A^O^I>E3XY OF THK J^.A.44-^ 2 00- /o -, ^-' J /' Ji- 5 ^ ^ '' / 2 i ^x% 1' ; ^ <- > J- ^ / .L ■/ 4 »/ hi r ■W^Mf^ ypl-^^T^t- Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/devotiontoblesseOpmaclrich C.A.T.4.LOGMJE5 OF VALUABLE n\I^MII|!]ll/4V'^ ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, PUBLISHED AND SOLD BY VIRTUE & YOESTON, 544 BROADWAY, & 12 DEY STREET, NJETW YORK. CATALOGUE OF TALIJABLE PUBLISHED AND SOLD BT VIRTUE & YORSTON, 544 BROADWAY, AND 12 DEY STREET, NEW YORK. BATTLES OF AMERICA, BY SEA AND LAND. A complete Naval and Military History of the Country, comprising the Colonial and Revolutionary Battles, War of 1812, and the Mexican Campaigns. By Robert Tomes, M.D. Illustrated with fifty-one designs by F. 0. C. Parley and other eminent artists ; all engraved on steel in the first style of art. 3 volumes, quarto, bound $30 00 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, from the first settlement of America to the present time. By W. H. Bartlett and B. B. Woodward. Illustrated with 90 steel engravings. 3 vols., large 8vo, clc'^h 16 DO WASHINGTON, A BIOGRAPHY— PERSONAL, POLI- TICAL, AND MILITARY. By Benson J. Lossing, author of the "Field Book of the Revolution." Illustrated by ' 90 engravings on steel from original drawings. 3 vols., large 8vo., cloth 16 00 • AMERICAN SCENERY, consisting of 120 engrav- ings on steel of the most celebrated views in the United States, from drawings made on the spot by W. H. Bart- lett. The descriptions by N. P. Willis. In 2 volumes, Quarto, cloth, gilt Id 00 CANADIAN SCENERY, consisting of 120 engrar- ing6 on steel of views in the Canadas, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, etc., from drawings by W. H. Bartlett. De- scriptions by N. P. Willis. JJaiJorm with '^American Sem- en/," 2 vols., bound in cloth, gilt $15 00 THE ART JOURNAL, A RECORD OF THE FINE ARTS, THE ARTS INDUSTRIAL, AND THE ARTS OF DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE. Illustrated with nu- merous steel and wood engravings executed in the first style of art. Each year, bound in cloth ; per vol 20 00 A new series was commenced in 1862, containing a se- lection of pictures from works by British Artist*, and a series of engravings from the paintings by J. M. W. Turner, R.A., all executed in line by the best British engravers — Tours, Biographies, Essays, Visits to Art- Manufactories, Public Galleries of Pictures, British Artists and their Works, and various Articles, exten- sively illustrated by wood engravings of the highest attainable merit. The volumes for 1862-3 contain an Illustrated Cata- logue of the International Exhibition of 1862. Set* of 6 Tols. (1849 to 1854 inclusive), comprising the pictures in the Vernon Gallery. Bound in red cloth, gilt edges ; per set 120 06 Sets of 7 vols. (1855 to 1861), comprising the pictures in the Royal Collection. Bound in red cloth, gilt edges ; per set 140 00 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF * IRE- LAND, illustrated in 120 engravings on steel, from original drawings made expressly for this work by W. H. Bartlett, with historical and descriptive text by Sterling Coyne and N. P. Willis. 2 vols., quarto, cloth, gilt. ... 15 00 IRELAND, ITS SCENERY, CHARACTER, etc. By Mr. «nd Mrs. S. C. Hall. Illustrated with 102 line engrav- ings from drawings by T. Creswick and W. H. Bartlett. 18 colored maps and about 500 wood engravings. 8 vols. , Urge 8vo., cloth 30 00 PIFDMONT AND ITALY, FROM THE ALPS TO TfiE TIBER. Illustrated in a series of 144 steel engrav- ings from drawings made on the spot by Brockedon and others. The letter-press by Dudley Costello. In 2 hand- some vols., quarto, cloth, gilt $15 00 SWITZERLAND ILLUSTRATED. From draw- ings by W. H. Bartlett. 108 beautiful line engravings. Descriptions by Dr. Beattie. 2 vols., quarto, cloth, gilt. . 18 00 BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS described by Miss Pardoe. Illustrated with 87 beautiful steel en- gravings from drawings by W. H. Bartlett. 1 vol. , quarto, cloth, gilt 10 Ot) THE DANUBE ILLUSTRATED, in a series of 84 fme steel engravings from drawings by W. H. Bartlett, and numerous wood engravings. The descriptions by W. Beattie, M.D. In 1 vol., cloth, gilt 10 00 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED, in a series of 120 splendid engravings from drawings made by T. Allom, Horatio MacCulloch, and W. H. Bartlett. Described by William Beattie, M.D. In 2 vols., quarto, cloth, gilt edges 15 00 GEMS OF EUROPEAN ART. The best pictures of the best schools. 90 large engravings, elephant 4to size, executed by the first artists. Descriptions by 8. Carter Hall, F.S.A. Bound in 2 vols. , cloth, gilt 25 00 ROYAL GEMS FROM THE GALLERIES OF EUROPE. Pictures of the Great Masters. 90 large engravings, elephant 4to size, executed by the first artists, with notices, biographical, historical, and descrip- tive by S. C. Hall, F.S.A. Bound in 2 vols., cloth, gilt. . 25 GO THE WILKIE GALLERY. A selection of 67 first- class engravings from the best paintings of Sir Da\ad Wilkie (including his Spanish and Oriental sketches), with notices, biographical and critical. In 1 vol .SO 00 ORSINrS LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, with the History of the Devotion to her. Com- pleted by the Traditions of the East, the Writings of the Holy Fathers, etc., etc., to which is added Devotion to the Virj^in in North America, by Xavier Donald Macleod. St. Mary's College, Cincinnati. 32 engravings on steel. 1 vol., 4to., half morocco $12 60 BUTLER»S LIVES OF THE FATHERS, MAR- TYRS, and other Principal Saints. Edited by the Very Rev. F. C Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. 38 steel engravings. 2 vols., large 8vo., cloth 16 00 RUTTER'S LIFE OF OUR BLESSED LORD AND SAVJOUa JESUS CHRIST. To which is added the Acts of the Apostles rendered into Blank Verse, with copious notes, and a Preface written expressly for this edition, by the Rev. C. C. Pise, D.D. 26 steel en- gravings. 4to., cloth 7 60 THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE, containing the Old Testament, first published by the English College, at Douay, a.d. 1609 ; and the New Testament, first publish- ed by the English College, at Rheims, a.d. 1582. Trans- lated from the Latin Vulgate, and diligently compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and other editions, in diverse languages ; with useful Notes, Critical, Historical, Con- troversial, and Explanatory, selected from the most emi- nent commentators, and the most able and judicious critics, by the Rev. Geo. Leo Haydock, and other Divines. Embellished with elegant engravings by the Great Mas- ters. The Text carefully collated with that of the orig- inal edition, by the Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D D., V.G. 45 splendid steel plates. Morocco extra 30 00 O'HALLORAN'S HISTORY OF IRELAND. From the Earliest Periods to the Present Time. Com- piled from the most reliable sources by Sylvester O'Hal- loran, and continued by William Dolby, Esq. 27 steel plates. 1 vol., laige 8vo., cloth 7 60 HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN INDIA AND THE EAST. By E. H. Nolan, PH.D., LL.D. Illustrated with steel engravings and maps. 2 thick vols., large 8vo., cloth, gilt $10 00 CYCLOPEDIA OF THE USEFUL ARTS, ME- CHANICS, MANUFACTURES, MINING, AND CIVIL ENGINEERING. Edited by Charles Tomlinson 18 00 This work includes detailed accounts of the principal Manufacturing Processes, Mechanical Inventions, and Chemical Operations in use, either in the United States, Great Brit&in, or the Continent of Europe. The descriptive portions are illustrated with upward of 2,.^00 Diagrams and Engravings, of which 40 are from steel plates and 2,477 fiom wood-cuts, made especially for the work, chiefly copied from the actual working machinery, by the permission of the patentees and owners. 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By Mr. and Mrs. S. C. HaU. Illus- trated by upward of 400 wood engravings by the best artists. A beautiful hook for the draxving-rcom. Handsomely bound in green and gold $8 50 THE BOOK OF BRITISH SONG, comprising about 120 songs with accompaniments for the pianoforte, and biographical and historical notes. By Geo. Hogarth. Illustrated by engravings. Full music size. 2 vols., cloth, gilt ; each 7 60 HISTORY OF WALES, from the earliest times to its final incorporation with England. By B. B. Woodward, B.A., F.S.A. Illustrated with original views of remarka- ble places, antiquities, and scenery. 2 vols., 8vo., cloth, gUt 12 00 GIBBON'S DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, with memoir of the author, and additional notes from the French of M. Guizot. Illus- trated with above 60 steel engravings and maps. 2 vols., large 8vo., cloth .' 12 00 This edition is undoubtedly the best published, as it contains — 1. Maps of the Roman Empire and of the Cities of Rome and Constantinople. 2. 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Containing a large number of illustrations by the late John Leech. In 20 vols., 1840-1861. Cloth, gilt edges 85 GO In cloth gilt, gilt edges 90 00 Imitation half-morocco, gilt edges. 90 00 A DICTIONARY OF TERMS IN ART, edited and illustrated by F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A., author of "Cos- tume in England," etc. ; honorary member of the Society of Antiquaries of Normandy, Poitiers, and Picardy ; and corresponding member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Illustrated by 500 engravings. 1 vol., cloth. 5 26 PRACTICAL HINTS ON PORTRAIT PAINT- ING, illustrated by examples from the works of Vandyke and other artists. By John Burnet, F.R S. With 12 en- gravings on steel Re-edited, and with an Appendix, by Henry MuiTay , F.S. A. Demy 4to, cloth 6 00 LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN OIL COLORS, explained in letters on the Theory and Pract'ce of the Art, and illustrated by examples from the several schools. By John Burnet, F.Pt.S. Re-edited, with an Appendix, by Henry Murray, F.S. A. 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Weights and Measures of all Nations; Weights of Coins, and Divisions of Time ; with the Principles which determine the Rate of Exchange, by W. S. B. Wooihouse 76 102. Integral Calculus, by H. Cox.. 50 103. Integral Calculus, Examples of, by J. Hann 50 104. Differential Calculus, Examples of, with Solutions, by J. Haddon 60 105. Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry, First Mnemonical Lessons in, by the llev. T.r.P. Kirkman. 75 131. Ready-Reckoner for Millers, Farmers, and Mer- chants, showing the Value of any Quantity of Corn, with the Approximate Value of Mill-stones and Mill Work 50 136. Rudimentary Arithmetic, by J. Haddon, edited by A. Annan 76 137. Key to the above, by A. Annan 76 147. Stepping-Stone to Arithmetic, by Abraham Arman, Schoolmaster, Thurleigh, Beds 50 148. Key to the above, by A. Arman 60 VmiUE & TORSION, 12 DEY STREET, NEW YORK. 4 ^ R-D-adensmg^ S c 'OwdcL JllosM^ DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIEGIN MARI m NORTH AMERICA. THE KEV; XATIER DONALD ^ACLEOD, 1 %2,\ -^ H ^ PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND BELLES LETTRES IN ST. MARY's COLLKGJt, \ CINCINNATI. WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, THE MOST REV. JOHN B. PURCELL, D.D., ARCHBISHOP OF CINCINNATI. NEW YORK: VIRTUE & YORSTON, 12 DEY STREET. E3? Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S66, By virtue & YOESTON, In the Clerk's OflBce of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. UMPTON ACCESSION MiiciioFfiJBRAgY : ;:; i;AK'0K01 1 1 IhKAUY 8.1938 PUBLISHERS^ NOTICE. Catholic Literature in this country is not yet rich in works of a historical character ; and though not a few have appeared evincing great research, and worthy of a high place, there was still wanting a popular element which genius alone could supply by lending its charm to the often dry details of the historian. The devotion to the Blessed Virgin in this country, from its settlement to the present day, was a theme which had been briefly touched upon by one or two writers. Still, it was a field which the late lamented author of the following pages entered with all the zeal and devotion of his ardent and impassioned character, and as a necessary consequence he gave his work the stamp of his peculiar genius. Few more gifted writers have appeared among us than Xavier Donald Macleod ; and in undertaking his work, ma- terial was contributed by his numerous friends. The writer of this, one who had enjoyed that friendship from boyhood, rejoicing to see him about to take up a subject so wor- thy of his talents, furnished him an abundant material which he had collected, and feels now, perhaps, too great pleasure in his privilege in having contributed to so noble a work as that here presented to the Catholic public. The early Spanish explorers came with the banner of Mary ; the very ship of Columbus gave up its profane appellation for that of " St. Mary ;" the earliest shrines iv Publishers' Notice. were reared under her invocation ; bay, and river, and mountain received the hallowed name ; the first city on the mainland that became a bishop's see was St. Mary's. If the ardent sons of France chose the icy realm of Canada to plant the fieurs-de-lis, its rigors could not chill devotion to Mary ; Cartier, in his distress, turns to Mai'y, and vows a pilgrimage to her shrine ; and Montreal Island sees a city rise with the name of Ville Marie ; while, westward as her pioneers and missionaries go, St. Mary marks her path, till the great Mississippi, the River of the Immaculate Concep- tion, bears them down again towards those Spanish realms where every officer swore to defend the Immaculate Con- ception. The Catholic settlers of the coast between^ who came from the British Isles, came, too, with love for Mary ; and the land which seemed closed forever on Catholicity, is studded with shrines of Mary, and sees a council of arch- bishops and bishops meeting unchecked by government dictation, and spontaneously placing the land under the patronage of St. Mary's Immaculate Conception. Such is the theme of this beautiful work, last and noblest offering of the genius of Xavier Donald Macleod. It can- not but be read with charm and delight, or fail to quicken and animate zeal and devotion. Although originally written as an appendix to the Life of the Blessed Virgin, with the History of the Devotion to Her, by the Abbe Orsini, the author was very desirous that the publishers should issue it in a more convenient form for general readers, and they had promised to accede to this wish shortly before his melancholy death. Encouraged as well by his many admirers as the Most Eev. Archbishop Purcell, who generously undertook to write a memoir of his life, they now feel pleasure in pre- senting this edition to the Catholic public. INSCRIBED BY THE PUBLISHERS TO STlje ittemor^ OP THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page Gkkeral View — Natubal Growth of thk Devotion — Fibst Catho- lics— Southern States and Canada — Ouk Lady's Discovehy or America— Chubches of heb Name — Ministers of the Devotion — European and Amfbican Devotion — Honor due to Mary— Emi- grants— Patroness OF THE United States 1 CHAPTER II. Zeal of Pioneers — Champlain and the Recollects — Mother Mary OF THE InCAUNATION AND THE UrSULINES — MaRQUETTE AND THK IM- MACULATE Conception . CHAPTER III. Advance of the Devotion— First Seventy-five Years — Jesuits nr Canada — Our Lady of Angels— Olier and St. Sulpioe — The City OF Mary — Mademoiselle Manse and the Hospital Sisters 60 CHAPTER lY. Marouebitk Bottroeoys and thk Congregation of Our Lady 81 CHAPTER Y. Extermination of the Hurons — Our Lady of Foie — New Loretto— The Northwest — Immaculate Conception in Illinois — Mary Ako — Down the Mississippi — Back to Montreal— Our Lady's Guard — The Congregation again— The Eecluse of Ville-Marie— Cub Lady of Angels 108 6 Contents. CHAPTER YI. Page Devotion of the Holy Family — Oub Lady of Victory — Our Lady OF Goob Help — Our Lady of the Visitation — Lodge of the Im- maculate Conception — Our Lady of Snows — Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, and Churches of Our Lady in Quebec. . 127 CHAPTER YII. Devotion in Texas, California, and New Mexico — Oub Lady ov Guadalupe — The New Mount Carmel — The Atlantic Spanish Missionaries — Maryland 146 CHAPTER YIII. The Devotion in Maine — Sillery and Chaudiere — Wampum Belt FOR Notre Dame de Chartres — The Vow of the Owenagunga — Mission of the Kennebec — Murder of Father Kasles — The Catholic Ked-skin and the Puritan Council 165 CHAPTER IX. The Devotion in New York— The Saint of the Mohawks— Saint Mary among the Iroquois 184 CHAPTER X. Oub Lady of Loretto of the Hurons 205 * CHAPTER XL Our Lady's Assumption, a. d. 1790, and what came or it— A Mission- ary Prince , 220 CHAPTER XII. Our Lady of the Lake 238 CHAPTER XIII. Oub Lady's Sisters— Les Sceubs de Notre Dame 268 CHAPTER XIY. Oub Lady of Mebcy and Chabity— Oub Lady's loving Fbiends at THE Cross— Oub Lady of Chbist's pbecious Blood 265 Contents. 7 CHAPTER XY. Page OuE Lady of Saint Ubsitla and Saint Angela 287 CHAPTER XYI. Various Obders of Oub Lady — Pilgbimaoes to Odb Lady of Peace, OF Mebcy, of Gbace, and back to Oub Lady of Good Help in MONTEEAL S18 CHAPTER XYII. Gillib-Maibi nan Gael.— Malik teba Wanbanakki Alnambak 838 CHAPTER XYIII. Oblati Mabi^ Immaculatje — Offebed FOB Maby Immaculate 856 CHAPTER XIX. Maby's Oblates on the Atlantic and in the Land of the Da- COTAH 892 CHAPTER XX. Company of Jesus again — Immaculate Conception in Bobeal Lati- tudes — Devotion in Minnesota — Oub Lady of the Rocky Moun- tains 408 CHAPTER XXI. The Black-eobe in Obegon— How the Black-bobe Dies — Rooky Mountains again— The Mabch of the Blackfeet towards the Shrine of Oub Lady — Abenaki and Flathead touch hands .... 487 CHAPTER XXII. Bboken Threads— Conclusion 458 *t MEMOIR BY THE MOST REV. JOHN B. PUKCELL, D.D., AKCHBISHOP OF CINCINNATI. The author of the following history of the Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, in North America, Rev. Donald Xavier MacLeod, was a native of New York, and a convert to the Catholic Church. Not- withstanding the ardent temper and impetuous character which he received from nature, soon as he had finished his collegiate course he took orders, as they are called, in the Episcopal Church, and exercised ministerial functions in his native State, and subsequently as a presbyter of the Right Rev. Dr. Ives, the illustrious convert, in North Carolina. Neither the bishop nor his curate was satisfied in the Anglican communion. They had read her history. They knew the vice of her origin, the hoUowness of her preten- sions. They beheld her sanguinary, self-inflicted wound of schism ever bleeding. She was for them the bad fruit of a bad tree — the creation, or the creature, of an Act of an obse- quious Parliament ; and that neither in England nor in the United States could she assert her claim to the marks by which the Gospels and the first four general councils teach us to recognize the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ. Before the minds of bishop and minister were fully irradiated by the ever growing splendor of Catholic 1* X Memoir. truth, they practised some of the ordinances and rites pecu- liar to the old Church. They went to confession to one another ; they gave each other salutary penances. They adorned their churches as Catholics, from time immemorial, / had been wont to do on the greater festivals ; and of Mr. MacLeod, in particular, it may be said that, while the proofs of the truth of our holy faith satisfied his judgment, the aesthetics of religion had a specia,! charm for his soul. After his abandonment of the ministry and religious opin- ions of the Reformation, Mr. MacLeod, for some years, de- voted his time to literary pursuits, writing books and delivering lectures in many of our cities. In St. Louis, where he was, if we mistake not, connected with the edi- torial department of a newspaper or a magazine, he became attached to an accomplished young lady of the best society; but, after having gone even to the altar for the marriage ceremony, the match was for some reason, for which neither himself nor the lady was to blame, suddenly broken off. We have the assurance of a highly respectable priest of St. Louis, who was perfectly cognizant of all the proceedings, that the conduct of Mr. MacLeod was all that could have been expected, in the premises, from a Christian and a man of honor. The world having no longer any attractions for Mr. Mac- Leod, he wrote to his friend, the Most Rev. Archbishop of Cincinnati, stating that he and the world had irreconcilably quarrelled, and reminding him of a promise, when such an eventuality occurred, to take him under his own protection and care. His request was promptly granted, and the sem- inary of Mount St. Mary's assigned him for his home. In this institution he continued several years, teaching, study- ing theology, and disciplining his mind and manner, in refer- ence to his aspirations to the priesthood. Here, after mature reflection, he received the clerical tonsure and minor orders on Thursday, 13th December, 1860. In March of the fol- Memoir. xi lowing year he was ordained sub-deacon ; in October, deacon and priest. From the seminary he continued for some time to visit Sedamsville and North Bend, collecting together the scattered Catholics, catechizing the children, and visiting the sick, until, the little church of St. Vincent of Paul being built, he took up his modest lodgings in the basement, where he continued, without a murmur, to bear privations such as fall to the lot of but few priests, until his lamented death. Of the acceptableness of his ministrations at "Sedamsville, and the manner of his death, we here insert the account given in his obituary written by H. C. Lord, Esq., Superintendent of the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Railroad, taken from the " Cincinnati Commercial," of Mon- day, 3d July, — his death having occurred on Friday, 30th June, 1865 : "The Rev. Donald MacLeod. " Eds. Com. — A short paragraph in the morning papers, of Saturday, announced that the Rev. Donald MacLeod, pastor of the Catholic Church in Sedamsville, had been accidentally killed by a train on the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Rail- road, on Friday evening. " It is proper for me to explain the circumstances of this sad event- Father MacLeod was, at the time, on his way to visit a poor woman, who was thought by her husband and friends to be dangerously ill, and who had requested the attendance of her faithful pastor. As he turned into the street which crossed the roads of the Ohio and Missis- sippi, and Indianapolis and Cincinnati companies, he was stopped by a passing train on the former road. At the time, he was standing on the track of the latter road, and at a sharp curve. The noise of the passing train drowned the signals of the approaching train on the Indianapolis and Cincinnati track. He was struck by the latter and instantly killed. He died while on his errand of duty and mercy. xii Memoir. ' " This event has cast a g-loom over our h'ttle commnnity, and I cannot help referring to some of the peculiar traits of character and disposition which had endeared Father MacLeod to myself and so many of his personal friends and admirers, and to so many of the poor and laboring people among whom he mingled, and by whom he was so much beloved. " My acquaintance with Father MacLeod commenced but a few months ago, yet at the time of his death I knew him well. I had learned to appreciate his excellent qualities of heart, and to honor his restless and vigorous intellect, his independent judgment, his fine scholarship, and his great learning. He was a man of remarkable energy. In look- ing after the necessities of his little church, in hunting up the needy and destitute, in ministering to their wants, in consoling the sick, in cheering on the well, working as will- ingly by night as by day, in the rain and under the glare of the sun, he never seemed fatigued or tired of his mission. Whatever he had to do he did cheerfully and with all his might. Hundreds of section-men and laborers on the two roads between Cincinnati and Lawrenceburg will bear testi- mony to their knowledge of him, and to his knowledge of them ; to their love and respect for the positive, yet good- natured priest, to his unfailing kindness to them and to their households, and to his influence and control over them, which never lost its hold. " Father MacLeod was a man of rare independence of judgment. He never adopted the opinions of others, but held them subject to a severe analysis, and only accepted them when they accorded with his own well-defined convictions. Whatever position he took, whether in the Church or as a citizen, he took conscientiously and with determination, and upon his own judgment, and he would recognize no human authority as above his own conscience or the conclusions of his own intellect. Memoir. xiii " Father MacLeod was a man of rare learning. I do not speak of him as a theologian, nor of his acquirements in that department of knowledge, but as a master of history, sacred and profane, of political economy, of many languages, ancient and modern, of natural philosophy, geology, botany, and their kindred sciences. His acquirements were equally varied and substantial ; and I have often heard him, in the same hour, instruct a wise man and delight a child. As an author he was well known, and his life of ' Mary Queen of Scots^ drew from Washington Irving a most touching and beautiful lettpr of commendation, in which that gifted man thanked our friend for having so ably and generously vindi- cated the character of a suffering woman and the truth of history. " But it is to the genial traits and generous friendship of Father MacLeod that I love most to refer. He was a man of strong impulses, quick, and sometimes violent temper ; but his impulses were generous, and he ever struggled to control his temper, and was always ready to recall an unkind word and to correct a false impression. A kind word to him always brought a kind word from him, and he loved to serve and defend his friends. It was a cruel and merciless engine that, with its terrible blow, shattered that manly and vigorous frame, and in an instant of time stunned the great and restless brain, stilled the loving and generous heart, and released the spirit of Donald MacLeod. " H. 0. Lord." The writer of this notice is not a Catholic. . But it shows that the character, the acquirements, and the talents of the deceased were appreciated and admired by others as well as by those of his own Church. The independence of all human authority so justly claimed for him, was confined to subjects of a merely human or secular description. To Church authority, in which he recognized the authority of xiv Memoir. God, he was at all times amenable. To her decisions he submitted, — if with a reasoning- and a reasonable conviction of his clear and vigorous intellect, yet with the childlike simplicity which taught him that, when God speaks through an infallible tribunal, it is the enlightened Christianas duty to listen and to obey. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and zeal for her honor, was a ruling passion of the soul of Rev. Mr. MacLeod. He was her client, her son^ her knight, her priest. The "Le- gends of Holy Mary" and " Our Lady of Litanies" preceded the beautiful " History of the Devotion to Mary in North America," which we now present to our readers. But an- other proof of his veneration for the Immaculate may aptly find its place here. The first sermon he preached after his ordination was on the purity of the Virgin Mary. The choice of this subject was probably suggested by the publi- cation of a tractate called " James, the Lord's brother," by one Chauncey Fitch, an Episcopalian minister of Piqua, Miami County, Ohio. The object of this tractate was to show that Mary had other sons besides the Lord. It was highly recommended by the Episcopal bishop, Mcllvaine, of Ohio. The bishop thus speaks of it in a letter to Rev. Dr. Anthon, editor of the " New York Protestant Churchman :" " Rev. and Deae Sir — I believe you know Bomething of a trao- tate which the Rev. Mr. Fitch of Ohio has written on * James, the Lord's brother.' He has recently completed a full carrying out of the argument, and made, I think, a very conclusive proof that James was the son of Joseph and Mary, and really, literally, the Lord's brother. It upsets the whole Mariolatry, and all her claims to supremacy through Peter. . . I believe it would be as good an article in the Romish controversy as we could publish. " Yours, affectionately, C. P. McIlvaine. " Cincinnati, Jan. 19, 1857." Commenting on this letter of the bishop, Father MacLeod MeMOIE. ' XT remarks, in a printed refutation of Fitch's theory, as follows : "MARY EVER VIRGIN." That Catholics may see and know how unfaithful and utterly false to the principles of their own creed are lead- ing Episcopalians, we reprint in this form a letter from an Episcopalian to the "Catholic Telegraph," January 22, 1859, which sets forth the real teachings of the Episcopal body on the subject of the perpetual Virginity of the Mother of our Lord. The letter being a contribution, we shall not change it, but print it as it came to us. Now this same Bishop of Ohio (I) disbelieves, if he had any religious belief or disbelief at all, the whole contents of Fitch's emanation. That same Bishop of Ohio, in common with all other bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, assigned Dr. Gilbert Pearson's Exposition of the Creed as the only standard dogmatic work in his communion, as the one dogmatic guide of his theological students, and as the text' book of the General Theological Seminary in New York. If he do not believe with Pearson, he is false to his trust and position in giving such a work to his students ; if he do, he, by his approval of Fitch for the sake of a dirty insult to Roman Catholics, has carried dishonorable baseness to an extent of which his is the only example. Furthermore, by so doing, he not only denies the common faith of all Chris- tians and the applicability of the passages from the proph- ets universally applied to our Lord, but also shows an ignorance of the mere letter of Scripture, which may be pardonable in an Episcopalian Bishop, but which should be a reasonable cause of degradation to the assistant sexton in a Hard Shell Baptist Conventicle. The book from which I quote is "An Exposition oC the Creed, by John Pearson, Bishop of Chester (in the 16th cen- tury). New York : Appleton & Co. 1857." It is as follows : xvi Memoir. " Thirdly, We believe the mother of our Lord to ham been, not only be/ore and after his nativity, but also forever, the most immaculate and blessed Virgin. For although it may- be thought sufficient as to the mj^stery of the incarnation, that when our Saviour was conceived and born, his mother was a virgin ; though whatsoever should have followed after, could have no reflective operation upon the first-fruit of her womb ; though there be no further mention in the Creed, than that he was born of the Virgin Mary : yet the pe- culiar eminency and unparalleled privilege of that mother, the special honor and reverence due unto that Son, and ever paid by her, the regard of that Holy Ghost who came upon her, and the power of the Highest who overshadowed her, the singular goodness and piety of Joseph, to whom she was espoused, have persuaded the Church of God in all ages to believe that she still continued in the same virginity, and therefore is to be acknowledged the Ever-Virgin Mary. As if the gate of the sanctuary in the prophet Ezekiel were to be understood of her : * This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it ; because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut.' (Ezek. xliv. 2.) " Many, indeed, have taken the boldness to deny this truth because not recorded in the sacred writ ; and not only so, but to assert the contrary as delivered in the Scriptures ; but with no success. , For though, as they object, St. Mat- thew testifieth that Joseph * knew not Mary, until she had brought forth her first-born son' (Matt. i. 25), from whence they infer, that afterwards he knew her ; yet the manner of the Scripture language produceth no such inference. When God said to Jacob, * I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of (Gen. xxiii. 15), it fol- io weth not that when that was done, the God of Jacob left him. When the conclusion of Deuteronomy was written, it was said of Moses, * No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto Memoir. xvii this day' (Deut. xxxiv. 6) ; but it were a weak argument to infer from thence, that the sepulchre of Moses hath been known ever since. When Samuel had delivered a severe prediction unto Saul, he ' came no more to see him until the day of his death' (1 Sam. xv. 35) ; but it were a strange collection to infer, that he therefore paid him a visit after he was dead. ' Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child until the day of her death' (2 Sam. vi. 23) ; and yet it were a ridiculous stupidity to dream of any midwifery in the grave. Christ promised his presence to the apostles * unto the end of the world' (Matt, xxviii. 20) ; who ever made so happy a construction as to infer from thence, that forever after he would be absent from them ? "Again, it is true that Christ is termed the first-horn son of Mary, from whence they infer she must needs have a second ; but they might as well conclude, that wheresoever there is one, there must be two. For in this particular the Scripture notion of priority excludeth an antecedent, but inferreth not a consequent ; it supposeth none to have gone before, but concluded not any to follow after. ' Sanctify unto me [saith God] all the first-born ;' which was a .firm and fixed law, immediately obliging upon the birth ; whereas if the first-born had included a relation to a second, there could have been no present certainly, but a suspension of obedience ; nor had the first-born been sanc- tified of itself, but the second birth had sanctified the first. And well might any sacrilegious Jew have kept back the price of redemption due unto the priest, nor could it have been required of him, till a second offspring had appeared ; and so no redemption at all had been required for an only son. Whereas all such pretences were unheard of in the Law, because the original Hebrew word is not capable of any such construction ; and in the Law itself it carrieth with it a clear interpretation, * Sanctify unto me all the first-born ; whatsoever openeth the womb among the chil- xviii " Memoir. dren of Israel, both of man and beast, it is mine.' (Exod. xiii. 2.) The apertion of the womb determined the first- born ; and the law of redemption excludeth all such ter- giversation : ' Those that are redeemed, from a month old thou shalt redeem' (Numb, xviii. 16) ; no staying to make up the relation, no expecting another birth to perfect the redemption. Being then * they brought our Saviour to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in Law of the Lord' (Luke, ii. 22, 23), it is evident that he was called the first-born of Mary according to the notion of the Law of Moses, and consequently that title inferreth no succession, nor proveth the mother to have any other offspring. " Indeed, as they thirdly object, it cannot be denied but that we read expressly in the Scriptures of the brethren of our Lord : ' He went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren' (John, ii. 12), and, ' While he talked nnto the people, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him.' (Matt. xii. 46.) But although his mother and his brethren be named together, yet they are never called the sons of his mother ; and the question is not whether Christ had any brethren, but whether his mother brought forth any other children. It is possible Joseph might have had children before Mary was espoused to him ; and then, as he was reputed and called our Saviour's father, so might they well be accounted and called his brethren, as the ancient fathers, especially of the Greek Church, have taught. Nor need we thus assert that Joseph had any offspring, because the language of the Jews includeth in the name of brethren not only the strict relation of fraternity, but also the larger of consan- guinity ; and therefore it is sufficient satisfaction for that expression, that there were such persons allied unto the Blessed Virgin. *We be brethren' (Gen. xiii. 8), said Abraham unto Lot : when Abraham was the son of Terah, Memoir. xix Lot of Haran, and consequently not his brother, but his nephew, and, as elsewhere properly styled, * the son of his brother.' (Gen. xii. 5.) 'Moses called Mishael and Elza- phan, the sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron, and said unto them, Come near, carry your brethren from before the sanc- tuary' (Lev. X. 4) ; whereas those brethren were Nadab and Abihu, the sons not of Uzziel but of Aaron. ' Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother, and that he was Rebekah's son' (Gen. xxix. 12); whereas, Rebekah was the sister of Rachel's father. It is suflBcient, there- fore, that the evangelists, according to the constant lan- guage of the Jews, called the kindred of the Blessed Vir- gin the brethren and sisters of her only son ; which indeed is something the later, but the most generally approved answer. ^ " And yet this diflSculty, though usually no further con- sidered, is not fully cleared ; for they which impugned the perpetual virginity of the mother of our Lord, urged it fur- ther, pretending that as the Scriptures called them the brethren of Christ, so they also showed them to be the sons of Mary, the mother of Christ. For first the Jews express them particularly by their- names, ' Is not his mother called Mary ? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas ?' (Matt. xiii. 55.) Therefore, James and Joses were undoubtedly the brethren of Christ, and the same were also as unquestionably sons of Mary : for among the women at the cross we find ' Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses.' (Matt, xxvii. 56.) Again, this Mary, they think, can be no other than the Mother of our Lord, because they find her early in the morning at the sepulchre with Mary Magdalene and Salome (Mark, xvi. 1) ; and it is not probable that any should have more care of the body of the son than the mother. She then who was certainly present at the cross, was not probably absent from the sepulchre; wherefore, they conclude, she was the mother XX Memoir. of Christ, who was the mother of James and Joses, the brethren of Christ. " And now the urging of this argument will produce a greater clearness in the solution of the question. For if it appear that Mary the mother of James and Joses was differ- ent and distinguished from Mary the Virgin, then will it also be apparent that the brethren of our Lord were the sons of another mother, for James and Joses were so called. But we read in St. John, that * there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.' (John, xix. 25.) In the rest of the evangelists we find at the same place, ' Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses' (Matt, xxviii. 56 ; Mark, xv. 40) ; and again at the sepulchre, * Mary Magdalene and the other Mary' (Matt, xxviii. 1) ; where- fore that of^r J^far^/, by the conjunction of these testimonies, appeareth to be Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and the mother of James and Joses; and consequently James and Joses, the brethren of our Lord,' were not the sons of Mary his mother, but of the other Mary, and therefore called his brethren ac- cording to the language of the Jews, because that the other Mary was the sister of his mother. " Notwithstanding, therefore, all these pretensions, there can be nothing found to raise the least suspicion of any interruption of the ever Blessed Mary's perpetual virginity. For as she was a virgin when she conceived, and after she brought forth our Saviour ; so did she continue in the same state and condition, and was commended by our Saviour to his beloved disciple, as a mother only now of an adopted son. " The consideration of all which will at last lead us to a clear explication of this latter branch of the Article, where^ by every Christian may inform himself that he is hound to profess, and being informed, fully express what is the ob- ject of his faith in this particular, when he saith, I believe Memoir. xxi in Jesus Christ who was horn of the Virgin Mary. For hereby he is conceived to intend thus much : I assent unto this as a most certain and infallible truth, that there was a certain woman, known by the name of Mary, esponaed unto Joseph of Nazareth, which before and after her espousals was a pure and unspotted virgin, and being and continuing in the same virginity, did, by the immediate operation of the Holy Ghost, conceive within her womb the only-begotten Son of God, and, after the natural time of other women, brought him forth as her first-born son, continuing still a most pure and immaculate virgin ; whereby the Saviour of the world was born of a woman under the Law, without the least pretence of any original corruption, that he might deliver us from the guilt of sin ; born of that Virgin which was of the house and lineage of David, that he might sit upon his throne, and rule for evermore. And in this latitude I profess to believe in Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary." We have a woi*d to add to this. " The Western Church- man," organ of the Episcopalians here, endeavored to cast discredit upon the above quotations. Now this was sheer impudence. The book is not only an Episcopal dogmatic text-book, but it is their only one. The title and the publisher's name are given above, and may be verified by anybody who chooses to take the trouble. The quotation begins upon page 263, Article III., "Born of the Virgin Mary," and is unbroken to the last paragraph, beginning, "The consideration of all which," etc. Between that and the preceding matter, intervenes the proof of the title " Mother of God," and of the absolute necessfty of Mary's Immaculacy to the Incarnation. From this intervening and very brief portion we add one further quotation to those given above : " The necessity of believing oui* Saviour thus to be bom xxii Memoik. of the Virgin Mary, will appear both in respect of her who was the Mother, and of Him who was the Son. In respect of her it was necessary, that we might perpetually preserve AN ESTEEM OF HER PERSON PROPORTIONABLE TO SO HIGH A DIGNITY. It was her own prediction, ' From henceforth all genera- tions SHALL CALL ME BLESSED,' (Lukc, i. 48) ; but this obligation is ours, to CALL HER, TO ESTEEM HER SO. If Elizabeth cried out with SO loud a voice, ' Blessed art thou among women,' when Christ was but newly conceived in her womb ; what ex- pressions OF honor and of admiration can we think suffi- cient now that Christ is in Heaven and that mother with Him I Far be it from any Christian to derogate from that special privilege granted unto her, which is incommunica- ble to any other. We cannot bear too reverent a regard unto the Mother of our Lord, so long as we give her not THAT worship which is due unto the Lord Himself." —P. 2t2. God grant that these words of old Bishop Pearson may influence the hearts of his pretended co-religionists here, if not to less hatred of the Church, at least to respect and sense of propriety and decency towards her whom their Prayer-book calls the " Blessed Virgin Mary." "We cannot resist the desire of embodying in this notice of the eloquent defender of Mary's prerogative, the beauti- ful tribute to the effect of mediaeval devotion to the Blessed Virgin, for which we are indebted to a very com- pulsory witness indeed, " Lecky's Rationalism in Europe," vol. ii., pp. 224, 225. The reader will perceive that only an enemy and a bigot would use the words " benighted and monkish" in such connection. "The world is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there been one which has exercised a more pro- found and, on the whole, a more salutary influence than the Memoib. xxiii mediasval conception of the Virgin. For the first time woman was elevated to her rightful position, and the sanctity of weakness was recognized as well as the sanctity of sorrow. No longer the slave or toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of a reverential homage of which anti- quity had had no conception. Love was idealized. The moral charm and beauty of female excellence was, for the first time, felt. A new type 6f character was called into being, a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a harsh and ignorant and benighted age this ideal type infused a con- ception of gentleness and of purity unknown to the proudest civilization of the past. In the pages of living tenderness, which many a monkish writer has left in honor of his celes- tial patron ; in the millions who in many lands and in many ages have sought with no barren desire to mould their characters into her image ; in those holy maidens who, for the love of Mary, have separated themselves from all the glories and pleasures of the world, to seek in fastings and vigils and humble charity to render themselves worthy of her benediction ; in the new sense of honor, in the chival- rous respect, in the softness of manners, in the refinement of tastes displayed in all the walks of society j in those and in many other ways, we detect its influence. All that was best in Europe clustered around it, and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our civilization." — Vol. i., pp. 225, 226. DEVOTION - TO THE BLESSED YIRGm MAEY IN NOETH AMEEICA. CHAPTEE I. General View — Coltjmbus — Natural Growth of this Devotion— First Catholics— THE Southern States and Canada — Our Lady's Dis- covery OF America — Churches of her Name — Ministers of the De- votion — European and American Devotion — Honor due to Mary- Emigrants — Patroness of the United States. The little seaport town of Palos, in Andalusia, lay basking in tlie sun, and its harbor was crowded with swarthy sight-seers and vocal with wonderiag tongues. The cool mountain waters of the Tinto brawled past the haven, and flowed iuto the broad Atlantic. Out on the burnished sea three caravels lay at anchor. The crowd had assembled to see a set of madmen, as they called them, depart upon a hopeless voyage. Their tongues were busy in discussing the probable manner in which evil fate would fall on the expedition, for no one dreamed of a happy issue for the adventure. If any dared to suggest such a probability, he, too, was hooted at as insane, and ironically recommended to ship for the voyage. 1 2 Devotion to the B. V. Mart And, as they disputed and sneered, ever and anon a strain of the Mass-music would swell out from the church, where Faith was kneeling to ask protection; where Confidence was drawing new strength from de- votion to God and Mary. For the adventurers, their commander at their head, wxre preparing, by confes- sion and Holy Communion, to enter like Christian men upon their perilous undertaking/ Then the Mass was over, and out from the church, grave, resolute, and calm, walked the admiral at the head of his crew ; and the crowd, hushed into silence, opened a way for the procession to the jetty. A few moments were allowed for farewells. Then the brief orders were given, and the sailors entering the boats, rowed out to their respective vessels. Then the report of the culverin sounded from the bows, and the standard of Castile swung out to the April breeze from the peak of the Santa Maeia ; and the crew cheered, and the crowd on shore responded, as the admiral stepped on board. A few moments more and the anchors were weighed, the yards were trimmed, the sails filled, and the flotilla of Columbus stood out to sea. And with it, as it crossed those pathless waters, the love and protection of our dear Lady and Mother floated over the Atlantic to the shores of America.'' ^ Prescott : Ferdinand and Isabella, ii. 130. ' The humble and reverent spirit in which Catholics undertook their great labors is wondered at, and sometimes even sneered at, by modern historians. These do not understand the consecration of all IN North America. 3 The first land touched by the Christian admiral he called San Salvador,^ in honor of the Son ; the next, Santa Maria de la Concepcion, did reverence to the Mother. It is well-nigh four hundred years since then, but never has Mary forgotten nor been forgotten here ; but her servants have labored to extend her devotion ; the faithful have responded with eager and loving hearts ; her powerful prayers have aided them in heaven ; and now, from the perpetual Arctic snows to the mists of Terra del Fuego, ascriptions of honor arise to the Mother Immaculate. For devotion to Mary is in its own nature a neces- sarily growing one, inasmuch as it is the expression of our love and reverence for her ; and these are inevi- table, because of her nature, immaculately conceived as it was, hngering sixty sinless years on earth, and now glorified and triumphant in heaven. things to God. Yet sucli was the spirit of Columbus. His prayer on reaching San Salvador is preserved by Washington Irving : "Domine Deus, seterne et omnipotens, sacro tuo verbo ccelum et terram et mare creasti; benedicatur et glorificetur Nomen tuum, laudetur tua majestas quae dignita est per humilem servum tuum ut ejus sacrum Nomen agnoscatur et prsedicetur in hac altera mundi parte." " Lord, eternal and omnipotent God, Thou hast, by Thy holy vj^ord, created the heavens, the earth, and the sea ; blessed and glori- fied be Thy Name ; praised be Thy Majesty, who hast deigned that, by means of Thy unworthy servant. Thy sacred Name should be acknowledged and made known in this new quarter of the globe." — Irving: Columbus, i. 156. ^ To call a land after the Saviour being deemed superstitious, the English conquerors reverently changed it to Gat Island. 4 Deyotion to the B. Y. Mary Mary is, of all creatures, except the sacred Kumanity of her Lord and Son, the nearest to the heart of God ; and the love that she gives us is, after aU, God's love, whereof she is the channel; and God's love, in His dealings with us, never stands still, but is evermore on the increase here, as it will be through the rapturous ages of eternity. But God gives love in exchange for love ; He allows us with our own coin, poor as it is, to purchase treasures on high, and so our love necessa- rily increases in an humble kind of proportion with His. Then, when He sends us so much favor through Mary, we are impelled to return it through the same Messed channel ; and thus devotion to her grows ever, and shall grow, until love shall be placed beyond the reach of change or decay. So, then, Mary has gained vast possessions in this country. One day, let us hope, she will conquer it all, and annex it aU, loyal and devoted, to the kingdom of her Son. There are pecuharities in her conquests and in her sacred warfare without parallel in the victories of the sword. The weapons of her hosts are gentle- ness, and mercy, and weariless affection ; self-sacrifice and refusal of reward on earth ; and, better still, when- ever a soldier falls, fighting bravely in the front rank for her honor, his death only strengthens her armies and helps to insure the success of her cause. From the soil which was enriched by the blood of the mar- tyrs, spring the flowers that deck her altars in the month of May. With the successors of Columbus came the cannon IN NoETH America. 5 and the sword : but there came also the Cross and the Kosary. There came lust of dominion, of lands, of gold ; cruelty, bloodshed, and the vices of civilization. But among them, and unharmed by their contact, were self-sacrifice, devotion, zeal for souls, love of God and of man only for God's sake. They that took the sword perished by the sword, and won only blood-stained names as their re- ward. But the warriors of Zion and of Carmel won souls back to Heaven; and if they died in the conflict, their blood spake louder than their voices had done. Ponce de Leon, Yasquez de Ayllon, Narvaez, de Soto, Alvarado, Coronado, with all the power of their arms, with all the Spanish an^ Indian gore they shed, only gained the abhorrence and hatred of the natives. But Father Mark, the Franciscan, armed only with the crucifix, penetrated New Mexico, in 1539, and gained the Indians' love. Five other Franciscans took the same path in 1540 ; and two of them, Father John de Padilla and Brother John of the Gross, remained in the country, and taught the doctrine of Christ, until they were slain in an inroad of stranger savages. RodrigTiez, Lopez, Santa Maria followed in 1580, and confirmed the faith in New Mexico, from which it has never since departed. But earlier than this, in 1544, Andrew de Olmos had sought out the fierce Texan tribes, and had converted many ; and in 1601, the Carmelite Father, Andrew of the Assumption of the Yirgin, with his companions. 6 Devotion to the B. V. Mart had entered California, and celebrated the divine mys- teries at Monterey. Florida was first b£l,ptized in the blood of Louis Cancel, the Dominican. As he stepped from his un- armed vessel, alone, and knelt down upon the shore, he was slaia by a blow from a war-club, and his reek- ing scalp was shaken iu derision before his shuddering brethren (1544.) To him succeeded many others, to labor for a while almost in vain, and then to die be- neath the tomahawk or by the arrow. The Spaniards struggled long to make a successful settlement at Pen- sacola, but gave it up, for a time, in 1561. And when the soldiers had departed, there lingered on the shore, alone, resolved to labor on. Father Salazar and Brother Matthew of the Mother /)f God. But a few years later, on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Yirgin, St. Augustine, " by more than forty years the oldest town in the United States," was founded, and so soon as this foothold was obtained, the heroic missionaries poured in.^ Jesuit, Francis- can, Dominican, thronged in generous rivaby to spread the gospel of the Highest throughout the new * " It was the hour of vespers, on the evening preceding the Festi- val of the Nativity of Mary, that the Spaniards returned to the harbor of St. Augustine. At noonday of the festival itself, the governor went on shore, to take x^Dssession of the continent in the name of his king. The solemn Mass of Our Lady was performed, and the foimdation of St. Augustine was immediately laid. It is by more than forty years the oldest town in the United States. Houses in it are yet standing which are said to have been built many years before Virginia was colonized." — Bancroft : History of the United States, i. 69. m NoBTH America. 7 country. They pierced the thick forests, they crossed the mountain ranges, they swam the broad rivers of the South. They toiled with the Natchez, the Creek, and the Cherokee ; they estabHshed missions in Caro- lina and Virginia, and they coasted the whole Atlantic border as far north as the Chesapeake, which they called St. Mary's Bay. They were martyred, it is true, by the Indians ; they died in the wild iorest of starvation or fatigue ; but that did not deter others from following in their steps ; and the first Europeans who dwelt peaceably in these lands were the missionary fathers, who claimed them, not for any earthly power, but for God and St. Mary the Virgin. It is true that they were soon driven from Virginia and the Carohnas. Shortly after the discovery of Amer- ica, followed the discovery of that system of rebellion popularly known as the Keformation. The only distinc- tive mark of this was, and is, hatred to the Church, and whenever its adherents had the power, it was signal- ized by the destruction of rehgious estabhshments. While the most splendid monuments of rehgion and art were falling beneath its axes in Europe, its repre- sentatives in the New World, in Carolina and Virginia, banded with and led on the savages to the sack of the humble missions, and the slaughter of the devoted priests who served them.^ ' The Christian Indians driven out with the missionaries took the name of Seminoles, or Wanderers. Deprived of their instructors, they 8 Devotion to the B. V. Mart No so-called Protestant powers have ever made their way to any new or pagan country — India, China, Japan, or America — without finding Catholic mission- aries in possession before them ; quia Domini est terra, " the earth is the Lord's." And wherever they have been strong enough, they have invariably overthrown those missions and re-established paganism. Nay, in some places they have endowed it ; and to-day the dis- torted, idols for India are manufactured by the ton in the cities of Christian England. So the missions on St. Mary's Bay and in the Caro- linas were destroyed by the combined zeal of the Re- former and the Yemassee ; but under the Catholic flag of Spain, they flourished and took root in Alabama and Florida ; and the summer sun of 1693 shone upon a statue of the Mother of God, under whose patronage and protection they were founding, and successfully, Pensacola.^ And while these transactions were occurring in the south and southwest, the French missionaries were conquering the tribes of the north. From Acadia and- the St. Lawrence the servants of Mary spread the news of salvation. The forests of Canada rang with the Salve Begina; from the birch canoes that cut the azure waters of the great lakes swelled up the Ave Maris Stella. On the banks of the Hudson, Bressany told his beads in the intervals of Iroquois torture. In the gradually relapsed into paganism. — Vide Shea's Catholic Missions* p. 75. ' Shea : History of the United States, p. 40. IN NoKTH America. 9 valley of the Moliawk streamed the blood of the mar- tyred Jogues, and whole districts of New York Indians publicly renounced their idolatries. Allouez and Dablon evangelized the chill shores of Lake Superior; Marquette bore the cross down the waters of the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkan- sas, established a mission of the Immaculate Concep- tion among the Illinois, and laid his weary frame to rest at last on the shores of Lake Michigan. And so the Catholic embrace circled North America, extending through pain and privation, through toil and martyr- dom, until the Jesuit, going northward from Missouri, and westward from Canada, completed the sacred cir- cle as they met beneath the crests of the Kocky Mountains and on the plains of Oregon. But after all, this was but Our Lady's discovery of North America, as it were — was but a planting of her standard and the act of taking possession. The battle was still to be fought, the hostile tribes were to be sub- dued ; re-enforcements of foes from lands inimical to her cause were to be expected, and were only to be met by re-enforcements of friends from lands that loved her. Her conquests resemble those of the world in this, that if they are to succeed, the officers must be skilful, fearless, diligent, prudent, unselfish, and prompt ; the troops must be steadfast, obedient, loyal, and constant. If they shall appear to have been so, we will under- stand how her honor has increased in the land ; how seven hundred churcJies bear her Name, out of three 1* 10 Devotion to the B. Y. IMary thousand five liundred in every portion of the country ; how the same sweet Name is given to river, lake, and mountain peak and bay, north, south, and through the centre ; and how more than two miUion voices chant her praise, and proclaim her Lady and Protectress/ The instruments, then, of the gracious will and favor of God are the fidehty of His ministers, the influx of foreign Cathohcs, and the T^dnniag character of the doctrines and devotions of the Church. The fidehty of the minister is the main point, since, without this, the aborigine would retain his paganism, the emigrant lose his faith, the American remain un- converted. He must be faithful who would preach the gospel of Christ, and so extend the devotion to Mary, for these two go together. The Mother, for all eter- nity, now is inseparable from her Son. When He took her pure flesh upon Him in time, it was not only to suffer in it here, but to preserve it forever in heaven. She whom He called Mother here. He calls Mother there. She has no honor but His, and what she merits by duty faultlessly performed to Him. Whatever goes towards God's glory is an honor to Mary ; whatever detracts from it or obstructs it, is a pain to Mary. She has nothing of her own, yet she has all ; for she has Him, *' of whom and by whom and for whom are all" — propter quern omnia et per quern omnia^ * Even these estimates are less than the truth. They are made from the almanac for 1861, in which, for some dioceses, the names of churches are not given : indeed, whole dioceses have no report at all. 3 Saint Paul : Epistle to the Hebrews, ii. 10. IN NOETH AmEEICA. 11 It is her Maternity to Him tiliat explains — ^that only can explain — the Catholic devotion to her. It is be- cause she has Him for her child that she has us for her reverers. She has a right to our veneration, because she bare Him who has a right to our adoration. It is a common sentiment of our nature to honor every ^ood mother for the sake of her son ; it is a sin, then, against our regenerate nature to refuse honor to that best Mother of the best Son. And so it comes that His ministers are her ministers ; that fidehty to the gospel of Christ is fidelity to devotion for Mary. And for this fidehty must her minister be endowed with the gifts which insure it, and which are rendered necessary by the circumstances of their hves, as well as for the success of their mission. They must be prudent as serpents, for a thousand snares are daily laid for their destruction. Estote ergo prudentes ut serpentes^ — yet prudent without selfishness or trick ; " be ye simple as doves" — simplices sicut co- lumbce. They must be brave in their innocence, for " I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves," mitto vos sicut agnos inter lupos f humble, for the poor in spirit have the blessuig — heati pawperes spiritu ;^ yet in all their personal humility they must preserve the highest dignity and sacred character of their office, since, " as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you" — sicut mint me Pater et ego mitto vos.* Renunciation of the world, and separation from its ties and it, are ' St. Matthew's Gospel, x. 10. ' St. Matthew, v. 3. ' St. Luke, x. 3. ♦ St. John's Gospel, xx. 21. 12 Devotion to the B. V. Maby necessary, for the "cares of this world choke the word," and the married man careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, oerumnce sceculi suffocant verhum^ and qui cum uxori est solicitus est mundi quomodo placeat uxori.^ The ministers of God and Mary must find no obsta- cle in disease, privation, or poverty, no terror in death ; for the " sufferings of the present hfe are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed" — non sunt condignce passiones hujus temporis ad futuram gloriam quce reveldbitur in nobis.^ He must be persever- ing, for only " to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of Life which is in the Paradise of my God" — Vincenti daho edere de ligno vitce quod est in Por- radiso Dei mei ;* and he must be ever vigilant, since only that servant is blessed whom his Lord, when He Cometh, shall find watching — Beati servi iUi, quos, cum (venerit Dominus invenerit vigilantes.^ And it is precisely men of such qualifications whom it has pleased God to send out for the evangelization of America. Had they been endowed with less than all this, the English conquest of North America would have swept the devotion to Mary from the land. "Were they not so endowed to-day, devotion to Mary would perish before the godlessness, the indifference of the world around us. But they are the same in the nine- teenth century as in the sixteenth ; they may differ * St. Mark, xiv. 19. * Apocalypse, ii, 7. ' 1 Corinthians, vii. 33. * St. Luke, xii. 37. • St. Paul to the Romans, viii. 18. IN NOBTH AmEKICA. 13 externally in some matters, but the interior — the in- tention, the purpose — ^is the same, as is the divine commission and ordination which gives authority to their labors. Monseigneur Verot builds a church to-day on the spot where Luis Cancel de Barbastro was martyred three hundred years ago. Bishop Lamy renews among the Spaniards and Indians in 1862 the fervor awakened in 1560 for Our Lady of Guadalupe. Where Jogues told his beads as a preventive for martyrdom, on the banks of the Mohawk, a hundred voices are repeating the same prayers ; and while the circle of Mary's in- fluence has been widened, tOl its bounds are the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and its northern limits are the extreme Arctic regions — while a bishop has his seat at the mouth of the Columbia Kiver, and another in far Florida, the land named for Palm Sunday,' and' a third rules in the almost per- petual winter of Hudson's Bay, and a fourth in. the golden land of California — the intrepid missionaries are pushing the frontiers still further northward ; and faithful servants of Mary have filled, and are still fill- ing the whole interior of the country with love and reverence for her name. While the old missionary orders, Jesuit, and Sulpi- tian, and Franciscan,' are still energetically pursuing ' The Spaniards landing on Palm Sunday, wliicli they call Pascua Florida, or the Flower Easter, gave this- name to the new land, "^ The Recollects, an order of reformed Franciscans, are busied in Canada. 14 Devotion to the B. V. Mary their sacred conquests in Oregon, among the Esqui- maux and the tribes of British America, new orders have arisen especially devoted and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, as the Marists' and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate." These are the outposts and advanced guards of God's army in North America ; while, in the interior, the secular and regular clergy, bishop and priest, are in the heat of the fight. These have, perhaps, even harder work than the missionary to the pagan. I do not say this in a spirit of comparison, but only in ex- pression of a feeling which I possess, in common with others, and which is this : That he who is roaming through the grand native forests, breasting the torrent in a birch canoe, setting a stout heart against the in- clemencies of a wild nature, has the poetry and ro- mance, the adventure and ever-varying incident to inspirit and excite him. So Bancroft, after a tribute to the zeal of the mis- sionary, says : " And yet the simplicity and the free- dom of Hfe in the wilderness had its charms. The heart of the missionary would swell with dehght, as, under a serene sky, and with a mild temperature, and breathing a pure air, he moved over waters as trans- parent as the most Hmpid fountain. Every encamp- ment offered his attendants the pleasures of the chase. * An educational order founded at Bordeaux, France, in 1818. ' A missionary order whose superior-general is Mgr. the Bishop of Marseilles, and who are laboring chiefly in British America and in the southwestern United States. IN NoETH A:mepjca. 15 Like a patriarch, he dwelt beneath a tent ; and of the land through which he walked he was its master, in the length of it and in the breadth of it, profiting by its productions without the embarrassment of owner- ship. How often was the pillow of stones like that where Jacob felt the presence of God I How often did the aged oak, whereof the centuries were untold, seem like the tree of Mamre, beneath which Abraham broke bread with angels ! Each day gave the pilgrim a new site for his dwelling, which the industry of a few moments could erect, and for which nature supplied a floor of green, inlaid with flowers. On every side clustered beauties which art had not spoiled and could not imitate." ^ He has the rough, hearty life of a soldier, and the triumph of the discoverer; and he has to teach the true God to those who have worshipped demons. But the priests in the midst of a more or less perfect civih- zation have not this. Their fight is against the vices of civilization, very unpoetic, very unromantic ; against the love of money, the cheatery of trade, the permitted dishonor and dishonesty of the world ; against the in- fluence of the drinking-shop and the low gambling- table ; against the serpent of liberalism and godless- ness ; against the temptations of impurity and false doctrine ; against the ever-changing phases of sin in individuals ; against dangers which confer no glory, and poverty which is not picturesque. They are in the * Bancroft : History of the United States, iii. 153. 16 Devotion to the B. V. Maky heart of fhe army, in the midst of the ranks ; they are the unnoticed fighters, who fall, and are succeeded by others who fall in turn ; who combat all their lives to gain one foot of ground, or, perhaps, only not to lose one foot ; and whose record is only on the page of the book of the Great King on high. For them the steaming walls of the hospital replace the dark green arching aisles of the stately immemorial wood. For them the rush and roar of the hot and nar- row street must be a substitute for the fresh, free leap of the wild and beautiful river. The skulking convict and the drunkard, the brazen harlot and the apostate Catholic, must be their dark-skinned warrior tribe. The idols they must shatter are the human passions ; the temples they must renovate are human hearts. ' It is in this view that I have ventured to call their work harder ; not in itself, but in its circumstances : not because more actual labor is required from one than another ; but because of the lack of much which can stimulate and distract. And this brings me to a point which must be care- fully noticed by the reader. I mean the difference be- tween the rise of devotion to the Blessed Mother of God in this country and in the old Catholic lands, and the consequent difference between the respective ex- ternal manifestations of it. When the Gospel of the Son of Mary issued from Palestine and spread over Europe, it was for the dethronement of false deities among comparatively simple men; for civihzation then was exclusively IN North America. 17 Koman, save here and there a little colony. Men re- ceived the faith, sooner or later, in simple, earnest hearts. Faith retained for many, many centuries a straightforwardness and unnhesitating openness which has begun to decay only within the last three hundred years. For the general diffusion of a too thin and in- nutritive knowledge has unquestionably injured the simpHcity of faith, by increasing, not our wisdom, but our conceit that we are wise. Men have been taught by this to replace Faith with those niggardliest of qualities, suspicion and doubt. State any manifestation of God's love to man, any in- dividual and distinct mark of His favor or providence, and for one that will say Blessed be His Name for that, a hundred will doubt it, will furnish a score of mean reasons against its probabiKty, will suspect a score of honorable men of collusion, invention, and deceit. Pantheism — if I may use that word for want of a better to express the generalization and depersonaHza- tion of God — was not universally spread as it is now. If it existed, it was in some head which " too much learning had made mad" — some mind gone astray through over-esteem of its own reasoning faculties; and was generally confined to a university chamber. Then men believed in a personal God, to whom they were personally accountable ; they loved to receive His gifts and benefits as personal ones ; they knew nothing of these fine, new, universal humanities and confeder- acies of God ; but He was my Father and my God as B 18 Devotion to the B. V. Maey well as our Father and our God. They got closer to Him by this individualizing, which was yet in no sense exclusive. A man received a benefit, not as a general, universal gift — of the gratitude for which his own share was so small that God woidd not miss it if it were never paid — but as a benefit done to him, ior which aU his gratitude was too little. And so they had personal dealings with God ; and when he said to the beloved disciple — speaking from the cloud of agony which overhung the Cross — " Son, behold thy mother !" they saw in that divinest boon a mother for all and each of them; a mother equally loving and tender to each of her chQdren ; procuring benefits for each from her Divine Son, and, therefore, naturally carrying back to Him the thanks of each for such benefits. Well, then, in a little time, human thanks to God ran generally through Mary's heart and hps as their channel, the channel naturally the most agreeable to Him ; and so her name got to be embroidered on the bright mantle of the European world as its chiefest decoration. They went to fight, and begged her pro- tection ; they came back successful, and they built Notre Dame des Victoires. They were perishing by an epidemic, and made a novena to her, and she heard them, and their Cathedral is dedicated to Our Lady of Help in need, Notre Dame de hon secours. Travellers lighted on land after storms, like the grand, heroic Columbus, and because in their trouble they had begged help from the gentle Mother, and IN North America. 19 thouglit that she had heard them, they called the new land by her name. A city escapes some general deso- lation ; they change its name for some title of hers. A poor, pious man, attacked by highwaymen, converts one by his gentle discourse ; the place is called St. Mary of KoJbbers, and some nineteenth-century liter- ary skirmisher will inform you that the Blessed Virgin was the patroness of thieves in this neighborhood. In this way Europe became covered with mementoes of benefits received by Mary's intercession, and, by inevitable naturalness, they bear her name ; and, in those days, remembering some kindness done by her to some particular town, and standing in need of the same kindness for himself, a man would pray to our Lady of Kehbourg, St. Mary of Challons, the Immacu- late Virgin of Liege. From which circumstance cer- tain flatulent writers have deduced that those Catholics thought there were many Blessed Virgins, and that each lived in her own special village.^ Hence, the History, of the Devotion to the Blessed * Even sucli as Walter Scott and Washington Irving commit blim- ders whicli are incomprehensible to men whose education is far in- ferior to that of those masters. Catholics going to Mass at all hours of the afternoon and evening, confessing to and receiving absolution from laymen, and men, women, and children in general using breviaries and missals. A well-educated author, a Protestant, is required to know the meaning of the Ramadan, the Mishna, the Norwegian Sagas, Joe Smith the Mormon, the Yezidees, the Fetish, but is allowed to blunder like an idiot about Mass, Vespers, and Rosary, the highest and most frequent acts of worship of two hundred millions of Chri* tian men, half of whom are of the leading races of civilization in France, Spain, North America, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain ! 20 Devotion to the B. V. Mary Virgin in Europe is simply a ramble througli the Beautiful. There is no hamlet, no burgh, nor city without its consecration, partial or entire, to the dear Mother of God, and for His sake ours. Europe is flooded with fact, and legend, and circumstance ; and he who writes of the devotion there finds difficulty, not in discovering material, but in deciding amid the masses that lie before him what he will accept and what refuse. But with us, the national antiquities, so to speak, of the CathoHc Faith must be looked for only on our borders. The poetry of evangelization meets only the Indian missionary, the tradition of the Spaniard in the South, of the Frenchman in the North. I mean, of course, the published poetry ; for the hidden, intrinsic beauties of our faith and our devotion are imperishable and invariable. We live, comparatively few in number, in a land which, if not Protestant, is, at least, anti- Catholic. No sacred processions, with vested clerics at their head, sweep through our streets ; no train of pilgrims winds along the river-bank, or through the greenwood, to a favored Lady Chapel ; no sweet face of dear Mary Mother smiles at us as we pass from wayside shrine ; there is no halt of business,^ and gen- * These statements are to be taken generally, and parti culady only of the United States. French Canada, of course, retains, with the ancient faith, many of its external practices. The colonies of Catholic Highlanders in the extreme north can do as they please. Louisiana, New Mexico, and part of California, are still Catholic ; but where our great populations and our largest wealth and influence are, these words are true. IN NoBTH America. 21 eral baring of tlie head for a moment's communion with God, when the Angelus rings out from the steeple. A few traditional observances may linger in portions of the United States where the Spanish or French in- fluence has remained unaltered; but the length and breadth of the land is bitterly hostile to any out- ward manifestation of our love for Mary, because bit- terly hostile to that love itself. Pulpit and lecture-room, rostrum, pubHc meeting, and comer-stone layings, the press and the bar-room, re-echo with charges of idolatry, of taking from God the honor which is His due only, and: giving it to a creature ; and even the gentlest will shake their heads and bewail with grave charity the unfortunate propen- sity of the Papist to give too much honor to Mary. And yet what. is our feeble love and honor compared to that which she obtains from God ? As our love for our fellows is but a shadow of His love for man, so our especial love for Mary is but a shadow — a, faint, attenuated shadow — of His love for her. The Eternal Father hath chosen her to be the Mother of His only Son ; the Holy Spirit elected her His spouse. The Son who giveth right-hand thrones to the apostles who preached His word, is bound in justice to do more for the Mother who bore Him. For His sake, if you would please Him, reverence her; if you believe in honoring your own mother, believe that He believes in honoring His. It is impossible for the Christian adorer of the Incarnate God to give His blessed Mother more honor, interior or exterior, than is her 22 Devotion to the B. V. Maey due. Sancta et immaculuta Virginitas, quihus te laudibics efferam nescio ; quia qnem coeli capere non poterant, tuo gremio contulistV So, then, when we consider how strong this feeling against devotion to Mary is ; how powerful the influ- ence of the majority is, especially when that majority possesses the wealth and influence of the land ; how many temptations surround the Catholic here; how hard it is to bear slight, misrepresentation, and wilful falsehood ; how much easier it is to deny having a del- icate and beloved sentiment the rather than to expose it to the risk of a sneer; how swift the pace of the money-hunter is here ; how httle the beautiful in life and creed is cultivated, and how devoted are men to what they are pleased to call the practical, and which means simply more careful diligence for the body than for the soul, for time than for eternity ; — ^when we con- sider all these, the wonder is, not that there is so much or so little devotion to Our Lady, but that there is any at all. Yet in despite of all this, we are prepared to believe that there is no old Catholic country in Europe ; that there never has been a country in which reverent love and earnest heartfelt devotion for the Blessed Mother of God was more deeply rooted, more ardently cher- ished, or more fervently and fruitfully practised than this same North America. It is unobtrusive, but it is » Response in office of B. V. M. Holy and immaculate Virginity ! with what praises- to greet thee I know not; for Him whom the heavens cannot contain, thoi; hast borne in thy bosom. IN North America. 23 real. It guides and influences the hearts of men, and it is found, pure and glowing, in the souls of some who seem to be the most thoughtless in society, of some who seem to be the driest and most engrossed by affairs. It begins in earhest childliood, when the scapular and the medal are placed round the neck, to be kept there ever afterwards, even in the grave. As the child grows, he is won into membership of some Sodality of the Blessed Yirgin, some Kosary Society, some Confra- ternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The elders form their benevolent associations, and place them un- der the patronage of the Queen of Angels. Nuns of Notre Dame and of the Visitation train the female children. Brothers of Mary are consecrated to the education of boys. The Bishop labors patiently till his seminary of St. Mary is completed ; the priest toils arduously until his parish of the Annunciation or the Assumption is established ; and all join their prayers, their counsel, their mQney, their manual labor, their seK-denial and renunciation, until the Cross peeps through the greenwood from the convent of Mary's Help, and the Church of the Immaculata crowns the summit of the hill. We close this chapter, then, with a short view of the means whereby this devotion has entered and in- creased in this country, before examining its progress and effects more particularly. And first, the Spaniard brought it in his heart as his best treasure for a new life, his best memento of his own old fervent land. He planted it in the ever- 24 Devotion to the B. V. Mary glades of Florida, on the coasts of Alabama ; or bore it with patient perseverance into Mexico, California, Texas, and even Oregon. In tbe various changes which this country has undergone of pohtical rule and advancing civilization, the Iberian was driven from the East, and made powerless in the "West, and his faith grew lazy, and in some places almost disappeared. But religious freedom fought its way here into general acceptation, and now the love of Mary is reappearing, fresh and beautiful, as the resurrection of the flowers when the winter has passed away. Then the Frenchman, above all, the loyal and pious Breton, settled Acadia.^ *' When, in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the sun- set Lighted the village street, and gilded the vanes on the chimneys. Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles. ********** Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them. Reverend walked he among them, and up rose matrons and maidens, Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome. Then came the laborers home from the field, and serenely the sun sank Down to his rest, and twilight prevailed. Anon from the belfry Slowly the Angeliis sounded, and over the roofs of the village Columns of pale-blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending. Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment. Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers — Dwelt in the love of God and man." ' And thence they were driven* by the English, uuder 1 The Acadia of the French settlers embraced Maine, New Bruns- wick, and Nova Scotia. a Longfellow's "Evangeline." m NoBTH Ameeica. 25 circumstances of barbaric cruelty whicb wrung from the very heart of a Protestant the finest poem yet written in America, and one of the finest poems of home and domestic affection extant in any language. But the good seed had been blown abroad by those brave northern winds, and the love and the name of Mary had been carried, through the wild red tribes, to the shores of Lake Superior, and missionaries were already sighing for permission to bear it to the far and yet unknown Mississippi/ And when, in 1673, Father Marquette discovered and explored that river, the name that he gave it was " Immaculate Conception." The Frenchman, descending the Mississippi, met the Spaniards coming up from Mexico, through New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas. And yet, although it was the forces of Great Britain which ex- terminated the missions of Carolina, and half de- stroyed those of Acadia and Canada, it w^as reserved for that empire to send forth a colony which should make the central line Catholic, and give the name of Mary to the State they founded. "With these three points starts the History of the CathoHc Church, and, consequently, of the devotion to the Blessed Mother of God in North America. What missionizing was done went either westward from » Bancroft, ii. Thus did the religious zeal of the French bear the Cross to the banks of the St. Mary and the confines of Lake Superior, and look wistfully towards the home of the Sioux, in the valley of the Mississippi, five years before the New England Elliot had addressed the tribe of Indians that dwelt within six miles of Boston harbor. 2 26 Devotion to the B. V. Maky Maryland or southward from Canada, the Jesuits and Recollects reaching the Hudson and Mohawk rivers and the State of Illinois. But little, however, was accomplished until after the Revolution, in the interior of the States east of the Mississippi. West of that great river, the whites were few or none. But the emigration began. More French came into the central States on the Atlantic, and their religion was respected for the sake of their services to the country, if for nothing else. The Irishman came, bear- ing from the shores of his seagirt isle the faith which had withstood centuries of persecution, and such a persecution as is a phenomenon in history, having no parallel in the annals of man's injustice to man. Van- quished, enslaved, starved, tempted, they clung to God and St. Mary the Virgin only more closely for all at- tempts to sever them. Crushed down by that preposterous incubus called the National Church, they remained and still remain devotedly faithful to the ancient creed. I do not speak of the priest-hunting and sanguinary portions of the persecutions, for that violence rather fans the flame of loyalty ; but of that dead, stupid, crushing load, which, pressing as it did on their very lives and souls, needed a miracle of grace to enable them to resist it as they have done. And when, commending themselves to that dear Mother in heaven, who had been their support and consolation, they bade adieu to their home, they brought to the land of their adoption the same un- IN North America. 27 shaken fidelity to their rehgion. They spread, like bee-swarms, over the land ; their strong arms hewed wide pathways through the forest, and cut the canals which were the life-veins leadiog to the country's heart ; their hands laid the long, iatermiaable lines of railway with which the map is covered as by a spider's web; and wherever they went they called to them Saggart aroon^ the priest of their love ; and when he came, the new Httle church of St. Mary soon rose, and the ancient Salve Regina resounded beneath the heavens in a new land. Then from the Ehine came their brethren, from that "long street of cassocks," as Charles the Fifth was wont to call it, where pilgrims are seen daily seeking shrines of Our Lady; where the mile-stones by the road are wayside niches for her image ; where her name is the most beloved of household words ; where a hundred poets chant her praises ; where the great schools of modem art love to reproduce her pure, ma- ternal face ; and where the very Protestant has not learned to speak of her with disrespect, nor utterly to empty his heart of aU love for her. These came to take up a thousand minor necessary industries which were too slow for the swift, rushing American ; to occupy small farms throughout the in- terior ; to teach the vineyard how to bloom upon the hiU-side. And they, too, brought a store of devotion to Mary, unobtrusive, little noticed, but fixed, steadfast, patient, and indestructible as their own quiet character. These parishes are generally the largest in America ; 28 Devotion to the B. V. Maky they retain the pleasant customs of their fatherland ; they call their settlements Mariastein, Mariahilf, and they transmit to their children their own trust in and affection for die heilige Mutter Gottes. Thus, then, from North, South, and East, have the armies of blessed Mary marched into the land. Since the year of our Lord 1530, they have advanced, at jGirst slowly, and then with rapid strides. For not only do the foreign populations retain and transmit their ven- eration for her, but countless conversions are made from heresy, or from the godlessness which is more prevalent and dangerous than it. And how many of these have been caused through affection for the ma- ternity of Mary, or by her direct interposition ? Some have been brought into the true fold by reading for the first time the story of the Church's love for her ; some by wearing her medal ; some by invoking her in time of need — " O holy Mary, conceived* without sin, pray for us sinners who have recourse to thee !" and some by observing the devotion of CathoHc friends to her, and the beautiful charities, the gentleness, and un- selfishness which are apt to spring from that. "WJiat wonder, then, that in her own sweet month of May, the Fathers of the Council of 1846 held in Baltimore — twenty-two bishops, with their theologi- ans — should solemnly elect as Patroness of the United States of America the Blessed Yirgin Mary, immacu- lately conceived? The Fathers had been trained in her honor, they had lived for her service, they desired to add this crowning glory to their life-long prayer IN North America. 29 and praise, and at the same time to show their zeal for the true interests of this country, by entreating her protection for it in this eminent and public way. The next year this election was confirmed by the sovereign Pontiff,^ and now forever in the grand pub- lic session that closes these august assemblies, after the Te Deum has been sung, the cantors, richly coped, stand before the altar and intone their first acclama- tion to the Most High God. That chorused, they burst forth — " Beatissimse Virgini Mariae, sine labe originali con- ceptse, harum Provinciarum Patronae, honor seternus!" And in chorus the venerable bishops, the theologi- ans and attendant priests, and the whole multitude of people, repeat the glad ascription, and then, swell- ing to vaulted roof, and filling aisle and nave and broad cathedral sanctuary, rolls in deep, majestic chorus the solemn Amen ! Amen ! » Decretxjm : Cum R. P. D. Arcliiepiscopus Baltimorensis ej usque Suffraganei Episcopi Concilium Sextum Provinciale mense Maio anno 1846 celebrantes, supplices petiissent ut a S. Sede approbaretur electio quam ipsi in Concilio fecerunt Bmse. Mariae Virginia sine labe origi- nali conceptse in Patronam Septentrionalis Americae Fcederatse Pro- vinciarum ; * * * Emi. ac Revmi. Patres in congregations general! de propaganda Fide censuerunt supplicandum Ssmo. Dno nostro ut pientissimis Concilii votis annuere dignentur. Hanc vero S. Cong, sententiam in audientia die 7 Februarii 1847 habita Ssmus Dns noster Pius divina providentia PP. IX. benigne probavit in omnibus. 30 Devotion to the B. V. Maet CHAPTEE n. The Zeal of the Pioneees — Champlain and the Kecolleots — Motheb Maby oe the Incarnation and the Ubsitlines — Maequette and the Immaculate Conception. The secret of the devotion to Mary is a beart-felt zeal for tlie glory of God. It was a higher motive than any worldly one that brought Columbus to San Salvador and Concepcion, or Champlain to the snows and forests of the North. " The salvation of a single soul," says this pious gentleman, "is worth more than the conquest of an empire, and kings should seek to extend their domin- ions in countries where idolatry reigns, only to cause their submission to Jesus Christ." ^ He undertook his toils and labors with patience, in order " to plant in this country the standard of the Cross, and to teach the knowledge of God and the glory of ffis Holy Name, desiring to increase charity for His unfortunate creatures."'* Thinking that he would " commit a great fault if he employed no means of bringing the savages to the * The first words of the Sieur de Champlain's voyages. ' Planter en ce pays I'estendart de la Croix et leur enseigner la cognoissance de Dieu et gloire de Son Sainct Nona, estant nostre desir d'augmenter la charite envers ses miserables creatures. — Voyages et decouvertures depuis 1615. IN NOBTH AmEEICA. 31 knowledge of God," lie earnestly "sought out some good Religious who would have zeal and affection for God's glory." Such as these are always discoverable by those who are really in want of them, and Cham- plain soon found them — men " who were borne away by holy affection, who burned to make this voyage, if so, by God's grace, they might gain some fruit, and might plant in these lands the standard of Jesus Christ, with fixed resolution to live, and, if need were, to die, for His sacred Name !" ^ So, when the ship is ready, we naturally expect the next record, that "each of us examined himseK and purged himself of his sins by penitence and confession, so best to say adieu to France and to place himseK in a state of grace, that each might be conscientiously free to give himself up into the keeping of God and to the billows of a vast and perilous sea." ^ When the voyage is thus undertaken, what wonder that we find, along the first discovered coasts, St. Mary's Bay, St. Mary's Isle, St. Mary's River; that Montreal is first called ViUe Marie; that the first grant of land from the Due de Ventadour to the Jesuits is the lordship or seigneurie of Our Lady of Angels, and that then, by Mary's lake and missions of Assumption and Annunciation, we sweep away west- ward to the mysterious river of the Conception ? And so the portal of the Occident beiug thrown open, and the highways baptized by the name of ^ Voyages depuis 1615, p. 3. « Ibid., p. 8. 32 Devotion to the B. Y. Maky Marj, her servants enter in. How they labored, a sketch of one or tvro of them will suffice to show. Mother Maey of the- Incaenation. In the convent grounds of the Ursulines, at Quebec, stood lately an old ash-tree. More than two hundred years ago, under its shadowy foKage, one might have seen a crowd of swarthy Indian girls, Algonquins, Iro- quois, Abnakis, but most of all, Hurons. Their voices sounded with natural sweetness in prayer, as their dusky fingers told their beads, or mingled in the Salve Regina or Ave Maris Stella, and their eyes were closed in meditation or lifted up with love upon the figure of the crucified Redeemer or the image of Our Lady, or fixed reverently and attentively upon the calm, affec- tionate face of their instructress. And she, with the holy wisdom and patient sweetness which are the gifts of saints, taught them the love of God, winning them one by one, and through them their families, from their pagan superstitions and their wretched hfe, to the love and service of that dear Lord and His Mother, to whom she had totally given up her body and her soul. Far away in central France she had left a gay and comfortable world, the society of the noble, the ease of wealth, for the white bandeau and dark veil and habit of the Ursuline ; and, in the year of our redemption 1639, she completed her renunciation of all things by forsaking her sunny native land forever for the ice- bound shores, the privations, the perpetual toils of IN NoETH America. ,33 Canada. Her verj name was left behind her in the world she had forsaken ; the lady of the French salons had been called Madame Sophie Gaynet ; the Ursuline beneath the ash-tree in Quebec was Mother Mary of the Incarnation. And this is, in brief, her story. One holy Christmas-tide, in her home at Tours, when her heart and soul had been particularly given up to union with God, by meditation on the mystery of His Incarnation, she fell asleep and dreamed. She thought that she, with one companion, hand in hand, were toiling along a broken and difficult road; more difficult than ordinary, because they did not see, but only felt the obstacles. But they had plenty of cour- age, and went on until they reached a place known as the Tannery, beyond which lay their home. Here they were met by a venerable old man, in whose pure, sacred lineaments beamed kindness and protection. It was he who had watched and guided St. Mary and her Child from the roofs of Bethlehem to the palm-shades of Egypt. And St. Joseph, , she thought, conducted them into a vast inclosure, whereof the sky was the, only roof. The pavement and the walls were of white, spotless alabaster, and arabesqued with gold. Here aU was silence, deep, rehgious, recol- lected. And, without disturbing the holy stillness by a word, their guide pointed out to them the way they should go. And they saw a Httle hospice of quaint, ancient architecture, but very beautiful, and of snow- white marble ; and in an embrasure of this, upon a delicately-sculptured seat, sat Our Blessed Lady, St. c 2* 34 Devotion to the B. V. Mary Marj, with the infant Jesus in her arms; but their backs were towards the travellers. Mary of the Incarnation sprang forward and em- braced the throne of her Queen, while her companion knelt at a little distance, where she could easily see the Virgin and her -Child. The hospice faced the Orient. It was built upon an eminence, and at the foot of this was a vast space, murky with clouds ; and through the thick, chill mists there rose into pure air the spire and gables of a church, but the body of ii was hidden by the heavy fog. A rugged, perilous road led down the rocks into this space, winding along fear- ful precipices and through cavernous rents in the mountain. Our Lady's gaze was fixed upon this gloomy space, and the heart of the nun kneeling be- hind her burned with desire to see the face of the Mother of pure delights. And then the Yirgin turned and welcomed the sup- pHant with a smile of ineffable sweetness, and, bend- ing down, she gently kissed her forehead. Then she seemed to whisper something about the Ursuline to the divine child in her arms. And when she had done this three times the vision faded, and in a tremor of delight the nun awoke. A year after, while absorbed in mental prayer, the UrsuHne became impressed with the idea that the cold, cloudy space was Canada, then called New France. She felt the most powerful attraction to- wards those unhappy regions, and seemed to hear a command to go there, and to found a house for Jesus IN NoKTH America. 35 and for Mary; so, then and there, she promised, if such were the will of God, to obey the inspiration if He would supply the means. She was right in her conclusions ; this was her vocation ; the shores of the broad St. Lawrence were to form the scene of her labors for more than thirty years ; and then, blessing and blessed, she was to depart thence for her eternal home in heaven. In October, 1636, comes a letter from the Jesuit Fathers, inviting her most urgently to join them. It is dated from the mission of the Immaculate Concep- tion ; it contains an anecdote of how the Fathers had made a vow to give the names of Mary and Joseph to the first persons baptized by them ; how they had ac- complished that vow ; how Joseph died a holy Chris- tian death soon after, but Mary was living, and was the first Indian who had brought her children for baptism and education to the missionaries. Their converts numbered several hundreds, and the Fathers ' ofteti heard resounding from the leafy aisles of the forest the sweet names of Jesus and of Mary. The saints have a straightforward simplicity in their lives which prevents our ever being surprised at their actions. After her vision, her waking convictions as to its significance, and the letters from Canada, we are ready to see her seated in the cabin of the St. Joseph, and writing placidly to her superior : " There are signs of a storm, the captain says ; we are at war with Spain and England also, and may meet their cruisers in the Channel ; but those are not reasons for being troubled 36 Devotion to the B. V. Maey • now. In fact, one lias no trouble now ; the difficulty is to explain or understand that infinitely sweet repose which follows one's complete abandonment to God; loTsqu^on s'est donne une bonne fais d Dieu." ^ There were no crowds of affectionate friends; no well-lined carriage ; no warm and brilliant drawing- room ready for her in Canada : her welcome was to hear the savages chant hymns in their own languages ; to see five hundred Huron names upon a year's bap- tismal register ; to receive her young future pupils as they came forward, and to mark their names, Mary Negabmah, and Mary Amiskwam, and Mary Abateno, and Mary Gamitien;'' and then to go to such house as she had, and, with her sisterhood, commence at once her thirty years' occupation. It is not much of a house, that convent and semi- nary of the Ursulines ; between the cracks of the planks you can see the bright winter stars ; and it is almost impossible to keep a candle burning in the rooms. It is no easy matter to accommodate all their pupils, and the sisterhood in the bargain. The beds, for instance, made of pine-plank, have to be . arranged in tiers, after the manner of berths in a canal-boat. They are obliged to cut up their own bedclothes to make gar- ments for the poor little Indian girls as they come in, and their chief articles of diet, indeed their only ones for a while, are salt fish and lard. ^ Choix des Lettres EQstoriques de la Venerable Mere Marie de I'ln- camation, premiere superieure des Ursulines de Quebec, p. 20. « Ibid., pp. 25, 27. IN NoKTH America. 37 And then the children. They are not all like Mary Gamitien, who needs no spur to daybreak devotion ; who is up with the sun, reciting her rosary, and who sings beautiful hymns to the Blessed Virgin in the Huron tongue. They are not like her when they come out of the woods. But they are brought to the good sisters with no more clothing than a solid coat of grease, weU rubbed in by their parents.^ And to get that, and worse, off of those Httle bodies, takes a pro- found and patient scrubbing, and a frequent changing of garments for months. Nice work for those delicate French ladies ; but they dispute for the office in their humble, gentle way. Magdalen de Chauvigny, Dame de la Peltrie, gets it the first year; Mother Mary of St. Joseph monopolizes it the next. And while the scrubbing goe^ on, and indeed always, there are men and women waiting in the parlor to be fed through the grating by others of the nuns. The small-pox entered their seminary and turned it into a hospital. The sisters all resigned themselves to catch it, and, if it were God's will, to die of it ; for they were in attendance day and night upon their patients, and lived all together in small and crowded apartments; but, through the care of Mother Mary, not one sister was attacked. Add to this the perpet- ual wars with the treacherous Iroquois ; the struggles ^ Quand on les nous donne elles sont nues comme nn ver. * * * Quelque diligence que Ton fasse, quoiqu'on les change souvent de linge et d'habits, on ne pen de long temps epuiser la vermine. — Choix des lettres, p. 31. 38 Devotion to the B. V. Maey of the medicine-men to retain their superstitious emi- nence among the savages, — that small-pox, for in- stance, and all these* new diseases come, they say, from the magic of the whites ; the seeming impossi- bility of teaching the elder ones to bridle their in- famous passions ; the desolation of the long winters ; the forests echoing with savage howls; the repeated shocks of earthquake; the dreary wastes of snow which spread around ; the news, now and then, of a missionary's martyrdom; surely these must break down our courage. Not a bit of it. " We are perfectly well ; we sing oftener and better than we did in France. The air is excellent — a little cool, perhaps, but excellent ; so, you see, it is a Paradise on earth, where the crosses and thorns spring up so lovingly, that if one is pierced by them it is only to let new floods of love in upon the heart. Pray God to give me the grace to love Him always." ' But Mother Mary's troubles and trials cannot be given here; a mere list of them would take up too much room. Only one or two of them can be men- tioned, which offer themselves apropos of our subject. It is the night of December thirtieth, " in the Octave of our Lord's Nativity." Sister Martha has a large baking on hand for to-morrow, and forgets the fire in the bakery, which is exactly under our seminary. The night pjayers are over, and all go to bed, to sleep as ^ Choix des lettres, p. 48. IN North Ameeica. 39 well as the cold will let them. A few hours afterward we find that some of them — poor souls ! — ^have gone to bed with their shoes on, so terrible is the chiU Ca- nadian air. And, at midnight, Mother Mary of the Seraphim, who has the care of the children, and sleeps at the door of the seminary, rushes into our dormitory with the cry, " Wake, sisters, wake ! The house is on fire ! Up, and let us save the children !" As they spring up, the flames, red and wild, leap crackling through the pine-floor of the apartment. The Mother Assistant and Sister St. Lawrence break down the convent grating, which is fortunately of wood, and get out a portion of the scholars that way. Our Mother Mary, trying to save some of the chapel furni- ture, gets caught between two fires, hesitates as to whether she should throw the large crucifix, her own, out of the window ; thinks that that would be irrever- ence, so kisses it with lowly love and faith, and leaves it to the flames. Then she escapes into the bell-tower, is just missed by the falling bell, and gets out, bare- footed, into the December snow. Sister Ignatia has a theological difficulty. The smaller children are still up stairs : is it permitted her to give her life for theirs ? Meantime, she goes up to their room, and lets them down, all safe, from the window, one by one. Then, with a fiery crash, the roof falls in, and Sister Ignatia's difficulty is solved. All in authority appear to have presence of mind. Each goes first to her proper post, to see if any thing may be done there. Mother Superior, who has the 40 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary keys, goes to set the doors wide open, and stands there calling to the sisters by name. But no one comes forth — no one replies ; then she throws herself at the feet of the Blessed Virgin, and makes a vow — its terms we do not know — for the preservation of her sisters ; and, after a short agony of doubt, she finds them aU safe, their poor little Indian girls with them. Safe they are, but nine-tenths of them barefooted, with a single garment to cover them, standing in the December snow. But Mother Mary could see, by the tranquillity and submission of their faces, that God was in their hearts. " We were stripped," she says, " as bare as Job, but then we had better friends." In fact, the people had gathered by this time round them ; the Jesuits from their house, the French and Indians from the neighborhood. One man, after star- ing in amazement at the perfect calm and resignation of the nuns, was heard to say, " Either these women are mad, or they have an exceeding love for God." Then all are hurried off, some to the neighbors' houses, some to the large parlor of the Jesuits ; the nuns to the hospital, where the sisters clothe them with their own gray habits, and make, for the time being, soeur grises of them. On the way thither they are met by some good people with welcome shoes ; and one of the first pair is given to Mother Superior, in right of her age and position. Mother Mary of the Incarnation does not say that she got a pair, which is very good evidence that she did not ; in which case this delicately nurtured woman must have walked m North America. 41 some quarter of a mile, barefooted, through the snow, to the Hospital of the Gray Sisters. And now all their earthly possessions were gone — house, furniture and raiment. Nothing remained to them but a black, ugly mass of ashes and ruin, whence a column of gloomy smoke rose, sluggishly curling up through the gray frosty dawn. Not a w^hit downcast is Mother Mary. "Divine Providence," she says, "will help us to pay our debts and to build again. That has placed us in our present sad condition. That will set us up again, through the most holy Virgin, of whose succor we are so assured, that we live in peace in that direction. What she does not of herseK, she will excite friends to do for us ; and so in time she will do an." ^ Those miserable Iroquois were the greatest difficulty of all. They would wage war, make peace, and wage war agaiu. They scalped, burned, and hewed in pieces our good Hurons and Algonquins. Their proph- ets accused our missionaries of bringing disease and other misfortunes upon them. Father Jogues goes off among them to have his fingers cut off, joint by joint ; to escape, but only to go back agaiu and win the crown of martyrdom. Father Daniel is burned by them, all clad in his vestments, at the foot of his altar. Father Breboeuf has the flesh torn from his body — torn carefully in thin strips, so as not to break the large veius ; has boiHng water poured upon his head * Choix des lettres, 210. ', 42 Devotion to the B. Y. Maey in mockery of baptism ; lias his nails torn out by pincers ; and passes from that torture into the eternal glory. All these were friends of Mary of the Incarnation. " Ah," she sighs, " if we could only get hold of some Iroquois girls to educate and send back as mission- aries to their fiendish clansmen! But some of the French are as bad as the Iroquois. Some have come hither only to trade, without care for souls ; and the easiest trade is made by means of brandy, fire-water. Our best converts, some of them, are lured astray; our very school-girls get to love the hellish beverage, which they get when they go to see their parents. The traders are excommunicated, but they laugh at that. All our efforts will fail, unless it please God to interfere in our behalf." God does interfere, he shakes that far northern land with an earthquake. It was in 1663 that this occurred. . Houses rocked to and fro, cracked, and fell to ruin; the atmosphere was dust ; steeples swung like trees in a storm; the mighty St. Lawrence ran yellow as sulphur ; the lamp of the Blessed Sacrament fell three times in the church of Beaupre. A mountain near Tadoussac sank wholly into the yawning earth, and the valleys rose into plains. " The walls of our con- vent spHt ; we were nearly choked with dust, asphyxi- ated with bituminous and sulphurous exhalations. Half of the neighboring forest was destroyed ; some lives were lost ; but God was with us !" The brandy-traders, at least, were well frightened ; IN North America. 43 and a pious governor, coming over from France, put an end to them for the present. And we learn, too, from these records, a new and very advisable method of measuring time — a method much and successfully used by those early Ursulines in Quebec. Some of the shocks, they tell us, only lasted an Ave Maria, while others were as long as two Misereres. All these trials, and all the daily hard labor, seemed, after aU, by God's benediction, only to make these delicate women stronger, happier, healthier, daily more devout. Mary of the Incarnation never seemed to need repose; teaching, counselling, praying. She wrote a catechism in Huron, and three in Algonquin. She translated a large collection of prayers, and com- piled a dictionary in the Indian tongues. "And I," she says, "I am so useless, that I tremble at the account I must render before God." What then were her consolations? for, in fact, it were impossible to support such a life without some. They were abundant enough to fill Mary's heart with courage, confidence, and love. There was the touch- ing, simple faith of the Indians. One poor couple, no longer young, were deserted with scorn by their' heathen relatives, and the old man was ill. So his wife prayed, " O Thou who hast made all. Thou canst help me. Cure my husband ; for we believe in Thee, and shall beheve in Thee, even though he die." "And when my wife had made that prayer," said the poor Indian, " I got well. But," he continued, " I had no canoe to fish from, and knew not how to make one. 44 Devotion to the B. V. Mary But I prayed with all my heart, ' O Creator of all, help me, I beseech Thee ; for Thou knowest I hare never made a canoe.' And then I set to work at it. Come, look at it ; it is perfect !" Then, again, the Indians got into a habit, when setting out on their hunting expeditions, of leaving their little daughters in the hands of the Ursulines, and by this means good seed was sown in those little hearts and matured there, and one day bore a hun- dred-fold. The baptisms increased yearly. New la- borers for the ripening harvest came from France; the converted Indian himseH became a messenger of good tidings to his brethren, suffering, many a time, torture and death with the fervor and constancy of a martyr. Above all, the venerable Mary of the Incar- nation saw that sweetest fruit of truth, that most civil- iziQg and gentle making of influences, devotion to Mary Mother of God, spreading deeply and broadly throughout the Huron and Algonquin tribes, and sink- ing more profoundly into the souls of her own some- times too Kght countrymen. There was the Abenaki tradition of a virgin's son, who had repaired the world after the great deluge, and who was to come to earth again. In the Huron name of this Being, which is Messou, the good Ursulines loved, probably correctly, to find Messiah. Then, be- sides the names of places which marked the land to her devotion, the Feast of the Virgin's Immaculate Conception was the patronal feast of all those coun- tries. AH the people, haUtans and Christian Indians, IN NoBTH Ameeica. 45 were wont to recur to the Holy Family in all their dis- tresses, and not in vain. Mary of the Incarnation knew one blind man who had besought St. Anne, the Mother of Our Lady, to restore his sight. The Saint caused it to be made known to him that that boon must come by invocation of the Holy Family, and so he prayed and received his sight. Louis, a Christian Huron, taken by the sanguinary Iroquois and con- demned to be burned ahve, was saved by the Blessed Virgin. He himself told the UrsuHne how, as he prayed earnestly to Our Lady for help, in the night, he felt the knots of the sinew-cord which bound him loosening on his right hand. Then it fell off, and left his fingers free to undo the other knots, and so pass- ing unseen through several hundred sleeping Iroquois, he, thanks to St. Mary, escaped safe to Quebec. What a pleasure to see the Indian girls, who had left the seminary to pass the winter in household du- ties with their parents, coming back in the spring, laden with early flowers to crown the beloved image of the Queen of May ! Their first visit, on returning, was to the Most Holy Sacrament ; their next, to bring their flowers to decorate the statue of their beneficent Mother. Even among the troops, our venerable Ee- Hgious knew of five hundred soldiers who wore the scapular and daily said the Eosary. Indeed, this beautiful devotion of the beads, to which all grades of men, the simplest and the highest intelligences, be- come so fervently attached, was seldom neglected in New France. Mother Mary asked a young Indian, 46 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary who, soon after his baptism, had' gone upon a long hunt, how he had managed when temptation assailed him. " Ah," he replied, " I was often tempted to sin ; but then I took my beads in my hand, and said, ' Have pity on me, Jesus, Thou who determinest all ; chase away the evil spirit, and have mercy upon me ;' and then the temptation would depart." Another, an old man, gave himseK up entirely to the instruction of his brethren. They used to see him with Victor, an ancient Algonquin, a man of faith and love, but of decayed memory, reciting the beads thrice over at one visit. Many of the good souls, even in their long and exciting hunts, never once omitted to say the five decades daily; and some, taken prisoners and doomed to die with the martyr Jogues, when the beads were taken from them by the cruel Iroquois, said the prayers upon their fingers ; and when these were cut off, joint by joint, they said them on the bleeding stumps — a Rosary indeed. Where such faith, such devotion were, it was not possible for our gentle Queen and Mother to leave unanswered the fervent prayers of her children. One instance out of many. A young lieutenant, coming too late to say the Ro- sary with the rest, walked out into the bordering woods to pray apart. And there, while kneeling, the sentinel took him for a lurking Iroquois, for it was in time of war, and firing at him from the distance of ten paces, shot him in the head, a finger's breadth above the temple. But Our Lady preserved him ; he fell, but rose again, with his beads still in his hands ; the ball IN North Aivierica. 47 was extracted from the skull, and Lie felt no very evil effects from the wound. Nay, where the famous church of St. Anne overlooks the broad St. Lawrence, our dear Lord manifested His love for His blessed Mother by daily miracles accorded to her intercession ; and to-day, the rough boatman of those regions will teU you countless instances of mercy sought and won by prayer to Mary, his patroness and Queen. Soj then, amid such trials and such consolations, in faith, hope, patience, and charity, did this devout ser- vant of Mary pass thirty years and more of holy life ; and when worn out at last, with the same sweet confi- dence and resignation, she crossed her pale hands upon her bosom, and gave up her soul to the Virgin, who presented it lovingly to her God and Son. Mother Mary of the Licamation ceased from her labors in the year of grace 1672. Father James Marquette. We have Breboeuf and Daniel, Jogues and Noue and Bressany, the Jesuits, the EecoUects, the Oblates, the ' Sulpicians to choose from, and we take Father James Marquette as the most American, so to say, inasmuch as he was the discoverer and explorer of the Missis- sippi, and as remarkably devout to Mary, having in childhood been consecrated to her, and in manhood as doing an for God through especial devotion to the Ln- maculate Conception. Of an ancient family of Laon, always famed for their 48 Devotion to the B. V. Maey valor in war and their sincerity in devotion, tliis glori- ous servant of Mary was born in the year 1637. Until the age of seventeen, his mother, Eose de la Salle, had educated him, inspiring him with that profound, ar- dent, tender, and unwavering devotion to Our Lady which was the mainspring of his hfe. When he had reached his seventeenth year she gave him up to God in the Society of Jesus. Twelve years from that dedi- cation he landed in Canada. Mother Mary of the In- carnation was one of those who welcomed him to the toils and self-sacrifice which his sacred ambition de- sired. New York was red with missionary blood, and he longed for that field of labor, but it was not to be his. First of all he must learn the languages, but these he soon mastered. Then he began his westward march, and first halted at the Saiflt Ste. Marie, where the Cross had been planted by Father Isaac Jogues twenty years before, but had fallen. It was for Mar- quette and Allouez to replant it, and to build the first Catholic church there, where now stands the cathedral of St. Mary, and the apostolic Bishop Baraga pre- sides. From this, further west to the Ottawa, was a mission almost hopeless, from the abandonment of that people to the worship of their own passions. But now the great dream of his Hfe began to rise in his heart, soon to take possession of it altogether. He had heard from straggling hunters, as from general rumor, that out to- wards the sunset a mighty river took its rise and rolled its floods, for measureless miles, through populous IN NoETH America. 49 pagan lands, to the far southern seas. Ah ! to dis- cover this — to launch himself on those swift tides with his cross, his beads, and his breviary ! not to win a name among the learned of the earth, the applause of science, the gratitude of trade, but to bear to those lost tribes the glad news of a Redeemer ; to people heaven with their ransomed souls ; to teach those pathless prairies and unhewn woods to re-echo the sweet names of Jesus and of Mary ! This, Father James Marquette felt, was to be, for the future, his ambition. So at once he began offering up perpetual devotions to the Immaculate Mother for the accompP shment of his yearning. Indeed, things seemed to work that way. He was sent south and westward to Mackinac, south and westward to Green Bay — southward, at last, to the Illinois. Everywhere he heard more and plainer tidings of the great river, and he redoubled his devotions. Then Mary heard and granted his prayers. Joliet arrived, sent by the Count de Frontenac, then governor of Canada, and bringing with him, from Marquette's superiors, the long wished-for permission. And note the day of Jo- liet's arrival : it is the 8th of December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary ! The heart of the missionary burned within him, for it took months to prepare the expedition ; but at last it was ready, at the mission of St. Ignatius, the cross of which, on the Isle of Mackinac, was seen over the wide straits and from the two inland seas of Huron and of Michigan ; and in the middle of May, the month 50 Deyotion to the B. Y. Mabt of Mary, tliey pushed out their bark canoes upon the deep blue lake. They took all possible precautions, made all prudent preparations, but " above all," says Marquette, " I placed our voyage under the protection of the Blessed Yirgin Immaculate, and promised her that if she obtained us the grace of discovering the great river, I would give it the name of Conception, as I would do to the first mission I should establish among those new nations." ' The story of this discovery cannot be repeated here ; it is the common property of historian and geographer. We have only to show the voyage of devotion to the Mother of God, and what advances that made into the wild interior of North America. The missionary, start- ing inward from the shores of Green Bay, had pene- trated west and south, through many adventures, leav- ing here and there some hint of the Gospel, which he hoped one day to preach to all these nations, and reaching at length a stream, wide, and swift, and deep, which they told him would bear him to the great river. Before embarking on its bosom, they began a new de- votion to the Blessed Virgin Immaculate, which they practised every day, and "by especial prayers we placed," he says, " under her protection the success of our voyage and ourselves." ** Then, for a hundred and 1 Sourtout je mis nostre voyage soubs la protection de la Ste. Vierge Immaculee, luy promettant, que si elle nous faisoit la grace de decou- vrir la grande riviere je luy donnerois le nom de la Conception. — Recit des Voyages et des Descouvertes de P. Jacques Marquette, cap. ii. ' Recit des Voyages, cap iii. IN NoETH America*. 51 twenty miles, they float down the Wisconsin, through the State of that name, to its mouth and the object of their wishes. Then out upon the broad breast of the Father of Waters, and down its stream past Iowa, , Missouri, Hhnois, noting every object, the nature of the trees, the varying width of water, the animals, es- pecially the "wild cattle," and the panthers which came in sight/ The Illinois seem to have been a mild, dignified, and hospitable race, receiving Marquette in their villages, showing him their customs, and listening with respect to the new doctrines which he uttered. They urged him to stay with them, and when he refused for the time, gave him provisions for his journey and a calu- met for his defence. Then down the river again as far as the mouth of the Arkansas. Just above this they had been attacked by a party of hostile Indians, ap- parently not natives of the neighborhood — perhaps Tuscaroras or Iroquois. They were armed with bows, arrows, axes, war-clubs, and bucklers, and prepared to attack the missionary both by land and water, some embarking in canoes, a part to ascend, others to de- scend the river, so as to surround their prey. The current drew the canoe to the shore, and the young men sprang in to seize it ; but not getting near enough for that, they returned to the shore, and seizing their bows and arrows, prepared to pierce the servant of God. Death seemed inevitable. "But," says the * Marquette gives the name of pisikiou to the American bison 62 Devotion to the B. V. Mary faithful Marquette, " we had recourse to our patroness and guide, the Holy Virgin Immaculate, and we had great need of her assistance, for the savages were urg- ing each other to the slaughter by fierce and continual cries." ^ But God suddenly touched the hearts of the old men, the youth were checked, and for that time the missionary was spared. They had now reached a land where the inhabitants "never see snow, and know the winter only by the rain which falls oftener than in summer ;" that is, they were in Arkansas. And now the problem of the great river was solved; and they knew how that, coming from the cold lakes of the north, it watered so vast an extent of country, to empty at last in the Gulf of Mexico. For they had heard already, by the New York missionaries, how bands of wandering Iroquois had warred against the Ontongannha, who Kved on the banks of a beautiful river (Ohio) which leads to the great lake, as they called the sea, where they traded with Europeans " who pray to God as we do, and have rosaries, and bells, to call men to prayers." " Of these and other such accounts, Marquette gained full confirmation from the Arkansas tribes; and so, having navigated its waters for a distance of eight de- grees, and pubUshed the Gospel as well as he could^ to the nations he had met, and learning that all the tribes below were in perpetual war and furnished with fire- ' Recit, cap. viii. ' Shea's Discovery and Exploration of tlie Mississippi, pref., p. xxiii, ' Recit, cap. ix. IN North Ameeica. 63 arms, lie turned the prow of his canoe and began to ascend the river. Entering the Illinois Kiver, he passed a town of the Kaskaskias; another, higher up, of the Peorias, and was compelled to promise both to return and instruct them. Three days he preached the faith in all their cabins, baptized a dying child, and so, after a voyage of two thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven miles, on foot or in birch canoe, he reached the mission of Green Bay. It was here, under the roof dedicated to his beloved mission-model, St. Francis Xavier, that Marquette spent, the summer of 1674, trying to recover from the .chronic dysentery which his labors and fatigues had brought upon him ; and it was here that the eagerly sought orders found him to go to the Illinois. In the month of November he set out, and was well enough upon the lake ; but, with' the severe cold upon the land, his disease attacked him with redoubled vigi- lance. Still he pushed on ; for had he not his work tc do ? But when he reached the banks of the Illinois, and found that river frozen, he was prostrated. And there he lay, so ill that even on his well-loved patronal feast, of the Immaculate Conception (Dec. 8), he could , not offer the Holy Sacrifice. There he must winter, that dying servant of Mary, in a haK-open wigwam, exposed to the fierce northern blasts, dependent for his food upon the guns of his two poor French com- panions. The Illinois heard of him, but only send to him for 54: Devotion to the B. V. Mary powder and for goods. "I have come," lie answers, ** to instruct you, to speak to you of prayer, to stop your wars with the Miamis, and to spread peace throughout the land. Powder have I none."^ How much does he murmur? "The Blessed Immaculate Virgin" — these are his words in his last journal—" has taken such care of us in our wandering, that we have never wanted food ; we live quite comfortably."'^ This is the " History of the Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary in North America," this spirit in her servants. What worldly motive-power is going to resist or over- come this? See that lone, feeble missionary, that child of an antique race of sunny France, in the poor bark hut of the savage, in the dead of the northern winter, lying prostrate there, yet performing the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, confessing and com- municating his two comrades twice a week, fasting on Fridays and Saturdays, and saying, and believing, in his deep, saintly humility, that he "lives quite com- fortably !" ^ That, we say, is the History of the Devo- tion to Saint Mary ; stop that, if you can, by a sneer, a treatise, or a mob ! Meantime, the flesh of humanity has its laws, and under these the missionary is doomed to death. Far ' Marquette's unfinished journal-letter to Father Dablon, superior of the missions, December 26. ^ Journal, December 30. ' The last words in his journal are a gentle jest at the fatigues of the French traders — ^he forgets his own: "Si les Francois ont des robbes de ce pays icy, ils ne les desrobbent pas, tant les fatigues sont, grands pour les en tirer." April 6. IN North America. 65 south lies the desired mission ; here, where he is lying, stretch the desolate snows and howls the wild boreal wind. He sinks daily, hourly ; his comrades are be- ginning to consider where, beneath the frosts, they shall scoop out his solitary grave. But he says, " Not yet. Let me see my mission first, and then die. To prayer, friends!" Never has that dear Lady Mother of his failed him yet ; nor, such is his confidence, will she do so now. They make a novena to the Immacu- late Mother of God, to Mary conceived without sin. His companions have but little faith — he much. And the prayer of nine days is past, and Marquette rises from the couch of death recovered. On the 29th of March, in the Octave of the Annun- ciation of the Blessed Virgin, he is able, still very feeble, to start. The ice is broken up and is floating down the river. On the 8th of April he reaches the long-aesired village of the Kaskaskias. Here he assembled foj several days the ancients of the tribe, then visited the separate wigwams, which were crowded to hear him. On Thursday, in Holy Week, he spake to all in public. It was a large town, five hundred fires burned there daily, and his audience was vast. His church was a prairie knoU. On four sides of him were planted his banners, large pictures of the Blessed Virgin, attached to strips of India taffety. Five hun- dred chiefs and ancients formed the first circle, nearest to the Father ; fifteen hundred young warriors gathered behind them ; the women and the children formed the outer ring. 56 Devotion to the B. V. Mary Thus lie preached to them the doctrine of Christ crucified ; the Gospel of God's Son made Mary's Son for them. He offered up the awful sacrifice of the Mass for their conversion. On Easter Sunday he cele- brated the same dread mysteries again, and claimed that land as a possession for the Most High God, and gave that mission the name of the Immaculate Con- ception of St. Mary. The good Indians received his message with joy; his mission was securely founded, and his work was done. He could not labor there, but must go and get other Fathers to replace him. For thirty miles on his way the new converts attend him, contesting who shall carry something belonging to him. Then he reaches Lake Michigan, poor Jacques and Frangois despairing almost of getting him further ; for he lies helpless in their arms now, or wherever they lay him down — - gentle, but feeble as a little child. He smiles, and speaks sweet, calm encouragement to these two, or lies quiet, murmuring from time to time, " I know that my Eedeemer liveth," or " Mary, mother of grace and Mother of God, remember me!" He directs every thing to be prepared for his death, blessing holy water for his agony and burial, instructing his companions, reading his breviary until the film of approaching dis- solution gathers on his eyes. He had always entreated his dear Mother that he might die on Saturday, the day of the office of the Immaculate Conception. Well, Saturday had come, and he bade them paddle to the shore to a knoll, at IN NoETH America. 67 the foot of which a little river ran into the lake.' They laid him, like St. Francis Xavier, upon the shore, and stretched some birch-bark upon poles above him. There he gave them the last directions, thanked them for their love, begged their pardon for the trouble he had given, heard their confessions, and bade them take some repose. When they returned, he had en- tered the valley of the shadow of death ; but he told one of them to take his crucifix and hold it up where his eyes might rest upon it. Looking on this, he uttered his profession of faith, and thanked the Triune Majesty for the grace of dying a missionary of Jesus, alone, and in tlie land of savages. Then, now and again, they heard him say, Sustinuit anima mea in verba ejus, and Mater Dei, memento mei. Then, as he seemed to be passing away, they called aloud, as he had told them, the names of Jesus and of Mary, and at the sound he raised his eyes above the crucifix ; he saw some object which they could not see, for his eyes filled with the light of ineffable joy ; a look of intensest delight made his whole face radiant; he cried out, Jesus and Mary ! and fell asleep. Surely we have no need of words to connect this man's life with devotion to the Mother of God, or of the part he took in establishing it in America. Let us content ourselves with citing the words of one of his editors and biographers '^ " We could say much of his ' The river and the bay into which it falls, in Colton's Atlas, are called Marquette. ^ John G. Shea : Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi, p. 64 3* 58 Devotion to the B. V. Maey rare virtues, of his missionary zeal, of his childlike candor, of his angelic purity, and his continual union with God. But his predominant virtue was a most rare and singular devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and especially in the mystery of the Immaculate Concep- tion. It was a pleasure to hear him preach or speak on this subject. Every conversation and letter of his contained something about the Blessed Virgin Im- maculate, as he always styled her. From the age of nine, he fasted every Saturday, and from his most tender youth began to recite daily the little office of the Conception, and inspired all to adopt this devotion. For some months before his death, he daily recited, with his two men, a little chaplet of the Immaculate Conception which he had arranged in this form : after the Creed, they said one * Our Father, and Hail Mary. ;' then, four times, these words : ' Hail, daughter of God the Father ! hail. Mother of God the Son! hail. Spouse of the Holy Ghost ! hail. Temple of the whole Trinity ! By thy holy virginity and immaculate conception, O most pure Virgin, cleanse my flesh and my heart. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;' and, last of all, the * Glory be to the Father,' the whole thrice repeated. " So tender a devotion to the Mother of God de- ' served some singular grace, and she accordingly granted him the favor he had always asked — ^to die upon a Saturday; and his two companions had no doubt that she appeared to him at the hour of his death, when, after pronouncing the names of Jesusp and IN North America. 69 Mary, lie suddenly raised his eyes above the crucifix, fixing them on an object which he regarded with such pleasure and joy that they lit up his yountenance ; and they, from that moment, beheyed that he had surren- dered his soul into the hands of his good Mother." His bones were laid m the Isle of Mackinac, where they were taken soon after ; his name is invoked by the boatmen when the lake is agitated by storms, and the Indians caU him the "Angel of the Ottawa Mission." 60 Devotion to the B. V. Mary CHAPTEE in. Advance of the Devotion— First Seventy-five Yeabs — Jesitits in Ca- nada—Our Lady of Angels— Olier and St. Sulpice — The City of Maby — Mademoiselle Manse and the Hospital Sisters. We have shown rather fully the spirit of those whom God, in His mercy to America, has charged with the diffusion of devotion to Mary. Nor did we choose them from any special preference for them rather than for others ; for the Hospital Sisters of Our Lady were in Canada before the Ursulines arrived, and there were gray-headed missionaries among the Indians before James Marquette had left his own sunny France. The spirit which, in the first chapter, we set forth as necessary, is conveniently exemplified in Mary of the Incarnation and the holy discoverer of the Mississippi ; but it is the same in all the servants. Urged by the love of souls, the children of St. Francis, known as Eecollects, as early as the year 1616, foUow the good Champlain. Of these three priests, two throw themselves at once into the difficult struggle, against sin and death, among the nomadic Algonquins of the Saguenay, the Ottawa, and the St. Lawrence, while the other pushes forward to the shores of Lake Huron, among the more settled Wyandots or Hurons. Three others are found about the same time in Maine ; but the new, young orders of Jesuits and Sulpicians, IN NoETH America. 61 full of fresh ardor and energy, came ti^on the field and claimed its dangers and its toils, in the names of Jesus and Mary. % The year 1625 is the first of'the establishment of the Jesuits, although they had labored in Nova Scotia and Maine from 1608 to the conquest of Acadia. Then the Due de Yentadour granted them lands around Quebec, under the title of the Seigneurie of our Lady of Angels. Their first house was built at St. Charles. Then for the Mission of St. Joseph, near Quebec, Brulart de Sil- lery furnishes foundation. He desires to estabhsh a spot where the wandering savages may be attracted and assembled, as the surest mode of their conversion. He hopes, in the deed of foundation, that all his plans " win happily succeed by the merits and powerful help of the most holy Virgin, Mother of God ; and wishes, by the deed, also to testify the gratitude which he feels for the wondrous favors received from that Mother of Mercy." So he dedicates the foundation "to the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity, — of the Father, who chose the Virgin to give a second life unto His Son ; of the Son, who accepted her as His Moth- er ; of the Holy Spirit, who operated in her the work of the adorable Incarnation ; and in honor of that same Virgin, who hath ever been Immaculate and without defect ; and in memory and thanksgiving of the mira- cles of holiness wrought in her, and in gratitude for the graces which he, the founder, has received from God by her intercession." So there he estabHshed a residence of Jesuits, on 62 Devotion to the B. V. Mary condition that the " Fathers shall say, or cause to be said there, forever, a Mass of the Blessed Yirgin, on every day permiMed by the nsage of the Church ; and on other days the Mass shall be celebrated with the same intention of honoring the Mother of God, so as to thank her more worthily, and to invoke her more efficaciously by this foundation, placing her Son Jesus Christ anew in her hands, and heartily beseeching her to offer Him, herself, in daily sacrifice to God for the whole Church, and in express memory of that admira- ble offering which the same Mother made of her Son at the moment of the Incarnation, and afterwards in the. Temple, to satisfy the apparent obligation of the law, and finally at the Cross, on the mountain of Cal- vary."^ Thus founded at Quebec, the members of the Com- pany of Jesus radiated throughout all New France, carrying the light and warmth of salvation to every part of its territory. Checked for awhile by the suc- cess of the British arms, it was only to commence again with renewed fervor. By 1633 no less than fif- teen priests of their order were at work in Canada, " and every tradition bears testimony to their worth. Away from the amenities of life, away from the oppor- tunities of vain-glory, they became dead to the world, and possessed their souls in unutterable peace. The few who lived to grow old, though bowed by the toils * Fondation faite par le Commandeur de Sillery pour le Residence de St. Joseph, pres de Quebec, from Father Bressani's Relation abre- gee, redigee par R. P. Martin, Montreal, 1852. IN ISToRTH Amekica. * 63 of a long mission, still kindled with the fervor of apos- tolic zeal. The history of their labors is connected with the origin of every celebrated town in the annals of French America ; not a cape was turned, nor a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." ' They followed the shores of the lakes to the Bay of Saguenay, and* pierced into the heart of the Huron for- ests. St. Mary's rose upon the Niagara Eiver. The Marquis de Gamache gave him^lf to the Society, and endowed with his ample fortune the first college at Quebec. From 1641 to 1644 the remoter Huron mis- sionaries received no supplies; their clothes fell to pieces; they had scarce bread enough for the Holy Mysteries; they themselves crushed the necessary wine from the wild grape that sprang in the woodlands. And yet, before 1647, forty-two members of the order had visited and labored in these lonely wilds, counting their Hves as nothing, if only they could win souls for the kingdom of Christ. Before 1690, thirteen had baptized the pagan land with their blood. Others had fallen victims to starva- tion or exposure. Father Anne de Noue, after years of terrible toil, died, frozen stiff and cold by the wild February blasts, upon the banks of the St. Lawrence. They found him kn^eeling upright, with crucifix clasped to his breast, and calm eyes open and fixed on heaven, on the Feast of the Purification of her whom he loved and served so * Bancroft's History of the United States, iii. 132. 64 Devotion to the B. V. Maky well (1646). diaries Garnier, pierced by three Iro- quois musket-balls, prepared to die, when lie saw a Christian Indian expiring. The sight awakened all the priest within him ; he staggered to his feet onlj to fall again. But though he could not rise, he could and did drag himself along the blood-stained ground, and, as he gave the last absolution, a tomahawk clove his skull, and he died on the eve of the Immaculate Con- ception, which gracioilfe mystery he had early bound himself by a vow to defend, even unto death (1649). Anthony Daniel fell at the Iroquois sacking of St. Joseph's, in 1648. The braves were all absent at the chase. There were none at home but the old priest, the women, and the children, when the savages burst through the paHsades. Swift he rushes to the wig- wams to baptize the sick ; a crowd of others demand that Sacrament ; he has no time for even shortest cere- monies ; he dips his handkerchief in water, and bap- tizes them by aspersion. Then he gave general abso- lution to all who sought it, and, entering the chapel, he vested and stood prepared to meet his death. " The wigwams are set on fire ; the Mohawks approach the chapel, and the consecrated envoy serenely advances to meet them. Astonishment seized the barbarians. At length, drawing near, they discharged at him a flight of arrows. All gashed and rent by wounds, he still continued to speak to them with surprising energy — now inspiring fear of the Divine anger, and again, in gentle tones, breathing the affectionate messages of mercy and grace. Such were his actions until he re- IN NoETH Amebica. 65 ceived a death-blow from a halbert. The victim of the heroism of charity died, the name of Jesus on his lips. The wilderness gave him a grave ; the Huron nation were his mourners." ^ It was in the Octave of the Visi- tation of Mary Mother of God. NoeJ Chabanel receives his death-blow upon the banks of a stream near St. Mary's, from the axe of an apostate Huron, on the 8th of December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.^ Kene Goapil, so livid and mashed with club bruises that his features were undistinguishable, had his thumbs cut off while repeat- ing " Jesus, Mary, Joseph." Tied to the ground upon his back, at night the savage boys poured coals upon his breast until the flesh was charred. Six days tormented thus, he and his companion. Father Jogues, too weak to escape, were left at Uberty. But one day, when they had retired apart to pray, two young men followed and ordered them back. "Dear brother," said the Father, " let us recommend ourselves to our Lord and to our good Mother the Blessed Virgin, for these men have some evil design." They walked back, telling the beads of their rosary. They had said four decades, when a tomahawk crashed into the brain of Eene, and he died, uttering the name of Jesus.^ Bressani (1644), captured by the Iroquois, marched chained in their procession, whereof the banner was the head of a Huron Catholic, whose heart he saw torn * Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. iii. 139. * Marie de I'lncamation, p. 148. ' Shea's Narrative of the Captivity of Jogues. £ 66 Devotion to the B. V. Maey from the body to be eaten in bravado — marclied fear- lessly in that dread procession, for " I was filled," he says, " with confidence in the intercession of the Holy Virgin." Six days they advanced through the forest, he being compelled to act as their slave, fetching the wood and water for the night encampments, cooking for his savage captors, and repaid by blows. He slept, tied to a tree, uncovered, in the night air of the early northern April. Arrived at the village, they prepared him for running the gauntlet, by splitting his hand up between the riag and little fingers, and then beat him as he moved between their barbarous lines. They forced him then to dance and sing for hours ; they ran splinters into his flesh, and burned him with brands ; they covered sharp points with hot ashes, and com- pelled him to walk thereon; they tore out all the nails of his fingers with pincers or with savage teeth. One night they would tear out a nail, the next cut off or burn off a joint ; and all this, and more than this, lasted for a month. His wounds swarmed with worms ; he " said unto rottenness. Thou art my father ; unto worms. Ye are my mother and my sisters." ^ Finally the sentence was passed, that what life lin- gered in him it should be burned out at the stake ; and then he says : " I prepared my soul and commended myself unto the Mother of Mercy, who is in truth the Mother most amiable, most admirable, most powerful, most clement, and the consoler of the afflicted. She, J Putredini dixi : Pater mens es ; mater mea et soror mea vermi- bus. — Job xvii. 14. IN North America. 67 after God, was the only refuge of me, a poor sinner, abandoned by all creatures in a strange land." ' Then they reversed the death sentence. "For such," he says again, " was the will of God and of the Virgin Mother. To her I owe not my life only, but the strength "to support my pain." It was the Hollanders of New York who saved him at length, purchasing him from the barbarians for some forty dollars, and he says : " I sang my coming out of Egypt^ on the 19th of August in the Octave of the Assumption of the Virgin, whom I consider the bestower of my freedom." Well, this at least was enough for one man; he surely left his mission. On the contrary, the same year saw him on his way to the Hurons. Four times he made that voyage, and thrice he fell into the same bloody hands, and was covered anew with wounds, yet God and Our Lady deHvered him out of all. What wonder that those mutilated hands can record among the reverers of Blessed Mary, as the fruits of thirteen years, twelve thousand Indians ! There was yet another of these Jesuits, the last W9 shall cite here, who came in 1625, and won the crimson crown of martyrdom in 1633. When he came to the Hurons, he found not a single Christian ; when he left them for the eternal glory, they numbered eight thou- sand. It was the noble Jean de Breboeuf — the heroic, impassioned servant of Mary. It was he who " once Bressani, Relation, pp. 116-139. " In exitu Israel de ^gypto, domus Jacob de populo barbaro Ps. 113. 68 Devotion to the B. V. Mary imparadised in a trance, beheld the Mother of Him whose cross he bore, surrounded by a crowd of virgins, in the beatitudes of heaven." ^ This was his vow : " What shall I render to Thee, O. my Lord Jesus, for all that I have received from Thee ? I will accept Thy chalice ; I will call upon Thy name. And now I vow, in presence of Thine Eternal Father, and of the Holy Ghost, in presence of Thy most holy Mother ; before the angels, the apostles, and the mar- tyrs, my sainted fathers, Ignatius and Francis Xavier, that if, in Thy mercy. Thou shalt ever offer unto me. Thy unworthy servant, the grace of martyrdom, I will not refuse it. So that if any occasion to die for Thee occur, I promise not to shun it (unless Thy greater glory so demand), and even to receive the mortal blow with joy. Now, from this hour, I offer unto Thee, with all my will, O Thou my Jesus, my body, my blood, my soul, so that, by Thy permission, I may die for Thee who hast deigned to die for me. So let me live that I may merit such a death! So, Lord, will I accept Thy chalice and invoke Thy name, O Jesus, Jesus, Jesus !"^ St. Louis, St. Mary's, and Conception were attacked by a thousand L:oquois in the winter of 1649. Among the prisoners taken was John de Breboeuf, who, when he saw the stake destined for his torture, kissed it with respect. So earnestly he exhorted his compan- ions to be firm, that the brutal savages cut off his lips * Bancroft's History of the United States, iii. 134. ' Relation de Bressani, p. 360. IN NoETH Ameeica. 69 and tongue. Continuing still his exhortation by signs, they gave him the first preference in the torture. " Thou wert wont," they said to him, " to tell others that the more they suffered here, the greater would be their recompense in the new Kfe. Now thank us, for we only brighten thy crown." Then, having made a necklace of red-hot hatchet-heads, they hang it about his neck. In mockery of baptism, they poured boiling water upon his head. They pierced his hands and breast with red-hot irons ; they tore his flesh away in strips; they cut his scalp into the semblance of a crown, then tore it from his head. He was a strong man, using to say of himself, " I am only an ox (hceuf), fit for labor;" yet he died in three hours — ^while his comrade, Gabriel Lallemant, young, delicate, and frail, lived seventeen. Yet his first torture was, to be stripped, enveloped from head to foot in bark, satu- rated with rosin, and set on fire.^ But we must turn elsewhere and look for other " Marians," as the pagan savages called them, saying only with the historian of the missions :" " Fain would we pause to follow each in his labors, his trials, and his toils ; recount their dangers from the heathen Huron, the skulking Iroquois, the frozen river, hunger, cold, and accident; to show Garnier wrestling with the floating ice, through which he sunk, on an errand of mercy ; Chabanel struggling on for years in a mis- » Bancroft: History of the United States, iii. 140. " Shea : Etistory of Catholic Missions, p. 183. 70 Devotion to the B. V. Maey sion from whicli every fibre of his frame shrank with loathing; Chaumonot compiling his Indian grammar on the frozen earth ; or the heroic Breboenf, paralyzed by a fall, with his collar-bone broken, creeping on his hands and feet along the frozen road, and sleeping, unsheltered, on the snow, when the very trees were spHtting with cold." But we must turn to other devout children, whose filial love has taught this country affection and devo- tion to the Mother of Divine Grace. In the great world of Paris, the Blessed Virgin Mary had few clients more sincerely devoted to her than the secre- tary of the king, Henry the Fourth — Jacques OKer de Vemeuil, the trusted minister of his sovereign, the friend of Saint Francis of Sales. His wife, Mary Dobe, Lady of Ivoi, was worthy of the respect which this holy bishop bore her, of her husband, and of her son. To them, among other children, God gave a boy who, from his earher years, belonged to Mary — Jean Olier de Vemeuil, founder of Montreal. Even in child- hood, whatever recalled the holy Virgin, or had any reference to her, caused joy or gratitude in him. He was glad to have been born of a mother named Mary, in a street called Our Lady of Silver.^ In his studies, he counted more upon the assistance of the Throne of Wisdom (Sedes SapienticeJ than on his own abilities, though these were naturally very » Notre-dame-d' Argent — a name given to the street called Roi de Sidle, because of a silver statue placed at its corner by Francis I,, in expiation of some sacrilege committed tbere. IN North America. 71 great. He says himseK that he could learn nothing without " Hail, Mary !" and others have recorded that the devotion with which he used to repeat this angelic prayer moved them to tears. He undertook nothing, indeed, without first going to that dear Lady and ask- ing her to command him to do it, as a mother her son. When clad anew, when the new hat or coat was given him, he never felt at ease until he had gone to dedi- cate them, and himseK in them, to the Blessed Virgin, and to implore her for the grace, never, so long as he should wear them, to offend her Son. "I have thought," he said, in later life, " sometimes, that this practice might be a feebleness or a folly. But, when I omitted it, my clothes were sure to come to speedy ruin the first day or the next. So I took these acci- dents as a visible punishment, sent to correct my fault, or to warn me not to fall into it again."* Grown up, he entered the gay world at Paris, as his birth and rank seemed for the time to require of him ; and even there his patroness preserved him from its evil. He conceived an ambition to be profoundly learned, and set out to Eome to gratify it. But ati affection of the eyes threatened him with total loss of sight; so, instead of staying at Eome to study, he went to Loretto to pray ; and there Saint Mary healed him, and showed him also that he was to be her faith- ful and devoted servant. In 1633, accordingly, he re- ceived the holy order of the priesthood, and, after 1 Vie de M. Olier. Paris, 1844, p. 5. 72 Devotion to the B. V. Maey three montlis' spiritual retreat, said his first Mass in the church of our Lady of Mount Carmel. To her his devotion increased daily. Convinced that to her, after God, he owed all the graces he had received, he chose her for his august Lady and Queen; he held all his possessions as a grant from her; used them only in her name ; made a vow of perpetual servitude to her ; and, with the antique symboHsm of his day, wore round his neck a silver chain to .show that he was bondman to the Queen of Heaven. From that day he never refused, when in his power, to give whatever was demanded in the name of Mary. He made no journey without first going to the church of Notre Dame to ask his Blessed Mother's benediction. When struck with apoplexy, his reason shaken, his sight and hearing gone, only two sounds seemed to reach his sense — the names of Jesus and of Mary. At the first, a bright smile gave intelligence to his half -dead face; at the second, his paralyzed lips murmured "Mother." When the idea of the grand Seminary of St. Sulpice' was in his mind, he went as usual to Notre Dame, and there our Lady showed him visibly the plan for the proposed edifice. Then he commenced that sacred work, and the comer-stone was laid in the Octave of the Virgin's nativity. The works went on until the winter interrupted them. They ceased on the Immaculate Conception; they were recommenced in the Octave of the Purification. He sang the Mass de Beata, with the keys in his bosom, offering them to Our Lady as the owner of the IN North America. 73 house. " For herein," lie says, " I trust that the holy name of Mary will be blessed forever. All my desire is to imprint it deeply on the hearts of our brethren ; for Mary is our counsellor and president, our treasurer, our princess, our queen, and our aU." In the court, facing the portal, he placed a grand statue of the Virgin, seated, and holding the infant Jesus in her arms. He refused to be called the founder of the house. " Fundavit earn AUissirmis" he said; "it is Jesus in Mary who is our founder ;" and he caused the monogram of Mary to be engraved on the silver, wrought in the iron-work, marked upon the linen, for the house was hers. Olier furnishes the idea, and»Le Brun paints the ceiling. It is the coronation of Mary Queen of Heaven by the hands of the Father Eternal ; while below, the Church militant, represented by the Council of Ephe- sus, hail her with cries of exultation, and proclaim her title, de fide, of Mother of God.^ Two other pictures from the same hand adorned the chapel — Mary, the channel of God's grace, and the Yisitation. In that house the first devotion was to the interior life of Jesus ; the second was to Mary. And all this love and devotion to the Queen of Saints was, by Father OHer's means, sent to consecrate the swift waters and im- memorial forest-lands of North America. Before treat- ing this point, we cannot leave the holy founder of St. Sulpice without mentioning his death. His last years » Vie de M. OHer, p. 281. 4 74: Devotion to the B. V. Mary were united to the Passion of his beloved Lord by a complication of disorders, especially the agonizing one of gravel. In its acutest attacks, when the soul was almost driven out of him by physical anguish, he uttered no complaints, but lay still, gently smiling, offering his pain to Jesus crucified, and murmuring, "OLove! OLove!" He rendqj^ed up his soul into the hands of Christ and his dear Mother on Holy Saturday, March 26, 1657. It was in 1636 that the Company of Montreal was founded "for the conversion of the savages and the maintenance of the CathoKc religion in Canada." Five priests, a cardinal (Eichelieu), a duchess, two dukes, twelve other nobles, and a simple Sister of Charity, formed the association; and, for four years, they labored faithfully to bring their scheme into suc- cessful operation. Their plan was this: To build, upon the Isle of Montreal, a town which should be at once a home for the missions, a defence against the savages, a centre of commerce for the neighboring people, which should be consecrated to the most holy Virgin, and be called YiUe-Marie. So, when all was ready, on the morrow of the Feast of Our Lady's Purification, .the associates assembled in the cathedral church of Notre Dame. M. Olier offered up the perfect Sacrifice at the Virgin's altar, whereat all the laics communed, while those of the Company who were priests said Mass at other altars with the same intention, "fervently imploring the Queen of IN North America* 75 Angels to bless their enterprise, and to take the Isle of Montreal under lier holy and most especial pro- tection."^ The collection after this ceremony was two hundred thousand francs. The commandant was Paul de Chaumeday, lord of Maisonneuve, a warrior who, for twenty years, had served his king with honor, the Blessed Yirgin with devotion, having made for her sake a vow of perpetual chastity, never omitting, for any excuse, the recitation of the chaplet, and the little office. Under him, then, they start at length from Rochelle, cross safely, winter at Quebec, and, on the 17th of Mary's own month of May, arrive at Montreal. They build a chapel of bark, erect an altar, and offer for the first time the Sacrifice of the Mass. On that day they reserved the Blessed Sacrament, and from that day it has always been reserved in Ville-Marie. "Henceforth," says the American historian, "the hearth of the sacred fires of the Wyandots was con- secrated to the Virgin." ' The colony does well, only it should not depend en- tirely upon France for clergy. The hospital sisters have settled here ; the Congregation of Our Lady is established expressly for the place ; there must be a seminary. The same devotion which built St. Sulpice for Mary in Paris, builds the new St. Sulpice three thousand miles away in the colony that bears her * Vie de Soeur Marguerite Bourgeoys. Ville-Marie, 1818, p. 31. « Bancroft, iii. 128. 76 Devotion to the B. V. Maky name. The motlier house furnishes priests — Messrs. de Quaylus, de Gallinet, Dallet, and Louart, to begin with. In 1663, the Company, whose only object was the conversion of the savages, resigns, into the hands of the Sulpicians, all seigneurial rights over the island, titles confirmed, a century later, by the British govern- ment, after the conquest of Canada. And thus it is that the Blessed Virgin Mary is still the sovereign lady of Montreal. These Sulpicians also have their crimson records — their dealings with the fierce and wily Iroquois. Two only, for the present, will we mention. When M. Olier first proposed this mission to his ecclesiastics, all eagerly ofiered themselves : none were more zealous than Father Le Maitre. " Send me," he said ; " I will promise earnest labor ; I will go to the Indians, even in their own country." "You will not have the trouble," answered the servant of God; "they will come to look for you, and will so surround you that you shall not escape from their hands." Two years after the death of M. Olier, Father Le Maitre, then in Canada, was surrounded and beheaded by the Iro-* quois, on the Feast of the Decollation of Saint John the Baptist. Father Yignal followed him to heaven by the same painful path. On the scant records that we have been able to procure, we read the names of twenty-five seminary priests in less than forty years — Salagnac de Fenelon, on the north Ontario shores; among the Iroquois, de Belmont in the Indian school of the Mountain; IN North America. 77 Buisson de St. Come, going far soutli to the Natchez. The children of Ignatius and Xavier were the adven- turers and pioneers ; for them earth had no resting- place, death no terrors ; their time of labor and its field were while and wherever their lips could proclaim the name of Jesus ; their rest was only in Patria. The ecclesiastics of Jean-Jacques Olier were a settled colony to educate, civilize, train, and keep the con- verted. The Jesuit furnished the element of conquest ; the Sulpician that of conservatism. Side by side with the Jesuit of Quebec labored the patient hospital sisters, founded by the bounty of the Duchess d'Aiguillon, and the Ursulines of Mary of the Incarnation. So, at YiUe-Marie, we have other hos- pitalieres, endowed by another pious and noble lady, the Duchess de BuUion, and sister Marguerite Bour- geoys, and her " Congregation of Our Lady." It is most interesting to trace the manner in which Mary caUs and inspires her servants, so various, yet so effective are the means she uses. One has simply a restless feeling, searches repose everywhere, and finds it suddenly at the first purpose of self-consecration to Mary. Another is summoned in a moment, when thinking of nothing less than of the Blessed Virgin, by a voice, or an apparition, or an accident, as Father Louart, the second priest of Montreal, could have testified. He was destined for the world ; he was on the point of marrying, when on the Feast of the As- sumption of Our Lady, he strayed by chance into a church in Paris. The preacher was not weU prepared 78 Devotion to the B. V. Maey —did not get along well on tlie subject of the day, and went wandering about in bis discourse untU be found a more famibar topic. Tbis happened to be, tbe ne- cessity of being sure of your vocation before entering upon any state of Hfe. Whether he dealt more hap- pily with this subject than with the one he had left for it, we are not informed ; but he set the mind of the young Louart at work; the vocation for matrimony was found not to exist, and a few years after saw the fiance cure in Ville-Marie. Different illustrations are found in the cases of the two holy women who came first to the wild island in the St. Lawrence, there to represent the tender pity and care of Mary Pruden- tissimay Mary Salus Infirmorum. A young lady of Langres, Mademoiselle Jeanne Manse, passing her life quietly among her friends in the ordinary routine of a pious girl's life, is suddenly struck with the idea of consecrating herseK to the ser- vice of the Blessed Mary in New France. What New France is she has no idea, or, at least, a very confused and indistinct one. It is a notion from some travel- ler's story, think her friends. Her confessor is con- sulted ; he has never heard of Montreal, and he treats his penitent as a visionary ; but, as she persists in her notions, he writes to Paris for information. The an- swers confirm the purpose of Mademoiselle Manse ; she goes to Paris, is introduced to the Duchess de BuUion, a great friend of the Montreal scheme ; the vocation is tried, ascertained, and followed. "I wiU go," she said; "give me, madame, a letter to the IN North America. 79 directors of the Company." The pious duchess gives her a note to M. de la Dauversiere, and a purse of twenty thousand liyres for expenses. She was warned that, in all probabilitj, the walls of Montreal must be cemented in blood ; that there were tribes of hostile savages who would oppose, perhaps destroy, the colony ; that she would be alone to care for the sick and wounded: but when these representations only increased her zeal and fervor, the good man blessed God, and bade her go in His name. And when he did that, he laid the foundation of that Hotel of God (Hotel Dku), or Hospital St. Joseph, where now some forty nuns and fifteen novices are consecrated to the service of Christ in His poor. They arrived in the middle of the month of Mary ; the land was assigned ; the gold of the good duchess was exchanged for wood and labor; a house and chapel rose up swiftly, and, on the 15th of August, 1642, it was opened to celebrate the Feast of the As- sumption of St. Mary the Virgin. As the colony grew, the number of its sick augmented also ; the house was found too small, the labor too great for any one per- son, however zealous. A new gift of sixty thousand livres, by Madame de Bullion, enlarged the edifice, and recruits from France brought help to Mademoi- selle Manse. It was de Maisonneuve, the command- ant of Yille-Marie, and the sworn servant of its Patroness, who went to look for hospitalieres. He found eager candidates for the mission among the sisters of St. Joseph, in la Fleche, from whom three 80 Devotion to the B. V. Maby were selected and sent to found their order' in Amer- ica. And now, what more have we to say of this ladj ? Her arm, broken by a fall, and badly treated, became hopelessly paralyzed. She was patient, but she was a burden to others ; so she resolved to seek reHef from God through her holy and gentle Mother Mary. Every one in Montreal had, of course, great veneration for M. Oher ; so, full of devotion and simple faith, she made a journey to France, and, at his tomb, she prayed for such a restoration only as might enable her to aid herseK, that she might be no longer a bur- den to others ; and her arm was made whole." She returned to her labors, and died in 1673. There is no more to tell. Hospital sisters have no stories. Their whole lives are beautiful praises to the gracious God, and are written only in His Book of Life on high. * They were still seculars. Pope Alexander the Seventh erected them into a religious order in 1666. ^ Vie de M. Olier, p. 394. IN NOETH AmEEIOA. 81 CHAPTEE IV. Marguebitb Boubgeoys and the Congeegation of Oue Lady. The hospital sister practices the virtues of Mary, and dies adventureless. But Mary's servants are of all kinds. There are adventures in the Kfe of Mar- guerite Bourgeoys — more than she sought, faithful, loving soul, as she was, but not more than God saw were necessary for her perfection. She did not look for roses, nor did she find them ; but her life is itself a rose, offered and accepted on Our Lady's altar. If the old style of writing in conceits were in vogue, her life is one that could almost be composed so that every third word should be " Mary." That word was in her mouth and in her heart, from the time her Kps first could frame it, until they laid her head, whitened by ninety winters, beneath the snows of Canada. She was bom in 1620, this Margarita, this pearl of the Queen of Virgins. She was called, in religion. Mar- guerite of the Holy Sacrament. She was the founder of that society known as Daughters of the Congrega- tion of Our Lady.' ^ It was in the city of Troyes, in Champagne, that Marguerite was born. Her parents, not notable for rank or wealth, were distinguished for something * Vie de M, Olier, p. 394. F 4* 82 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary better — earnestness in the practice of religion. This was the best heritage they bequeathed their daughter ; it was the only portion of their bequests that she re- tained. Her childhood was distinguished, quite early, by a certain grave piety, which was always character- istic of her in after-Hfe, and by zeal in the confraterni- ties and rosary societies to which she belonged. It was at a feast of our Blessed Lady that she first caught a glimpse of her vocation. It was the festival of the Kosary, and Marguerite had gone to join in the procession, which it is the custom of the Dominicans to make on this day. On this occasion. Anno 1640, so great was the throng of people, that the pomp was forced from its usual neighborhood into the larger streets, and passed before the grand cathedral church of Notre Dame. A statue of the Holy Mother of God adorned the grand portal, and Marguerite saw it, as she thought, at least, environed with lustre ; while the eyes, full of kindly intelligence, appeared to look wist- fully at her'. Imagination or reality. Marguerite re- ceived it as an invitation to consecrate herself to God, under the auspices of St. Mary. And, from that mo- ment, all the innocent little fineries of dress, in which, like other girls, she had hitherto indulged, were laid aside, and she thought only, henceforward, of how she might ^compHsh her self-dedication. At first she tried to gain admission into the convent of our Lady of Mount Carmel; but God had other work for her, and she was baffled in this attempt, although she persisted for years — although it became IN NoKTH America. 83 the strongest desire of her heart. There was another order of nuns whom she frequented in Troyes, those of Notre Dame, devoted to instruction, and they had under their supervision a number of young persons, united by an agreement, without vow, Kving each in her own family, and visiting and instructing those who could not attend the classes of the nuns. These were called the " outside Congregation of our Lady," and into it the members received our Marguerite with gratitude. This was her novitiate. Here she prac- tised aU those virtues of holy poverty and self-sacri- fice, charity and devotion, with which, afterwards, she made America illustrious. So, in the course of time, her saintly, mortified life won great grace for her. Her heart was always filled with fervor when she ap- proached the Holy Communion; nay, such was her devotion, that, our Lord vouchsafed to show himseK to her in the Blessed Sacrament as a little child incomparably beautiful. It was the Feast of Our Lady's Assumption, the chief festival of her congre- gation. Among the nuns of Notre Dame was a sister of that pious noble, the commandant of Ville-Marie. Another sister, equally devoted, Madame de Cuilly, remained in the world. Of course, both were interested in their brother's far-away colony in America ; they had pledged themselves to use every effort to procure for him some rehgious, for the instruction of the young people, and, for a long time, many of the nuns of Notre Dame hoped to be sent. They had given to 84 Devotion To the B. V. Maey M. de Maisonneuve a picture of the Blessed Virgin, whereon they had written, in testimony of their prom- ise and desire, these lines : " Holy Mother of our God, Virgin of loyal heart, Keep for ns, of thy royal mount [Montreal], a consecrated part." Naturally, then, the good sisters talked much about Canada, and Marguerite Bourgeoys listened. For, by this time, she had won the respect and love of the whole community, and had been offered admission to the Order ; but it was not her vocation — that, as far as she knew it yet, was to be a Carmehte. But de Maison- neuve, arriving in France to look for hospital sisters for Mademoiselle Manse, and soldiers for the defence of his colonists, went, as he ever did, to visit his sisters at Troyes. It was in the parlor of the convent at Notre Dame that Marguerite met him, and heard him talk of Ville-Marie. Then she knew at last where her vocation was. If she needed confirmation, she had seen the commandant in a dream some weeks before his arrival, and recognized him as soon as she saw him ; and when, in the absence of the bishop, she went to take counsel of the vicar-general, he told her, in so many words, that God required her in Canada. To know her vocation was to follow it. She was guardian of a younger brother and sister, and she arranged at once for their education. She had some property — she made it over to them and to the poor, and stood free in the world. She said, " I am ready ;" and then came the difficulties and temptations. The IN North Ameeica. 85 religious, refused for the present by de Maisonneuve, dissuaded her from going until they could go too. She desired to have with her a member of that " outside congregation," of which she had for some time been prefect, a young girl, whose honor she had saved ; but circumstances were inexorable: only one could be taken ; there was employment only for one. Mar- guerite must stay or go alone — alone, of her sex, in a ship filled with newly-recruited soldiers, and their commander, whom she had seen but once. Not an easy obstacle this to surmount. She has recourse to her confessor. " Go freely," he says ; " M. de Maisonneuve will be your guardian ; he is one of the noblest knights in the court of the Queen of Angels."* Still, nature and modest education are powerful ; Marguerite yet hesitates ; then the Blessed Virgin herself decides. One morning, while meditating ia her own chamber, a lady, beautiful, white-robed, surrounded with a halo of flashing yet tender light, appears before her, and says gently : " Go, Marguerite, to Canada ; I will not abandon thee." This settles the matter. Come now what may, she will be at Nantes for the embarkation by the Feast of the Visitation of St. Mary. Many a thing will come — temptations, re- monstrances, imputations which are the hardest for women to endure, but all useless. She quits Troyes, in the Octave of the Purification, for Paris. At Paris ' *' C'est un des premiers chevaliers de la chambre de la Reine des Anges." — Vie de Soeur Marguerite, p. 51. 86 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary she is generally laughed at ; her uncle there, not shar- ing in the hilarity, storms, argues, rebukes, forbids, brings tears abundantly and humble protestations of affection, but no change of purpose. The provincial of the Carmelites begs her to renounce this crazy ad- venture — offers to procure her reception in any Car- melite convent she prefers. Here, then, is the dearest wish of her heart realized at last, and it staggers her a little. She pays a visit to the nearest church, and comes back fixed. It is not to Our Lady of Mount Carmel that she belongs, but to Our Lady of Ville- Marie. Then she makes up her comforts for the voyage. These consist of a crucifix, a rosary, a book of devo- tions, and a change of linen. She takes this luggage in her hand, and she starts for the port of Nantes. Travelling alone, she is frequently insulted ; at Saumur and at Orleans she is contemptuously refused entrance at the hotels. One night she passes in a stable, the other in a church. She has a letter for a merchant at Nantes, whom, on her arrival, she meets in the street. He gives her the address of his house, and promises to follow thither shortly. A young man, going out with M. de Maisonneuve, insists upon carrying her little bundle, and they present themselves at the house of Monsieur le Coq. Madame, in person, opens the door ; madame appears to have been one of the " unco good." She looks at the poor young woman and the youth beside her, and shuts the door in their faces. Marguerite crosses over to the church of the Jacobins, m North Ameeica. 87 in time for the commencement of the Eosary proces- sion, joins in the ceremony, and then with renewed courage attempts the merchant's house again. This time she . is soundly rated for her impudence, and dismissed with ignominy. But, as she turns away patiently, M. le Coq himseK comes home, and the weary servant of Mary finds a shelter at last. She reposes for a day or two. By the Octave of the B. Y. M. of Mount Carmel, she is out at sea — not in a modern packet-ship, or luxurious, swift-puffing steamer, but in the lumbering little transport of two hundred years ago. In this vessel, sleepiag upon a pile of cordage, the nurse of the sick, the consoler of the distressed, making the night and morning prayer, the attendant upon a hundred soldiers and the crew, the heroic woman traversed the Atlantic. When she steadily refused to eat at his table, M. de Maisonneuve sent her food, filtered water and wine, tv^hich she re- ceived gratefully, and distributed among her patients. She ate the coarse fare of the ship ; she drank, from a little leathern cup, the ropy, unsavory water of the common cask, and drank but once a day — a habit she preserved through all her after-Ufe, from devotion to our dear Lord's bitter thirst upon the cross. In the practice of these virtues, after a journey of between three and four months, sister Marguerite arrived at Montreal about the Feast of Our Lady's Presentation, 1653, and then and there began the labors which knew no rest for nearly half a century. The town of Ville-Marie had few magnificences in 88 Devotion to the B. V. Makt that day. Within the stockade, some fifty houses ; outside the walls, twenty or thirty farms, and a half hundred of Indian wigwams — that was the city of Montreal. But, small though it were. Marguerite could find work enough in it. Scarcely any one of those habitations faile to received a daily visit; you saw her everywhere, if good were to be done there, nursing the sick, consoling the sorrowful, instructing the ignorant, washing the Knen and mending the clothes of the poor, as well as giving away to the needy what others thought the very necessaries of hie. M. le Coq had given her a bed, which she had never used on board the ship. There was a straw bed, a mattress, two coverlets, and a piUow. In less than a week, one after the other disappeared, and Marguerite slept upon the floor in the Canadian winter. In a word, she "became an eye unto the blind, and feet unto the lame. When the ear heard, then it blessed her ; when the eye saw, it gave witness to her, because she dehvered the poor that cried, the fatherless, and the helpless. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon her, and she caused the widow's heart to sing for joy." ' Above all, she found her greatest pleasure in in- structing young girls, both French and Indians, in the ' Oculus foi coeco et pes claudo. Auris audiens beatificabat me, et ocnlus videns, testimonimn reddebat mihi. Eo quod liberassem pauperem vociferantem et pupillum cui non esset adjutor. Bene- dictio perituri super me veniebat et cor viduae consolatus sum. — Job IN North America. 89 branches necessary for them, especially in the prin- ciples and practice of religion. " She inspired them," says one of her biographers, " with sentiments of love and devotion towards the angust Mother of God, to whom she was herseK particularly devoted. A worthy Goadjutrix of M. de Maisonneuve, while he was build- ing up a material city for Mary, she was establishing the spiritual empire of that Blessed Mother in the hearts of the faithful."^ For four years occupied in these labors, she ran from house to house, for as yet no building could be spared her for a school. But if the commandant could give her no building, he could and did give her land ; and on this, thinking first, as always, of St. Mary, she determined to build, not a school, but a chapel in her honor. Then she redoubled her energies, running about to every one in the town ; and so, one brought wood, and another stone ; a few, money; a greater number, their stout arms, willing hearts, and mechanical skill; and thus the chapel arose, just where now stands the church of Our Lady of Good Help (du Bon-secours), But the colony was growing large — ^a bishop had arrived, Mgr. de Laval de Montmorenci — and Mar- guerite felt that, if her work was to go forward, she must have help. Mademoiselle Manse was going to France to look for hospital sisters, and for relief for her use- 1 La Vie de la Venerable Soeur Marguerite Bourgeojs, dite du Saint Sacrament, Institutrice, Fondatrice et premiere Superieure des Filles Seculaires de la Congregation de Notre Dame. Ville-Marie, 1818. 90 Devotion to the B. V. Maey less arm. Marguerite theii cotJd wait upon lier, and so sanctify the voyage itseK; and, when arrived in France, could gather some devoted souls, and, if it were God's will, establish a congregation of Our Lady in Ville-Marie. They had a safe and pleasant passage ; they visited together M. Olier's tomb, and, together, rendered thanks to God for the mercy extended to Mademoiselle Manse. Alone, as she came, so she goes back to her native country, a simple woman, wiiiiout rank, wealth, or influence, to ask parents for their daughters, to go to an isle in a scarce explored river, three thousand miles away, surrounded by cruel and hostile savages, to instruct the children of poor colonists and Indians in the knowledge of the Gospel of God. Truly it required some confidence to make the request, and more to hope for a favorable re- sponse. But Marguerite knew to whom she looked, whom she loved in her heart, whom she trusted in, whom she had chosen.^ "I will come back in a year, and successful," she said, as she left Montreal, on the Octave of the Virgin's Nativity, 1658. No sooner had she arrived in Troyes, than three of her old companions presented themselves to her for the mission ; but the father of one of them, a notary, wanted a little information on the subject. " How did they live, for instance, in that wild country ?" " They had a stable," said Marguerite, " which M. de Maison- ' Regnum mundi et omnem ornatum sseculi contempsi propter amorem Domini mei Jesu Christi, quern vidi, quern amavi, in quern credidi, quern dilexi. — Com. non Virg. IN NOETH AmEKICA. 91 neuve had given them, and which only wanted some repairs to make a residence of it." The notary wished to know what inducements were ojffered to those who should inhabit this fine lodging ? " Troubles, humili- ations, and labors," answered Marguerite. " Was it proposed to support life exclusively upon these?" asked the notary. " Oh, no ; she would insure them bread and soup, and, with the blessing of God, that was enough." The tears arose in the old man's eyes. " You shall have my daughter," he said, " provided you accept a dowry with her." Marguerite thanked him, in Our Lady's name, for the former, but refused money upon any conditions. At length, with five re- cruits, she returns to America and her stable in Isle Mont-Koyal. " It was a stone building, this stable," she tells us, " about twenty-five feet square, and had long been a retreat for animals of every sort. But I had a chimney built, and got it cleaned; so that we could lodge there the children whom the Indians gave us, as well as hold our schools. As for us, there was a sort of dove-cot, or garret, above, where, until now, pigeons had been bred, and of this I made our dormitory and com- munity-room, although it was rather inconvenient of' approach, the only access being by a ladder outside." * Yet, in this establishment they lived, taught their schools, guarded young emigrant girls who came from France — once as many as eighteen — and trained their * Vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys, p. 81. 92 Devotion to the B. V. Mart postulants and Indian converts. Next, they spared two sisters for the famous Mountain Mission of the Iroquois. It was the mountain which Jacques Cartier had surnamed the Eoyal, and which gave its name, corrupted, to the island. "When first, in 1649, M. de Maisonneuve beheld the stately height, that " knight of the Queen of Angels" vowed to erect a cross, the standard of his Lord, upon its summit, and to place beside it the lesser banner of his sovereign Lady. So he caused a tall, massive cross to be made ; and he himself bore it painfully to the top of the mountain, planting it firmly there, and inserting carefully, in a niche at its foot, the image given him by his sisters at Troyes. This took place the same year and season — perhaps the same day and hour — in wl^ich Marguerite, looking up from the Rosary procession upon the great statue of Our Lady, beheld it robed with unwonted splendors. So now she sent two sisters to toil among the In- dians ; for M. de Belmont, serving there as priest, had opened schools for the savages, which were well at- tended. And there the sisters dwelt in birch-bark wigwams, and labored for the spiritual weal of the native American. When advancing civilization drove the Indians thence to the Saut au Eecollet, and thence to the Lake of Two Mountains, the sisters followed them, and are stiU found there in 1862, faithful to their inherited duties, as were the first two sent by Sister Marguerite. But labors and troubles accumulated — difficulties about the congregation — ^hard work in get- IN North America. 93 ting the rule. The saintly bishop hesitates, would like to unite the orders of Quebec and Ville-Marie, does not see with Sister Marguerite's eyes. She must needs go to France again, and get a charter for her congrega- tion from Louis le Grand ; which charter, according to the propriety of dates which seems to accompany these matters, is issued and signed by King Louis in the month of May. Mgr. de Montmorenci falls ill, and is obhged to resign his see ; so that, when Sifter Mar- guerite returns to Canada, she finds no bishop to whom to submit herself and the rule, as the term of the charter required. One treasure she acquires in France. All the Com- pany of Montreal, we know, were distinguished for de- votion to the holy Yirgin Mary. Among them, le Pretre, lord of Fleury, had a collection of ancient relics in the chapel of his castle. One of these was a little statue of Our Lady, by which it had pleased God to work miracles. This he determined to send to ViUe-Marie, where, he hoped, a chapel would be built for it, and where it would be more honored than else- where, as that town and colony were more particularly consecrated to the pure Mother of God than any other portion of the world. Being brought to M. de Fan- camp, another member of the Company in Paris, he was healed instantaneously of a dangerous illness, and then he vowed to labor steadfastly for the chapel, headed the subscription list with a heavy sum from his own purse, and placed that sum and the sacred image at once in the hands of Sister Marguerite. It 94 Devotion to the B. V. Maby was the consolation of the sisters on their voyage, and the object of their unremitting zeal on their arrival, which happened on the eve of the Assumption. So well they labored, that, on that day two years, they saw the chapel finished — ^the first stone church erected in Montreal — walked in the long procession, and heard the first Mass within its walls. The house of the Con- gregation rose beside it, and the sisters dwelt and toiled there under the eye of their tender Mother. Many a storm passes by her and over her during all these years. Chapel and house consumed to ashes; the first English war and the capture of the city ; the burden of the Superiority — ^for the order numbers forty persons now, and she desires to lay down the authority, to place it in younger hands; nay, she walks to Quebec, on foot, through the midwinter snoV, at the age of seventy-three, to beg remission from the ofiice, but the bishop (Lacroix) will not Hsten to her. " Go back, Marguerite, to your austerities, your labors, to this position of honor, harder for your humiHty to bear than either : ' qui perseveraverit usque in finem hie salvus erit — ^whoso persevereth unto the end, he shall be saved.' " ^ So Marguerite persevered, lived to see her mission-schools spread over the land ; to hear her community blessed by every mouth; to build a new church, in 1695, and to see there founded the perpet- ual adoration of the most holy Sacrament. Her prayer on this occasion to the Prisoner of Love is preserved, » St. Matthew, x. 33. IN KOETH ASIEPJCA. 95 wherein she beseeches His especial benediction upon, and his guardianship for, her sisterhood. " Most Holy Virgin," thus, after long supplication to Jesus in the Sacrament, it ends, "remember that thou art our Mother. Be, too, our advocate, and supply what our devotion to thy Son is lacking in. Make us see the power of thy intercession with Him, bearing thyseK our poor and feeble prayers to Him, and presenting them thyself before the throne of His glory." And, now, the day was well-nigh over — the hour was approaching for repose, for reward. Sixty years of austerities and toils had done their work upon the weary frame — ^forty-seven of those years in the wilds of Canada. Consult her hfe for the extraordinary spirit of mortification which always ruled her, or judge what treatment she reserved for herseK when she pre- scribed this course for her community : " To live in perfect renunciation of seK and all things earthly ; to seek only the glory of God ; to be devoted to the in- struction of young girls, and the practice of all good works, without murmuring at the pain, trouble, humili- ations, and suffering which are inseparable from these ; to imitate the simple and modest life of Mary in all things ; on their missions to imitate the Apostles ; to travel always, when possible, on foot; to win their bread by the labor of their hands ; to be chargeable to no one. In their missions and community to have only the simplest, poorest, most indispensable furni- ture ; to wear the commonest clothing, and eat the coarsest food ; to have no better bed than straw ; to 96 Devotion to the 6. Y. Maky live in all things as tlie poorest people, only in scrupu- lous neatness. Such was her rule for others ; it was luxurious when compared with the rule for herself." * Thus, when the Master came, He found His servant watching, and the end was on this wise. Sister Cath- erine, the mistress of the novices, lay dying in the in- firmary, still young, but early called. The last sacra- ments had been administered; the agony came on. The sisters watching her ran to the various rooms to summon all to the prayers for the dying. When they came to sister Marguerite, she groaned in spirit, and said : " O Father ! why not take me, the old and use- less, and spare that poor sister who can yet serve Thee long?" And Mary bore the aspiration of self- sacrifice to the feet of God, and God heard it, and granted it. Sister Catherine rose up cured. Sister Marguerite lay down upon a couch of cruel anguish for ten days, borne with thanksgiving and hymns of praise, and then, on the Feast of the Epiphany, she fell into a sweet , and gentle agony,"'' and, with her hands crossed meekly on her bosom, went to " find the yoimg Child and His Mother" in the courts of heaven, January 12, A. D. 1700. How simply she told her Mother what she desired for her congregation ! " Oh, my good Mother, I ask for our community no goods, no honors, no pleasures of this life. Obtain for me only that God may be faithfully served, and that we may never receive * Vie de Soeur Marguerite, p. 139. « ibid., p. 168. IN North America. 97 haughty or presumptuous persons in our midst; nor those whose hearts are in the world; nor who are slanderers or mockers ; nor any save such as will study to practise those maxims which our Lord, thy divine Son, has taught us, has sealed with His blood, and which thou, oh, most Holy Virgin, hast observed with such exactitude."^ How dearly she loved the very name of Mary, giving it in baptism to the poor little Indian babes, abandoned or easily given up by their parents ! The first, baptized on the feast of Our Lady of Snows, and all the others, were named Mary. One, an Illinois girl, lived to be eighteen, and died a holy death in their house. Other two, Iroquois, Mary Barbe, and an Algonquin of the same name, became sisters of the community. But Marguerite's whole life was devotion to the Blessed Virgin; every thought was affected by her, every act was done as if by her direction. To Mary she gave herself in France ; for her she left her native land forever, to dwell in a wild and just discovered country, in a town bearing the name of Mary, to estabhsh a congregation under the name of Mary, where the books, and houses, and persons wore the livery of Mary, and where Mary herseK was solemnly chosen first and perpetual superior. For, at the first formal assembly of the congregation for the election of a superior, the sisters had cried with one voice, that " they would have the Blessed Virgin ^ Vie de Sceur Marguerite, p. 114. 98 Devotion to the B. V. Maey for their superior, their origin, founder, protectress, and good mother for time and for eternity."^ And then Marguerite and the rest of them prostrated them- selves before the image of our dear Lady, and made this prayer, remembered and preserved by the sister- hood : " Look, holy Virgin, on this little band of thy servants, who have consecrated themselves to God's service under thy direction, and who desire to follow thee as good children follow their mother and mistress, and who consider thee as their superior, hoping that God will give to thee the rule over a community which is thine own creation. We have nothing worthy to present to God ; but we hope, by thine intercession, to obtain the graces necessary for our salvation and for the perfection of our state. Thou knowest better than we what we need, and what we should ask for. Eefuse us not thine aid. Help us, by thy prayers, to receive light and grace from the Holy Spirit, so that we may labor faithfully in the instruction of the young girls whom it is our especial charge to teach. And, above all, oh, our dear Lady and Mother, procure that we, the teachers, and all the children to us committed, and all who shall contribute to their spiritual advance- ment, may be of the number of the elect ; so that, in thy society, we may praise our good God in the joy which endureth forever." ^ And so it happens that, in the Congregation of Our Lady, there are no earthly superiors, but only sub-superiors. * Vie de Sceur Marguerite, p. 148. ' Ibid. IN North Ameeica. 99 "We would like to show, by its manifold varied exam- ples, the zeal of Marguerite for God's service in other channels of devotion, but it cannot have place in this book, which is dedicated to one topic only. But, she used to teU her sisterhood, and her entire life exhibited her own conviction of its truth, that their zeal, to be perfect, must be formed upon the model of the Blessed Virgin's, of her whom it pleased the Eternal Father to make a coadjutrix (in a manner) of her divine Son's work of redemption. From this, that dependence on, and imitation of, Mary, which she so much insisted on in the formation of her society, it was no barren and transitory sentiment of devotion which caused her to caU her institute the Congregation of Our Lady, under the title and invocation of the Yisitation of Mary. It was the expression of the devotion which^ filled her heart. It was a monument of her own dependence and love — a model for her sisterhood, hereafter, that she proposed to establish by these titles. Some brief quotation from her own simple instructions to them will not only give us an insight into her ruling senti- ment, but wiU exhibit the power of one means of ex- tending the devotion to the Mother of God in this country. "The Blessed Virgin," she said, "desired to con- tinue the work of God on earth : this must be our de- sire in our special mission, the instruction of young girls. As Mary used to pray for the fulfilment of the promises, for the deliverance of the Fathers, who, in limbo, awaited the coming of the Just One, so must we 100 Devotion to the B. V. Maky praj continually for tlie souls in purgatory, and for the conversion of sinners on earth. "At the age of three years she was taken to the Temple, as to the school of virtue : our novices must be scholars of Mary and with Mary during their prep- aration. She was edifying in all her acts ; ever ready to serve others; moderate in her repasts and in all things : and we, like her, must do all things for edifi- cation; must prefer others to ourselves, and be as moderate in food and drink, in apparel, in slumber, and in conversation, as necessity will admit. " Mary was at prayer when the angel saluted her : * Hail, full of grace !' By prayer, then, must we gain the graces needed for our condition as instructresses. And when our Lady had given her consent to become the Mother of God by the operation of the Holy Ghost, at once to show her gratitude to the Eternal Father, to correspond with the graces He bestowed, and with His designs for the redemption of the human race, she hastened to visit her cousin. Saint Elizabeth, to become an instrument for the sanctification of the great Saint John the Baptist, and tp carry grace and salvation to the house of Zacharias : so we, the ser- vants of Mary, on our missions, must strive to contrib- ute to the sanctification of children, to edify all per- sons, especially those of our own sex, and to let the whole world know that we are indeed daughters of that most holy Virgin. "Mary received, with equal kindness, both kings and shepherds as they came to adore her Son, and IN North America, 101 took to herseK no tittle of the honors which they paid Him : nor shall the sisters distinguish between their scholars, rich and poor, nor attribute to themselves any of the success which God may grant to their labors. It is believed that, as the number of Chris- tians increased, Mary, and other holy women, aided the Apostles by instructing persons of their own sex, and, by their prayers and exhortations, recalled them, if they erred from the promise of their baptism : and the sisters naust be ready to receive such in retreat, and to labor for their reformation, where that is needed. " But the Hfe of the Blessed Virgin being all perfec- tion, and including aU the virtues of the religious state, points her out in all things as especially to be chosen as our model, our mother, and our directress. 4^, then, she has deigned to admit us into ihe ranks of her humble servants, has chosen us to imitate her life, and is our founder and superior, let us, in conformity with aU the graces given us, as far as the frailty and corruption of our nature wiU aUow us, imitate her virtues. Our good God has always, in the history of the Church, giveS to the founders of religious orders the special graces demanded by the spirit of their in- stitutions ; be sure, then, that he will accord to Mary, our dear founder, the graces which she asks for her daughters, so entirely consecrated to her glory and that of her Eternal Holy Son. " Study, then, her hie, oh, my sisters, and imitate her virtues, and, if we are faithful, we may be confident of her perpetual help." 102 Devotion to the BfY. Maby This is the spirit which animated the whole life of this saintly woman — the spirit which she carefully in- stilled into the Congregation that she founded. In her own long, laborious life, she formed at least sixty of the sisters after this model; and since she has passed, as we believe, to her eternal joy and reward, she has seen from heaven that Congregation ramify and extend over the country, preserving intact the principles she left them. At this hour, in the half- dozen dioceses we can learn about, more than three hundred sisters of the Congregation are teaching the example of Mary to seven thousand pupils in the very spirit of their venerable founder. So you see, my reader, what Marguerite Bourgeoys, the poor girl of Troyes, the austere, lowly rehgious of the colony in the wilderness, has to do with devotion to Our Lady in North America. I In North Ameeica. 103 CHAPTEK V. Extermination of the Hurons — Our Lady of Foie — New Lorktto — The Northwest — Immaculate Conception in Illinois — Mart Ako — Down the Mississippi — Back to Montreal — Our Lady's Guard — The Congregation again — The Recluse of Ville-Marie — Oub Lady of Angels. Westward from Nazareth and Bethlehem, through Europe, to the shores of America ; westward, athwart that continent, advanced the devotion to Mary, on its consecrating march to the Pacific. "We have seen the broad St. Lawrence entered by her servants; a vast manor given up to her in the territory of Quebec ; a city built as a monument of devotion to her, and solemnly called by her name ; and the bearers of her standard pushing westward, painfully, but with courage un- flinching, and planting a fort or a chapel, a station or a mission-house of St. Mary, to mark their toilsome but triumphant way. Let us follow it as it leads through the Umits of the present British possessions ; then through the French claim, down the Valley of the Mississippi, and so to its progress under the Spanish flag, and to the settlement of the United States. This much will bring us to the year 1776, and thus to the present day. The Huron learned quickly to love the name of Mary. Above all, the women looked up, from their la- 104 Devotion to the B. V.* Maky borious debasement, to this glorified model of woman- hood; and when they heard from the Jesuit or the Sulpician that, by imitating her virtues, they might share in her glory ; when they saw the Ursuline, the HospitaKere, and the daughter of Notre Dame, tread- ing this sanctified path, they gave up their very hearts to the Immaculate Queen, and besought her followers on earth to teach them the way to her protection. Nor less did the tall warrior swear himself to her ban- ner ; the wisest spake her praises by the council-fires of his tribe ; the bravest crowned his dusky forehead with the grains of her rosary. Mary of the Incarna- tion could count two hundred redskins in her schools ; Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament saw them de- voted sisters of her order. In their country the mis- sionary placed his headquarters, St. Mary's on the Matchedash or Wye. " There, at the humble house dedicated to the Virgin, in one year, three thousand guests from the cabins of the red-man received a frugal welcome." ' And thence the early Jesuits went forth to discovery, to spiritual conquest, or to martyrdom. In the cabin of the Huron they sate as fathers of the tribe ; side by side with the Huron they received the deadly arrow, or felt the keen scalping-knife of the Iroquois. Breboeuf organized the mission in 1634, and the Fathers never left until the Hurons were no more a people, 1650. They taught them in the day of peace ; * Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. iii. 135. IN North America. 105 suffered witli them in their raisfortunes, and gave them hope beyond the grave for their restraint and consola- tion. The triumph of the Iroquois broke the nation up into five bands. The first sought immediate security with the French. The second fled northward to the Manitoulin Islands, and, driven thence by their implacable foemen, took refuge in Quebec. The third, appealing to the generosity of the Mohawks, were re- ceived by them as brethren and adopted into the tribe. Here they preserved the faith, although without priest or instruction. They met in common to chant the hymns they had learned, and to tell the beads they had acquired before the days of their captivity. They became missionaries among their captors, and allured many from paganism. When the Fathers at length penetrated into the Iroquois cantons, some of these converts, grown old in the long-deferred hope of bap- tism, rushed forward to meet them, and wept aloud for joy. The fourth troop went to Mackinac, where the enemy followed ; thence far beyond Lake Superior to the Sioux, who treated them as ill as the Iroquois; thence to the Ottawas, in North Michigan ; and then to Point St. Ignace, upon the Straits of Mackinac, where a smaU remnant of them dwells to-day. The fifth joined the Eries, and, with them, were blotted from existence by their relentless enemies. The first alone reaped benefit from the national ruin. They settled in Isle Orleans, in the St. Lawrence, and changed its name to St. Mary's Isle, and here, amid thoir cabins, rose the house of prayer, and the fixed, 6* 106 Devotion to the B. Y. Maky thougli humble, residence of the missionary. The Iro- quois drove them even from that, it is true ; but, when the war was over, they settled again about four miles off, and gave to their new home the name of Mission of Our Lady of Foie. Hither the Belgian Jesuits brought a statue of the Holy Virgin, sculptured from the oak of that forest near Dinan, in which was found the miraculous image which bears the title of Notre Dame de Foie in Europe. But their need of the chase drew them nearer to the woods, and a league further brought them to a place wherein they hoped at length to rest. The cabins were arranged in the form of a square, and in the midst of them the church was placed supereminent, dominating all the village with its cross as in perpetual benediction. To this the missionary, Chaumonot, added a chapel of the Blessed Virgin, in size and form, material and furniture, a copy of the Holy House of Loretto, wherein our Lord was born. This became the holy place of the Lidians. The Iroquois convert found a home here, side by side with his ancient Huron victim. The Hurons them- selves grew in holiness and all primitive virtues ; and their brethren in far exile were wont to make pilgrim- ages hitherward, bringing offerings of furs and balm, from the distant west, to the feet of the Virgiu Im- maculate. Another and final removal to a very short distance took place long after. They called the settle- ment the New Loretto,' and there, to-day, are gathered * Notes to Bressani's Relation, 309-318. IN North America. 107 the fast-fading remnants of the once grand Huron nation. What was once the site of the Old Loretto of the Hurons is now the parish of the Annunciation of Our Lady. The Cross went northward, and was planted among the Chippewas of Lake Superior. The mission-house was called by the name' of Mary, and stood where the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception now shadows the leaping waters of the Saut. Then along the south shore of the same great water, Father Allouez carried the beautiful devotion, founded the mission of the Holy Ghost at the very extremity of the lake, and taught a Chippewa choir to chant the Pater and the Ave Maria.^ And here he met the scattered Hurons and Ottawas, the sun-worshipping Pottowattomie from the recesses of Lake Michigan, the Sac and Fox, the gentle Illinois, and the proud warrior Dacota. For years, AUouez, Dablon, Marquette evangelized the vast regions from Green Bay to the head of Superior, " de- fying the severity of climates, wading through water or through snows, without the comfort of fire, having no bread but pounded maize, and often no food but the unwholesome moss from the rocks ; laboring in- cessantly ; exposed to live, as it were, without nourish- ment, to sleep without a resting-place, to travel far, and always incurring perUs; to carry his life in. his hand, or rather daily, and oftener than every day, to hold it up as a target,' expecting captivity, death from * Bancroft's History of the United States, iii. 150. 108 Devotion to the B. V. Mary the tomaliawk, tortures, fire." * So to the Fox Eiver, to Iowa and Wisconsin, to the tribes of the Kickapoo, the Mascoutin, and the Miami, the devoted servant of Mary proclaimed her beautiful name. The Mission of the Immaculate Conception among the HHnois was the most prosperous, although not without its checks. In a foray of the Kickapoos the Kecollect Eigourde was slain, and his colleague, Membre, put to flight. Allouez, the " Apostle of the West," labored long, and then retired to Isle St. Joseph to die. But, as in later times, with other races, some of the red men were willing to adopt Christianity only on condition that it should not inter- fere with their passions. The chief of the Kaskaskias called himseK a Christian, and professed great re- spect for the missionary, but he lost it in this way. The light of his lodge was his daughter Mary, brought up from childhood in the faith, which had found congenial soil in her innocent heart. Mary had heard of the virgin spouses of Christ, and longed always to be such as they were. Besides, she desired to belong altogether to that dear, spotless Mother of Purity, whose name she had received in baptism. But a Frenchman, named Ako, rich for the place and time, but dissolute and reckless, demanded her hand, and her father determined to give it him. Mary prayed earnestly to be left as she was ; she told her father that she had given her heart to God, 1 Bancroft's History of the United States, iii. 153. IN NoBTH America. 109 and could not religiously marry ; but tlie old cliief forced her to the chapel. At the very altar she told Father Gravier of her earnest disHke to the marriage, and was instructed by him that her free consent was necessary. This she refused to give, and the party left the chapel. But her dusky sire stripped her and turned her from his lodge. More than this, he won the other chiefs to his side, and the " Prayer" was pro- hibited in the village. Gravier appealed to the French commandant, one of the adventurer La Salle's posting, but Ako had been there before him, and he was dis- missed with blame and reproach. The mission was tottering to its fall. Fifty Peorias and Kaskaskias remained faithful, but their opposition was only strong enough to irritate, not to resist, the party of the chief. The cross would soon be broken down, the chapel closed, the pastor driven away. Then Mary offered herself in sacrifice for the good of her tribe, and, on her father's promise to restore the mission, she gave her hand to Ako. Her virtues and her gentleness re- claimed the dissolute Frenchman, and he became a model of penitence. The old chief made himself a sacristan, and morn and evening he went through the village calling his people to prayer. His wife in- fluenced the women, as he did the warriors ; and Mary assembled the children daily in her house, and taught them to invoke, by prayer and hymn, the benign Eefuge of Sinners. From this source was it that the good Indian woman drew her consolation and strength. " I call her only 110 Devotion to the B. V. Mary Mother," she was wont to say of the Blessed Mother of her Lord. " I beg her, with all the terms of endear- ment that I know, to accept me as her child. If she accept me not as daughter, if she will not be my mother, what can I do ? I am but a child, and know not how to pray. I beg her to teach me how to pray, how to defend myseK against the evil one, who attacks me ceaselessly, and will effect my fall unless I have recourse to her, unless she shelter me in her arms, as a gentle mother does a frightened child." ' This was an Illinois Christian woman two hundred years ago. I know of no country in which the influence and in- terference — so to speak of the Blessed Mother of God — is so evident as in this country. Here, now, in Illi- nois, as the first Jesuits disappear, the Priests of the Foreign Mission take their place, and the Priests of the Foreign Mission were originated in a sodaHty of the Blessed Virgin in Paris. Thesa carried the be- loved name to the banks of the Ohio and the St. Joseph's. The number of converts among the Illinois grew rapidly, and embraced the noblest and best of the tribe. So changed was an Indian village now, that the French settlers preferred to choose their wives from its maidens. At home, the tribe was punctual at the chapel ; when they went to their hunting-grounds, they would meet every night and chant — ^for that was their way — ^in alternate choirs, the Rosary of Our Lady. * Shea's Indian Missions, 417. IN North America. Ill There was no priest at Peoria since the death of Father Gravier, slain there bj the influence of the medicine-men or prophets. But the grand chief wore a crucifix upon his breast, which he revered with sin- cere piety, and a medal of the Blessed Virgin. He had found this somewhere, and had carried it to better instructed Christians to learn what it was. They told him that it represented the Virgin Mother of God ; that the little Infant, whom he saw in her arms, was the Kedeemer of the world, and that her especial title was Mary the Help of Christians. He received this lesson into a faithful heart, and he wore his medal with confidence in her whose image was embossed upon its surface. One day, walking with his gun un- loaded, he espied a Fox Indian lurking in a thicket, and saw that the musket of the savage was levelled at his heart. Then he cried to Mary Help of Christians, and she heard him. Five times in succession the gun of the Fox missed fire. Before he could aim a sixth time, the piece of the Peoria chief was charged and levelled in its turn. The Fox surrendered, threw down his gun, and the votary of Mary led him triumphantly to his lodge. It was to Father de Charlevoix that he told the story, when he brought his little daughter for baptism to that clergyman.^ What most charmed the later missionaries, when they came among these In- dians for the first time, was their peculiar, grave, alter- nate chant for the Eosary. 1 Shea's Missions, p. 428. 112 Devotion to the B. Y. Mart These Illinois chanters of the Ave Maria had been even to the mouth of the Mississippi, to the new French settlements, chaplet in hand, and the by no means too pious Europeans there looked admiringly, and, perhaps, self-reproachfully, at these swarthy war-^ riors, who had not left their religion behind them in the far-off lodges of their tribe. Indeed, a prayer to Mary Immaculate was not new there, for de Soto's expedition in 1539 had been accompanied by twenty- two ecclesiastics. The Salve Begina had floated over the waters of the mighty father of streams, from the mouth of the Eed Eiver to the ocean, and the infidel Mobilian, in the wilds of Alabama, had listened with wonder to the chant of the Litany of Loretto. Membre told the pure Name to the swarthy Arkansas ; Mon- tigny to the Tsensas on Eed Eiver; St. Come laid down his life to honor it, amid the towns of the fire- worshipping Natchez ; Foucault, du Poisson, and Louel shed their blood while proclaiming it among the Choc- taws and the fierce Yazoos. When Iberville came from France, to meet the Acadian and the Frenchman descending from the Canadas, he called the islands at the mouth of the Mississippi, Ghandeleur,^ in honor of our Blessed Lady's Purification ; and soon we find within the stockade of New Orleans the hospital sister (1705), the monks of the Blessed Yirgin of Mount Carmel (1722), and those devoted pioneers of educa- » The French Festival de la Chandeleur answers to our old English Candlemass, or Feast of the Purification. IN NOETH AmEKICA. 113 tion, the daughters of St. Ursula. Thus, then, from its head-waters to the ocean, had the devotion to Mary followed the tides of the Mississippi; and on both sides of the stream it had been planted, and its roots had taken firm hold, and had spread widely. We shaU soon see their bloom. But we must now return, where indeed we find the throbbing heart of this devotion, to the city of Mary on the St. Lawrence, to Ville-Marie. There, while aU others were contributing to the honor of their sacred patroness, their safety was watched over by the guard of de Maisonneuve ; for this gentleman had euTolled from among the soldiers sixty-three volunteers, all specially vowed to defend the town of Our Lady, out of peculiar devotion to her. The number was sug- gested by the years of her blessed life on earth ; and these veterans of old France formed thus, in the forests of America, a sort of military confraternity. They met daily for the recital of the Eosary ; they wore the medal of their order as a military decoration ; they approached the holy sacraments on all the feasts of the Virgin ; and be sure that for all this they were the first to confront the cannon of the English, or to an- swer, with their battle-cry of Ave Purissima, the war- whoop of the sanguinary Iroquois. So, too, when their chief enrolls the inhabitants into a miHtia, it is " attendu que cette isle apparttent d la Sainte Vierge — because this island belongs to the Blessed Virgin." And those who are forward in the service are to have their names publicly recorded " as a mark 114 Devotion to the B. V. Mary of honor, as having exposed their lives for the interests of Our Lady and the public weal." ^ And the imitation of Mary in her Visitation to Saint Elizabeth sj)read fast and wide, the distinctive institu- tion of Northern French America. It was this festival that Marguerite Bourgeoys had chosen for the patronal hoHday of her institution. " The Yisit of Our Lady," she used to say to her sisters, " was the occasion of the greatest of miracles, the purification of Saint John the Baptist from original sin ; his sanctification and that of his family. Take that thought with you, sisters, in all your missions. Imitate Mary in the sanctification of children." Swift and steadfast the good work spread ; ecclesiastics wrote to their friends in France ; colonial officers reported to the home government ; the soldier detailed to his ancient comrade the marvels of Marguerite's institution. Their missions multiplied from Isle Orleans to Quebec. Not only did they fol- low their vocation in their schools, but in what was called the Outer Congregation, which was devoted to grown-up girls. This was of incalculable benefit, not only in correcting morals and manners that were de- fective, but in implanting the principles of purity and zealous practice of religion. On Sundays and festivals the sisters were wont to gather the maidens of the neighborhood to instruct them in the faith and in their duties for this life. Then they would lead them in * Memoires et documents publics par la Societe Historique de Mon- treal. 1860, vol. iii., p. 134. m North America. 115 procession to the cliurch, and watch that then* deport- ment there befitted children of Mary, and servants of the Lamb without spot. " Then," says one of the biographers of Marguerite — " then did piety, religion, and modesty succeed to levity and indevotion ; and not only were all improved, but the hearts of many, touched by the lessons and example of their saintly instructors, grew disgusted with the world, and they consecrated themselves to God in the Congregation of Our Lady." ^ Marguerite lived to see no less than eight of these missions securely founded and prosperous in well-doing ; a few- years after, they had increased to thirty-three, and now they form an especial glory of Canada, and are to be found in one diocese at least of the United States. Anywhere in their mission you may see them patiently, sweetly, perseveringly busied in their beautiful calling, the " sanctification of children," leading the young heart, through Mary's maternal tenderness, to God, her Eternal Son. But most edifying must that sight have been when they "met in their new and present home in Yille-Marie, on the Octave of our Blessed Lady's Nativity, A. d. 1845, their number lacking but one of the hundred. And still more touching is that anniversary of theirs, when they assemble on the day that Marguerite Bourgeoys died — ^not to lament her as one lost, but to celebrate with joy her birth into * From the large and very beautiful life, in two volumes, published for " the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame.'* Ville-Marie, 1853. By Rev. M. FaiUon, St. Sulpice. 116 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary that new and better land where her soul is reaping the rewards of her self-sacrifice, her labors, and her sanctity. For many months before the day comes round, the young girls of the wealthier classes consecrate their working-hours to the making of a complete outfit each for one of the poor children of the outer schools. And on that day all assemble, rich and poor, in the pres- ence of the good sisters and a concourse of friends, in the grand hall, where all the gifts are laid at the foot of an image of Blessed Mary. There stands, too, a bust of Marguerite, at the feet of her whom she loved so truly and followed so devoutly ; and there, after the other exercises are over, each, child leads up her little protegee, presents for Mary's sake the roll of comfort- able clothing, and adds something wherewith to make a httle feast at home in honor of Marguerite and Saint Mary. And this is the annual celebration of the Daughters of Our Lady at Yille-Marie. One mark of the devotion to the Mother of God, which still exists in all its pristine fervor in Montreal, I insert here, as belonging to the Congregation by sentiment, although to our own time by date. It is an extract or two from the pious dedication to the life of Marguerite Bourgeoys, to which I am indebted for so many beautiful facts. ^ The dedication is — 1 Let me thank, liere, for the loan of this book, as well as for the Life of Mademoiselle Leber, the kind courtesy of the Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee, M. P. P. for Montreal. IN North Amebioa. 117 "To THE Most Holy Viegin— Queen of Apostles," and it begins — " Blessed Virgin, I am most happy to recount here the touching effects of your love for the Sister Bour- geoys, who owed to you, after God, aU that rendered her so venerable to the colony of Montreal. Her vir- tues and her labors are your work. Her biography is the history of your love for her, or rather, the mani- festation of your especial predilection for your beloved city, on which you have deigned to bestow so rare an instrument of your choicest favors. By this privileged soul you desired to renew and to make felt in this rising colony the effects of your grace. You made to her an abundant commimication of your spirit, and rendered her a living image of your own apostolic zeal ; so that, veiling your power beneath her form, you gained as many hearts for God as she attracted by the fervor of her prayers, by the force of her words, and by the efficacy of her example. Be blessed then, for this sweet discovery of your love. " Be blessed anew for having willed to perpetuate so great a benefit in this colony by the establishment of the congregation which justly recognizes you as its foundress, its instructress, its superior, and its Queen. She who originated it was but an instrument in your hands. It was formed by a diffusion of your spirit, extending from her through all the members of this body to give them life ; by your love it has grown ; by your care and maternal solicitude it has been main- 118 Deyotion to the B. V. Maey tained until to-day. If you are Mother of all saintly communities, by the participation in His fcecundity which God the Father gave you in the adorable mys- tery of the Incarnation, you are so in an especial sense of this institute, which has received from you all that it has, and is, by you, all that it is. Deign to protect it forever, and always to renew that primitive spirit of fervor and zeal which you gave it so abundantly at the beginning. Cause all who read this book to reap edi- fication from its pages ; to be drawn to imitate the vir- tues of your faithful servant — above all, her sincere and tender fihal love for you. And may they, by this read- ing, learn how consoling is that truth, that he who has found you has found life ' ia you, the Life which is Jesus, from whom by you he may attain everlasting salvation." Such, then, for two centuries, has been the ardent feehng in Montreal for the Lady of their city. And it is by recitiQg such things as these that we reveal to you the secret springs of devotion to Saiat Mary in North America. Although the history of the famous church of Our Lady of Good Help, and of the chapel of Our Lady of Victory,'' belong to the history of the Congregation, yet we reserve them for another place, and end this chapter with the beautiful episode of Mademoiselle Jeanne le Ber.^ 1 Proverbs, viii. 35. ' Notre Dame de Bonsecoura and Notre Dame de la Victoire. ' L'Heroine Chretienne du Canada, ou la Vie de Mademoiselle le Ber, Ville-Marie, chez les ScBurs de la Congregation de Notre Dame. 1860. By M. Faillon. IN North Ameeica. 119 Among all who loved Marguerite Bourgeoys — and who did not love and revere her? — ^none was more eminent than this lady. Daughter of the wealthiest merchant in French America, she had every thing at her command that could make the world inviting ; an esteemed pupil of the pious Ursuhnes, the religious orders would have thought her an acquisition, but her vocation made her turn from both, and she went to dwell alone in prayer, and work, and meditation with God. It is not our purpose to follow her life, but only to look at it as a devotion to Mary. It was love for this Blessed Mother that drew her so surely and at- tached her so ardently to the Congregation. " How happy your lot," she used to say to a cousin of hers in the sisterhood, " to be numbered among the daughters of Mary ! Learn well the excellence of your good for- tune in this, and all the extent of your obHgations. You must be perfectly free from the maxims of the world and from all carnal inclinations. She who wears the livery of the most holy Virgin must care for naught else."^ Faithful to this predilection, when the time had come at last to retire, it was with the Congrega- tion of Notre Dame that she sought seclusion. The immediate cause was the holy death of a young sister of that society, whom she tenderly loved, and whose death-scene was of such beauty, and hopefulness, and peace, that it broke what Httle tie there was to bind her to the world. She exclaimed in her heart, with » "Life," p. 334. 120 Devotion to the B. V. Maey the Syrian prophet, " Let my soul die the death of the just, and may my last end be like theirs." ' She de- termined upon absolute seclusion, but it was exacted from her that she should undergo a novitiate, as it were, of five years in the house of her father. This ended, her mother's death, meanwhile, giving new strength to her purpose, she retired to the church of the Congregation, which she had largely aided from her abundant means. Here, in a little cell behind the altar, dwelt this de- voted recluse, the cell modelled upon the Santo Camino or sacred chamber of the Holy House of Loretto ; so that in this she might be perpetually, as it were, under one roof with the Mother of the Incarnate Word. Here, with her rosary, her httle office of the Blessed Virgin, and her utensils for embroidering — for she proposed no idleness — she was at length inclosed, after vespers on the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows, August 5, 1695, to go no more out forever. Here she dwelt for nineteen years in prayer, in manual labor for the altar, in meditation, and in adoration of the thrice holy Sacrament. To aid her in obtaining the inner union which she sought with the perfect dispositions imprinted by the Holy Spirit on the heart of the Blessed Virgin, she kept continually before her eyes, upon the walls of her cell, two pious pictures. The first was called the " in- * Moriatur anima mea morte justorum et fiant novifisima mea honun sLmilia. — Numbers, xsiii. tO. IN North America. 121 terior life of Mary." There you saw tlie Blessed among women enthroned on clouds, the hands crossed upon her immaculate bosom, while the sacred Dove, hovering over her, seemed to pour from his spotless wings His sevenfold grace. The eyes of Our Lady, raised to heaven, were fixed upon the sacred mono- gram, I. H. S. — Jesus hominum Salvator. This showed that if the Holy Spirit were the source of Mary's actions, Jesus and the salvation of souls was their end and aim. Below the print, you read: ^^With Mary. By Mary. In Mary.'' This was Sister le Ber's — for such was her title henceforward — this was her object now ; sought steadily in prayer, at holy Mass, in her communions and other pious exercises, in labor, in her poor repasts, to unite herseK by faith and love to the interior dispositions of Mary ; and earnestly she be- sought that sacred and tender Mother to be with her spirit, her heart, and all her faculties ; to be the model of her actions and the soul of her soul ; to penetrate and fill her mind, to possess it altogether, until she should become a simple instrument wherewith the Mother might deign to glorify her Divine Son.^ The other print represented the same good Mother receiving into her arms and lovingly supporting a Christian soul, which, languishing in this condition of exile, seemed to find all its joy and repose in Mary. The Sulpicians celebrated the feast of this interior life of the Blessed Virgin on the nineteenth of October, ' Life of Mademoiselle le Ber, p. 211. 6 122 Devotion to the B. Y. Maey and for tlie pious recluse it was a day of particular devotion. And, still more to honor it, even by the works of her hands, she made a superb vestment for the feasts of the Immaculate Queen, and in the centre of the cross she embroidered most cunningly the pic- ture first described. How all this love was answered and increased, we shall see in the notes of the chapels and churches connected with the Congregation. She never wearied in her benefits to this " family of Mary," as she called it. Her means had gi-eatly aided the building of their church; she furnished the richest vases and ornaments for the altar ; she founded there the Perpetual Adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament, and endowed a daily Mass ; and more, to maintain, out of filial love and tender devotion to Saint Mary, an institute so distinctly her own, she gave them ten thou- sand livres " for the good friendship that she bears to the Sisters of the Congregation of Our Lady,"' the only condition being that the revenue shall be applied to their uses in Ville-Marie alone. Glad enough, we may be sure, was the heart of Sister Marguerite to have such a guest within the walls of her house. At the time of her coming there were other guests there also. The Hospital Sisters had been burned out, and had found affectionate wel- come from the humble Daughters of Our Lady. " We have now," says Marguerite Bourgeoys, " in our house > "PoTir la bonne amitie qu'elle porte anx Soeurs de la Congregation de Notre Dame.*' Words of the deed of donation. IN North America. 123 the three estates of women whom our dear Lord left on earth, after His resurrection, to serve Him and His Church : like Magdalen, by soKtary life ; like Martha, by active life in the cloister ; like the most holy Virgin, ^by an uncloistered life of zeal."^ There Hved, then, the recluse, so busied with her needle, that she fur- nished aU the parishes of Montreal with chasubles, altar fronts, and other ornaments. They still preserve in the parish church of the city a cope, chasuble, and dalmatics, richly embroidered on cloth of silver by her nimble fingers. Towards herself she showed an ex- treme parsimony, making her poor woollen robe and coarse shoes last for years by mending them repeatedly herself ; for of all her large revenues, what was left from her gifts to the altar, she scrupulously gave to the poor. She knew the Psalms and the New Testa- ment almost entirely by heart. They were her books of predilection. But, besides reading these, she re- cited daily the Litanies of the Saints, the Office of the Cross, the Eosary, and the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin. Add to these her ordinary prayers, mental and vocal, her adoration of the Sacrament, the office for the dead three times a week, her embroidery, and her care for the poor, and judge whether she had not caught some of the tireless spirit of zeal of her sacred model and Mother. The faithful of that day and place believed that the angels used to help her. That she did receive many and * Vie de Mademoiselle le Ber, p. 229. 124 Devotion to the B. V. Mary visible graces from on high, it is impossible to doubt. Touched by her example, her brother Pierre also re- nounced the world from devotion to Mary in the Holy Family. Joining with Frangois Charon de la Barre, he instituted the Hospital Brothers in honor of St. Joseph, and built with his fortune a chapel of St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin, on the oppo- site side of the town from that where stood his sister's chapel of Bon Secours. This was the origin of St. Anne's, so famous in song and northern story. Dying before his sister, he left to her beloved community ten thousand livres, on the sole condition that there should always be one of the sisters who should bear the name of Saint Mary, and another that of Saint Anne. His body was buried in the church of the Hospital Brothers, his heart in the chapel of the Congregation of Our Lady — that it and his dear sister's heart might not be divided even in the grave. Marguerite, dying, had charged her sisterhood to increase the accommodation for their schools so soon as Divine Providence should provide the means. But thirteen years passed on, the necessity annually in- creasing, but the good sisters growing no richer. For years, however, this project had lain in the charitable heart of Jeanne le Ber, and now that she felt heaven drawing nearer, she determined to execute it. First, she recommended her project to the Blessed Yirgin and to her holy friends the angels, and^ then she began to press the sisters to the work. They were reluctant, having the fear of debt before their eyes, and they put IN North America. 125 off the pions recluse as well as thej could. But tliey were used to listen to her advice, and when she said that she knew it was the will of God, and that the angels would help them, they went to work and gave the first orders, although they had neither materials nor money. The foundation was dug, the corner-stone was blessed and laid by M. de Belmont, and the new house was dedicated to their heavenly superior, under the title of Our Lady of Angels. This was the inscrip- tion on the plate in the corner-stone : "Most Holy Virgin, Queen of Angels, refuge and safety of men, receive the prayers which we, in full confidence, offer, to obtain your blessed protection for the commencement, the advance, and the completion of this building which your servant and our good mother. Marguerite Bourgebys, has charged us to con- struct. With all our hearts we desire that it may serve to augment your honor and the glory of your Divine Son. Do not, oh. Immaculate Virgin, ever permit mortal sin to enter in this house. Bid the holy angels watch, so well over the conduct of all who dwell therein, that you may be ever loved and faithfully served as Our Lady and Our Queen. Amen." Ask in the country where it stands to-day, and they will teU you that immortal hands worked at those walls, and that the masons looked with awe every morning at a progress to which they had not con- tributed. Be that as it may, the house was finished ; and Jeanne le Ber, gathering together her last thirteen thousand livres, founded therewith what we would 126 Devotion to the B. V. Mary now call scholarships for girls who merited education, but whose parents were too poor to furnish the requi- site means. And this was the last act of money-giving charity, done in honor of Our Lady of Angels. It was the day after the Feast of the Blessed Yirgin's Nativity, September 9, 1714, that she signed the deed of this foundation ; twenty-four days after, hope had become realization. On their own festival, the second of October, the holy guardian angels came for the pure soul of the re- cluse, and she died in prayer and love as she had lived, resigning herself into the hands of that blessed Mother whom on earth she had served so weU. Her modest ceU and work-room were religiously preserved, and the devout of Ville-Marie loved to go pray at her tomb ; but the cell with its furniture, the church, and the house of the Congregation, were consumed by the fire of 1768. When the estabHshment was builded anew, a repository was made on the site of the cell, where now remains, (in His ineffable patience, the Prisoner of Love.^ Beside the grave of the recluse stands the miraculous statue of Our Lady of Pity, gracious sentinel over the ashes of her devoted child. Frequent recurrence will be made to Mademoiselle le Ber in these pages ; but now, for the present, we leave the edifying volume which contains her biography, and is dedicated with propriety. To Mary presented in THE Temple. IN North Ameeica. 127 CHAPTEE VI. Devotion of the Holt Family— Our Lady of Victory — Our Lady of Good Help — Our Lady of the Visitatioin^ — Lodge of the Immacu- late Conception— Our Lady of Snows —Cathedral of the Immacu- late Conception, and Churches of Our Lady in Quebec. The first three titles written above are the titles of three most eminent devotions in Canada. Dating back to the very beginnings of the colony, they, or at least two of them, have grown steadily in the affec- tions of the Canadian Catholic down to this day. A favorite theme of M. Olier's devout meditation was the Holy Family,. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, in the stable, in the humble house at Nazareth, or the flight from the murderous wrath of Herod during the long hidden life of our Lord. As by this sacred household it had pleased the Eternal Father to convey salvation unto man, so did M. Olier desire to secure its protection for the new France which was growing up in the snowy pine-woods of the scarcely trodden "West. It was in February, then, that this holy priest, assembhng the Society of Montreal in the church of Our Lady of Paris, and having offered the eternal Sacrifice at the altar of the blessed Virgin, consecrated Montreal and its whole territory to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, under the particular protection of Mary, to whom the com- pany resigned forever the sovereignty and dominion of their lands. 128 Devotion to the B. Y. Maey As he used to go before, on their journeys in the land of Palestine ; as he marched before on the weary way to Egypt; so now St. Joseph was the first to come amid the ice-fields and by the rushing rivers of Canada. He came in and with the hospital sisters of Mademoiselle Manse, endowed by M. de la Dauver- siere expressly to honor the pure foster-father of Christ. Tlien came the seminary priests of St. Sulpice, whose aim was, as is that of the sacred priesthood in- deed, to represent our Lord himself, and to diffuse His spirit. And, thirdly, came the institute of Marguerite Bourgeoys, to make the name and thought of Mary revered and loved. To none of these three had M. Olier revealed this cherished idea; yet, without their own design, they perfectly accomplished it. By and by, the time came ; the Jesuit Father, Chaumonot, pro- posed and took the management of the scheme ; the three communities accorded heartily, and the Confra- ternity of the Holy Family was established in Canada. The object was to reach the three estates of manhood, womanhood, and childhood ; to induce every resident of the land to do something towards an imitation of these great exemplars of human virtue — ^the men to find their model in St. Joseph, the women in Our Lady, the children in the gentle innocence of the In- fant Jesus. Sister Marguerite records her signing of the act of foundation, together with Mademoiselle Manse, and Mother Mace, superior of the Hospitalieres ; "for," says the Sister Mozier, historian of the Hotel Dieu IN North America. 129 " our first superiors were closely bound in holy friend- ship with Marguerite Bourgeoys and her sisters ; they were daughters of the most holy Yirgin, whom they had chosen for mother and protectress ; and we daugh- ters of St. Joseph, which makes us, too, adopted chil- dren of the same Holy Family."^ The first use to which Marguerite applied the new scheme was in the establishment of a house for poor grown-up girls, wherein they might be taught some honest calling, while their souls were kept pure from the temptations to which they were exposed. And this was called the House of Providence of the Holy Family. Soon it was used for spiritual retreats ; then for the preparation of children for their first communion ; and so incalculable were the moral benefits produced, that royal procu- reurs grew eloquent about it in their letters to the king, trayeUers consecrated pages of their journals to its praises, and the Parisian Father Souart used to call Sister Marguerite la petite Sainte Genevieve du Canada. Mgr. de St. Yallier desired such a blessing for his episcopal city of Quebec, and sister Marie Barbier was sent to found it. From the very commencement, zeal and fervor for a better and holier life spread through-' out the city ; every day gave birth to some new prac- , tice in honor of the Infant Saviour, the Yirgin, or St. Joseph ; the young girls in humbler life had been over- fond of dress, vieing with each other in seK-ornamenta- tion, and, by dressing above their class, had exposed * Vie de Sceur Marguerite, i. 170. I 6* 130 Devotion to the B. V. Maky themselves to vanity and the usual risks and tempta- tion that attend it. But, before the end of the first year, this was aU cured; and, on Corpus Christi, a modest neatness was the characteristic of all, and their head-tire and other gilded decorations were lying at the feet of the statue of St. Mary the Virgin. Since that day, no people has ever surpassed the Canadians in devotion to the Holy Family. About the autumn of 1711, Yille-Marie was filled with terror at "the report of an English armament, twelve thousand strong,' on their way from Boston to the conquest of Canada. Montreal and Quebec, had they been together, had no means of resisting even the half of such a force ; and it was soon clearly evident that, if help there were, it must be only from the hand of God. To Him, therefore, the CathoHc people had recourse. The churches were thronged, the altars be- sieged. Men and women vied with each other in acts of interior and exterior penitence. And, at last, the young people who formed the external Congregation of Notre Dame united in a vow to the sacred Mother of God, that if, by her powerful intercession, she would save the town, which was built in her honor and bore her gracious name, they would erect a shrine in their gratitude, in perpetuam rei memoriam, which should bear the title of Our Lady of "Victory. As the time passed on, the rumors grew to certainty. The fleet was already in the St. Lawrence, and advancing swiftly * Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. iii. y. 223. m North America. 131 towards the city. The alarm reached even the cell of Sister le Ber. The sister who carried her modest pro- vision to her, told her that, if the wind should hold favorable, the English fleet and the ruin of Montreal would arrive together, and that in a day or two. But, after a short silence, the recluse said, calmly : " No, my sister, the Blessed Virgin will take care of the country; she is the guardian of Yille-Marie, and we have nothing to fear." Now the people of the good town had great confi- dence in the prayers of the holy recluse, and they trusted in God in the midst of their reasonable alarm. Her cousin, the Baron de Longueil, governor of the place, resolved to attack the advancing fleet off Cham- bly, and do what he could to keep them from the town. He could get but a mere handful of men, and his hopes were entirely in the help of their Blessed Patroness. So a banner was prepared, on the centre whereof they wrought a picture of the Virgin Mother, and Jeanne le Ber's cunning needle worked round the image this legend : " Our enemies put all their trust in arms, but we confide in the Queen of Angels, whom we invoke. She is terrible as an army in battle array, and under her protection we hope to vanquish our foes." M. de Belmont blessed the standard before aU the populace in the parish church of Our Lady. Then, bearing it in his own hands, Longueil set forth at the head of his Kttle troop. Their trust was not in vain. Heaven fought visibly for the servants of Mary. As the fleet came up the 1 32 Devotion to the B. Y. Maby St. Lawrence, abreast of Egg Island, on the night of the second of September, a fierce northward-careering gale smote them suddenly. Seven of the largest ships were instantly wrecked, another was struck with light- ning, and the shattered remnants of its hulk flung sheer up upon the yellow sands. The shores were covered with corpses — nearly three thousand, say the French — about a thousand, says the accurate Bancroft. The rest were driven from the river, and fled back to Boston, where their arrival was followed by a confla- gration that destroyed eighty houses. When solemn thanksgiving had been rendered to the Most High for this signal deliverance, the externes of the Congregation commenced their collection. The sisters gave a piece of ground within their own inclo- sure, and the chapel of Our Lady of Yictory raised its roof above the dwellings of Montreal. Pope Bene- dict XIII. enriched it with privileges and indulgences ; its patronal .feast was the Nativity of Mary ; and, for many a year, no day ever saw it unvisited by faithful worshippers who came to give thanks for their preser- vation. Burned with the other buildings, it was recon- structed in 1769, and became thenceforward the par- ticular chapel of the externes of Notre Dame. But the greatest, as it was the first, treasure of the good sisters was, and is, their church, Our Lady of Good Help, Notre Dame de Bon Secours. If you should make a pilgrimage to this famed American shrine — and a more edifying devotion you will not find on this con- tinent — ^you will see its quaint structure on the hill- IN North America. 133 side, fronting Notre Dame Street, and overlooking the broad, sail-covered St. Lawrence. Its not ungraceful, ratter Oriental-looking steeple, with its two open lan- terns, one above the other ; its steep, snow-shedding roof, and old-fashioned ornamentation of the doorway, will at once carry you back to the date of the Jesuit martyr and the Indian missions. Of course, this, or something like it, had found a place in M. OHer's saintly reveries. " Often," he says, " it comes into my heart that God will, of His grace, send me to Montreal, in Canada, where the first chapel built to Him shall be under the title of the Holy Virgin, and I shall be the chaplain of that Blessed Lady." ^ But he was not to see Canada ; the work was for Marguerite Bourgeoys, and we have seen her struggles to build crowned with ultimate success in 1675. The wish of M. Olier was fulfilled in the person of his spiritual children, the Sul- picians, for they became the chaplains of Our Lady in Ville-Marie. Father Souart headed a procession of all the people upon the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and solemnly blessed and laid the comer-stone — " D. 0. M. Beatce Marice Virgini et sub titulo Assump- tionis. To God, most Good, most Mighty, and to Blessed Mary the Yirgin, imder the title of the As- sumption." The walls rose swiftly ; a bell was cast from a bronze cannon which had been burst in the Iroquois war ; the miraculous statue of Our Lady was placed in a shiine, * Vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys, i. 238. 134 Devotion to the B. V. MaeY' gilt and enriched with jewels, and Bon Secours stood open to the faithful, the first stone church on the island. Then the sisters made over all their claim to the parish church of the citj, retaining this privilege alone, the perpetual right to keep it in repair, and to adorn it, " which we offer to do," they say, " to render to the Blessed Virgin, our Mother, aU the honor and service that we can." This was accepted by the Sul- picians, as lords of Yille-Marie, and the deed was sealed with their famous seal for Montreal, which shows on its intaglio the Queen of Saints kneehng to receive the Most Holy Eucharist from the hands of the beloved Disciple, with this brief, eloquent legend : " Virgo Virginem virgini communicat. A virgin to a virgin gives a Yirgin in communion." And there, henceforth, were daily Masses said ; and there, in aU distresses and calamities, were pubhc processions made ; a daily pilgrimage sprang up for the citizens, and from the remotest parts of settled Canada came others, for already Our Lady of Bon Secours had be- come the refuge of New France, and to her protection was attributed the success of the infant colony. This was the beacon of the boatmen on the stormy river, and the remembrance of the trapper in the far-off forests. For the Sisters of the Hospital, expelled by the fire of 1734, it became a refuge, a hospital, and a grave ; for, almost coeval with the fire, an epidemic of most virulent kind broke forth ; they had no place but the chapel wherein to lay their sick ; and it was within its venerated walls that they performed their offices of IN NoBTH Ameeica. 135 mercy ; and that ehveM of them, smitten by the plague, died there, and were buried there, under the eyes of the Virgin of Good Help.' In 1754 a great part of the town was burnt again, and this time, to the horror of the people, they beheld their beloved and venerated shrine reduced to ashes. Nothing was saved, picture nor altar furniture — all dis- appeared under the smoking ruin ; all things, save one. Beneath the ashes they found the little statue, not even discolored by the fire, but in perfect preservation. Imagine with what joy it was recovered by the Sisters of the Congregation! They carried it with devotion to their own church, and the holy Father was pleased to transfer thither the many indulgences with which the shrine of Bon Secours had been enriched. Many an evil followed this. Famine, and war, and English conquest, with its train of consequences ; and the ashes grew black with age over the site of the venerated shrine, and the rains beat upon them and mingled them with the soil. Now and then, a devout soul would say, amid the sorrows of a conquered people, " Ah, if we only had Our Lady of Good Help back in her own house, all would go well !" But the people were disheartened, and did nothing towards a reconstruction. At last the governor claimed the place as waste land, and this roused them from their apathy. Not that, at least ! The land, and the city, and the ' Manuel du Pelerin de Notre Dame de Bon Secours. Montreal, 1848, p. 22. 136 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary people he might have; but Our Lady's Httle plat of ground ! no, that, at least, no governor should get, by any fault of theirs. So, towards the end of June, in 1771, the ground was cleared anew ; and, on the anniversary of the first pro- cession, a second, manifold as great, chanting Htanies and hymns, passed to the spot to lay anew the ancient corner-stone. The new inscription tells the history of the shrine : " D. 0. M. et Beatce Marim Auxiliatrid sub titulo Assumptionis, Templum hoc^ primum angustiori forma cedi/icatum, anno 1675, postea flammis adustum anno 1754, ampliora forma restauraverunt Cives Mari- anopolitanij cultui Beatce Marice Virginis addictissimi anno 1771, die Junii 30" eadem qua primus lapis veteris ecdesice fuerat impositus. To God, the All Good, the Almighty, and to Blessed Mary of Good Help under the title of the Assumption, the citizens of Ville-Marie, most devoted to the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, have restored this Temple, built at first in 1675 of narrower dimensions, consumed by the flames in 1754, in ampler form, this 30th day of June, 1771, the same day that the first stone of the ancient shrine was laid."^ It was finished in 1774, and so stands to-day. It is not large, the nave being seventy feet by forty-six; the choir, thirty-two by thirty ; but it holds the relig- ious heart of Canada. Over the portal stands Our * Vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys, ii. 437-30; Pelerin de Notre Bame, 23-24. IN North America. 137 Lady's image, with tlie legend: ^^ Maria Auxilium Christianorum — Mary Help of Christians." It looks over the swift-rushing river, and the flash of its metal- lic roof makes it a beacon to the boatman and the sailor, " beckoning him," says Father Martin, " as it were, to the shore of the heavenly country, the port of safety and repose." The famous image was of dark- brown wood, exquisitely sculptured, and, after being the object of aJffectionate veneration for three cen- turies, was stolen by some infamous wretch in 1831, and has never been recovered. How it has been re- placed by a modern substitute, we shall see hereafter. Another ancient American shrine of the Blessed Mother, near, or rather at present in, Montreal, must have brief notice. It is that of the first chapel at La Prairie, the Indian mission so often referred to in these pages. The date is 1675, September 22. Yery humble, indeed, in man's eyes, is the gift we chronicle, but precious as St. Peter's or Cologne in the sight of God and to the heart of Mary. It was only " a lodge of stakes or upright logs, straw-thatched; but, for thirty years, it sheltered the celebration of the Divine Mysteries, and echoed to the responses of the Kosary." Nay, within its Httle inclosure of twenty by twenty-five feet, Mgr. de St. Vallier once held a confirmation in 1692. And this is the deed of gift : " Pierre Pera, and Denise Lemaistre, his wife, both dwelling at the Prairie of the Magdalen, with mutual accord and consent, moved thereto by an impulse of piety, have given, and by these presents give, to the 138 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary Holy Virgin Mary Our Mother, purely, simply, and ir- revocably, a stake lodge, thatched with straw, situated on their property at the Cote St. Lambert, with the site of the said lodge, as well as with a perch of land all round, and a right of way to be adjudged and marked out ; the said lodge, site, environ, and way, to be per- petually used for the service of the Blessed Virgin, and this lodge to be made a church dedicated to her name." ^ Sixteen years from this time the pious donors were massacred by the inevitable Iroquois ; but the simple church they gave, blessed under the title of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, survived them for many years ; and even now a handsome cross marks the spot, and has indulgences, attached to it by Mgr. Bourget, for all who shall salute it with respect. Here, then, is the second church of the Immaculate Concep- tion, in a land where now nearly a hundred temples stand in honor of that wondrous mystery. Next, in Montreal, was, and is, the church of Our Lady of the Visitation, or the church of the Congrega- tion. Built, as we have seen, chiefly by the help of Mademoiselle le Ber in 1696, this shrine of the faithful children of Mary was held second, in the devotion of the people, only to Bon Secours. Here mouldered the heart of Sister Marguerite; here lived and died the saintly recluse; here, for many years, all the indul- gences of Bon Secours, were obtainable ; and here, in * Souvenirs Historiques sur la Seigneurie de la Prairie : par J. Viger, Ecuier, anden et premier Maire de Montreal. 1857. IN NoBTH America. 139 our own day, some of the most earnest devotions in Canada take place. In 1718, a pious widow, Marie Biron, gave foundation for a Mass and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in honor of the holj Heart of Mary, " with intention of conforming to the zeal which the Sisters of Our Lady have ever shown to inspire in the breasts of the children whom they educate, a knowledge of, and love for, that most Sacred Heart." ^ For this purpose was the Mass to be offered and the Benediction given, after which the sisters were to say a De Profundis for the souls in purgatory, ^ho, when on earth, had shown devotion towards the Heart of Mary. This pious intention is still carried out on the feast of that title, the Sunday in the Octave of the Assump- tion. Burned in 1768, this church was rebuilt, as it now stands, by the close of the next year. The last of the ancient shrines mentioned by us here, is Notre Dame des Neiges, Fronting on Sherbrooke-street, a wall of defence and two towers are still erect, to show you where once stood Our Lady of the Snows. Formerly, surrounded by the dwellings of the Indian converts and their in- structors of the " Mountain Mission," it stood on the southern slope of the Koyal Mount. The present chapel of the name is in the village of Cote des Neiges, behind the mountain. Here follows the Legend of — * Vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys, ii. 354. 140 Devotion to the B. V. Ma by OUR LADY of THE SNOWS. If, pilgrim, chance thy steps should lead. Where, emblem of our holy creed, Canadian crosses glow — There you may hear what here you read, And seek, in witness of the deed. Our Lady of the Snow I In the old times, when France held sway From the Balize to Hudson's Bay, O'er all the forest free, A noble Breton cavalier Had made his home for many a year Beside the Rivers Three. To tempest and to trouble proof. Rose in the wild his glittering roof, To every traveller dear ; The Breton song, the Breton dance, The very atmosphere of France, Diffused a generous cheer. Strange sight, that on those fields of snow The genial vine of Gaul should grow. Despite the frigid sky ! Strange power of man's all-conquering will, That here the hearty Frank can stiU A Frenchman live and die ! The Seigneur's hair was ashen gray. But his good heart held holiday. As when in youthful pride He bared his shining blade before De Tracey's regiment, on the shore Which France has glorified. » From " Canadian Ballads," by Hon. T. D. McGee, M. P. P. Montreal. IN NOETH AmEEICA. 141 Gay in the field, glad in the hall, The first at danger's frontier call. The humblest devotee Of God and of St. Catherine dear Was the stout Breton cavalier , Beside the Rivers Three. When bleak December's chilly blast Fettered the flowing waters fast, And swept the frozen plain — When, with a frightened cry, half heard, Far southward fled the arctic bird. Proclaiming winter's reign — His custom was, come foul, come Mr, For Christmas duties to repair Unto the Ville-Marie, The City of the Mount, which north Of the great river looketh forth Across its sylvan sea. Fast fell the snow, and soft as sleep. The hillocks looked like frozen sheep, Like giants gray the hills — The sailing pine seemed canvas spread, With its white burden overhead, And marble hard the rills. A thick, dull light, where ray was none . Of moon, or star, or cheerful sun. Obscurely showed the way — While merrily upon the blast The jingling horse-bells, pattering fast. Timed the glad roundelay. Swift eve came on, and faster fell The winnowed storm on ridge and dell. Effacing shape and sign — Until the scene grew blank at last. As when some seaman from the mast Looks o'er the shoreless brine. 142 Devotion to the B. V. Mary Nor marvel auglit to find, ere long. In such a scene tlie death of song Upon the bravest lips — The empty only could be loud When nature fronts us in her shroud, Beneath the sky's eclipse. Nor marvel more to find the steed, Though famed for travel or for speed, Drag on a painful pace — With drooping crest, and faltering foot, And painful whine, the weary brute Seemed conscious of disgrace. Until he paused in mortal fear, Then plaintive sank upon the mere. Stiff as a steed of stone. In vain the master winds his horn — None, save the howling wolves forlorn, J Attend the dying roan. Sad was the heart and sore the plight Of the benumbed, bewildered knight. Now scrambling through the storm ; At every step he sank apace, The death-dew freezing on his face- In vain each loud alarm. Down on his knees himself he cast. Deeming that hour to be his last. Yet mindful of his faith — He prayed St. Catherine and St. John, And our dear Lady called upon For grace of happy death. Wlien, lo 1 a light beneath the trees. Which dank their brilliants in the breeze, And lo ! a phantom fair 1 As God is in heaven ! by that blest light Our Lady's self rose to his sight. In robes that spirits wear 1 [ IN NoETH America. 143 Oh 1 lovelier, lovelier far than pen. Or tongue, or art, or fancy's ken Can picture, was her face- Gone was the sorrow of the sword, And the last passion of our Lord Had left no living trace. As when the moon across the moor Points the lost peasant to his door. And glistens on his pane — Or when along her trail of light Belated boatmen steer at night, A harbor to regain — So the warm radiance from her hands Unbinds for him death's icy bands, And nerves his sinking heart — Her presence makes a perfect path ; Ah 1 he who such a helper hath, May anywhere depart. All trembling, as she onward smiled. Followed that knight our Mother nuld, Vowing a grateful vow ; Until, far down the mountain gorge, She led him to an antique forge. Where her own shrine stands now. If, pilgrim, chance thy steps should lead .Where, emblem of our holy creed, Canadian crosses glow — There you may hear what here you read. And seek, in witness of the deed, Our Lady of the Snow. At Quebec, the Recollect Fathers had raised a handsome church, as early as 1693, "to the per- petual glory of God and the honor of the Yirgin Mother of God, instead of the ancient convent of 144 Devotion to the B. Y. Maey Our Lady of Angels," converted into an asylum for the poor.' But old, even as the original convent — older than our little straw-thatched lodge at La Prairie — is the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, built by the noble and saintly Bishop Montmorenci de Laval, in 1666. So that they built cathedrals in America two hundred years ago, in honor of that dogma which the learned reformed divines declare a novelty in 1860. The cathedral is very lofty, with massive arches of stone dividing the nave from the aisles ; its dimensions are two hundred and sixteen feet by one hundred and eight, and it can contain four thousand v/orshippers. The tall tower and spire stand detached from the body of the building. Its interior was destroyed by shells during the bombardment of 1759, and the pictures and decorations now there are modern. Next comes the hospital, with its chapel, dedicated, in 1672, " to the Blood of Christ poured forth for us, and to the Blessed Mother of Mercy — effuso Christi Sanguini et Misericordice Matrif' and thither one goes to look at Coypel's famous picture of the " Yirgin and ChM." At the repulse of the British arms in 1690, the Feast of Our Lady of Victory was estabhshed in the church of that title ; and, twenty-one years later, on the wreck of the Boston fleet, the title was changed 1 For these notices of churclies in Quebec, see " Hawkins' Picture of Quebec." 1834. IN North America. 145 to Our Lady of Victories. The church was destroyed by the bombardment which injured the cathedral. Of old pictures of our Blessed Mother, which we hear of in Quebec, the Ursulines possess an original Vandyke, a Mater Dolorosa. The Seminary of the Holy Family has a Flight into Egypt, by Vanloo ; an Adoration of the Wise Men; and a Virgin ministered unto by Angels, 146 Devotion to the B. V. Mart CHAPTEE VII. Devotion m Texas, California, New Mexico — Cub Lady of Guada- lupe — The New Mount Carmel — The Atlantic Spanish Mission- aries — Maryland. In the North — as we have seen — ^the devotion was planted and grew ; grew steadily, in spite of checks and obstacles. Throughout the present, British pos- sessions it maintained itself healthfully, with the single exception of unfortunate Acadia. But its story in the South is twofold. Brought by the early Spaniards, ever devoted to the Holy Mother of God, her name was proclaimed upon the coasts of Florida and Alabama ; was carried thence through the forests as far north as the Bay of St. Mary (the Chesapeake) ; as far west as the yellow Mississippi. But new dominions drove it hence, only to be renewed with additional fervor in our own day. This was the approach from the Atlantic and from the Gulf of Mexico. But the conquests of Our Lady of Victories were more progressive and steadfast on the Pacific side — ^the side of the Ocean of Peace. Here, securely sheltered by the golden flag of Spain, the missionary pushed his way through the Mexican territories, hew and old — Texas and Cali- fornia. From that day the love of Mary has conse- crated those regions ; and still are the rivers, the mountain-peaks, the valleys, and the upland slopes, IN North America. ' 147 blessed by her beautiful name.' A daily newspaper will show this, wherein the letters from these countries are fuU of Santa Maria, Asuncion, Virgen, Concepcion, Loreto, El Kosario, Carmelo, and la Purissima ; the last new diocese estabhshed there is Marysville, and the capital of New Mexico is still called Santa Fe. It is not to be supposed that the blood of so many holy missionaries had been shed in vain in the South- em Atlantic and GuK States, or that the Enghsh arms effectually destroyed all reverence for the sacred name of Mary. Something survived, if only the solitary " one cluster of grapes, or as the shaking of the olive- tree, two or three berries on the outerniost bough, or four or five on the top of the tree." ^ Enough was left to give courage by tradition, enough to support hope when it pleased the Son of Mary to " send new laborers into His harvest." Although the first explorers who landed on the Southern coast were accompanied by ecclesiastics, yet there remains no record of any fruits gathered by them for God. But, as early as 1526, Mexico, thoroughly Christianized, began to pour her heroic missionaries upon the Northern shores of the New World Mediter- ranean. Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit struggled side by side. These first missions were about St. Augustine, the town founded on the Feast of Our Lady's Nativity, with solemn celebration of that rising * Sicut racemus et sicut excussio oleae duarum vel trium olivarum in summitate rami, sive quatuor aut quinque in cacuminibus ejus fructus ejus. — ^IsaisB, xvii. 6. 148 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary of the Morning Star. Bj 1597, three chapels, dedi- cated to Our Lady, stood upon the soil of Florida ; a mission upon St. Mary's Bay invited the Algonquins of Virginia; another wooed the lichees and Catawbas amid the piue-covered Carolinian mountains. The Cherokee, the Natchez, the Mobilian tribes, were visited. The Indian and the Spaniard knelt side by side at the foot of the stately statue of Our Lady, which threw its stately shadow over the harbor of Pensacola. But they were nearly all washed away in blood. The tomahawk and arrows of the savages slew over thirty Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans. The English conquest did the rest. The Catholic Indians who throng around the Spanish St. Augustine grew few and feeble in the destructive and licentious pres- ence of the Saxon successors of the Spaniard. They wandered back to hide themselves in their thick, green everglades, and were called Seminoles — the Wanderers. By 1783 they were all gone from the neighborhood of the city where they had been peacefully colonized and instructed in the faith of Christ and the virtues of civil- ization, near the shrine of St. Mary the Virgin. The same power desolated the missions of Alabama, until, in 1722, none remained of the converts save four chiefs — Oziuntolo, the Creek ; Adrian and John Mark, the Appalachicolas ; and Tixjana, or Baltasar, chief of the Talapoosas. These, gathering a hundred Chris- tians of their tribes, established the Mission of Our Lady of the Solitude. Then came the cession to the English, and the red-skinned devotee of Mary disap- IN North America. 149 peared. Their priests were banished ; the religion of the foolish Establishment was proclaimed ; and if any still lingered who loved the beautiful Name, it was in the fastnesses of the forest yet pathless for the invader. Nevertheless, before we cross the Mississippi, let us note the double consecration of its waters to the Im- maculate Conception. Almost from its source to the Arkansas had Marquette made its shores hear the praise of that adorable mystery of God's love to man ; and, ere his followers sank the body of Fernando de Soto in its turbulent floods where they near the sea, his fingers had traced in his last will and testament these directions : " I order" — ^he says, after the usual Christian pref- ace and commendation of his soul to the Most Holy Trinity — " I order that, wherever I may die, my body shall be carried to Xeres — to the church of San Miguel, and laid in the sepulchre where lies my mother '' * * ^ " And in that church, I order that of my goods a site and place be bought, where shall be built a chapel, which shall have for its invocation Our Lady of the Conception. In which edifice and work I desire that there be expended two thousand ducats — fifteen hun- dred for the structure and inclosure, and ^yq hundred for an altar-piece representing the said Invocation of Our Lady of the Conception." He then directs fully the famishing of silk vestments ; the chaplain's salary ; the fund for the perpetual guardianship and repair of the chapel, and for the Masses to be said therein — to wit : five of the Passion of our Lord ; five of His sacred 150 Deyotion to the B. V. Maky wounds ; sixty for the souls in Purgatory ; ten of All Saints ; ten of the Holy Ghost ; and twenty of " Our Lady of the Conception." And then he adds : " In the event that my body cannot be taken for sepulture to Spain, I order that that be no impediment or hindrance to the founding of said chapel." Ah, Christian Cabal- lero ! not beside thy mother ; not in the chapel of the Conception ; but in the swift, turbid river of • the Con- ception were thy bones laid to moulder until the trump of God shall bid them rise. Bequiescant in pace !^ Meanwhile, in Mexico, the devotion to the Blessed Virgin was spreading rapidly and surely. The Span- iard had been nurtured in it afar off beside the Anda- lusian streams, or on the hills of Castile. And the Indians — ^they were a gentle race, except in the cele- bration of their pagan rites — ^the Indians gladly learned the beautiful mystery of the Saviour's Incarnation, and gave up their whole hearts to His influence, embracing with simple but most earnest faith the privilege of sharing in Mary's maternal love. In a little while they returned that love with faithful childlike affection, and so won great spiritual reward from her gracious in- tercession. Throughout Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Cahfornia, you find churches by the score dedicated to the Mother of God. Some of these were built but yesterday; some, echoing now on festal days to the ^ De Soto's will may be found in the "American Historical Maga- zine," vol. v., p. 104. IN NOKTH AmEEICA. 151 chant of Our Lady's Litanies, or the choral sweetness of the Ave Regina, heard the same sounds swelling from Lidian voicea two hundred and forty years ago. On every mountain-side, on forest edge, on village- watering stream, upon the frontier of the far-stretching prairie deserts, beside the canon's brink, they stand, perpetual prayers in stone, invoking the intercession of the matchless Virgin with her eternal Son : Our Lady of the Kosary, Our Lady of Angels, Our Lady of Light, Our Lady of Carmel, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady's Annunciation, Nativity, Immaculate Con- ception, Assumption; Our Lady of Belen, of Santa Cruz, of the Canon de 'Jemes; but, above all. Our Lady of Guadalupe ! No less than five of these famed shrines are fiUed with praise, even in this age, in the diocese of Santa Fe alone. That diocese is weU named, for the holy faith, sown there in blood three hundred years ago, has never faded from the people's hearts. But why so many shrines of Guadalupe ? Ask the lady in the drawing-room, or the shepherd-boy on the hill-side; inquire of the soldier in the barrack, the cattle-driver on the pampa, the Lidian girl with the basket of fruit upon her dark-tressed head, and they will all tell you the same story of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe ^ Our Lady of Guadalupe was soon the patroness of all New Spain ; Texas, and California, and New Mex- * The legend of Our Lady of Guadalupe is given in Orsini's Life (Virtue's edition), p. 374. 152 Devotion to the B. V. Maky ico, were rivals in showing her honor. Rivers and towns were called after her name, and little hamlets on the edge of the forests still bear the name of Guada- lupita, or Little Guadalupe. At least a score of churches, dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, have in those States resisted the changes of empire ; the many revolutions ; the influx of licen- tious infidels from the Eastern States; the cruel, causeless, wicked destruction of the harmless Cathohc Indians by the people of the United States.' A chap- ter was formed for the first church, and Pope Benedict XIV. accorded a Mass and office, with a privileged octave. The copy of the miraculous portrait given him, he gave to the religious of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin in the Eternal City. To Spain he gave the right of celebrating the festival in Europe, and the great Pius VI. extended the privilege to Italy. Judge then, with such a patroness for New Spain, how fast the devotion spread ! By 1581 the fearless missionaries had carried it seven hundred miles from the capital, into what is now the State of New Mexico. The land was of course irrigated here, as elsewhere, with blood ; and the first to fall for St. Mary was the Fransciscan Father, Juan de Santa Maria. Sixteen years later, eight more of the same order had pene- trated to the northern Rio Grande. By 1608 eight thousand souls had been baptized into the faith of Christ ; and when less than a score of years more had * Vide note at end of chapter. IN North America. 153 rolled over, Father Benavides had established the twenty-seventh mission in New Mexico. Three well- built churches of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and others, under various dedications, sheltered crowds who adored the All Holy and told the beads of the Rosary of the Virgin. Of these poor Indians, in spite of their many sufferings from the governments which have plundered and oppressed them, eight thousand still exist as a proof of the graces won from God by la Purissima Virgen. As early as the year 1686 there was a Chiadalwpe river in Texas, and eight Franciscan missions flourished on its borders. Nay, some of them were pushed for- ward among the Osages and Missouris, while others, going towards the Pacific shore, had marched to the spiritual conquest of California. These pioneers of Christ, who were hunting souls, more precious far than gold, were in a special way St. Mary's own sworn ser- vants ; they were the Monks of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. These were the founders, two centuries and a half ago (1601), of Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Monterey ; and, at the latter place, an altar was erected beneath a shadowy oak, and Father Andrew of the Assumption of the Virgin said then and there the first Mass, and laid claim to CaHfornia in the name of the King of kings. ^ South of that rose the new Mount Carmel, and the mission of that title stood at its feet, looking out upon the broad, still, transparent * Shea's Indian Missions, p. 88. 7* 154 Deyotion to the B. V. Maky sea ; and the dusky Pueblos gathered there to learn the history of the Incarnation ; to be glad at the news of a Eedeemer ; to lift their untutored hearts in rev- erent love to His Mother, whose protection they soon learned to trust. And the good Fathers won them from their savage sloth, and idleness, and want, having heard in their souls a voice like that which sounded to the prophet of old : "Feed this people with thy crook, this flock of thy heritage, which dwell solitary in the wood in the midst of Carmel." ^ There the beads of Mary's Eosary were taught, and the hymns of her feasts were sung in the Indian language; and as in Asia the Mediterranean bathed the feet of the ancient hill, so here the blue, clear Pacific sought the shore, and broke at the base of the new-found vineyard of God.^ Wondrous, indeed, were some of our dear Mother's manifestations of power and protection. In the Octave of her glorious Assumption into Heaven, year 1770, the priests Somera and Cambon started off for the in- terior, where pagan tribes, hitherto unvisited, were dying in ignorance of the Father of all. Weary days and nights they travelled with their little escort of ten soldiers, till they reached the base of the vast Sierra. The sun was going, down over the Western Ocean ; the snowy peaks of the mountains were turning rose-hued in the setting day, when they saw hundreds of Indians, 1 Pasce populum tuum in virga tua, gregem hereditatis tuse, habi- tantes solos in saltu, in medio Carmeli. — Micah, vii. 14. • The Hebrew word Carmel signifies God's vineyard. IN NoETH America. , 155 fully armed, and sliouting their war-cry, rushing upon them. A moment's commendation of their souls to God, and then the missionaries unfurled their battle- flag — the flag of the Blessed Virgin. Fold after fold, the azure standard, studded with golden stars, streamed out in the light of the sunset, and from its field the radiant beauty of Our Lady's eyes beamed on the startled Indians. Their hearts were touched; they threw away their arms ; and catching their trinkets, or whatever else they had of value with them, they came forward humbly to offer them to her as a propitiatory gift. They were soon won to know her and love her better ; the Mission of San Gabriel, of him who brought to her the message of the Incarnation, rose among the mountains; the Cross was securely planted, and the first Mass was offered on the Feast of her Nativity, in the chapel which her new children had builded. Thus the whole golden land was won to Mary and her Divine, Eternal Child. Missions of Santa Maria, Nuestra Senora de la Soledad, la Purissima Concep- cion, were crowded with the Christianized natives. AU these estabhshments had the same rule. At daybreak the Angelus summoned all to church for morning prayers and Mass before their fast was broken. After that, each went where the duties and labors of the day might summon him. Again the Angelus recalled them at eleven, when they dined, rested until two, and re- turned to work, until the third Angelus sounded as the sun went down, and they gathered for the Eosary and then for their last meal. The evenings were spent in 156 Devotion to the B. V. Maey innocjent recreations. Their wealth was in common, and was laid out by their spiritual Fathers for their best welfare ; happy, innocent, and pious, thus they lived, until the *' lust of gain in the spirit of Cain" sent the eastern money- worshipper among them to blight, demoraHze, and destroy. In 1837, thirty-one thousand lingered still in pleni- tude and peace ; but the next year Father Saria died of starvation and poverty — died clad in his sacerdotal vestments, as he strove to begin the Mass where for thirty years he had offered it, at the altar of Our Lady of the SoHtude. In 1840 there remained of these poor children of God only about four thousand in all the missions of California. Would you know the rest of their history, read the note which follows this chapter. While these first conversions were going on in the more Southern and Southwestern States, an Enghsh nobleman, a friend of his king, yet powerless to prac- tise his rehgion even under that protection, resolved to seek for freedom of faith in America. A grant of lands was obtained ; the expedition organized ; the spiritual charge of it given to some Jesuit Fathers, and thus the first step was taken towards the establishment of that church which, two centuries later, should declare Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception patroness of all the land. It was then, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and thirty-three, on the twenty-second day of November, the first day in the Octave of Our Lady's IN North America. 157 Presentation in the Temple, that the CathoHc emi- grants, under Lord Baltimore, embarked on board the "Ark" and the "Dove." "They placed their ships," says their chaplain. Father White, " under the protec- tion of God, of the Blessed Virgin Mother, of St. Igna- tius, and of the Guardian Angels of Maryland," and so set forth to seek religious freedom in the forests of America. Their voyage was long, as usual in those days, and a furious storm threatened to send them to the bottom. The two vessels were driven apart, and in the one which bore the Jesuit they expected and prepared for death. Strengthened by the Sacrament of Penance, they had resigned hope, almost, when the priest, kneeling on the drenched deck, called to witness " the Lord Jesus and His Holy Mother, that the pur- pose of the voyage was to pay honor to the Blood of the Redeemer by the conversion of the barbarians." The tempest soon lulled, and, at the close of February, they gave thanks to the Blessed Virgin as they landed in Virginia. Then sailing up the Chesapeake, first called, by Christian men, St. Mary's Bay, they entered the Potomac, and reached the territory of Maryland. Their first solemn thanksgiving for safe arrival was made on the Feast of Our Lady's Annunciation (March 25). They offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and then planting a huge cross, hewn from a tree, they knelt at its foot to recite the Litanies. No other colo- nists of the United States, known to us, dealt so fairly with the red-men. No rum, no worthless trinkets, no destructive weapons were used in trade ; but the Lidian 158 Devotion to the B. V. Makt set his own value on the land, parted from it willingly, and received in exchange seeds, cloths, and instru- ments of husbandry. No native blood stains the soU purchased for St. Mary the Virgin ; no Indian warfare is in the records of its history; but on St. Mary's River they pitched their tents, and, in friendship with the red-man, laid the foundation of their town. They called it after the beloved Mother of their Lord, to whose protection they avowed their safety from the perils of the sea ; and for years the little town of St. Mary's was the centre of their colony. One of their earliest converts was the chief Tayac, and with him were baptized his wife and daughter, both of whom received the sacred name of Mary. And soon the fervent heart of the Jesuit Father White was gladdened by hundreds of neophytes, for the aborigines received with joy the doctrine of Christ. The cere- mony of the baptism of the chiefs family had been conducted with what pomp their rude circumstances permitted. A cross was borne in procession, the gov- ernor of the colony and his officers walking beside the dusky American king, and all chanting the beautiful words of the Litany of the Blessed Yirgin. Soon came the crowning boast of this colony, the passage of the religious toleration act, in 164:9 ; for these children of St. Mary had not been, like the Puritans of New Eng- land, soured by persecution into relentless and absurd intolerance. Churches soon arose to bless the land, sometimes the work of government, sometimes of in- dividuals, as when William Bretton gave, for a church, IN North Ameeica. 159 a grant of land " in honor of Almighty God and the Ever Immaculate Virgin Mary." ' This colony, it is true, was soon to see itself dis- franchised, robbed of its religious freedom, and its Catholic people stripped of their privileges for wor- shipping God in the way of their fathers. But before this. Father White had displayed the spirit of his holy Company, in the evangelization of the savages. Sail- ing up the rivers in an open boat, with a box of pres- ents, a chest containing the sacred vestments and altar-stone, and a basket of provisions, with a mat for shelter from the sun and rain, he went forth in pursuit of souls. Towards nightfall the boat was made fast to the shore ; the two attendants went into the wood to look for game ; and the priest gathered sticks to make a fire, or, if it rained, stretched the mat upon boughs of^ trees. " Thanks be to God," he says, " we enjoy our scanty fare and hard beds as much as if we were accommodated with the luxuries of Europe." On one of these occasions he was called to a Chris- tian Indian, an Anacostan, who had fallen into an am- bush of Susquehannas and been run through with a lance. Father White found him chanting his death- song, and the Christian red-men beside him praying fervently. Then the good priest heard his confession and prepared him for death. But, ere leaving him, he read a gospel and the Litany of Loretto over him ; he urged him to commend his soul to Jesus and to Mary. » Day-Star of American Freedom, by G. L. L. Davis, p. 228 160 Devotion to the B. V. Maey Then, toucliing his wounds with a relic of the true cross, he bade the attendants bring the body to the chapel for interment, and launched his canoe to go visit a dying catechumen. Ketuming the next day, he be- held with amazement the same Indian vigorously pro- pelling a canoe to meet him. When they met, the Anacostan stepped into the priest's canoe, and, drop- ping his blanket, showed him a faint red line, which was all the trace remaining of the deadly wound. Eec- ommending him to make his whole Hfe an act of grati- tude to Jesus and Mary, the father went on his way, giving thanks to God.' But here the further records of devotion to our Heavenly Queen, if any such exist, from this time to the Revolution of 1776, have, owing to the distracted condition of these States, and other causes, become quite inaccessible to the present writer. The present significance of the settlement of Maryland is this, that the devotion to Our Blessed Lady, expressed in the English language, here enters the now territory of the United States. The Spaniards planted it, to be well- nigh extinguished, along the Mexican Gulf ; and, more permanently, in Texas, California, New Mexico, as early as 1540. The French so cherished it from its first coming, in 1615, that it grew with luxuriant beauty, grows daily now, and promises, by God's blessing, to shelter, with its pleasant shade, the whole North, from the Arctic circle to the great lakes. The English, as » Shea's Missions, 492, 493. IN North America. 161 we see, attempt the centre in 1634. We sliall return to tliem at the period of the American Revolution. Now we are to look at the other early Missions in the United States. Note to Page 152. An tmexpected confirmation of tMs sort of fiBWjt is found in Harper'a MontJdy Magazine, 1861, p. 307, et aeq. When I saw in the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, the statement in a missionary's letter, that the whites were wont to " try their new pistols'" upon the unfor- tunate Indians, I was unwUling to believe. Read, now, the testimony to that and to the Catholic Missions from the most prejudiced and anti-Catholic work in this country : " As California became more settled, it was considered profitable, owing to the high rate of compensation for white labor, to encourage the Christian Indian tribes to adopt habits of industry, and they were employed very generally throughout the State. In the vine-growing districts they were usually paid in native brandy every Saturday night, put in jaU next morning for getting drunk, and bailed out on Monday to work out the fine imposed upon them by the local authori- ties. This system still prevails in Los Angeles, where I have often seen a dozen of these miserable wretches carried to jail roaring drunk of a Sunday morning. The inhabitants of Los Angeles are a moral and intelligent people, and many of them disapprove of the custom on principle, and hope it v(dll be abolished as soon as the Indians are all killed off". Practically it is not a bad way of bettering their condition ; for some of them die every week from the effects of debauchery, or kiU one another in the nocturnal brawls which prevail in the outskirts of the Pueblo. " The settlers in the northern portions of the State had a still more effectual method of encouraging the Indians to adopt habits of civiliza- tion. In general they engaged them at a fixed rate of wages to culti- vate the ground, and, during the season of labor, fed them on beans and gave them a blanket or a shirt each'; after which, when the har- vest was secured, the account was considered squared, and the Indians were driven off to forage in the woods for themselves and families during the winter. Starvation usually wound up a considerable number of the old and decrepit ones every season ; and of those that 162 Devotion to the B. V. Maey failed to perisli from liiinger or exposure, some were killed on the general principle that they must have subsisted by stealing cattle, for it was well known that cattle ranged in the vicinity ; while others were not unfrequently slaughtered by their employers for helping themselves to the refuse portions of the crop which had been left in the ground. It may be said that these were exceptions to the general rule ; but if ever an Indian was ^ully and honestly paid for his labor by a white settler, it was not my luck to hear of it. Certainly, it could not have been of frequent occurrence. " The wild Indians inhabiting the Coast Range, the valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, and the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, became troublesome at a very early period after the discovery of the gold mines. It was found convenient to take possession of their country without recompense, rob them of their wives and children, kill them in every cowardly and barbarous manner that could be de- vised, and when that was impracticable, drive them as far as p6ssible out of the way. Such treatment was not consistent with their rude ideas of justice. At best they were an ignorant race of Diggers, wholly unacquainted with our enlightened institutions. They could not understand why they should be murdered, robbed, and hunted down in this way, without any other pretence of provocation than the color of their skin and the habits of life to which they had always been accustomed. " Voluminous reports were made to Congress, showing that a gen- eral reservation system, on the plan so successfully pursued by the Spanish missionaries, would best accomplish the object. It was known that the Missions of California had been built chiefly by Indian labor ; that dicring tTieir existence the priests had fully demonstrated the capacity of this race for the acquisition of civilized habits ; that extensive vineyards and large tracts of lands had been cultivated solely by Indian labor, under their instruction ; and that by this humane system of teaching, many hostile tribes had been subdued, and enabled not only to support themselves, but to render the Mis- sions highly profitable establishments. " No aid was given by government beyond the grants of land neceS' sary for missionary purposes; yet they soon grew wealthy, owned immense herds of cattle, supplied agricultural products to the ranche- ros, and carried on a considerable trade in hides and tallow with the United States. If the Spanish priests could do this without arms or assistance, in the midst of a savage country, at a period when the IN North Ameeica. 163 Indians were more numerous and more powerful than they are now, surely it could be done in a comparatively civilized country by intelli- gent Americans, with all the lights of experience and the co-operation of a beneficent government. ************ " At Nome Cult Valley, during the winter of 1858-59, more than a hundred and fifty peaceable Indians, including women and children, were cruelly slaughtered by the whites who had settled there under official authority, and most of whom derived their support either from actual or indirect connection with the reservation. It was alleged that they had driven off and eaten private cattle. Upon an investiga- tion of this charge, made by the officers of the army, it was found to be entirely destitute of truth ; a few cattle had been lost, or probably killed by white men, and this was the whole basis of the massacre. Armed parties went into the rancherias in open day, when no evil was apprehended, and shot the Indians down — weak, harmless, and defenceless as they were — without distinction of age or sex ; shot down women with sucking babes at their breasts ; killed or crippled the naked children that were running about; and, after they had achieved this brave exploit, api)ealed to the State Government fpr aid ! Oh, shame, shame ! where is thy blush, that white men should do this with impunity in a civilized country, under the very eyes of an enlightened government ! They did it, and they did more ! For days, weeks, and months they ranged the hills of Nome Cult, killing every Indian that was too weak to escape ; and, what is worse, they did it under a State Commission, which, in all charity, I must believe was issued upon false representations. A more cruel series of out- rages than those perpetrated upon the poor Indians of Nome Cult never disgraced a community of white men. The State said the settlers must be protected, and it protected them — protected them from women and children, for the men are too imbecile and too abject to fight. " During the winter of last year a number of them were gathered at Humboldt. The whites thought it was a favorable opportunity for getting rid of them altogether. So they went in a body to the Indian camp, during the night, when the poor wretches were asleep, shot all the men, women, and children they could at the first onslaught, and cut the throats of the remainder. Very few escaped. Next morning sixty bodies lay weltering in their blood — the old and the young, male and female — with every wound gaping a tale of horror to the civilized 164 Devotion to the B. V. Mary world. Children climbed upon their mothers' breasts and sought nourishment from the foimtains that death had drained ; girls and boys lay here and there with their throats cut from ear to ear ; men and women, clinging to each other in their terror, were found per- forated with bullets or cut to pieces with knives — all were cruelly mur- dered ! Let any who doubt this read the newspapers of San Francisco of that date. It will be found there in its most bloody and tragic de- tails. Let them read of the Pitt River massacre, and of all the mas- sacres that, for the past three years, have darkened the records of the State." If such a record as this can be read in the pages of Harper's Maga- zinCy in what language would the exiled Franciscan describe this un- holy march of modern civilization ? IN North Ameeica. 165 CHAPTEE Yin. The Devotion in Maine — Sillery and Chattdiere its Nurseries — The Wampum Belt for Our Lady of Chartres — The Vow of the OWENAGUNGA — ThE MiSSION OF THE KeNNEBEC — ThE MuRDER OF Father Kasle — The Catholic Ked-skin and the Puritan Council. Feom the crimson record of the Iroquois we turn to a gentler race ; — from the struggle of Christianity with sanguinary paganism, along the bright lakes of New York, to the serene and beautiful rise of the Morning Star over the hills and pine-forests of Maine. The reader will perhaps recollect that fine Catholic gentleman and knight of Malta, Brulart de Sillery ; — how he renounced the world that favored him ; left his king who honored, and his country which was proud of him, to consecrate himseK to God in the wilds of the New World ; how, " to testify his gratitude for the wondrous favors received from the Mother of Mercy," he founded the Mission of St. Joseph; and how he hoped, " by the merits and powerful help of the Holy Virgin Mother of God," to " attract, assemble, and settle the wandering savages, as the surest means of their conversion." By that powerful help the foun- dation succeeded; numbers of Algonquins and Mon- tagnais forsook their nomad life to gather round the " black-robes," to live by tillage of the soil, and to ex- 166 Devotion to the B. V. Mary hibit, by their lives, a simplicity and fervor of intelli- gent faith which races, seK-called superior, would do well to emulate. Eminent among these, for his many virtues, was the Algonquin, Charles Meiaskwat. Hearing, one day, that a party of his pagan clansmen had taken some Abenaki prisoners and were torturing them, though they were not enemies, he hurried in pursuit and res- cued the captives, but not until they had been most savagely treated. But he brought them down to Sil- lery, or St. Joseph's, and there the Hospital Nuns, from the Quebec foundation, dressed their wounds, and attended them with their usual gentle charity until they were quite recovered. When they went home, well armed and clothed, Meiaskwat accompanied them, visited their towns on the Kennebec, and preached Christ and His blessed faith to them. One sagamo, or chief, returned with him to Quebec, was instructed and baptized. His example was followed. In a* little while, no Abenaki, or, as New Yorkers called them, Owenagunga, village was without two or three Chris- tians. Finally, on the feast of the Mother of God's Assumption into heaven, year 1646, they formally asked for black-robes. And then two Jesuits went forth from their central house in Quebec — ^Isaac Jogues to the New York Iroquois, Gabriel Druillettes to the tribes of Maine. Father Gabriel was received by a docile and gentle, although heroically brave people. In three months he could catechize and preach in their own tongue ; and IN North America. 167 he labored, on and off, as the necessities of other mis- sion stations required, until 1657 ; by which time the good seed was sown and had sprung up, never to be eradicated. Although they were often without a mis- sionary for long years at a time, yet they remained steadfast in the faith. Before the attack on Fort Pen- quid, in 1689, we find aU the braves fortifying them- selves by the Holy Sacrament; and during all that expedition they said the Eosary of Our Blessed Lady perpetually, without intermission even at meal-time.^ Judge, then, if they had not received into fervent souls devotion to the Queen of Angels. And be not sur- prised at their fideUty through the long residence of Father Basics and Father Yincent Bigot among them ; nor yet that they remain to-day pure and fervent Cathohcs amid the temptation, vices, and irreligion of effete Puritanism. From about 1680 to 1700 the mis- sionaries, unable to live amongst these tribes, sought to draw them nearer to Quebec, whence spiritual and physical help could be more easily procured. In a Httle while the men of the Kennebec outnum- bered the vanishing Algonquins in Sillery, and for years the Mission was called the Abenaki. Then Father James Bigot, of the Society of Jesus, founded the Mission of St. Francois de Sales, on the beautiful Falls of the Chaudiere, not far from the spot where your modern maps show you three townships of St. Mary side by side. In 1685, the new reduction absorbed ^ Shea's Indian Missions, p. 143. 168 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary that of Sillery. Two letters' of Father Bigot, now be- fore us, are filled with edifying details of these most fervent American Catholics — these faithful American devotees of the Blessed Mother of God. They were poor to extremity, their village seemed a favorite abode for epidemics, yet men, women, and children exhibited a firm, resigned love for the holy will of God, most edifying and most instructive to the civilized white, if, indeed, he would take advantage thereof. Their pecu- liar religious characteristics, if we may say peculiar where all were so good, were an intense trustful love for Jesus crucified, and a zeal for and practice of per- fect purity in honor of His Immaculate Mother. Ten- derly they used to call upon her beautiful name in their sickness, and fondly summon her to the couch of death with prayers. To her they sent their choicest wampum necklaces, the work of a whole long winter's leisure. Do you smile at the poor ofi'ering of Indian beads ? send your own necklaces and bracelets of gold and ruby, in the spirit of the simple Abenaki, and then you may smile with more satisfaction to yourselves and edification to your neighbor. Among the treasures of the famous cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres," France, you may still see, preserved ' The letters, printed from the originals, form pari; of an exquisite series, contributed, among so many other things, to American Christian history, by the indefatigable zeal and taste of John Gilmary Shea. ' As this celebrated cathedral has not been described in the work of the Abbe Orsini, and as it had so close a connection with our poor little American Mission, a note descriptive of it, and explanatory of a reliquary soon to be mentioned, will foUow the notice of the Huron reduction. IN North America. 169 with reverence, a band of this sea-shell wampum, all that the American had of most precious sent to Our Lady, as a token of their simple love, in 1695. The ground is violet, and in white letters you may read this inscription : " MATEI VIRGINI ABNAQUICEI, D. D." " To the Virgin Mother, her most devoted Abenakis." The chapter of the great cathedral received the offer- ing as it would have received the jewelled gift of a king, and wrote affectionately to the poor Indians a thousand leagues away. Whatever taste and power of deHcate labor the Owenagunga could bestow, were lavished on this belt. The best workers of the village were employed, the choicest and most perfect beads carefully selected. And this they entreat the clergy of the cathedral " to offer as their little present to the most Blessed Yirgin." "Though it be only Indian work," they say, " our sacred Mother will see by it our hearts, and all the sentiments of love and tenderness with which we offer it. We have already offered it here, placing it at the foot of her image during two whole novenas, praying for you; and at the end of each day's Mass chanting the Inviolata henigna Regina Maria'' These novenas commenced, one on the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, the other on that of her sinless Nativity. "Ah," cries Father Yincent Bigot, in writing of these Indians, " if you could hear them sing at the Holy Mass ; if you beheld their fer- vor, their innocence, their extreme abhorrence of even 8 170 Devotion to the B. V. Maey the least fault, their docility for. the sacred mysteries, their love for Jesus Christ crucified, and for His Blessed Mother, which attain to a very great tender- ness, to an heroic desire for suffering, and all the marks of predestination which accompany their holy death, you would be greatly touched."^ The chapter of Chartres having made some presents to the little church of Chaudiere, the hearts of the forest children overflow with gratitude. " We always loved the blessed Virgin Mother," they write,'' " we always honored her sincerely ; but now it seems that your kind gifts have redoubled our affection and reverence for our good Lady. Some years ago we consecrated to her our vil- lage, our persons, all that we have, and all that we are. Each year, on the day when she was assumed, body and soul, into heaven, we renew that consecration. Present our poor little gift to Mary, and, what we especially desire, cause that this very paper touch her shrine. Maybe, from that, fresh ardor will be con- veyed to us here, to augment our love for our sacred Princess. We have said. Let this belt of wampum confirm our words." The present sent from Chartres was, as we find by a letter from Eev. Pere Aubery, written sixty years later, a very beautiful statue of the Blessed Virgin in silver, a copy of that known as Notre Dame soics terre, or under-ground, so called from the subterranean * Les Voeux des Hurons et des Abnaquis a Notre Dame de Chartres par M. Doublet de Boistliibault. Chartres, 1857, p. 32. » Ibid., pp. 34-38. . IN North America. 171 chapel, whicli will be described in a note. This letter is signed by the missionary and six Abenaki chiefs. The letters of their missionaries are full of simple little traits of devotion to St. Mary the Virgin. Some- times they would want the Indian names, family names of the women, to distinguish in their registers one from another, and they would find the greatest difficulty in getting them. " My name is Mary," they would say. " But I want your Indian name — your Abenaki name." And the answer would be, " I have no other name ; Abenaki name no good ; my name is Mary !" Almost every woman was a Mary; if they did not get that name in baptism, they took it in confirmation, or they would go and ask permission of their pastor to be called henceforward by the beloved name. Or, after Mass, they would linger in the church, even in the depth of winter, to recommend their resolutions and their good thoughts especially to her. And, after aU, f what else could they do, since they were consecrated to her individually and as a people ? It was on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception that this solemn dedication, or donation as they called it, took place. They adorned, as well as they could, the chapel of Our Lady in the church at Sillery, ex- posing to veneration their beautiful silver statue ; and, for many days after, they practised particular devo- tions in honor of their elected Queen.' Then, every ' Relation de ce qui s'est passe de plus remarquable dans la Mission Abnaquaise de Sainct Joseph de Sillery et de Sainct Francois de Sales Tannee 1665 : par le Pere Ja<5ques Bigot d(^ la Compagnie de Jesus. 172 Devotion to the B. V. Mary year, on the Feast of the Assumption, they bore the image in procession to bless the village at Chandiere, and solemnly renewed their gift. This was their act of donation : " Great Mary, may the heavens and earth bear wit- ness to our sincerity. May all thy friends gathered now in heaven hear us, and be glad that we thus imi- tate them. Let them testify that our hearts and our words accord. May Jesus, our Lord and our God, acknowledge our sincerity, who hath willed His in- fancy to be governed by thee, who so miraculously gave him birth ; who hath made the universe confess thee Lady of all, almost as though He had placed His sovereign dominion in thy hands. May He, whom we hail as Lord, behold our hearts, see that we have but one thought, that thou shalt be forever our Lady and our Queen. And thou, O Mary, hear us from heaven, where thou art throned in incomparable splendor; hear us, and accept what we offer. " O Mary, Virgin Mother of God, we have long waited for this day to choose thee for our Queen, for hitherto we have been but obscurely thine. Take, then, possession of us and ours. We make thee mis- tress of our village, and therefore have we borne thine image hither. If in any of our lodges thou shouldst see what can displease thee, hasten to remove it. May all anger, and disunion, and evil speaking, all impurity, drunkenness, and every other sin, take flight before the approach of thy sinless^ steps. May the demon not dare to injure a land which belongs to thee. Do not IN North Ajierica. 173 disdain to dwell with us, since, having thee, we shall have the virtues that go with thee, and that remain where thou art, gentleness, unitedness, charity, docility. Do not refuse to dwell with us, great and glorious Lady. Though among us, vile and contemptible as we are, thy grandeur will not be obscured, but our lowli- ness and our wretchedness will give it new splendor by the contrast. " This, our blessed Princess, is what we have to say. Would to God that our words were engraven upon the rock, never to be effaced. But they will not vanish, for they are written on our hearts. They are im- printed on the tender hearts even of our little children. They will hand them down, and our remote descend- ants shall know how we loved thee and recognized thee as our Queen. So shall our example teach them to love and serve thee. "Woe to him who would destroy our affection, or change the sentiments we have for thee ! Kather may the brooks cease to flow, and the sun to shine, yea, all things to exist, than that one of our descendants should prove disloyal to thee. Love us, then, Mary, our great Queen ; procure for us the favor of thy Son ; and may we one day behold with joy His unutterable glory and thine. We have spoken." ' This was the school in which the true Americans of Maine learned the faith which they practise still on the banks of the Penobscot and Kennebec. * Voeux des Hurons, pp. 39-41. 174 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary i When, after a time, the Missions were re-established in their own country, by the salmon-filled streams of Maine, we find no diminution in the fervor of these red-skinned children of Saint Mary. Father Thury, at Panawaniske, on the Penobscot ; the Recollect Father Simon, at Medoktek, on the St. John's ; and Father Vincent Bigot and Father Rale, or Rasle, on the Ken- nebec, were steadfast laborers by 1688. Bigot^ has two especial themes of praise in his people, their fervor for the Most Adorable Eucharist, and their love for Mary. The first thing in the morning, the last thing at night, was a visit to our Lord, if only for a few moments : going to or returning from work, they made it a law to go salute, at least, the Most Holy. So fre- quent were these visits of the children, women, and men, that Father Bigot declares it was like a continual little procession to and from the chapel. So constant a habit had some of them formed of spiritual union with our Lord and his blessed Mother, that none of their occupations could distract them from it. An old chief blesses God for his blindness, since nothing now can attract his sight from the wounds of the Crucified and the beautiful face of Mary. Maidens die in their bloom, blessing her for taking them unfettered by mar- riage and its distracting cares. A young man, whose right arm was dropping to pieces from necrosis of the bone, would ask her pardon for the irrepressible groans * Relation de ce qui s'est passe dans la Mission des Abnaquis 4 TAcadie I'annee 1701. m North America. 175 wrung from him by his bitter pain. To the priest ask- ing a young girl dying, if they could do nothing to assuage her sufferings, she answered, "No, father, I can wish for nothing more. The Mother of Jesus, my good mother, knows that I have no more fervent and continual desire than to see her face." ^ An Indian who desires to reach a point has a way of going straight at it. Not remarkable for syllogistic abihties, he has a shorter method of reaching correct conclusions. The Mohawk, when the Albany Dutch- man sneered at her for honoring Mary, asked to whom he prayed. He said, to Christ his God. But she shaking her head gravely, said, "Guess not pray much ; no have honor for Mother, no have much for Son." One of the Kennebec chiefs, of Bigot's time, was taunted with the errors of his creed, in his visits to the English settlements, and urged by the people to adopt theirs. "Which of them?" asked the red-man, "for no two of you have the same." Of course they must deny the power of the Blessed Yirgin ; for they could see the scapular on his swarthy chest, or the beads and medal twisted into his head-dress ; but he fought the usual battle with them, and gave himseK as an example to prove his doctrines. " You have known me long enough," he said. "You know that I was as big a drunkard as ever lived. Well, God has had pity on me ; and I can defy any one to reproach me with having tasted wine or brandy for many years. To » Relation, p. 36. 176 Devotion to the B. V. Maby whom am I obliged for this but to our holy Lady, to the Mother of Jesus. For to her I had recourse in my extreme feebleness, for grace to conquer my inveterate habit of drunkenness; and by her help I conquered it. After that, will you tell me that the .saints do not hear us ; that it is useless to address ourselves to the Mother of God ? I believe none of your words ; you are deceivers. My own experience convinces me ; and know you this," and the brave, a renowned one, drew himself up, and his dark Indian eye kindled, "know this, that I will love and bless the holy Virgin to the last breath of my life. For I am sure that she is glad now, and that she will recompense me for defending her cause against you." ^ Father Yincent Bigot is succeeded by Sebastian Rasle, another of that grand " Company of Jesus." On his thirty years' mission we shall touch but lightly. In 1705, one Hilton, at the head of a party of New Eng- landers, burnt the church and village of Norridgewock, profaned the sanctuary, and withdrew. In 1713, after the peace of Utrecht, some of the chiefs went to Boston to hire workmen to rebuild their church. " I will re- build it for you," said the governor, " if you will dismiss your missionary and receive one whom I will send you," " Listen," said the warrior in answer. " You saw and knew me long before the French, but neither your predecessors nor your ministers ever spoke to me of prayer or of the Great Spirit. They saw my furs, my * Eelation, pp. 9, 10. IN North America. 177 beaver, and my moose-skins ; these they sought alone, and so eagerly that I have never been able to bring them enough. When I had plenty, they were my friends, and only then. One day my canoe missed the route, and I wandered a long time, having lost my way. At last I landed near Quebec, in a great village of Al- gonquins, where the black-robes were teaching. As soon as I had arrived, one of them came to me. I was loaded with furs, but the black-robe of France dis- dained to look at them. He spoke to me of the Great Spirit, of heaven, of hell, of the prayer which is the only way to reach heaven. I heard his words with pleasure, and remained in the village near him. At last, the prayer pleased me and I asked for instruction. Then I asked for baptism, and received it. * * * Now I hold to the prayer of the French ; I agree to it ; I shall be faithful to it, until even the earth is burnt and destroyed. Keep your men, your gold, and your minister. I will go to my French father." ' For thirty years now, has Father Sebastian Rasle dwelt in the forest, teaching to its wild, red children the love of God and Mary. He is burned by sun and tanned by wind until he is almost as red as his parish- ioners. The languages of the Abenaki and Huron, the Algonquin and Illinois, are more familiar to him than the tongue in which his mother taught him the Ave Maria. The huts of Norridgewock contain his people; the river Kennebec flows swiftly past his dwell- * Shea's Missions. M 8* 178 Devotion to the B. V. Maey ing, to the sea. There he has built a church — hand- some, he thinks and says ; perhaps it would not much excite our more luxurious imagination. At any rate, the altar is handsome ; and he has gathered a store of copes and chasubles, albs and embroidered stoles, for the dignity of the holy service. He has trained, also, as many as forty Indian boys in the ceremonies, and, in their crimson cassocks and white surpUces, they aid the sacred pomp. Besides the church, there are two chapels, one on the road which leads to the forest, where the braves are wont to make a short retreat before they start to trap and hunt; the other on the path to the cultivated lands, where prayers are offered when they go to plant or gather in the harvest. The one is dedicated to the Guardian Angel of the tribe ; the other to our most holy Mother, Mary Immaculate. To adorn this latter is the especial emulation of the women. Whatever they have of jewels, of silk stuff from the settlements, or delicate broidery of porcupine quill, or richly tinted moose-hair, is found here; and from amidst their offerings, rises, white and fair, the statue of the Virgin ; and her sweet face looks down benignantly upon her swarthy children, kneeling before her to recite their rosaries. One beautiful inanimate ministrant to God's worship they have in abundance — ^Hght from wax candles. The wax is not precisely qpics apiurrit but it is a nearer ap- proach to it than you find in richer and less excusable places. It is wax from the berry of the laurels which cover the hills of Maine. IN North America. 179 And to the chapel every night and morning come all the Indian Christains. At morning they make their prayer in common; and assist at Mass, chanting, in their own dialect, hymns written for that purpose by their pastor. Then they go to their employment for the day : he to his continuous, orderly, and ceaseless labor. The morning is given up to visitors, who come to their good father with their sorrows or disquietudes ; to ask his relief agaiast some Httle injustice of their fellows ; his advice on their marriage or other projects. He consoles this one, instructs that ; re-establishes peace in disunited families ; calms troubled consciences ; administers gentle rebuke, or gives encouragement to the timid. The afternoon belongs to the sick, who are visited in their own cabins. If there be a council, the black-robe must come to invoke the Holy Spirit on its dehberations ; if a feast, he must be present to bless the viands and to check all approaches to disorder. And always in the afternoon, old and young warrior and gray-haired squaw, Christian and catechumen, as- semble for the catechism. When the sun dechnes west- ward, and the shadows creep over the village, they seek the chapel for the pubhc prayer, and to sing a hymn to St. Mary. Then each to his home ; but before bedtime neighbors gather again, in the house of one of them, and, in antiphonal choirs, they sing their beads, and with another hymn they separate for sleep.^ 1 Lettre du R. Pere Sebastian Rasle, 1733, tiree de la Choix des Lettres edifiantes ecrites des Missions etrangeres. Paris, 1809, vol, vii, p. 395-413. 180 Devotion to the B. Y. Maet When they go to the seaside for their fishing, they bear with them, as wandering Israel bore the taber- nacle, a chapel formed of bark, that they may have the consolations of religion, while exposed to danger and temptation. And now compare this picture of the progress of devotion to Our Lady, with any march of Protestantism among the Indians. Eead the French Catholic's mission to the Algonquin, Abenaki, Huron, and Iroquois; or, in our own day, to the Kaw, the Osage, and the Flathead ; and the work of Protestant England or the United States among the Seminoles, the Pottowattomies, or the Pueblos. One carries the beads, purity, and civilization; the other a whiskey bottle, defilement, and death. One thing, in a reli- gious way, the descendant of the Puritan is pretty apt to do — namely, to attempt the destruction of his neigh- bor's religion. Boston contributes a minister to effect, if possible, this end, even in the wilds of Maine a hundred years ago. He reaches the mouth of the Kennebec, and building a school-house there, does his best to entice the children to it by presents and caresses. This failing, he attempts their parents, and snuffles out to them nasal denunciations of the Sacra- ments, purgatory, invocation of Saints, the beads, the cross, the altar lights, and images. Then Father Easle, from his lodge, leagues away in the forest, writes him a Latin letter, sixty-two pages of it, full of instruction on these topics, and of charitable recom- mendation to let the Indians alone. And the divina replies, swiftly, that the arguments are childish; and so IN North America. 181 wends back to Boston to inform the august community there of how he had been persecuted by the Jesuits. So, in 1722, Norridgewock was attacked by a force of two hundi'ed and fifty New Englanders, for after the war broke out the Abenaki adhered to the French Cath- oHc, rather than to the EngHsh Puritan. A few old men, women, and children only were in the village ; but the Puritans were after the priest. He had time to consume the sacred hosts in the tabernacle, and to escape on his snow-shoes. But they pillaged the church and his lodge, and carried off every thing, even to his inkstand. They stiU show with pride, in Har- vard College, his manuscript Abenaki dictionary, made with such long toil and patience, and bravely con-' quered by two hundred and fifty advancers of civiliza- tion from an old ecclesiastic and a handful of squaws and papooses. Father Kasle had broken both legs some time before, and yet he refused to leave the main band of his people, following them about wherever the necessities of warfare chanced to lead them. The New Englanders never relaxed their efforts to catch Father Sebastian, for in him they saw the soul of the Indians. Accustomed themselves to deify their own popular leaders, till they tired of them, they fancied that the strength of the red-man lay not in the CathoHc faith, but in the talents of the priest. Him, at all hazards, they must have ; and triumphant success crowned their efforts in 1724. It was on the feast of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, August the twenty-fourth, that a band of Mohawks and New Eng- 182 Devotion to the B. Y. Maby lish burst upon the town of the Owenagunga. The women and children fled ; a few young braves who were in the village caught up their arms to withstand the enemy. But before they could be slain, the priest, remembering those words of our dear Lord, ^^ Bonus pastor animam suam dat 'pro ovihus suis,^ the good shep- herd giveth his hfe for his sheep," and knowing himself to be the real object of the attack, advanced to meet his foes. They saw him just as he reached the village cross. A yell of savage exultation, a volley of bullets, and the missionary lay dead at the foot of the symbol of salvation. Half a century later, the descendants of these men were asking the friendship of the Owenagunga against the arms of Great Britain. The Kennebecs, Passama- quoddies, and Penobscots met the Council of Massa- chusetts, and expressed their determination to espouse the cause of the colonies, but added : " We must have a French black-robe ; we will have no * Prayer' that comes from you." Orono, the Penobscot chief, bore a commission in the army of the Revolution, and his clansmen fought beside him. "If one of our priests would be agreeable to you, we wiU endeavor to get you one, and take care he be a good man." Such was the offer of the Council ; but the answer of the Abenaki was still, " We know our religion, and love it ; we know nothing of you or yours." Thus faithful to the teach- ings which they had received in 1650, these true * St. John's Gospel, x. 14 IN NoETH Ameeica. 183 American Catholics continued to cherish it, bj rosary, and crucifix, and earnest prayer, until they carried the cross which Father Easle had worn, to Bishop Carroll at Baltimore, and by it, demanded a pastor of the true faith. We shall see these faithful red-men, briefly, again. 184: Devotion to the B. V. Maey CHAPTER IX. Thb Devotion in the State of New Yobk — The Saint or the Mo- hawks — Saint Mart am;on& the Iroquois. Brayest, haughtiest, handsomest, most adventurous of all North American aborigines, were the clans of the warrior Iroquois. The territory which they dwelt in was small, when compared with the vast circle travelled over by the nomad Algonquin, or the hmitless prairies of the mounted Dacotah. The State of New York, with the neighboring parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio, held them all. From the wide St. Lawrence, they swept along the southern shores of Erie and Ontario, to the yellow waters of the Beautiful River. Amid the forests, by the clear blue mountain streams of New York, stood the towns of the tall, spare Seneca, the Cayuga and Onondaga, the beautiful Oneida and the merciless Mohawk. To white man and Indian they were a terror and a fate. The far Natchez had felt their tomahawk, by the winding Mississippi. At the echo of their wild war-cry the heart of the Frenchman stopped beating within the palisades of Quebec. They slew the wandering Algon- quin on the edge of the Chesapeake, or caught him as he fled on his sinew-woven snow-shoes ; and crimsoned m North America. 185 the white wastes of Canada with his blood. They were a dread to the Winnebago, although Lake Michigan rolled between them ; to the Chippewa and Menome- nee, although, their canoes ruled the waters of Superior. They chased the unfortunate Huron from the fur-lined sepulchre of his fathers, and drove westward the poor remnants of that shattered tribe, as the wind of the autumn drives the leaves of the forest. For their savage virtues were all nullified by their immeasurable barbarity. We have heard of indi- viduals in other races, whose cruelty won for them a bad distinction, but here was a nation, from the hum- blest of whom the historic tyrant might learn his art. In stealth they were hke serpents ; in slakeless blood- thirst they were tigers. The Huron had no other name for them than Nado- Wessiouex — the Cruel. These were the enemies of Cartier and Champlain ; these were an incarnate and ceaseless terror to the rising colonies of Quebec and Montreal. They were Iroquois arrows which quivered through the palisades of the fort ; an Iroquois torch brought the new mission-house to, ashes ; an Iroquois tomahawk sent the first priests to heaven. Their name is the one terrible word in all the early writings, in the letters of Mary of the Incarnation, of Marguerite of Our Lady, of the Jesuit relations, of the Virgin's knight, Maisonneuve. Priest and laborer, nun and warrior, wound up the tale of their hardship with horror for the Iroquois. Yet into the inner tent of that fierce people a ray from the loving heart of Mary shone at last ; they learned to hush the war-whoop and 186 Devotion to the B. V. Makt to slieatli the scalping-knife in lionor of her name ; and in a Mohawk village which reeked with Christian gore, grew as sweet and gentle a flower of holiness as ever bloomed. Always at vindictive war with the Canadian Indians, they turned their ire upon the French when these made friends with the Algonquin and the Wendat. They at- tacked the very forts of the settlers ; they waylaid their voyagers. Beaten often, punished as well as the small force of the Europeans would allow, they returned with redoubled fury. Champlain and others chased them into their own country, fired their villages, and reduced them for a time. They would make peace with the white man and bury the hatchet ; but, dug up again be- fore the blood had well dried upon the blade, it flamed, hungry for murder, in the clutch of the treacherous savage. A favorite method of foray was the waylaying of Huron or French parties as they passed from Mon- treal or Quebec to the Mission on the distant lakes. Buii the cross was to be planted among even the sanguinary Iroquois, and the mode chosen by God's wisdom was as follows. In the year of our Lord 1644, Father Isaac Jogues, who had been laboring for years on the shores of Huron and Superior, descended to Quebec accompanied by a train of Indians. Twenty- three in number they started from the Mission of St. Mary's, in the Huron country, and in thirteen days reached the colony of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, at Three Eivers. And from this place he was returning to Saint Mary's, the canoes hugging the m North America. 187 shore to avoid the strong current of the stream, when suddenly the warwhoop of the fatal Iroquois rang through the air and a hail of musket-balls rattled about them. The pagan Indians leaped at once from the canoe ; but the Jesuit, with the three Frenchmen and the few Christian savages with him, "offered up a prayer to Christ and faced the enemy." ^ But already, at the first whistling of the balls, a catechumen had thrown himself upon his knees in the canoe, and the fearless priest had baptized him. They fought, some dozen of them, but the Iroquois were seventy in number. The missionary did not even try tp esca,pe. Eene Goupil, whom we have mentioned, was taken, fighting like a lion. The next brought in was a famous Christian chief, Ahasistari, who cried, "Did I not swear, my father, to live or die with thee !" Finally, a youfig Frenchman, William Couture, who had escaped, came back and gave himself up, saying, " I cannot abandon my dear father." This heroism won him the honor of instant torture ; they stripped him at once ; they tore his nails away, crushed his fingers with their teeth, and ran a sword through his right hand. The same treatment was then given to Father Jogues and Goupil. But we will recite no more of these brutal tortures here. As they treated Breboeuf, so they treated these, not once, but twenty times, stop- ping short only of death for the present. Whenever they rested, on their long journey of thirteen days, » Lettre du P^re Isaac Jogues au P. Provincial de la Province de France ; (ipud Relation abregee de P. Bressani, pp. 188-246. | 188 Devotion to the B. V. Mary torture was the amusement of their captors ; whenever they met another roving band of savages, and the forests were full of them, the torture of their victims was the feast to which they welcomed them. Twenty- two in number, they filed off from the battle-ground, and tramped sadly through the woods on their way to the towns of the Mohawk. Through the woods to the beautiful lakes Champlain and Horicon, and thence, past Saratoga, across the country to the Mohawk. The last four miles they marched on foot, carrying all the baggage of their masters, covered with putrefying wounds, unfed save by the berries which, with muti- lated hands, they caught from the bushes on the road- side. But, " at last," says the servant of Mary, " on the eve of the Assumption of the Blessed Yirgin, we ar- rived at the first village of the Iroquois. And I thank our Lord Jesus Christ that He thus deigned to grant us a share in His sorrows and His cross, on the day whereon the Christian universe celebrates the triumph of His sacred Mother taken up into heaven." They entered the town of the barbarians by running the gauntlet, — Jogues comforted as he went "by a vision of the glory of the Queen of Heaven." ' Then on to another village, and so to a third, tracking the whole land with their blood ; the Jesuit offering up his agonies to God, instructing his Huron neophytes when- ever he could get beside them, as watchful and as ready for his duties as a priest, as if within the walls of a * Bancroft's History United States, vol. iii., p. 133. IN NoKTH Ameeica. 189 parish cliurch in France. He hears Goupil's confession as they drag their weary limbs through the forest ; he baptizes two pleading neophytes as they wade through a woodland stream ; he wrings the rain-drops from a stalk of corn and confers upon two others the sacra- ment of regeneration. Thus, in constant torture and prayer, he lingered until the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin brought him hope. Two Hollanders from Albany arrived to treat for his deliverance, which was effected, however, only in the summer of the next year. But before that, he had seen his friends fall, one by one ; the Huron chief praying at the stake for his enemies; Goupil tomahawked at the thirty-ninth " Hail Mary" of the Rosary ; blood, death, horror, demon-worship around him. Sis Breviary had long since been taken from him, but he had found, from time to time, fragments of his Bible, the Imitation of Christ, and the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin. How often did he sit thus "by the waters of Babylon, and weep as he remembered Zion !" ' " How often," ^he exclaims, " did I carve Thy Name, O Jesus ! upon the taU trees of the forest ! How often, stripping off the bark, have I traced there the most holy cross of my God !" See him kneeling there, half clad with skins, and meditating on the life of his Eedeemer; or watch his lips as they move in the recitation of the only office left him ; how his voice lowered at the last Tu autem Domine, miserere nobis, * Psalm, cxxxvi. 1. 190 Devotion to the B. V. Maey gathers strength again, and breaks forth in the anti- phon, " Fdix namque eSy sacra Virgo Maria, et omni laude dignissima; quia ex te ortiis est Sol Justitiay Christus Deus noster I Blessed art thou and worthy of all praise, O sacred Yirgin Mary, for from thee rose the Sun of Righteousness, even Christ our God !" Thus did he teach the aisles of the New York forests to resound, for the first time, with the sweet and holy name of Mary. When, after a year's endurance of captivity, he was released by the kind offices of the Hollanders, he had baptized no less than seventy persons — some captives and some converts. They get him a passage from New York to England, and a collier carries him thence and lands him, barefooted and in tattered sailor's dress, on the coast of Brittany. He approaches a peas- ant's house, and they rise to receive the forlorn sailor kindly; then he lifts up his poor mutilated hands and blesses them in the name of the Eternal. What shall he do with these hands ? A priest with but one thumb and four or five fingers left him ! Courage, Confessor of God ; the Holy Father, Urban VIII., will settle that. " Indignunij' he exclaims, ^Hndignum esse Christi marty- rem, Christi non bibere sanguinem I It were unjust that the martyr of Christ should not' drink the blood of Christ!" So the dispensation is granted. AU throng to do him honor ; great nobles vie in offering him their services ; prelates throw open their palaces ; the lips of the stately Anne of Austria, the Queen of fair France, are reverently pressed to those deformed and mangled hands. But his place is not here. Away, IN North Ameeica 191 thousands of miles, it lies, where the Hudson and the Mohawk mingle their clear waters beneath the shadow of the immemorial woods. In the month consecrated to his beloved heavenly- Queen, he left his country for the last time, and arrived just soon enough to see a peace concluded with the Iroquois. They asked for " black-robes," and his su- periors offered Father Jogues the mission. ""Xes," he said, " I shall go, and I shall not return ; Ibo et non redibo; but I will be happy if our Lord will complete the sacri- fice where he has begun it, and make the little blood I have shed in that land the earnest of what I would give from every vein of my body and my heart." ' The sacrifice was accepted. He and Father Jean de La- lande departed with the treacherous Iroquois. The very day of their arrival the savages began to threaten them. The next day they tomahawked them at the door of a lodge ; their heads were stuck upon the pali- sades of the town ; their bodies were thrown into the Mohawk. But he had not died in vain. . Two churches of St. Mary^ stand upon the shores of that beautiful river ; the Arch Confraternity of her Immaculate Heart is established in the principal town bathed by its waters.' For the beautiful flower of devotion to Mary had been ' Letter to a friend, in Shea's Narrative of Captivity. 2 At Amsterdam and Ldttle Falls. The place itself is now Tribes Hill, just opposite to the confluence of Schoharie Creek with the Mohawk. 3 Utica. 192 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary surely planted by Father Jogues, and nurtured with his tears and blood in the woodlands of New York, when he kneeled to say her office at the foot of the cross traced by his crushed fingers on the trunk of the maple. "Beata Dei Genetrix Maria" he had said again and again in his agony, " Virgo perpetva, tem- plum Bominif sacrarium S'piritus Sanctis sola sine ex- emplo placuisti Domino Nostro Jesu Christo ; ora pro populo ; interveni pro dero ; intercede pro devoto foemi' Tieo sexu. Blessed Mary, Mother of God, ever a Yir- gin. Temple of the Lord, dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost ; thou only, without example, hast been found pleasing to our Lord Jesus Christ ; pray for the peo- ple ; intervene for the clergy ; intercede for Holy women." ' And Mary heard him. Although the tribes upon whose heads his blood had fallen were fiercer and haughtier than ever, yet thd day was to come when the knees of the Iroquois should bend in prayer to a saint of their own race and nation. At present, suppKed by the Dutch and English with arms, they spread tha flames of war over the land. They destroyed, as we have seen, the Hurons. They drove the northern Algonquins from the shores of the lakes, and slew the French and their allies under the very walls of Quebec. Then, weary of the war-path, they themselves asked for peace. And the heralds of this peace were those whose " footsteps are beautiful upon the mountains ; who pubhsh glad tidings of ' Antiphon in Little Office of B. V. M. IN North America. 193 good."* Father Chaumonot assembled the Ononda- gas in the chief town of their people, on the Oswego ; received from the nation a site for a mission-house, and commenced his labors by the baptism of a poor captive woman of the Eries, and an explanation of the leading doctrines of the Gospel. The red-men received his message with songs of joy, and the council gave permission to preach Christianity in all their villages. Soon after, one thousand Onondaga braves were to meet four thousand Eries in fight; and they vowed, like Clovis, the Frank, of old, that if the God of the Christians would give them the victory, they would thenceforth serve him alone. They drove the Eries Hke deer from before them ; and though many were false to their vow, yet a goodly number sought in- struction, and became the first-fruits of the warrior Iroquois. In November, 1653, the back walls of St. Mary's church arose, and the dread sacrifice of the Mass consecrated the land to its Maker. By the Oc- tave of the Yirgin's Nativity, 1656, the back walls were exchanged for stone, and daily devotions to Mary Im- maculate were paid in that first church of New York, Our Lady's of Ganentaa. The same year saw Father Bene Menard standing at the altar of a little chapel among the Cayugas, between pictures of our Lord and His Blessed Mother, and ex- plaining their significance by the legend of man's re- 1 Quam pulchri super montes pedes annuntiantis et praedicantis pacem annuntiantis bonum, praedicantis salutem. — Isaias, lii. 7. 1^ 9 194 Devotion to the B. V. IMary demption. The great allies of the missionaries were the captive Huron women, many married now to Iro- quois warriors. They brought their babes for bap- tism; they instructed their pagan neighbors, whom they edified by their virtues ; " and in almost every cabin could be found an Indian mother teaching her wayward child to hsp a prayer to Jesus and Mary."^ But the demon grew strong again. The war was re- newed; the missionaries were driven away or fled; and, by the end of 1658, not a priest was left in the Iroquois territory. But the converted Indians, nota- bly the grand statesman and noble warrior Garacontie, had been at work ; and the missionaries were implored to return to Onondaga. So, with much labor and in- terruption, the holy toil went forward until, in 1668, they had once more renewed their foothold throughout the cantons ; and, in 1670, the first day of the Octave of the Annunciation of Our Lady, the worship of the demon Areskoui and other pagan superstitions were renounced and solemnly condemned. But the EngHsh were by this time in New York, with the energetic Dongan as their governor, and the missionaries to the Iroquois were Frenchmen. Intrigues were commenced with the Indians ; the servants of Mary were driven from the country; and, by 1687, not one remained. Then the Catholics of the Five Nations went over and joined the French; and though the missions were * Shea's Alissions, p. 333. m North America. 195 re-established fourteen years afterwards, it was only to linger out a painful existence ; and Father Mareuil, the last Jesuit in New York, left the desolated harvest- field of the Iroquois just sixty-seven years after Jogues had first enriched it with his tears and blood. But although the field was laid waste, the fruit had been gathered. In thirty-five years from the capture of Father Jogues, two thousand two hundred and twenty-five Iroquois were baptized — many children, but many noble women and the choice of the sachems and orators. Garacontie, " the advancing Sun," the grandest statesman of the Five Nations, the bulwark of Christianity for a quarter of a century ; he who cried out, before he died, as he covered with kisses a picture of our Lord, " Jesus born of a Virgin, thou art peerless in beauty; grant that we may sit near thee in heaven." Kryn, the high chief of the Mohawks, who, when his tribe would not hsten to his pleadings, raised his wild war-cry for the last time in the streets of his viQage ; gathered forty devoted followers, and, kneeling down amid the graves of their fathers, poured forth a prayer for his nation ; then rose, and, with streaming eyes, led his braves away forever from the fires of their people to the Christian settlement at La Prairie. Catherine Ganneaktena, the Erie by birth, the Oneida by adop- tion, the foundress of La Prairie on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Mary Tsawente, "the Precious," the saint of -the Onondagas. Stephen te Gannonakoa, who suffered purely for the faith, and was cut to pieces almost with knives before they threw him into the fire. 196 Devotion to the B. V. Maby Ourehouhare, the war-chief of the Cayugas, .who, when Hstening on his death-bed to the story of the Passion, cried out, hke Clovis, "Oh, had I been there, they never would so have treated my God !" Frances Gon- nonhatena, who, when a barbarous kinsman tore the crucifix from her neck, as she stood bound to the stake, and gashed a cross upon her bared bosom with his scalping-knife, said : " I thank thee, my brother ; thou hast given me a cross which none can take away." These, and many another like them, form the crown of the Iroquois missionary in heaven. But, brightest and sweetest flower in the Indian coronal of Mary, was Catherine Tegahkouita, the " Saint of the Iroquois." Her father a Mohawk chief, her mother an Algon- quin captive, this holy girl was born in 1656, in the town whence Rene Goupil and Father Isaac Jogues had ascended, by martyrdom, to their rest. The small- pox, which made her an orphan at the age of four years, had also injured her sight ; and, shunning the light of the sun, she passed her infancy and girlhood with an uncle, in a cabin, at the door of which the tomahawked priest had fallen. The child had not re- ceived the grace of Holy Baptism, and had only what Christianity she could remember from her mother's instructions, with, perhaps, occasional teaching from some poor Huron captive. Thus, her affliction of the eyes was, in God's will, a means and excuse for that jetirement which would otherwise not have been allowed. Thus she grew up, free from the vanities and m North America. 197 vices almost inevitable to an Indian girl in those Mo- hawk villages. The temporary peace already spoken of had been made with the French. The missionaries, whom the savages had demanded, arrived from Quebec, but found chief and people engaged in a drunken debauch to cele- brate the peace. Behold " how all things work together for good to them that love God." ^ The drunkenness of the tribe was the opportunity of Tegahkouita. The retiring girl, unfit for the revel, was ordered to enter- tain the missionaries, and won their hearts by her gentleness. But her timidity kept her silent before them, and they went away from the village to their several stations, without learning her desire for bap- tism. The girl grew up beautiful. It was for the in- terest of her relations to marry her, for the product of the chase went to the wife and her family. But she earnestly and steadily refused. Entreaties, stratagem, argument were tried in vain. Then they began to treat her as a slave ; whatever work was hardest or most unpleasant was laid upon her, mingled with reproaches and even blows; but so invincible was her patience, and so docile her gentleness, that they softened even the hearts of her persecutors. Then Father James de Lamberville came to the vil- lage, and brought the fulfilment of her long-deferred hopes. She had wounded her foot, and could not fol- low the other women to labor in the corn-harvest. The * St. Paul to the Romans, viii. 28. 198 Deyotion to the B. Y. Mary missionary chose the opportunity, offered by the ab- sence of the majority, to visit those who remained in the village; and to him the girl opened her heart, and set forth with touching simplicity her love for the " Prayer," and her long and ardent yearning for bap- tism. This sacrament, however, he dared not hghtly confer. He gave the whole winter to her instruction and to close inquiry about her character. She came forth from the trial white and pure as the blossom of the thorn. Of all that knew her, no one could say aught but in her praise. Even when they blamed her for what they considered defects, the Christian priest knew these to be virtues. So at length, upon the Feast of Easter, 1676, she received the seal of regen- eration and the name of Catherine. Ah! then how her saintly soul unfolded, petal after petal, virtue after virtue, till she stood before the dear heavenly Mother Mary, whom she tenderly loved, a white rose of purity and all goodness. But her trials came with her graces. The time she took for her beads, which she said twice a day, for her attendance a^ the chapel, for her various devotions, was made a reason of blame and rebuke. The girls of her own age, angered by seH-rej&oach, mocked and insulted her ; the children were taught to pelt her with earth and stones, and to shout " Christian !" derisively as they passed. One day a fierce young warrior dashed into the cabin and swung his axe above her head ; but, without looking up, she crossed her hands upon her breast and awaited the blow. The brave was abashed, IN North America. 199 and retired. Then her relatives returned to their at- tempts at her marriage, and omitted no effort to shake her resolution, but in vain. Even the calumny which is hardest for a woman to bear, failed to destroy the sweet patience with which she bore their persecutions. But she had heard of La Prairie. Yearly a few con- verted Iroquois would bid adieu to the graves of their fathers and go thither for peace in religion. And as the love of Christ grew daily greater in her heart, she sighed for the free exercise of her worship, the enjoy- ment of her faith. At last a half-sister of hers, a Christian, at La Prairie, opened communication with her and urged her flight. Father de Lamberville approved of it, and at length it was concerted. The husband of her sister and a Christian Indian from Loretto, in the absence of her uncle, managed the escape ; but the old chief heard it, and, charging his gun with three balls, he pursued them. They hid her in a thicket, and sat down by .the road-side as weary men taking repose. When he saw them alone, he was ashamed of having suspected them, and, without telling his uneasiness, went back to his town. Then the flight was renewed, and Catherine, with her friends, arrived in safety at La Prairie. There, then, she saw with rapture a settle- ment entirely Christian ; and what Christians ! They were like those of the first century, living in the fervor of fresh faith in the presence of ever-impending death. For the leaves of each forest they entered were likely to conceal the war-paint of the Mohawk ; from behind 200 Devotion to the B. Y. Maey each rock on the road-side might twang the Cayuga bow-string. The young girl vowed herself entirely unto God, and from that moment seemed to hav^ no tie on earth ex- cept that of labor for others. At the four o'clock Mass she entered the chapel, nor left it again till after the community Mass, two hours and a half later. Often in the day she interrupted her work to visit the Most Holy Sacrament; and in the sacred shadow of the image of Our Lady, she passed whole hours absorbed in prayer. Every week she summed up her daily seK- examinations, and approached the tribunal of penance. The least defect in her conduct caused her floqds of tears. " Oh, how can I be wicked," she would say, "and offend my God who has so loved me!" So serenely beautiful, so recollected and devout was she at each communion, that the others used to say they could make their preparation better if they knelt where they could see Catherine. Her spirit of mortification was intense; she used scourges and iron chains, and mingled ashes with her simple and scanty food ; she would remain on her knees, in midwinter, in chapel, until directed to retire by the pitying priest ; she slept upon a hard bed strewed with thorns, until her morti- fications, becoming known to her director, were mod- erated by his command. She visited the TJrsulines at Montreal, and falling in love with their consecrated life, asked and obtained permission from her confessor to render her ever- cherished purpose of living a virgin for Christ's sake IN North America. 201 irrevocable by a vow. This was done on the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Blessed Mother. " A mo- ment after Our Lord had been given her in the holy communion, she pronounced, with wondrous fervor, the vow of perpetual virginity. Then she besought the holy "Virgin, to whom she always had the tenderest devotion, to present to her divine Son the self-oblation which she made ; and then passed several hours at the foot of the altar in perfect union with God." ^ From this time she belonged to earth no more, but longed perpetually for the presence of her Eternal, Spouse in heaven, and to be with her Mother, Mary, Queen of Angels. " She never spoke of Our Lady but with transport," says her biographer. " She had learned the Litany of the Blessed Virgin by heart, and said it every night alone, after the common prayer of the family was ended. She was never without her rosary, which she said many times a day. On Satur- days, and other periods consecrated to the Virgin, she redoubled her austerities, and passed the day in the practice of some one virtue of Our Lady, augmenting her fervor on all St. Mary's feasts."' But the slight frame was wearing fast away; the eager soul must soon be unchained, and, like the dove of the royal poet, "fly away and be at rest."'' As the spring drew on, she prepared to pass away when the glory of the forest foliage and flowers was i Father Cholenec's Letter.— GJioix des Lettrea Edifiantes, torn, vii. 447. 8 Ibid., p. 453. ' Psalm, liv. 7. 9* 202 Devotion to the B. V. Mary just dawning on the land. The men were all away at the chase ; the women absent the entire day, planting the golden com ; and Catherine lay there, in the deso- late cabin, alone, with a plate of crushed maize and a cup of water by her pillow, from morn till the stars had risen. Pain, of the acutest and most ceaseless nature, racked her worn, delicate frame ; but it never forced a murmur from her — ^never drove the sweet, tranquil smile from her lips and large, dark Indian eyes. The week of the Lord's drear Passion had come ; she was to keep Palm Sunday and Holy Mon- day on earth, but her glad, eternal Easter with St. Mary in heaven. The holy Viaticum was administered on Tuesday. Father Cholenec would have anointed her then, but she told him she was not yet dying ; and she passed that night in fervent communion with our Lord and his dear Mother. "But on Wednesday," says the good father, " she received the last unction with her usual piety ; and at three o'clock in the day, having uttered the holy names of Jesus and of Mary, she passed into her agony." In half an hour, without struggle or consciousness, she was asleep in Jesus. They did not pray for her when she had gone, but to her ; and many a cure and many a grace were ob- tained by her intercession. The holy bishop, Mont- morency de Laval, as he knelt by her grave, called her the Genevieve of New France; they planted a tall cross above her ashes, where it still stands, and there did American Catholics, natives by a hundred descents, kneel and pray to a native American saint, nearly two IN North America. 203 hundred years before Satan invented Native American politics, for the persecution of those who say the prayers and worship the God of Catherine Tegah- kouita. Thus did the devotion to Mary take root in North America; filling human hearts with sanctity, repeo- pHng heaven, and making new intercessors for a sinful world. The State of New York had been taken pos- session of in the names of Jesus and Mary ; its lands had been consecrated to the Immaculate Conception ; its children taught to say the Ave Maria or chant the Eegina Coeli. In thirty-seven years the fierce Indians of the Five Nations had learned to come in crowds to the New Loretto, and pray at the feet of Our Lady of Foie. St. Mary's Church was built in Onondaga. Another still, St. Mary's of the Mohawks, soon occu- pied the very spot where Father Jogues was slain. The picture of her pure, sweet face adorned the chapel altar at Cayuga ; Jihe Mission House of the Immacu- late Conception stood in the midst of the Senecas ; a statue of the Virgin Mother was erected in Oneida, and the SodaUty of the Holy Family won scores of that people to its banner. The noble Mohawk women wore their beads with firm devotion, though the burghers of Albany threatened them for displaying their "popish trumpery" in the streets. One, stung past all patience by the taunts of the boors, went into their temple and said her rosary aloud.' The brave * Shea's Indian Missions, p. 268. 204 Devotion to the B. V. Mary and wise Garacontie was driven from that temple for kneeling upon its floor to recite his chaplet. " What !" he said, " are you Christians, and will not let men pray?" It was the aged Mohawk, Assendase, whose beads were torn from his neck, while the raised toma- hawk threatened his head, white with eighty years. "Strike!" said the old chieftain, "for this cause I shall be glad to die." One woman drove her husband from the lodge because he had destroyed her chaplet ; but, learning that she had done wrong, recalled him, and so won him by her gentleness that he forsook his paganism. And another, mocked by the Dutch for her beads and her medal .of St. Mary, said to them with quiet scorn, " You pretend to worship Jesus, yet wish me not to honor his Mother !" Such, nearly two hundred years ago, was the devo- tion to the Yirgin Mother of God in New York. IN North America. .205 CHAPTEK X. OuB Lady of Loretto of the Hukons. One fair September day, rather more than two cen- turies ago, a young man, a novice, sat in the garden of the Jesuits in Rome, reading the narrative of Father John de Breboeuf. Two points, he tells us,' especially riveted his attention. First, that in the land described there was no wheaten bread, no wine, nor any of the luxuries that sweeten European life, but there was abundance of suffering. And second, that to instruct and convert the barbarous tribes of America, there was more need of humility, and patience, and charity, and zeal for souls, than of great wit or very great learning. Then it struck the young man that such a home and such a life were precisely what was best for him ; for he had a very decided calling to the life of a missionary. His name was Joseph Mary Chaumonot. For the sinless Mother and pure foster-father of the Redeemer he had always had a vivid devotion, even in the early part of his life, which had furnished him with abundant material for penance. So he turned to them 1 " La Vie du R. P. Pierre Joseph Marie Chaumonot, de la Com- pagnie de Jesus, ecrite par luimeme par ordre de son Superieur I'an 1668." Another of Shea's unappreciated gifts to American Catholic history. 206 Devotion to the B. V. Mary to get him all the permissions that were needed to quit his studies, to be ordained, to leave Rome in time for the next missionary ship, and above all, to make, on foot and begging his bread, a pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Loretto, there to offer himself to her who in that house had given birth to God the Son. For he had made a vow to seek in all things the greater glory of God, under the especial protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So, in October, he started upon his pilgrimage. The very first day something Hke the white sweUing appeared in his knee ; but in spite of the extreme pain, growing daily worse by exercise, he for eight days marched on with heroic fortitude ; then by the intercession of a holy person at St. Severino, during the Mass of his companion, Father Poucet, he was healed. They arrived in Loretto, and the vow was solemnly pronounced before the shrine, with this ad- ditional one : that, if it were possible, he would some day build in Canada a house upon the model of the sacred one wherein he was then praying. We know that he fulfilled the second part of his vow at the Mission of the Indians of Loretto. During four- teen years he was chaplain there; during forty-nine years he was Huron missionary. And in the duties of this post he sought to accompHsh the first obhgation. He and the Ursulines and the Hospital Sisters reached Quebec together in 1639. Two days after his arrival he set out in a canoe for Lake Huron. His early instruc- tors were Lallemont, Daniel, and Breboeuf, the latter of whom had first made known to him his vocation, and m North America. 207 whose Indian name, Hechon, lie inherited when Bre- boeuf went to heaven by the bitter path of Iroquois torture. From that moment he was a Huron. He never left them, except for a journey to Montreal or Quebec on their business, except once to aid the Onon- daga mission, until his superiors called him away in his last illness. He remained with them throughout their desperate and fatal struggle with the Five Nations, and did not forsake them in their ruin, but led the chief remnant of the tribe first to the Isle of Orleans, under the protection of Quebec, and, afterwards, to the new Loretto. It was he, we know, who expressed the unuttered wish of Oher's heart, and with Marguerite Bourgeoys, Judith de Bressole, Superior of the hospital, the Sulpi- cian Father Souart, and Madame Barbe de Boulogne d'Aillebout, founded the Devotion of the Holy Family. While his Hurons were still in the city, he was ap- pointed chaplain of De Tracey's newly arrived troops. He and his new charge felt some mutual distrust at first, but when the soldiers saw that he was never idle, that he was in almost constant prayer, that he spoke with them only of what concerned their souls, that he waited on their sick, saved them by his intercession from iU-treatment, and thought nothing of himself, , they grew to love him. Soon he had them all at a • short night prayer, then saying a chaplet every night in honor of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and by and by enrolled among the devotees of the Holy Family. Nay, one of them, a captain, became a priest and 208 Deyotion to the B. Y. Mary ^ pastor of Port Boyal, in Acadia ; another became a lay brother in the Company of Jesus. The next of his works was the founding of Our Lady of Foie, a shrine immediately sought by the devotion not only of the red-men of the parish, but of the French from the neighboring city. The writers of the day record several miracles of mercy wrought through the intercession of St. Mary, and the little chapel was en- riched with gifts from Canada, and even from Europe. The Indians, in gratitude for the statue bestowed, had sent to Our Lady of Dinan a wampum belt, the first which reached Europe in this way. This one bore, in black letters on a white field, the legend, Beata quoe credidisti — "Blessed art thou who hast believed" — the words of St. Elizabeth to Our Lady when first she was saluted as Mother of the Lord.^ A second, dispatched to Loretto, bore the inscription, Ave Maria Gratia. It was received with all honor, and, richly encased, was hung up in the Santa Casa at Loretto. " The canons received it with all honor," writes the pious Chau- monot, " and I doubt not that the Blessed Virgin gave it a still kinder reception, since, a few years ago, she procured me both the opportunity and the means of building a new Loretto in the forests of New France." Ah ! Mother of Grace," he continues, " why can I not daily render thee a million acts of thanksgiving ? above all, when I have the happiness to celebrate the holy Mass. Were it permitted me here to set forth all the * St. Luke, i. 45. ' Vie de Pere Chamnonot, p. 91. IN North Ameeica. 209 wretchedness, even spiritual, from which thy pity has rescued me, others would be excited to thank thee for me, and to have recourse to thee with confidence." When his purpose was known, the means soon fol- lowed — land and labor, money from Canada, and silver lamps and rich vestments from France. It was com- menced in January, 1674, and finished and blessed the same year in November. The ceremony drew vast crowds of French and Indians together. The Hurons and the Christian Iroquois, of whom, by this time, there were many in the Keduction, bore the image of Our Lady, a copy of that in the Italian Loretto, in solemn procession ; the Superior of the Jesuits chanted the solemn High Mass and preached ; and all hearts saluted with fervent devotion St. Mary of the Hurons. The shrine may still be seen, with some modem addi- tions, but substantially the same. It stands upon an elevated point between two gorges. One of these is thickly covered with vegetation ; but down the other, over rock and gnarled roots, rushes the foaming river. On all the heights, and on the sides of the first deep glen, stand the houses of the habifans; beyond these rises the remnant of the aboriginal forests, and the blue, wavy outline of the distant mountains forms the background of the picture. It is now called the "Ancienne Lorette ; Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady."^ Many a favor, obtained by Mary's intercession, * See Illustration with this title. 210 Devotion to the B. Y. Maey made grateful hearts in this Keduction ; many a mir- acle aided the celebrity of the shrine, which was now the only shelter of a once flourishing tribe. Let us give one story here of Mary's pity, on the authority of Father Chaumonot. He says it would require a large volume to record them aU ; of this one he was an eye- witness ; his legend runs thus : Mary Ouendraca was a Huron woman and a fervent Christian. Her husband, Itaenhohi, and two of her children — one five and one fifteen years old — had died in the bosom of the Church, and slept in the grave- yard of Our Lady of Foie. Some years after the re- moval to Loretto, this good Mary was smitten by one of the terrible typhoid fevers which used to desolate the Indian villages in those days; something analo- gous to the camp-fevers which we hear of now. So completely reduced was she that her whole body was powerless, as if paralyzed; the last sacraments had been given her, and her decease was momently ex- pected. Should she die, she must leave behind her her remaining children, John and Teresa. So, when human help had ceased to be of use. Father Chau- monot called the children — Teresa, a married woman, and John, a boy of fourteen — to him, and the three united in a vow to the Blessed Yirgin, that if she would be pleased to obtain from the Master of Life the re- covery of the mother, they would say in her church nine chaplets of the Holy Family in thanksgiving for the favor. When they made this promise, the priest went away to the chapel to pray for the dying woman^ IN NOETH AmEBICA. 211 In a few moments Teresa came to say that her mother asked for Hechon. He arose and hurried to the cabin, recalling as he went the prayers for a de- parting soul. As he entered the lodge, its mistress rose and received him with profound reverence, a la Frangaise, he tells us. He thought this effort the last that nature would make — the flickering of the hght before it should expire forever. He urged her to He down at once upon the poor mat which served her for a bed ; but she said she would be as well seated. He again urged her, but she answered gravely, she was perfectly well. Still the good Father fancied this a dream of mere delirium, which, when she had ob- served, she sent her children from the lodge and told the priest as follows : That, soon after he had gone out, two persons entered the lodge and took their places by her mat, one at the side, the other, a Httle boy, at the foot. The one at the side seemed a young woman or full-grown girl, and said, " My mother, if you will touch the edge of my robe, you will be healed." But Mary Ouendraca could not believe that any one from heaven would condescend to visit one so lowly as herseK ; and as mortals would not have appeared Hke these, she fancied them demons come to trouble her last hour, and she prayed to be rescued from them. But the young girl, with a sweet, heavenly smile, brushed the edge of her robe across the sick woman's face, and said, " There, mother, you are cured." And then they disappeared. Then Mary tried to move, and confidence began to steal into her heart as she 212 Devotion to the B. Y. Maky found herself mistress of her strength. She rose and walked to the door, tried aU her hmbs, and sent her trembhng daughter for Chaumonot ; for the boy had fled from her as from a spectre. Then the good priest understood that the gracious Queen of Heaven had heard their prayers, and had sent to her lowly Huron namesake her own children, with the boon of health. There were no degrees in the recovery, Mary Ouen- draca walked at once to the church, there to offer her thanksgiving, perfectly restored. So many and so marked indeed were the favors ob- tained through the intercession of the Mother of God, that the poor Indians were always regretting their lowliness and poverty, because they had no means of honoring her as they desired. Nevertheless, they de- termined to do what they could. They had sent a wampum-belt to Foie and to Loretto ; they must send another, ad Virginem parituramf to Our Lady of Char- tres ; for the Mission of Loretto, as well as that of the Abnakis, had been united, by a " union of intention in prayer," to the grand cathedral in France. So they made as fine a belt as they could of black and white wampum, and they wrought the edges in the finest quiU-work, of the richest dyes, and the legend was, " ViBGiNi Pariture Yotum Huronum," and they sent it with this letter :^ " It fiUs our hearts with joy, O Holy Virgin, that ' Those who are curious in these matters may see he original Huron letters in John Gilmary Shea's exquisite edition of Father Chaumonot's Autobiography. m NoETH Amekica. 213 even before your birth, the city of Chartres built to your honor a shrine with this dedication, *To the Virgin who shall bear a child.' Happy are they who have won the glory of being your earliest servants. Alas! incomparable Mother of God, it is quite other- wise with us poor Hurons ; we have the sorrow to have been the last to know you and to honor you. But we would do what lies in our power to make up for all past neglect of your service by fervent devotion now. This we desire to do, joining ourselves to your chil- 'dren at Chartres, so that we may have but one mind, one mouth, one heart with them, to render you praise and service and love. We beseech them to offer for us, and in our name, all the honors which they have ever paid to you. It shall be they, for we hope they will not refuse us, who shall win your bounty for us ; their fervor compensating for our sluggishness, their know- ledge for our ignorance, their riches for our penury. "And, Holy Virgin, although your holy child has been born into the world, we will still honor you under that title of Virgo Paritura, so that you may deign to accept us also as your children. As we honor you here in a house modelled upon that wherein you gave a human life to God, we hope that you will obtain a spiritual life for us ; so shall you be, O ever Virgin, our regeneratrix until Jesus be bom anew in our hearts. This is what we ask of you, sending this wampum in testimony that we are bound to your service." ^ * Voeux des Hurons et des Abnaquis, p. 1. 214 Devotion to the B. V. Mary The chapter of Chartres placed the Huron belt among the treasures of their glorious cathedral, and were very kind to their poor Indian brethren on the banks of the St. Lawrence. They sent them, among other things, a very handsome, well-filled reHquary. It was of massive silver, richly chased; upon one side bearing in high reHef the kneeling figure of Our Blessed Lady, and of the Angel who brings the An- nunciation, who with one hand extends the lily of purity, and with the other points to the eternal Dove, hovering, white-winged, in the upper glory. On the other side you see the hollow oak wherein, on a low altar, sits the Virgin with the Holy Child in her arms. On the base of the altar is a legend, Virgini Pariturce.^ This was received with great gratitude, and on the feast of All Saints, 1680, it was exhibited for the ven- eration of the faithful. Sermons were preached in French and Huron ; the reliquary was incensed and placed within the niche prepared for it; and Our Lady was thanked for this, as for other favors, by the mingled voices of French and Indians chanting the Ave Maris Stella. The daily Hfe at Loretto was more Hke that of a re- ligious community than of a village of poor Indians who depended upon the chase for their support. Morning prayer. Mass, and general examination in * Notice STir un Reliquaire donne en 1680 aux Hurons de Lorette en la Nouvelle France par le Chapitre de I'eglise de Chartres, par M. Doublet de Boistliibault. Extrait de la Revue Archeologique, XV'. annee. Paris, A. Leleux, 1858. IN NoETH America. 215 the chapel occupied the leisure of the forenoon ; cate- chism and instruction of those who could attend, with visit to the Blessed Sacrament, sanctified the after- noon ; and when the sun was setting, the sound of the bell called the canoe to the shore, and bade the loiter- ing hunter hasten from the forest to end the day with prayer. Then, when all were gathered, they sang vespers on feast-days, and other prayers on ferise. They sang in alternate choirs, in Indian and in Latin, their evening devotions. There was a short examina- tion of conscience, the beads of the Blessed Virgin or of the Holy Family, the Pater, Ave, Credo, Confiteor, the Commandments, and other prayers for the Kving and the dead, an anthem to the most pure Mother, and the Angelus. Thus closed the day, and then the stars reigned in heaven ; or, if the clouds made the mid- night more profound, the Indian children of Mary slept in secure hupaility beneath the shadow of her shrine in the Loretto of the forest. Missionary to the Hurons for more than fifty years, the hour for Father Chaumonot's rest must be at hand. There are successors, capable men, for the mission. Part of his daily duty was to teach the Huron lan- guage for at least half an hour,^ but at length the superior thought him too much worn for further labor, and recalled him to the tranquillity of the college, in 1692. What else we know of him is not from hia ^ His Huron grammar was the basis of all other Northern Indian grammars, and the text-book of the missionary. 216 Devotion to the B. V. Maby autobiography, written in obedience and for humility, but is from the work of a contemporary Father who knew him and watched his dechning years, as he passed from holy life to hoher, in the college of Our Lady of Angels. He had passed the limit usually allotted to man, the threescore years and ten. In 1689, on the Feast of St. Joachim, the second day of the Octave of Our Lady's Assumption (Aug. 15)^ he chanted, in the cathedral of Quebec, his "Mass of fifty years." HaK a century had he been priest, and had broken the Bread of Life to " the souls that hun- gered in the wilderness." Falling sick at last, the old man was summoned from his mission, but as soon as he had somewhat recovered, he craved permission to return. They put him off until the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and from that until Epiphany, and^ then they needed no more excuses. His rapidly breaking system told him that Loretto and he were parted forever. So he prepared himself by ceaseless prayer and meditation, and offering up of his suffer- ings, from acute gravel, to his crucified Lord ; and on the morning of the nineteenth of January, he took leave of the world without a moan, enteriag the new life with the words, "Jesus, Mary, Joseph!" on his lips. We conclude this chapter with the promised Note, on the especial patroness of our early Indian missions, Our Lady of Chartres. Note. — " L'anciennete, la devotion et la service de Teglise cathe- drale de Nostre Dame de Cliartres I'ont rendue sainte et venerable a IN North America 217 tons les Chrestiens . . . C'est ce qui a mou la piete des roys nos predecesseurs, la dotter de plusieurs fonds et domaines, faveurs et priveleges, et par leur charites, liberalites, magnificence royaUe, la restablir et la reedifier des le temps de S. Fulbert qui en estoit evesque en I'estat qu'elle se void a present." So speaks tlie Most Christian King Louis the Thirteentli when founding in this famous cathedral, in 1638, a perpetual requiem Mass for the soul of his father Henri Quatre. " The antiquity, devotion, and service of the cathedral church of Our Lady of Chartres have rendered it holy and venerable to all Christians. This it is which has moved the kings our predecessors to endow it with many foundations, domaines, favors, and privileges, and by their charities, liberalities, and royal magnificence to re-establish and re-edify it from the days of St. Fulbert, who was its bishop, in the condition that we see it in to-day." ^ For Chartres yields to no quarter of the earth in devotion to the Mother of God. In the diocese whereof this venerable slirine is cathedral, nine stately abbeys and forty-five parish churches are dedicated by name to the Blessed Virgin, and her veneration traces back, by reverent tradition, beyond the date of Christianity itself. There is nothing requiring a very unusual stretch of faith or credulity in the tradition. The argument is briefly tliis : That all peoples"^ had a tradition of a virgin who should bear a child, the Saviour of the world; that the Druids in Gaul were the learned of the day, the holders of all religious tradition as weU as its ministers, and that Chartres was the headquarters of Druidism.^ Such is the argument for its probability, and the legend is as foUows : The cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres stands upon a hiU once covered with the sacred oak-grove wherein the Druids worshipped their god Teutates.^ In the centre of the wood was a cavern or vast grotto, where the sunlight scarcely penetrated, and where the sombre mysteries of the Druidic idolatry were celebrated. There, says the ^ Lettres patentes de Louis XIII., apud Boisthibault, p. 59. 2 For a remarkable instance among the American Indians, see this work, p. 44, Orsini's Life B. V. M., chap. 1, and I'Abbe Henrion's Notre Dame de France, pp. 184-193. 3 Hi (Druides) certo anni tempore in finibus Carnutum, quae regio, totius Galliae media habitur, considunt in loco consecrate. — C^SAR de Bel. Gal, iv. 13, 14. ^ Tacitus, Germania. 10 218 Devotion to the B. Y. Maet legend, one hundred years before the Saviour's birth, did Prisons, king of Chartres, gather his warriors, bards, orators, and priests, to see erected, by command of the Druidic college, an altar, bearing the Image of a Woman with a Child in her arms, and the inscription, " To THE Virgin who sHAiiL bring forth a Child." Virgini PARiTURiE. The altar was set up, and Priscus the king solemnly consecrated himself, his land, and his people forever to her who should bear the " Desire of all Nations." When, then, the first heralds of the truth, SS. Potentianus, Altinus, and Sabinianus arrived in this country and announced that She, so honored there, had come, and had born " Emanuel, God with us," the hearts of the Carnutes, long pre- pared, received the message gladly. A rude church was built within the grotto, the very image sculptured by pagan fingers was blessed, and the land became Mary's, to the greater glory of her eternal Son. When Constantine gave peace to the Church, and the empire of the Caesars became Christendom, the grove was cut down, and a church, still modest and poor, was erected upon the summit of the hill. Hither the early Gallic Christians flocked, and here Our Blessed Lady was pleased to manifest her maternal love for the unfortunate human brethren of her Son. The crowds of worshippers gradually augmented, and various structures succeeded to the primitive build- ings as the necessity of the times required. At length, in 1020, the Bishop, Fulbert, aided by the devout largesse of Robert of France, Knut the Great, of Denmark and England, Richard of Normandy, William of Aquitaine, Eudes of Chartres, and other sovereign princes, laid the magnificent foundations of the actual cathedral, and finished vaulting the grotto which thus became the crypt of the church. In the crypt-church, which is known as Our Lady's Under Ground, is preserved the antique statue, in a niche over the altar. The image was of wood, the original color long since destroyed by the smoke of wax-lights and its great age. The Virgin was represented as seated in a chair and holding upon her knees her Divine Son, who holds the globe of the earth In His left hand, and with His right bestows the benediction. The Blessed Virgin is crowned. And there rested the statue where the hands of the Druids had placed it, imtil the progres- sive republicanism of 1794 overthrew the shrine, tore the image from its niche, heaped outrage and insult upon it, and then burned it pub- licly at the door of the noble temple which piety had raised in its honor. That which is now seen in the cathedral is only a copy of the antique image, so consistently destroyed by our modem political and IN North America. 219 social reformers. Besides tliis, however, the church was enriched with other treasures, which happily escaped the rage of the Revolu- tion. There was a statue called Our Lady of the Pillar; long a vehicle of Mary's graces to her children. The stone pedestal on which it stands has been worn hollow by the kisses of the devout, and the legend on the base is, Tota pulchra es arnica mea et macula non eat in te — "Thou art all fair, my beloved, there is no spot in thee." There is also, since the year 870, an Oriental veil, such as is still worn in the East, and which is said to have been Our Lady's. It was given to the church by Charles the Bald ; it has received the venera- tion of all centuries since then, even of our own ; and in 1855, the eloquence of the great Bishop of Poitiers chose it for one theme of his discourse, when the statue of Notre Dame was solemnly crowned in that year. Many another sacred treasure does this grand old tem- ple possess, and simple and poor, yet honored among them, you may still see the wampum belts of the Abenaki of La Prairie and the Huron of Loretto.^ ^ Vide " Notre Dame de France ou I'histoire du culte de la Sainte Vierge en France depuis I'origine du Christianisme jusqu' a nos jours. Province ecclesiastique de Paris, par M. le Cure de Saint-Sulpice." — Vomx des Hurons, etc., etc. 220 Devotion to the B. V. Maey CHAPTEE XI. OuB Lady's Assumption of a. D..1790, and what came of it — A Mis- sioNABY Prince. Destined to temper, if possible, the absolute free- dom of the one, and to serve as a refuge from the hor- rors of the other, the Church in the United States appears serenely between the American and the French revolutions. The first name, in the hierarchy of this republic is a name from the Declaration of Indepen- dence : the first clergy under the jurisdiction of Car- roll are those whom fetterless tiger passions drive from old Catholic France. Dubois, Flaget, David, Badin, Dubourg, Marechal Cheverus, Eichard, Salmon, and their companions, lay the foundations of this country's true indebtedness to the land of St. Louis. Of these, Stephen Badin' is to be the first priest ordained in America ; six others are to be bishops, one afterwards a cardinal f Abbe Salmon is to die of cold and wounds, in the snow; Garnier shall see his plaisant pays de France again, and end his labors as superior-general of St. Sulpice ; Cheverus, a Prince of the Church, and Du- bourg die members of the restored hierarchy in their native land; and the others are to find the place of ^ Stephen Badin, ordained at Baltimore, 1793. 2 John Lefevre Cheverus, Bishop of Boston, 1810 ; of Montauban, 1818 ; Archbishop of Bordeaux, 1826 j Cardinal, 1836. IN North America. 221 their rest in tlie land which their toils have conse- crated. So that France, the pioneer of Christianity, heir of the Spaniard in Louisiana, and sacred conqueror of Canada, sends the first company of soldiers of Mary to reduce to the submission of God the centre of this vast northern continent. Nevertheless, it is in England that this act of the sacred drama opens. In the centre of a well-watered valley, running downward through Dorsetshire to the Channel, stands the antique castle of Lulworth, a gothic pile of four round towers united by massive battlemented curtains. This was the home, first of the Norman de LoUeworths ; in King John's days, of the princely Newburghs ; then of the Bindon Howards ; lastly of the Welds, sprung from Edric the Wild. For these a home, for others a temporary refuge. For here the austere monks of Our Lady of La Trappe found a shelter when, driven from their mountain for- ests by the merciless sans culottes; and later, by another effort after universal equality, the old walls became the abode of the royal house of France, before they moved to that castle of sadder and darker history, the Scottish Holyrood.^ It was the scene of many a hard fight in olden days, as when de Clare stormed it for the Empress Matilda ; but none of its memories can interest us so much as that of the midsummer morning which gave their first » Sir Bernard Burke's " Landed Gentry," Article, Weld. 222 Devotion to the B. V. Mary bishop to the United States. The day was not un- happily chosen. For the discovery and consecration of the land from Maine to Florida, from the Chesa- peake to California, by the servants of Mary, and the solemn dedication of it to her name, may be likened to her Nativity. The growth of the French and Span- ish churches is her beautiful youth. Then come the dark times of Puritanic conquest, the destruction of the Catholic missions, and the disappearance of the CathoKc Indians, as the dark time of her sorrows from the Flight into Egypt until the Crucifixion. And now the new rising of the Church is visible meetly on the Feast of her Assumption, when she went up into the presence of the King her Son, and "the King rose up to do her reverence, and they set a throne for the King's Mother, and she sate at his right hand." ' So that from that Feast of Our Blessed Lady's As- sumption in the castle chapel of old Lulworth, unto that which has been celebrated this year throughout the length and breadth of North America, the devotion to Mary has grown steadily ; and now there is scarcely a county without a church to her name; scarcely a square mile from the Gulf to the Arctic Ocean wherein that name has not at least been proclaimed. In that short space of a single human life, seventy-two years, ^ lAb. iii., Begum: Venit ergo Bethsabee ad Regem Salomonem ; et surrexit rex in occursmn ejus : adoravitque earn, et sedit super tltironum suum ; positusque est thronus matri regis quae sedit ad dex- teram reg^s. IN North America. 223 " the least has become a thousand, and the little one a most strong nation." * The holy de Montfort,' if we remember rightly, ap- plies to Our Lady those words of the Song of Songs : " As the apple-trees among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the children of men ;" ^ and says that she shall come to unite in herself almost all the veneration paid by man to saints ; or at least shall be acknowledged as supereminently worthy of it in every part of Christendom. And we seem to see the fulfil- ment of this declaration in North America. In Europe, every town and village has its own patron, who ab- sorbs most of the devotion of the people ; but in this country, placed under her especial protection by Span- iard and Frenchman, by emigrant Englishman, and American in the fresh flush of new independence, nearly the whole devotion of the people concentrates in her; or turns, for her sake, to Saint Anne among the Canadians,* or to Saint Joseph among the faithful in the United States. What antique Catholic land, even Spain or Ireland, can show what this country shows, even by the ex- ' Isaias, Ix. 23. • See Dr. Neligan's " Saintly Characters." — Kirker : New York. ^ Sieut malus inter ligna silvarum, sic dUectus mens inter filios. — Cant. ii. 3. ^ The voyager gives as reverential reason for his great devotion to St: Anne, that Our Lady is too lofty and great for his unworthiness to address directly ; and so as other Catholics plead through the ma- ternity of Mary to the Heart of Jesus, the Canadian implores the ma- ternity of St. Anne to intercede with the Heart of Mary. 224 Devotion to the B. Y. Maey tremelj imperfect record of the almanac, one church in every five bearing the beautiful and enduriQg name of the Mother of Our Lord and of us ? What territory, of one-tenth the vastness, has ever been placed by four independent and unintercommunicating powers under her peculiar patronage and protection ? Then, with this for the divinely ordered starting-point, let us look to see whether the other means, the zeal of the ministry, has been commensurate, in its degree of course, with the clear grace bestowed by our eternal Father. We adopted as principles,^ at the outset of this work, that a devotion advances in proportion to its own merits and to the ardor of the ministry who propagate it. The whole of this great book, Orsini's noble " Life," and our own humble continuation, is an exhibition of the merits of Mary, and we have seen the latest illustrious historian of America, puritan though he be, supporting us in our claims for the early pioneer servants of Mary in the land. Let us begin by stating what they have done in a single evident way for this beautiful devotion — as Kenelm Digby would say, the way of churches. There are many churches of Our Blessed Lady un- known to this writer. Of seven dioceses in the British Possessions he has no account ; but with all this, and with the great imperfection of such records as he has, he still can give the following List of Mary's shrines in North America. * See pages 9, 10. IN NoBTH America. 225 There are (1862) nine dedications to Mary Help of Christians, nine to Mary Star of the Sea, two to Mary Kefuge of Sinners, seven to the Sacred Heart of Mary. There are sometimes only one, sometimes as many as four, to Our Lady of the Port, of the Isle, of the Cata- ract, of the Gulf, of the Kiver, of the Kocks, columha in foraminihus petrce,^ Our Lady of the Portage, of the Snows, of the Woods, of the Lake, of the Desert. There is Our Lady of La Salette, of Belen, of Levis, and nine of Guadalupe. Again, we have Our Lady of Light, of Grace, of Good Help, of Kefuge, of Good Hope, of Prompt Succor. There are four to Our Lady of Victories, three to Our Lady of Consolation, five to Our Lady of Loretto, seven to Our Lady of Angels, nine of the Kosary, seven of the Good Shepherd, six- teen of Our Lady of Mercy, twenty-one of Sorrows, twenty-two of Carmel, thirty-one to "Our Lady," simply. There are three churches of the Mother of God, five of the Purification, eleven of the Nativity fourteen of the Annunciation, sixteen of the Yisitation, fifty of the Assumption, one hundred and forty-five of the Im- maculate Conception, and three hundred and sixty- seven which are simply called Saint Mary's. In all, there stand in North America, in honor of its Patroness, more than eight hundred churches. How this swift growth has come about in so short a time we are about to look at more in detail. We are ' " My dove in the clefts of the rock."— Song of Solomon, ii. 14. P 10* 226 Devotion to the B. V. Maby to see the priest and the religious, the energy of man and the patient labor of woman, under new difl&culties and trials peculiar to their position, extending to the people who surround them their own earnest devotion to God and Mary. Coeval with the consecration of Bishop Carroll, the Daughters of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel were in Maryland suffering from poverty al- most extreme, fasting eight months in the year, sleep- ing on straw, obtaining a modification of their clois- tered austerity to enable them to become teachers,^ and offering perpetual prayer for the country wherein they came to dwell. The Poor Clares followed, but did not continue long; when they declined, the Visitation of Our Lady took their place. Long, long ago among the mountains of Chamblais, there stood an ancient shrine of the Blessed Virgin, resorted to by pious pilgrims. Here, gradually, certain hermits gathered, as in Switzerland they clus- tered about the famous Abbey of Einsiedeln, and the saintly Bishop of Geneva had given them for title, Hermits of the Visitation. Afterwards, when Saint Jane Frances de Chantal formed her congregation at Annecy, in Savoy, St. Francis de Sales called them the Order of the Visitation of Our Lady.' It was their rule and title which Miss Alice Lalor, by direction of Bishop Neale, adopted for her new American sister- hood in Georgetown, a. d. 1814; and now between * De Ckmrcy's History of the Catholic Church in the United States, p. 83. 5 Approved by Pope Urban VIII., 1626. IN North America. 227 three and four hundred of these daughters of Mary- teach reverence to her name in these States. ALready the Sisters of Charity were at Emmittsburg with their venerable foundress, Mother Seton, 1809. To-daj where are they not? Their orphan-asylums and schools, their hospitals, their barrack near the battle-field mark their presence. And there are no longer in this whole vast country, we believe, unless perhaps in New England, many who do not know and reverence the dark-robed form as it moves on its er- rand of mercy through the streets. Add to all these, the fervent priests, so few at first in number ; the early bishops, penniless, sometimes barely clothed, and often without light or fire in winter; traversing distances on horseback that we grumble at passing over in the railway-train now; enduring all this cheerfully and heroically as we shall soon see. Sum up all these and we begin already to observe that Devotion to Mary in Central North America is to rival the Devotion of the Canadas. Bishop Carroll found himself spiritual governor of all the territory then owned by the United States, and his missionaries started from Baltimore for the West as one would strike out to sea alone in a bark canoe. For the uncut forest surged around them with its vast green waves of verdure; the Indian, rarely friendly, lurked in its dim recesses; the road was oftenest no clearer than a hunter's trail or a forsaken deer-path. They themselves were scholarly men, nurtured in European habits, necessities, ideas of distance. But 228 Devotion to the B. V. Maey in the precise spirit of Marquette, Jogues, Breboeuf, they put their trust in God and went wheresoever He directed. Borne by them, the Devotion to Our Lady followed the course of the great natural boundaries of this mighty land. Flowing westward from the bay which the first missionaries called St. Mary's; from the town which its first settlers called St. Mary's ; this river of devotion, checked, as might be supposed, by the chain of mountains, by Alleghany, and Cumber- land, and Blue Eidge, divided into three streams. One of these streams ran northward, as if to seek the old wells of devotion among the red-men and the French ; and this soon carried on its bosom a saintly Cheverus to hear through the gloom of the wood the song Magnificat and the Solva Regina from the lips of our old friends the ever-faithful Abenaki. A second ran southward, to visit again, after an interval of twb centuries, the spots where the blood of Jesuit and Carmehte, of Augustinian and Franciscan, had min- gled to baptize the Carolinas. And the third followed the course of la helle Biviere, and flowed with its yel- low waters through the fertile heart of the land, to the river wherein De Soto had been buried, and to which Marquette had given its name of Immaculate Concep- tion. In eighteen years, sixty-eight priests and eighty churches formed too heavy a burden for the venerable Bishop of Baltimore, and the sees of New York, Bos- ton, Philadelphia, and Bardstown in Kentucky, were established. Let us look at a type or two of the men m NoETH Ameeica. 229 who led these missions. As early as 1795 there was one Father Smith who was missionary for an enormous district in Western Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsyl- vania. There, for forty-one years, he toiled in hum- ble faithfulness ; from thence his soul ascended to the judgment which his life had merited. It wiU not be uninteresting to consider some points in the Hfe of this servant of Mary, this glorious, although unrenowned pioneer of her honor in this country. This Father Smith, missionary of Hagerstown and Cumberland in Maryland, of Martinsburg and Win- chester in Virginia, of Chambersburg and the Alle- ghany mountain sweep in Pennsylvania, and thence southward; of far more, in a word, than what now constitutes the entire diocese of Pittsburg ; this rival of Gomez in the south, and of Father Chaumonot in the north ; this founder of Our Lady of Loretto in the centre of the continent, was not always known as Father Smith. In his own country, the vast Muscovite em- pire, then ruled by the Czar Alexander I., he was known as the Prince Augustine de GaUitzin. His father. Prince Demetrius GaUitzin, was ambassador of Catherine the Great to Holland, at the time of the missionary's birth. His mother, the Princess Ameha, was daughter of that famous Field-marshal Count von" Schmettau who illustrates the military annals of Fred- erick the Great. The young GaUitzin was decorated in his very cradle with military titles, which destined him from his birth to the highest posts in the Kussian army. 230 Devotion to the B. V. Maby High in the favor of the Empress Catherine, his father, a haughty and ambitions nobleman, dreaming only of the advancement of his son in the road of preferment and worldly honor, was resolved to give him an educa- tion worthy of his exalted birth and brilliant prospects. Rehgion formed no part of the plan of the father, who was a proficient in the school of Gallic infidelity, and the friend of Diderot. It was carefully excluded. Special care was taken not to suffer any minister of religion to approach the study-room of the young prince.' He was surrounded by infidel teachers. His mother, a CathoKc by birth and early education, was seduced into seeming Voltairianism by the court fash- ion of her native country, and her marriage with Prince Demetrius confirmed her habits of apparent infidelity ; we say apparent, for she retained, even in the salons of Paris and in the society of Madame du Chatelet, a fervent devotion to Saint Augustine, that grand doctor of the Church who had been a great worldling and heretic. After the marriage of the elder Gallitzin with the Princess Amelia, he brought her to Paris and in- troduced her to his literary infidel friends, especially to Diderot, in whose company he delighted. This philosopher endeavored to win the princess over to his atheistical system ; but though she was more than in- different on the subject of religion, her naturally strong mind discovered the hollowness of his reasoning. It was remarked that she would frequently puzzle the philosopher by the little interrogative — why ? And as he could not satisfy her objections, she was determined IN NoBTH America. 231 to examine thoroughly the grounds of revelation. Though having no rehgion herself, she was determined to instruct her children in one. She opened the Bible merely for the purpose of teaching her children the historical part of it. The beauty of revealed truth, notwithstanding the impediment of indifference and unbelief, would sometimes strike her — ^her mind being of that mould which, according to Tertullian, is natu- rally Christian. A terrible illness called her mind back to God ; she saw the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith, and she returned to the protection of Mary on the Feast of St. Augustine, in the week following the Octave of Our Lady's Assumption. It is to the happy influence and bright example of his mother, to whom, under God, we must mainly as- scribe the conversion of the young Demetrius. As the illustrious Bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, consoled the mother of Augustine, when he used to say " that it was impossible for a son to he lost for whom so many tears ivere shed/' so we may believe that the pious Furstenberg, her son's tutor, cheered, in a similar manner, this good lady, in her intense solicitude for a son whom she so tenderly loved. At the age of seventeen the young prince was re- ceived into the Church. He was, in the year 1792, ap- pointed aid-de-camp to the Austrian General Von Lil- ien, who commanded an army in Brabant at the open- ing of the first campaign against the French Jacobins. The sudden death of the Emperor Leopold, and the 232 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary murder of the king of Sweden by Ankerstrom, both suspected to be the work of the French Jacobins who had declared war against all kings and aU religions, caused the governments of Austria and Prussia to issue a very strict order disqualifying aU foreigners from military offices. In consequence of this order the young Prince de GaUitzin was excluded. Eussia not taking any part in the war against France, there was no occasion offered to him for pursuing the profession of arms for which he had been destined by his military education. It was therefore determined by his parents that he should travel abroad and make the grand tour. He was allowed two years to travel ; and lest, in the mean time, his acquirements, the fruits of a very j&n- ished education, might suffer, he was placed under the guidance of the Bev. Mr. Brosius, a young missionary then about to embark for America, with whom his studies were to be still continued. In the company of this excellent clergyman he reached the United States in 1792. The next we need see of him is as a seminarian with the Sulpicians in Baltimore, November 5, 1792. In this moment of his irrevocable sacrifice of himseK to God, the feehngs of his inmost soul may be gathered from a letter which he wrote at the time to a clergy- man of Munster, in Germany. In it he begs him to prepare his mother for the step he had finally taken, and informs* him that he had sacrificed himseH, with aU that he possessed, to the service of God and the salvation of his neighbor in America, where the har- ' IN North America. ' 233 vest was so great and the laborers so few, and where the missionary had to ride frequently forty and fifty miles a day, undergoing difficulties and dangers of every description. He adds, that he doubted not his call, as he was willing to subject himself to such ardu- ous labor. Father Etienne Badin was the first priest ordained in the United States ; Prince Gallitzin was the second, and he, as early as 1799, was settled for hfe in the then bleak and savage region of the Alleghanies. From his post to Lake Erie, from the Susquehanna to the Potomac, there was no priest, no church, no re- ligious station of any kind. Think, then, of the in- evitable labors and privations of this missionary ; and again understand how the devotion to Mary has spread over North America. During long missionary excursions, frequently his bed was the bare floor, his pUlow the saddle, and the coarsest and most forbidding fare constituted his re- past. Add to this, that he was always in feeble health, always infirm and delicate in the extreme, and it was ever a matter of wonder to others how the Httle he ate could support nature and hold together so fragile a frame as his. A veritable imitator of Paul, " he was in labor and painfulness, in watching often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, in cold and nakedness." ^ When he first began. to reside permanently on this mountain, in 1779, he found not more than a dozen 1 3 Cor., xi. 234 Devotion to the B. Y. Maey Catholics, scattered here and there through a trackless forest. He first settled on a farm generously left by the Maguire family for the maintenance of a priest. A rude log-church, of some twenty-five or thirty feet, was sufficient for a considerable time for the first Httle flock that worshipped according to the faith of their fathers on the Alleghany. He commenced his colony with twelve heads of families; he left behind him when he died six thousand devotees of Mary. But the population grew rapidly, allured by the saintly reputation of Father Smith. It was he who purchased enormous tracts of land, who built the grist and saw mill, he who found himseK oppressed by debt in his old age. Of course he expected his father's in- heritance, and when that prince died in 1803, he was pressed to quit his beloved Loretto and go to claim his rights in Eussia. His mother and friends urged him to come; his prelate was on the point of com- manding him ; but when he met Bishop Carroll, he gave reasons for remaining among his flock which that prelate could not in the end refute. He stated that he had caused a great number of Catholic families to settle in a wild and uncultivated region, where they formed a parish of a considerable size ; that the Legis- lature had proposed to establish there a county-seat ; and that numbers still continued to flock thither. The bishop at length fully acquiesced in his remaining, as he could not send another in his place. The apostoHc missionary then wrote to his mother, that whatever he might gain by the voyage, in a temporal 'point of view, IN NoBTH Amekica. 235 could not, in his estimation, be compared with the loss of a single sold that might be occasioned by his absence. Had he gone, it would have been in vain, for the Emperor and Senate of St. Petersburg settled the question by disinheriting him for "having embraced the Catholic faith and "clerical profession." Neverthe- less, he hoped to share with his sister, who had in- herited all. And she did supply him, until the ruined German Prince de Solm, whom she had married, made away with her fortune as he had done with his own. Then came his days of debt, dreariest of all days to men. But he lived so that none should suffer but himself. He neither ate nor drank nor was clothed at the expense or loss of any creditor or others. His fare was often but some black bread and a few vege- tables ; coffee and tea were unknown luxuries in those times. His clothing was home-made and of the most homely description ; his mansion was a miserable log- hut, not denied even to the poorest of the poor. "With the prodigal son of the Gospel, but in a most meritori- ous and heroic sense, he could say : " How many hired servants in my father's house have plenty of bread, and I here perish with hunger !" ^ " Being now," he says, " in my sixty-seventh year, burdened, moreover, with the remnant of my debts, reduced from $18,000 to about $2,500, I had better spend my few remaining years, if any, in trying to » St. liUke's Gospel, xv. 236 Devotion to the B. Y. Mart pay off that balance, and in preparing for a longer journey." On that Loretto of his love he expended, from the wreck of his fortune, $150,000. So is it with the ser- vitors of Mary. Three centuries ago, they gave their bodies to be burned, their heads to the scalping-knife, their finger-joints to the teeth of the Iroquois ; later, they gave their lives and fortunes, counting them as nothing if so they might win souls to Christ.' Let his friend and biographer tell the secret of aU this, and thus show what a Muscovite prince can have in commou with this book : " As he had taken for his models the Lives of the Saints, the Francis of Sales, the Charles Borromeos, the Yincents of Paul, so like them he was distinguished for his tender and lively devotion to the Blessed Yirgin ; and he lost no opportunity of extolling the virtues of Mary. He endeavored to be an imitator of her as she was of Christ. He recited her rosary every evening among his household, and inculcated constantly on his people this admirable devotion, and all the other pious exercises in honor of Mary. The church in which he said daily Mass, he had dedicated under the invoca- tion of this ever-glorious Yirgin, whom all nations were to call blessed. It was in honor of Mary, and to place his people under her peculiar patronage, that he gave the name of Loretto to the town he founded here, ^ Omnia detrimentum feci et arbitror ut stercora ut Christum lucri- fttciam. — ^Phil. iii. 8. IN North America. 237 after tlie far-famed Loretto, which, towering above the blue wave of the Adriatic, on the Itahan coast, ex- hibits to the Christian pilgrim the hallowed and mag- nificent temple which contains the sainted shrine of Mary's humble house in ivhich she at Nazareth heard an- nounced the mystery of the Incarnution, and which the mariners, as they pass to encounter the perils of the deep, or return in safety from them, salute, chanting the joyous hymn, Aye Maris Stella 1 For, like St. John, he recognized in her a mother recommended to him by the words of the dying Jesus : " He saith to the disciple, Behold thy mother !" And so, when the frame was worn out in her service and her Son's, he went up to see her face on high.' Proceeding in the order proposed to ourselves, we give the first place to that which bears the name of Our Lady. , ^ Discourse on the Life and Virtues of Eev. Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, by the Very Rev. Thomas Heyden. Printed for the Monu- mental (to Prince Gallitzin) Committee of Loretto, Penn. From this eloquent discourse nearly the whole of the above account is taken. 238 Devotion to B. V. Maby ^ CHAPTEE Xn. OuB Lady of the Lake. Not long ago, in 1834, in the old town of Mans, in Catholic France, a holy and devoted priest, Moreau, was professor of dogma in the seminary and canon of the cathedral in the town. He was eloquent, zealous, and one of the grandest preachers in France. He gave up much of his time to preaching retreats ; that is, to the leading of his flock away from the world, to the " quiet pastures and still waters," where is the presence of the Good Shepherd, whose crook and staff rule, guide, guard, lead; who "restoreth the souls" of the erring, the weary, and the so-called lost, and giveth them to eat and to drink of His own table, whereat is " fulness for evermore." ^ After many years thus passed, his bishop authorized him to form an auxiHary society of priests to aid him in this pastoral labor. He accordingly associated with himself four pious and devoted clergymen, with whom he lived a regular community life in the seminary for over a year. About this time, or a few years previously, a com- munity of a different kind had been founded in the same diocese, by the Very Rev. Mr. Dujarier, one of ^ Psalm, xxii. IN NoBTH America. 239 the venerable survivors of the Eevoliltion. It consisted of a band of devoted men, mostly young, who, without aspiring to the ecclesiastical state, yet, animated by a 'true zeal to labor for God's glory and the salvation of souls, had formed themselves into a rehgious com- munity under the title of the Brothers of St. Joseph, consecrating themselves to the Christian education of youth, and having no higher aim than to imitate the humble and hidden life of their holy patron. Then, tAvo years later, moved by the self-sacrifice of these good men, some pious and devoted women of the humbler class of society offered themselves, from a motive of holy charity aiid zeal, to conduct the work of the estabhshment, and to serve those good Priests and Brothers as the holy women of the Gospel did our Saviour and his disciples. God willed it that this event should inspire our worthy founder with the idea of establishing, as a third branch of the association, a sisterhood to co-operate with the two former branches in all their pious labors, and to labor themselves in a particular manner for the benefit of the youth of their own sex ; the whole association thus forming a united and most efficient body, able to act in concert upon all classes of society. Under the training of the saintly Superioress, Mother Mary of St. Dorithei, Juet, they made a fervent and regular novitiate, and were, one year afterwards, admitted to the rehgious profession under the name of " Sisters of the Holy Cross," ^nd patronage of Our Lady of the Seven Sori^oivs. They were, said their founder, to seek God in all 240 Devotion to the B. V. Maey tilings, to aim only at heaven, to aspire to the happi- ness of possessing Jesus, of belonging only to Him and to His Blessed Mother, making use of all interests, rights, or goods for the sole honor of their Divine Master and the salvation of souls. They were to lead a life of abnegation in all employments and exercises, never acting save by the will of a Superior; a life regular and exact, by constant and universal fidelity to the rules and constitutions of the Society, observing them in the spirit of love and not of fear, by the Hght of faith and not through human motives ; a life social by humility, in meekly bearing or charitably support- ing others, accompUshing to the letter the maxim of the picus author of the Imitation, of mutually support- ing, consoling, aiding, instructing, and admonishing one another ; a Hfe edifying by modesty, the forgetful- ness of self, religious gravity, avoiding in conversation all criticisms, raillery, and above all, levity ; a life of labor — a life interior and elevated to God by the habit- ual practice of the acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity, by the example of Jesus Christ, whom we are partic- ularly bound to imitate in our conduct, for we must above all lead a life hidden in our Lord, if we would not ruin the work of the Holy Cross. " Here," he says, " are three orders subordinate one to the other, an imitation of the Holy Family, where Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, although of conditions so different, are made one by the union of thoughts and the uniformity of conduct. " In order to cement this union, and this imitation IN North America. 241 of the Holy Family, I have consecrated, and conse- crate again as much as in me, the Priests, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Pastor of souls — the Brothers, to the Heart of St. Joseph, their patron ; and the Sisters, to the Heart of Mary, pierced with the sword of grief. " Behold, my dear children in Jesus Christ, the plan of government which it is the will of God should be followed in the administration of Our Lady of Holy Cross." The Bishop of Vincennes, Monseigneur de St. Pa- lais, desires to have these children of St. Mary to help him in extending her renown through the west of Northern America. So Father Sorin, still Superior, comes with six brothers. They "bless God and his Holy Mother" for their safe arrival, and they claim possession of the soil "in the name of the Cross, of the Blessed Virgin, and of St. Joseph." * Monseigneur sends his new colony, 3Ioiris cultores Deif to the northern part of Indiana, about thirty miles south of Lake Michigan. This section had been secured, years before, by the proto-priest of the United States, Kev. Father Badin ; his efforts, how- ever, had only been crowned by the erection of a little log-church, and a poorer log-house. But the situation is one of extreme beauty — ^not grandeur ; for northern Indiana can claim nothing of the sublime or grand in her scenery. Yet the monotony of her low land and * Vide Life of Rev. F. Cointet, Priest and Missionary of the Con- legation of the Holy Cross. Cincinnati, 1855. R 11 242 Devotion to the B. V. Maky prairies is frequently diversified, and the character of the beautiful given it by clear, placid, little lakes, sui*- rounded by gently undulating plains. The farm in question contained two" of these pleasant lakes, to which Indian tradition had attached many a tale of enchantment. Dedicating this spot to "Notre Dame du Lac," Father Sorin selected a charming little island, in the largest lake, as the site for two new novitiates — one for the Priests he hoped to train for his new mission, and the other for the Brothers. A beautiful situation was also chosen on the banks of the lake for the future college; then, with firm confidence in Divine Provi- dence, he spent the winter in collecting the scattered CathoHcs of the neighborhood into a regular congrega- tion, in forming his Novitiate of the Brothers, and at- tending to the temporal wants of his little colony. At this period, the aid so long and earnestly desired by this devoted missionary was furnished in the per- son of his former beloved friend, the young Abbe Cointet, he who in youth had made this resolution — "To give up some time every day to reading holy books." Then, in his journal, after that, he adds : "For the same intention, I shall say the Eosary. Since an early age I have been consecrated to the Blessed Yirgin, and to her care have I confided my chas- tity. I will study attentively the virtues of this Holy Mother, to whom I am strictly bound to have many traits of resemblance, and towards whom I ardently desire to feel all the tenderness of a true child." IN North America. 243 So, then, there are two priests ; how apostolic, in one point, these words of Father Sorin himself shall hint: "For some years the wardrobe of Father Cointet and his Superior was considered very full when they possessed a pair of hoots and a hat as property in com- mon. The boots he adroitly managed not to wear until they had passed through the stages of good and indifferent^ but the hat could not be so easily managed, there being no alternative except to replace the ecclesi- astical square cap by the beaver, when on the Mission. Accordingly, if Father Cointet was recognized riding or walking off with a hat on his head, it was known to the members of the little community that the Superior was at home." And now, what else is to be said of these devoted souls shall not be in the words of him whose name is on the title-page of this book, but in those of a sister of the order, of a servant of Mary at the foot of the Cross. As " Notre Dame du Lac" now stands, it holds, in various establishments circKng the pleasant waters of the lake, a college, a manual-labor school, a convent in its popular sense, the initiatory schools of the Brothers, and the seminary — all and each of these solemnly dedicated in 1845 to devotion to, and placed under the special protection of, the Blessed Mother of God. St. Mary's Lake is thus encircled, and over all, one hundred and ten feet from the ground, stands the statue of "Blessed among women." She looks with love upon the apprentices of the manual-labor school 244 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary in their different worksliops and fields ; the Brothers in their quiet novitiate ; the seminarians in their holy solitude. And off a mile to the west, her eye rests dis- tinctly upon the institutions of the Sisters of the same order, dwelling under the title of St. Mary's of the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic pupils of both places are enrolled in the sodalities of the Children of Mary and the Living Eosary. Every Saturday evening the Litany of Loretto is solemnly chanted in the conventual churches. The Month of Mary is here made a glorious festival of thirty- one days. Benediction of the Blessed Sacra- ment is given every evening, and a discourse pro- nounced by one of the Kev. Fathers in honor of their Heavenly Queen. The Assumption is annually celebrated by a solemn procession after High Mass. On that day every pic- turesque spot is adorned with some memento of the Queen of Heaven. Arches ornamented with her image point the route to the pious pilgrims, and the murmur- ing waters of the lake, the songs of the birds, and all the pleasant sounds of midsummer in the green woods, together with the joyous chime of twenty-one bells in the church-tower, unite to form a triumphal chorus to the happy voices of the children of Notre Dame as they intone the Litany of Loretto, the Magnificat and the Salve Regina. Devotion to the Blessed Yirgin may truly be said to be the presiding spirit of the place. Private chapels IN North Ameeica. 245 in her honor are in every house. The grounds are adorned with statues of the Madonna and Child and of the Immaculate Conception. At Notre Dame a luxuriant arbor, at least an eighth of a mile in length, dedicated to Noire Dame aux Raisins, bears conspicu- ously on every arch the different titles of the Litany of Loretto. In the conventual church is the altar of the Seven Dolors, above which is a fine group of statuary repre- senting the body of Our Blessed Lord taken from the Cross, and laid in the arms of his Mother. A magnifi- cent stained window above the main altar represents the Assumption. In every direction the spirit of Mary seems to breathe and influence. The full ecclesiastical year should be passed at Notre Dame, in order to under- stand how every festival of the Blessed Virgin brings some new or touching evidence of the love which the Society of Holy Cross bears to Notre Dame, and which it seeks to instil into the hearts of its pupils. On a beautiful little promontory opposite the col- lege, the zeal of the Superior has caused to be erected a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels. Here the CathoHc pupils spend one night of every month in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. This chapel is built on the exact plan of the celebrated chapel of " Our Lady of the Angels, or the Portiuncula," and^has been enriched by the Holy See with all the privileges of that world-renowned pilgrimage established by St. Francis of Assisium. 246 Devotion to the B. V. Maky These privileges, whicli have made " St. Mary's of the Angels" one of the richest treasures in Italy, con- sist of plenary indulgences gained by all the faithful who, being heartily sorry for their sins, go to confes- sion, receive Communion, and visit the chapel between the first and second Vespers of the 22d of August — not one indulgence alone, but as many times during the day as the faithful enter the chapel with the proper dispositions will they gain a plenary indulgence. These immense spiritual blessings were granted to the prayer of St. Francis by the visible intercession of Mary, and by Jesus Christ himseK. During six hun- dred and twenty-five years the devout among the people of Italy, and many pilgrims from foreign climes, have assembled at Assisium on this feast of grace and mercy. So numerous were these devotees, that it is related of St. Bernardino, when he preached at St. Mary's of the Angels, that two hundred thousand per- sons were assembled around the chapel. And to give the faithful of North America an oppor- tunity of gaining the same treasures, and in the same manner, the Society of Holy Cross has transported, as it were, this chapel with all its- spiritual wealth into our midst. At St. Mary's of the Immaculate Conception, the residence of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, one mile west of Our Lady of the Lake, the duplicate of the Santa Casa, or Holy House of Loretto, has been erected as the special chapel pf the children of Mary. This chapel has also been enriched by the Holy See IN North America. 247 with all the indulgences belonging the famous pilgrim- age of Loretto. These two chapels bring to our own land the two most famous shrines of Italy, and are most powerful means, in the hands of the religious, of promoting in the hearts of the youth intrusted to their care a deep and abiding love for the Blessed Mother of God ; and may we not hope that at no distant day love for Our Blessed Lady will bring many a pilgrim to these two chapels, in crowds, if not as great, at least as fervent, * as those which visit the original chapels in Italy ? The Society of Holy Cross has several houses of education established in different parts of the United States and Canada; and, as at Notre Dame and St. Mary's, so do they all aim at spreading the love and devotion for their Hoiy Mother by every means which their zeal and resources will present. The consecration of this order was made on the Feast of Our Lady of Snows, and in the snows of • November they first took possession of the old log- church and the adjacent lands. This church had been dedicated to the Blessed Virgin by the early French missionaries, de Seille and Petit, and here these holy men had taught the Indian to love and venerate their Heavenly Queen. When Father Sorin came and heard of the pioneer devotion of the American proto-priest, he rejoiced at the thought of laboring in this domain, already consecrated to his Blessed Mother. Not as owners of the soil, but as faithful and devoted servants of Mary did the first members of Holy Cross com- 248 Devotion to the B. V. Maky mence their work. Every thing was to be improved, every thing made useful or beautiful. For Mary's sake, their Queen, the lake was called St. Mary's Xake. Plans for novitiate, church, manual-labor school, and college, were sketched, and all conse- crated to Notre Dame, and all the land was Mary's land. Notwithstanding the rigors of an unusually severe winter, zeal for the glory of the august Mother of God warmed the hearts of her children with its ardent and generous rays. Often during the first years they actually suffered for lack of food and rai- ment. Their favorite devotion on such occasions was the thousand Hail Maries said in common — a devo- tion still customary among the members of the con- gregation. Let us 'learn, among the- items of this wondrous North American Devotion to Mary, how these sisters of hers are consecrated to her Seven Sorrows. Let one of them still speak, and tell how pleasing, how dear to the Queen of Martyrs must be the devotion to her Sorrows ; how, more than all other devotions, it tends to supematuralize the mind, since in it the most wonderful divine operations mingle with the common woes and sorrows of a suffering world ; and it ex- presses that union of self-abasement and self-oblivion in which all the greater graces of the spiritual life take root. Devotion to the Sorrows of Mary unites us to an abiding sorrow for sin. It is all stained with the precious blood of our dear Lord, and thus it puts us into the very depths of His Sacred Heart. m NoKTH Amekica. 249 The lessons which Our Mother's Sorrows teach us are wanted at almost every turn in life ; they are im- parted with such loving tenderness, with such pathetic simplicity, and in the midst of such counties^ simili- tudes between our sinless Mother and our sinful selves, that no school can be found in which so much heavenly wisdom is taught so winningly as in the Sor- rows of Mary. Before we quit this pleasant subject, let us see that this land of Mary does not belong solely to the living, but also to the memory of the dead. In the parish graveyard chapel stands the statuary group of the Mother with her dead Son. Over the earth wherein the Sisters are buried, smiles serenely " Our Lady of Peace ;" where the priests and seminarians repose, is the statue of the Immaculate Conception. Every- where Madonna, she is the Lady of Lake and Land. When recreation calls the children of the Sisters' schools together, among other pleasures they have the reading of their journal, the " Mystical Eose." It was in this that a Sister, whose heart is full of music as of devotion, sang in sweet rhythm her prayer for North America. Later, we will see that Litany chanted by the Ursuline nuns before Our Lady of Swift Help, Notre Dame de Prompt Secours, during the battle of New Orleans, in 1812 ; now let us read the hymn of a religious of Mary's Sorrows, sung in this time of great national pain and small individual charity : 11* 250 Devotion to the B. V. Maky STELLA MATUTINA. I O Star of Morning ! dense tlie clouds That hover round our nation's bark. And howling winds shriek through her shrouds As on she ploilghs the billows dark. Oh, show thy light ! thou art our guide, Thy Virgin beams our path shall lead. As fearful o'er the stormy tide, Before the conquering blast we speed. O Star of Morning ! pierce the gloom, And gild our path along the sea. Ere anarchy shall seal our doom, And chant the death-dirge of the free. From St. Augustine, far away, • To bold St. Lawrence' northern strand. From San Francisco to the bay That waters honored Maryland, Deep love for thee with mystic power Hath mingled with our nation's life. And aided us, in danger's hour, '^ 'Gainst wars and elemental strife. Star of Morning ! 'twas thy ray That led the mariner of old Along the ocean's trackless way. Earth's western wonders to unfold. 'Twas love for thee that fired his breast. And made him count all perils light. That opened to the cloud-girt West, Thy morning beams to heathen sight. O Star of Daybreak ! when the hand Of bold oppression crossed the wave, Thy shelter sweet in Maryland Made conscience there no more a slave. Thy chosen child. Lord Baltimore, Struck off the manacles that bound. By tyrant power, the infant shore. And stamped her soil true freedom's ground. IN North America. 251 *Twas there that Faith — celestial bird — First flung abroad her carol loud : And thou, fair Star, her matins heard, Which, soaring heavenward, pierced the cloud. Sweet Orb of Dawn ! it was thy ray Th^t, creeping through the western wilds. Kissed the broad streams, and kindled day Along the woodland's dark defiles. And woke a song of praise that wound Where mighty lakes majestic flow ; .Memnon's famed lyre were harshest sound To anthem blest that hailed thy glow ; The touching strain so old— «o new. The words we ne'er shall cease to frame. Those mystic syllables that drew A God from heaven at thy sweet name, — ** Hail, full of grace ! the Lord, with thee. On earth is blessed evermore ;" And Gabriel's salutation free, Echoed in joy from shore to shore ; And savage men submissive bowed. To own a Saviour crucified. While Error, in her dusky shroud. Sought in her darkest haunts to hide. The waters of the sylvan lake, And wildwood stream were hallowed then. By sacred touch for Jesus' sake. And Mass was sung in glade and glen ; And crosses in the wilderness Sprang up to bless primeval shade. Where lilies wild, and water-cress. Alone before thanksgiving made. O peerless Orb ! along thy wake, How clear thy constellated train Of virgin stars, fair saints that take Their rank along the ethereal main ! 252 Devotion to the B. V. Maey A constant harbinger thou art Of Him, the Son of Light Divine, Who drank sweet warmth from thy pure heart, Whose wondrous grace through thee doth ahine I When climbing soft the evening gray. Thy radiant form doth gem the sky We know ere long will come the day. We know the rising Sun is nigh. Oh, yes, when o'er our sinful souls Thy genial rays benignant fall. Our Blessed Lord His love unfolds, And Mercy's daylight spreads o'er all. Yes, thou wUt bring to us, sweet Star (A nation of young restless life). The light of peace, and near and far Will cease the bitter soimd of strife. We a^k thy aid ; we beg thy care ; We know we cannot plead in vain ; So, trustful, through the murky air We hail thee with thy heavenly train. blissful Star ! words cannot frame The gratitude we owe to thee. As reverent now we name thy Name, And meekly suppliant bow the knee. Then show thy light — thou art our guide ; Thy Virgin beams our path shall lead. As hopeful o'er the stormy tide Before the conquering blast we speed. They educate in the love of Marj five thousand five hundred children. Mary Angela is the Mother Pro- vincial, and Mary of the Ascension, Superior.* » Letter of Very Rev. R Serin, October, 1863. IN North America. ' 253 CHAPTEE Xm. OuB Lady's Sisteks— Les S(euks db Notee Dame. Let us look at other orders of holy women who bear the name or advance the devotion to Our Blessed Lady in these States. Li fifteen dioceses — ^perhaps in more— you find les Soeurs de Notre Bamef Our Lady's Sisters ; and they are engaged teaching thousands to venerate the sacred Mother of God. Four of their houses are (1862) in the diocese of New York, eight are in Cincinnati, three in New Orleans, three in far Monterey. They are in Baltimore and Oregon, in Newark and Detroit, in Philadelphia and Boston — spreading and growing Hke the mustard seed of the Gospel ; covering this vast continent with a lace-work of prayer, and education, self-denial, devotion, and love for God and man, yet are scarcely sixty years in existence. It is amazing how much of fruit for North Amer- ica, how many unrecked-of blessings to its headlong people, sprang from the horror and anguish of the French Eevolution. These Sisters of Our Lady issued, by God's will, from that triumph of Satan and Moloch, as lilies from the putrid fertilizers of the soil. Marie Louise, Viscountess de BHn-Bourdon, and 254 Devotion to the B. V. Maby Mademoiselle Julie Billiart, sought refuge in Belgium from the merciless iniquity of the land once ruled by St. Louis. And here, in 1804, they pronounced their first vows. This was their vow : to give themselves, and, by the efforts of their Hves, to extend devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, protected by the Immacu- late Heart of Mary. Next year they venture sixty miles into the north of France, to Amiens, and there commence their work.^ They have a lodging, it is evident, and some room for scholars — of what excellence and how large we cannot say ; but we can discern one pleasant figure at the very beginning. It is the figure of Sister Ber- nardino, wandering about the streets with a big bell in her hands. Gravely along the wealthier streets, cou- rageously down fetid alley-ways, and into quarters of the very poor, her bell chanting Vivos voco^. her own voice translating that to those who came about her ; and at length her heart thrilling with gratitude and love to gentle Mother Mary, as she leads some seventy children to the schools — sweet first-fruits of Our Lady's new harvest in haK-ruined France. By 1807 the Mother House is well established at Namur, and begins to send forth its colonies. So far as we can ascertain, the first flight of doves from this cote was a long one, over the Atlantic Ocean, and across half a continent to the very heart of this country — to ^ Notice sur I'ordre des Soeurs de Notre Dame de Namur. ' " I call the living." Part of the old inscription upon church bells " Vivos voco ; mortuos plango ; sabbata pango." IN North America 255 Cincinnati. There they still remain, teaching thirty- six hundred pupils in the cathedral city alone. But Ohio does not satisfy their ambition. Their next flight from Namur is all the way to Oregon ; to that river no longer to be known as one that " rolls and hears no sound Save its own dashing/'^ but a stream henceforth to show the shadow of the Cross, and to mingle the song of its waves with the music of Mass, and vespers, and convent litany, or with the sweet, wild notes of the Indian children, as they chant, from their canoes, their hymn to Blessed Mary : Ayaa skokoum maika, Kwanissom tlosh Marie Kopa sahale taye. Wawa pons naika Pons ka kwa yaka temtom Nalka memmeloucht, Ayak yaka eskam naika sahale. In thee I place my confidence, Oh, Virgin, strong and fair ;' Be thy protection my defence. Be all my life thy care ! And when I draw my latest breath, And seek my endless lot, Obtain for me a holy death, And then forsake me not. It was under the charge of the apostolic de Smet that these devoted Sisters of Nore Dame made their ' Bryant's Thanatopsis. ' " Pulchra ut luna, terribilis ut castromm acies ordinata." — Cant Canticorum, vi. 9. 256 Devotion to the B. Y. Mary long journey : a journey vexed with many storms, and almost finished by one off the coast. Decks were swept clear by the irresistible waves ; sails shivered ; top- masts went by the board ; water-casks completely emptied ; no soundings ; nothing but guesses as to their whereabouts, and those guesses proved after- wards to be TjTong. But the Sisters were calm, and full of that most beautiful courage which is called res- ignation : full of resignation, but not at the expense of hope. They gather in their cabin, holding there to whatever can be seized to steady themselves, and in- tone their litany ; they make a new vow to the Immac- ulate Heart of Mary, and then they trust. By and by the storm subsides, the winds abate, the waves go down, and as the crimson lustre of the sunset is flung athwart the sea, they notice, floating towards them, masses of long, green, salt-meadow grass, and they know by it that the shore is on their lee.^ And so they landed, and on the eve of the Assump- tion of Our Lady they lodged in a tent on the banks of the Wallamette. In the morning, they raised and adorned, as they might, a little altar, and Mr. Blanchet, afterwards Archbishop, offered the Holy, Sacrifice. On the second day of the Octave they reached the mission. It was a house, but without doors, without windows ; only with open spaces ready for such luxuries. Car- penters were the rarest and most costly articles in Oregon in those days. " Every man is his own builder ^ Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, torn. xvii. 483. Lettre du Pere de Smet. IN North America. 257 here," was the consolation which Our Lady's Sisters got when they looked at the yawning window-frames and portals. No matter ; they took the Highlandman's proverb for their law : " Set a stout heart to a steep hill-side ;" and one undertook to learn the management of the plane, another voted herseK a sashmaker, a third claimed to be a house-painter, and if any found abso- lutely no mechanical vocation within her, she went straightway to Our Lady and asked her help for the others. Then the v