SULPICIANS
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SULPICIANS
workers were a large accession to the small body of
American priests, then only about thirty-five, who
were endeavouring to serve a diocese extending from
the Atlantic to the Mississippi Valley. The Church
was in its infancy; there was no organized community
of priests (since the suppression of the Jesuits), no
teaching sisterhood, no Catholic schools. An academy
for boys was about to open at Georgetown. Non-
Catholic education in Maryland was almost as back-
ward as the Catholic. In these conditions Bishop
Carroll's greatest need and most difficult task, as
he had long recognized, was to recruit a sufficiently
numerous and fit clergy, if possible native, which he
could hope for only from a seminary. Naturally,
he welcomed the coming of the Sulpicians as "a
great and auspicious event" for his diocese.
But the time was not ripe for a seminary as there were no students prepared to enter it. Georgetown Academy, founded chiefly to develop priestly voca- tions, instead of being an aid to the seminary drew on St. Mary's few students to recruit its teaching staff. The natural remedy of opening a preparatory seminar}' at Baltimore was forbidden (see below). The almost hopeless condition may be judged from the fact that during each of the first three years there were only five students and in the next J'ear, 1794, only two, nearly all of whom were from Europe; from 1795 to 1797 there were none at all. So with little or no opportunity of cultivating their own field, the Sulpicians offered themselves to the bishop for any work at hand. Flaget, David, Mar^chal, and Dubourg taught at the Georgetown Academy; Dubourg, an enterprising and energetic man, being made president (1796-99), greatly increased its numbers and prestige. Ciquard worked among the Indians of Maine; Levadoux, Dilhet, and Richard among the French and the Indians of IlUnois and Michigan. Richard, still well remembered at Detroit, which some years ago placed his statue on the city hall, deserves special mention. He restored religion, established Cathohc schools, founded a young ladies' academy and a preparatory seminary for young clerics, set up the first printing press in the West, pubhshed the first newspaper in Michigan and the first Catholic paper in the United States; was a founder, vice-president, and professor of the Univer- sity of Michigan and the only Catholic priest ever elected to Congress. GaUitzin, a pioneer priest in Western Pennsylvania, converted six thousand non- Cathohcs. The Sulpicians at Baltimore ministered in the churches of the city and the missions of the country. They were considered as clergy of the cathedral and are credited with having introduced into the United States some of the dignity and splen- dour of old-world Cathohc worship.
St. Mary's Seminary. — After a trial of ten or eleven years the seminary at Baltimore had no prospects of success; an academy which Dubourg had opened for foreign boys was not allowed to receive Americans (see below); the Sulpicians there had no means of support. Meanwhile, the Revolution in France had passed, religion was restored by Napoleon, and the seminaries were being reopened. In these circum- stances of 1802 only one course seemed possible to the superior-general in Paris: to recall his subjects to France gradually. Bishop Carroll, who had the highest esteem for the Sulpicians and regarded them as the hope of his diocese, was very deeply afflicted by this resolution, and in many letters begged Father Emery not to carry it out. "If it be necessary for me", he wrote, "to bear the terrible trial of seeing the greater number of them depart, I implore you to leave here at least a germ which may produce fruit in the se:ison decreed by the Lord." Nevertheless, Garnier (wlio aftcrw.ards became superior-general), Mar6chal, and Levadoux departed for France in 1803, though with the greatest reluctance; Nagot
was detained from going by ill-health. The seminary
seemed doomed. It was saved by Pius VII, whom
Father Emery, moved by the bishop's appeals,
consulted at Paris in ISO-t. "My son," said the
pope, "let it stand, let that seminary stand. It will
bear fruit in its own time." Father Emery accepted
these words as the voice of God, and the Sulpicians
remained. But progress was slow; St. Mary's
College, Baltimore, and Mt. St. Mary's, Emmits-
burg, both founded by the Sulpicians (see below),
furnished few students to the seminary. Still,
Bishop Carroll had the consolation of seeing thirty
priests ordained from there before his death in 1815.
Under the second superior. Father Tessier (1810- 29), the seminary became solidly established, although the number of ordinations averaged only two or three a year. His chief support up to 1817 was Father Ambrose Mar^chal, whose abilities raised him in that year to the Archbishopric of Baltimore. In 1822 St. Mary's Seminary was endowed by Pius VII with all the privileges of a Catholic university. The third superior. Father Louis Regis Deluol (1829-49), a man of exceptional ability and character, exerted a strong influence not only on the seminary and college over which he presided, but on the general affairs of the Church in America. St. Charles' College was founded during his administration. St. Mary's Col- lege was suppressed under his successor. Father Francis L'Homme (1849-60). The Irish immigra- tion, the spread of Catholicism, and the foundation of St. Charles' College, contributed to render the seminary as fruitful in vocation in the one decade of Father L'Homme's administration as it had been in the preceding sixty years. Two directors at St. Mary's, Fathers Aiphonse Flammant (1856-64) and Francis Paulinus Dissez (1857-1907), deserve mention here as saintly men who deeply influenced Cardinal Gibbons, the first Archbishop Keane of Dubuque, and other leaders of the American Church. A half-century of teaching at St. Mary's made Father Dissez one of the best known and most venerated priests of America.
St. Mary's prospered and grew under the fourth superior. Father Joseph Paul Dubreul (1860-78), and still more under his successor. Father Aiphonse Mag- nien (1878-1902), who saw an enrolment of over three hundred students. Father Dubreul built the central portion of the present seminary in 1878: the building was completed by Father Magnien. All that remains from the old days is the sisters' house, in which Mother Seton began her work as a Sister of Charity, and the seminary chapel, built in 1806, which long served as a parish church and was regarded in those days as a gem of architecture. Both Dubreul and Magnien were marked types of the true ecclesiastic, and moulded the character of hundreds of priests now living. Prob- ably no priest in our day was better known or better loved by priests than the good and genial "Abb^" Magnien. He was the close friend and trusted adviser of Cardinal Gibbons, who said of him some time after his death; "I had been so much accustomed to consult the venerable Abb6 on important questions, and to lean upon him in every emergency-, that ... I feel as if I had lost my right arm. He was indeed dimidium aninur meiT." The present superior, Father Edward Randall Dyer, D.D., was appointed in Aug., 1902, after Father Magnien's health had failed. St. RIary's Seminary has given over thirty hi.shops and eighteen hundred priests to the Church of .America, of whom more than fourteen hundred are still living. The largest of our American seminaries, and national in its scope, it draws its students from everv quarter of the country. It has always taken a leading part in the seminary conferences of the Catholic Educational As.sociation. It was the scene of the Third Plenary Covmcil and of many notable ecclesiastical gatherings. Its arihivrs and Hhrary are rich in materials of early American Church History.
