The Great Mogul — Rudolph Aquaviva — Jerome Xavier — de Nobili — de Britto — Beschi — The Pariahs — Entering Thibet — From Peking to Europe — Mingrelia, Paphlagonia and Chaldea — The Maronites — Alexander de Rhodes — Ricci enters China — From Agra to Peking — Adam Schall — Arrival of the Tatars — Persecutions — Schall condemned to Death — Verbiest — de Tournon's Visit — The French Royal Mathematicians — Avril's Journey.

At the very time that Queen Elizabeth was putting Jesuits to death in England, there was a remarkable pagan monarch reigning in what is now part of English India, who was inviting Jesuits to his court and making them his friends. His name was Akbar, and he is known in history as the Great Mogul. He was born in 1542, and ruled four years longer than the forceful Eliza. She was queen from 1558 to 1603; he was king from 1556 to 1605. Akbar appears first as the ruler of the Punjab and the country around Delhi and Agra; but in 1572 he drove the Afghans out of Bengal, and reunited the lower valley of the Ganges to Hindostan. Later, he annexed Cabul, Kashmir, Sind and Kandahar. He was a mighty warrior, but remarkable likewise as a civil ruler, the proof in this case being that he levied more money in taxes than England extracts at the present day from the same territory. He was very much interested in religious matters, and Christianity appealed to him, because one of his numerous wives had been a Christian; but he fancied that it was part of a general system which could be incorporated in a new cult which he had devised to conciliate the conflicting creeds of his realm. His own personal devotion was sun-worship, and he appeared every morning in public, devoutly offering up his orisons to the god of day. He fancied it was the world-soul that animates all things, a concrete form of one of the illusions of the present time.

At the invitation of Akbar, Rudolph Aquaviva, accompanied by Anthony Montserrat and Francisco Henriques, left Goa in 1579, to present himself at his court for the purpose of explaining to him the doctrines of the Christian Faith. He listened with pleasure and intelligence, but his interest was purely academic. As with other Oriental despots, nothing practical could be hoped for, on account of the harem. Seeing that it was lost time to remain there, Aquaviva returned to Goa, and was then sent down to the peninsula of Salsette, as superior of the mission established at that place. His stay there was not a long one, for on July 15, 1583, he and Alfonso Pacheco were attacked by the natives and cut to pieces. Fathers Pietro Berno, Antonio Francisco and Francisco Aranha, a lay-brother, together with twenty of their neophytes were included in the massacre.

Hearing of the tragedy, the Great Mogul despatched an embassy to the viceroy and to the superior of the Jesuits to express his sympathy, and also to urge that other missionaries might be sent to instruct his people. In compliance with the request, JerÓnimo Xavier, a nephew of St. Francis Xavier, was sent there in 1595 and succeeded in winning the favor of Akbar. The "Encyclopedia Britannica" informs us that JerÓnimo, at the suggestion of the monarch, translated the four Gospels into Persian. Ranke adds in his "History of the Popes" that "while the Jesuit was there the insurrections of the Mahometans contributed to dispose the emperor towards the Christians, for in the year 1599 Christmas was celebrated at Lahore with the utmost solemnity. The manger and the leading facts of the Nativity were represented for twenty days consecutively, and numerous catechumens proceeded to the Church with palms in their hands to receive baptism. The emperor read, with great pleasure, a 'Life of Christ' composed in Persian, and a picture of the Virgin, copied from the Madonna del Popolo in Rome, was by his orders taken to the palace that he might show it to the women of his household. It is true that the Christians drew more favourable conclusions from these things than the facts justified; still, great progress was really made. Indeed, after the death of Akbar, three princes of the blood royal were solemnly baptized. They rode to the church on white elephants, and were received with the sound of trumpets, kettle-drums and martial music. This took place in 1610, so that Christianity seemed gradually to acquire a position of a fixed character, although suffering from certain vicissitudes and the prevalence of fickleness in the matter of religious opinion. Political considerations, also, largely affected the public mind. In 1621 a college was founded in Agra, and a station established at Patna. In 1624 hopes were entertained that the Emperor Jehanguire would himself become a Christian."

Shortly after JerÓnimo Xavier had settled down in the court of the Great Mogul, Father Robert de Nobili, a nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine, broke through the caste barrier in India in a way that, for a time, gave considerable scandal. He had gone to the mission of Madura, a territory somewhat in the interior towards the northeast of the Fisheries, and found there that Father Fernandes, a very pious and energetic missioner who had been living for fourteen years among his pagans, had never made a convert, as he could not get in touch with the influential people of the country. Two difficulties stood in the way: first, he was a Portuguese or a Prangui, and the Prangui were held in abhorrence, because they ate meat and drank wine; secondly, he mingled with the most degraded castes of India.

De Nobili determined to get rid of these obstacles. First, he insisted, that he was not a Prangui but a Roman nobleman in name and in fact; secondly, with regard to wine and meat, he would abstain from them and live on rice; thirdly, he would become a Brahmin, as far as their manner of life and dress was concerned, and, moreover, he would outdo them in the knowledge of their own language, literature and religion. Indeed, within a year, he was master of Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit. He was now equipped for his work, and in 1606 he bade good-bye to Fernandes, and shut himself up in a hut which, for a long time, no one was allowed to enter. He wanted the news to spread among the natives that a great European Brahmin had made his appearance. Curiosity, he said, would do the rest, for his rigid seclusion would make them all the more intent on seeing him. The scheme succeeded, and when, at last, visitors were admitted to speak to him, they found him to be even holier in appearance than they had imagined him to be, and were amazed to hear him converse in Tamil, and show a perfect acquaintance with the literature of the language. He made it a point, also, to recite and even to sing the songs of their poets, for he was an able musician and had a good voice.

When his reputation was established he began to discuss some of the truths of fundamental theology, not as coming from himself, but which, as he showed them, were actually set down in their own Vedas. His knowledge of Sanskrit — perhaps he was the first European to venture into that field — had given him a more thorough knowledge of the sacred books than was possessed by any of the Brahmins themselves, and hence it happened that, before a year had passed, he had baptized several persons who were conspicuous both for their nobility and learning. He permitted his converts to continue to besmear their foreheads with sandal-wood paste, to cultivate the tuft of hair on the top of their heads, and to wear a string on the left shoulder. He did this after he had thoroughly convinced himself that there was no superstition in such practices. Meantime he was living on milk, rice, herbs and water, which were handed to him once a day by the servant of a Brahmin. It was a precaution to forestall any suspicion that other food was supplied surreptitiously.

In the second year, his flock was so numerous that the hut he lived in was insufficient to contain them all, and he had to build a church. That, of course, caused some alarm among the Brahmins, but it was nothing in comparison to the storm that de Nobili's life excited in Europe. Cardinal Bellarmine, his uncle, thought he had apostatized, and wrote him an indignant letter, and the General of the Society added to it a very severe reprehension. His brother Jesuit, Fernandes, had denounced him as a traitor, because of his rejection of the name "Prangui," or Portuguese, and also of his connivance at idolatry in allowing his neophytes to retain their heathenish customs. This was the origin of the famous question of the "Malabar Rites" which created such a stir in the Church, one hundred years later. These charges gave de Nobili a great deal of trouble for some time, but at last everything was satisfactorily explained, and the cardinal, the General and the Pope told the innovating missionary to continue as he had begun. Hence in order to obviate the apparent neglect and even contempt of the lower castes, other priests were assigned to that work, and de Nobili restricted himself to his peculiar vocation for forty-two years. He then lost his sight and was sent to Jafanapatam in Ceylon, and afterwards to Mylapore, where he died on January 16, 1656.

The mission had prospered. About the time de Nobili ended his labours, it had an average of 5000 converts a year, and it never dropped below 3000, even in the times of persecution. At the end of the seventeenth century its territory had extended beyond Madura to Mysore, Marava, Tanjore and Gingi, and the Christians of the entire Madura Mission, as it was called, amounted to 150,000 souls. Besides being a field for apostolic zeal, the mission also produced eminent scholars in Tamil and Sanskrit, like Beschi, Coeurdoux, and others. In 1700 it reached into the Carnatic and probably took in what Christians had been left there by the missionaries among the Moguls. This mission glories in its great martyr, John de Britto, who arrived there twelve years after the death of de Nobili. He, too, adopted the manners of a Saniassi, and labored as such for twenty-one years. It was a life of continual and horrible martyrdom. He was finally put to death as a magician, because of the multitudes of people attracted to the Faith by his holiness and teaching. Like his predecessor de Nobili, he did not worry his converts about their tufts of hair or the cotton cords on their shoulders, and it is noteworthy that long after his death, and just while the process of his beatification was going on, the theologians were hotly discussing the liceity of the Malabar Rites. If they were condemned, how would the decision affect de Britto's canonization? Pope Benedict XIV decided that it would not stand in the way, and so de Britto was placed among the Blessed.

The companions of de Nobili and de Britto went everywhere in Hindostan, they even reconciled to the Church the community of natives who called themselves the Christians of St. Thomas the Apostle, but who were in reality commonplace Nestorians. They built the first Church of Bengal, and penetrated into the kingdoms of Arracan, Pegu, Cambogia, and Siam, all the time busy avoiding the Dutch pirates who were prowling along the coast.

The most dazzling of these picturesque missionaries was undoubtedly the Italian, Constant Beschi, who arrived in Madura in 1700, one hundred years after de Nobili, and twenty-eight after de Britto. He determined to surpass all the other Saniassis or Brahmins in the austerity of his life. He remained in his house most of the time, and would never touch anything that had life in it. On his forehead was the pottu of Sandanam, and on his head the coulla, a sort of cylindrical head dress made of velvet. He was girt with the somen, was shod with the ceremonious wooden footgear, and pearls hung from his ears. He never went out except in a palanquin, in which tiger skins had to be placed for him to sit on, while a servant stood on either side, fanning him with peacock feathers, and a third held above his head a silken parasol surmounted by a globe of gold. He was called "the Great Viramamvuni", and like Bonaparte, he sat "wrapped in the solitude of his own originality." Not even a Jesuit could come near him or speak to him. A word of Italian never crossed his lips, but he plunged into Sanskrit, Telugu, and Tamil, studied the poets of Hindostan, and wrote poems that conveyed to the Hindoos a knowledge of Christianity. For forty years he was publicly honored as the Ismat Saniassi, that is, the penitent without stain. The Nabob of Trichinopoli was so enthusiastic about him that Beschi had to accept the post of prime minister, and thenceforth he never went abroad unless accompanied by thirty horsemen, twelve banner-bearers, and a band of military music, while a long train of camels followed in the rear. If, on his way, any Jesuit who was looking after the Pariahs came across his path, there was no recognition on either side, but both must have been amused as the Jesuit in rags prostrated himself in the dust before the silk-robed Jesuit in the cavalcade, the outcast not daring even to look at the great official, though, perhaps, they were intimate friends.

Numbers of Jesuits were, meantime, besieging the General with petitions to be made missionaries among the Pariahs, for few could act the part that Beschi was playing. To be a Pariah was easy, and attempts to evangelize that class continued to be made in Madura up to the time of the Suppression. Conversions were numerous, and Bouchet, a contemporary of Beschi, heard as many as 100,000 confessions in a single year. It is said that the particularly fervent converts among the Brahmins used to cut off their hair as a sacrifice, when they were baptized, and a great number of locks, some of which were four and five feet long, adorned Beschi's church in Tiroucavalor.

But these conversions connoted persecution. Bouchet, who was Beschi's successor among the high-class Brahmins, was several times arrested and condemned to death. On one occasion, when he was sentenced to be burned alive and was being covered with oil to make the flames more active, the executioners were so startled by his apparent unconcern that they dropped the work and set him free. Bouchet thought that the Church of Madura was specially blessed by being persecuted, and that explained for him how he was able to baptize 20,000 Hindoos. He had the care of thirty churches, which meant untold labor. About the trifles of never eating meat, fresh eggs or fish, living in straw-covered cabins without beds, seats or furniture, and never having the luxury of a table or spoon or knife or fork at meal times, — that never gave the missionaries a thought. The consolation for these privations was that at times they would hear the confessions of entire villages and never have to deal with a mortal sin. Probably Simon Carvalho, — Marshall calls him Laynez — who had received 10,000 people into the Church, and was at one time almost torn to pieces by a mob, and at another hunted for five months to be put to death, would have preferred this work, in which he had been employed for thirty years, to that of administering the diocese of Mylapore, of which Clement XI made him bishop later.

"They were giants," wrote the AbbÉ Dubois who was a missionary in India in modern times, "and they triumphed in their day, because neither the world nor the devil could resist the might that was in them. Possessing for the most part the rarest mental endowments, so that if they had aimed only at human honors they would have encountered scarcely a rival in their path, versed in all the learning of their age, and conspicuous even in that great Society, which attracted to itself for more than a century the noblest minds of every country in Europe, they had acquired in addition to their natural gifts such a measure of Divine grace and wisdom, such perfection of evangelical virtue, that the powers of darkness fled away from before their face, and the Cross of Christ wherever they lifted it up, broke in pieces the idols of the Gentiles." And Perrin in his "Voyage dans l'Indoustan," II, 166, writes: "I confess that I have criticized the Jesuits of Hindostan with critical, perhaps with malignant temper. I have changed my mind now, and if I spoke ill of them, all India would tax me with imposture." The hermit kingdom of Thibet was first entered by Father Antonio de Andrada. He was one of the missionaries in the kingdom of the Great Mogul, and started from Agra in 1624 to cross the Himalayas and enter, if possible, the Grand Lama's mysterious domain. He joined a troop of idolaters who were going to present their offerings at the celebrated pagoda of Barrinath, whither thousands flocked from all the kingdoms of India and even from the island of Ceylon. "That part of the trip," he says in his narrative, "was the easiest, although in ascending the valley of the Ganges I had often to creep along a narrow path cut in the face of the rock, sometimes scarcely a palm in breadth, while far below me were roaring torrents into which, from time to time, some unfortunate traveller would be hurled. Here and there we had to pass rivers with the help of ropes strung across the stream, or perhaps on heaps of snow which the avalanches had piled up in the valley, but which were especially perilous, for the mountain torrents were all the while eating through them at the base. If there was a cave-in the whole party would disappear in the depths. It was dreadful work, but when I saw my companions, many of them old men, keeping up their courage by repeating the name of Barrinath, I was ashamed not to do more for Jesus Christ than these poor pagans for their idols and pagodas."

After the shrine was reached, the valiant missionary continued his journey, and arrived at the town of Manah, the last habitation of the mountaineers on the India slope. "Before us was a desert of snow, inaccessible for any living creature for ten months of the year, and which called for a twenty days' march, without shelter and without a bit of wood to make a fire. With me were two natives and a guide. However, I had put my trust in God, for whom alone I was attempting this dangerous task. Each step costs incredible struggles, for every morning there was a new layer of snow, knee-deep or up to the waist or even to the shoulders. In some places, to get across the drifts, we had to go through the motions of a swimmer; and to avoid being smothered at night, we were compelled to remove the snow, at least every hour." He finally arrived at his destination and was well received by the Lama. He was given leave to establish a mission in the country, he then made haste to return to Agra and in the following year he established a base at Chaparang. But he himself was not to remain in the country which he had so gloriously opened to the world. He was named provincial of the Indies, and had to set out for Goa immediately. Nine years later, on March 19, 1634, he was poisoned by the Jews. Meantime the Thibet mission tottered and fell.

In 1661 Father Johann Gruber, one of Schall's assistants in Pekin, reached Thibet on his way to Europe. He could not go by sea, for the Dutch were blockading Macao, so he made up his mind to go overland by way of India and Thibet. With him was Father d'Orville, a Belgian. After reaching Sunning-fu, on the confines of Kuantsu, they crossed Kukonor and Kalmuk Tatary to the Holy City of Lhasa in Thibet, but did not remain there. They then climbed the Himalayas and from Nepal journeyed over the Ganges plateau to Patna and Agra. At the latter city d'Orville died, he was replaced by Father Roth, and the two missionaries tramped across Asia to Europe. Gruber had been two hundred and fourteen days on the road. In 1664 he attempted to return to China by way of Russia, but for some reason or other failed to get through that country. He then made for Asia but fell ill at Constantinople, finally he died either in Italy at Florence or at Patak in Hungary. Fortunately he had left his "Journal" and charts in the hands of the great Athanasius Kircher, who published them in his famous "China Illustrata."

Other missionaries entered Mingrelia, Paphlagonia, and Chaldea; in the latter place they brought the Nestorians back to the Church. Besides laboring in nearby Greece and Thessaly, at Constantinople, they were in Armenia and at Ephesus, Smyrna, Damascus, Aleppo, at the ruins of Babylon, and on the shores of the Euphrates and the Jordan, and they founded the missions of Antourah for the Maronites of Libanus, whom Henry IV of France took under his protection.

The origin of these Maronite missions reads like a romance. It is found in the French "Menology" of October 12 which tells us that one day, at a meeting of his sodalists in Marseilles, Father Amien was talking about the propagation of the Faith and incidentally mentioned Persia, which only one missionary had as yet entered. Among his hearers was a rich merchant named FranÇois Lambert, who, excited by the sermon, determined to go and put himself at the disposal of that solitary Persian apostle. He crossed the Arabian desert, reached Bagdad, embarked on the Euphrates, with the intention of getting to Ispahan in Persia and when he failed in this, he turned towards Ormuz on the straits connecting the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea. That place, however, could not keep him; it was too luxurious and too licentious; so he went over to upper Hindostan, where the Great Mogul was enthroned. He passed through Surate and Golconda, but from Mylapore, which holds the tomb of St. Thomas, he could not tear himself away for several weeks. Finally, he boarded a ship which was wrecked on the shores of Bengal, and twice he came within an inch of disappearing in the deep. After two days and two nights on the desolate sands, he and five other castaways sang the Te Deum to make them forget their sorrow. They must have struck inland after that for we are told that later they built a raft and floated down one of the great rivers of India. It was a journey of thirty-five days, and several of the poor wanderers died of hunger on the way. At last they reached a native settlement and were led to the nearest Portuguese post. Unfortunately, the geography at this part of Lambert's narrative is too vague for us to be sure of the places he saw on his journey.

From India he made his way to Rome, where he entered the Jesuit novitiate of San Andrea, and from there, after his ordination, he was sent to Syria. Again he was shipwrecked, and when picked up on the beach he was taken for a pirate and brought in chains to the chief of the mountaineer clan. Happily they were the Maronites of Libanus, and there Lambert remained till the end of his days, helping the persecuted people to keep their faith against their furious Mussulman neighbours. These Maronites had been represented, by postulatory letters at the Lateran Council as early as 1516, and later Pope Gregory XIII built for them in Rome a hospital and a college which produced some very eminent scholars. In 1616 Clement VIII sent the Jesuit, Girolamo Dandini, to preside at the Maronite council, for the purpose of introducing certain liturgical reforms; but it was the wanderer Lambert who was the first to remain permanently among this heroic people. He lived only three years after his arrival; it was long enough, however, to prepare the way for the five mission centres which were subsequently established there.

Alexandre de Rhodes, who appears at this juncture, is another of the picturesque figures in the history of the Society. According to FÉnelon, it is he who inspired the formation of the great association of the Missions EtrangÈres, which has sent so many thousands of glorious apostles, many of whom were martyrs, to evangelize the countries from which he had come in a most unexpected and extraordinary fashion. He was born in Avignon, the old French City of the Popes, and was called by his contemporaries the "Francis Xavier of Cochin-China and Tonkin." He left Rome for the Indies when he was only twenty-six years of age, and began his missionary work in the East by looking after the slaves and jailbirds of Goa. On his way from that city to Tuticorin he baptized fifty pagans on shipboard, his eloquence being helped by the furious tempest that threatened to send the frail bark to the bottom. While waiting at Malacca for the ship to get ready, he and his companion captured another two thousand souls for the Lord, and when he arrived at his destination, other thousands came into the fold, among them the king and eighteen members of the royal household, and two hundred of the priests of the pagan temples. Nor did this rapidity denote instability, for twenty-five years later the Church of Tuticorin which he founded could count at its altars no less than 300,000 Christians.

It is said that he had even the power of making thaumaturgists out of his catechumens. By the use of holy water or the relic of the cross, they restored people to health, and as many as two hundred and seventy sufferers from various maladies were the recipients of such favors. When he was thrown into prison and loaded with fetters, as he often was, he converted his jailers and others besides. When carried off in a ship to be ejected from the country, he baptized the captain and crew and got them to put him ashore in a desolate place where he began a new apostolate. Fifteen times, in his journeys to Tonkin and Cochin-China, he crossed the Gulf of Tonkin, which had a terrible record of tempests and shipwrecks, and finally he started on his famous overland tramp to Europe in search of evangelical laborers. He achieved his purpose, though it took him three years and a half to do it.

On that memorable journey he risked his life at every step, for he had to travel through countries whose language he did not understand, and where he could expect nothing but suspicion, ill-treatment and, if he escaped death, privations and sufferings of every description. On his way to Rome the Dutch in Java threw him in jail, but he converted his keepers, and was segregated in consequence and put in solitary confinement; he regarded that seclusion only as a splendid chance to make his annual retreat, and when he was let out he resumed his pilgrimage through India and Asia. As he said himself, he was carried on the wings of Divine Providence, through storms and shipwrecks, and cities and deserts, and barbarians and pagans, and heretics and Turks. He finally reached Rome in 1648, and told the Father General and the Pope what was needed in the far-away Orient. The purpose of this voyage, so replete with adventure, was of very great importance.

It was chiefly by the help of Portugal, which was then at the most brilliant epoch of its history, that missions had been extended for thousands of miles in the East, beginning at Goa and Malabar, and stretching round the Peninsula of Hindostan to Cochin-China, Corea, and Japan, in many of which splendid ecclesiastical establishments had been founded. They were all begun, supported and protected by Portugal. But unfortunately, Christianity and Portugal were so inextricably entangled, mixed and confused with one another that the religion taught by the missionaries came to be considered by the people not so much the religion of Christ as the religion of the Portuguese. Another consequence was that a quarrel between any little Portuguese official or merchant with an Oriental potentate meant a persecution of the Church. Furthermore, as Portugal's possession of the country was so exclusive that not even the most humble missionary could leave Europe unless he was acceptable to the Government, it amounted to an actual enslavement of the Church. Finally, as every other nation was debarred from commercial rights in the East, it became the practice of rivals to represent to the natives that the missionaries were merely Portuguese spies or advance agents who were preparing for invasion and conquest.

Unfortunately, in return for all that Portugal had done and was to do for the advancement of Christianity in those newly discovered lands, an arrangement had been made with the Pope that no bishop in all that vast territory could take his see unless Portugal accepted him; no new diocese could be created unless Portugal were consulted; no papal bull was valid unless passed upon by the Portuguese kings. To put an end to all that, was the reason why de Rhodes went to Europe. But he did not dare to appear before the Pope as a Jesuit, for if it were known what his mission was every Jesuit house in the Portuguese possessions would have been immediately closed, as happened later. Hence it was that he had to wait in Rome for three whole years until 1651 before he could even get his petition considered, and this explains also why he made the extravagant demand for "a patriarch, three archbishops, and twelve bishops." By asking much he thought he might at least get something.

The Pope wanted de Rhodes himself to be a bishop; he refused the honor, and then was told to go and find some available candidates. For that purpose he addressed himself to a group of ecclesiastics at Paris whom the Jesuit Father Bagot was directing in the ways of the higher spiritual life, and who were often spoken of as the Bagotists. Among them were Montmorency de Laval, the future Bishop of Quebec, and M. Olier, who was, later on, to found the Society of St. Sulpice. His appeal had no immediate result, and he then prepared to return to Tonkin, but he received an order to go elsewhere. Probably no Portuguese vessel would take him back, for the purpose of his visit to Europe must have by that time got abroad. He was, therefore, sent to Persia, although he was then over sixty years old; so to Persia he went, and we find him studying the language on his way thither, and, when travelling through the streets of Ispahan, making a fool of himself in trying to stammer out the few words he had learned, but always making light of the laughter and sometimes of the kicks and cuffs and even threats of death that he received. He was planning new missionary posts in Georgia and Tatary when death called him to his reward. But he had already won the admiration of Ispahan, and the city never saw a costlier funeral than the one which, on November 7, 1660, conveyed to the grave the mortal remains of the glorious Alexandre de Rhodes.

This journey of the great missionary is a classic in its emphasis of the earnestness the Society has always shown to have the episcopacy established in its missions. It is idle to pretend that this project of de Rhodes was due to his own initiative, and was not sanctioned by his superiors. He may, indeed, have suggested it, but no one in the Society undertakes a work from which he may be withdrawn at any moment, except he is assigned to it. Now de Rhodes continued at his task for several years, and evidently with the approval of his superiors. Apparently unsuccessful though his effort was, it brought about some results. Mme. d'Aiguillon, the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, took the matter up, but even she, with her great influence, could induce the ecclesiastical authorities to do no more than create one little vicariate Apostolic. It was a far cry from the great hierarchical scheme of de Rhodes. One of the Bagotists, Pallu, was appointed, though, for a time there was a question of sending Laval also to the East; but the necessity of having a bishop in Quebec was so urgent that Pallu was sent alone to Tonkin.

Portugal, however, refused to carry him thither, although Louis XIV asked it as a special favor. In 1658 when Pallu attempted to go out at his own risk he reached not Cochin-China but Siam. He was back again in France in 1665, begging protection against the Portuguese, who were arresting his priests and putting them in jail at Goa and Macao. In 1674 he was shipwrecked in the Philippines and carried off a prisoner to Spain, and was liberated only by the united efforts of the Pope and Louis XIV. He set sail again, but was driven ashore on the Island of Formosa and never reached Tonkin.

Meantime the Jesuits had not forgotten Francis Xavier's dream about China. The Dominican Gaspar de la Cruz had found his way through its closed gates, four years after Xavier expired on the island opposite Canton, but he was promptly expelled. It was only in 1581, fully thirty-six years subsequent to the attempt of de la Cruz, that the Jesuits finally succeeded. All that time they had been waiting at Macao, — a settlement granted to the Portuguese in return for the assistance given to China in beating off a fleet of plundering sea-rovers. They had long since seen the folly of attempting to enter a new country under the shadow of some pretentious embassy, for inevitably a suspicion was left lurking in the minds of both the governments and the people that there was an ulterior political motive back of the preaching of the priests. Hence it was that Valignani, though in general believing in embassies to kings and rulers, after the new religion was well understood and accepted in a country, had become convinced that it was unwise to begin the work in that ostentatious fashion. He, therefore, took three clever young Italians, Michele Ruggieri, Francesco Pasio and Matteo Ricci, and after training them thoroughly in mathematics and in all the branches of the natural sciences, ordered them not only to master the Chinese language, but also to familiarize themselves with the literature and the history of the country. Ricci was available especially as a mathematician, having been the favorite pupil of Father Clavius, who was one of the chief constructors of the Gregorian Calendar.

According to Huc (p. 40) they gained access to the forbidden land by taking part in a comedy. A viceroy, he tells us, who lived near Canton, summoned to his tribunal on some charge or other both the bishop and the governor of Macao. This was a grievous insult to those dignitaries, but on the other hand if they refused to appear, the result might be disastrous for the whole Portuguese colony. To extricate themselves from the dilemma a trick was resorted to — one which was quite in keeping with Chinese methods. Instead of going themselves, they sent two persons who pretended to be the bishop and governor. For the former Father Ruggieri was chosen, for the latter, a layman. On the face of it, the story is absurd. It would be impossible to impersonate two such well-known functionaries as a bishop and a governor, and the discovery of such a fraud would inevitably entail condign punishment. Most probably Ruggieri and his companion went simply as representatives of the two functionaries. They were well provided with presents, which had the desired effect of making the viceroy forget his grievances, if he had any. He accepted everything very graciously and suggested a second visit. Then Ruggieri apprised him of the longing he had always entertained of passing his whole life in the wonderful land of China, with its marvellously intellectual people, and was assured that his wish might possibly be gratified later on. But when a hint was thrown out about a wonderful clock which the missionary possessed and was extremely anxious to show such an important personage as the viceroy, every difficulty about a permanent residence immediately disappeared.

The party was conducted back to the boat with great ceremony; and when Ruggieri's return was delayed by an attack of sickness, the viceregal junk was sent to the Island to convey him to Tchao-King; and also to deliver into his hands a formal authorization to establish a house in the town. Valignani, who was then at Macao, hesitated for a time about accepting the offer, but finally consented. On December 18 Ruggieri embarked, taking with him Father Pasio and a scholastic, along with several Chinese. This addition to the party somewhat surprised the viceroy, but Ruggieri told him that being a priest, it was in keeping with his dignity to have an attendant. The others were only servants, but the clock did the work, and the audacious apostles received a Buddhist temple outside the town as their place of residence, and were the recipients of frequent favors in the way of food from the delighted viceroy. He even granted permission to Ruggieri to call Ricci from Macao. Their temple-residence soon became famous, and every one in Tchao-King, from the highest civil and military functionaries down to what we now call coolies, came out to see the occupants.

Unfortunately, the viceroy was deposed and his successor, objecting to the presence of the foreigners, ordered the whole party to return to Macao. They did not obey, but made an attempt to reach Canton, which the former official had given them authority to enter. They succeeded by purposely getting themselves arrested in Hong-Kong. But in Canton no attention was paid to the document they had with them, and so they made their way back to Macao, convinced that there was no hope of remaining in China under the new incumbent. Yet to their great surprise, the very man they feared sent an envoy over to Macao to bring the three missionaries back to Tchao-King. He welcomed them effusively and gave them a beautiful site for their residence, quite close to a famous porcelain tower, which had just been erected and was considered a monument of Chinese architecture. This was the cradle of Christianity in China.

In 1589, however, there arrived a new viceroy who took a fancy to their residence, and without any ceremony dispossessed them. But as they had already won such favor by their maps and globes and astronomical instruments, when they came to Tchao-Tcheou looking for a house, they were received with the wildest demonstrations of joy. They grew more popular every day, and soon the mandarins of Canton invited Ricci to speak in their assemblies. He availed himself of all these opportunities afforded him to inject into his scientific discourses something about religion, and he noted that they showed greater attention when he broached such topics than when he restricted himself to purely human science. Troubles occurred from time to time, but the number of neophytes increased daily, and Ricci, who up to that time had worn the dress of a bonze now discarded it and assumed the garb of a Chinese man of letters.

In 1595 the news came that the Japanese emperor, Taicosama was preparing an expedition against Corea, whereupon, the general-in-chief of the Chinese troops came down to Tchao-Tcheou to consult Ricci. But it was not so much to discuss the military situation as to get him to restore a favorite child to health. Ricci promised to pray for the boy, and in return asked to accompany the general back to Pekin for he was convinced that if he could once convert the educated classes of the capital the rest of his work would be easy. The request was granted, and Ricci was thus, very probably, the first white man to travel through the interior of China and to see the people of the cities and country at close range. At Nankin, however, he noted the deep suspicion entertained for foreigners, and although he went as far as Pekin itself, he thought it wiser not to enter the city, and consequently he returned by the Yellow River to Tchao-Tcheou.

Taicosama's expedition from Japan proved a failure, and the public anxiety about foreigners ceased to be acute. This lull enabled Ricci to establish himself at Nankin, which seemed to have struck his fancy as he passed through it on his way to Pekin. The city was in a fever about the study of astronomy and astrology, and he found a hearty welcome among its learned men. He taught them in his daily intercourse many of the doctrines of the Faith, and got in return from them the real meaning of their ancestor-worship and ceremonies. Hence, he had no scruples at all about taking part in the honors paid to Confucius, who was the great legislator and teacher of China, and he never suspected that there would be later a hue and cry in the Church about the alleged idolatry of these very ceremonies.

Meantime he forwarded information about the observatory of Nankin that quite astounded scientific Europe. Nankin, however, did not satisfy him, and he made constant but unavailing efforts to reach the imperial city of Pekin. Finally, in 1600, after seventeen years of patient waiting, he succeeded. His coming produced a great sensation. He was even admitted to the palace, but really never saw the emperor, though the people at large fancied he had been accorded that privilege. However, it amounted almost to the same thing, for the effect produced and his real missionary success dated from that moment. The greatest mandarin of the court became a Christian and almost a saint, though his name was Sin. Later, Sin went about preaching Christianity. His conversion itself was a sermon, and was the beginning of many others. Meantime the five Jesuits at Canton drew multitudes around them. The upper classes flocked to hear their discourses, and began to take pride in being considered Christians, but it was hard for them to understand why the Gospel was not exclusively restricted to their set. They could not yet grasp the fact, even after baptism, that the lower classes had the same privilege of salvation as themselves. To the Chinese mind it was a social revolution, and they were right, but they were wrong in objecting to it.

Here an interesting episode occurs. Associated with Father Geronimo Aquaviva in the court of the Grand Mogul at Agra was a Portuguese lay-brother named Benedict Goes. Although engaged only in domestic service, he was in great favor with the barbarian monarch, and if the Viceroy of India was saved from disaster, it was due to Goes, who not only persuaded the Grand Mogul to desist from war with the Portuguese, but succeeded in having himself sent down to Goa with all the children who had been captured in the various raids of Akbar's armies into Portuguese territory. While he was at Agra, reports had been coming in that the Fathers had at last entered China — the Cathay of the old Franciscans of the thirteenth century, and it was deemed advisable to try to establish communications with them. Goes was chosen to carry out the project, and, in 1602, he started from Agra, which lies in the northern part of Hindostan, about south of Delhi and west of Lucknow. It meant a journey from the centre of Hindostan, across the whole of Thibet and China, among absolutely unknown nations, savage and semi-civilized, Mohammedans and idolaters, through trackless forests and over snow-clad mountains, facing the dangers of starvation and sickness and wild beasts at every step. But all that was not thought to be beyond the powers of the courageous brother. Disguised as an Armenian, he had a hard time of it from robber chiefs and barbarian princes. He was ill-treated by most of them, for he openly professed that he was a Christian. When he refused to pay respect to Mohammed, he was sentenced to be trampled to death by elephants, but he was finally pardoned and allowed to resume his journey. On he plodded for five years, and just as he was nearing the goal his strength gave out. Fortunately Father Ricci, at Pekin, had heard of his coming, and sent Father Fernandes to meet him. When Fernandes arrived, Goes was breathing his last in the frontier town of Su-Chou. It was then 1607, and the dying man told his brother Jesuit: "For five years I have been without the sacraments, but I do not remember any serious sin since I set out from Agra." He died on April 7, 1607.

In 1606 there was worry in China about certain reports originating in Macao, where the Portuguese were stationed. The Jesuits were accused of aspiring to nothing else than the imperial throne; to prove it, attention was called to the fact that all their houses were built on hills, and could be easily transformed into citadels in time of war. It was said, too, that a Dutch fleet in the offing was at their service, and that arrangements had been made with the Japanese for an invasion. The result was a general panic throughout the empire and not a few apostacies. Threats to kill the missionaries also began to be heard. Coincident with this, came an unwise act on the part of the Vicar-General of Macao, who, because of a decision against him in a dispute he had with the Franciscans, put the whole island under interdict. The result was that the political situation became still more threatening, and Father Martines was arrested at Canton, tortured in the most horrible fashion, and finally executed. This death, however, marked as it was by the heroic courage of the victim, his affirmations in the midst of his sufferings of his own innocence and that of his brethren, quelled the storm. Ricci's influence, also, contributed to calm the excited people, and he became greater than ever in their estimation. He was called another Confucius, and was even empowered by the authorities to establish a novitiate at Pekin. Ricci was well on in years by that time, but continued valiantly at his work, making saints as well as great littÉrateurs and mathematicians out of his Jesuit associates; he wrote treatises in Chinese on Christian ethics, while continuing his mathematical works, and all day long he was busy with the great mandarins who came to consult him. In 1610 he succumbed under these accumulated labors, and his obsequies were such as had never been accorded to any other foreigner. The funeral procession, preceded by the cross, traversed the entire city, and by order of the emperor his remains were laid in a temple, which was thenceforth transformed into a Christian church.

Mr. Gutzlaff, a Protestant missionary in China of modern times, says that "Ricci had spent only twenty-seven years in China but when he died there were more than three hundred churches in the different provinces." Gutzlaff's testimony is all the more precious, because, according to Marshall, his own associates describe him as "more occupied in amassing wealth than in making Christians." Referring to the scientific labors of Ricci and his successors, Thornton (History of China, Preface, p. 13) says: "The geographical labors performed in China by the Jesuits and other missionaries of the Roman Catholic Faith will always command the gratitude and excite the wonder of all geographers. Portable chronometers and aneroid barometers, sextants and theodolites, sympiesometers and micrometers, compasses and artificial horizons are, notwithstanding all possible care, frequently found to fail, yet one hundred and fifty years ago a few wandering European priests traversed the enormous state of China Proper, and laid down on their maps the positions of cities, the direction of rivers and the height of mountains with a correctness of detail and a general accuracy of outline that are absolutely marvellous. To this day all our maps are based on their observations." "Whatever is valuable in Chinese astronomical science," adds Mr. Gutzlaff, "has been borrowed from the treatises of Roman Catholic missionaries."

Ricci's death was a calamity to the Church, for in the following year a mandarin who was in charge at Nankin started a genuine persecution. The missionaries were summoned to his tribunal, publicly scourged and sent back to Macao — and all this with the authorization of the emperor. Matters grew worse, but at the emperor's death in 1620, there was a lull, for the Tatars were invading China and the help of the Portuguese had to be invoked; as that, however, could not be done unless the Europeans were placated by recalling the missionaries, the exiles returned to their posts. The emperor overcame the Tatars, and the tranquillity and good feeling that followed allowed the Fathers, who were scattered all over the empire, some of them 800 leagues from Pekin, to get together and decide on uniformity of methods in treating with their converts. In that congregation the doubts which met them at every step as to what they were to tolerate and what to forbid were settled. They knew the people thoroughly by this time, their ideas, their customs; and their scrupulous love of the Faith guided them in their decisions.

About this time the great Adam Schall arrived. He was a worthy successor of Ricci. His reputation had preceded him as a mathematician, and he was immediately employed by the emperor to reform the Chinese calendar. His influence, in consequence of this distinction, was unbounded in extending the field of missionary work. The pagans themselves built a church at his request in Sin-gan-fou, and he obtained an edict from the emperor which empowered the Jesuits to preach throughout the empire. The extraordinary success of Schall was the talk of Europe; and applications poured in on the General from all sides to be sent out to share the labors and the triumphs of the mission. Great numbers of Jesuits were sent there, but many perished on the way out, for shipwrecks were very common in those unknown seas, and the crowded and unhealthy ships as well as the long and difficult journey claimed throngs of victims.

The work soon became too great for the laborers and then there came a reinforcement from the Philippines, largely from the other religious orders who had been long waiting to enter China, and who now devoted themselves to the work. Not knowing the country, however, they were horrified to see that many of the practices of Confucianism were still retained by the Chinese Christians, and they denounced as idolatry what the old Jesuits had decided, after years of close scrutiny, to be nothing but a ceremonial which had been thoroughly and scrupulously purified from all taint of superstition. But the newcomers would not look at it in that light. They immediately wrote to the Archbishop of Manila and to the Bishop of CebÚ that the Jesuits not only concealed from their converts the mysteries of the Cross, but permitted them to prostrate themselves before the idol of Chin-Hoam, to honor their ancestors with superstitious rites, and to offer sacrifices to Confucius. Rome was then informed of it, but some years later, namely in 1637, both the archbishop and the bishop wrote to Urban VIII that on examining the matter more carefully, they had arrived at the conclusion that the Jesuits were right. It was then too late. A series of bloody persecutions had already begun. The first explosion of wrath occurred when one of the new preachers, speaking through an interpreter, told his congregation that Confucius and all their pagan ancestors were in hell, and that the Jesuits had not taught the Chinese the truth. Public indignation followed on this unwise utterance and expulsions began.

Fortunately, the persecutions were checked for a while by fresh attempts of the Tatar element in China to seize the imperial crown. The Jesuits kept out of the strife by pronouncing for neither party. Happily, the Tatar element took a fancy to Schall, while Father Coeffler baptized the Chinese empress, giving her the Christian name of Helen and calling her infant son Constantine. The Tatars finally prevailed, and Schall was made a mandarin and president of the board of mathematics of the empire. He was given access to the emperor at all times, and might have made him a Christian had not the empress induced him to resume the pagan practices from which Schall had weaned him. Nor did the death of the troublesome lady mend matters; on the contrary, her disconsolate husband lapsed into melancholia, and in 1661 died, leaving a child of eight as his successor. In pursuance of the emperor's command, Schall was appointed instructor of the prince, but, as was to be expected, that arrangement aroused the fury of the people and especially of the bonzes. They maintained, rightfully from their point of view, that if Schall were left in position during the long minority of the prince, he would be absolute master of the future emperor — a result that must be prevented by crushing out Christianity. Forthwith all the missionaries were summoned to Pekin and thrown into prison. There was now no longer any discussion about the worship of Confucius, for the disputants were all in the dungeons of Pekin or elsewhere waiting for death.

The Christians were without pastors, but Father Gresson, who was in China at that time, tells us in his "History of China under the Tatars" that, during the persecution, the catechists baptized 2000 converts. It is not surprising, for before the outbreak of the persecution, the Jesuits had one hundred and fifty-one churches and thirty-eight residences in China; the Dominicans twenty-one churches and two residences, and the Franciscans one establishment. The total Christian population amounted to 250,000. Up to that time the Fathers of the Society had written one hundred and thirty-one works on religious subjects, one hundred and three on mathematics, and fifty-five on physics.

While the missionaries lay in chains expecting death at every moment, a Dominican named Navarrete succeeded in making his escape. It was lucky for him in one respect, but in all probability it would mean as soon as it was discovered the massacre of all the other prisoners; to avert this calamity, the illustrious Jesuit, Grimaldi, took his place in the prison. Unfortunately, Navarrete had no sooner reached Europe than he began an attack on the methods of the Jesuits in dealing with the Chinese rites. It caused great grief to his fellow Dominicans, and when the news of the publication of his "Tratados histÓricos" reached China in 1668, the Dominican Father Sarpetri sent a solemn denunciation of it to Rome, declaring that the practice of the Jesuits in permitting such rites was not only irreproachable under every point of view, but most necessary in propagating the Gospel. He denied under oath that the Jesuits refused to explain the mysteries of the Passion to the Chinese, and affirmed that his protest against the charge was not in answer to an appeal, but was prompted by the pure love of truth. Another Dominican, Gregorio LÓpez, who was Bishop of Basilea and Vicar-Apostolic of Nan-King, sent the Sacred Congregation a "memoir" in favor of the Jesuits. Navarrete atoned for his act of mistaken judgment later; for when he was Archbishop of Santo Domingo he asked leave of the king and viceroy to establish a Jesuit college in his residential city, and he paid a glowing tribute to the Society.

When Schall was brought up for trial there was, at his side, another Jesuit named Ferdinand Verbiest, a native of Pilthem near Courtrai in Belgium. He had come out to China when he was thirty-six years old, and was first engaged in missionary work in Shen-si. In 1660 he was summoned to Pekin to assist Father Schall, and in 1664 was thrown into prison with him. In the court-room, Verbiest was the chief spokesman, for Schall, being then seventy-four years of age and paralyzed, was unable to utter a word. The charges against the old missionary had been trumped up by a Mohammedan who claimed to be an astronomer. They were: first, that Schall had shown pictures of the Passion of Jesus Christ to the deceased emperor; secondly, that he had secured the presidency of the board of mathematics for himself in order to promote Christianity; thirdly, that he had incorrectly determined the day on which the funeral of one of the princes was to take place. It was an "unlucky" day. Verbiest had no difficulty in proving that the accused had been ordered by the emperor to be president of the board of mathematics, and furthermore, that he never had anything to do with "lucky" or "unlucky" days. The charge about the pictures of the Passion was admitted, and that may have been the reason why, in spite of the eloquence of Verbiest, who was loaded with chains while he was pleading, Father Schall was condemned to be hacked to pieces. In this trouble, however, the Lord came to the rescue: a meteor of an extraordinary kind appeared in the heavens, and a fire reduced to ashes that part of the imperial palace where the condemnation was pronounced. The sentence was revoked, and the missionaries were set free. Father Schall lingered a year after recovering his freedom. When Kang-hi came to the throne in 1669, an official declaration was made denouncing both the trial and the sentence as iniquitous, and although Schall had then been three years dead, unusually solemn funeral services were ordered in his honor. His remains were laid beside those of Father Ricci. The emperor himself composed the eulogistic epitaph which was inscribed on the tomb.

Schall had given forty-four years of his life to China, when at the age of seventy-five, he breathed his last in the arms of Father Rho, who, like him, was to hold a distinguished position as mathematician in the imperial court. Rho had preluded his advent to China by organizing the defense of the Island of Macao against a Dutch fleet. He had new ramparts constructed around the city; he planted four pieces of artillery on the walls, and when the Dutchmen landed for an assault he led the troops in a sortie and drove the enemy back to their ships. In his "Promenade autour du Monde" (II, 266), Baron de HÜbner gives an enthusiastic description of the Jesuit Observatory at Pekin.

"Man's inhumanity to man" is cruelly exemplified in a foul accusation urged against the venerable Schall, a century after he was buried with imperial honors in Pekin. In 1758 a certain Marcello Angelita, secretary of Mgr. de Tournon, the prelate who was commissioned to pass on the question of the Malabar Rites, published a story, which was repeated in many other books, that Schall had spent his last years "separated from the other missionaries, removed from obedience to his superiors, in a house which had been given him by the emperor, and with a woman whom he treated as his wife, and who bore him two children. After having led a pleasant life with his family for some years, he ended his days in obscurity." If there was even the shadow of truth in these accusations the Dominican Navarrete, who knew Schall personally, and who wrote against him and his brethren so fiercely in 1667, would not have failed to mention this fact to confirm his charges about the Chinese Rites. But he does not breathe a word about any misconduct on the part of the great missionary. Moreover, it is inconceivable that the vigorous Father General Oliva, who governed the Society at that time, would have tolerated that state of things for a single instant.

The foundation upon which the charge was built appears to be that the old missionary used to call a Chinese mandarin his "adopted grandson" and had helped to advance him to lucrative positions in the empire. The libel was written forty years after Schall's death, and was largely inspired by the infamous ex-Capuchin Norbert.

Possibly the mental attitude of Angelita's master, de Tournon, may also account in part for the publication of this calumny. De Tournon was known to be a bitter enemy of the Society, and he took no pains to conceal it when sent to the East to decide the vexed question of the Rites. Although on his arrival at Pondicherry in 1703, the Fathers met him on the shore and conducted him processionally to the city, he interpreted these marks of respect and the lavish generosity with which they looked after all his needs as nothing but policy. Not only did he refuse to give them a hearing on their side of the controversy, but he hurried off elsewhere as soon as he had formulated his decree. When he arrived in Canton, the first words he uttered were: "I come to China to purify its Catholicity," and before taking any information whatever, he ordered the removal of all the symbols which he considered superstitious. The act created an uproar, as it was only through the influence of the Fathers that de Tournon was permitted to go to Pekin; and although they managed to make his entrance into the imperial city unusually splendid, he immediately informed the emperor of a plan he had made to reconstruct the missions but, expressed himself in such an offensive fashion that the emperor immediately dismissed him. He then repaired to Canton, and on January 28, 1707, issued the famous order forbidding the cult of the ancestors, with the result that the emperor sent down officials to conduct him to Macao, where he was reported to have died in prison, on June 8, 1710.

The Mohammedan mandarin, Yang, who had trumped up the astronomical accusations against Schall, had meantime succeeded to the post as head of the mathematical board, but the young emperor was not satisfied with the results obtained, and he ordered a public dispute on the relative merits of Chinese and European astronomy. Verbiest was on one side, and Yang on the other. The test was to be first, the determination, in advance, of the shadow given at noon of a fixed day by a gnomon of a given height; second, the absolute and relative position of the sun and the planets on a date assigned; third, the time of a lunar eclipse. The result was a triumph for Verbiest. He was immediately installed as president, and his brethren were allowed to return to their missions. Verbiest's career, at Pekin, was more brilliant than that of either Ricci or Schall. There is no end of the things he did. The famous bronze astronomical instruments which figured so conspicuously in the Boxer Uprising of 1900 were of his manufacture; he built an aqueduct also, and cast as many as one hundred and thirty-two cannon for the Chinese army. The emperor followed his astronomical classes, appointed him to the highest grade in the mandarinate, and gave him leave to preach Christianity anywhere in the empire. Innocent XI, to whom he dedicated his Chinese Missal, sent him a brief in 1681, which contained the greatest praise for "using the profane sciences to promote Christianity," a commendation which was more than welcome at that time, when the book of Navarrete was doing its evil work against the Society.

In 1677 when Verbiest was appointed vice-provincial, he appealed for new laborers from Europe. He even advocated the use of the native language in the liturgy in order to facilitate the ordination of Chinese priests. It was a bold petition to make when the memory of Luther and his German liturgy was still so fresh in the mind of Europe. The reason for the petition was that otherwise the conversion of China was impossible. Brucker in his history of the Society tells us that for one hundred years no native had been ordained a priest in China. He gives as a reason for this, the disgust of the Portuguese government at the failure met with in Hindostan, where the formation of a native clergy was attempted. That alone would be sufficient to acquit the Society of any guilt in this matter; but he gives facts to his readers which go to show very plainly that this failure to create a native Chinese priesthood clearly evidences the Society's desire to have one at any cost. It is paradoxical, but it is true.

The great lapse of time that passed without any ordinations need cause no alarm. There are instances of greater delay with less excuse very near home. For instance, there were secular priests and religious in Canada as early as 1603, but there was no seminary there till 1663, although the colony had all the power of Catholic France back of it. There were Catholics in Maryland in 1634, yet there was no theological seminary until 1794, that is for a space of 160 years. After a few years' struggle with only five pupils, and in some of these years none, it was closed and was not re-opened until 1810, which is a far cry from 1634. New York did not attempt to found a seminary until the time of its fourth bishop. The house at Nyack was burned down before it was occupied; the Lafargeville project also proved a failure and it was not until 1841 that the diocesan seminary was opened at Fordham.

Moreover, in none of these seminaries was there the remotest thought of forming a native clergy in the sense of the word employed in the anti-Jesuit indictment. The seminarians were all foreigners or sons of foreigners. There were no native Indians in these establishments, as that, apart from intellectual and moral reasons, would have been a physiological impossibility. Nature rebels against the transplanting of a creature of the woods and mountains to the confinement of a lecture hall. The old martyr of Colonial times, Father Daniel, brought a number of Indian boys from Huronia to Quebec to educate them, but they fled to the forests, while the Indian girls, who were lodged with the Ursulines, died of consumption. Even in our own times, Archbishop Gillow of Oaxaca, Mexico, brought a number of pure-blooded Indians to Rome, in the hope of making them priests, but they all died before he attained any results. In brief, we in America have never formed a native clergy.

Moreover, this century-stretch of failure in China is cut down considerably when we recall the fact that for a considerable time there were only two or, at most, three Jesuits in that vast empire, and that they contrived to remain there only because they interested the learned part of the populace by their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, never daring to broach the subject of religion, though they succeeded under the pretence of science in circulating everywhere a catechism which enraptured the literati. It was only in the year 1601 that permission was given to them to preach. Hence, the figure 100 has to be cut down to 83. In two years time, namely in 1617, there were 13,000 Christians in China. How were the rest to be reached? No help could be expected from Europe, which was being devastated by the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Independently of that, the caste system prevailed in China, and the learned, even those who were converted, found it difficult to understand why the wonderful truths of Christianity should be communicated to the common people, yet it is from the people that ecclesiastical vocations usually come. Thirdly, the Chinaman has an instinctive horror of anything foreign. Yet here was a foreign creed which, moreover, could be thoroughly learned only by a language which was itself foreign even to the priests who taught it.

The audacious project was then formed to petition the Pope to have the liturgy, even the Mass, in Chinese. No other modern mission ever dared to make such a request. As early as 1617, the petition was presented, and although Pope Paul V favored the scheme, yet the undertaking was so stupendous and the project so unusual that he withheld any direct or official recognition. Whereupon the missionaries began the work of translating into Chinese not only the Missal and Ritual, but an entire course of moral theology with the cases of conscience. In addition a large part of the "Summa" of St. Thomas along with many other books which might be useful to the future priest were rendered into the vernacular. The work was begun by Father Trigault in 1615 and was continued by others up to 1682, when the Pope while accepting the dedication of a Chinese Missal by Verbiest, finally concluded that it would be impolitic to grant permission for a liturgy in Chinese. This gigantic undertaking ought of itself to be a sufficient answer to the charge that the Jesuits were averse to the formation of a native clergy. The scheme failed, it is true, but the attempt is a sufficient answer to the hackneyed charge against the Society.

It might be asked, however, why did they not foresee the possible failure of their request and provide otherwise for priests? In the first place, there were Dominicans and Franciscans in China, and it might be proper to ask them why they excluded the Chinese from the ministry? Secondly, the Jesuits had all they could do to defend themselves from the charge of idolatry for sanctioning the Chinese Rites. Thirdly when Schall arrived in 1622 there were no missionaries to be met anywhere — they were in prison or in exile. Fourthly, in 1637 there was a bloody persecution. Fifthly, in 1644 the Tatar invasion occurred with the usual havoc, and the Manchu dynasty was inaugurated. Sixthly, in 1664 Schall hitherto such a great man in the empire was imprisoned and condemned to be hacked to pieces and Verbiest was lying in chains. It is quite comprehensible, therefore, that in such a condition of things, quiet seminary life was impossible, and as the Jesuits were suspected of leaning to Confucianism it would have been quite improper to entrust to them the formation of a secular clergy.

When Verbiest wrote home for help, numbers of volunteers left Europe for China. Louis XIV was especially enthusiastic in furthering the movement, and, among other favors he conferred the title of "Fellows of the Academy of Science and Royal Mathematicians" on six Jesuits of Paris, and sent them off to Pekin. But when they arrived, Verbiest was dead. They were in time, however, for his funeral, which took place on March 11, 1688, with the same honors that had been accorded to Ricci and Schall. He was laid to rest at their side. His successors began their work by establishing what was called the French Mission of China, which lasted until the suppression of the Society. The great difficulty in sending missionaries thither by sea had long exercised the minds of the superiors of the Society, especially after a startling announcement was made by Father Couplet, who, after passing many years in China, had returned home, shattered in health and altogether unable to continue his work. He said that, after a very careful count, he had found that of the six hundred Jesuits who had attempted to enter China from the time that Ruggieri and Ricci had succeeded in gaining an entrance there, as many as four hundred had either died of sickness on the way or had been lost at sea. De Rhodes had shown that an overland route was possible from India to Europe; the lay-brother Goes had succeeded in getting to China from the land of the Great Mogul, Gruber had reversed the process, and in 1685 an attempt was made by Father Avril, to reach it by the way of Russia, but he failed.

Avril's account of his journey has been shockingly "done out of French" by a translator who prudently withheld his name. It was "published in London, at Maidenhead, over against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street." Its date is 1693. From it we learn that Father Avril started from Marseilles and made for Civita Vecchia, after paying his respects in Rome to Father General de Noyelle, he went to Leghorn, where he took ship on a vessel that was convoyed by a man-of-war called the "Thundering Jupiter." Passing by Capraia, Elba, Sardinia, and nearly wrecked off the "Coast of Candy," his ship dropped anchor in the Lerneca roadstead after three days' voyage, but without the "Thundering Jupiter." It was still at sea. He touched at Cyprus and Alexandretta, then proceeded to Aleppo, crossing the plain of Antioch in a caravan. He was fleeced by an Armenian who professed to be a friend of the Jesuits, then he crossed the Tigris or Tiger, and arrived at Erzerum in time for an earthquake. Continuing his journey through the intervening territory to what he calls the "Caspian Lake", he finally reached Moscow, after being almost burned to death on the Volga, when his ship took fire. At Moscow he was welcomed by the German Jesuits who had a house there, for Prince Gallichin (Galitzin) was then prime minister. He was soon bidden to depart, and crossed a part of Muscovy, Lithuania and White Russia, reaching Warsaw on March 12, 1686. It was eighteen months since he had left Leghorn. He made effort after effort to get back to Muscovy, but in vain. Ambassadors and princes and even Louis XIV found the Czar obdurate, and so, after two years of unsuccessful endeavor, Avril arrived at Constantinople, after being imprisoned by the Turks on his way thither. Finally, he reached Marseilles, having proved, at least, that the road through Russia would have to be abandoned; hence, it was determined to make those overland journeys in the future through the territory of the Shah of Persia.