of all 
the Christian communities during the first few centuries. In 
Ireland, as elsewhere, their founders all hastened to place them 
in the charge of bishops. 

The propagation of the Gospel, Mgr Batiffol has written, 
was "a multiplication of Churches analogous to a proliferation 
of cells". And their proliferation took place for the most part 
without any intervention on the part of Rome another charac- 
teristic of the early Churches. When the barbarians were 
evangelized during the following period, missionaries in our 
sense of the word were to appear on the scene, missionaries, 
that is, who were envoys of the papacy. 



CHAPTER III 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF 
THE BARBARIANS 



The invasions had brought about the collapse of the Roman 
Empire but had not disorganized the Church. The firm stand 
made by the bishops, including the bishop of Rome, as the 
sole defenders of peoples and cities against barbarian violence 
had, on the contrary, increased her prestige, and this is one of 
the good aspects of this chaotic time. But new problems faced 
her and of these the most urgent was to discover what political 
power was to succeed the Empire which had supported the 
Church since the days of Constantine. 

Apart from the cities between the Seine and the Loire, "a 
pale reflection of the ruined Empire", which remained under 
the control of Syagrius, the whole of the West was occupied 
by the barbarians, Italy by the Ostrogoths (until the arrival 
of the Lombards), the Rhone valley by the Burgundians, Spain 
by the Suevi soon to be joined by the Visigoths who already 
governed Aquitania with Toulouse as their capital. Alsace and 
Lorraine were in the hands of the Alemanni, Africa in those of 
the Vandals. Finally, the Franks, who had first settled in the 
Tournai region, had advanced as far as the Loire after Clovis* 
victory over Syagrius at Soissons. 

From the point of view of evangelization this barbarian 
world was divided into two groups. There were the totally 
pagan Franks, and the rest of the barbarians who for the most 
part had gone over to Arianism. On the one hand was a com- 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE BARBARIANS 31 

plete ignorance of the faith, on the other, a corrupted know- 
ledge which ruined its foundation since Christ's divine nature 
was denied. 

Which task would prove the more difficult? To begin again 
from the beginning or to rectify a knowledge which was only 
partial? To win the pagan from Ms gods or to bring the Arian 
to admit that he was distorting the image of Christ? Hesitation 
was understandable and it is easy to see why the Gallo-Roman 
episcopate, as far as the pagans were concerned, watched with 
such interest the young Prankish chief, an ambitious man who 
had grasped the fact that Christianity held a preponderant 
place In Gallic society and constituted a real force which it 
would be better to win over to one's side rather than to attack. 

It was in an atmosphere such as this and, on the whole, one 
not unfavourable to an understanding between Clovis and the 
bishops, that one of the latter, St Avltus, suggested to St Remi 
that the young chief should marry Clotilda, a Burgundian 
Catholic princess of exemplary piety. He hoped this might lead 
to Clovis' conversion. The marriage, celebrated in 493, did not 
at first change Clovis' inclinations. His first son died shortly 
after baptism. The second, who was also baptized, in his turn 
was at the point of death. Clotilda prayed that he might be 
cured. When Clovis saw that her prayer had been answered, he 
ceased to be hostile to the God of the Christians. He took the 
final step at Tolbiac in 496. It was like a story in a picture 
book. Seeing that victory was likely to escape him, Clovis 
promised to receive baptism if Clotilda's God should grant 
him success. His prayer was answered and the victorious chief 
was baptized at Rheims on Christmas Day, 496 9 together with 
three thousand of his soldiers. 

This event raised great hopes. St Avitus, bishop of Vienne, 
greeted it as the starting-point of a new era which would gather 
all the peoples of Gaul under Clovis' rule "to the great advan- 
tage of the authority religion has to exercise". In the southern 
areas where the Arian chiefs were persecuting the Church, the 
king of the Franks soon came to be considered as a liberator, 



32 THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE BARBARIANS 

as the man who would achieve political unity and the triumph 
of Catholicism over Arianism. We cannot doubt that he en- 
thusiastically accepted this splendid assignment when we read 
the words attributed to him by Gregory of Tours: "I can no 
longer accept the fact that the Arians occupy part of Gaul. 
Let us then march against them with God's help, and if our 
enemies are conquered, we shall rule over the whole country." 

This crusade against Arianism, begun at Tolbiac after the 
defeat of the Alemanni, was continued at Fleury with a crash- 
ing defeat of the Burgundians (500) and at Vouille (507) by that 
of the Visigoths. Clovis thought he would end it in a final 
campaign against the Ostrogoths, but he died before he could 
launch it, in 511. But at least he had had time to prepare for 
the overthrow of Arianism and the triumph of the true faith 
in the West. 

In any case, after his death, his story continued to have 
immense significance for the barbarian chiefs. Even the Arians 
among them were shaken and asked themselves whether they 
should remain faithful to Arianism once Clovis had triumphed 
over it in a perfectly regular manner? Why, too, should they 
not rally to Catholicism which from now onwards would be 
the conqueror's religion? It would certainly be untrue to urge 
that generosity and even a certain sense of the divine were 
unknown among the barbarians. The truth is that miracles as 
the outward sign of a mystery, in particular such a striking 
miracle as that of Tolbiac, demonstrated the powerlessness 
of their own gods to these men for whom might was every- 
thing. Clovis was the unchallengeable witness to the superiority 
of the Christians' God. 

For the bishops the story of Clovis was valued as a precedent 
to be extended throughout the West. Following as it did upon 
that of Constantine, it suggested that it would be wise to 
attempt to convert sovereigns in the first place and that this 
initial stage would prepare for the conversion of their sub- 
jects. Among the Burgundians, the method was a complete 
success. After the baptism of Sigismund by the bishop of 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE BARBARIANS 33 

Vlenne (500), a considerable section of the aristocracy followed 
Ms example. So Influential was the bishop who converted him 
that there was no outbreak of violence against the Arians. 
An edict placed the old Catholics of GaUo-Roman origin and 
the new Burgundlan converts on an equal footing and the 
fusion of the two races was thus prepared. 

St Martin of Braga obtained similar results among the Suevi, 
as did also St Leander among the Visigoths. But the latter's 
conversion was as violent in its circumstances as that of the 
former was easy and peaceful. Arianism had by no means 
overrun the whole of Spain, although Leovigild, king of the 
Visigoths, had given strong support to the heresy. Of his two 
sons, one, Reccared, was of the same opinion as himself. The 
other, Hermenigild, had renounced Arianism under the in- 
fluence of St Leander, bishop of Seville. The antagonism 
between the two men led to civil war. At first, Hermenigild 
entered wholeheartedly into the struggle and even went so far 
as to send St Leander to Constantinople to ask for the 
emperor's support against his father's party. But then, out of 
filial piety, although fully believing in the justice of his own 
cause, he accepted the offer of negotiation sent to him by 
Reccared and gave himself up to his father, who pretended to 
pardon him, yet immediately afterwards had him cast into 
prison. He wanted his son to return to Arianism and to re- 
nounce the true faith. He failed to persuade him and handed 
him over to the executioners who cut his throat. Heresy gained 
nothing by this. On the contrary, Reccared who had succeeded 
Ms father, took up a more conciliatory attitude under the 
influence of St Leander and became better disposed. He agreed 
to call a council at Toledo in 589. The delegates of the clergy 
and of the people made a profession of orthodoxy, so that 
here again, unity of religion brought about peaceful racial 
fusion. 

Apart from the warm congratulations addressed to St Remi 
by Pope Hormisdas after the conversion of Clovis, the share 



34 THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE BARBARIANS 

of the papacy in the missions during this period seems to have 
been very limited. It could not have been otherwise at a time 
when the barbarians were piling ruin upon ruin and had to be 
resisted unless all was to be lost in both the temporal and the 
spiritual orders, at a time, too, when this resistance confined 
the ecclesiastical authorities within the territory over which 
they exercised their jurisdiction. Rome, like the other bishop- 
rics, could not avoid this isolation nor these necessities. 

St Leo himself, active and apostolic though he was, had to 
endure this state of affairs. Resistance to the barbarians kept 
him fully occupied. Attila was threatening Mantua and it was 
only by going out to meet him at the head of a deputation that 
St Leo persuaded him to withdraw. In less than three years 
later, he had to face Genseric, the king of the Vandals. In 
addition to material ruin, there were the dangers with which 
the heresies were threatening the true faith, Pelagianism, 
Eutychianism, Nestorianism, etc. St Leo's glory lies in having 
triumphed over all these difficulties and in having given 
decisions sufficiently authoritative to be accepted after his 
death. 

Under succeeding pontificates, the invasions of the Lom- 
bards had made the prevalent disorder even worse. When the 
system of an elected monarchy had divided the Lombard king- 
dom into some thirty duchies while a large number of the cities 
still depended on Byzantium, anarchy reached its zenith. 

It was at this moment that a great pope came onto the scene. 
He was able to make use of the situation in order to restore all 
its prestige to the papacy. Of patrician stock, he had been 
prefect of Rome. Yet honours had no attraction for him. He 
had heeded the Gospel counsel and, in his search for perfection, 
had sold all his immense property in order to provide endow- 
ment for monasteries. He himself had then withdrawn to one 
of these, on the Coelian hill. The conclave came to fetch him 
from it as the successor of Pelagius II (590). His name was 
Gregory. 

Like St Leo, he resisted the anarchy and violence of the 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE BARBARIANS 35 

barbarians and succeeded in containing them. He then fol- 
lowed the policy which St Remi and other bishops had found 
so successful and arranged a marriage between Agiiulf, Duke 
of Turin, and Theodelinda, a Catholic princess whose spiritual 
director he was. Theodelinda did not become Italy's Clotilda, 
as he had hoped she would, but she did at least have her 
children baptized, and built churches, among them that of 
Monza where her memory is preserved. If St Columbanus 
(c. 530-615) was able towards the end of his life to found a 
monastery at Bobbio, it was because the surrounding regions 
had been christianized by this princess. 

In Gaul, Gregory (590-604), an indefatigable letter-writer, 
gave spiritual direction to Childebert II, son of Branehaut, 
whom he recommended to support efforts to evangelize the 
countryside, and as we have just seen, he had given the full 
force of his own support to St Leander in Spain against the 
partisans of Arianism. 

England above all was the object of his apostolic zeal. After 
its entry Into the framework of the Empire, the south of the 
island had had Its missionaries. So well did they establish 
Christianity that the young Church of Britain could boast 
of its martyrs under Diocletian and of its three bishops at 
the Council of Aries in 314. The Saxon invasion of the fifth 
century had ravaged it but without disorganizing its hierarchy 
and its clergy or emptying its monasteries. But later the resent- 
ment felt by the invaded Britons against the invading Saxons 
remained for a long time so bitter that the former could not 
be asked, even when they were ordained priests, to share the 
work of evangelization of the latter. 

Gregory the Great therefore decided to send them a mission 
whose members he recruited from among the monks on the 
Coelian. Forty of them set out under the leadership of Augus- 
tine their prior. It was the largest apostolic expedition that had 
ever been undertaken. It immediately succeeded in converting 
king Ethelbert whose initiation into the new faith had been 
the work of the queen, Bertha, a Parisian and a woman of the 



36 THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE BARBARIANS 

same type as St Clotilda. Several monasteries were founded 
and Augustine became bishop of Canterbury. 

Gregory the Great had thought out bold methods of placing 
the new church on solid foundations. As he wrote to Melitus, 
the monk founder of the see of London: 

Tell Augustine that after giving much consideration to the 
affairs of the English, I have decided it would be unwise to 
destroy the temples. Destroy the idols only, then sprinkle the 
buildings with holy water, erect altars and put relics in them. 
If these temples are well built, they can be transferred from 
the worship of demons to that of the true God. Thus the nation, 
seeing that its sanctuaries are left standing, will abandon its 
errors and acknowledge and worship the Lord. People will find 
it easier to come to the places which they have previously 
frequented. 

[He uses the same tactics in regard to sacrifices:] Here again 
the previous custom must be transformed into the celebration 
of a Christian feast. Thus, on the day of the dedication, on the 
anniversary of the holy martyrs whose relics are venerated in 
the place, let the people put up their tents of leaves round the 
temples which have thus been transformed into churches and 
let them celebrate the feast with religious festivities. They are 
no longer to immolate animals to the devil but to kill them in 
God's honour and then eat them. And when they have had 

enough, let them give thanks to the author of all gifts It is 

impossible to change barbarian minds completely. This is most 
certainly true, for the top of a mountain can indeed be reached 
but only step by step not by leaps and bounds. It was in this 
way that God made himself known to the people of Israel. 

Gregory the Great granted the pallium, the distinguishing 
mark of archbishops, to Augustine and announced that he had 
created two metropolitan sees, at Canterbury and at York. 
Each of these was to have twelve bishoprics under its direc- 
tion. Neither he himself (he died in 604) nor Augustine, who 
died shortly after, was granted the privilege of working out 
this great plan in practice, but they had opened the way. 

The Church of England met with many and considerable 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE BARBARIANS 37 

difficulties. Fierce rivalry existed between princes who had 
remained pagan and their converted neighbours. Hostility 
persisted between the Britons belonging to the earlier Christian 
communities and the Saxon invaders. It was only when another 
band of missionaries arrived (c. 657) under the leadership of 
Theodore of Tarsus that charity triumphed and both parties 
were persuaded to submit to Rome. 

The monasteries developed considerably. The most cele- 
brated were Croyland and Wearmouth. From this time forward 
it was possible to speak of a Church of Britain, the Church 
which harboured the life of prayer and work of St Bede the 
Venerable. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE EVANGELIZATION OF 

GERMANY AND 

SCANDINAVIA 



Christianity had already made a few foundations in Germany 
when the first organized mission arrived there in the middle 
of the seventh century. Certain bishoprics had, in fact, been 
founded during the days of the Late Empire and had outlived 
it, e.g. Coire in the Orisons, Saben on the Italian side of the 
Alps, Augsburg, Trier the seat of one of the oldest bishoprics 
of the Roman period. 

Here and there in various regions, individual and obscure 
members of the Prankish clergy had crossed the Rhine. Some 
had gone as far as the Danube basin. The first and perhaps the 
most active of these, St Severinus, was at Astura (now 
Stockerau) in 454. For thirty years he evangelized Bavaria and 
Austria, built churches and founded monasteries, for he had 
compassion on sinners and on the poor and lived in the greatest 
austerity. 

Emmeramus evangelized Ratisbon (Regensburg). Eustace 
who died in 640 continued the work of St Severinus among the 
Boiarii of Bavaria. Rupert became bishop of Salzburg, 
Amandus travelled throughout Flanders, Brabant, the Toumai 
country, the Beauvais region and then went to preach as far 
away as Carinthia. 

Where did they all come from? We do not know the place 



GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA 39 

of St Severinus' birth. Rupert was a Frank from the Worms 
district; Eustace a Burgundian and also a disciple of St Colum- 
banus. When the latter had been expelled from Luxeuil by 
Thierry II, Eustace had succeeded him at the head of the illus- 
trious abbey in the Franche-Comte which, with some six hun- 
dred monks within its walls, maintained celebrated schools and 
sent out colonies over a wide area. The appearance of Irish 
monasticlsm on the scene during the period preceding the 
arrival of the first missions In Germany should be noted. Not 
that it directly shared to any great extent at least In the 
preaching of the Gospel; Irish monasticism preferred the 
eremitical life and, in the course of his numerous journeys, 
St Columbanus had principally in mind the founding of monas- 
teries. But the learning, virtues and asceticism of these 
monasteries were of benefit to generations of monks In various 
places and notably in Northumbria whence numbers of mis- 
sionaries were to set out for Germany. On their arrival there, 
they found the ground had been prepared for them to the 
south of the Main. The region over which paganism held 
absolute sway began only to the north of this river. 

We may wonder why the apostolic ardour of the Northum- 
brians chose Germany. The answer is that the conversion of 
their island was now almost completed and the continental 
Germans were of the same race as the Angles and Saxons who 
had invaded Britain and whose descendants some of these 
Northumbrians were. 

The first point of contact was in Friesland. In a sense this 
was the result of an odd stroke of fortune. Wilfrid of North- 
umbria during the early stages of a journey to Rome in 678 
was forced to spend the winter in Friesland. While there he 
converted several chieftains. He did not revisit the area but 
it was he who had provided the necessary stimulus. The mis- 
sionaries sent by his fellow countryman Egbert found no signs 
of Christianity surviving nor were they able to revive it. Two 
of them, Hewald the White and Hewald the Black, were put 



40 GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA 

to death by Radbod 9 king of Friesland, a fierce enemy of 
Christ. 

Willlbrord (or Wlllibrod), another of Wilfrid's disciples, was 
more fortunate. He converted the Utrecht region, founded two 
churches and a school for the formation of a Frisian clergy. 
Radbod prevented Christianity from penetrating elsewhere. 
Wiliibrod, disappointed by his partial failure in Friesland, went 
on to Thuringia where a Christian prince was in power, and he 
worked out for this principality a programme of apostolic 
activity which he was able to carry out only in part. He did 
however have time to establish some of his disciples in various 
centres. Then, weakened by old age, he scarcely ever left the 
abbey of Eisenach which he had founded in Luxemburg. It was 
here that he died in 739. At about the same time, St Pirminus, 
who may have come from Aquitania, preached in Alemannia 
and founded the monasteries of Reichenau (on an island in 
Lake Constance) and Murbach. From these, numbers of monks 
went forth to evangelize the neighbouring territories. When 
Winfrid, the future Boniface, appeared on the scene, several 
generations of his predecessors had therefore done a work of 
preparation which should not be passed over in silence. 

Winfrid was born in 675 in Wessex, the south-west of 
England. He was educated first at Exeter, then at Nursling near 
Southampton, two small abbeys which, under the protection of 
Theodore of Tarsus, the pope's envoy, were devoted to the 
Roman spirit at least as much as to pure Irish monasticism. 
His apostolic vocation was certainly indebted to this Irish 
monasticism, but it developed in a Roman atmosphere. This 
doubtless explains why he decided so early to place his missions 
under the authority of the papacy. 

At least it is true that after Ms first contact with Friesland in 
716, he came away convinced that the apostolate of isolated 
individuals could never establish anything great or lasting in 
this country. He therefore suggested to Gregory II that the 
method adopted by St Gregory in the case of England should 
be repeated. The pope agreed and on May llth, 719, ordered 



GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA 41 

him to make a visitation of the German peoples. "You shall 
no longer be called Winfrid," he added, "but Boniface, the 
doer of good." 

On his return, Boniface undertook the reform of the Tfaurin- 
gian clergy created by Willibrod. In so doing, he found himself 
in conflict with his predecessor. We hasten to add that the death 
of Radbod, the pagan tyrant, had made it possible for the 
missionaries to come back to Friesland, and Boniface joined 
Willibrod and under his orders worked for three years for the 
conversion of the Frisians. 

He then went on to Hesse and founded there the monastery 
of Amoneburg whose influence rapidly brought about a number 
of conversions. When the pope was informed of these excellent 
results, he summoned Boniface to Rome, consecrated him 
bishop and, when he set out again, handed him letters of recom- 
mendation to Charles Mattel. From then onwards, the work 
of Boniface was to develop on a new and wider scale. Hitherto 
it had been purely missionary, it was now to organize and 
create Churches with the support of the Prankish monarchy. 

On his return, he made a confirmation tour through Hesse, 
destroyed the idols there and founded the celebrated abbey of 
Fritzlar. Passing on into Thuringia, he began by establishing 
a monastery at Ohrdurf near Gotha. But very soon Willibrod's 
missionaries, supported by the political authorities in Thurin- 
gia, clashed with those of Boniface. Willibrod decided to with- 
draw his men. Boniface, now sole master in the land, took 
advantage of the fact to found a new Church. His success was 
so complete that Gregory II recognized it by sending him the 
pallium. 

With the help of monks summoned from England the new 
archbishop devoted all his care to the three abbeys of Fritzlar, 
Ohrdurf and Amoneburg, which soon had novitiates for the 
reception of natives of the country. Their influence was so 
widespread that Duke Hubert of Bavaria (c. 735) invited Boni- 
face to visit his country. As we have already seen, there were 
Christian communities there, bishops even, but of unequal 



42 GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA 

merit. One of them was even suspected of idolatry. There, as 
in Thuringla, reform was necessary. 

Boniface went to the pope and asked for the powers he 
needed. Once he had obtained them from Gregory III, he used 
them promptly and vigorously. Of the four bishops then in 
office, he kept only one, the bishop of Passau. Those of Ratis- 
bon, Salzburg and Freising he deposed and replaced by men 
of his own choice. Gregory's successor, Zachary, ratified every- 
thing he had done. 

He installed another bishop at Fichstatt on the border 
between Bavaria and Franconia, appointed bishops all of 
them priests from Britain to the sees of Wiirzburg, Buraburg 
and Erfurt. By the year 741, the hierarchy had been established 
everywhere from the Rhine to Bohemia. 

Boniface then wished to return to the evangelization of the 
Frisians, his original aim, constantly postponed but never for- 
gotten. The reform of the Church of Gaul, for which the papacy 
had made him responsible, took him away for another ten 
years. When this work was done, he went down the Rhine in 
753 (he was 79) accompanied by three priests, three deacons 
and four monks, on the way to Friesland. He visited the 
Zuyderzee, spent the winter at Utrecht and, when spring came, 
set out northwards preaching the true faith and making a large 
number of converts. But the old Frisian fanaticism revived as 
vigorous as ever. On June 5th, a group of pagans attacked the 
mission at Dokkum, put Boniface to death and massacred 
most of his companions. Some Franks came and took away 
the bodies of the martyrs. That of the apostle of Germany was 
buried at Fulda, the monastery founded by his disciple, Sturmi. 

When Charlemagne came to the throne (771), the situation 
was still much as it had been when Boniface died. The only 
new victory for Christianity had been won by Gregory, abbot 
of Utrecht, in the part of Friesland to the west of the Lauwers. 
Independent Friesland east of the Lauwers, then known as 
Saxony, the territory between the sea to the north, Hesse and 



GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA 43 

Thuringia to the south, the Rhine to the west and Swabia to 
the east, remained under the domination of the violent and 
fiercely anti-Roman paganism of the Saxons. One of its idols* 
Irrnino, they had glorified on the summit of the Eresburg, 
under the form of a statue of Arminius, the destroyer of the 
legions of Varus. As long as this barbarian worship remained 
intact there was little hope of Roman Christianity penetrating 
this region and it could only be destroyed by force. Hence the 
part played by Charlemagne in this final phase of the con- 
version of Germany. 

In the second year of his reign he destroyed the IminsuL 
At the time it was more important to master the Saxon forces 
than to conquer Saxony. In any case, after the first campaigns, 
the conquered troops were baptized en masse, the Westphalians 
at Paderborn (776). The division of southern and western 
Saxony into sectors which were to receive Christian mission- 
aries was already in course of preparation when, in 778, Widu- 
kind, the champion of the resistance, placed himself at the 
head of a rising which he persuaded the Danes to join, and 
advanced as far as Coblenz, ravaging Hesse and sweeping the 
Prankish forces before him. 

Charlemagne replied with a show of force that brought his 
armies as far as the Elbe. His object was still the evangeliza- 
tion of the region. Ten years previously, a Northumbrian 
missionary, Willehad, had converted the Frisians of the 
Drenthe. Charlemagne chose this exemplary apostle for the 
evangelization of the territory between the lower reaches of the 
Elbe and the Weser Wihmodia, where the population was 
largely Frisian. Two years later, the Prankish troops suffered 
a reverse and another rising resulted. Willehad survived it 
without injury but several of his helpers were martyred. 

Charlemagne countered with a policy of terrorization. In a 
single day he massacred 4,500 rebels at Verden. Draconian 
penal laws were promulgated. Sacrilege was punishable by 
death, and not only sacrilege but anyone plotting against the 
Christians or any unbaptized Saxon attempting to hide among 



44 GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA 

his fellows or refusing to be baptized. The choice lay between 
submission, that is baptism, and death. Widukind eventually 
chose baptism and received It in 785 at Attigny-sur-1'Aisne. 

Ten years of calm followed and the missionaries made full 
use of them. Willehad returned to Wihmodia and established 
the first Saxon bishopric at Bremen. Soon afterwards, Minden 
also had its bishop. The Verden region was evangelized by 
monks from Arnorbach and the Minister area by an abbot, 
while in southern Saxony missionaries from the Church of 
Eresburg preached the Gospel. But the old German spirit was 
still only dormant and the defeat of a Prankish force in 793 
reawakened it with all that this meant in the way of hatred of 
Catholicism. The rebels pillaged the churches, massacred the 
priests. The same fate awaited the Saxon converts who refused 
to deny their faith. A number of them preferred martyrdom to 
apostasy. The true faith therefore was already firmly based. 
Four campaigns were needed to bring peace to Saxony. It then 
became possible to organize the Church. It was divided into 
four dioceses: Minister, Paderbom, Osnabriick and Bremen. 
Liudger, a Frisian, grandson of one of WiUibrod's converts 
and who had been forced by the 784 revolt to take refuge in 
Italy, became bishop of Minister. Under Louis the Pious, the 
eastern part of Saxony was given three dioceses: Hildesheim, 
Halberstadt and Hamburg. 

Until the final pacification of the territory, the missionaries 
all came from monasteries situated to the west of the Rhine, 
on the Prankish side. The foundations on the right bank only 
appeared in the last years of Charlemagne's reign, at Wisbek, 
Meppen on the Ems, at Corvey and Stavoren. A number of 
Saxons joined the Corvey community which became an active 
spiritual centre and was soon to share in the christianization 
of the Scandinavian peoples. 

The Danes had taken part in the great rising of Wadukind. 
They had then barred the Slesvig isthmus by means of an enor- 
mous earth wall to be safe from the repressive measures the 



GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA 45 

Saxons had been obliged to endure. Louis the Pious took care 
not to attack it. Behind this wall and as a reaction against 
Christianity, the worship of Thor had taken on a new lease of 
life. The worshippers of the god carried his hammer round 
their necks In the form of an amulet and also underwent a 
kind of baptism which was a parody of the Christian sacra- 
ment. Nevertheless, Christianity had penetrated their ranks to 
a very small extent, It Is true, and by methods which remind 
us of those we have seen at work throughout the Roman 
Empire. Dorestad, a port on the Rhine delta, in an area 
christianized under Prankish influence, was the starting-point 
of the road which went via the Slesvig Isthmus and the Baltic 
and ended at Birka, the commercial centre of Sweden on an 
island to the west of Stockholm. Christian merchants and in 
particular Christian slaves came to this city in sufficient num- 
bers to form an embryo Christian community. 

Yet it was not at Birka that the first contact was made 
between the Prankish missions and the Scandinavians, but in 
Denmark which Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, though of 
German birth, entered as legate of Paschal III In 823 together 
with the monks Halltgar and Willerich. The latter was bishop 
of Bremen. Their aim was to obtain the goodwill or better 
still the conversion of the princes in the hope that their subjects 
would follow them. But there were no persons of importance 
among the converts they baptized. 

In 826 a new mission under the direction of the monk 
Anscar, entered Jutland. It had no greater success than had 
Ebbo's. Three years later, a delegation from Sweden came to 
Worms to inform the Emperor that certain Swedes wished to 
receive baptism. Anscar agreed to leave for Birka with a monk 
called Witmar. The king authorized them to preach and to 
build the first church in Scandinavia. But apart from the 
king's representative among the merchants and a few other 
private persons, Anscar's flock belonged entirely to the com- 
munity of Christian slaves whose origin we have already 
described. 



46 GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA 

On his return to Prankish territory eighteen months later 
Anscar was consecrated bishop of Hamburg, and Gregory IV 
subsequently divided Scandinavia between Mm and Ebbo. 
Denmark was Anscar's province and Sweden Ebbo's. A bishop, 
Gauzbert, succeeded in remaining at Birka for some twelve 
years. He was alone at first but shortly afterwards was joined 
by another missionary, yet no new converts were made. Rela- 
tions with the Swedes even became less cordial in the end. 
During a riot, Gauzbert's helper was killed, and he himself 
was unable to remain at Birka. 

In Denmark, Anscar was more fortunate, thanks to the sup- 
port of King Haarek who authorized him to build a church 
at Slesvig and another at Ribe. In 852, Anscar was once more 
at Birka together with the monk Erimbert. The small com- 
munity of slaves had been without a pastor for some years but 
until Anscar's death, Birka had several priests-in-charge. Sub- 
sequently only the communities at Slesvig and Ribe survived. 

We may wonder why such courageous and fervent pioneers 
were unable to attract a larger audience. The reason is that 
their first foundations were composed almost entirely of 
foreigners merchants and slaves. In Scandinavia, as in the 
West as a whole, we may say that the native populations 
became Christian when the example had been set by sovereigns 
and public figures. It is the story of Clovis constantly repeated. 

But among the Scandinavians, the first chiefs to be converted 
were those who obtained kingdoms by conquest in christianized 
territories. Marriages and alliances were sealed by baptism. 
Guthred, the second king of York, was baptized at the end of 
the ninth century. Sigtrygg and Olaf, kings of Dublin, died 
Christians in the tenth century. Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, 
received baptism and his duchy at one and the same time in 
911. In all these cases, paganism began by evincing strong 
resistance to such examples although they were set by men of 
high rank. Eventually, however, it capitulated fairly quickly. 

The Scandinavian territories properly so-called became 
Christian at a later date. In Denmark, the baptism of king 



GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA 47 

Harald Is shrouded In mystery. It Is at least an established fact 
that bishops (of German origin, It is true) represented the 
country at the Synod of Ingelheim (948), those of Slesvig, Ribe 
and Aarhus. The progress of Christianity continued to meet 
serious obstacles for almost a century. Then King Canute the 
Great, who died in 1035, established regular relations with the 
Holy See and these were ratified by his nephew Sven Estridsen. 

Viking princes, who had been baptized outside the 
country, established Christianity In Norway. Haakon the Good 
did not show any great zeal. On the other hand, Olaf, son of 
Tryggvi (995-1000) and, above all, Olaf the Fat (St Olaf, 
1014-30) were real apostles. At the end of the eleventh century, 
there were three bishoprics: Trondhjem, Bergen, Oslo. 

Iceland received missionaries brought from the Continent by 
the Vikings. Paganism disappeared but after a long period of 
resistance. In the year 1000, the plenary assembly of the Ice- 
landers decided that Christianity should be the only authorized 
form of worship. 

Sweden's conversion followed a different, slower and more 
mysterious course and missionaries from outside the country 
played the leading part in It. The German Bruno of Querfurt, 
the Englishman Osmund, are the best known among these. 
Here again, paganism proved tenacious especially in Uppland 
and Gotaland, a southern province, where it did not surrender 
until the twelfth century. 



CHAPTER V 



EVANGELIZATION OF THE 

SLAVS, MAGYARS AND 

RUSSIANS 



At the beginning of the ninth century in the Prankish states s 
the bishoprics nearest the eastern frontier were Ratisbon, 
Passau and Salzburg. To the East stretched the Slav countries 
in which organized Christian communities were non-existent. 
Prankish priests and monks had visited them for many years 
previously, yet the first missions did not come from the 
Prankish empire. 

In 862, Ratislav, prince of the Moravians, turned to Con- 
stantinople for help in countering a rapprochement between 
the Franks and the Bulgars which was causing him anxiety and 
he asked the Emperor Michael III (842-67) to send him mis- 
sionaries who knew the Slavonic language. The civil and 
religious powers, the Emperor and the Patriarch, delighted to 
steal a march on Rome in the interests of the Byzantine 
Church, appointed Constantine and Methodius, two brothers 
whose learning and virtue were of the highest order. These 
two apostles, of course, remained outside these rivalries and 
played a decisive part in the establishment of Christianity 
among the Slavs. 

They were Greeks by birth, sons of a high-grade civil ser- 
vant of Thessalonica and had themselves held important civil 
offices. Constantine, known as the Philosopher, had taught 



THE SLAVS, MAGYARS AND RUSSIANS 49 

philosophy at the imperial university. He had translated into 
Slavonic a collection of passages from the Gospels before they 
set out on their journey. Methodius also knew Slavonic. Their 
hearers were therefore pleasantly surprised to be instructed in 
Christianity through the medium of their own language and 
by apostles thoroughly informed about their culture and 
national spirit. After mature reflection, Constantine gave them 
a liturgy they could understand in the Slavonic tongue. This 
was a new departure and made his work distinctly easier. 

The Holy See approved and a little later confirmed it when 
the Roman clergy tried to have it condemned. Adrian II gave 
a very favourable welcome to the two brothers in Rome. He 
supported them and in order to give more prominence to his 
decision, arranged for their disciples to be ordained by a dis- 
tinguished member of the Roman party well known for his 
opposition to the two apostles. The latter had the joy of seeing 
the Slavonic liturgical books placed on the altar of Sancta 
Maria ad Praesepe 1 and the Slavonic liturgy celebrated in the 
basilicas of St Peter, St Petroniila, St Andrew and St Paul. 

Constantine, feeling that his end was near, withdrew to a 
monastery and took the monastic habit under the name of 
Cyril. On February 14th, 869, he died charging his brother and 
his disciples to continue the work that had been begun. 

Methodius became bishop of Sinnium, archbishop of Pan- 
nonia and, finally, papal legate to the Slav peoples. This did 
not prevent the Prankish bishops from waging fierce war 
against him. They refused to recognize his authority, im- 
prisoned him and only set him free when ordered to do so by 
John VIII, who commanded the archbishop of Salzburg per- 
sonally to conduct him back to Moravia and to re-establish him 
in his see. 

Methodius died on April 6th, 885. His death did not put 
an end to the opposition of the Prankish bishops, who suc- 
ceeded in having the Slavonic liturgy banned and in driving 
several of Methodius' disciples from Moravia. These exiles 

1 St Mary Major. 



50 THE SLAVS, MAGYARS AND RUSSIANS 

went to Bulgaria and took with them the sacred books In 
Slavonic. Thus the work of the two brothers Cyril and 
Methodius came under the domination of the Byzantine 
Church and shared its subsequent fate. 

Meanwhile, the Magyars from the East had Invaded Hun- 
gary. Their Initiation Into Christianity may have been begun 
by Byzantine priests during the first stage of their migration. 
It was continued by Prankish priests depending on the bishop- 
rics of Passau and Ratisbon. 

Then the principal evangelist of the Hungarians appeared, 
St Adalbert, a Slav whose original name was Voytiekh. He 
was martyred by the Prussians near Danzig in 997. Adalbert 
had the good fortune to administer confirmation to the son of 
the Hungarian duke, Geiza. This convert became king under 
the name of Stephen and consecrated his kingdom to the 
Blessed Virgin. The pope gave him the title of "apostolic king" 
because he had made Hungary a Christian country. 

Further east, the principality of Kiev was governed from 945 
by Princess Olga, widow of Igor, who had been taught the 
principles of Christianity by Byzantine priests. The conversion 
of the princess provoked a violent reaction among the pagans 
and her son Sviatoslav placed himself at its head. The war 
which followed took the prince into Bulgaria where, as we 
have seen, some of Methodius' disciples had taken refuge. The 
stay made by these Kiev Russians in Bulgaria was to have 
fortunate results. Sviatoslav returned to Kiev unconverted, but 
a number of his soldiers while they were among the Bulgars 
had come to know Christianity in its Slavonic form, far more 
intelligible to them than in its Latin form. The first step along 
the right road had been taken. The Christian religion won the 
day in Russia and Olga's dream had come true. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE MISSIONS AMONG 
THE MONGOLS 



At the beginning of the ^thirteenth century while the Church 
was still preaching the Crusade, St Francis of Assisi's Order 
of Friars Minor and St Dominic's Order of Preachers came 
into existence at one and the same time. Although these two 
movements were different in character, there is no reason, in 
our opinion, why they should be considered as in opposition 
to one another. Each was an answer to certain needs of the 
time. 

Islam, or, as the phrase was, the Saracens, had behaved as a 
determined enemy of Catholicism in Africa and Spain. They 
occupied the Holy Places. By undertaking to free these from 
their domination, the Crusaders, as is made clear by a passage 
in the cartulary of the abbey of St Bertin, were seeking to 
increase the body of the Church and to restore to God lands 
and cities unjustly held by the infidels. But to these motives of 
a religious nature were added others of a very human kind 
which did not diminish as time went on. 

Jerusalem was taken and lost again. This failure was salu- 
tary, we might almost be tempted to say, since it did not effect 
the lasting results on the intellectual and economic levels. It 
was when the spirit of the Crusades had revealed its weak- 
nesses that St Francis came upon the scene and preached a 
missionary doctrine inspired, as was his whole life, solely by 
the spirit of the Gospel. We cannot say it was new, for it was 



52 THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 

that of the early Church. The Moslems were commonly con- 
sidered to be simply men whose throats were to be cut and 
they, in their turn, asked for nothing better than to return 
the compliment, so as to receive not only an eternal reward 
but also the golden besant the Sultan ordered should be given 
to every man who brought back the head of a Christian. 
St Francis suggested that men should go to them for no other 
purpose than to preach the Gospel and lead them to baptism 
without any threats or use of force. 

He himself joined the crusaders in 1219 at Damietta and 
put his method into operation in spite of the opposition of 
Cardinal Pelagio. He went towards the enemy lines and suc- 
ceeded in obtaining an audience of the Sultan Melck-El-Kamel. 
The Sultan argued that he could not change his religion with- 
out alienating Ms people. St Francis, having failed to achieve 
any result, came sadly away. 

St Dominic too was prevented from realizing his desire to 
become a missionary but he wished that his disciples should 
take their share in missionary work. 

It was therefore in obedience to their illustrious founders 
that Franciscans and Dominicans, the wandering friars of both 
Orders, wanted to continue the evangelization of the Gentiles 
in Asia. 

In about the year 1223, the Dominicans, under the protection 
of the king of Hungary, arrived among the Comans or 
Qiptchaq, who lived in the Ukrainian steppes and were for the 
most part Shamanists. The wave of conversions caused by the 
baptism of one of their chiefs became considerable enough 
to lead the papacy to establish a bishopric among the Comans. 
The Dominicans then moved on to the north-east into greater 
Hungary or the territory situated to the east of the upper 
reaches of the Volga. But the Mongol invasion soon wiped out 
every vestige of the Comanian mission. 

These Mongols had nevertheless destroyed the Moslem 
empires of the Middle East. Further, as a large number of 
Nestorians lived under their rule and apparently in reasonable 



THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 53 

freedom, the papacy did not consider them at the outset as 
enemies. Innocent IV sent ambassadors to them in preference 
to missionaries; their task was to explore the ground and to 
prepare for the return to unity of the schismatics and heretics 
and, if possible, to persuade the Mongols to abandon violent 
methods. 

Two Franciscans, Dominic of Aragon and John of Piano di 
Carpine, set out on a journey, one to the Armenians, the other 
to the Russians, while two Dominicans, Andrew of Long- 
jumeau and Ascelin of Cremona, were sent, one to Syria and 
beyond and the other to the Mongol princes. In the end, Piano 
di Carpine alone made contact with one of these, Guyiik. This 
khan gave a courteous hearing to his exposition of Christianity, 
refused to be baptized and took leave of the Franciscan, at the 
same time instructing him to tell the pope that he considered 
the papacy his (Giiyuk's) vassal. 

Reports which came in later claimed that some Mongol 
chiefs had become converts to Christianity. This time St Louis, 
with the pope's approval, sent Andrew of Longjumeau on a 
second mission. Meanwhile Gtiyiik had died. His widow 
politely accepted the presents sent by the king of France. 
Among these were relics of the true Cross. She herself gave 
presents in return to the Dominican for St Louis but refused 
any precise undertaking in regard to the plan for a Franco- 
Mongol alliance against the Moslems of Irak. She too urged 
a counter-claim to the right of suzerainty over the West. 

Nevertheless Andrew of Longjumeau returned to report 
some good prospects for future missions. The Mongols were 
strictly neutral in religious matters. Further there were 
Christians at court in the higher ranks of the administration 
and even in the near neighbourhood of the throne. It was even 
said that the mother of Mangou (the emperor and a grandson 
of Genghis Khan) and several of his wives were Christians as 
well as Sartach, the khan in command between the Don and 
the Volga. As Matrod writes in his tude sur le voyage de 
Guillaume de Rubrouck: "People began to dream of the days 



54 THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 

of St Helena, Constantlne Chloras and Constantino ... in their 
over-excited imaginations they already saw the Cross casting 
its shadow over the tents of the nomads. It was still unsteady 
but an apostle would be able to plant it firmly there." 

The apostle chosen was a Franciscan Friar Minor, William 
of Rubrack, who came from the village of that name in 
French Flanders. The letters St Louis gave him did not mention 
political problems, they merely begged Prince Sartack to 
authorize the bearer and his companion, Bartholomew of 
Cremona, to remain in the territories under his command "in 
order to teach the word of God". The king of France had 
asked William to write down an account of everything of every 
sort which he might see among the Tartars. This embassy 
which at first was sent to Sartach alone, that is to the territory 
north and north-east of the Caspian and Aral seas, went as 
far as Karakoram, the capital of the empire. 

Everywhere the two Friars Minor, alone in the tower of 
Babel of the imperial horde, succeeded in gaining a hearing 
from the princes Sartach, Batou and Mangou, the great khan. 
They even won their esteem while the courtiers did all they 
could to be of disservice to them. The words of farewell 
addressed to them by Mangou were full of meaning. This 
hardened sceptic and his scepticism was doubtless due to the 
lack of zeal he saw among the followers of the various religions 
who lived at his court paid homage to their generosity, their 
disinterestedness and their uprightness. In the humble and 
charitable conduct of the two Franciscans he caught at least a 
momentary glimpse of the value of the true faith. 

After this isolated visit, genuine missions, profiting by the 
very ancient relations between East and West, went to Asia. 

Between the West especially Italy and the Djagatai* 
khanat, there existed means of communication which crossed 
the Crimea, passed through Sarai", a town on the Volga, to the 
north of the Caspian Sea, then south of the Sea of Aral as far 
as Almeligh at the centre of the middle Tartar empire. Further, 



THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 55 

certain Italian cities had established banks for their trade, 
Venice at Tana on the Sea of Azov at the mouth of the Don, 
Genoa in several of the Black Sea ports. In all these places, 
the missionaries could quite safely establish posts to serve as 
stages for their work. 

A great Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, reached China 
shortly before them. He left Constantinople in 1260 with his 
brother and when he arrived at Pekin (Kambalik) he was very 
courteously received by the great khan Qubilai" and was com- 
missioned by him to ask Gregory X (1271-6) to send mission- 
aries to his empire. The first two parties went no further than 
Armenia. When Qubilai sent a second request, a very experi- 
enced Franciscan, John of Monte Corvino, set out in 12&9. 
He travelled by sea, embarked in the Persian Gulf and reached 
Quilon at the southern extremity of the Malabar coast, and 
then continued to St Thomas on the coast of Coromandel. 
From there he went on to the Chinese port of Zayton and 
completed the final stage of his journey on foot. When he 
arrived at Kambalik, he handed his pontifical letters to 
Qubilai* s successor. His first audiences were Nestorians belong- 
ing to the kingdom of Ongiit, some hundreds of miles to the 
north-west of Kambalik. The king was converted and gave 
him every facility he needed for the building of a church at 
Olon-Siine, the capital. The ruins of this church were discovered 
a short time ago. During the following reign, a violent reaction 
among the Nestorians forced him to return to Kambalik, where 
he built a church. The progress of Christianity continued at an 
astonishing rate with 4*000 baptisms in one year alone (1305). 

When news of these results finally reached Rome, Clement V 
made Kambalik a metropolitan see. John of Monte Corvino 
was placed in charge of it with jurisdiction over the whole 
Mongol empire. He established a bishopric at Zayton. His 
apostolate among the various Christian families worked 
wonders. There were mass returns of Nestorians and 
Armenians to Rome. The section of the Alani people who had 
been deported to China by the Mongols and to whom William 



56 THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 

of Rubruck had so longed to give spiritual help, listened so 
religiously to John of Monte Corvino that they returned as a 
body to Roman Catholicism. They numbered fifteen thousand 
in all. Yet the illustrious Franciscan worked almost alone. 
Not that the papacy had abandoned him, but the missionaries 
were few in number and because of the distance, the length of 
time and the dangers of travel, the parties that set out arrived 
decimated. Sometimes they disappeared altogether. 

Yet Qdoric of Pordenone, another great missionary, reached 
his destination. It is from him that we learn how venerated was 
John of Monte Corvino by the great khan and all his court, 
But their frame of mind remained like that of Mangou. They 
listened to the apostle with great interest but, with a few ex- 
ceptions, went no further than this. 

After Monte Corvino's death, the see of Kanabalik was 
vacant for ten years. The bands of missionaries had ceased to 
arrive. John of Marignoli eventually came to take up the work 
and experienced from the khan the same kindness that had 
been shown to John of Monte Corvino, with every facility to 
visit the Christian foundations in China. This state of affairs 
so favourable to Catholicism was only changed when the 
Mongol dynasty was overthrown and replaced by that of the 
Ming with the Chinese nationalist reaction it brought in its 
train. Tolerance was replaced by the re-establishment of the 
official Confucian worship. Further, these Chinese Christian 
communities had become increasingly isolated from the West 
as a result of the establishment of areas under Moslem rule 
in central Asia. 

Before they came under the yoke of Islam, the central Asian 
lands, extending roughly from Lake Balkhach to the Don basin, 
had been fairly successfully evangelized as early as the end of 
the twelfth century. The first to arrive, Franciscans from 
Hungary, had obtained from the Mongol princes an ordinance 
allowing them to join the hordes in small groups. They moved 
about, dressed as Tartars, placing their portable altars on carts 
similar to those of their hosts. From evening till morning, 



THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 57 

there were opportunities of teaching Christianity and bearing 
witness to what they taught. TMs continual presence brought 
about many conversions. The most famous of these was that of 
one of the khans of the Golden Horde in 1311. But this success 
was not to last. The elder sons of the convert were dethroned 
by the Islamic party which transferred power to a prince of 
their own persuasion. 

Nevertheless, Christianity continued to progress in the East. 
In 1318, Sara!, hitherto dependent on Kambalik, became an 
episcopal see. Later it had an archbishop with jurisdiction 
over the khanate of the Golden Horde. 

In 1333, two Dominicans, Francis of Camerino and Richard 
the Englishman, sent the pope news of the conversion of a 
prince of Alani, the governor of Vospro (Kertch) in the Crimea. 
John XXII made this city an archbishopric with suffragan sees 
in the ports of the Black Sea Caffa, Kherson, Pera, Trebizond 
and Sebastopol in Abkhasia. After the Mongol governor of 
the Crimea had driven the Alani from Vospro, certain of these 
bishoprics disappeared, others lost their missionary character 
and the faithful under their jurisdiction were almost entirely 
members of the Italian colony. 

The most stable of the Christian communities on the Black 
Sea, that of Ziquia, was the work of a local Circassian by the 
name of John. He had been taken to Genoa as a slave, was 
converted to Catholicism and returned to his native land as a 
Franciscan where he made many converts. In 1349, the pope 
appointed John of Ziquia archbishop of Matrega (Tanan), a 
city lying opposite Kertch. After the conversion of the Kaitat 
people, from the Caspian Mountains in Daghestan, Maiera, 
Tarki and Kumuk became episcopal sees. 

Tamerlane's invasion abolished the episcopal hierarchy of 
these Circassian lands but did not totally destroy Christianity. 
It is known that there were still Franciscans and Christians of 
Latin rite among the Kaitats at the end of the fifteenth century. 

Further east, the Franciscan missionaries had made their 
way as far as Almaligh, the capital of the Djagatai* Khanat, 



58 THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 

where they had founded a friary. John XXII erected a see 
there with Richard of Burgundy as its bishop. The khan 
welcomed him favourably and entrusted to him the education 
of his son, who was baptized and given the name John. The 
story of the Golden Horde was soon repeated here. After the 
death of the khan, who was well disposed towards Catholicism, 
an Islamic reaction set in, the friary was sacked, three of the 
friars, three lay brothers (one a native) and a Genoese mer- 
chant were martyred. Once this wave of hatred had subsided, 
the friary was rebuilt. But a new Islamic outburst finally 
obliterated the Christian community at Almaligh. In any case, 
it would not have survived Tamerlane. 

We have still to give an account of apostolic work in the 
southern territories: Persia, Chaldea, Armenia, India. 

Between the Mongols of Persia and the West, long- 
established relations existed and were improved by the fact 
that during the Crusades both parties had a common enemy 
in the sultan of Egypt. Although no military alliance had been 
concluded between the Crusaders and the Mongol sovereigns, 
the latter nevertheless gave a courteous welcome to the 
Dominican missionaries sent to them. John XXII withdrew 
Sultaniah, the capital of the khanat of Persia, from the Kam- 
balik bishopric and erected it into an archdiocese in charge of 
the Dominicans. They were unable to weaken the Islamic posi- 
tions. Their apostolate, with papal approval, was directed 
almost exclusively to the dissident Christians and they found 
it difficult to achieve any lasting results. The difficulties arose 
from the frequent disagreement between the lower clergy and 
the ordinary faithful on the one hand and the patriarchs on the 
other. The former, who were deeply attached to the idea of a 
national Church, had no wish to return to unity, while their 
spiritual leaders were often favourably disposed to such a 
return. In Armenia, the missionaries were very successful at 
first. The archbishop of Karkilisse (St Thaddeus) submitted to 
Rome. The Qrna monastery followed suit and superintended 



THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 59 

the formation of the Order of the "United Brothers of St 
Gregory the Illuminator". The new Order showed great zeal, 
too much perhaps and in some respects ill-judged; in any case, 
a vigorous nationalist reaction became sufficiently widespread 
to counteract the movement towards unity. 

The chief obstacle was Islam. A missionary at that time, 
the Florentine Ricardo of Monte Croce, suffered cruelly at 
its hands and in a saintly spirit deserving of mention. A fierce 
attack forced him to leave his place of residence at Baghdad 
where he had received the news that, shortly after the fall of 
Ptolemais, the friary at Accon had been destroyed and all the 
Dominicans living there massacred. He was taken prisoner, 
beaten, ordered to become a Saracen and on his refusal 
divested of the habit of his Order. He was given a camel 
driver's clothes and made to work at this trade. One of his 
letters (quoted in the Revue Biblique, 1893, II, p. 589) reveals 
the serene way in which he accepted his lot: 

Embarrassed by my strange garb, I began to lead my camel 
by the chain and suddenly from a neglectful friar preacher as 
I had hitherto been, I became a vigilant camel driver. Overcome 
with joy, I burst into tears and cried: "O Lord, I have been told 
that Mahomet was a camel driver. Have you decided to make 
me destroy him by wearing the same costume as he did? In any 
case, for your sake I do not refuse to fight in any sort of dress." 

The first Latin missions in India were the outcome of an 
outburst of Moslem fanaticism. Missionaries on their way to 
China had continued for some years to follow the route taken 
by John of Monte Corvino. They set out from Ormuz for the 
west coast of India. They went by coasting vessel from port 
to port as far as Quilon on the Malabar coast and from this 
point were taken to their destination by felucca. The Malabar 
coast therefore was originally no more than a series of stages 
on the way. But on one such occasion, a party under the 
direction of the Franciscan Thomas of Tolentino was stopped 
at Thana near Bombay and there found itself violently attacked 
by Moslems. Four Franciscans were martyred (1320). A 



60 THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 

Dominican in the same party, Jourdain Cathala de Severac, 
had meanwhile decided not to continue on Ms way to China 
but to devote himself to the evangelization of the Nestorians 
scattered throughout the towns of India. The first Latin mission 
to India was bom. In the north, he found Islam firmly en- 
trenched and his efforts remained fruitless. He was more 
fortunate with the southern Nestorians and succeeded in 
detaching a good number of them from the form of Christianity 
which they were practising, distorted as it was and tainted on 
occasion by idolatry. It was for these reconciled Christians that 
the papacy established a see at Quilon. Severac was appointed 
its bishop. This bishopric was still in a flourishing state when 
Marignolli, the pope's legate, visited it in 1360. 

For a better appreciation of the quality of the missionaries 
in Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we need 
only look at some of the distances on the map. From Rome 
to Vospro and Matrega, the two metropolitan sees on the Black 
Sea and stages of considerable importance for the missionaries, 
the distance as the crow flies is some 1,250 miles, from Vospro 
to Almaligh, the Djabatai* bishopric, 2,250 miles, and from 
Almaligh to Kambalik 1,875 miles. To the south between 
Sultaniah and Samarkand the distance is 1,125 miles and 
2,500 between Sultaniah and Quilon. 

There could not have been more than a few hundred mis- 
sionaries at the most to evangelize these immense areas. Com- 
munications between them were irregular except in the dioceses 
bordering on the Black and Caspian Seas, the only regions in 
which dioceses formed any sort of group. Everywhere else, 
there was almost complete isolation. The problem of the 
arrival of reinforcements became increasingly complicated the 
further east one went. The journey to China took some three 
years. If all went well, half of those who had set out arrived 
at their destination, the others died on the way. 

Yet this handful of isolated Christians and venturers for 
whom outbreaks of Islamic fanaticism, epidemics, want, even 
famine, were constant hazards, succeeded in founding and 



THE MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS 61 

maintaining active Christian communities for almost a century 
and a half. For a long period they enjoyed the toleration of the 
Mongols. When Islam gained ground, they fought courageously 
and, as we have seen, took advantage of any opportunity that 
occurred to rebuild a church that had been destroyed, a friary 
that had been burned down, and accepted their trials like 
Ricardo of Monte Croce, In a spirit of genuine sanctity. 

Tamerlane's Invasions (1336-1405) were the final blow. The 
Tartar conqueror cut them off from all relations with the West, 
once he had established his mastery over the heart of Asia. 
The missions disappeared. The first Mongol empire had made 
the spread of Christianity possible In central Asia, the second 
wiped it out. 



PART II 

FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE 
NEW WORLD TO GREGORY XVI 



CHAPTER VII 

BEFORE THE 

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE 

CONGREGATION OF 

PROPAGANDA 



THE PARTITION OF THE NEW COUNTRIES 
AND THE INSTITUTION OF THE PATRON ATO 

At the end of the fifteenth century, the discovery of America 
and the East Indies proved that the Scholastic Doctors of the 
Middle Ages, Alexander of Hales, St Thomas Aquinas and 
St Albert the Great, had spoken rashly when they declared 
there was no place in the world in which echoes of the Gospel, 
if not the preaching of missionaries, had not been heard. It 
was not merely a few savages lost in the heart of the forest 
who were ignorant of Revelation but a great number of 
nations scattered over immense areas. 

The Bulls of Alexander VI divided these among the States 
who had discovered them, that is, Spain and Portugal. The 
Bull of 1493 placed the dividing line 100 miles west of the 
Azores and gave Spain all the territories to the west of it and 
Portugal all those to the east. In the following year, the Treaty 
of Tordesillas moved this line 370 miles further west so as to 
give Brazil, discovered by Cabral, to Portugal. This division 
was not contested in the West. In the East, on the contrary, 



66 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 

while Lisbon claimed the right to draw the line from the 
western end of Japan as far as New Guinea, Spain moved it 
a considerable distance to the west so as to include in her share 
the Philippines, Indo-China and almost all the Sunda islands. 
Serious conflicts between missionaries from these two countries 
arose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a result of 
this disagreement. 

The Spanish and Portuguese monarchies were given these 
territories on condition that they spread the Faith in them, sent 
out missionaries and built churches. They undertook this 
spiritual mission with undeniable fervour, but it earned them 
special powers and privileges which were defined in the Bull 
Universalf Ecclesiae (1598). These were known as the 
Patronato, Padroado in Lisbon, Padrao in Madrid. In prac- 
tice, the pope made over to the kings the government of and 
the responsibility for the Church in the Indies. When the Holy 
See later claimed its inalienable right to direct the apostolate 
ad infideles, difficulties arose, as we shall see. 

THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE MISSIONS IN 
AMERICA, THE PHILIPPINES AND THE CONGO 

The Spaniards first landed in the West Indies and the mis- 
sionaries came immediately after the discoverers. After a few 
fruitless efforts on the part of the Franciscans at Haiti and 
St Domingo, a new Franciscan party, seventeen in all, arrived 
in 1502. In 1505, the Franciscan mission to the West Indies 
was raised to the status of a province. 

The Dominicans sent their first mission in 1510. From 1511 
onwards, the hierarchy was established in the West Indies and 
numbered three sees. The bishop of St Domingo was a Fran- 
ciscan, the bishop of Concepcion de la Vega, a Dominican, 
and shortly after a secular was appointed to Puerto Rico. In 
1513, a Franciscan was appointed to Panama and was the first 
bishop on the mainland. The moving spirit behind this magni- 
ficent beginning was Ximenes de Cisneros (1436-1517). 



BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 67 

Such speedy work shows that Spain intended to combine 
spiritual with military conquest. Once Mexico had been con- 
quered (152 IX Cortes asked Charles V for sufficient men to 
begin a rapid and well-organized apostolate. In 1523, the first 
group of Franciscans landed under Peter of Ghent. This 
illegitimate son of a Habsburg, at a time when a fine future 
awaited those with the bar sinister, preferred the Lady Poverty 
to honours, imitated the holy founder of his Order by refusing 
the priesthood and devoted himself entirely to the conversion 
of the Indians. In 1524, the famous mission of the "Twelve 
Apostles" arrived. They were Franciscans. The first Domini- 
cans landed in 1526 and the Augustinians in 1533. These three 
Orders were to be responsible for almost all of the work of 
evangelizing Mexico until the Jesuits landed in 1572. 

The first Franciscan missions were to achieve distinction 
through one of their friars, Bernard de Sahagun, who was both 
an apostle and a man of learning. With the aid of a group of 
native scholars whose language he had learned and to whom 
he had taught his own as well as Latin, he conducted a monu- 
mental inquiry into the religions, customs, laws, fauna and 
flora of Mexico, on lines exactly similar to those of modern 
ethnology. It was published after his death with the title 
Historia general de las cosas de Nueve Espana. The mission- 
aries did not wait for its publication but agreed to adopt the 
system of "the clean sweep", that is, they did not try to dis- 
cover whether the religion of the natives might contain elements 
of truth. So lively was their horror of the human sacrifices 
practised in this religion that they insisted on their converts 
abandoning it entirely. In any case, Sahagun's work had led 
him to the same conclusions by the time he had completed it, 
and the reason why he had devoted so much care in bringing 
it to completion was that he might instruct his brethren and 
put them on their guard against any attempt at syncretism. 

All said and done, these pioneers were a mere handful 
scattered over an immense area. Yet they made numerous 
converts, using methods that may seem obvious enough today* 



68 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 

but the credit of initiating them at the time must go to the 
pioneers alone. They turned their attention first to the children 
so as to make apostles of them, small centres of shining faith 
and purity who were to radiate the light in their own homes. 
We know from Toribio de Motolinia's Historia de los Indios 
de la Nueva Espana that some of them even suffered martyr- 
dom for their witness to their faith. 

In the main, however, the natives of Mexico, apart from a 
few members of the old aristocracy, accepted the Spanish 
conquerors so passively that the missionaries interpreted what 
was doubtless merely a mask adopted from fear, distrust or 
even hostility, as a fundamental lack of maturity from both 
the political and spiritual standpoints. Some of the missionaries 
eventually wondered whether they were not in fact dealing 
with beings without the gift of reason. 

It was common practice to administer only the sacraments of 
baptism, penance and matrimony. The missionaries also 
admitted a fairly large number of their converts to confirmation 
but were more cautious regarding extreme unction. Doubts 
arose, and these at times caused acute distress of mind, as to 
the Eucharist and the priesthood. There was no general rule 
for the first which was administered rarely in some places and 
more frequently in others. In regard to Orders, Indians were 
not allowed to receive them. This prohibition did not come into 
force at once, but only after a very interesting experiment had 
been tried. 

The Franciscans, supported by the viceroy, D. Antonio de 
Mondoza, attempted from the beginning to recruit a native 
clergy. At the suggestion of Juan de Zumarraga, the bishop of 
Mexico, they founded the college of Tlaltelolco In a suburb 
of the capital. They were successful to the extent that their 
pupils were usually well gifted, and spoke Latin and Castilian. 
It was from among their number that Sahagun chose the colla- 
borators he needed for his inquiry. But the seminary soon 
caused serious anxiety to its founders, who discovered that it 
was difficult to detach their pupils, even the best of them, from 



BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 69 

the atmosphere of paganism and sensuality in which they had 
been bom and brought up. 

The opposite environment could hardly come into existence 
except in families which had been Christian for a long period 
and at the time when the representatives of the second or better 
still the third generation reached adult age. But the most 
determined advocates of a native clergy met with very strong 
opposition when the experiment had only just begun. And it 
came from the colonists and some of the Dominicans. They 
instanced the scandal caused by a former pupil who apostatized 
and became a preacher of apostasy. According to them, 
Tlaltelolco ran the risk of becoming a hot-bed of heresy. 
Zumarraga was discouraged, and wrote in 1545 to Charles V: 
". . . as for the college of Santiago, we do not know how long 
it can last, since the Indian students, the best scholars, tendunt 
ad nuptias potiusquam ad continentjatn" . It disappeared with- 
out producing one priest of Mexican blood. There was no 
subsequent rescinding of the decision to deny the priesthood 
to natives. The responsibility for the missions rested entirely 
on regulars and seculars, all Europeans, whose chief aim was 
to keep the converts under their protection in Christian villages 
away from their natural environment as well as from the bad 
example given by some of the Spaniards. 

In South America apostolic work began a little later than 
in Mexico and developed at the same speed and by means of 
similar methods. 

The Order of St Dominic was the first to arrive in Peru 
in 1531. As early as 1544, the Peruvian province of the Friars 
Preachers numbered fifty-five religious, stationed almost ex- 
clusively in various parts of the former Inca empire. 

The Franciscans arrived in 1540 and founded three houses 
at Quito, Cuzco and Lima. They quickly spread further south 
to Potosi, La Paz, Tucuman and even to the River Plate, the 
region that was the scene of the amazing apostolate of a 
missionary who was also a musician, Francis of Solano. 



70 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 

The Augustinians established monasteries in Peru in 1551 
and played a considerable part in the evangelization of the 
immense area extending from Popayan (Colombia) to Potosi 
(Bolivia). The Mercedarians, based also on Peru, advanced as 
far as the Argentine. Finally, the Jesuits, who landed in Peru 
in about the year 1568, shortly afterwards founded the 
provinces of Quito, New Granada, Paraguay and Chile. 

Lima became the metropolitan see for all this territory. 
After 1575 its jurisdiction extended from Central America to 
South America (Brazil excluded, since it was a dependency of 
the Portuguese patronatd). There were ten dioceses: Cuzco* 
Quito, Panama, Nicaragua, Popayan, Paraguay, Tucuman, 
Charcas or La Plata, Santiago de Chile and La Imperial (Chile). 

The first Council met at Lima in 1552. Another in 1567 was 
concerned with securing for the Indians doctrina, that is the 
teaching of the catechism, public worship and the administra- 
tion of the sacraments. It obliged parish priests to learn the 
language of the country and laid down penalties for those who 
refused to do so. It forbade confession through an interpreter. 
And the Crown ordered the establishment of chairs of quichita, 
the common language. Ten years after their arrival the Jesuits 
had already organized a system of language teaching, and 
there is the frequently quoted case of the illustrious bishop of 
Lima, Toribio of Mogrovejo, a great missionary of the period, 
who was able to address the Incas in their own official language. 

To provide uniform catechetical teaching, the Council of 
1583 arranged for the translation into the two principal lan- 
guages of a catechism it had drawn up which comprised three 
stages: a simplified course, a course for the majority of children 
and adults, and a higher course for an elite. The Council also 
decided that there should be one priest for the doctrinas of 
from one to two thousand souls, and two for the doctrinas of 
more than two thousand. Villages of less than a thousand 
inhabitants were to be grouped. It is obvious that the 
doctrineros, the priests, had a heavy task. It was therefore 
arranged that they should be given lay auxiliaries chosen from 



BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 71 

among the Indians, the best of whom might become catechists. 
Two stewards were to be the custodians of the church and the 
sacred vessels and to keep the parish accounts. Finally, super- 
visors were to be given the duty of notifying the doctrineras of 
births and cases of sickness, so that the sacraments could 
be administered. They were also to report the drunkards and 
sorcerers and to keep order at Mass and during catechism 
sessions. In South America as in Mexico, the apostolate quickly 
moved towards a system which was already a precursor of the 
Reductions. 

We observe the same similarity in regard to admission to the 
sacraments. Great caution was shown in allowing converts 
to approach the altar rails. Subsequently, this attitude became 
less strict but frequent communion was never the rule. The 
Council decided to refuse the priesthood to the Indians on 
the ground that they were unable to acquire a full understand- 
ing of the mysteries of the faith. 

This vast programme did not remain a dead-letter. It came 
to life. The vigorous faith of large numbers of officials gave it 
inspiration and warmth. Many religious and seculars came out 
from Spain and, on the whole, accomplished their mission 
without failing in their duty. Before passing a severe judgement 
on them, as has been done, we ought to consider the diffi- 
culties they had to face. 

In the first place, strict honesty obliges us not to view them 
in isolation from their times. The sixteenth century was in 
almost complete ignorance of civilizations other than that of 
Europe. The latter, so it believed, enjoyed an unquestionable 
superiority since it had sprung from Christianity and appeared 
to be the necessary means of propagating it. 

Several centuries elapsed before it was admitted that Chrisf s 
teaching could flourish as completely in the new as in the old 
world and, during these centuries, natives who had received 
baptism were not always able to remain faithful to those of 
their customs which were not incompatible with Christianity. 
Moreover, how could the missionaries at the period following 



72 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 

the discovery of this new world have solved these difficult 
problems? If some national custom were to be deserving of 
toleration without any qualms of conscience whatsoever, they 
would have needed a profound knowledge of the civilizations 
and religions of the peoples to whom they were speaking. 

There were other drawbacks, the climate, for instance, the 
area, the lie of the land. The dioceses were so huge and travel 
so difficult that pastoral rounds might last for years. The first 
two made by St Toribio of Mogrovejo took six and four years 
respectively. He died during his last one, in 1606. 

The total number of religious and seculars, considerable 
though it is, when considered in isolation, looks paltry when 
we think that their ministry extended from Panama to Tucu- 
man, a distance of more than 2,500 miles. The clergy were 
badly distributed. They were too numerous in the cities, whose 
population was composed almost solely of Spaniards, and far 
too few among the Indians scattered throughout the country- 
side and the sierras. Among the seculars, recruitment was not 
careful enough, and since discipline was not sufficiently strict 
among the Orders, rivalries weakened their apostolate. 

But the chief obstacle was perhaps the regime under which 
the Indians were forced to live. The missionaries taught them 
the truths of Christianity and prepared them for baptism, but 
at the same time the colonists forced them to work for their 
benefit and used violence if they judged it necessary. Whether 
they were enrolled in the repartimientos or the encomiendas, 
Christianity in the temporal order, as far as they could see, 
meant loss of freedom. It is surely not surprising therefore 
that some converts openly stated that they did not want to 
go to Paradise for fear of meeting their oppressors there. 
Neither the campaigns undertaken by some of the missionaries, 
Las Casas and others, nor instructions from Rome and the 
kings, all of which drew attention to the fact that the natives 
were to be treated as free men, succeeded in making any real 
change in the regime forced on the natives by the colonists. 
The quality of the converts was bound to suffer. Paganism 



BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 73 

might be renounced in word, but in fact It remained deep 
down and disguised under Christian ceremonies. It was there- 
fore all the harder to unearth and to overcome. 

Yet, as early as the sixteenth century, the Spanish mission- 
aries had accomplished a noble apostolic work. We can accept 
the word of the great apostle Toribio de Mogrovejo when he 
says that he confirmed 500,000 people during his second 
pastoral round. The Church established in the new world was 
not merely a brilliant fagade. The cathedrals, the more modest 
buildings, the numerous monasteries that they built, prove that 
the Spaniards wished to accomplish a work which would last. 

In the Malayan archipelago of the Philippines, the Spanish 

had an outstanding success. Madrid questioned whether the 
literal interpretation of the treaty of Tordesillas (1493) brought 
the archipelago within the Portuguese domains, as Lisbon 
claimed. Since the Spice Islands had been assigned to Portugal, 
Spain laid claim to the Philippines and Spaniards landed there, 
unsuccessfully in 1542, and again in 1564, this time for good. 
They had come from Mexico, the terminus for Pacific trade 
of the galleons sailing from Asia and of the Indian Ocean and 
Cape route which depended on the Portuguese monopoly. A 
small band of Augustinians had gone with the expedition. 
Reinforcements reached the pioneers; Franciscans (1577), 
Jesuits (1581), and Dominicans were soon on the scene. Forty 
years later, the archipelago was Christian. Since there were no 
mines there, European colonists had not come. The Filipinos 
were able to maintain their agricultural and patriarchal 
economy and their status was not unlike that found in the 
Reductions. 

The missionaries had no difficulty in winning them over 
from a religion which was no more than a rudimentary animism 
without any common practices or places of worship. In 1585, 
there were already 400,000 converts. There were two million 
in 1620 and the clergy who ministered to them, at least in the 
rural parishes, were Filipinos. 



74 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 

Catholicism was introduced into Brazil in the middle of the 
sixteenth century by the Jesuits with the help of the Portuguese 
Crown. 

The first group landed at Bahia in 1549. It numbered six 
religious in all. In the same year 9 this handful of missionaries, 
under the direction, it is true, of a very great apostle, Fr de 
Nobrega, visited the areas around the old capital of Brazil and 
laid the foundations of a teaching system of which the first 
results were the confraternity and the college of Meninos de 
Jesus. Fr de Nobrega gathered there some young Indians 
together with orphans he had arranged to be sent out from 
Portugal. He hoped that as they studied their religion and their 
rudiments side by side, genuine friendship would spring up 
between them, and that the orphans would at the same time 
learn the Brazilian language and the little Indians Portuguese. 
The latter would then return home to their villages and spread 
the Good News. We, cannot but admire such a bold project 
which was to prepare for the fusion of the races at the moral 
level within the framework of Christianity. But difficulties that 
arose in the application of the programme, due doubtless to 
insufficient knowledge of the character of the Indians, caused 
the confraternity scheme to be abandoned. Only the Jesus 
College survived. Its teaching began with reading and advanced 
as far as theology. It served as a seminary for the secular 
clergy, both Portuguese and Creole, and also as a house for the 
formation of the young religious of the Society. 

The missionaries rapidly brought Christianity to the areas 
north and south of Bahia, to the south, as far as Sao Paulo and 
Rio de Janeiro, two cities founded by the Jesuits (and in 
particular by Fr de Nobrega) and to the north, as far as 
Pernambuco (Recife). Faced with a religion without external 
worship or a priesthood and with a political system without 
written laws or a hereditary authority, the Jesuits adopted the 
"clean sweep" method. The Indians were easily won over from 
their practices but their easy-going nature drew them back 
equally quickly if ever the careful watch on them was relaxed. 



BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 75 

In order to instruct them and stiffen their characters, it was 
necessary to group them in Christian villages. But the Indians 
soon wanted their spiritual leaders to be their temporal leaders 
also, in recognition of the protection they were giving them. 
The General of the Jesuits considered it his duty to ask his 
religious not to follow this course but to avoid undertaking any 
political function. Then other difficulties arose. If the Fathers 
ceased to rule in the villages, the Indians would be afraid that 
once they were no longer under their care, they would be 
maltreated and so would ran away to the forests and become 
inaccessible. Eventually things were left as they were so as 
not to compromise and perhaps ruin an apostolate which had 
been organized with so much labour. 

The Fathers contrived to introduce forms of entertainment 
into the natives' disciplined and hardworking life. There were 
songs, dances, masquerades, processions, bull-fights and edify- 
ing comedies written by a Spanish Jesuit, Anchieta, "the 
apostle of Brazil". 

The liturgy was surrounded with great pomp. Baptisms and 
weddings were celebrated with the splendour of feast days, and 
processions were on the scale of huge spectacular demonstra- 
tions to the glory of God. 

The converts were admitted to all the sacraments, although 
Holy Communion was not given without strict preparation. 
The Indians were not admitted to Orders for the same reasons 
as in Peru but also for another which was peculiar to Brazil. 
The missionary zeal of the mother-country, great though it 
was, could not bridge the gap between its own territory and the 
immense size of the territories attached to the Crown. It was 
scarcely possible to evangelize more than the coasts and the 
Christian communities there were not sufficiently numerous to 
ensure the provision of a native clergy. 

In the Congo, the missionaries who had accompanied Cao 
converted the king and queen. The sovereign subsequently 
apostatized. On the other hand, his son Alfonso was a man of 



76 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 

firm and active faith. In 1513, lie sent an embassy to the pope 
to assure Mm of Ms loyalty. One of its members was Ms son 
Henry. He won great esteem in Portugal and in Rome both for 
his piety and intelligence and was consecrated a bishop in 1520. 
He returned to Ms country with several of his fellow country- 
men who had been ordained priests in order to work there, 
with Alfonso's permission, for the preparation of a Congolese 
clergy. But the candidates who were sent to study in the 
mother-country did not persevere or were unable to withstand 
a climate so different from their own. After Alfonso's death in 
1543_h e had maintained his faith unshaken the Congo 
mission gradually faded away. What then had happened? 
Portugal had neglected the African coastal territories and con- 
centrated all its efforts on the East Indies, whose future seemed 
much more promising. The first nucleus of missionaries had 
not increased nor been renewed. In any case its members were 
of mediocre quality and had become insufficient for the exer- 
cise of the ministry among converts who had been too hastily 
baptized. Some of the religious had engaged in trade. Finally, 
the slave traffic brought complete discredit on Europeans and 
their religion. 

From 1560 onwards, there were missionaries at Mozambique. 
They had come since the news had reached them that the Negro 
king wished to become a convert. The three Jesuits in the first 
party found the chiefs and his subjects very docile and willing 
to be baptized en masse. But during the following year, the 
superior was murdered and a general apostasy followed. Subse- 
quently, the Dominicans, in spite of all their efforts, could not 
win the natives from a kind of syncretism which included odds 
and ends of Islam mixed with their own tribal animism. 

In Angola, the apostolate begun in 1560 by four Jesuits 
resulted at the end of the sixteenth century in the rise of a 
Christian community of 20,000 converts in Massangano, which 
became an episcopal see. But this centre did not develop and in 
this it was like all the African foundations of the period. 



BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 77 

ST FRANCIS XAV1ER IN INDIA AND JAPAN 

The Portuguese had gone to India with the object of wresting 
the monopoly in spices from Venice and the Arabs. But there, 
as in Brazil, they by no means forgot their duties to Catholicism 
as these had been defined in the Bulls. 

In the initial stages, they thought only of settling in with all 
their own institutions. The pagodas were destroyed and the 
pagan customs disregarded. The system of the "clean sweep" 
was vigorously applied and eventually led to the use in the 
religious sphere of the Compelle intrare the natives were 
made to become Portuguese. But not for long. The arrival of 
St Francis Xavier opened the way for a more apostolic method. 

The life of this famous apostle, when purged of all its legen- 
dary accretions, recovers all its meaning and its value as an 
example. It is still the life of a saint, but this saint, instead of 
hovering in a world of marvels with no practical significance, 
is revealed as a forerunner of things to come. 

Goa and it was here that he landed on May 6th, 1542 was 
scarcely more than an annexe of Portugal, but with the added 
and disheartening fact that dissolute living and the love of 
lucre, which had grown up because of the distance from the 
mother-country, were scandalously flaunted. However, he was 
in charge of the college that had just been founded there and 
could not set up his headquarters elsewhere. But as soon as he 
was able, he escaped to the Fishery coast, where his predeces- 
sors had founded an embryo Christian community but without 
any genuine preparation. Xavier hastened to instruct these 
people, to solemnize the marriages of the adults and to organize 
Christian groups. This was a task that had to be done before 
all else and it was made difficult by the climate, the almost 
complete absence of his brethren and his ignorance of the 
language. Legend says he enjoyed gifts like those the apostles 
received at Pentecost, but he himself never hid the fact that he 
was accompanied by interpreters and that an immense amount 
of work remained to be done. Henceforward, we see that he no 



78 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 

longer shared all the positions taken up by the Portuguese. For 
him, indeed, there was no question of depriving the Indians of 
their nationality, it was Christianity that had to be solidly 
established. 

It was in Japan that the great apostle showed the full 
measure of Ms powers. Thanks to the good offices of three 
Japanese he had known and baptized at Malacca, he succeeded 
in finding a junk which landed him together with two other 
Jesuits at Kagoshima in 'the southern part of the great island 
of Kyushu. It was August 15th, 1549, a date to be remem- 
bered, for he was the first missionary ever to enter Japan. He 
found the Japanese most interested in Western inventions but 
thought their political situation deplorable. The division of the 
land among numerous principalities perpetually at war with 
each other favoured a state of feudal anarchy which a purely 
nominal sovereign, the Mikado, living a cloistered and wretched 
life at Kyoto, was unable to bring to an end. St Francis Xavier 
considered there was no point in contacting this "do-nothing 
king 5 * and decided to go to the daimyo of Yamaguchi. But for 
this visit he put aside the humble apparel which had hitherto 
ensured him a favourable reception throughout the Portuguese 
Orient, He had quickly learned from experience that this 
would not do. In Japan lack of display would only have dis- 
credited him. And so he appeared before the daimyo, clothed 
in silk, escorted by Portuguese merchants in similar array, and 
bearing rich presents. This was the right procedure, since he 
was allotted some land and given permission to preach. A 
daimyo on the east coast granted him the same facilities in his 
territory. 

These first contacts revealed to him the existence of a 
numerous class of scholars, bonzes and lords, with subtle 
minds, full of curiosity, and formidable in argument. With 
people like this, it was essential to show that he too was 
learned and shrewd. 

Xavier was now convinced that the system of the "clean 
sweep" would be fatal in Japan. Accompanied by Fr Cosmo de 



BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 79 

Torres and Brother Juan Fernandez, who acted as interpreter, 
he began a controversy with these worthies and not without 
success. The important thing to remember is not so much the 
figure for the number of converts (there were not even a 
thousand in all when he left Japan in November 1551) but the 
experience he had acquired. It proved that if the apostolate 
was to be effective, especially among the upper classes, it 
would need to be based on a profound knowledge of the 
religion, laws and customs of the country. 

Francis Xavier had also discovered in Japan the immense 
prestige enjoyed by the Chinese empire. If your religion were 
a good one, some of the Japanese had told him, China, a nation 
where wisdom flourishes, would already have adopted it. The 
great apostle had drawn the conclusion that the conversion of 
the Chinese empire to Christianity was a work of the first 
importance. He was about to undertake it when he died at 
Sanchoan, a small island in the bay of Canton, on December 
3rd, 1552, not far from Macao where, twenty years later, 
Fr Ricci was to arrive and attempt in his turn to force the 
gates of China closed to Europeans since the end of the four- 
teenth century. 

When St Francis Xavier left Japan, he was by no means 
certain of the success of his work. The curiosity shown by his 
hearers had certainly seemed a good sign. In a letter from 
Cochin dated January 29th, 1552, he wrote "...after the 
daimyo of Yamaguchi had authorized us to preach God's 
law, so many people came to ask us questions and to discuss 
things with us, that my joy and consolation were such that I 
think I am justified in saying that I had never experienced 
them to so great an extent during my whole life". 

Nevertheless, this curiosity was awakened at least as much 
by Western science and its applications, such as ships and 
canons, as by religious problems. In general Christianity was 
received as a kind of by-product, on the ground that the religion 
of such clever and industrious men must inevitably be a good 



80 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 

one. We must bear in mind that the Japanese had adopted 
Buddhism for similar reasons in the seventh century. 

Yet the fact remains that, in 1586, the Christian communities 
of Japan numbered 200,000 converts. By the end of the cen- 
tury, this figure had been increased by 100,000 further conver- 
sions. Such a beginning gave grounds for hope. But in 1638, 
Japan was to close its gates completely against Europe and 
Christianity for more than two centuries. We may well ask why 
and how this was done. 

The Jesuits, the first missionaries to arrive and the only ones 
until 1590 9 had made their mark because of their knowledge 
and their moral qualities which contrasted sharply with the 
loose living found in the most recent Buddhist houses. They 
had all applied the method of adaptation. The visitor, 
Fr Valignano, had approved it. On the other hand, the "clean 
sweep" system prevailed in the Philippines which had passed 
over to the Spanish patronato. This variation in method was 
quite simply due to the difference between the level of intel- 
lectual development among the Manillans as compared with 
that of the Japanese. It was very desirable that this difference 
should be maintained; each of the two methods had proved its 
value in its own sphere. 

A Jesuit from Manila, Fr Sanchez, on his arrival in Japan, 
refused to use the method in force there. This refusal filled 
Fr Valignano with misgivings. However he succeeded in com- 
municating them to the General of the Jesuits and to such good 
effect that the latter decided to keep all the fathers in the 
Spanish paironato away from Japan. But the prohibition was 
only valid for the Society of Jesus. If religious from another 
Order succeeded in entering the country, the unity of method 
would be destroyed. This in fact happened, as an indirect result 
of political events in Japan. 

Following upheavals in the country, a dictator, Hideyoshi, 
had seized power. He showed a tolerant attitude at first, but 
in 1587, in an outburst of temper for a reason unknown, he 
decreed the expulsion of all the Portuguese. Fr Valignano's 



BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 81 

skill succeeded in making the decree a dead letter and preach- 
ing could continue. However, the rivalries between Portugal 
and Spain, which soon came to the knowledge of Hideyoshi, 
induced him to turn them to his own profit. He approached, or 
rather sent messengers to, the Manila authorities. They listened 
to what he had to say and, for his information., sent two 
missions to the dictator, one under the direction of a Domini- 
can, the other under a Franciscan. Hideyoshi chose the 
Franciscans and authorized them to preach Christianity in 
Japan. The newcomers certainly behaved as zealous apostles, 
but they used the "clean sweep" method. What Fr Valignano 
had feared had happened; unity no longer existed. 

Further, the arrival of the Spaniards led to complications 
of a political nature. A galleon from Manila ran aground on 
the coast of Tosa to the south of the Japanese archipelago. It 
was seized by the Japanese authorities. The pilot threatened to 
appeal to Ms sovereign for reprisals to be taken. This and other 
incidents changed the atmosphere of relative tolerance which 
had been maintained after a fashion since the edict of 1587. 
The edict had not been withdrawn and Hideyoshi used it to 
condemn to death six Franciscans accused of preaching openly 
against the religion of the land, together with seventeen of their 
converts and three Japanese Jesuit brothers. The twenty-six 
condemned men were put to death by crucifixion at Nagasaki 
on February 5th, 1597. 

leyasu, Hideyoshi's successor, waged a still fiercer battle 
against Catholicism. He issued the edict of 1613 which ordered 
all the daimyo to expel Japanese and foreign preachers, to 
destroy all the churches and to force the converts to apostatize 
at once. 

We know from the evidence of a Franciscan, Diego of 
St Francis, that, at the height of this persecution, some of the 
faithful at the risk of their lives welcomed him with "in- 
describable joy", and that he gave them the sacraments. After 
the year 1638 9 it was all but impossible for missionaries to 
enter the country even in disguise. Five Jesuits, one of them 



82 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 

Fr Rubin, who had been appointed visitor for Japan, did 
succeed in landing in August 1642. They were discovered by 
the spy network operating throughout the islands and put to 
death after suffering atrocious torture. 

During the sixty or so years that had elapsed since the arrival 
of St Francis Xavier, no agreement had been reached on the 
subject of the establishment of a Japanese clergy. Fr Valignano 
had wanted this to be done. His colleague, Fr Cabral, remained 
hesitant for fear that "Japanese pride" would not accept 
obedience. This was also the opinion of the coadjutor bishop of 
Nagasaki, Don Luis de Cerqueira. He had however done work 
towards equipping a seminary. He wrote in 1603 to the pope: 
"The exclusion of the natives from the ministry of the sacra- 
ments and the care of souls would have grave disadvantages; 
It would lead to jealousies, mistrust, suspicions, divisions." In 
the event, the persecution outstripped a project which would 
certainly have encountered reservations at least, if not open 
opposition. When the gates of Japan were finally closed, the 
Christians remained without priests for two centuries. 

FR RICCI AND THE INTRODUCTION OF 
CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 

While Christianity was being expelled from Japan, a Jesuit, 
Fr Ricci, in 1583 began introducing it into China and used 
St Francis Xavier's second method with exemplary intelligence 
and zeal. While making no secret of the fact that he was a 
Catholic priest, he described himself as a scholar, a learned 
mathematician from the West desirous of establishing relations 
with his peers in the Far East. He became a good Sinologue 
and soon had conversations with some of the mandarins. He 
baptized several of them. Encouraged by their friendly support 
he succeeded in advancing to the interior of the empire, to 
Nantchag, Nankin and Pekin which he entered in 1601. He was 
able to acquire a piece of land there with the authorization of 
the emperor. It still exists and is known as the Nant'ang. He 
published some doctrinal works in 1604. The True Idea of the 



BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 83 

Lord of Heaven, a dialogue between a Christian and a scholar 
in search of truth, and in the same year, Twenty-five Words, a 
little treatise on certain of man's duties, and again in 1607, 
Ten Paradoxes, a book containing clarifications, commentaries 
and explanations of the moral code and the principal articles 
of Christian belief. At the same time he published scientific 
works which established his reputation for learning. The con- 
siderable development of St Francis' second method at 
Fr Ricci's hands together with Ms tact, learning and virtues 
attracted adherents to Catholicism who formed an elite who 
were able with his help to see that it was possible to remain 
Chinese when one had entered the Mystical Body. At his death 
in 1610, the number of his converts stood at 2,000. 

Further, after examining the traditional rites such as the 
honours paid to ancestors and to Confucius, he was certain 
that these were "certainly not idolatrous and perhaps not 
superstitious". The manner in which he had tolerated them 
with an easy conscience had been the reason for his success 
with the upper classes. But Ms tolerant attitude was soon 
criticized by other missionaries, and later gave rise to the 
formidable, interminable wrangle over the rites which was to 
be so detrimental to the work of the apostolate. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FROM THE 

ESTABLISHMENT OF 

PROPAGANDA TO 

GREGORY XVI 



THE BULL INSCRUTABILI DIV1NAE AND THE 
INGOLI REPORTS 

The idea of a Congregation of Propaganda seems first to have 
occurred to John of Vendeville, a jurist who had taken orders. 
In 1567, he sent his first memorandum to Rome. It urged the 
need to establish special seminaries for the formation of "good 
workers". St Francis Borgia, the General of the Jesuits, had 
also suggested the founding of an organization especially to 
deal with the missions. Hence Pius V appointed a commission 
composed of four cardinals (1568). Gregory XIII increased its 
numbers and founded many missionary seminaries and colleges. 
A further memorandum from Vendeville caused Clement VIII 
to decide that the initial commission should be developed, and 
it became the Congregation for matters concerning the Catholic 
faith and religion (1592). Vendeville died in the same year. 
The next step towards the final organization was not possible 
until the arrival on the scene of another zealous supporter of 
the missions, the Carmelite Thomas of Jesus. A book which 
he published in 1613 dealt with "all the works that are of use 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 85 

to a religious and apostolic man". He suggested that on a given 
date a commission composed of eminent men should meet to 
study the problems raised by the apostolate to non-Christians. 
With its five secretaries covering the whole of the known world, 
it was the future Congregation in embryo. Yet it only came 
into existence on January 6th, 1622. It was given the name 
Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. The Bull Inscrutabili divinae 
of June 22nd in the same year gave it its official character. 
Six years later, a Bull of Urban VIII created the College of 
Propaganda, which was to undertake the "choice of qualified 
ministers who were to go to those peoples in the bondage of 
spiritual blindness and to shine with the brightness of an 
upright and well-ordered life, inflamed with an ardent zeal for 
souls, standing on the mountains like lamps glowing with the 
light of the Gospel teaching, dissolving and scattering, as far as 
lay in their power, the darkness of infidelity and heresy". 

The new organization was fortunate to have as its first secre- 
tary a learned jurist, Mgr Ingoli. His priestly life was above 
reproach, and he was so insensitive to honours that he never 
wore the insignia of his prelacy. In addition, he was a tireless 
worker. It is not surprising that with a character such as this, 
he should have been a dyed in the wool authoritarian. He 
immediately inaugurated a general inquiry among the nuncios 
and the mission institutes and heads. It gave him more com- 
plete information concerning abuses and disorders which were 
already known in a broad sort of way. Missionaries were too 
few in number and their intellectual and moral quality was 
sometimes inadequate. Some engaged in trade, many did not 
know the native languages and showed little zeal in conferring 
Orders on native Christians whom they considered to be in- 
ferior beings. Divisions were rampant everywhere, regulars 
against seculars, Portuguese against Spaniards in the Far East, 
regulars against other regulars. The choice of agents by the 
Councils of the Indies left much to be desired and the less 
worthy among them often found the ecclesiastical authorities 
very accommodating. But the men from whom the reports 



86 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

came in and this was a good sign expressed their wish that 
the newly constituted authority would speedily elaborate and 
impose reforms. 

Mgr Ingoli laid the foundations of this reform in three 
reports, three documents of basic importance. In order to 
remedy the discord existing between missionaries and to put a 
stop to their trading activities, the 1625 report called for 
greater discrimination in the choice of subjects, advised against 
the intermingling of religious from different Orders or nations 
in the same diocese, and recommended that the bishops should 
preferably be chosen from among the seculars and that apos- 
tolic delegates should be appointed to supervise the missions. 

The report of 1628 attacked the widespread prejudice against 
the natives as incapable of receiving the fullness of the priest- 
hood. It not only recommended that they should be raised to 
the priesthood, but also that they should not be kept on prin- 
ciple in subordinate posts. As soon as it became possible, 
episcopal sees, whose number should be increased, ought to be 
entrusted to them. This was the policy of Pius XI in embryo. 

Finally, the 1644 report denounced the inroads of the system 
of patronato and in particular the interference of royal officials 
of the Crown in the choice of bishops and the running of the 
missions. 

These three reports, inspired by the desire of the Holy See 
to claim for itself as an inalienable right the spiritual direction 
of the missions, were to give rise to serious conflicts with the 
patronato system, especially in Asia. 

FIRST MISSIONS SENT BY FRANCE TO CANADA, 
THE ORIENT AND MADAGASCAR 

A departure from the stipulations in the Bulls of Alex- 
ander VI appeared in the treaty of Vervins (1589) and made it 
possible for France to send her ships to the north of a line 
passing through the Canaries and for France's first missions to 
come into being in North America. 

We can hardly give the name of missions to the outposts 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 87 

established in Nova Scotia by a few isolated persons one of 
these was Lescarbot, a layman, who was followed by two 
Jesuits. In any case, a Welsh adventurer arrived as early as 
1613 and made havoc of these settlements before their founders 
had time to organize them properly. 

On the other hand, Champlain, a pioneer who was convinced 
of "the need to propagate the faith among the infidels by 
bringing among them some good religious" laid the founda- 
tions of genuine missions when in 1615 he put ashore at 
Quebec four Recollects who, as early as the second half of 
June, erected a chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. 

Their first investigations showed them that, apart from the 
Hurons, who were relatively stable some of them knew how 
to cultivate the soil the peoples in these territories led com- 
pletely nomadic lives. If they were to be evangelized, they had 
therefore to be made to settle down, to be prevented from 
wandering from place to place. Such a result might be achieved 
by giving Frenchmen, who were good agriculturists, the task 
of teaching them to turn the land to better account. In other 
words, a settlement had to be made. Champlain launched an 
appeal for volunteers but it was hardly heeded to begin with 
except by Louis Hebert. Yet surely no one was better qualified 
for this work than this apostle who, on Ms deathbed, offered his 
life for the conversion of the Indians. He had been driven out 
of Nova Scotia in 1613. He returned to the St Lawrence with 
his wife and children, married his daughter to a Norman, and 
the untold numbers of magistrates, officers, merchants and 
ecclesiastics who were the descendants of this marriage rightly 
earned for Hebert the title of "the father of believers", "the 
colony's Abraham". 

Meanwhile, at Tadoussac and Three Rivers, the first settle- 
ments founded by the Recollects, the Indians proved super- 
stitious, inveterate polygamists and dominated by the spirit of 
revenge. All this was the very antithesis of Christianity. And 
their language, so lacking in abstract terms, was inadequate to 
convey to them the attributes of the Godhead. In these 



88 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

depressing circumstances the Recollects decided to call on the 
Jesuits for help. 

The first Jesuit mission, led by Fr Charles Lalemant, landed 
at Quebec in 1625. Two years later, Richelieu founded the 
Company of the Hundred Associates, who guaranteed to send 
to Canada from 1628 onwards two or three hundred Frenchmen 
and four thousand more during the next fifteen years, all of 
them Catholics. In Canada, the Edict of Nantes was no longer 
in force. The colonial settlement Champlain and the Recollects 
wished to see could now be founded. But, in the summer of 
1628, England had no difficulty in taking possession of a 
Canada entirely without means of defence. The missionaries 
put to sea again and only the members of the nascent Hebert 
tribe remained. 

Since Champlain was able to prove that the capture of 
Quebec took place after the signing of the treaty of Suse, 
which had ended hostilities between England and France, a 
new mission, consisting entirely of Jesuits, arrived in Canada in 
1632, under the direction of Fr Le Jeune. He tried to keep the 
children at the mission station, with the parents' consent, so as 
to teach them the catechism. The restraint imposed on them 
by a regular life seemed intolerable to these children of nature 
and they were soon back with their tribes. Fr Le Jeune tried 
the scheme again, this time with a better organization on the 
material side, at Notre-Dame des Anges, in a Quebec suburb. 
He also drew up a more liberal set of regulations. The little 
savages again found it too oppressive. Several of them died, 
one escaped. The only thing to be done was to close this 
embryo seminary. 

Fr de Brebeuf, who had been received among the Hurons 
during his first stay in the country, returned to them in 1633 
with two other Fathers. They went from hut to hut and under- 
took the task of catechizing children and adults. But the 
Indians' sorcerers persuaded them that the presence among 
them of the Fathers was the cause of bad. weather, drought, 
epidemics and every kind of calamity. It was decided that they 



FROM ESTABLISHMEHT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 89 

should be put to death. The Fathers showed remarkable pluck 
by inviting their judges to a farewell banquet, as was the 
custom. The massacre was cancelled. 

The meagre results of these first contacts were a few children 
at Notre-Danie des Anges, a few dying people baptized and 
the apostasy of all the catechumens "except one or two families 
who scarcely dared to hold up their heads". 

The Jesuits then decided to protect the catechumens against 
the immense power of sorcery by isolating them in Christian 
villages. Sillery, the first of these, grew up four miles from 
Quebec. It had a fort, a chapel, houses, a hospital, and a house 
for the Jesuit fathers. 

In fact, for some years previously, the missionary reports of 
Lescarbot, Frs Biard and Masse, and especially after 1632, the 
annual publication by the Jesuits of Relations with a wide 
circulation, had inaugurated a new attitude of mind. Canada 
ceased to be thought of as the counterpart of More's Utopia. 
Men with the spirit of adventure, who were good Catholics 
too, were now arriving to colonize and build up New France. 
At the same time volunteers one might almost say crusaders 
came forward to work for the conversion of the Indians. Such 
were Mother Marie de L'Incarnation, an Ursuline from Tours, 
who with two of her nuns founded a boarding-school at Quebec 
for the education of Indian children; Madame de la Peiterie 
who, with some nursing Sisters from Dieppe, started a hospital, 
also at Quebec; the members of the Society of Notre Dame of 
Montreal who, with the support of M. Olier and the Company 
of the Blessed Sacrament, and in a spirit of complete dis- 
interestedness, built Ville Marie which was to become 
Montreal. 

While this apostolic emigration was arriving in Canada, the 
village of Sillery was well on the way to becoming, as the 
Relation for 1656-7 pointed out, "the one matrix of Chris- 
tianity in the new world". Members of various tribes, after 
living there and receiving instruction and baptism, returned 
as apostles to their native territories. So other villages modelled 



90 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

on Sillery grew up: Tadoussac, Three Rivers, Sainte-Marie de 
la Wye. 

On the other hand, the Iroquois proved hostile and un- 
yielding. In 1642, Fr Jogues had been horribly mutilated by 
them when, nobly sacrificing himself for his Huron converts, 
he had refused to leave them when they were carried off as 
captives into Iroquois territory. After living among them, he 
no longer doubted that they planned to exterminate the Huron 
race. Yet, when he was asked in 1646 to found a mission in 
Iroquois territory, he obeyed knowing well the fate that awaited 
him. He wrote to a brother Jesuit: Ibo et non redibo, "I shall 
go but I shall not return." And the Iroquois put him to death 
on October 18th, 1649. In the years that followed, they relent- 
lessly continued their war against the Hurons and the missions. 
In March 1649, they captured the villages of Saint-Ignace and 
Saint-Louis and martyred Frs de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lale- 
mant. Sainte-Marie had to be abandoned. A new attack in 
December brought about the martyrdom of Frs Charles Gamier 
and Noel ChabaneL What remained of the missions took 
refuge in Quebec. The situation was only restored in 1665 after 
the Carignan regiment had intervened. But the Huron people 
had been decimated and, as far as the Iroquois were con- 
cerned, the missionaries had completely failed. 

However, the Society of Jesus did not abandon Canada, 
although it never recovered the enthusiasm it had shown in the 
middle of the seventeenth century. Only apostles of the heroic 
kind, who were not afraid to spend the winter in tents, were 
to be found during the eighteenth century in the areas to the 
north-west of the first mission stations. The mission to the 
Iroquois was undertaken again. Its results were meagre. The 
only mission station that was firmly established, Michili- 
makinac, served as a base for the attempts at extending the 
work to the west and south-west, and in particular for that 
of Frs Marquette and Jolliet, the first white men to go down 
the Mississippi. 

Until the suppression of the Society, the Jesuits held first 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 91 

place in the North American missions, although the latter 
received valuable help from other quarters. The Sulpicians, 
who were given permission to set out in 1667, catechized 
Indians whom the slave trade had brought to Montreal. They 
also founded Christian villages on the shores of Two Mountain 
Lake and at La Presentation, where M. Picquet became so well 
known. The Paris Foreign Missions took over, for a time, the 
running of the Quebec seminary, which was entrusted in 1732 
to the priests of the seminary of the Holy Ghost. Some of the 
latter, including Fr Le Loutre, took part in the Nova Scotia 
and He Royale missions. 

The statistics and the moral quality of the converts are 
indicated in the census of 1737 which shows that there were 
1660 Christians in residence and a few hundred children. Their 
lively and very simple faith was revealed in highly emotional 
scenes of repentance after bouts of drunkenness, violence or 
lechery, and by a keen taste for great ceremonies. Some were 
exemplary, for instance, the Huron Chihwatenhawa, author of 
a prayer published in the Relation for 1640-1, a kind of 
primitive poem in which submission to God's will is expressed 
with overwhelming sincerity. 

The zeal aroused by the Canadian missions had not turned 
France's attention away from the Levant to which she was 
drawn by the memory of the Crusades and the Capitulations 
regime which had made her the protectress of all the Christian 
subjects of Turkey, including the heretics and schismatics. The 
aim of the missions there was not so much the conversion of 
individuals as to bring back to union with Rome Christians 
who were under the authority of patriarchs not in obedience 
to the Holy See. This was the case with the Patriarchs of 
Jerusalem and of Constantinople at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century, when the Jesuits arrived. In spite of their 
hostility, the Fathers succeeded in founding a school at Constan- 
tinople and so laid the first stone of the great school which in 
the nineteenth century was to have an almost complete educa- 



92 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

tional monopoly in the Levant and In Egypt. French Capuchins 
established a mission post at Aleppo (1627), and the Jesuits 
opened a school of their own there in 1651. In the same town, 
the French consul, Frangois Picquet, did useful work in the 
cause of the return to unity. He was a skilled diplomat and 
fervent missionary (he eventually took holy Orders) and he 
succeeded in obtaining the appointment to the archbishopric 
of Aleppo of a prelate subject to Rome and also, in 1663, in 
procuring from the Syrian Patriarch Andrew Akidjian, and 
from the Armenian Patriarch Kachadour, a declaration of their 
submission to the Holy See. Their return, however, was an 
entirely personal affair and gave no guarantee that their suc- 
cessors would be faithful to Rome. 

Further East, Fr Pacifique of Provins, obtained permission 
from the Shah Abbas to found a mission at Baghdad and 
another at Isapahan. The friendly disposition of the sovereign 
made it possible for other Capuchins to settle at Tabriz. This 
small Christian community numbered twenty faithful when 
Mgr Pallu arrived in 1662. Another founded at Djoulfa by a 
Jesuit was composed of six families. In both places, the Latin 
missions encountered bitter opposition from the Vertabiets, or 
Armenian monks. 

The Capuchins, who went further East, came up against 
the intransigence of the Padroado. Ephrem of Nevers, although 
imprisoned and later released, established at Madras a mission 
comprising a hospital and a school, whose excellent organiza- 
tion was admired by Mgr PaUu. The missions in the Orient 
were maintained with difficulty during the eighteenth century, 
but from 1850 onwards were able to receive more help from 
the Holy See. 

The first sons of St Vincent de Paul to be attracted to the 
foreign missions devoted themselves to the welfare of the 
slaves in the convict prisons of North Africa. Two Vincentians 
arrived in Tunis in 1645 and two years later, a third, Jean Le 
Vacher. Other priests and lay-brothers came to Algiers. A 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 93 

benefactress, the Duchess of Aiguillon, a niece of Richelieu's, 
bought the right to nominate the French consul in these two 
cities and so the Vincentians were able, at various times, to 
exercise interim consular functions, which made it possible for 
them to bring spiritual help to the slaves. But whether as 
consuls or as missionaries, they were always badly treated by 
the Turkish authorities. Jean Le Vacher was martyred in 1683 
by being tied to the mouth of a canon. 

The Congregation of Propaganda also entrusted the Vincen- 
tians with the evangelization of Madagascar, which proved a 
terrible ordeal for them. Charles Nacquart and Nicolas 
Gondree, who set out in 1648, both died as a result of the 
climate a few months after their arrival at Fort Dauphin. A 
new team made up of MM. Mousnier, Bourdaise and Forest 
suffered the same fate between 1655 and 1657. The Catholic 
community around the mission, in all twenty-three French and 
twelve native families, remained without spiritual aid. A third 
party composed of three missionaries was wiped out in the 
same way. Yet M. Vincent's successor did not want to abandon 
the island of death. He sent three expeditions a total of eleven 
priests and seven brothers. In 1674, when the missionary staff 
had been reduced to half its strength, the colonists decided to 
abandon Fort Dauphin and the island itself and to repatriate 
the survivors. 

FR DE NOBILI AT MADURA 

In India, the caste system kept individuals enclosed in what 
we may call social prisons. To leave them was to become an 
"outcaste", to be dead as far as civil society was concerned. 
This system seemed incomprehensible to the Portuguese and 
so contrary to Christianity that they took no account of it in 
their relations with the native population. They had therefore 
invited all men to become Catholics, but because of an in- 
sufficient acquaintance with the language they couched their 
invitation in unsuitable terms. The question: "Do you want to 
be a Christian?" became "Do you want to joint the Prangui 



94 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

cast?" But Prangui was a word of contempt applied by the 
Moslems to all Christians since the time of the Crusades. 

This procedure might perhaps form Christian communities 
(though of doubtful quality) in the few areas where Portuguese 
rule was effectively exercised. Beyond these, that is in almost 
the whole of India, the caste system continued in all its rigour. 
Christians, who to all intents and purposes became Portuguese, 
were despised and looked on as renegades, and the mission- 
aries ensured their own fall into disrepute by entering into 
contact with all the castes in a society in which the mere fact 
of accepting a drop of water from a member of an inferior 
caste was considered to involve grave impurity. 

This had been the state of affairs at Madura previous to 
the arrival of an Italian Jesuit, Robert de Nobili. In 1607 he 
wrote to one of his relatives: "In spite of twelve years of work, 
our Fathers have not been able to make a single convert. At 
the most, they have baptized in articulo mortis three or four 
sick people." He took careful note of this failure but did not 
give way to despair. He was looking for a different method of 
approach. It seemed to him that the secrets of Hinduism could 
only be penetrated from within* As he was descended from an 
illustrious Tuscan family, he protested that he was neither a 
Prangui nor a Portuguese. He introduced himself as a "Roman 
rajah" and so was able to put himself on the same level as the 
Sannyassi, upper class penitents who were respected by every- 
one. He built a church and presbytery on a site granted to him 
by a cousin of the king of Madura. All his servants were 
Brahmins, and he lived and dressed like the Sannyassi. A 
Brahmin had taught him Sanskrit and he was thus able to 
discover the secrets of Hinduism. Hence his expository work 
and his controversies with the distinguished visitors admitted 
to his company could, for the greater good of Christianity, 
be orientated towards the spiritual needs common to the faith- 
ful of both religions. At the same time, he had become con- 
vinced that the caste customs were not all to be condemned. 
Certain of these, whose character was purely civil and social, 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 95 

might be tolerated. But some of his brethren were of the 
contrary opinion and they denounced him to Rome as causing 
scandal. This was the greatest trial of his life. A Bull of 
Gregory XV (1623) put an end to it by authorizing the 
Brahmins and other "Gentiles" to wear cordons and koudounis, 
the caste insignia, on condition that they were handed to them 
by a Catholic priest who would bless them by reciting prayers 
approved by the ordinary of the district. 

The new method of adaptation thus allowed Indians to enter 
the Mystical Body without renouncing all their titles and tradi- 
tions, in a word without incurring the shameful name of rene- 
gade. Nevertheless, Gregory XV's decision was to give rise 
later to very serious controversy. 

FR DE RHODES AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF 
VICARS APOSTOLIC IN THE FAR EAST 

At the same time, Fr Alexander de Rhodes, also a Jesuit, 
born at Avignon in 1591, was conducting in Vietnam an 
experiment of great interest and whose results were to have 
considerable influence on the missions in the Far East. 

One of a party sent to Cochin-China in 1623, he showed that 
he was able to adapt himself with amazing facility. He laid the 
foundations of Quoc-Ngu, a transcription of the Annamite 
characters into the Latin alphabet which generations of mis- 
sionaries were to use. But in 1626, he was withdrawn from 
Cochin-China, apparently because of his excessive petulance in 
the face of the thousand and one difficulties put in the way of 
the Christians by the sovereign. 

In the following year, he was sent to Tonkin. There he found 
out how popular was a certain piece of buffoonery which repre- 
sented a Portuguese European with an enormous paunch, into 
which there entered and then re-emerged a tiny Vietnamese 
who had become Portuguese in the process. This parody of 
baptism, reduced to the status of a conjuring trick in which the 
Vietnamese was transformed into a Portuguese, showed well 
enough the need for the apostolate to be given a new form. 



96 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

Fr de Rhodes took care to make sure of the good will of the 
chua by initiating him into the secret of the chiming clock and 
offering him a treatise on mathematics, and so was able to open 
a church at Hanoi and to preach there as frequently as six 
times a day. He appealed to the upper classes, in the hope that 
they would set an example to the others. His enormous success 
caused his downfall. The concubines or second wives, fearing 
that their convert husbands would repudiate them, spread 
calumnies about him and accused him of complicity with the 
rebels. They enlisted the help of sorcerers and witches and so 
succeeded in having him expelled. But 6,700 persons had 
been baptized before he left. 

At Macao, whither he had returned, his provincial kept him 
more or less in disgrace. This provincial died in 1640 and his 
successor sent Fr de Rhodes to Cochin-China where the events 
in Tonkin were enacted all over again. He was opposed, and 
for the same reason, by the king's wives, the eunuchs and some 
of the courtiers. Although he was under sentence of expulsion, 
he succeeded on several occasions in returning among his 
converts. Then a new edict was issued banishing him under 
pain of death and he had to tear himself away from them. 

As his superiors were preparing to send a procurator for 
the Macao mission to Rome, their choice fell on him. Who, 
indeed, was better qualified to explain the situation in the Far 
East than this missionary with twenty years' experience to his 
credit, and successes in the apostolate on a par with those of 
St Francis Xavier? 

In his first report, Fr de Rhodes estimated the number of 
converts in Cochin-China and Tonkin at 300,000, and antici- 
pated a regular flow of 15,000 conversions a year. To minister 
to these Christian communities at least three or even four 
hundred priests were needed. Where were they to be found? 
And supposing they were found, what a persecution would 
have to be expected with such an influx of foreigners! The 
example of Japan before him, Fr de Rhodes wrote pathetically: 
"What would we not give to have many native priests in Japan 



ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 97 

today ! But because, when times were in our favour, the neces- 
sary priests were not ordained, this Church is now in great 
distress!" Priests therefore would be recruited in Vietnam 
from the ranks of the catechists, and to ordain them, it would 
be advisable to send out without delay bishops appointed 
in partibus infidelium so as not to cause any misgivings to the 
patronato* 

The Congregation of Propaganda showed great interest in 
this report. Nevertheless, Innocent X asked for further informa- 
tion, including even a list of candidates for the episcopal duties 
envisaged. Fr de Rhodes sent in a second report. A year later, 
on August 1st, 1651, the Congregation suggested to the pope 
that a patriarch, two or three archbishops and twelve bishops 
should be sent out, all of them in partibus infidelium. Inno- 
cent X hesitated because of the conflict then raging in Idalkan 
between the Holy See and Portugal. As Portugal was keeping 
this kingdom without missionaries, the Holy See had sent out 
a Goanese priest, Matthew de Castro, a brilliant pupil of the 
College of Propaganda in Rome, with the title and powers of a 
vicar apostolic. The ecclesiastical authorities in Goa treated 
him as an intruder, declared that his papers were forged and 
refused to recognize him as an envoy of the Holy See. 

If Lisbon had gone as far as this in its resistance to one 
single vicar apostolic, what would it not do if there were twelve 
bishops all chosen directly by the Holy See? Yet Fr de Rhodes 
forwarded a petition it is the third document in his dossier 
and follows the two reports in which he noted the fact that 
the Christian community of Tonkin had already given seven 
martyrs to the Church and that there were within it candidates 
for the priesthood, with all the necessary qualities. He asked 
that Tonkin should be given permission to have a native clergy. 
This petition was not granted. But he himself was appointed 
prefect of the Annam mission. All that remained for him to 
do was to recruit the missionaries he needed from those depend- 
ing on Rome alone. But where was he to find them? Not in 
Portugal, The Idalkan affair made this obvious. Not in Spain; 



98 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

Madrid would be as unwilling as Lisbon to forgo its patronato 
rights. Not in Italy, then under Spanish tutelage. And Pro- 
testantism was dominant in the greater part of Germany. In 
these circumstances he left for France. 

He reached Paris towards the end of the summer of 1652. 
The Society opened many doors for him, including that of the 
Court. His skill, his ardour, the brilliant way in which he ex- 
pressed his ideas, did the rest before an audience which, during 
the ten preceding years, had given so many proofs of its zeal 
for the Missions in Canada and in the East, and which also 
was only too eager to show that, in the realm of the apostolate, 
France could compare with the two ancient Catholic 
monarchies. 

"Les Bons Amis", one of the groups which had its place in 
the religious history of the seventeenth century in France, was 
composed of the most zealous members of the great confra- 
ternities of the Blessed Virgin founded by the Jesuits. It was 
in this choicest of choice societies that Fr de Rhodes found 
more recruits than he needed for the Far-Eastern missions. 
He picked three men: Francois de Montigny-Laval, Frangois 
Pallu and Bernard Piques. The Company of the Blessed Sacra- 
ment guaranteed the necessary financial help. In 1653, five 
bishops assured Innocent X that there were in Paris "able 
secular priests, of proved moral character and remarkable for 
their zeal, prudence and learning" for the Far-Eastern missions. 
The Assembly of the clergy, in its turn, took up the cause but 
without producing the slightest effect. In the meantime, 
Fr de Rhodes, on orders from his superiors, had been sent to 
Persia where he died in 1660. 

The reason for the setting aside of this great missionary must 
have been the anxiety his schemes awakened in the Portuguese 
patronato. It would be wrong to conclude that his reports on 
the Far East were filed and their suggestions rejected. The 
truth is that the Holy See was waiting for the right time to deal 
with them. 

In any case, Fr de Rhodes's recruits did not ab.andon the 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 99 

project. Five of them set out for Rome, Pallu among them. 
They went on foot begging their food on the way. When they 
were taken into the presence of Alexander VII, they reminded 
him with so much fervour of their plan to "leave fatherland, 
relatives and friends and to offer themselves and all they pos- 
sessed for the salvation of the peoples of the Far East", that he 
appointed a commission of four cardinals to re-examine the 
reports. One of them, Barberini, was against the scheme, and 
he held the key position. As Pallu had failed to get a hearing, 
he asked for the help of one of his friends, a former advocate 
at the Normandy Court of Excise, Pierre Lambert de la Motte. 
He too was full of zeal for the missions and had left the legal 
fraternity to take holy Orders. His tenacity and his powerful 
gift of argument removed the last objections of the formidable 
Barberini. The commission pronounced itself in favour of 
sending out three vicars apostolic. On May 13th, 1658, the 
Congregation of Propaganda put forward the names of Fathers 
Pallu and Lambert de la Motte. A brief dated July 29th 
appointed them, one as bishop of Heliopolis, the other as 
bishop of Beryta. The former was given jurisdiction over 
Tonkin, the latter over Cochin-China, A little later, a third 
Frenchman was appointed to the vicariate of Nankin, Ignace 
Cotolendi. Each of them also was made responsible for the 
administration of provinces in China. In fact, several of these 
provinces became vicariates. 

Certain habits contrary to the evangelical spirit were severely 
condemned in the celebrated instructions drawn up in 1659 for 
the use of the new vicars apostolic, who were recommended 
not to interfere in national politics either directly or indirectly. 
In cases where they were absolutely obliged to give an opinion, 
they were to do so sub specie aeternitatis. They had to preach 
obedience to princes even to those of a religion opposed to 
Christianity. They were not to censure their conduct, but to 
wait patiently until Providence "brings happier days". They 
were not to urge peoples to change their manners, customs 
and rites, but on the contrary to respect them except when 



100 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

"they were detestable 55 . For "it is as it were inscribed in the 
nature of men that they should esteem, love and value above 
all else in the world the traditions of their country and this 
country itself 5 . Further, the missions were to be organized in 
such a way that they should not be a charge on the faithful, for 
"there is nothing people admire more than perfect detachment 
and that evangelical poverty which lays up treasure only in 
heaven". 

At the same time, Pallu, Lambert de la Motte and their 
friends founded at Paris in the rue du Bac, the Seminary for 
the Foreign Missions. (It is still there today.) 

THE CHINA MISSIONS AFTER FR RICCI 

Two important events took place in China after the death 
of Fr Ricci. 

One 9 which seemed encouraging for the future of Chris- 
tianity, had been the admission of the Jesuit scientists to the 
Pekin astronomical committee. Fr Adam Schall had been its 
president and had then been expelled, but a little later Fr 
Verbiest was given the office and Jesuit scientists 1 were, for a 
time at least, to be the bulwark of the missions because of the 
prestige they enjoyed under the emperors of two successive 
dynasties, the Ming and the Manchu. 

The other event did more harm than good. In 1631 two 
missionaries arrived from Manila. One was a Franciscan, 
Fr Antonio a Santa Maria, the other, Fr Morales, a Dominican. 
They came from an area in which the "clean sweep" method 
was in force and so were a priori full of distrust for the method 
of adaptation adopted by Fr Ricci. They were present at a 
ceremony in memory of the ancestors after which they no 
longer doubted that the advocates of tolerance towards the 
Chinese rites were following a dangerous course. 

Subsequently the members of both schools of thought were 

1 French Jesuit mathematicians were also authorized in 1687 to come 
into residence at Pekin and to be members of the astronomical com- 
mittee. 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 101 

all imprisoned together at Canton. Thus an unexpected oppor- 
tunity arose for a comparison and discussion of their points of 
view. Ultimately, they agreed on twenty-four articles which 
they all signed. It is to be noted that the signatories included 
the Dominican Navarette. It is true that there was a proviso. 
The articles were to be approved by the Jesuit general's Visitor 
at Macao. The latter, although he had never entered China, 
nevertheless changed several of the articles entirely on his own 
initiative. In these circumstances, Fr Navarette considered he 
was no longer bound by his own signature. He succeeded in 
getting away from Canton and reached Macao where he em- 
barked for Europe. When the ship stopped at Madagascar, he 
met Mgr Pallu who was on his way to China, and gave him a 
full account of all the facts. Then, on his arrival in Europe, he 
began publishing in 1676 his Tradados historicos, politicos, 
ethnicos y religiosos de la monarchia de China. This work, 
condemning the methods of the Jesuits, was to supply all 
their enemies with arguments. 

Meanwhile, Mgr Pallu had reached Fokien, and the Christian 
community of Moyang, where he found himself up against 
serious difficulties. Certain of the latter arose from the oath of 
obedience to the vicars apostolic which Propaganda wished to 
make obligatory on all the missionaries. The Portuguese 
patronato* which had been informed of the situation by its 
missionaries, had protested so vigorously (Louis XIV had done 
likewise regarding the Jesuit scientists of the Cambodia 
mission) against this demand that the Holy See had eventually 
withdrawn it. Other conflicts had arisen over the division of 
the provinces of China between the old dioceses of the 
patronato and the vicariates apostolic. From the first, Portugal 
had questioned the legality of these vicariates. However, an 
agreement was reached in 1696. The three Portuguese dioceses 
of Pekin, Nankin and Macao were left with all their privileges 
but, apart from the area they covered, the Holy See reserved 
the right to maintain the vicariates already in existence: 



102 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

Fukien, Shensi, Kiangsi, Szehwan, Yunnan, and to establish 
others under its authority alone. 

There was still the problem of the rites. Mgr Pallu had not 
alluded to it in his last report to the Holy See. He had merely 
noted that the Chinese Christians he had seen had been 
delighted when they learned that Rome was sending bishops to 
China "to lead them in the ways of the Lord and to raise some 
of their fellow countrymen to the dignity of the priesthood". 

Shortly afterwards in 1614 sickness brought Mgr Pallu's life 
to an end. His successor, who had been his vicar general, 
Mgr Maigrot, a good sinologue, examined at length the respec- 
tive attitudes of the two parties and then adopted the opinion 
of the Dominicans and Franciscans. In a pastoral letter written 
in 1693, he strictly forbade the rites and refused to recognize 
the meaning which certain Jesuits had given them. It is impor- 
tant to note that the Society was not composed entirely of 
Fr Riccfs followers. An able sinologue, the leading expert in 
the antiquities of China, Fr de Visdelou, approved of Mgr 
Maigrot's decision, while on the other hand, Fr Le Comte went 
even further than Fr Ricci. According to him, the rites were 
not only free from all idolatry, but from all superstition. 
Fr Ricci would not have agreed that this was so. 

The condemnation of Fr Le Comte's book by the Sorbonne 
aggravated the quarrel between the advocates and the oppo- 
nents of the rites. The lampoons of the Dominicans and the 
priests of the Foreign Missions were answered by those of the 
Jesuits. There were a dozen of these in the year 1700 alone. 
The Holy See instructed Mgr Maillard de Tournon to conduct 
an inquiry on the spot. He decided to defend the Dominican 
view and to condemn the rites. He had to face both Portugal, 
which considered him an intruder in patronato territory, and 
also the hostility of the Chinese government since he had 
refused to accept the opinion of Kang'Hi who had given an 
assurance that the rites were of a merely civil nature. He was 
imprisoned at Macao where he died in 1710. A second legate, 
Mgr Mezzabarba, although of a more accommodating tempera- 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 103 

ment, did not put an end to the quarrel. On the contrary, the 
concessions he judged should be made only aggravated the 
trouble. The advocates of the rites considered them inadequate, 
while their opponents were of opinion that he had sinned by 
showing weakness. These opponents, in any case, eventually 
won the day, and the Bull Ex quo singulari (1742) issued a 
definitive and complete condemnation of the rites. 

During the quarrel, the emperor Kang'Hi had discovered 
the papal authority, but since he had not understood its entirely 
spiritual character, the Christians in his empire appeared to 
him to be subjects who were evading Ms authority in order to 
obey a foreign master. His attitude towards them altered. He 
demanded that the missionaries should apply for the Piao 
(authorization to preach) if they wished to reside in China. 
And this permission was only to be granted in return for a 
promise that Fr Ricci's teaching would be followed. The 
missionaries who did not possess the P'fao and these were 
the great majority since, even among the Jesuits themselves, 
many did not accept Fr Ricci's views on what could be toler- 
ated were obliged to go underground. 

Throughout this vast empire they became hunted and ex- 
hausted men. The Christians were small in number, a bare 
150,000 and all of humble rank: shopkeepers, ploughmen, 
fishermen, artisans, scattered far and wide. They could not be 
grouped into villages for fear of attracting attention. The mis- 
sionary was always on the road from one hiding place to 
another and, however zealous, could only visit his flock on rare 
occasions, and when he arrived among them, what troubles 
awaited him! One of these missionaries, Blessed John Moye, 
wrote: "The poor man needs to be not in two but in ten places 
at once. He has to preach, hear confessions, quieten the 
children, carry them about, look after them and drive away the 
dogs, cocks and ducks that constantly interrupt his preaching." 

The first missionaries had been ordered to inaugurate a 
Chinese clergy with all speed. Innocent X had told Mgr Pallu: 
"I would rather see you consecrate one good bishop in these 



104 ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

parts than convert 50,000 Idolaters." The instructions of Propa- 
ganda to Mgr Pallu and Mgr Lambert de la Motte in 1689 gave 
them authority "to oblige the vicars apostolic, under threat of 
.canonical penalties, to educate and ordain clerics and priests 
and thus to open the way to the episcopate as quickly as 
possible to native priests". An indult of Alexander VII was 
implemented and a beginning was made by ordaining to the 
priesthood middle-aged Chinamen, catechists of exemplary 
life, who were not required to know Latin, provided they pro- 
nounced it correctly and understood the sacramental formulas. 
This procedure was suited to the heroic times but could not 
become a general practice. A more thorough formation was 
essential. With this in mind, Mgr Lambert de la Motte, on his 
arrival in Siam, established a seminary at Juthia. 

The first Chinese bishop, Mgr Lo or Lopez it was the 
custom to Europeanize surnames never left it. Fr Navarette 
had pointed him out to Mgr Pallu as a suitable candidate for 
the episcopate and he was consecrated in 1685. The second 
native bishop in the Far East, Francis Perez, was born at 
Tenasserim, the son of a Filipino father and a Siamese 
mother, and so was a half-caste. He was also one of the most 
devout and brilliant pupils of the Juthia seminary. With him 
the first experiment with native vicars apostolic came to an end 
as early as the end of the seventeenth century. They were 
beyond reproach in their priestly lives but lacked the authority 
to hold out against the claims of the Padroado and to discip- 
line the Western missionaries who were constantly quarrelling 
with one other. We may well ask whether anyone else in their 
place would have overcome such difficulties. 

However, the formation of a native clergy was not aban- 
doned. All the missionaries, whatever their attitude in the 
struggle over the Chinese rites, wanted to work on its behalf. 
But agreement was impossible both as to the recruitment of this 
native clergy and its formation and deployment. 

The Jesuits were apprehensive about the effect of the environ- 
ment at Pekin and Macao on the seminarists. Should these 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 105 

young Chinese be sent to Europe? The experiment was tried 
in the middle of the eighteenth century. The candidates 
educated at La Fleche proved worthy of the priesthood. But the 
priests-in-charge of the mission wanted to have them as simple 
catechists; they were to complete their preparation on the spot 
and would only be admitted to Orders after this testing period. 
The European Fathers and those in China could not agree 
and the European scheme was abandoned. An effort was made 
to establish seminaries in the heart of the empire in spite of 
the edicts outlawing Catholicism. This attempt also failed. The 
following passage from a letter of Fr Charlier's explains why: 
"All the pupils have defaulted, have learned nothing and have 
had to be dismissed. To educate them properly we should have 
to send them away from their own country, otherwise they 
make no progress in knowledge or virtue. Experience is there 
to prove it." 

However, the priests of the Paris Foreign Missions, by form- 
ing priests both on the spot and at the Juthia college, succeeded 
after the beginning of the eighteenth century in having several 
Chinese ordained. One of them, Andrew Ly, may be held up 
as an example to the Universal Church. The only priest in 
Szehwan in the mid-eighteenth century for several years after 
the death or banishment of the European missionaries, a 
perpetual traveller often obliged to disguise himself to escape 
from his persecutors, he would revive in one place a Christian 
community on the verge of flight, in another encourage the 
wavering; elsewhere he would solve cases of conscience. Yet he 
found time between two periods of imprisonment to draw up 
instructions for the catechists, to have the calendar of Christian 
feasts printed every year, and, with the approval of the 
seminary in the rue du Bac 5 to recruit candidates for the priest- 
hood. 

When Mgr Pettier became vicar apostolic of Szehwan, he 
found an embryo seminary with nine boys in it. It was the 
work of Andrew Ly. The number of ordinations continued to 
be very small. Many pupils died during their course of study. 



106 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

Towards the end of the eighteenth century (1763), Mgr Pettier 
took advantage of the indult of Alexander VII to ordain three 
clerics who knew no Latin. Another priest from the Paris 
Foreign Missions, M. Hamel, started a peripatetic seminary 
which for forty years moved backwards and forwards between 
Szehwan and Yunnan in order to avoid persecution. During 
these forty years, twenty-two priests were trained and ordained 
and they had often to be confessors of the faith. Several suffered 
martyrdom, three were beatified. 

After the suppression of the Society of Jesus, a Vincentian, 
Nicolas Raux, in accordance with a decree of Propaganda 
dated February 5th, 1783, succeeded the Jesuit scientists at 
Pekin and became a member of the board of mathematicians. 
Now that they were ordinary secular priests, the Jesuits showed 
admirable zeal in their submission to the authority of the heads 
of the missions in their places of residence. The Vincentians 
fell back on the same method as that used by the Foreign 
Missions in their training of Chinese priests. The candidates 
who had been prepared in the clandestine seminaries completed 
their studies at the Macao seminary. When it was broken up 
in 1845, it had trained thirty-three Chinese priests. 

THE MISSIONS IN IN DO-CHIN A 

From the moment of his arrival in Siam, Mgr Lambert de la 
Motte had come up against the representatives of the Padroado, 
who threatened to arrest him and his missionaries. They there- 
fore had to take refuge at Ayouthia, in the concession of the 
Cochin-Chinese. They used this enforced stay to put into shape 
a regulation (the Monitd) in which they expressed their inten- 
tion of acting "in an apostolic fashion", that is, to refuse to 
accept any political office from the local sovereigns. 

They were all in a hurry to begin their apostolic work. Louis 
Chevreuil, a member of the "Bons Amis" group, who had 
been appointed vicar general for Cochin-Chma, entered Faifo, 
where he was given a rather cool reception by the few Euro- 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 107 

pean priests depending on the patronato who had preserved 
the faith of Fr de Rhodes' converts. Persecution forced him 
to return to Siam. Shortly afterwards he returned to Cochin- 
China where he fell ill. The young priest who had accompanied 
him, Hainques (he deserves to be mentioned by name), devoted 
himself unaided to the task of bringing spiritual help to the 
persecuted and hunted Christians. He had time to train the 
two first Cochin-Chinese priests: Joseph Trang and Luke Ben, 
who were ordained under the conditions laid down in the indult 
of Alexander VII. He then died, worn out by his labours. 

When the vicar general appointed for Tonkin, Louis Deydier, 
entered the territory in 1666, the last priests had just been 
expelled. The little Christian community was under the direc- 
tion of catechists who lived in hiding on a boat. This boat, 
which has remained celebrated in the history of the Tonkin 
missions, sheltered a seminary in which Deydier, after a stay 
of eighteen months, chose two candidates for the priesthood: 
Benedict Hien and John Hue. They were ordained in Siam and 
then returned at once to their own country. When Mgr de la 
Motte succeeded in landing, Deydier brought to him seven 
other candidates for ordination and forty-eight catechists to 
receive the tonsure and minor orders. Subsequently the vicar 
apostolic assembled the first synod of Tonkin. All his mission- 
aries and nine native priests attended it. It was decided that, 
in the chief towns, a fixed place of residence should be allocated 
to the priests and the catechists; that in every separate group, 
certain of the most deserving members of the community 
should be chosen to be responsible for presiding at assemblies 
for prayer and for the maintenance of general good order: that, 
with the example of the Twelve Apostles in mind, and with the 
help coming from Europe and from local alms, a common fund 
should be inaugurated to provide the means of subsistence for 
the missionary personnel. 

Young women and Christian widows, who desired to conse- 
crate themselves more fully to God, received from Mgr Lam- 
bert de la Motte a rule which included community life in 



108 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

addition to the three vows. He also gave them a strict set of 
regulations In which prayer and penance played a great part. 
This was the beginning of the Congregation of the Amantes de 
la Croix (Votaries of the Cross) for the education of girls, the 
care of the sick and the baptism of children in danger of death. 

These Far-Eastern Christian communities were seldom left 
at peace. They had to go underground for most of the time, 
yet such periods were succeeded by a few months of toleration 
during which public worship would come out into the open. 
At Tonkin, Deydier spent two years in prison. At the outset 
in Siam, King Phra-Narai seemed well disposed. The embassy 
which he sent to Louis XIV was received with great ceremony 
at Versailles and Paris. The Siamese envoys returned home 
accompanied by a French delegation headed by M. de Chau- 
mont, who made a speech in which he expressed the hope that 
the king of Siam would receive instruction in the truths of 
Catholicism. But nothing of the kind ensued. Phra-Narai was 
overthrown by a revolution and his successor drove the French 
from Bangkok and Mergui. As the evacuation orders had 
been badly executed on both sides, the missions suffered from 
the repercussions. Mgr Laneau, the vicar apostolic, some mis- 
sionaries and a number of the faithful were thrown into prison, 
the churches were closed and Mgr La Motte's tomb desecrated. 

The greatest upheaval of the century was caused by the 
revolt of the Tay-Son. Their leader conquered the whole of 
Cochin-China, put the chua and his son to death, invaded 
Tonkin shortly afterwards and drove out the king who was the 
last of his line and had to take refuge in China. The heir to the 
kingdom of Cochin-China, Nguyen-Anh, a young man of seven- 
teen and the nephew of the murdered chua, eluded the rebels 
by seeking asylum with the vicar apostolic, Mgr Pigneau de 
Behaine. Meanwhile, the English in India and the Dutch in 
Batavia offered their help in restoring Mm to his kingdom. 
This would have meant the entry of Protestantism into Viet- 
nam and the Catholic missions would have been threatened 
with the same fate as befell those in Ceylon after the Dutch 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 109 

conquest of the island. Since this was how matters stood, 
Mgr Pineau de Behaine set out for Versailles to ask the French 
Government to defend the cause of the dethroned monarch. 
Louis XIV's ministers, completely devoid of all enthusiasm 
for this cause, drew up a treaty of alliance between France and 
Nguyen-Anh. The governor of Pondicherry refused to imple- 
ment its stipulations on the grounds that he had received secret 
orders leaving him full freedom of action. 

Mgr Pineau de Behaine next appealed for French volunteers: 
engineers and officers. These fitted out two ships at their own 
expense and armed a small expeditionary force whose inter- 
vention was enough to bring about the restoration of Nguyen- 
Anh. After 1802 he reigned under the name of Gia-Long* 
showed himself tolerant and remained on good terms with 
Mgr Pineau de Behaine, but did not become a convert. How- 
ever, when struck down by a serious illness, he asked for bap- 
tism and died a member of the Church. 

Mgr Pigneau de Behaine had died before Mm. It may be said 
of this prelate that in difficult circumstances his political 
acumen had come to the rescue of his apostolic zeal. Mgr de 
Guebriant wrote of him: "Had he kept silent, he would have 
betrayed the Gospel which it was his mission to preach." 



THE INDIAN MISSIONS AFTER FR DE NOBILI 

Although the coronation of John of Braganza in 1640 had 
freed Portugal from its dependence on Spain, her hold on India 
was to become increasingly weaker as her former privileges as 
discoverer and first conqueror were undermined by the Dutch, 
the English and the French, each in their turn allies of the 
local rulers. These reverses did not prevent Portugal from 
claiming her full rights of Padroado when faced with the 
decisions of the Holy See. 

As we have seen, Matthew de Castro, who had been 
appointed vicar apostolic of Idalkan, had been treated as an 
intruder. This was the beginning of a severe struggle in which 



1 10 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

he received many blows and gave many in return. Propaganda 
did not approve of all he did, yet never lost confidence in him. 
In fact, he had been zealous in applying the pontifical instruc- 
tions concerning the founding of a native clergy and had suc- 
ceeded in obtaining permission for such a clergy to be affiliated 
to the Oratory of St Philip Neri. The other two Goanese vicars 
apostolic, Custodio de Pinho and Thomas de Castro, cousins 
of Matthew, acted in the same way. They too were unable to 
persuade the patronato to recognize their authority. Rome 
therefore ceased to appoint vicars apostolic of Indian race. 
Here, as in China, it was not until the thirties of the twentieth 
century that natives were once more to be raised to the 
episcopate. 

We may guess what suffering these rivalries caused to sensi- 
tive minds thanks to certain authentic writings dealing with 
the long and exemplary apostolic life of a Goanese priest, 
Joseph Vaz. It happened that he was at Kanara when the 
conflict between Thomas de Castro and the archbishop of Goa 
was at its height. The latter had excommunicated all who had 
any relations with his rival; de Castro had retorted by applying 
the same penalties both to priests administering the sacraments 
by virtue of powers they had received from Goa, and also to 
the faithful who accepted the sacraments at their hands. The 
unfortunate Vaz had received his powers from the archbishop 
of Goa's vicar f orane and so fell under the ban of Thomas de 
Castro. At first he remained obedient to his archbishop and 
urged the faithful to repeat to him the confessions they had 
made to priests appointed by Propaganda. Then, troubled by 
the whole affair, he went to discuss his difficulties with Thomas 
de Castro and begged him to grant him jurisdiction and, at 
the same time, to tone down his warfare against the Padroadists. 
He obtained what he had asked for. All this never caused his 
zeal to flag. He went bare-footed from village to village, looking 
for Christian families, reconciling apostates and giving help to 
those who had been reduced to slavery. Eventually, the quarrels 
became such a burden to him that he asked the archbishop of 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 111 

Goa for permission to leave Kanara for Ceylon (1684). His 
request was granted. He was a man of profound humility and 
before his departure he called on his successor, the pro-vicar. 
He assured him that he had never wanted to offend the vicar 
apostolic personally or his priests, and asked to be given public 
conditional absolution. Not that he thought he had deserved 
excommunication but he wanted nobody to doubt his filial 
respect for the archbishop of Goa. The pro- vicar realized that 
the man was a saint and refused. 

Joseph Vaz was able to enter Ceylon, disguised as a beggar, 
in 1688 or thereabouts. The decree expelling all the mission- 
aries promulgated by the Dutch after their conquest of the 
island, had not been withdrawn. Later, a few Goanese had been 
allowed to enter. Vaz joined these, brought the scattered flock 
together again and enlarged it in a miraculous fashion. He was 
responsible for 30,000 conversions in the quarter of a century 
between his clandestine entry into the country and his death 
in 1711. The cause of his beatification was Introduced almost 
at once. It was then abandoned because of difficulties con- 
nected with the inquiry. It has just been revived on the initia- 
tive of the bishop of Candy. Joseph is the noblest figure among 
the Goanese clergy who were sufficiently numerous in the 
eighteenth century to provide priests for all the churches 
between the delta of the Indus to Cape Comarin and from Cape 
Comarin to the Ganges. 

At Madura, the Jesuits, faithful to Fr de Nobili's methods, 
continued to base their apostolate on both Sanyassi and Pan- 
dam missionaries. They had little success among the Brahmins; 
among the other castes results were slightly less disappointing 
and year in, year out, about a thousand converts were bap- 
tized. In 1688, the mission was reinforced by French Jesuits 
who, once they had landed at Pondicherry, obtained permission 
to evangelize the interior and left the French Capuchins to 
minister to the European colony in the town. 

A serious conflict between the two institutes was shortly to 
break out when the process of beatification of the greatest 



112 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

missionary in the province at the time, the Jesuit, John de 
Britto, was introduced at Rome. The son of one of King 
John IV's Masters of Horse, page and fellow student of the 
future regent, Don Pedro, at the age of sixteen he had turned 
his back on the brilliant career which was opening before him 
with the firm intention of preaching the Gospel in the Indies. 
As a Pandara missionary in Panjore, the Eastern province, he 
had been arrested on several occasions, imprisoned, beaten and 
tortured. He was eventually condemned to death but was 
reprieved by the king of Marava on condition that he gave up 
all preaching and left the country. His superiors sent him back 
to Europe. But nothing, neither prayers nor entreaties nor 
promises of a fine future, could make him forget the missions. 
He was in Madura again in 1691. He was offered but refused 
the archbishopric of Cranganore, Faithful to his vocation as 
a Pandara, he took up again the same insecure and apostolic 
life he had previously led. He wrote to his brother: "Our 
enemies do not cease from harassing us, but the king and his 
ministers pay no attention to their recriminations. The king 
contents himself with declaring that if I were to preach in his 
own territory,, he would have me beheaded. I am now trying 
to obtain an audience so as to find out what my legal position 
is." 

The king of Marava was not the kind of man to listen to 
the complaints of any- and everybody, but when one of his 
nieces came to tell him that a neighbouring prince, whose 
youngest wife she herself was, had repudiated her in order to 
obey the laws of Christ, he decided to put to death the man 
responsible for his conversion. He entrusted the task of execu- 
tion to one of his brothers who cut John de Britto's throat with 
a blow from his scimitar. In the last fifteen months of his life 
John de Britto had baptized 8,000 people and the movement 
of conversion had continued after Ms death, so that the cause 
of his beatification was introduced immediately. 

At the outset, it roused the liveliest opposition from the 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 113 

French Capuchins at Pondicherry. In a report they sent to 
Rome, they accused John de Britto and all the Jesuits of show- 
ing an exaggerated toleration towards the Malabar rites. This 
denunciation reached Rome at the time Mgr Maillard de Tour- 
non was about to leave for the Far East as legate with the task 
of settling the problem of the Chinese rites. He was now told to 
institute an inquiry into the Malabar rites as well. At Pondi- 
cherry he met Fr de Visdelou who had not been able to accept 
Fr Ricci's conclusions in the matter of the rites. The opinion 
of this Jesuit, who was considered a great sinologue, must have 
carried great weight with the legate. In any case, on June 23rd, 
1704, he signed a decree annulling the toleration granted to 
these rites by Gregory XV at the request of Fr de Nobili. This 
decree enjoined obedience under threat of excommunication. 
It divided the missionaries into two camps. It also caused John 
de Biitto's cause to be abandoned, for how could a religious 
be raised to the honours of the altar if he had practised 
customs forbidden by the Holy See? But the Holy See always 
ends by rehabilitating those it has ill-treated. John de Britto 
was beatified in 1851 and canonized in 1941. 

The Madura mission recruited fewer and fewer Sanyassi and 
Pandora vocations after this. Yet there were two other Jesuits 
who distinguished themselves in this region: Fr Hanxleben, to 
whom we owe the first Sanskrit grammar, and Fr Beschi, a 
fervent missionary, a polyglot and an extraordinarily prolific 
poet. He wrote lives of the saints, among them one of St Joseph 
containing 3,615 quatrains and loaded with quotations from the 
Bible; and a Veda Vilakkan, or explanation of Catholic doc- 
trine in twenty-eight chapters. It was often reprinted in the 
nineteenth century. 

This brief sketch of Christianity in India would be incom- 
plete without mention of the Syro-Malabar Christian com- 
munities which, according to a well-established tradition, were 
descended from the converts of St Thomas, the first Apostle 



1 14 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

of India. All the travellers In the Middle Ages had drawn 
attention to these communities which were dependent on the 
Church of Antioch or that of Persia through the Catholics of 
Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Were they followers of one or other of the 
Eastern heresies, were they schismatics or Catholics both in 
word and at heart? Contemporary scholars still discuss these 
questions. But, when modern missions began, there was an 
initial period of peaceful relations, after which in 1599, the 
Synod of Diemper (Udiamperur) declared that they were 
Nestorians and decided that they should be forcibly restored 
to communion with Rome. In future, they were to have only 
one bishop, a Latin and a suffragan of Goa. Their books were 
to be burnt, their traditions cast aside and the use of Syriac 
limited to the translation of the calendar, the Latin Missal and 
Ritual. 

An ambitious man, the archdeacon Thomas, put himself at 
the head of a resistance movement and so was raised to the 
dignity of a mar. But one section of the Syrians refused to 
recognize his authority and appealed to the Holy See who sent 
them an Italian Carmelite as vicar apostolic. He succeeded in 
re-establishing unity in his flock but, shortly afterwards, the 
capture of the town of Cochin by the Dutch led to the departure 
of the bishop. The Syrians were invited by the Dutch occupying 
power to choose a bishop and enthrone him. They split again, 
some nominating mar Thomas, who adopted the Monophysite 
views of the patriarchs of Antioch so as to obtain episcopal 
consecration from a Jacobite bishop. Thus there was a "new 
party". The others, faithful to their original faith, formed the 
"old party". This time the schism was complete. 

Already divided in this way, the St Thomas Christians had 
also to suffer from the conflict of jurisdiction between the 
bishops of the Padroado and the vicars apostolic. They had 
only one common desire: to have a hierarchy of their own race 
and this could only alas! become possible by means of a 
schism. 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 115 

THE PATRON ATO MISSIONS IN SOUTH AND NORTH 

AMERICA 

At the time of the establishment of the Congregation of 
Propaganda, the patronato missions had already taken their 
final shape. They were not so much missions as the extension 
or rather the implantation of the Churches of Portugal and 
Spain in the new world, with this very unapostolic addition 
that they depended on the Council of the Indies and so, in a 
word, escaped from the authority of Propaganda. All attempts 
to reform certain abuses came to nothing. 

In 1611, the Jesuit, Louis de Valdivia, who had been raised 
to the office of royal commissioner by Madrid, had freed 
10,000 Indians from slavery and had forbidden any fresh raids 
or enslavement. But he succeeded only in enlisting against him 
colonists, soldiers, officials and the religious of the other 
Orders. Antonio Vieira underwent similar cruel trials in Brazil 
from 1652 onwards. This missionary had evangelized some 
fifty villages along 1,000 miles of the coast. He too had 
undertaken to defend the natives and to ask Lisbon to put an 
end to the slave raids. He was listened to and appointed visitor 
of the Brazilian missions. He was thus able to pacify the tribes 
on the verge of revolt. Nevertheless he was treated as a sedi- 
tion-monger by the colonists. The Inquisition condemned him 
to two years' imprisonment on account of his book Quinta 
imperia del mondo, and he had many other tussles with the 
same tribunal in Rome. However, justice was done to him in 
the end. At the age of seventy-three he then set out again, in- 
different to the honours offered him by the pope, for Brazil, 
where he died in Amazonia at the age of eighty-nine. 

Other missionaries experienced the same trials. The criti- 
cisms they aroused, even in missionary circles themselves, 
indicate that dignitaries of the Churches of South America and 
Mexico, both secular and regular (except the Capuchins), to the 
extent that they become part of the colonial system, had 
sometimes been influenced by it. It is certain that the clergy, 
all of whom were Spanish or Creole (Vieira himself considered 



116 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

the almazinhas, the little souls of his dear Indians, unready 
for the time being to receive the priesthood) was badly dis- 
tributed. In the towns, the clergy were too numerous and too 
rich. In the rural parishes and the haciendas they were too 
scarce and too poor. The instruction of the converts suffered 
In consequence. 

But this is only one aspect of the matter. The other, so clearly 
worthy of admiration, is the work done in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries from California, evangelized by Junipero 
Serra, to the Jesuit reductions in Paraguay. Side by side with 
the static Church of the colonial areas, there was a Church on 
the march, ardent, resourceful, creative and seeking its inspira- 
tion as best it could in the character of the Indians themselves 
so as to establish and confirm them in Catholicism. 

This truly apostolic Church, composed of regulars, operated 
generally from Lima after it had handed over to the diocesan 
clergy the Indian parishes already established. In the mid- 
seventeenth century, Franciscans founded In the north of Peru 
a large Christian community which was laid waste at the end 
of the century by Indians who had not been subdued. The 
Franciscan missions in the south of Peru had been ill-treated 
during the seventeenth century. They were reopened during 
the first thirty years of the following century by Fr Francis of 
St Joseph, and when he died they had made 85,000 converts. 
But ten years later, an Indian from Cuzco, a self-styled descen- 
dant of the Inca Athualpa, Instigated a revolt, In the course 
of which the mission was destroyed and several religious 
massacred. 

In Chile, the Spanish had signed a treaty (1641) guaranteeing 
peaceful possession of the land to the Araucanians. The latter, 
when they found the treaty was not adhered to, revolted and 
destroyed part of the mission posts founded by the Jesuits. 
The Franciscans restored some of these and Fr John Frenezda, 
who had a perfect knowledge of the local languages, established 
two missionary colleges at Chilian and Tariva. A fresh revolt 
led to a new repression which a missionary, Fr Angel 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 117 

d'Eispineira, succeeded in mitigating. When peace returned the 
work begun by the establishment of the colleges produced its 
first fruits: the first three Indian priests in Chile were ordained 
in 1794. 

The earliest Franciscan missions in the east of Peru on the 
territory which is now Bolivia, obtained almost no results at all 
while they were helped by the colonial administration. Then, 
at the end of the eighteenth century, there came a perfect son 
of St Francis, Francis del Pilar. He had the same spirit as the 
Poverello himself, making Ms way into the court of Melek- 
El-Kamel. Francis del Pilar settled in a Chiriquan village and 
lived there in poverty for thirty years, indifferent to insults and 
never ceasing to come to the help of the Indians. In the end, 
they were moved by his charity and agreed to receive some 
missionaries. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the 
Chiriquan mission had twenty-two mission posts and more 
than 16,000 Christians out of a population of 25,000 souls. 

The Jesuits founded a large number of Indian parishes in the 
basins of the upper Amazon and the Maranon. Apparently 
there were three hundred Indian churches in Colombia during 
the seventeenth century, but they were not completely free from 
paganism. The Jesuits, profiting by the memory of the apos- 
tolate of Fr Claver to the Negroes, made many converts among 
the Llanos. 

Fr Christopher de Torres, who became archibishop of Santa 
Fe in 1635, founded there a university college and decided to 
admit Indians to communion. The most amazing apostle of 
Colombia at this time, the Dominican St Louis Bertrand, began 
by evangelizing Cubara, Tenerif e and a number of other places, 
baptizing thousands of Indians and then, sickened by the 
profligacy, cruelty and love of lucre among far too many of 
the Spanish officers, returned home to Spain. 

By far the most original and most effective establishment, the 
republic of the Guaranis, stretching from Belem in the north 
to Uruguay in the south, and from Parana in the west to Brazil 
in the east, was the work of the Jesuits. The Guaranis, the 



1 18 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

largest racial group in South America, were civilized, although 
to a lesser degree than the Incas. They believed in God, but 
their belief was an entirely personal one and involved no public 
worship, sacrifices or priests. They had no notion of private 
property and their economy was communitarian. 

Loreto, the first community, founded in 1610 on the Parana, 
comprised two hundred families already baptized. As the 
Fathers guaranteed freedom, this initial nucleus attracted 
people living in nearby villages. This attraction continued to 
operate and the first Reduction was soon overpopulated. It 
split in two and so the Reduction of San Ignacio-Mini came 
into existence by the side of the original one, still on the 
Parana. This swarming process went on and all the more since 
the various freedoms granted by the Jesuits to the convert 
Guaranis had been sanctioned and codified by royal ordinances. 
But the movement forward was controlled with exemplary 
prudence. The Fathers began by building the Reduction and, 
in order to ensure its economic independence, endowed it with 
cattle and saw that the soil was in good condition to bear crops. 
Many of the inhabitants were still pagans, but the example of 
the religious and the converts living according to the Gospel 
teaching, prepared them to listen to the catechism which was 
only taught in full after the village had been completed. As 
time went on, the "swarming" was speeded up. The number of 
Reductions in the Guayra rose from thirteen in 1623 to twenty- 
four in 1630 with a population of 100,000 Guaranis. There 
were another half-dozen on the Parana and a dozen to the 
south-west of the Sierra del Tape. This incomparable success 
had not failed to give rise to calumnies nor had it escaped the 
slave raids organized by Spaniards and more often still by 
Portuguese. The permission given to Fr de Montoya to arm 
the Guaranis put an end to this. The Paulista marauders were 
defeated in 1640 and 1641. A relative peace was established 
but the loss of Guayra and Tape reduced the Republic of the 
Guaranis to the territory within the area round the spot where 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 119 

the courses of the Parana and the Uruguay are nearest to one 
another. 

The Reductions were all built according to the same plan. 
They included a vast rectangle with a spacious square on one 
of its sides and streets going off at right angles from it and 
lined with houses and blocks of flats. Just off the square were 
the church, the Cotiguazu (a home for widows, cripples, etc.)* 
the hospital, the school and further on, a large garden. 

Private property was unknown. Trade outside or within the 
community was the monopoly of the latter. All in good health 
were required to do a maximum of eight hours* work per day. 
In exchange, they were guaranteed all the necessities of life: 
housing, clothing, food, tools, education and apprenticeship 
for their children, an old age pension, insurance against sick- 
ness and accidents, upkeep of widows and orphans, leisure. 

The working day began at about nine o'clock after Mass and 
ended at about four or five. On Sunday in addition to Mass 
there were Vespers, Rosary and confraternity meetings. Their 
public worship gave the Guaranis ceremonies accompanied by 
music and chant and all those who witnessed these commented 
on the dignified and reverent way in which they were carried 
out. 

One or two Fathers at the most (and unarmed), assisted by 
the pick of the young men forming the group known as the 
Congregation of St Michael the Archangel, were all that was 
needed to keep the peace and ensure fraternal unity. 

The downfall of the Reductions was not due to any internal 
weakness; it was caused first and foremost by the violent crisis 
that followed the cession of seven of them by Spain to Portugal, 
the calumnies spread abroad against the Jesuits by Plombal's 
agents and, finally, the suppression of the Society as a whole. 

These Paraguay Reductions have been studied and praised 
by men of very different schools of thought. Voltaire praised 
them as "a triumph of humanity". Buffon considered that 
"nothing has given more honour to religion than the civilizing 



120 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

of these nations and the laying of the foundations of an empire 
with no defensive arms other than those of virtue". 

The lesser Antilles do not seem to have been inhabited by 
indigenous peoples properly so-called. The Caribs who landed 
only a short while before the Spaniards cannot be considered 
as such. Hence, apart from these newcomers, the missionaries 
were preaching almost wholly to Negroes, slaves imported from 
Africa. 

The Caribs whose religion, so it is thought, was a mixture 
of pantheism and shamanism, lived in the most primitive 
social conditions. They conceived a ferocious hatred of the 
whites who had driven them back and tried to impose forced 
labour on them. Naturally, this feeling extended to the mission- 
aries themselves. The first among these, the Dominicans, 
preached the Gospel to them at Guadeloupe. The war between 
the Caribs and the Europeans obliged them to withdraw. They 
made further attempts in 1641-2, then in 1652, this time in 
company with the Jesuits. This new Carib mission had also to 
leave, after the massacre of two Jesuits. An Anglo-French 
agreement ceded the islands of Dominica and Saint Vincent to 
the Caribs and in them Dominicans and Jesuits began their 
apostolic work again, but with no more success than previously. 
Finally, the mission was abandoned in 1685. 

The Negro slaves arrived in ever increasing numbers during 
the eighteenth century. There were 84,000 in Martinique alone 
and 90,000 in Guadeloupe in 1789. Catechists began to instruct 
them as soon as they landed. When they considered them 
sufficiently advanced, they passed them on to the missionaries. 
They were only admitted to baptism later, when they had given 
proof of their knowledge and good conduct. With the exception 
of those who had already come under Moslem influence in their 
native countries, they accepted baptism all the more readily 
since it was accompanied by holidays and presents and they 
considered it a godsend if they were able by trickery or cunning 
to have themselves baptized several times. 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 121 

The Negro Code obliged owners of slaves to give them 
religious instruction. Many undertook this with reluctance since 
they considered it equivalent to wasting so many working 
hours and days. When the Fathers reminded them that all men 
were equal in the sight of God, that baptism was of outstanding 
importance, they still in general refused to obey them. All these 
obstacles were unable to prevent a West Indian Negro Chris- 
tian community from coming into existence. It was made up of 
various elements: a few free men, slaves who were well treated 
and in fact were permanent members of their masters' house- 
holds, and slaves attached to the plantations. These were the 
least well provided for, since it was very difficult to minister 
to them for the reasons we have mentioned. The escaped slaves 
or maroons were deprived of all religious help. 

Jesuits (until the suppression and even afterwards as 
seculars), Dominicans, Capuchins,, Carmelites, Friars Minor, 
Recollects, and a few seculars shared the moral responsibility 
for this Christian community. In all, there were no more than 
two hundred priests, a minute number for these hundreds and 
thousands of souls. It is surely not surprising that under such 
conditions this community was not a model one, that it often 
harboured traces of fetishism imported from Africa, and that 
its moral standards were deplorable. But there were within it 
families based on regular marriage. Some of the good 
Christians whom it was found possible to send back to their 
native land after the abolition of the slave trade and slave 
status often became the nucleus around which the first African 
missions came into existence. 



MGR BORGIA'S INQUIRY REVEALS A GENERAL 
DECLINE: ITS CAUSES 

The last few chapters suggest that there was a falling-off in 
missionary work. Its full extent became known when in 1773 
Mgr Borgia presented to Clement XTV the general census on 
which he had been working since 1765. In China there were 



122 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

125,000 Christians, in Tonkin 200,000, a few thousands in 
Cochin-China, Siam and Burma, perhaps 500,000 in India 
(225,000 of these were in Goa), 100,000 in Ceylon and 80,000 
Syro-Chaldean Catholics; some tens of thousands in Africa; 
100,000 in Canada and Nova Scotia; 25,000 in the Calif ornian 
missions and 25,000 in Texas; 400,000 Negroes had been 
evangelized in the West Indies as well as a few hundred 
Caribs: 100,000 Indians in the Paraguay Reductions; and per- 
haps 100,000 in all the other missions of Portuguese and 
Spanish America: in all, a total of less than two million. 

But the returns for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
gave the figures for Catholics in Spanish and Portuguese 
America as 15 to 20 million; 4 to 5 million in the Philippines; 
600,000 to 700,000 Japanese. Even if we suppose that one of 
these lists of figures was drawn up too optimistically and the 
other too strictly or with insufficient data, the divergence is still 
too great to allow of any doubt as to the extent of the decline. 

There were local reasons for it. There is no point in going 
over them once more and they were not the most serious ones; 
these we must look for in Europe. 

Their unity in faith had not prevented Spain, Portugal and 
France, from the eighteenth century onwards, from waging 
bitter warfare with one another in an attempt to extend their 
colonies. The Protestant powers, England and Holland, had 
been equally greedy and each of their conquests had been 
followed by an extension of Protestantism to Ceylon and 
Indonesia accompanied fay hostility towards Catholicism. 
These struggles between Europeans could not fail to do a dis- 
service to the religions they protected. 

In France, the Jansenist quarrel, aggravated by the quarrel 
over the rites, had slowed down missionary effort in the seven- 
teenth century. The enthusiastic workers, men like Olier, 
Vincent de Paul, Bagot, etc., had never really been replaced. 

Of course, these theological disputes emboldened and en- 
couraged the enemies of Catholicism throughout Europe. They 
declared a war to the death against it, a war all the more 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 123 

dangerous In that It was waged in the name of reason, progress 
and freedom. Its principal achievement, the Encyclopedic ou 
Dictionnaire des sciences, des arts et des metiers, skilfully 
planned by Diderot and d'AIembert to create "a general and 
widespread attitude of hostility towards all that smacked of 
religion", gained for the philosophic spirit, thanks to a no less 
skilful circulation policy, converts of high standing outside 
France whose decisions dealt a terrible blow to the missions. 
Two of the most active of these men, Pombal (1699-1782) at 
Lisbon, and Aranda (1718-99), a personal friend of Voltaire, 
at Madrid, with the support of all the courts of Europe suc- 
ceeded in obtaining from a weak pope, Clement XIV, his 
signature to the brief Dominus ac Redemptor (1773) which 
suppressed the Society of Jesus. 

Once the French Revolution had abolished the religious 
Orders, closed the seminaries, secularized the property of the 
clergy and confiscated the inheritance of "emigres" and 
suspects, recruitment in France ceased altogether and the work 
of the missions lost a large section of its resources. Finally, for 
a quarter of a century the wars of the Revolution and the 
Empire made communications difficult between Europe and 
the missions. In view of all this, the very serious decline 
revealed by the Borgia report was bound to become still more 
marked. 

In America and Canada, 137 priests were left and twenty- 
four of these were missionaries. They were gradually to dis- 
appear. The progress of Catholicism towards the West was 
interrupted and only revived in the first quarter of the nine- 
teenth century. The Franciscans and then the Dominicans 
replaced the Jesuits in California and Texas, but Louisiana and 
Florida and central North America were abandoned for twenty 
years. In the thirteen states of the Union, Baltimore which 
had been a prefecture apostolic, was now a diocese but there 
were twenty-five priests in all for 24,000 Catholics. A handful 
of religious were living In Mexico. They were barely tolerated 
by the new government in revolt against Madrid. There was a 



124 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

similar shortage in the lesser Antilles (In spite of the addition 
to their numbers provided by French priests, deportees to 
Guiana who had managed to escape) and in Guiana itself 
whose new prefect apostolic had under his jurisdiction the 
whole coast as far as Brazil. 

In South America, the missions had been disorganized by 
wars of Independence, and also in Mexico, although in Peru, 
the Indians remained loyal to their missionaries. The expulsion 
of the Franciscans (1810), the Jesuits' successors in Paraguay, 
brought in its train the dispersal of the Guaranis and the 
looting of what remained of the Reductions. 

In India, the priests of the Paris Foreign Missions were un- 
able to replace the Jesuits except in the Coimbatore, Mysore 
and Carnatic missions. The oversight of the Christian com- 
munities fell to a hundred or so missionaries of various Orders 
who were not replaced after their death. A large number of 
their converts, deprived of spiritual help, gave up the practice 
of their religion or became Protestants. The four dioceses of 
the Padroado were to remain without bishops until 1818. This 
was the fault of Portugal whose governments since Pombal had 
been anticlerical. 

In the Indo-Chinese peninsula, only the Christian com- 
munity in Annam (Cochin-Chlna, Cambodia, Tonkin), with Its 
400,000 Christians, remained steadfast, thanks to the goodwill 
of Gia-Long, the protege of Mgr Pigneau de Behaine, and to a 
relatively numerous native clergy. 

In China, the French and Portuguese Vincentians succeeded 
the Jesuits. Two of them, men of learning, had seats on the 
board of mathematics at Pekin and enjoyed the imperial 
favour. They were able, for the time being, to protect the 
missionaries scattered throughout the empire. But nothing 
could stop the persecution launched by Kiaking in 1802. The 
missionaries, banished from Pekin, were obliged to take refuge 
at Siwantse, beyond the Great Wall, in Manchuria. Mgr 
Dufresse was beheaded and four Chinese priests were put to 
death by strangling In 1815. Fr Clet, the Vincentian, and 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 125 

Fr John de Triora were martyred In 1820. The last missionaries 
had come out in 1801. No more arrived until 1829. We may 
well ask what would have become of the China missions whose 
European establishment was decreasing year by year, had not 
the members of this establishment done all in their power to 
train, at Manila in particular and on the spot, a Chinese clergy 
(It numbered eighty-nine priests at the beginning of the cen- 
tury), and had they not been helped by excellent catechists and 
Chinese women, nuns by desire if not in fact, entirely devoted 
to apostolic work. 

Japan was still closed to missionaries, but the arrival at 
Manila in 1829 of twenty Japanese bringing medals with them 
and wishing to be baptized, showed that the light of faitl 
continued to burn there. 

In Africa, Abyssinia was without missionaries, five or six 
Vlncentiaris were in residence at Algiers, three at Tripoli, five 
Capuchins at Tunis, four of whom died of the plague while 
tending those who had been struck down by it. At Benghazi, 
a mission had been opened by the Franciscans. In West Africa, 
the prefecture apostolic of Senegal had not survived the Revolu- 
tion, and two attempts to restore it had failed. In the Congo, 
in Angola and at Mozambique, the remains of the Portuguese 
missions were in the last stages of decay. In the Indian Ocean 
and on the Island of Bourbon In 1818, five Vincentians were 
in charge of eleven parishes with a population of 12,000 whites, 
3,000 blacks and 60,000 slaves. Madagascar had been almost 
given up and in 1829 was restored to the immense prefecture 
apostolic entrusted to Mgr Solages which comprised all the 
South Sea Islands as far as Australia and Oceania, where 
missionaries were unable to land for a long time to come. 

The situation was no brighter In the Near East. The see of 
Baghdad had been vacant since 1773 and was not filled until 
1820. The new arrival then found the missions neglected. The 
same was the case with those of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, 
Arabia, Cyprus and Egypt. 



126 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

FIRST SIGNS OF A RE-AWAKENING OF THE 
MISSIONARY SPIRIT 

Setbacks on every side! It was time to remember that the 
Imitation, quoting St Paul, recommends us to accept these 
with joy, "for it is always for our salvation that God brings 
about or permits ail that happens to us". In any case, at the 
end of the seventeenth century, a light suddenly shone in 
Korea, a feeble light indeed, yet kindled in such a surprising 
fashion that it was sufficient to drive darkness and desolation 
from the land. It was not the work of any missionary. A treatise 
on the Catholic religion which had come from China together 
with various scientific works, fell into the hands of an educated 
man and made him a Catholic by desire. He shared his dis- 
covery with a friend about to leave for Pekin with the annual 
delegation and asked him to make contact with the Christians 
of the Chinese capital. The friend obtained an audience with 
the archbishop of Pekin, studied Catholic doctrine, was present 
at some of the ceremonies, was himself won over and asked 
for baptism. This he received and once back again in Seoul, 
loaded with books and pious objects, baptized the Catholic by 
desire. Between them, they converted a third scholar in their 
small circle. The three of them converted others and worked 
to such good effect that the first priest to enter Korea, James 
Tsiu, found there 4,000 Catholics who had remained steadfast 
under fierce persecution. This priest was beheaded in 1801 and 
with him several Koreans of high rank. The "underground" 
Church of Korea then numbered some 10,000 faithful and 
several martyrs. Yet no missionary had come to it. It was 
already so steeped in the spirit of Catholicism that it asked 
the pope to send a bishop and some priests. The letter reached 
Fontainebleau at the time when Pius VII was Napoleon's 
prisoner and quite unable to give a favourable reply for lack 
of missionaries. A new request in 1827 decided Leo XII to 
entrust Korea to the Paris Foreign Missions, but they were 
unable to send out missionaries until 1835. 

In France, Napoleon at first seemed anxious to rebuild the 



FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 127 

rains left by the Revolution, but for reasons of a political 
nature. These were analysed in the Portalis report and the 
emperor summed them up cynically In an address to the 
Council of State: ". . . These religious will be very useful to 
me in Africa, Asia and America. I shall send them out to 
gather information on the state of affairs in the various 
countries . . ." 

A decree of March 23rd, 1805, therefore legalized the exist- 
ence of the Society of the Foreign Missions, the Seminary of 
the Holy Spirit and the Vincentian Congregation. But fresh 
difficulties with the Holy See, caused by the unbridled 
Gallicanism of the emperor, brought in their train the revoca- 
tion of these decrees of 1805 in Paris, and in Rome (soon after 
occupied by Miollis), the suppression of the Congregation of 
Propaganda, the seizure of its archives and the control of its 
finances by the imperial authority. 

After the collapse of the Empire, Pius VII reorganized the 
Congregation of Propaganda in 1817. In Paris, Louis XVIII re- 
established the Society of the Foreign Missions by the decree 
of March 2nd, 1815, the seminary of the Holy Spirit and the 
Vincentians by the decree of February 3rd, 1816. 

Moreover, this legal re-establishment was accompanied by a 
re-awakening of the missionary spirit. It may be asked to 
whom or to what this was due. We must certainly not dis- 
regard the deep emotion aroused by the Genie du christiartisme 
(1802), but the new editions of the Lettres edifiantes et curie uses 
were even more influential. It was while listening to a com- 
mentary on these at a meeting of the association of prayer for 
the salvation of the infidels that a Lyonese woman of great 
piety, Pauline-Marie Jaricot, thought of the idea of making 
collections for the missions. It was from this initial effort that 
the work of the Propagation of the Faith was to emerge in 
1822. In the same year, the Council of this Society began to 
publish extracts from missionaries' letters under the title of 
Nouvelles des Missions ("News of the Missions"), to be re- 



128 FROM ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGANDA TO GREGORY XVI 

placed in 1825 by Les Annales de la Propagation de la Foi 
("Annals of the Propagation of the Faith"). 

From the ruins left by the Revolution and with the intention 
of rebuilding them, there came into being three new institutes 
whose chief object was the apostolate ad infideles: the Con- 
gregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, approved 
in 1800 and better known as the Societe de Picpus from the 
name of the street in Paris where it was founded during the 
Empire by Fr Coudrin; the Society of Mary (Marists) founded 
by the Venerable Fr Colin and approved by Pius VII in 1822; 
the Congregations of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, estab- 
lished in 1816 by Mgr de Mazenod. 

Finally* the resumption of exploration and the campaigns 
against slavery contributed, as early as the beginning of the 
nineteenth century, towards the creation of an atmosphere 
favourable to the missions. Fifty years later, the furious river 
rapids which form a sheer barrier to navigation round almost 
the whole coast of Africa, had been everywhere crossed. 
Through the breaches the missions, which had previously 
been confined almost exclusively to the coasts, were able to 
move forward into the interior of the continent and sometimes 
to complete the work of the explorers. 



PART III 

FROM GREGORY XVI TO 
BENEDICT XV 



CHAPTER IX 

THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 



FIRST FOUNDATIONS ON THE PERIMETER 
(1820-75) 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century African Christianity 
was in process of extinction. Its revival should undoubtedly be 
dated from the day when a few nuns belonging to the order of 
St Joseph of Cluny landed on Senegal in 1817 and in 1820 
opened a school at St Louis de Senegal, but still more from the 
day of the arrival, two years later, of the foundress of the new 
institute. A trifling matter, you may say. No, it was a matter 
of immense importance if we bear in mind the vision which 
Mother Javouhey had seen in 1800. 

At a time when, already attracted to the life of perfection, 
she prayed to be granted new light, she saw little children with 
black faces crowding into her room. "They held out their hands 
to me and called me 'dear mother'. They seemed so unhappy 
that the memory of it has ever since been impressed on my 
memory . . ." St Teresa appeared in one comer of the scene 
and told her: "They are God's children and I am giving them 
to you. I shall be the protectress of your order." She had just 
established this order, the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny. Mother 
Javouhey found her "children" on Senegal in 1822 in the 
streets of Saint-Louis. 

Her genius for putting ideas into practice was so quick in 
action that she was already thinking of giving them instruction, 
of providing for them a specially recruited body of priests pre- 
pared for the apostolate in the colonies, and a seminary to 
which young Africans fitted to become priests would be 
admitted. 



132 THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 

In 1825, she made herself responsible for the transfer of 
eight of these to France where they began their studies at 
Bailleul-sur-Tfaerain. Three persevered and were ordained by 
Mgr Afire in 1840. 

But even before this threefold ordination, the cause of the 
missions in Africa had found its second hero in Abbe Liber- 
mann. Among the "devotional groups" he had formed in the 
seminary of Saint-Sulpice, two Creole seminarists, one from 
the island of Bourbon, the other from Port-au-Prince, had 
opened Ms eyes to the wretched state of the Negro slaves. This 
staggering discovery which followed his meditations on the 
bold programme of Mother Javouhey, moved Libermann and 
his Mends to found the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of 
Mary, which was to devote itself to the evangelization of the 
Negroes. When it received the approval of Gregory XVI in 
1840, it was composed of a mere handful of priests. Its founder 
entrusted ten of his men (seven Fathers and three Brothers) to 
Mgr Barron, vicar apostolic of the two Guineas. This first 
party was all but wiped out in a few months (1844) In the 
Cape Palmas area by a deadly climate against which at that 
time there was no defence. Two survived and one of them, 
Fr Bessieux, was sent to Gabun where he landed in 1845. 

In France, the news of the disaster was a torture to Liber- 
mann, torn between his sorrow ("I do not want to send my 
children to be butchered", he cried) and his desire not to 
abandon "more than fifteen million souls who have never heard 
of the good news our Lord brought to earth". His disciples all 
asked if they might leave for Guinea. He yielded, and in 1846 
a second party founded a post opposite the small island of 
Goree in a modest concession which in 1862 still had the 
appearance of a village but later became Dakar. 

Thus the two first bases for this new evangelization were 
now in existence, one in Gabun with Mgr Bessieux, appointed 
vicar apostolic of the two Guineas in 1848, the other on 
Senegal. Their founders thenceforward belonged to the Con- 
gregation of the Holy Ghost which emerged from the fusion in 



THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 133 

1848 of the Congregation established by Libermann and the 
Seminary of the Holy Spirit. In both places, the period of trial 
and error lasted, it may be said, until the speeding up of ex- 
ploration during the last quarter of the century. On Senegal, 
Mgr Kobes (Mgr Bessieux's coadjutor in 1849), helped by the 
Lammenais Brothers and the Sisters of Castres for the schools, 
and the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny for the care of the sick, 
succeeded, in spite of the strong positions held by Islam, in 
establishing six posts on the coast: Saint-Louis, Goree, Joal, 
Dakar, Sainte-Marie de Gamble and Ngazobil. At his death 
in 1872, the Senegal mission was well established and had six 
Senegalese priests and a congregation of Negro sisters, the 
Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Mary, founded by the Blue 
Sisters of Castres. His successor brought the Gospel to the 
south, to Casamance in the country of the fetichists, where 
Islam had not gained an entry. 

Progress was slower perhaps in Gabun. France had only 
one miserable little outpost on the Libreville peninsula, in- 
habited by a Negro population which the slave traffic and 
various kinds of trade kept in a state of listlessness and corrup- 
tion. Beyond the post was the unexplored forest. Mgr Bessieux, 
with the monks of the early centuries in mind, decided to give 
these rather unapproachable Negroes an example of a Christian 
life and productive work. He himself took part in the clearing 
of the forest and the prairie, so that a mission post might be set 
up. It had its church, workshops, vegetable and fruit gardens 
and soon after its schools under the direction of the Blue 
Sisters of Castres. This method was that adopted in Canada 
during the seventeenth century by the builders of the first 
Christian villages. He himself acquired sufficient prestige to be 
able to tell the French admiral who, after the events of 1871, 
was talking of evacuating Gabun: "Admiral, we are standing 
in front of a door which may well open one day." And he 
proved to be right when exploration began to develop. 

Previous to this period, the missionaries had blazed trails 



134 THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 

in two other sections of central Africa on the shores of the 
gulf of Guinea and on the east coast. 

In 1856, a former member of the Paris Society of Foreign 
Missions, Mgr de Marion-Bresillac who had been vicar apos- 
tolic of Colmbatour, made up his mind to devote himself to 
the evangelization of the Negroes and, with the approval of 
Pius IX, founded the Lyons African Missions. He was 
appointed vicar apostolic of Sierra Leone and landed there in 
1858 with three priests and two brothers. Less than two months 
later all five of them died of yellow fever. It was an even 
greater disaster than that of Cape Palmas. Yet it too was not 
allowed to breed discouragement. A new party set out from 
Lyons in 1861, this time for the Slave Coast and Dahomey, 
where there were still a few small groups of Christian Negroes 
who had been evangelized in America and repatriated after 
the abolition of the slave trade. At Lagos, Ouidah and Porto 
Novo between 1861 and 1868 new mission posts developed of 
the same type as those established by the Holy Ghost Fathers. 

On the east coast where the slave trade was practised more 
blatantly and with more impunity than in the west, a Holy 
Ghost Father, Fr Homer, established at Zanzibar in 1863 a 
medical centre and a Catholic school which took in Negro 
children who had been ransomed. In the course of the next few 
years, he built it up into a mission that was a model at the 
time. He added to the elementary schools a vocational institute 
for adults with facilities for training in all trades, an embryo 
seminary where Latin was taught, and a school of domestic 
science. From 1868 onward, he built another centre on the 
same model at Bagamoyo on the mainland opposite Zanzibar, 
Soon afterwards, he built a third on the heights of Mhonda. 
These three foundations, and Bagamoyo in particular, were 
to serve as bases for the departure and as stages on the journey 
of new bands of missionaries and several explorers, among 
them Stanley and Cameron. Bagamoyo, like Libreville in the 
West, was "the mother of all the missions" in the East. 



THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 135 

In South Africa, the hostility of the Protestant Boers delayed 
until 1820 the establishment of the first Catholic priests at the 
Cape. In any case, by order of the authorities, they were 
obliged to confine their ministry to Whites alone. The apos- 
tolate to the Negroes only really began after 1855 when the 
Oblates of Mary Immaculate were given the Natal vicariate. 
Their success in Zululand had been veiy moderate and they 
abandoned the missions they had established there and moved 
to Basutoland whose inhabitants gave them more satisfaction. 

Of the African islands, Mauritius was entrusted to the Vin- 
centians at the beginning of the century. They were succeeded 
by English Benedictines. The appeal made to the Holy Ghost 
Fathers by the most active among them, Mgr Collier (a mis- 
sionary from 1840 to 1863), brought to the Island Fr Desire 
Laval, an apostle who has rightly been compared to Fr Claver. 
His tomb is still honoured today. Almost half of the population 
is Catholic. At La Reunion, the work of the ministry was first 
entrusted to priests of the Holy Ghost Seminary and then, after 
the amalgamation achieved by Libennann, was allotted to the 
Holy Ghost Fathers. Today, in a population of 300,000, there 
are 278,000 Catholics. 

After the decimation of the Vincentian missions in the seven- 
teenth century, Catholicism had all but disappeared from 
Madagascar. In 1829, Mgr de Solages was appointed prefect 
apostolic of the islands in the Southern Sea. During the follow- 
ing year, he tried to enter Tananarive. Queen Ravalona forbade 
him to do so. In 1832, he died of fever and hunger at Ande- 
vorante on the east coast. When the Jesuits were made respon- 
sible for the Madagascar prefecture in 1841, this prohibition 
had not been withdrawn. Fr Finaz, however, succeeded in 
entering the capital in disguise during 1855. In 1861, 
Radama II allowed Catholicism to gain a foothold, but it was 
not until the general pacification of the island by Gallieni (1896) 
that it was really able to develop. 

In the last years of the century, progress became extensive 
enough to bring about the establishment of two new vicariates: 



136 THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 

Southern Madagascar, entrusted to the Vincentians, Northern 
Madagascar, to the Holy Ghost Fathers. 

The rebirth of the missions in Ethiopia in the nineteenth 
century was the work of two French explorers, the brothers 
d'Abbadie, and an Italian Vincentian, Fr Sapeto. The favour- 
able reports they sent to Rome persuaded Gregory XVI to send 
to Fr Sapeto two other Italian members of his order, Frs de 
Jacobis and Montuori who landed at Massouah in 1839. The 
immense charity of Fr de Jacobis proved so effective that 
Propaganda established two vicariates, Gallas entrusted to the 
Italian Capuchins, Abyssinia under the charge of Mgr de 
Jacobis and the Italian Vincentians. The Coptic clergy took 
umbrage at this and launched a persecution which led to the 
martyrdom of an Abyssinian Vincentian, Ghebra Mikael, who 
was beatified in 1926. Mgr de Jacobis was thrown into prison. 
He escaped but died, worn out by his labours, in 1860. He had 
been responsible for 6,000 conversions. In the meantime, 
French Vincentians replaced their Italian brethren (1861) and 
succeeded in protecting the Christian communities in spite 
of the persecutions of the emperor Theodoras and his succes- 
sor Johannes IV, both enemies of Rome. 

The first bishop of Gallas, Mgr Massaia, succeeded, at the 
risk of his life, in reaching God jam and Choa on the Abyssinian 
plateau. Soon after, Kaffa, the southern territory, expressed a 
desire to receive missionaries. Once again, Copts and Moslems 
reacted violently. The emperor Theodoras imprisoned the 
bishop in 1863. But the dignity and prestige of the prisoner 
was so great that the emperor released him. In 1877, Johannes 
IV expelled the entire mission, including Mgr Massai'a, who 
returned to Italy where he received a cardinal's hat. In 1880, 
the Gallas vicariate was in the hands of Mgr Taurin, a French 
Capuchin who, after initial difficulties, profited from the 
friendly dispositions of Menelik, Johannes* successor. Thence- 
forward, the mission foundations, while still always exposed to 
the hostility of the Copts and the Moslems, could be consoli- 



THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 137 

dated and expanded. In 1900 Mgr Jarosseau was succeeded by 
Mgr Taurin. His long ministry (1900-36), Ms prestige and Ms 
inexhaustible and discerning solicitude for the people who were 
often threatened with famine, completed the work so heroically 
begun before his time. The situation of Catholicism was trans- 
formed by it. In the days of Mgr Massaia, everything which 
represented Catholicism in Abyssinia was detested. About 
fifty years later, respect had taken the place of hatred. 



PENETRATION INTO THE INTERIOR FROM 1875 
TO 1914 

A period of rapid expansion began during the last quarter 
of the century. A great number of explorers arrived from all 
parts of the world. Each of them was working on behalf of Ms 
own country and eager to ensure that it had a good share in 
the forthcoming partition of Africa. The slave trade sparked 
off ferven* anti-slavery campaigns. In this combination of 
circumstances, an opportunity occurred for the missions to 
enter the field of international politics and Cardinal Lavigerie 
seized it with his customary promptness. 

The international Association for the exploration of Africa, 
founded at Brussels in 1876, had undertaken to guarantee the 
freedom of the missionaries. The Protestants were already pre- 
paring to take advantage of tMs. Cardinal Lavigerie used the 
fact as a pretext for sending a secret memorandum to Pius IX. 
In it he suggested that vicariates should be established in 
those places where the Protestants announced their intention 
of founding new missions, that "Africa should be transformed 
by the Africans," and finally that every effort should be made 
to abolish slavery. Fifty of his sons (the WMte Fathers, 
religious of the Society of African missionaries which he had 
just founded), he noted at the end of the document, had 
promised on oath to devote all their strength to carrying out 
this vast programme. 

Leo XIII had just succeeded Pius IX. Four days after Ms 



138 THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 

election, he signed a rescript establishing two vicariates in the 
area of the Great Lakes (1878) and giving Lavlgerie the powers 
of an "Apostolic delegate for the missions of equatorial 
Africa". During the summer of 1878 the first party of White 
Fathers left Bagamoyo. At Tabora, it split into two. One group 
reached the shores of Lake Tanganyika at the beginning of 
1879, the other arrived a little later at Lake Victoria-Nyanza. 

The reports they sent to Lavigerie gave horrifying details 
regarding the slave raids organized against the Negroes by the 
Arab dealers. He used them in drawing up a brief for the 
struggle against slavery. 

Leo XIII was about to issue the apostolic letter In plurimis' 
addressed to the bishops of Brazil on the occasion of a decree 
of the Brazilian Government which had just emancipated the 
slaves in its territories. Lavigerie asked for a few words to be 
added to the letter. His wish was more than granted, the addi- 
tion grew into a page which described the whole African 
drama. 

Lavigerie supplemented the effect produced by the pope's 
letter by himself preaching a crusade against slavery through- 
out Europe. It had a profound influence on the Brussels Con- 
gress of 1890, whose final enactment therefore pointed out that 
among the most effective means of fighting the slave-trade was 
"the progressive organization of the religious institutions of 
civilized countries". Further, the powers who signed the docu- 
ment undertook to protect existing and future missions. Cer- 
tainly, the missionaries had not waited for these guarantees 
before preaching the Gospel, but the homage paid to their 
civilizing work, although coming a little late in the day and 
with a strong suggestion of empty promises, was of a kind 
to strengthen their position as they faced their enemies. 

After the division of the party at Tabora in 1878, the first 
group of White Fathers, as we have said, arrived at Lake 
Tanganyika in the early days of the year 1879. By 1881, it 
had firmly established itself there, although it had lost two 
religious during an attack by partisans of slavery who had 



TIIE AFRICAN MISSIONS 139 

tried to recover some orphans rescued from their clutches. In 
1886, the Holy See established the provicariate of the Upper 
Congo and entrusted it to Mgr Roelens, a Belgian White 
Father who was joined in 1891 by his first party of mission- 
aries. They were of the same nationality as himself. Thus was 
inaugurated the Great Lakes Mission, one of the finest crea- 
tions of the Institute founded by Lavigerie. 

In 1887, the first representatives of a recently established 
Belgian Institute, the Scheut Fathers, at the cost of severe 
losses (more than thirty per cent of the pioneers), laid the 
foundations of Christian communities which were eventually 
to flourish, on the Kasai and at the top of the Congo loop. 
The Jesuits in 1893 made similar foundations on the Kwango, 
with the help of the Sisters of Charity of Ghent. 

The second party of White Fathers setting out from Tabora 
had reached the area north of Lake Victoria-Nyanza where 
three religious were murdered during the first months. Rein- 
forcements arrived. The Superior, Fr Livinhac, obtained from 
the local ruler a concession at Kasubi. But the baptism of the 
pages of his court angered the Moslem party who maintained 
that the missionaries should be deprived of their freedom and 
Mohammedanism made obligatory. Fearing new outbreaks of 
violence, Lavigerie ordered the Fathers to withdraw to the 
opposite side of the Lake. Left by themselves, their first bap- 
tized converts made many others and they all begged the 
religious to return. When they did so, six hundred cate- 
chumens were waiting to be baptized. This new progress on 
the part of Catholicism unleashed a persecution which put 
eighty martyrs to death in 1886. Twenty of them, among whom 
were thirteen pages who were burned alive, were beatified in 
1920. This sublime sacrifice brought about fresh conversions. 
Between 1886 and 1893, and in spite of two persecutions, one 
instigated by the Moslems, the other by the Protestants, the 
number of Christians in Uganda rose from 4,000 to 50,000. 

Other missionaries also set out from the east coast: in 1890, 
Mgr Leroy, a Holy Ghost Father, who celebrated Mass on the 



140 THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 

slopes of Kilimanjaro., at a height of 11,641 feet, laid the 
foundation of a vicariate bearing the name of the mountain. 
In 1891, the Nairobi mission was founded, again by Holy 
Ghost Fathers. 

In the first years of the twentieth century, the Consolata 
Fathers successfully evangelized the Kikuyu and the Amem 
in the south of Kenya, and the Mill Hill Fathers, the 
Kourrondo. In 1889, the White Fathers established the Lake 
Nyasa mission on the initiative of Lavigerie who had estimated 
that the Great Lakes missions would be more easily accessible 
from Mozambique than from Bagamoyo. In 1897, Propa- 
ganda established the Nyasaland vicariate and in 1908 divided 
it to form the new vicariate of Shire, which was entrusted to 
the de Montfort Fathers. 

As Mgr Bessieux had foretold, the open door leading from 
the west coast to Gabun widened to allow new parties of 
Holy Ghost Fathers to pass through. Between 1878 and the 
first journeys of Stanley and Brazza, they settled at Saint-Paul 
de Donghila (on the estuary of the Gabun), then at various 
points along the two banks of the lower Congo, especially at 
Banana and Landana. This latter mission gave hospitality 
during the early days of 1881 to Brazza who arrived, in a 
semi-dying condition, from Mfoa on Stanley Pool. It was 
from Landana again that Fr Augouard set out towards Mfoa 
where he found Stanley at the beginning of August 1881. 
Mfoa was later to become Brazzaville. The same religious 
helped towards the peaceful settlement of the French at Pointe 
Noire, Shortly afterwards, the basin of the lower and middle 
Congo became the field of action of this high-spirited mis- 
sionary. When he had founded the mission station of Saint 
Joseph of Linzolo, he arranged for the separate parts of a 
small ship to be sent to Brazzaville from France. The ship 
was constructed under Ms direction and at times with his 
help and, under the name of the Leon XIII, established con- 
nections between the various mission posts that had been 
established in the Congo basin. Leon XIII wore out in time 



THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 141 

and was succeeded by another ship of the same name, then by 
a Pie X. The vicariate of Oubangui and Brazzaville, estab- 
lished in 1890 to include these posts in one district, and ex- 
tending from Stanley Pool to the Nile basin, covered areas 
that were mostly unexplored; it was a very suitable assignment 
for Mgr Augouard. For many years, there was only a handful 
of Christians there, the majority of them ransomed Negro 
slaves. Then, towards the beginning of the twentieth century, 
an extraordinary movement led these man-eating tribes 
towards Christianity, and to such good effect that in 1909 the 
original vicariate had to be divided. The southern part formed 
the vicariate of the French Upper Congo and the northern 
part the prefecture apostolic of Oubangui-Chari. 

Still in equatorial Africa, the Holy Ghost Fathers had 
settled in 1885 on the Ogoue at Lamberene, at Ndjole, Lastour- 
ville, Fenian Vaz, and to the south of the river, at Loango. 

After the founding of French Guinea, other Holy Ghost 
Fathers established posts near the coast at Boffa, Sangha and 
Boke, further inland at Kindia and Mamou, and in the Kissi 
territory, at Guedekou and Mongo. They arrived in Nigeria in 
1885. Fifteen years later, the prefecture apostolic of the Lower 
Niger numbered three posts: Onitsha, Agouleri, Nsube. 

In 1879, after the Gold Coast prefecture had been entrusted 
to the Lyons African Missions, the first post was founded at 
Elmina on the coast. It included a school and a medical centre. 

The king of the Ashantis wanted to make the acquaintance 
of these philanthropists and gave orders for them to be sum- 
moned to Kumassi, his capital. He gave a friendly reception 
to one of them, Fr Moreau (1881), who thought he might 
ask for permission to take up residence in the town. The king 
refused, doubtless because a Wesleyan minister had asked for 
the same favour. In any case, he dismissed them both. In the 
midst of all this, a revolt drove him from his throne. The 
Lyons missionaries were not able to settle at Kumassi until 
1910. 

To compensate for this, as early as 1880 they were able 



142 THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 

to found a mission post at Abeokouta, the great city of the 
Yoruba, whose local chief, having once invited them to come, 
did not change his mind. A church soon replaced the little 
temporary chapel. An educational and medical centre fol- 
lowed for "the white women who do not marry and who come 
from the cold countries to save little children", as the nuns 
were called in the deed of conveyance drawn up by the local 
chief. Thanks to his goodwill, another mission post was estab- 
lished at Oyo.* 

The Ivory Coast became a French colony in 1893. Two years 
later, Propaganda established a prefecture apostolic in the 
country and this too was entrusted to the Lyons African 
Missions. After an auspicious beginning, marked by the foun- 
dation of posts at Grand-Bassam, at Memmi, then at Dabou, 
Bonoue, Assinie, Jacqueville and Moousso, an epidemic of 
plague accompanied by yellow fever decimated the 1899 
mission. The missionary council decided nevertheless to keep 
all the stations. 

The first priests to preach the Gospel in the Cameroons, 
Holy Ghost Fathers, came from Gabun in 1884. They were 
succeeded by German Pallottini Fathers when the Cameroons 
became a colony of the Reich and was given the status of a 
prefecture apostolic* and they were subsequently helped by 
German Fathers of the Sacred Heart (St Quentin). In the 
meantime, the prefecture had been replaced by a vicariate. 

Nothing remained of the Portuguese seventeenth-century 
missions in Angola except the memory of a brilliant past, when 
in 1865 the Holy Ghost Fathers were given charge of the 
territory. One of them, Fr Duparquet, set out from Lindana 
on a voyage of discovery in the southern areas. He was respon- 
sible for valuable information which led Propaganda to estab- 
lish the prefecture apostolic of Cimbebasia (1879), later known 
as Cubango. The Holy Ghost Fathers also settled at Huila 
(1881). At the same time, secular missionaries from Portugal, 
trained at the seminary of Xernache, took over the parishes 
that had previously been abandoned and revived San Salvador 
(which had seen better days) with the help of seculars from 



THE AFRICAN MISSIONS 143 

Goa and nuns (Sisters of Saint Joseph of Cluny and Fran- 
ciscans of Mary). 

The advance of the White Fathers across the Sahara and 
the Sudan Is one of the most glorious chapters in the history 
of this period. Cardinal Lavlgerie had indicated Timbuctoo 
as the base where they were to establish a mission from which 
they could go out in all directions across the Sudan. But in 
1876 three Fathers were murdered by the Tuareg. In 1881, 
three other religious also met their death in an ambush on the 
road from Tuat. On the orders of Cardinal Lavigerie, there 
then followed a period of retreat and preparation in the centre 
at Ghardaia, where the Fathers and the nuns partly allayed the 
prejudices and hatred of the desert nomads by their works 
of charity. The time came when the Superior, Fr Hacquart, 
was given a respectful reception in the advance posts in the 
south of Algeria and in southern Oranais. When he set out 
on his great journey, the atmosphere was favourable and he 
arrived at Timbuctoo in 1894 without encountering any diffi- 
culties. From there, he undertook several exploratory journeys 
and investigations across the Sudan. The report he sent to 
Rome included a very penetrating forecast of the probable 
evolution of the Negro countries. "Soon there will no longer 
be in the Sudan any isolated communities living the simple, 
primitive life. This fanciful vision must be abandoned and we 
must train for the different ranks in the social world and 
according to each man's aptitudes, educated people, open- 
minded people and above all people who are Christian through 
and through." 

Who else in 1900 had such confidence in the world of the 
Negroes? Meanwhile, as early as 1895, the White Fathers were 
at Bamako, Segou and Timbuctoo and from there they rapidly 
moved on to the KissI, in the direction of Kankan to the 
west, and the Mossi country to the east. They were followed 
shortly after by the White Sisters. In the Sudan vicariate, of 
which Mgr Hacquart was given charge, were included the 
centres of Bobo-Dloulasso and Ouagadougou. 



CHAPTER X 

THE CHINA MISSIONS 



THE SITUATION PRIOR TO THE TREATIES OF 
TIEN-TSIN (1858) AND PEKIN (1860) 

At the beginning of Gregory XVTs pontificate the position 
of the Chinese Christian communities was still much the same 
as it had been in about the year 1800, but there had been one 
change for the better: the missionaries were coming out in 
slightly larger numbers; and one change for the worse: the 
hostility of the emperors meant the more rigorous application 
of the edicts prescribing Christianity. In a word, the Church 
was still obliged to remain underground. 

Legal proceedings were taken against missionaries and 
Chinese Christians. A Vincentian, Fr Jean Gabriel Perboyre, 
who arrived in Honan in 1836, was betrayed to the police by 
a renegade, then tortured for months on end for having refused 
to renounce his faith and to give information about the 
Christian communities. He was hanged on September llth, 
1840. He was beatified by Leo XIII. 

The missions only acquired legal status after the Opium War 
had forcibly opened the gates of the empire. The causes of this 
war are well known. On March 28th, 1839, the governor of 
Canton ordered that some 20,000 cases of opium which a 
merchant by the name of Elliot wanted to introduce into 
China, should be seized and dumped into the sea. The Chinese 
Government refused to pay the compensation claimed by 
Elliot and suspended all trade with the English. 

After a short campaign China yielded and opened the ports 
of Canton, Amoy, Hing-Po and Shanghai to British traders 
(1842). In 1844, France and America in their turn negotiated 
the treaty of Whampou. The French plenipotentiary, M. de 



THE CHINA MISSIONS 145 

Lagrenee, succeeded In having an article Included in It (23) 
according to which any Frenchmen venturing to any area out- 
side the five ports Indicated in the treaty with England should 
be taken, without receiving ill-treatment of any kind, to the 
French consulate in the nearest port. French priests thus found 
themselves safeguarded by an International agreement. But 
before freedom to move about and to preach could be secured 
for missionaries of every nation, a new European Interven- 
tion was necessary. The circumstance which led to it was the 
martyrdom of one of the missionaries, Fr Chapdeiaine (1856). 
The freedom in question was written into the treaty of Tien- 
Tsin (1858) which also contained an article (8) declaring that 
any missionary in possession of a passport issued by the 
French Legation at Pekin would be considered as French. 
Thus France's right of protection was recognized. The general 
assembly of the bishops of China, which included the Italian 
prelates, had stated in a letter written to the pope in 1851 that 
they considered such protection "indispensable". 

The treaty of Pekin (I860), negotiated by France, obliged 
the Chinese Government to restore to the Christians, through 
the good offices of the French minister to China, the church 
buildings and those devoted to charitable works which had 
been previously confiscated. It also granted to the missionaries 
the right to possess and to buy land for the erection of 
churches and houses. 

This state of affairs which has been called, perhaps too 
optimistically, "the French protectorate" was displeasing both 
to the Chinese Government since it placed under foreign 
supervision small areas of Its territory and the Christians 
living in them and to the Holy See, in so far as it re-estab- 
lished, though on a very small scale, and for the benefit of 
France, a state of affairs which was reminiscent of the former 
patronato system. 

This dissatisfaction on the part of both Rome and Pekin 
might, in favourable circumstances, lead to the establishment 
of diplomatic relations between them. The opportunity came 



146 THE CHINA MISSIONS 

in 1885. At the time of the Tonkin expedition when Franco- 
Chinese relations had become strained, the emperor had made 
it known that the Chinese Christians and the missionaries, 
even those who were French, would be safe from violent 
action of any kind. Leo XIII thanked him and reminded him 
in a letter dated January 1st, 1885, that the envoys of the 
Sovereign Pontiff were not recruited from one nation alone. 
"A fact", he pointed out, "in complete accord with the nature 
of the Christian religion, which is not made for one people 
alone but for all, which unites all men in the bonds of brother- 
hood with no distinction of country or race." 

In its reply, the imperial Government made it known that 
it was willing to accredit a minister to the Holy See and to 
welcome a nuncio in Pekin. The establishment of direct 
relations, however, did not take place, as France refused to 
renounce the benefits she enjoyed under article 8 of the treaty 
of Tien-Tsin. 

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FRENCH 
PROTECTORATE 

Throughout the empire the treaties (Whampou, Tien-Tsin, 
Pekin) improved the situation. When the guarantees of 
religious freedom secured by them had been included in the 
treaties China signed with Prussia (1861), Denmark and 
Holland (1863), Spain (1864), Italy (1866) and Portugal (1887), 
the Chinese missions did indeed take on the international 
character Leo XIII was to emphasize. 

There was now no longer any need to work underground. 
Yet the outbreaks of civil war, brigandage, the attacks of 
xenophobia those endemic diseases of China never ceased. 
One orgy of butchery after another took place in the second 
half of the nineteenth century, down to the most deadly of 
them all, that of the Boxers in 1900 which martyred several 
thousand Chinese Christians. 

The Chinese world faced by the missionaries in the second 
half of the century was almost the same as it had been in the 



TBDE CHINA MISSIONS 147 

preceding period. It was shut in on itself, closed to European 
influences, and all but exclusively agricultural. Attachment 
to traditional ways, whether in the shape of loyalty to Chinese 
culture among the educated or of mere superstition among the 
peasants, kept all its force. Both classes took part in the family 
or national rites condemned by the Bull Ex quo singularL 

The old institutes (the Paris Foreign Missions, the Vincen- 
tians) developed the country settlements already established. 
The newcomers acted in the same way for a long time. Yet 
some of them showed occasional leanings towards the creation 
of reductions, the Scheut Fathers, for instance, in Mongolia 
among the Ordos and the Ala-Shan. These Christian com- 
munities which had fully developed thanks to the treaties, 
satisfied all the spiritual and vital needs of their members. But 
they were isolated groups, cut off from the national life. How 
could it be otherwise as long as the Bull Ex quo singulari con- 
tinued to have the force of law? 

The increasingly numerous vicariates on which they 
depended did not lose sight of the need to train a Chinese 
clergy. They all had preparatory schools in which vocations 
underwent a testing period, and seminaries leading to the 
priesthood. The Jesuits, faithful to their traditions, concen- 
trated all their attention on higher education. At Zi-Ka-Wei, 
they established the College of St Ignatius, then, in 1873, an 
observatory which soon became famous throughout the world. 
At Shanghai, they opened in 1903 the Aurora University and 
at Tien-Tsin, an institute of higher studies. At Pekin, the 
Fathers of the Divine Word founded two universities. 

The following figures show the progress of the Church in 
China in the nineteenth century. In 1800, the six vicariates 
numbered 300,000 faithful served by 198 priests, of whom 
89 were Chinese. In 1885, the 650,000 Christians were dis- 
tributed among the 35 vicariates served by 700 foreign mis- 
sionaries and 273 Chinese priests. In 1900, the number of the 
faithful had risen to 740,000, distributed among 82 vicariates 
served by 471 Chinese priests and 904 unssionaries. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE INDO-CHINA MISSIONS 



Under the reign of Gia-Long (Mgr Pigneau de Behaine's 
protege), the flourishing Christianity of Annam had only one 

difficulty, the shortage of missionaries. Everything changed 
when Minh-Mang came to the throne in 1820. His hatred of 
Catholicism was kept in check at first by the viceroy of Lower 
Indo-China, who had been one of Gia-Long's officers. After 
this man's death, it knew no bounds. The edict of 1825 for- 
bade missionaries to enter the country and condemned the 
"perverted religion of the Europeans". The edict of 1833 
called on all Christians from the mandarins down to those 
In the most humble circumstances to abandon it in all sincerity. 
Those who trampled the cross underfoot would be pardoned 
but once only. The edict ordered also that the churches and 
the priests* houses should be destroyed. In 1836, a fresh edict 
brought in the death penalty for every European priest "cap- 
tured on a European ship in the act of landing in the kingdom; 
every priest seized in the interior of the country; those who 
hid them in their houses; and all public officials in whose 
territories one of these priests was seen, on the grounds that 
they would be guilty of failing to make the necessary searches 
in order to take him into custody". The Christian communities 
were forced to go underground and the missionaries into 
hiding. There were many victims of this persecution between 
1833 and 1840. Fr Gagelin, who had given himself up in order 
not to compromise the faithful among whom he was hidden, 
was put to death by strangling. Fr Odorico and Mgr Delgado 
died in prison. Fr Marchand suffered the frightful torture of 



THE INDO-CHZNA MISSIONS 149 

the hundred wounds. Two vicars apostolic, Hernandez and 
( Dumoulin-Borie and Frs Comay and Fernandez were be- 
headed and Fr Jaccard strangled. 

A few years of respite followed the accession of Thien-Tri, 
Minh-Mang's son (1841). Not that he revoked the edicts, he 
merely applied them less rigorously. Exile or imprisonment took 
the place of the death penalty. One great missionary belonging 
to the Paris Foreign Missions, Mgr Retord, without further 
ado acted as though liberty had already been restored. He In- 
vited his clergy to celebrate public worship once more In the 
open. He himself, in company with several of his subordinates, 
undertook pastoral journeys. He officiated In makeshift 
churches, administered the sacraments In them and then sum- 
moned his congregation to join in processions at which public 
prayers were recited. Nothing hindered this movement, not 
even obstructions In the villages or the imprisonment of some 
of his priests on the Instigation of zealous governors. And the 
bishop wrote: "our little boat, which was letting in water on 
all sides and seemed doomed to shipwreck, Is now repaired." 

After the death of Thieu-Tri (1847) his successor, Tu-Duc, 
promulgated three edicts whose aim was the extermination of 
the European and Vietnamese priests. 

Every village suspected of giving hiding to any of them 
was surrounded and every house in It searched. So as not to 
compromise the faithful, the missionaries sought refuge In the 
mountains and the forests. In his successive hiding-places, 
Mgr Retord the bishop of the maquis, as one of his bio- 
graphers calls him received news of the worst kind: churches 
demolished or burned, Christians tortured, condemned to exile, 
hard labour, beheading and, alas, sometimes when under 
torture, denouncing priests. Nothing could break his spirit. 
In his last hiding-place, a hut made of branches and leaves, he 
'was drawing up a programme of restoration when he died on 
October 22nd, 1858. 

After a Spanish bishop, Mgr Diaz, had been beheaded 
(July 20th, 1857), Spain and France organized an expedition 



1 50 THE INDO-CfflNA MISSIONS 

commanded by Admiral Rigoult de Genoullly. Turan was 
taken. The expeditionary force occupied Saigon (1859), then, 
in the absence of sufficient intelligence, dug Itself In there. 
The outburst of violence which followed caused the year 1861 
to be given the name Phan-Tap (dispersion). All the Christians 
were scattered among the pagan villages, while their own were 
sacked. The land they owned was shared out among the 
neighbouring pagan villages and their families broken up. The 
most barbarous clause in the edicts placed Christians on a par 
with mere cattle, and ordered that the two characters Ta Dao 
(perverted religion) should be cut into their left cheek, and 
into their right the name of the canton or the prefecture where 
they were to live. Amongst the martyrs of this period was one 
of outstanding character, a young priest of the Paris Foreign 
Missions, Theophane Venard, who kept up his spirits even 
before his executioner. His exemplary submission to his fate, 
clearly expressed in his letters written in prison and later pub- 
lished, gave birth to large numbers of missionary vocations 
especially in the United States. The expeditionary force set out 
once more and in 1862 France and Tu-Duc signed the treaty 
of Saigon which ceded to France three provinces of Cochin- 
China and guaranteed religious freedom. In 1867, the whole of 
Cochin-China became a French possession. 

When peace was restored, the nursing Sisters of the order of 
Saint Paul de Chartres arrived and then the Brothers of the 
Christian Schools. The nuns of the Lisieux Carmel had 
founded a convent In Saigon as early as 1861. It was the first 
Carmel In the Far East. 

On the other hand, throughout the whole of Annam, the 
Christians continued to be ill-treated by the lettered classes 
with the support of Tu-Duc. Then again, bands of Chinese 
pirates were constantly playing havoc with Tonkin; Franco 
led two new expeditions there which finally brought about 
the establishment of her protectorate (the treaty of Hue, 1883). 

What, we may ask, was the mental reaction at the time to 
this series of Interventions In China and Indo-China? An article 



THE INDO-CffiNA MISSIONS 151 

in L'Ami du clerge et du roi (February 3rd, 1842) informs us. 

The Opium War had just begun and two missionaries had 

been arrested in Tonkin when the review wrote: 

France has a few ships stationed in the China seas; they are 
insufficient to engage in hostilities against an organized power, 
but they would be adequate to make our name known among 
the barbarians and to save the lives of those Frenchmen who 

have marched forward with the advance guard of civilization 

And when Asia hears the sound of British cannon would it not 
surely be worth while for France to let the 400,000 Christians 
of these new missions know that they have found a protector? 

Should the missionaries receive less consideration than the 
British business men who were selling the drug? It would have 
been a sorry affair to allow opium to go in and the Gospel 
to be rejected. This was the way Catholic circles reasoned. 
And the others, even though hostile to Catholicism, considered 
that the State had an inalienable right to avenge Its nationals 
when they were ill-treated. But once the Western States had 
entered on this path, they were to find themselves caught up in 
a web of circumstance from which there could be no escape. 

Meanwhile what of the missions? During the periods of 
warfare, the Christians, since they were accused of being in 
sympathy with the invaders, could not fail to be treated even 
worse than before. In Annam, the most deadly persecutions 
took place at the same time as the 1883 expedition. In the half 
century of persecution dating from Minh-Mang down to the 
treaty of Hue, 115 Annamite priests suffered martyrdom, and 
100,000 Christians died for their faith. St Pius X and Pius XII 
beatified more than a hundred of them. Such was the quality 
of these Vietnam Christian communities that at the height of 
the final persecution they continued to grow. In the year 1885, 
the vicariates depending on the Paris Foreign Missions regis- 
tered 19,705 baptisms. 

When peace was restored it lasted for fifty years. This was 
the pax gallica, as Fr Brou had written, and it made possible 
the expansion of the work begun by sacrifice. The Sulpicians 



1 52 THE INDO-CHINA MISSIONS 

took charge of the international seminary at Hanoi; the 
Canadian Redemptorists and the Franciscans devoted them- 
selves to giving parish missions and retreats and to youth 
work. The Brothers of the Christian Schools and the Sisters 
of Saint Paul de Chartres developed their own foundations. 
Other congregations devoted themselves to teaching and 
social work the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul, the Franciscan 
Missionaries of Mary, the Canonesses of St Augustine, the 
Sisters of Providence of Portieux, the Sisters of Our Lady of 
the Missions. The centres of the contemplative life made their 
appearance. These were founded by the Trappists at Phuoc- 
Son, by the monks of Lerins and of La Pierre-qui-Vire through- 
out Vietnam, by the Carmelites at Hanoi, Hue, Phat-Diem and 
Tranh-Hoa, and by the Poor Clares at Vinh. Native vocations 
were developed in these houses. Finally, purely Vietnamese 
congregations were founded by the already existing European 
Votaries of the Cross, the Sisters of the Third Order of St 
Dominic, the Brothers of the Holy Family, the Catechist 
Brothers of Christian Doctrine. 

The evangelization of the other territories of the Indo- 
Chinese peninsula the plateaux to the west of the Annamite 
mountain chain, Cambodia, Siam (now Thailand), Burma 
followed a parallel course to that of Vietnam. The first priests 
from the Paris Foreign Missions arrived in 1842 among the 
Banhars, one of the savage tribes of western Vietnam. They 
had much to suffer from the climate and the insalubrious 
nature of the country, and still more from the fickleness and 
superstition of the natives. A rebellion drove them out in 
1867. They came back and by their pertinacity succeeded in 
founding a permanent mission. 

The first mission to the Tais, the people of the mountainous 
regions of Tonkin, dates from 1878. After satisfactory begin- 
nings, sickness carried away several of the missionaries and, 
in 1883 and 1884 an outburst of xenophobia, parallel with that 
in Vietnam, brought about the massacre of missionaries. 



THE INDOCHINA MISSIONS 153 

native priests and 2 9 000 Tai converts. Evangelization began 
again under Mgr Gendreau's direction but It achieved only 
slight successes during the nineteenth century. The same Is 
true of Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, where Buddhism 
remained in a strong position. 

In Burma, the vicaiiates of Pegu and Ava, which were 
entrusted to the Barnabltes, numbered some 3,000 converts at 
the end of the eighteenth century. After half a century of 
virtual neglect, due to the shortage of missionaries, the mission 
was handed over, from 1839 to 1856, to the Oblates of Turin 
who were later succeeded by the priests of the Paris Foreign 
Missions. 

One of these, Fr Blgandet, completely mastered the Burmese 
language. He was appointed vicar apostolic in 1858 and won 
the favour of the king of North Burma. He was then able to 
appeal for help to medical, nursing and teaching institutes: the 
Good Shepherd Sisters of Angers, the Little Sisters of the 
Poor, the Brothers of the Christian Schools. With their colla- 
boration and in the course of a large number of pastoral jour- 
neys, he developed the former mission posts, established new 
ones and ordained fourteen Burmese priests. 

The Church of Burma had been founded. In 1868, the initial 
vicariate was divided Into three sections: East Burma, Central 
and South-west Burma. The Milan Foreign Missions were 
allotted the eastern region, the two others were left under the 
care of the Paris Foreign Missions. New districts were to be 
formed after 1914, 



CHAPTER XII 

THE INDIAN MISSIONS 



THE BULL MULT A PRAECLARE AND THE 
GOANESE SCHISM 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Indian missions 
appealed in vain for help. Neither the warning of the co- 
adjutor of Goa, notifying the regent of Portugal that the secular 
priests of the diocese were by no means sufficient in number 
to minister to the spiritual needs of the Christians, nor the 
appeals made by the Government in 1819 and 1831, had per- 
suaded a single secular or religious to set out for India. The 
future looked darker still when the mother country in 1855 
suppressed the religious Congregations throughout the terri- 
tory of the patronato without however renouncing any of the 
rights attached to the patronato itself. 

At this date there were still 248 religious in the whole of 
India, of whom some twenty were Portuguese. The others, the 
"Goanese", although not deserving the severe judgements of 
the Propaganda missionaries, were for the most part lacking in 
zeal and preferred to remain in Goan territory rather than to 
go out on the mission. The majority, with insufficient training, 
could not hope to give a good account of themselves in contro- 
versies with the Protestant ministers who, on the whole, were 
carefully chosen and increasingly numerous after the British 
conquest. Further, the Portuguese patronato showed less and 
less willingness to honour its obligations. Goa had been with- 
out a bishop since 1831, Cranganore since 1777, Cochin since 
1778, Mylapore since 1804. The Holy See began by begging 
Portugal to make appointments to the vacant sees or else to 



THE INDIAN MISSIONS 1 55 

renounce her rights. Having received no reply, Gregory XVI 
established five vicariates apostolic between 1831 and 1834: 
Calcutta, Madras, Ceylon, Pondicherry and Madura. The 
bishops to be appointed would be withdrawn from the juris- 
diction of the Portuguese ordinaries. 

Justified though these appointments certainly were, they 
produced a situation pregnant with conflict, since the terri- 
tories of the new dioceses continued to be within the sphere 
of the Padroado, which had not been abolished by any 
diplomatic instrument. In the meantime, Gregory XVI, with 
the advice of theologians and jurists, had put into final form the 
Bull Multa praeclare (1838) which confirmed the status of the 
vicariates, suppressed explicitly the four dioceses of Cran- 
ganore, Cochin, Mylapore and Malacca, handed over their 
territories to the vicars apostolic and limited Goa's jurisdiction 
to the Portuguese possessions in India. As relations with 
Lisbon had been broken in 1833, the Roman decisions were 
completely unilateral. Neither the queen of Portugal nor the 
Padroado administration had been warned, except by the 
appeal of 1837, of the restrictions to their power which were 
now in force. Even the Bull Multa praeclare itself was not 
addressed to them. 

Its publication was a bombshell. After the vicar apostolic 
of Goa, Carvalho, had questioned the Bull's authenticity and 
its obligatory nature, the Goanese clergy in the territories in- 
corporated in the vicariates refused to take any notice of it, 
inveigled the faithful into rebellion and drove out the Jesuits 
from some of the parishes. This was the beginning of what 
has been called, with a certain amount of exaggeration, the 
"Goanese schism". With a few rare exceptions, the resisters 
had no intention of denying the authority of Rome. In any 
case, once Carvalho was dead, the resistance decreased and 
some of the priests made their submission to the vicars 
apostolic. 

There was reasonable hope of peace all round, when the 
appointment of a new archbishop of Goa (vacant since 1831) 



156 THE INDIAN MISSIONS 

rekindled the quarrel. The queen, after the resumption of 
diplomatic relations in 1841, had presented her nominee, Mgr 
Silva Torres, to the Holy See which had accepted him. 
Gregory XVI handed two documents to the new archbishop. 
One was official and declared that no change had been intro- 
duced as regards the right of patronage. It had no difficulty in 
receiving the royal consent. The other, Nuncium ad te, was 
secret, and ordered Mgr Silva Torres under oath to obey the 
provisions of the Bull. 

On Hs arrival at Bombay, the warm welcome he received 
from the Catholics and the respectful behaviour of the English 
Governor doubtless went to his head, for he forgot the con- 
tents of the secret letter and conducted himself as though he 
were the ordinary of the place and this in spite of the protests 
of the vicars apostolic who quoted the Bull Multa praeclare 
against him. It was useless for Gregory XVI to remind him 
of the circumstances surrounding his appointment, he persisted 
in his disobedience and took with him almost all the Goanese 
clergy. 

FROM THE SYNOD OF PONDICHERRY TO THE 
END OF THE CENTURY 

On their side, the vicars apostolic firmly maintained the 
positions given to them by the Bull and, while continuing to 
struggle against the dissidents, went on with their work. The 
most important event during this period was the Synod of 
Pondicherry (1845). It was summoned and presided over by 
Mgr Bonnand and was attended by his coadjutor elect, twenty- 
three priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, three 
Indian priests and Fr Bertrand, superior of the Madura 
mission. With a view to recruiting a native clergy, a teaching 
programme was drawn up. It recommended as a basis the 
establishment of good primary schools or at least the improve- 
ment of those already existing. Secondary education was to be 
undertaken by junior seminaries and its curriculum was to 
include Latin, Tamil, French as a cultural language, English to 



THE INDIAN MISSIONS 1 57 

facilitate relations with the administration, and the elements 
of history, geography, arithmetic, astronomy and physics. The 
pupils with an attraction towards the priesthood were to con- 
tinue their higher studies at the seminary proper and were to 
spend one year in a missionary post between their philosophy 
and the tonsure, so that their vocation might be tested. 

The work of the Synod was reported to the Congregation of 
Propaganda in a document entitled ftclalrdssement sur le 
synode ("The Synod explained"), the author of which was a 
priest of the Paris Foreign Missions, Fr Luquet. It was wel- 
comed and was used in giving final form to the Instruction of 
November 12th, 1845, a document of capital importance for 
the problem of a native clergy. One paragraph in it approved 
the school curriculum mentioned above, and declared its hope 
that when applied, it would recruit not only priests, but bishops 
too. Other paragraphs advised the abrogation of "the custom 
of reducing the native clergy to the state of an auxiliary clergy, 
a situation which they rightly consider distressing". On the 
contrary, "little by little, as far as is possible and prudently, 
the rule should be introduced that, among those labouring in 
the apostolate, whether they be natives or Europeans, and all 
other things being equal, promotion should be based on length 
of service in the mission". Hence, "honours, duties, ranks 
should be distributed with reference to seniority alone". 

The programme drawn up by the Synod of Pondicherry 
could only be put into practice slowly and by instalments. The 
general inquiry ordered by Propaganda in 1858 (its findings 
were only made public in 1862) noted that four vicariates only 
had seminaries. That of Coimbatore had already produced five 
native priests for the mission and had seventeen pupils in 
training. That of Bangalore numbered twenty-nine seminarists, 
that of Bombay, about fifteen. The Pondicherry vicariate alone 
had a junior seminary and a seminary proper. They had 
already produced fourteen priests. On the Malabar coast, 
where there had been communities since the Middle Ages, 
founded by missionaries from the Near East, the three 



158 THE INDIAN MISSIONS 

vicariates of Verapoly, Mangalore and Quilon had possessed 
a native clergy for centuries. It was of both Latin and Syrian 
rite. The Syrian clergy was mediocre in quality because its 
members became priests since to do so was a family tradition 
rather than because they had genuine vocations. As regards 
seminaries, they were established gradually throughout the 
whole of India, except in the mountainous northern regions. 

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Jesuits organized 
a system of secondary and higher education. Their oldest 
institution, St Joseph's College at Bombay, dating from 1807, 
had more than 2,000 pupils at the beginning of the twentieth 
century. As early as 1835, the Jesuits had founded the St 
Francis Xavier College at Calcutta. It was given up because 
of Goanese opposition but re-opened in 1859 by the Belgian 
Jesuits. In the Madura district, where the French Jesuits, with 
exemplary pertinacity, had succeeded in settling in 1837 in 
spite of Goanese hostility, Fr Canoz established a college at 
Negapatam in 1844. The Goanese set fire to it. Fr Canoz then 
chose Trichinopoly as the site of a new foundation, St Joseph's 
College, which, in 1887, already had 1,000 pupils. 

The University Colleges, fifty-four in number, and open to 
pupils of all creeds, have had considerable influence. The 
Trichinopoly college alone has produced 1,000 priests and ten 
bishops. The old pupils, even when they remain pagans or 
Brahmins, retain an esteem for and gratitude towards their 
masters. As a number of them hold high office in the admini- 
stration and the liberal professions, they help to maintain an 
attitude favourable to Catholicism which counterbalances the 
opposite mentality, based on xenophobia. 

While the vicariates apostolic were making progress, the 
"Goanese" did not disarm. The appeal or rather the second 
appeal for obedience addressed to them by Pius IX in 1853 
was considered by the Lisbon Parliament as an attack on the 
age-old rights of Portugal, and Parliament made use of the 
occasion to represent its resistance as an act of good citizenship. 

The Holy See nevertheless continued to seek for bases for 



THE INDIAN MISSIONS 159 

a Concordat. In 1857 the nuncio at Lisbon worked out a 
scheme which limited the rights of the Padroado to the diocese 
of Goa and the three suffragan sees, Cochin, Mylapore and 
Cranganore, but submitted to the approval of Lisbon plans 
for the creation of new dioceses and annulled the Bull Multa 
praeclare. The vicars apostolic protested so vigorously against 
a scheme which gave the victory to Portugal that Pius IX did 
not ratify it. But in 1861, with a view to promoting a peaceful 
solution, a brief granted extra-diocesan and delegated juris- 
diction over the areas which the Bull had withdrawn from 
the Padroado, to the archbishop of Goa and his successors. 
In 1886, Leo XIII signed a new Concordat which gave to the 
archbishop of Goa the title of Patriarch of the Indies, but 
restricted the patronato rights to his diocese and his suffragans. 
Nevertheless, he himself continued to enjoy a personal juris- 
diction outside these areas. New concessions in 1887 and 1890 
In actual fact revived the double jurisdiction. In a word, a 
member of a diocese In the Padroado who was staying in an 
area under the jurisdiction of a vicar apostolic, ran the risk 
in case of illness of dying without the sacraments since only a 
Padroado priest had the right to administer them to him. 

The Concordat of 1886 did however remove the last obstacle 
to the establishment of the hierarchy which Mgr Bonnand had 
asked for at the 1845 Synod. India was divided into eight 
ecclesiastical provinces: Goa, Colombo, Pondicherry, Verapoly, 
Madras, Calcutta, Agra and Bombay and these comprised 
nineteen bishoprics, three vicariates and four prefectures 
apostolic. 

THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE NORTHERN 
PROVINCES 

In the middle of the nineteenth century the north of India 
was still almost totally ignorant of Christ's message. When it 
reached the small States of the mountainous area to the west 
of Bengal Chotanagpur, Jashpur, Surguya and Udaipur 
the missionaries who brought it had to endure so many trials 



160 THE INDIAN MISSIONS 

and yet Introduced such admirable social reforms for the 
natives that their story reads like an epic. All its heroes were 
from Belgium. The first to come, the Jesuits, entered the 
country as chaplains to the British troops stationed at Ranchi, 
in 1876. They discovered tribes living in the mountains: the 
Kherias, Ouraons, Hos and Mundos who were completely 
animist, totally outside the sphere of Buddhism and living 
under the domination of sorcery. 

Further, they were shamefully exploited by the great landed 
proprietors, the Zemindars and also by usurers. The Jesuits, 
and in particular Fr Lievens who arrived in 1885, took upon 
themselves the task of defending these victims of oppression. 
In so doing, they opened people's eyes to the value of 
Catholicism. Once they saw this, some of them asked to 
become members of the Church. They proved willing pupils. 
By 1890 Fr Lievens had baptized 79,000 of them. During a 
visit to Belgium where he returned to rest, he died of sheer 
exhaustion without seeing India again. But the torch passed 
into the hands of other Fathers who, inspired by the same 
zeal, were rewarded with similar successes, in spite of the 
smallness of their numbers. 

The progress of Catholicism in Jashpur followed a similar 
pattern, but by a kind of osmosis. The tribes had heard of the 
battle for justice waged in Chotanagpur by Fr Lievens and 
they asked for missionaries to be sent to them. As the rajah 
had forbidden the latter to enter his territory, they settled on 
the frontier and there instructed and baptized the small groups 
who came to them. In 1907, there were already 12,900 
Christians in the north of Jashpur. During this same year, 
Fr de Gniyse crossed the frontier to forestall the Lutherans. 
He soon died, worn out by his labours. He had converted 
12,000 natives. These young Christian communities were to 
reach the fullness of their growth in the second quarter of the 
twentieth century. 

The honour of continuing J. Vaz's apostolate in Ceylon 
belongs to the Goan Oratorians. Towards the middle of the 



THE INDIAN MISSIONS 161 

nineteenth century, the island numbered some 100,000 
Christians who were distributed at the time between the 
vicariates of Colombo and Jaffna, entrusted to the Oblates of 
Mary Immaculate and the Benedictines respectively. Colombo 
became an archdiocese in 1886 with suffragan sees at Jaffna, 
Kandy and, from 1893 onward, Galle and Trincomalee. The 
Oblates were assisted in their ministry by Jesuits, Premon- 
stratensians and a diocesan clergy. 

In the second half of the nineteenth century, many other 
institutes had come to reinforce the missionary personnel; 
Salesians of Annecy and from Don Bosco's community, Mis- 
sionaries of Milan and Mill Hill, Fathers of the Holy Cross 
and the Divine Word, Franciscans, Vincentians, Canons 
Regular of St Augustine, Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny, Tarbes 
and Annecy, catechists of Mary Immaculate, Franciscans of 
Mary, Sisters of the Good Shepherd, the Holy Cross, Loretto, 
Sisters of Charity of Milan and many others. They all helped, 
in their respective spheres, to edify, catechize and to succour 
suffering humanity, in short to plant the Cross in the citadel of 
Hinduism and to earn respect for It there. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE KOREAN AND 
JAPANESE MISSIONS 



It will be remembered that in 1827 Leo XII entrusted Korea 
to the Paris Foreign Missions, but so many gaps were made In 
their ranks by the Revolution and the Empire that the first 
party could not set out until 1832 and it was composed of 
only two priests, both volunteers, Frs Bruguiere (with the title 
of vicar apostolic) and Maubant. The former died on the way, 
near the Korean frontier. Maubant succeeded in crossing the 
latter, disguised as a mourner. At the beginning of 1836 he 
arrived in Seoul where an eminent convert gave him hiding. 
Another volunteer, Fr Chastan, joined him and later in 1838, 
the new vicar apostolic, Mgr Imbert. In the following year, a 
maladroit convert fell into a trap and revealed the hiding-place 
of the bishop who gave himself up so as not to expose his hosts 
to legal proceedings. Frs Chastan and Maubant could not be 
found in spite of the tortures inflicted on the Christians in order 
to persuade them to denounce them. Mgr Imbert then began 
to experience scruples. Believing that if his missionaries as 
well as he himself were sacrificed, the persecution would cease, 
he wrote to tell them to give themselves up as befitted "the 
good shepherd on behalf of his sheep". He was immediately 
obeyed. His hopes were not realized. On September 21st, the 
first three missionaries to Korea were beheaded after suffer- 
ing terrible tortures. 
Once again, the Church of Korea was without priests. Three 



THE KOREAN AND JAPANESE MISSIONS 163 

came to its aid in 1845. Two were French, Mgr Ferreol and 
Fr Daveluy, and one a Korean, Andrew Kirn, who had acted 
as their guide in the midst of the gravest dangers. He was 
martyred on September 16th, 1846. A slight easing of the 
situation gradually followed and lasted for some ten years. 
Then the interventions of Europe in the Far East caused a 
serious reversal. The party opposed to all contact with the 
West won the day and a violent persecution once again broke 
out. Two vicars apostolic and seven French priests were 
martyred and eight thousand Christians perished. The three 
missionaries who had escaped the massacres were obliged to 
move into China. 

One of these fugitives had been appointed vicar apostolic. 
He did not wait for more peaceful times before exercising his 
ministry (1876). Two other missionaries succeeded in joining 
him, but, in 1878, he was imprisoned with one of his priests. 
They would probably have suffered the same fate as their pre- 
decessors had not the French Government intervened. It was 
only in 1886 that a treaty, negotiated by the French represen- 
tative, obtained from Seoul freedom to profess their religion 
for those under French jurisdiction. 

When the Korean vicariate was established in 1831, Propa- 
ganda asked the Paris Foreign Missions to undertake the 
evangelization of Japan at the same time. It was the expression 
of a wish and not an order. Japan had not withdrawn the 
edict closing her gates against all foreign influence. While 
waiting for them to reopen, the missionaries could do nothing 
except hold themselves in readiness, devote themselves to 
prayer and the study of the Japanese language. In 1848, 
Fr Fourcade settled at Nara, the capital of the chief island of 
the Riu-Kiu group situated between China and Japan. In 1850, 
Propaganda appointed him vicar apostolic, and a missionary 
from the Society came to join him. Two years later, they had 
baptized two converts. 

Yet, after 1851, Japan, like China, had signed treaties on 



164 THE KOREAN AND JAPANESE MISSIONS 

the model of that of Whampou, with a series of countries, the 
United States, England, Holland and Russia. France also 
obtained permission for her nationals to enter the ports of 
Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, Hakodate and Niigata as well 
as the towns of Yedo and Osaka. The missionaries arrived 
in 1859. One of them, Fr Petitjean, built a church at Nagasaki 
on the Oura hill and dedicated it to the twenty-six martyrs of 
1597. We may imagine his deep emotion when, on March 17th, 
1865, he found himself in the presence of a group of some 
twelve Christians descended from the converts of the sixteenth 
century. They were the vanguard of the secret Church of 
Japan, which had been miraculously kept in being by the 
fervour of the catechists who, from generation to generation, 
had handed on the essential prayers and the formula for bap- 
tism. It numbered about ten thousand Christians. When the 
Government heard of its existence, it once more put into opera- 
tion (1868) the edicts proscribing Christianity. Everything was 
tried, imprisonment, deportation, threats and promises, in 
order to transform these exemplary Christians into apostates. 
Two thousand of them died. In 1875, the intervention of 
Western diplomats brought about the withdrawal of the edicts. 
By the end of this same year, the Christian body numbered 
15,000 converts, evangelized by twenty-nine missionaries. It 
had therefore been increased by half during the persecutions. 

The new spirit of toleration allowed the young Church to 
be openly organized. In 1876, the Holy See established two 
vicariates, Tokyo and Nagasaki. Churches were built. Japan, 
eager for scientific knowledge and material progress, and 
strongly inclined also towards secularism, followed in the 
footsteps of the West more boldly than did China, to the extent 
of promulgating a law in 1884 separating the Japanese State 
from the two traditional religions, Shintoism and Buddhism. 
Henceforward, Catholicism, hitherto only tolerated, was in 
possession of its freedom. The missionaries were able to 
organize an educational system. After 1887 Marianists made 
available the wealth of Western culture in three establish- 



THE KOREAN AND JAPANESE MISSIONS 165 

tnents: the "Morning Star" at Tokyo, the "Star of the Sea" at 
Nagasaki, "The Bright Star" at Osaka. Institutes of religious 
women arrived: the Dames de Saint-Maur, the Sisters of 
Cfaauffailles and Saint-Paul of Chartres. In 1919, the Jesuits 
established at Tokyo their "High School of Wisdom" with its 
three departments Letters, Philosophy, Advanced Com- 
mercial Studies. At the same time, the Dames de Saint-Maur 
organized secondary schools open to all young people. 

In missionary work properly so called, the Paris Foreign 
Missions were helped by Spanish Dominicans, German and 
Spanish Jesuits, Franciscans, Fathers of the Divine Word and 
Salesians from Italy. Already before the 1914 War, this influx 9 
so international in character, showed the Church under her 
true, universal aspect. This mark of universality became still 
more evident after the arrival of American missionaries and 
contemplative orders of both men and women. 

The liberty granted in 1884 determined Leo XIII to write a 
letter in his own hand to the emperor in 1885. It was handed 
to the latter by Mgr Ozouf . The pope also decided to establish 
the hierarchy (1891). Tokyo was raised to the status of an 
archbishopric with three suffragan sees at Nagasaki, Osaka and 
Hakodate. 

In spite of all this, the progress of Catholicism remained 
slow. In 1891, there were 45,000 Catholics and this figure had 
not yet doubled by 1914. The fact is that the separation of the 
State from the traditional religions had not prevented the birth 
of a pragmatic form of Shintoism based on loyalty to the 
imperial family and an unconditional devotion to the mother- 
land. This creed was influential enough to make men believe 
that its requirements and Catholicism were incompatible. Yet, 
those persons who were able to override this specious objection 
generally became ardent converts. Japan is not the country for 
half-measures. Those of her people who have assimilated the 
words of Christ are capable of scaling by leaps and bounds 
the heights of spirituality. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 



THE UNITED STATES 

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, paganism had 
disappeared officially at least from America, since the 
Indians and the Negro slaves had either been baptized, as in 
the territories dependent on Spain and Portugal, or entered in 
the registers of the Protestant ministers in those countries 
which had, or still were, possessions of the English Crown. 
In actual fact, a very large number of them, for lack of in- 
struction, practised a crude syncretism, a mixture of Indian 
or African cults and a form of Christianity reduced to a few 
devotions in honour of the saints in the calendar. And again, 
from Mackenzie to Tierra del Fuego, there were still tribes 
living in a savage state, pushed further and further back by 
the brute force of European immigration, yet preparing them- 
selves to defend their soil with the energy of despair. The 
missionaries (there were Protestants among them, such as 
Roger William) had often stood up in their defence during 
the previous centuries and they were to continue to do so in 
the nineteenth. 

The evangelization of the North American Indians originated 
in the old Catholic centres established in the colonies with a 
European population: Maryland, Louisiana and Canada. Help 
in the work came from religious, both men and women, who 
had been dispersed by the Revolution and the wars of the 
Empire. They sought refuge in the United States, especially 
in Maryland, where the Toleration Act of 1649 had given 
Catholicism the right of entry. One of the first to arrive in 



THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 167 

1790, a Sulpician, was made the head of the seminary of Balti- 
more by the vicar apostolic, John Carroll. He trained in it a 
clergy of truly apostolic spirit. In 1808, when Baltimore 
became an archbishopric with four suffragan sees New York, 
Philadelphia, Boston and Bardstown Mgr Carroll's task 
became so onerous that the work of reviving the mission to the 
Indians was given to the bishop of New Orleans, Mgr Dubourg, 
who was also a Sulpician. In the meantime, a delegation of 
Indians arrived from the prairies and asked for the "Black 
Robes" to come back to them. 

A vanguard, composed of Belgian Jesuits, came to Floris- 
sant, where they built an establishment of the sort used in 
Canada during the seventeenth century, with its mill, cattle- 
sheds and barns. While the novices were there completing 
their theological training, useful information came in regard- 
ing the state of mind of the tribes. In the light of this, Fr Van 
Quickenborn decided to set out to meet them. He found little 
more than remnants of the former tribes, sodden with alcohol, 
nomadic and forced to be constantly on the run westwards as 
the wave of White immigration swept forward. All, or almost 
all, of them had heard of the "Black Robes", but, even among 
those who had been baptized, many had gone over to Pro- 
testantism. Two apostles set out to evangelize these unfortunate 
people. One, Fr Hoecken, went among the Indians of the 
Forest, the other, Fr de Smet, among those of the Prairie. The 
latter, "the man with the most influence over the Indian tribes 
in the whole of the North- West", had few failures except with 
the Sioux. His apostolate extended as far as the Rocky Moun- 
tains where he worked among the Flatheads who had appealed 
to him to come to them in 1840. He returned ^among them 
twice, on the second occasion in 1844 with four Fathers, two 
brothers and six nuns. These reinforcements made it possible 
to extend the apostolate to the majority of the tribes, so that 
by the middle of the century the Rocky Mountains mission 
numbered some 3,400 converts. 

The influence of Fr de Smet and his brethren was revealed 



168 THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 

in all its vast range when, in 1870, General Grant inaugurated 
his policy of peace with the Indians. Those among them who, 
it was claimed, had joined Protestant bodies although they 
were Catholics, sent delegates to Washington to ask, in the 
name of the liberty which was written into the Constitution, 
for the return among them of the "Black Robes". They eventu- 
ally obtained what they wanted, thanks to the American 
episcopate and the Catholic missionary societies of the United 
States. 

The majority of the Negroes in the south, where they were 
so numerous, were practising Protestants or more or less in- 
fluenced by a Protestant tradition. The Catholic Church had 
a duty to come to the help of those who were baptized and to 
attempt to convert the others. The Mill Hill priests devoted 
themselves to this apostolate. After establishing parishes in 
the south, they founded in 1892 the Society of St Joseph (the 
Josephites) the first missionary institute exclusively conse- 
crated to the evangelization of the American Negroes. 



THE EPIC OF THE OBLATES IN THE FAR NORTH 

The Oblates of Mary Immaculate were responsible for the 
apostolate among the Indians of Oregon and Columbia. Fr 
Ricard came out as a pioneer with six religious in 1847 and 
founded a mission on the southern point of Puget Bay on the 
spot where the town of Olympia was later to be built. The 
Oblates next moved forward into the lower valley of the Fraser 
River, where they built the missions at Sainte-Marie, Fort 
Hope, Fort Yale and New Westminster. 

But the chief field in which the epic of the Oblates was to 
unfold was the Far North where, however, it profited by the 
admirable preparatory work which had already been done by 
Canadians alone. 

The point of departure was an appeal by Lord Selkirk, a 
shareholder in the Hudson Bay Company, to the bishop of 
Quebec, Mgr Ples&is. He asked him for a zealous and intelli- 



THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 169 

gent ecclesiastic to minister to the religious needs of the half- 
caste trappers and various other workmen who were Catholics. 
They lived in the extreme south of Winnipeg. The priest chosen 
for the work, Fr Provencher, received such a promising wel- 
come that the Holy See at once formed the project of using 
this advance post as a base for the whole of North-west 
Canada. Fr Provencher became Mgr Plessis' coadjutor. At first 
he exercised his ministry among the half-castes then, after 
1830, he sent some of his priests among the Indians. 

In 1844, Mgr Provencher, then vicar apostolic of the whole 
of Canada, asked the bishop of Montreal, Mgr Bourget 9 to send 
him some of the Oblates who had just gone forward with 
unheard-of daring, as far as the territories in the neighbour- 
hood of lakes Abitibi and Timiskaming where they had 
converted a few fur hunters. The local superior considered 
that this was a rash undertaking and informed Mgr de 
Mazenod, the superior general of the Oblates, of his misgivings 
in the following terms: "We are 2,000 miles from the Red 
River. Communications are extremely difficult. Our men will 
lead a lonely life full of all kinds of dangers." The answer 
came and it was peremptory: 

I cannot understand how you can have been so strangely 
mistaken in the matter of the Red River missions. Yet it seems 
to me that I spoke clearly and precisely enough to let it be 
understood by you that this was not a mere suggestion to be 
examined and discussed but a plan on which I had come to a 
decision and whose execution I am entrusting to you. 

This memorable summons opened the pages of the epic of 
the Oblates, in which religious who wanted to obey their 
founder hastened to play their part. Already during the 
summer of 1846, two Oblates, one of them Fr Tache, a 
Canadian but of French stock, had set out; they spent the 
winter at I'lle-a-la-Crosse, 625 miles to the north-west of 
St Boniface. The next year, a new leap forward took Fr Tache 
as far as lake Athabaska. He was the first Catholic priest to 



170 THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 

appear In these regions where he was welcomed by a few 
Indians with these words: "We have long desired to see you 
face to face. Take pity on us and teach us how to become 
good." 

After four months spent among these men of goodwill, he 
had to return to I'lle-a-la-Crosse, but other Oblates came, some 
to consolidate the first foundations, the others to push on 
further towards the polar circle. In 1856, Fr Faraud founded 
the St Joseph mission in the neighbourhood of Fort Resolu- 
tion on the Great Slave Lake. In 1858, Fr Grollier founded 
the Sacred Heart mission near Fort Simpson, after a journey 
down the Mackenzie. The Oblates were beyond the sixtieth 
parallel north. One more forward leap and Fr Grollier reached 
the edge of the Arctic circle at Fort Good Hope. There he 
laid the foundations of the mission of Our Lady of Good 
Hope and wrote on May 20th, I860, to Mgr de Mazenod: 
"Everyone here thinks that the winter this year has been mild. 
We haven't had a temperature lower than 48 below zero 
(Fahrenheit = 54-5 degrees of frost. Trans.) Would they think 
this was not much, at Marseilles?" 

During the summer, he chose Fort Norman as the centre for 
a new mission, St Teresa's, and then he went on beyond the 
Arctic circle as far as Fort McPherson. 

From roughly the year 1860, came a period of settling in 
and consolidation. It was less spectacular than the daring 
initial thrusts, but It probably called for greater sacrifices. 
Three prelates, among others, distinguished themselves. Their 
combined episcopates cover almost a century. Mgr Tache 
had guided Mgr Grandin in his early years; Mgr Grandin him- 
self was consecrated a bishop in 1859 at the age of twenty-nine. 
Mgr Grouard was a pupil of his and he died on March 7th, 
1931, at Grouard, the chief town of the Grouard vicariate. It 
must be noted indeed that these Oblates were such discoverers 
and builders that their memory is for ever engraved upon the 
map. Between the Great Slave and the Great Bear Lakes, six 



THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 171 

others bear the name of six of these Oblates: Mazenod, Rey, 
Seguin, Glut, Grandin, Tache. And how many places could 
be named whose "patron" Is one or other of these pioneers 
who discovered them? 

It has been suggested that these were vocations awakened 
by the lure of journeys by dog-sledge through the blizzards. 
But the truth is that in the accounts that have come down to 
us from these apostles of the snows (Mgr Grandin's in par- 
ticular), we see men who often went hungry, who deprived 
themselves so as to feed and clothe the Indians, who some- 
times coughed up their own lungs, but whose faces shone with 
joy when, at the meal served for the bishop on his rounds, they 
could add a white partridge or a rice pudding seasoned with 
that rarest of products which sugar then was. 

They were never discouraged. In 1912, two Oblates of Kee- 
watin, one of them Fr Turquetil, were about to set off for the 
spiritual conquest of the Eskimos. After four years of entirely 
unproductive work at Chesterfield, their vicar apostolic had 
recalled them, when there was a mysterious change and con- 
versions that had been quite unexpected took place. The two 
religious attributed this to the prayers they had made to a 
Carmelite nun who had died at Lisieux in 1897 and whose 
renown as a wonder-worker had reached even their ears. From 
Chesterfield the hand of grace touched Pand Inlet at Churchill, 
Azavick at Coppermine. This miracle, when it became known 
at Rome, was to contribute its share in the canonization of 
St Teresa of the Child Jesus, patroness together with St Francis 
Xavier of the missions and the missionaries of the whole 
world. 

While the brutal and pitiless wave of European immigra- 
tion drove the half-castes and the Indians to the north and 
west, the Oblates undertook the defence of these victims of 
oppression. Mgr Grandin, again, endeavoured to "keep them 
on the path of obedience and duty and to see that they were 
treated justly". 



172 THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 

SOUTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 

In Mexico and South America, the history of the Missions 
in the nineteenth century is divided into two sections. The 
first, contemporary with the wars of independence which were 
to give birth to the South American Republics and put an 
end to the system of patronato, was marked by great upheavals 
and severe trials. Subsequently, new missions were set up on 
the basis of concordats concluded between the Holy See and 
the new States. 

Officially, the missions to the Indians had disappeared in 
Bolivia in 1815, in Chile in 1817, in Ecuador and Peru in 
1824 and in Mexico in 1833-4. But they had left behind a 
whole mass of foundations which still arouse the admiration 
of tourists today. And they could also take pride in the fact 
that they had improved the standard of living of the tribes 
by acclimatizing food-producing crops and domesticated 
animals from the old world. 

Nor were the missions entirely abandoned. If the apostolate 
to the Indians was able to continue for a time, the credit was 
due to the Franciscans, Capuchins, Dominicans and Augus- 
tinians who stayed on the spot, and to the Missionary colleges 
of the Propagation of the Faith, founded in 1686, and re- 
organized in 1797. In them, masters of proved worth trained 
a missionary elite in an atmosphere of deep spirituality and 
did not neglect the study of the native languages. 

In this transitory period, while nothing took the place 
officially of the missions of the patronato, certain religious dis- 
tinguished themselves. An example is the Franciscan Andrew 
Herrero. In 1835, after launching an appeal to the whole Order 
of St Francis, he brought to Bolivia twelve Italian Franciscans. 
He returned a little later with eighty-three missionaries who 
established colleges and restored mission work among the 
Indians in Peru, Chile and Bolivia. But they were not numer- 
ous enough to keep the missions in being and quite soon they 
found themselves obliged to confine their ministry to the 



THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 173 

established Christian communities. In 1842, Colombia 
appealed for Jesuits, but expelled them eight years later. The 
Dominicans returned to Peru as did a few Jesuits to Paraguay. 
The place which South America acquired in the missionary 
movement owed its importance, towards the middle of the 
century, to the fact that the Far East continued to be closed 
and the harbours on the Pacific coasts were ports of call for 
the increasingly large numbers of missionaries on their way 
to Oceania. 

On the debit side must be placed the political instability 
of the new States, the continual threat represented by their 
anti-clericalism and the uncertain status of the missions and 
the missionaries, who were without an organization to replace 
the patronato system. 

Both Pius VIII and Gregory XVI had wished to avoid 
humiliating these young republics, full of the memories of the 
foundations made under the old monarchies, by imposing on 
them a missionary code. Gradually, concordats came into 
operation under Pius IX. There was a paragraph guaranteeing 
State financial aid for the evangelization of the Indians which, 
as such, was to be organized by Propaganda. It was on this 
basis and with varying fortunes that the apostolate to the 
Indians recommenced. And the Indians themselves had not 
fallen victims to former massacres in any great numbers, since 
today their descendants represent more than half the popula- 
tion of Ecuador, Central America and Bolivia (where they 
number 60 per cent). 

In 1847, at the request of the Government of Chile, Pius IX 
sent twelve Italian Capuchins to evangelize the Indians of 
Arauco. These missionaries were followed by Capuchins from 
Bavaria. The mission is in a flourishing state today. During 
the same pontificate, in 1855 and 1856, two parties of Fran- 
ciscans arrived from Italy to undertake the same work among 
the Indians of the Argentine. 

In the West Indies, after the vicariates of Guadeloupe and 
Martinique had been attached as suffragan sees to the 



174 THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 

Bordeaux diocese, and those of the Windward Islands to the 
diocese of Port of Spain (Trinidad), only the Caribbean Sea 
mission depended on Propaganda, which entrusted British 
Guiana to the English Jesuits, and the missions in those areas 
of Guiana and the West Indies under Dutch administration 
to Dutch Redemptorists and Dominicans. 

In Brazil, after 1860, the Franciscans evangelized the Indians 
of the interior, the Capuchins those on the coast, and the 
Dominicans those of Upper Araguay from 1880 onward. The 
revolution of 1889 restored their freedom to the religious Orders 
and some of Don Bosco's Salesians arrived in Matto Grosso 
in 1890 (in 1910, they were to settle on the Rio Negro), Holy 
Ghost Fathers at Teffe in Amazonia (1897), Fathers of the 
Divine Word among the Coroados Indians and the Botokudi, 
German Franciscans (1903) at Santarem among the Mun- 
durucu, Italian Capuchins among the Indians of Parana and 
Sao Paolo, Belgian Benedictines on the Rio Branco, and in 
1911, French Dominicans at Conceigao on the Paraguay river. 

In Peru, three prefectures apostolic were founded in 1899: 
Saint-Leon of the Amazon, Ucayali, Urumbamba of the Mother 
of God. The first Augustinians arrived in 1900. 

Salesians arrived at the southern tip of South America in 
1879; Leo XIII sent them when the Argentine Government 
asked him for religious to instruct and pacify the Patagonians. 
They were very unwelcome at first but subsequently their 
success was sufficient to allow them to extend their work as 
far as Tierra del Fuego. It was in this group of islands, separ- 
ated from the mainland by the straits of Magellan, that Mgr 
Cagliero devoted himself with exemplary charity to the 
Fuegians whose race was well on the way to becoming extinct. 

At the end of the nineteenth century, the north and centre 
of Patagonia became a vicariate and Tierra del Fuego a pre- 
fecture apostolic. And what a thankless task the Salesians have 
undertaken in this region! 

Since by the end of the nineteenth century the political 
situation in Colombia had become stable, various institutes 



THE AMERICAN MISSIONS 175 

settled there: Augustinians and Recollects in 1890, de Mont- 
fort Fathers in 1903, Vincentians in 1905, Claretians in 1908, 
Carmelites and Jesuits (the latter had been expelled in 1850) in 
1918 and priests from the Burgos seminary in 1920. These 
apostles, most of them from Italy and Spain, were helped by 
priests trained in the seminary of the Foreign Missions at 
Yarumal (Colombia), which was founded in 1927. In 1928, 
the Colombian State granted an official status to the mission- 
aries, on condition that they civilized scattered and backward 
groups and made them fit to take their part in the life of the 
nation. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE OCEANIA MISSIONS 

THE PICPUS FATHERS IN EASTERN OCEANIA 

Oceania with its islands large and small scattered over a sea 
area equal to one-third of the surface of the globe, possesses 
a group of missions that is unique. It is the largest and yet 
one of the least populous; in it the spirit of the pioneers can 
still find (in New Guinea for instance) plenty of scope today. 
And in no other region have the conflicts between papists 
and anti-papists taken on such dimensions. 

Before the nineteenth century, Catholicism had scarcely 
made an appearance there except in the New Hebrides (and 
then only spasmodically), which had been visited by the Fran- 
ciscans who accompanied Quiros. The discovery of Oceania 
was scarcely completed at the end of the eighteenth century 
and the descriptions embellished with lewd engravings which 
had been published by Wallis and Carteret (1766), Bougain- 
ville (1768) and above all Cook (1769-78) conveyed the idea 
that these islands were earthly paradises. So much so that, 
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Tahiti, Otaiti as it 
was called, was a symbol for a country of dreams, liberation 
and beatitude, the garden of Eden regained. Of this idyllic 
picture, the missionaries were to find little more than the 
countryside, the vegetation, the light and the waters. The 
natives, when seen at close quarters, were in general not at all 
like the pleasant Aoutourou whom Bougainville had brought 
back with Mm to France. The Whites were whalers, dealers in 
sandalwood, adventurers of all kinds whom the missionaries 



THE OCEANIA MISSIONS 177 

were to find in all sorts of odd places, "a crowd of European 
and American deserters", as one of them has said, "roaming 
all over the islands and corrupting what remains of the good 
physical and moral qualities of these peoples". The mission- 
aries were often to find their work thwarted by such men. And 
finally they were to be exposed to the hostility and the calum- 
nies of the Methodist ministers who had preceded them by 
some ten years in different parts of Oceania. 

This was the case in the Hawaiian islands, an important 
port of call for the whaling-ships. The American Methodists 
had already established missionaries when, in 1819, the chap- 
lain of the Uranfe baptized two of the chiefs. In 1827, a 
properly constituted mission arrived: three Picpus Fathers (one 
of whom, Fr Bachelot, had the powers of a prefect apostolic) 
and three brothers of the same order. The Methodist party 
succeeded in having them expelled when they had baptized a 
few persons. Liberty of worship could not be established in the 
Hawaiian islands before 1839. And it was there that, a little 
later, Fr Damien was to die a leper, in the service of the lepers. 

In spite of the initial check, the Congregation of Propaganda 
immediately amplified its plan of action and in 1833, raised a 
Picpus Father, Mgr Rouchouze, to the dignity of vicar apos- 
tolic of Eastern Oceania. 

In 1834, two religious of the order, Frs Caret and Laval, 
landed in the Ganibier Islands. The natives tried to kill them 
in a bush fire. They succeeded in escaping and then completed 
a Franco-Polynesian lexicon which enabled them to instruct 
children and soon after adults with unprecedented success. At 
Christmas 1834, one of the Gambier islands, Akamarou, 
burned its idols. Aukenia soon followed suit and shortly after, 
Mangavera, the great island, whose sovereigns were baptized. 
In two years, the whole archipelago had been converted and 
Mgr Jerome Rouchouze set up his vicariate there. 

In the Marquesa Islands, however, two Picpus Fathers who 
landed in 1839, met with considerable resistance. Shortly after, 
disaster overtook the Picpus missions. The ship in which Mgr 



178 THE OCEANIA MISSIONS 

Rouchouze had set sail and which was bringing large reinforce- 
ments five religious, one subdeacon, seven Brothers and ten 
nuns, all belonging to the Picpus institute sank with all her 
passengers shortly after passing the Island of St Catherine 
facing Brazil. 

Yet the spiritual conquest continued just the same. Although 
on Tahiti it had experienced a setback because of the Pritchard 
affair, it saw better days when Mgr Jaussen, the first vicar 
apostolic of Tahiti, came out in 1849. Today, a quarter of the 
population is Catholic. 

The long and patient apostolate of Mgr Dordillon was 
needed to undo the scandal caused by the apostasy of the king 
of one of the Marquesas. Mgr Dordillon was both a missionary 
and a scholar. He arrived in the archipelago in 1846 and died 
there in 1888, as vicar apostolic. 

The evangelization of the Tuamotou Islands began in 1847 
and was completed in 1889. Easter Island owes much to Mgr 
Jaussen who wrote a remarkable monograph on the island 
itself and its mysteries. It was later detached from the Tahiti 
vicariate after its annexation by Chile. 

There was still the Cook archipelago. When the Picpus 
Fathers settled there in 1894, though without much success 
because of the very strong position Protestantism had acquired 
in the islands, the work entrusted to their zeal had received 
its foundations. 

THE MARISTS IN WESTERN OCEANIA 

The western part of Oceania, that is, Polynesia with 
Melanesia and Micronesia, was raised to the status of a 
vicariate (Western Oceania) by Gregory XVI in 1836 and was 
in the hands of the Marists, the missionary institute then 
recently founded by Fr Colin. The first bishop, Mgr Pom- 
pallier, landed in New Zealand in January 1838 and sent 
Fr Bataillon to Wallis Island and Fr Chanel to Futuna. The 
events that had taken place in the Gambier Islands were re- 
enacted here, though at a slower pace. On Futuna, there was 



THE OCEANIA MISSIONS 179 

a general conversion, largely due to the martyrdom of Fr 
Chanel (1841) which brought about an extraordinary wave of 
conversions far beyond the island itself, while on Wallis Island, 
conversions were due to the inexhaustible charity of Fr 
Bataillon, an apostle who put an end to the unending wars 
between the chiefs by acting as intermediary between them, 
and who forgave those who had intended to murder him. 
Rome appointed him as vicar apostolic in 1843. He died on 
Wallis Island among his people like an Old Testament 
patriarch, on April 10th, 1877. 

The evangelization of Tonga shed lustre on one of his 
disciples, Fr Chevron, who, by using the same methods as his 
master and thanks to his perfect knowledge of Polynesian lan- 
guages, overcame the opposition of the local feudal chief, a 
Protestant petty tyrant who called himself the "Napoleon of 
the Pacific". On the other hand, another pioneer, Fr Breton, 
had no success during his lifetime at Vavaou, a small archi- 
pelago depending on Tonga, where he lived as a hermit until 
1881. But his death was mourned by the whole archipelago. 
Even the Protestant ministers wanted to be present at the 
funeral of the man who has been called the anchorite of 
Oceania. 

The Marists entered the Samoan Islands in 1845. Their 
founding of a mission there under the direction of Fr Elloy, 
made it possible to consider that the evangelization of western 
Polynesia was completed. 

That of Melanesia began in 1844, when Fr Bataillon sent 
Fr Breheret to the Fiji Islands. There were hardly any con- 
versions before 1860, but nine years later the number of 
catechumens was 4,000 and, by 1880, 9,000. The prefecture 
apostolic of Fiji, which was established in 1863, became a 
vicariate in 1888 and included the Island of Rotuma. 

The evangelization of New Caledonia demanded of the 
Marists continual patience, apostolic fervour and cost them 
one martyr. Mgr Douarre and four religious entered the island 
at the port of Balade in 1843 and had to leave again soon after 



180 THE OCEANIA MISSIONS 

in order to avoid a general massacre (one Brother had already 
been beaten to death) plotted by the natives who considered 
them responsible for a famine on the island. In 1849, Mgr 
Douarre again landed but this time in the south. But once 
more and for the same reason, he was forced to fall back on 
the island of Pines to the south-east. It became entirely 
Christian. While he was there, he received orders from Rome 
to take charge of the Samoa mission and to wait for better 
times before returning to New Caledonia. But he was drawn 
to the Caledonians, as St Patrick had been to the Irish. He was 
at Balade again in 1851 with a few missionaries as resolute 
as himself and a group of natives whom they had taken away 
with them when they had left on the previous occasion and 
thoroughly indoctrinated in the meantime. With the help of 
these converts the conversion of the island made rapid strides. 
Then the time came when the colonists, whose numbers were 
continually on the increase, and the administration drove the 
natives Into the interior. The Marists went with them and 
tried to group them in "Reductions". But their ministry 
among the Whites absorbed so much of their time that they 
were unable to give themselves wholly to this apostolate. 
Recently, they have found it possible to return to it with some 
success. 

In the New Hebrides, where the Marists arrived in 1886, a 
population survived decimated by malaria, alcoholism and 
cannibalism. Yet they succeeded in obtaining a few con- 
versions. 

It was In the Solomon Islands that they underwent their 
greatest trials. The islanders were ferocious by nature and, in 
the early days, did not distinguish between the missionaries 
and white men of doubtful character against whom they 
fiercely defended their independence. 

Mgr fipalle, the first vicar apostolic of the archipelago, was 
beaten to death a few minutes after he had landed on Isabella 
Island (December 12th, 1845). At San Cristobal, another small 
Island, Fr Montrouzier in 1845, and in 1847 two religious 



THE OCEANIA MISSIONS 181 

and a brother, perished victims of a cannibal feast. Finally, 
malaria decimated this first mission. The Marists received 
orders to evacuate the archipelago in 1852. They returned at 
the end of the century and on this occasion were given a 
hearing. 

THE ISSOUDUN FATHERS IN NEW GUINEA 

In New Guinea, on the other hand, evangelization is far 
from complete, but where else in the whole world has It met 
more obstacles? Even Torres in his time, when crossing the 
straits to which his name has been given, had noted that 
around this island, one of the largest in the world, navigation 
was exceedingly difficult. When the Italian naturalist, 
d'Albertis, provided precise information concerning its relief, 
its snow-covered mountain tops (and this in the Tropics) close 
together and separated by steep chasms covered with an im- 
penetrable undergrowth, New Guinea seemed to offer more 
obstacles to discovery than any other territory in the world. 
As for its inhabitants, it was gradually to be discovered (and 
there still remains a great deal of work to be done in this 
connection) that they belong to human groups which have been 
cut off from the rest of mankind for thousands of years. They 
have distinguishing characteristics of every kind and obey a 
moral code which authorizes infanticide, homicide, cannibalism 
and polygamy. The planisphere made for the Holy See in the 
eighteenth century was therefore not far from the truth when 
although from hearsay alone it described New Guinea as 
risla de las malas gentes. 

Gregory XVI had included it in the Marists' mission field. 
They tried to approach it via Woodlark Island in 1848 and 
were decimated by fever. Priests from the Milan Foreign 
Missions relieved them in 1852 but after the murder of Fr 
Mazzuconi in 1855 they were obliged to give up any hope of 
remaining. 

For more than twenty-five years, the Congregation of Propa- 
ganda made no further move in the matter. Then, in 1881, it 



182 THE OCEANIA MISSIONS 

appealed to the Congregation of the Fathers of the Sacred 
Heart of Issoudun. Three religious, one of whom was Fr 
Navarre, set out during the same year with this final blessing 
from Leo XIII: "Go without fear, it is the Church who is 
sending you." 

Their destination was Papua, that is, the English area of 
New Guinea. After a halt at New Britain, they landed on 
Thursday Island in the Torres Straits, then on Yule Island 
(1885), a small holm lying nearest to the great island itself. 
Frs Navarre and Verjus organized there a base from which 
to operate. Fr Verjus went forward and established the first 
mission post in Papua on Moou, three hours from Yule in a 
rowing-boat (1889). Meanwhile, Yule itself, now wholly 
Christian, served as the residence of the vicar apostolic. This 
office had been given to Mgr Navarre and soon after Mgr 
Verjus was appointed his coadjutor. He, with the help of a 
few pioneers, opened some ten mission stations in the Mekeo 
country, beyond Moou. Nothing could stop them, neither the 
climate which gives almost no respite from attacks of fever, 
nor famine, a constant threat, nor the hostility of the natives. 
He returned to Europe to inform the pope of the first results 
of the mission (and these were not to be despised, since a 
Christian village was in existence at St Anne in 1891), and 
died worn out by his labours. 

In 1894, Papua had already taken a toll of twelve victims 
among the youngest and most active members of the Issoudun 
Congregation. But new recruits were constantly coming for- 
ward. Mention must be made of at least one of these, Fr de 
Boismenu, Mgr Navarre's successor. He was the moving force 
behind a simultaneous movement which included discovery, 
the erection of mission posts even in the most unlikely places, 
and the deepening of the Christian life by well-prepared cate- 
chisms in the various dialects, and the training of good 
catechists. 

Some ten years after the arrival of the Issoudun Fathers, the 
German Fathers of the Divine Word began to evangelize the 



THE OCEANIA MISSIONS 183 

eastern and western regions of New Guinea. There also, 
through suffering and sacrifice, they founded firmly established 
Christian communities before 1914. 

In New Britain and New Ireland, the islands to the north- 
west of New Guinea, the Issoudun Fathers experienced the 
same ups-and-downs as in Papua. 

In Micronesia, they settled on the Caroline and Marianne 
Islands in 1886 and 1891 respectively. These islands had 
already been evangelized in the eighteenth century by mission- 
aries from the Philippines. In 1888, the Issoudun Fathers were 
on the Gilbert Islands. The evangelization of Guam island was 
undertaken in 1911 by American Capuchins. In a word, 
immediately before the Great War, there was no island in 
Oceania which had not heard the good news of the Gospel. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE MISSIONS IN THE 
NEAR EAST 



The lot of the uniate Oriental Christians gave more anxiety 
than ever to the Holy See from the moment when, in 1821, the 
year of the rising in Greece, the dismemberment of Turkey 
began. The interference of the European Powers had brought 
Turkish animosity to a pitch of frenzy. The most appalling 
massacres of Christians ravaged the whole East, in Syria (I860), 
the Balkans (1878), Armenia (1894-6), Adana (1908) and 
finally, the massacre which lasted from 1915 to 1919 through- 
out the ruins of the Ottoman empire. 

As a general rule, the Turkish Government separated 
Catholics from Rome by placing them under the authority of 
patriarchs of the Orthodox Church. Gregory XVI took care 
at once to provide them with some support by creating, 
between 1832 and 1839, three Apostolic Delegations to cover 
the whole of the Near East. At the same time, thanks to the 
re-establishment of the religious Orders in France, mission- 
aries arrived in sufficient numbers to revive old foundations 
that had had to be abandoned after the French Revolution. 
They also established new ones. The Vincentians reopened 
their college at Constantinople and inaugurated others at 
Smyrna, Santorin and Antoura. 

The Jesuits returned to Beirut in 1839, and then established 
at Ghazir in 1846, a central seminary open to all rites in com- 
munion with Rome. The Brothers of the Christian Schools 
arrived in 1840, the Daughters of Charity at Constantinople in 



THE MISSIONS IN THE NEAR EAST 185 

1839 and in 1847 at Beirut where they were followed shortly 
after by the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition. 

This growth of educational foundations was due in large 
measure to the campaigns of a young Orientalist, Eugene Bore, 
who had returned from a fact-finding journey to Persia (1838) 
convinced that to rescue these unfortunate Christians from 
ignorance and superstition was a task of the utmost urgency. 
After his own entry into the Vincentian Congregation, of 
which he later became Superior General, he was able to work 
directly for the carrying out of the programme he had drawn 
up. 

The Latin hierarchy had disappeared in the thirteenth cen- 
tury after the withdrawal of the Franks. Pius IX re-established 
it at Jerusalem in 1847 and at Athens in 1875. 

Other factors also helped to strengthen the positions of the 
Latins: the development of the missions in Mesopotamia 
which, thanks to the Italian Dominicans, stretched from Mosul 
to Van, Seert and Djeziri; the revival of the old Carmelite 
missions in Baghdad; the arrival of the Spanish Capuchins at 
Diarbekir, then at Orfa and Mardin; the establishment of an 
Apostolic Delegation in Persia, distinct from that in Meso- 
potamia, which was entrusted to the Vincentians; finally, the 
increase in the numbers of educational, medical and charitable 
institutions. 

The Orthodox hierarchy had not replied to the invitation to 
attend the Vatican Council sent them by Pius IX. Hence Leo 
XIII showed all the more solicitude towards the uniate 
Oriental hierarchy. He gave them the means to recruit and to 
train a clergy of quality for each rite. Seminaries were there- 
fore established in Cairo by the Jesuits for the Copts (1897), 
at Constantinople (1881) by the Capuchins for all the rites, at 
St Anne in Jerusalem by the White Fathers for the Melkites, 
at Mosul (1885) by the Dominicans for the Syro-Chaldeans, at 
Zeitenlik (1885) by the Vincentians for the Bulgarian clergy. 
The idea behind these foundations is contained in a phrase 
which Leo XIII, the Pope of Union, was fond of repeating: 



186 THE MISSIONS IN THE NEAR EAST 

"The East will be converted by the Easterns." At Rome itself, 
he founded a seminary for the Armenians (1883) and, in 1891, 
another for the Maronites. He restored the College of St 
Athanasius for the Greeks and founded bursaries for the 
Syrians at the Urban College. His letter Orientalium dignitas 
(1894) guaranteed to the Eastern Churches their traditional 
privileges. A Motu proprio (1895) recommended the apostolic 
delegates to treat the patriarchs with all due deference, to 
have at least two meetings a year with them and to take care 
to maintain good relations between the Latin missionaries and 
the Oriental clergy. With this project still in mind, Leo XIII 
suppressed in the East the title of prefect apostolic and re- 
placed it by that of mission superior. Further, the Latin clergy 
were allowed attach themselves to this or that oriental rite 
as occasion arose. 

Benedict XV brought this conciliatory policy to full fruition 
when, in 1917, he founded the Sacred Congregation of the 
Eastern Church, thus granting autonomy to the special section 
for the affairs of the Eastern Church which had been estab- 
lished by Pius IX in 1862 as part of the Sacred College of 
Propaganda. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE INDONESIAN MISSIONS 



A new era opened for the evangelization of Indonesia when, 
in 1807, the king of Holland, Louis-Napoleon, granted freedom 
of worship in the Low Countries, and two Dutch priests ex- 
pelled from the Cape by England were able to land at Java. 
In 1826, Propaganda established the Batavia prefecture which 
was raised to vicariate status in 1842 and had within its 
jurisdiction all the Dutch possessions. 

In actual fact, during the first half of the nineteenth century, 
apostolic work was almost confined to Java because of the 
poverty of the missionaries and the restrictions enforced by the 
general Government which authorized preaching only after 
the reception of a special permit which could always be 
cancelled. 

The Missions ad infideles, properly so-called, began at 
Borneo, where a shipwrecked man, Cuarteron, who had vowed, 
if he were saved, to devote himself to the apostolate, became 
prefect apostolic of Labuan and North Borneo. He recruited 
no more than two missionaries, Italians, and they abandoned 
him. After his death in 1879, the English Mill Hill Fathers 
took over the mission he had founded. 

Fr Sanders visited Dutch Borneo in 1851, but the first 
mission was that founded by the Jesuits in 1883. At Banka, 
where there were Catholic coolies among the workers in the 
tin mines, a missionary took up residence in 1853. In the 
following year, another went to Sumatra. However, the island 
had no organized mission before the Jesuits established one in 
1888. They were succeeded by Capuchins in 1911. 



188 THE INDONESIAN MISSIONS 

The process was the same In the Celebes. After a period 
when the apostolate was limited to annual visits by one priest 
working alone, Manado, the Kei Islands and Macassar had 
their missions in 1885, 1888 and 1891 respectively. 

It was the little islands of Sunda, Flores, Timor which pro- 
duced the richest harvests. The first visitor, Fr Sanders, found 
there in 1860 enough Catholics (several thousands) to establish 
a parish at Laratoeka. In 1862, he received support from the 
Jesuits, among whom was Fr Le Cocq d'Armandville, who has 
remained famous for his conversion of fifteen pagan villages. 
Flores numbered 14,000 Catholics in 1875 and the mission was 
increasingly successful in the years that followed. And this 
success was in sharp contrast with the forlorn state of the 
other islands in the group and especially to the west, Bali 
and Lombok, where the missionaries were forbidden to land 
because of Moslem hostility. 

After the middle of the nineteenth century these missions 
received the help of teaching congregations of women: Ursuline 
Sisters of Venray, Franciscan Sisters of Heythuisen, Sisters of 
Charity of Our Lady of Mercy of Tilburg, Sisters of the Com- 
pany of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and there were also the 
Brothers of the Congregation of St Aloysius of Dudenbooth. 

Holland did not rest content with sending missionaries only. 
She supported them through her charitable societies such as 
the Missionary Association for Dutch East India and by a 
constant stream of prayer in the Missionary Union of the 
Clergy modelled on similar societies existing in many Catholic 
countries. 

The division of the original Batavia vicariate began in 1902 
and continued at a rapid rate after the Great War. It brought 
about the opening of seminaries and shortly afterwards, the 
rise of an Indonesian clergy. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE EUROPEAN MISSIONS 



The European missions in modem times took care of the 
Catholics whose intention it was to remain faithful to Rome 
in the States and territories where the Reformation had 
triumphed, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Germany, a 
part of Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries. They in- 
cluded also the Catholics of Latin rite in Poland and the 
Catholics of Ruthenian rite whom, in both Poland and Russia, 
the orthodox Russian Church had not succeeded in winning 
over. 

In England, the position of the Catholics, scattered and very 
small in numbers, remained lamentable until O'ConnelFs cam- 
paigns had secured their emancipation throughout the United 
Kingdom and the British colonies. Once this was done, the 
revival of Catholicism began to expand, thanks to the Oxford 
movement for which Newman was responsible and which 
Wiseman supported at the English College in Rome, thanks 
too to the fervour and pugnacity of the Irish Catholics who 
had settled in considerable numbers on English soil. From 
120,000 members in 1800, the Catholic community in England 
rose to 700,000 by 1850 (450,000 Irish). Pius IX gave recog- 
nition to this progress by substituting an archbishopric with 
ten suffragan sees for the eight vicariates. 

Catholicism in Scotland passed through similar stages. After 
more than two centuries of oppression, the Relief Bill of 1793, 
a measure due to the efforts of George Hay, restored to it the 
ownership of its property. In 1829, the Emancipation Bill 
made it free and the Irish immigration reinvigorated it and 



190 THE EUROPEAN MISSIONS 

brought about the establishment of numbers of religious com- 
munities of both men and women. Leo XIII re-established 
the hierarchy in 1878. 

At the end of the eighteenth century, in 1775, the major part 
of North Germany and all Scandinavia formed the vicariate of 
the North, which was divided several times during the nine- 
teenth century. Propaganda separated Norway and Sweden 
from the vicariate in 1783, the year in which an edict granted 
to foreigners alone the right to practise any religion other than 
Lutheranism. Sweden then had a few hundred Catholics. In 
1842, they numbered 1,000 with four priests and two churches. 
This figure had exactly quadrupled by the beginning of the 
twentieth century. In Norway, the first Mass since the Reforma- 
tion was celebrated in 1843. Norway became an independent 
prefecture apostolic in 1855 and a vicariate in 1892. It also 
allowed religious Orders to settle in its territory. At the begin- 
ning of the present century, the Catholics numbered 2,000. 

In 1855, Propaganda incorporated in one prefecture, known 
as that of the North Pole, Lapland, the Faroes, Iceland, Green- 
land, the far North of the American continent, then the 
Orkneys and Shetlands. In 1866, this prefecture had only seven 
stations, of which the most active was that of the Faroes. In 
all there were 250 Catholics. It was suppressed in 1869. 

Catholics were a little more numerous in the vicariate of 
North Germany which was attached to the see of Osnabriick, 
and in the prefecture of Schleswig-Holstein. But they were 
scattered and divided in a number of parishes that was minute 
by comparison with the dimensions of the territory. 

The prefecture of Denmark, established in 1868 and in 
which the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland were in- 
corporated after the suppression of the prefecture of the North 
Pole, became a vicariate in 1892. The Sisters of St Joseph had 
made a foundation there in 1856. The progress of Catholicism 
was less slow than in Sweden and Norway. In 1892, there 
were 19,750 Catholics and twenty-nine parishes. 

Catholicism was reintroduced into Finland, at Viborg, in 



THE EUROPEAN MISSIONS 191 

1721 by Polish soldiers serving in the Russian army. In 1781, 
it was authorized in the Swedish-speaking area. Missionaries 
from Germany arrived in Helsinki in 1860 but returned home 
discouraged. The Fathers of St Quentin came in 1906 after the 
abolition of the laws against toleration, but they could not 
stay more than two years. They returned again in 1917 and 
had the assistance of some Dominicans. Together they suc- 
ceeded in making a few converts. 

In Iceland, where Catholicism had disappeared at the 
Reformation, a French priest, Abbe Baudoin, founded at 
Reykjavik and Grandavjorden, two mission stations which for 
a long time had as their only parishioners the Breton fishermen. 
However, one native family was converted, but the departure 
of Abbe Baudoin left them without anyone to minister to 
them (1876). 

In 1892, the vicariate apostolic of Denmark to which Iceland 
had been attached, sent a priest to Reykjavik and he estab- 
lished a parish there. In the following year, the Sisters of 
St Joseph of Chambery arrived and soon founded a school and 
a hospital. Yet in 1897 there were only thirty-seven Catholics 
and ninety-two in 1902. In 1903 the de Montfort Fathers were 
given the responsibility of evangelizing Iceland and their efforts 
succeeded in establishing a few Christian families on this stony 
soil. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no 
territory in which the Sacred Congregation had not attempted 
to establish missions. The latter, it is true, did not always have 
the supranational character she wished to stamp upon them. 
They did not always give the native clergy the place which it 
should hold in the new Christian communities as time goes on. 
It was to reform them in these two particulars that the Holy 
See applied itself during and after the pontificate of Bene- 
dict XV. The purpose of the sequel to this book is to describe 
the precise circumstances in which these reforms were 
undertaken. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

In this series: ZEILLER, Jacques: Christian Beginnings", PALANQUE, 
J. R.: The Church and the Dark Ages (American edn The 
Dawn of the Middle Ages); GUILLEMAIN, Bernard: The Early 
Middle Ages and The Later Middle Ages; CRISTIANI, Leon: 
Heresies and Heretics; RETIF, Andre, S.J.: The Catholic Spirit. 

ATTWATER, Donald: Martyrs: From St Stephen to John Tung, 
London and New York, Sheed and Ward, 1957. 

BRODRICK, James, S.J.: St Francis Xavier, London, Burns Gates, 
and New York, Farrar Strauss, 1952. 

CALVET, Jean: St Vincent de Paul, translated by Lancelot C. 
Sheppard, London, Burns Gates, and New York, David 
McKay, 1952. 

DANIELOU, Jean, S.J.: Salvation of the Nations, London and New 
York, Sheed and Ward, 1951. 

FREMANTLE, Anne (Editor): The Papal Encyclicals in their Histori- 
Context, New York, New American Library of World 
Literature, 1956. 

HUGHES, Philip: A History of the Church, first three volumes to 
the Reformation, London and New York, 1934-7; A Popular 
History of the Catholic Church, London, Burns Gates, and 
New York, Macmillan, 1939 (reprint, 1958). 

KENTON, Edna: Black Gowns and Redskins (Jesuit missionaries 
in North America, 1610-1791), London, Longmans, 1959. 

KOREN, Henry J., C.S.Sp.: The Spiritans: A History of the Congre- 
gation of the Holy Ghost, Pittsburgh, Pa, Duquesne Univ. 
Press, 1959. 

LATOURETTE, K. S.: History of the Expansion of Christianity, seven 
volumes, New York, Harper, 1939-45. 

LEBRETON, Jules, and ZEBLLER, Jacques: The History of the 
Primitive Church, four volumes, London, Burns Gates, 
1942-8, and New York, Macmillan. 

MANN, H. K., and HOLLNSTEINER, J.: The Lives of the Popes in 
the Middle Ages, eighteen volumes, London, Kegan Paul, and 
St Louis, Herder, 1928-32. 

MONSTERLEET, Jean, S.J.: Martyrs in China, London, Longmans, 

and Chicago, Regnery, 1956. 
PASTOR, Ludwig von: The History of the Popes from the Close of 

the Middle Ages, forty volumes, London, Kegan Paul, and 

St Louis, Herder, 1937-50. 



(continued from front flap) 

of the indigenous population and the unchris- 
tian motives of the European invaders. That 
they succeeded at all was a miracle. The later 
part of the book is concerned with the efforts 
in Africa and the Far East, and the incredible 
obstacles of tremendous distances and, in 
Africa, the almost unlivable environment. 

Any book on this subject could not fail to 
be exciting; this book has the added grace of 
being well written. 

Bernard de Vaulx, who was born in France, 
is principally a historian, though he has writ- 
ten a few novels. He is the author of Monsieur 
de Sougy avant le Phylloxera (1935), Joseph 
de Maistre (1940), Journal de Frangois Suleau 
(1946), Charlotte, Femme Souple (1947), Deux 
Figures du Tiers Ordre (1948), L'echeance de 
1852 ou la Liquidation de 1848 (1948), His- 
toire des Missions Catholiques Francises 
(1951), Les Plus Beaux Texts sur les Missions 
(1954), Madame Tiquet Criminelle Repentie 
(1955), Les figlises de Couleur (1957), and En 
Afrique (1960). 

Reginald F. Trevett translated History of 
the Missions from the French. 

THIS IS VOLUME 
99 

UNDER SECTION 
IX 

THE CHURCH AND THE 
MODERN WORLD 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CATHOLICISM 

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