Part 23 (1/2)
Thus, in considering this in himself, he aimed first of all to propagate the name of Christianity and the benefits of Christian charity in the West. As a fact, as soon as he presented himself to the sovereigns of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, he explained the cause for which they were not to fear taking a warm interest in the enterprise, as their glory would increase to the point of becoming immortal if they decided to carry the name and the doctrine of Jesus Christ into such distant regions. And when, not long afterward, his prayers were granted, he called to witness that he wished to obtain from G.o.d that these sovereigns, sustained by His help and His mercy, should persevere in causing the gospel to penetrate upon new sh.o.r.es and in new lands.
He conceived in the same manner the plan of asking Alexander VI.
for apostolic men, by a letter in which these words are found: ”I hope that it will some day be given to me with the help of G.o.d to propagate afar the very holy name of Jesus Christ and his gospel.”
Also can one imagine him all filled with joy when he wrote to Raphael Sanchez, the first who from the Indies had returned to Lisbon, that immortal actions of grace must be rendered to G.o.d in that he had deigned to cause to prosper the enterprise so well, and that Jesus Christ could rejoice and triumph upon earth and in heaven for the coming salvation of innumerable people who previously had been going to their ruin. That, if Columbus also asks of Ferdinand and Isabella to permit only Catholic Christians to go to the New World, there to accelerate trade with the natives, he supports this motive by the fact that by his enterprise and efforts he has not sought for anything else than the glory and the development of the Christian religion.
This was what was perfectly known to Isabella, who, better than any other person, had penetrated the mind of such a great man; much more, it appears that this same plan was fully adopted by this very pious woman of great heart and manly mind. She bore witness, in effect, of Columbus, that in courageously giving himself up to the vast ocean, he realized, for the divine glory, a most signal enterprise; and to Columbus himself, when he had happily returned, she wrote that she esteemed as having been highly employed the resources which she had consecrated and which she would still consecrate to the expeditions in the Indies, in view of the fact that the propagation of Catholicism would result from them.
Also, if he had not inspired himself from a cause superior to human interests, where then would he have drawn the constancy and the strength of soul to support what he was obliged to the end to endure and to submit to; that is to say, the unpropitious advice of the learned people, the repulses of princes, the tempests of the furious ocean, the continual watches, during which he more than once risked losing his sight.
To that add the combats sustained against the barbarians; the infidelities of his friends, of his companions; the villainous conspiracies, the perfidiousness of the envious, the calumnies of the traducers, the chains with which, after all, though innocent, he was loaded. It was inevitable that a man overwhelmed with a burden of trials so great and so intense would have succ.u.mbed had he not sustained himself by the consciousness of fulfilling a very n.o.ble enterprise, which he conjectured would be glorious for the Christian name and salutary for an infinite mult.i.tude.
And the enterprise so carried out is admirably ill.u.s.trated by the events of that time. In effect, Columbus discovered America at about the period when a great tempest was going to unchain itself against the Church. Inasmuch as it is permitted by the course of events to appreciate the ways of divine Providence, it really seems that the man for whom the Liguria honors herself was destined by special plan of G.o.d to compensate Catholicism for the injury which it was going to suffer in Europe.
To call the Indian race to Christianity, this was, without doubt, the mission and the work of the Church in this mission. From the beginning, she continued to fulfill it with an uninterrupted course of charity, and she still continues it, having advanced herself recently so far as the extremities of Patagonia.
Thus, when compelled by the Portuguese, by the Genoese, to leave without having obtained any result, he went to Spain. He matured the grand plan of the projected discovery in the midst of the walls of a convent, with the knowledge of and with the advice of a monk of the Order of St. Francis d'a.s.sisi, after seven years had revolved. When at last he goes to dare the ocean, he takes care that the expedition shall comply with the acts of spiritual expiation; he prays to the Queen of Heaven to a.s.sist the enterprise and to direct its course, and before giving the order to make sail he invokes the august divine Trinity. Then, once fairly at sea, while the waters agitate themselves, while the crew murmurs, he maintains, under G.o.d's care, a calm constancy of mind.
His plan manifests itself in the very names which he imposes on the new islands, and each time that he is called upon to land upon one of them he wors.h.i.+ps the Almighty G.o.d, and only takes possession of it in the name of Jesus Christ. At whatever coast he approaches he has nothing more as his first idea than the planting on the sh.o.r.e of the sacred sign of the cross; and the divine name of the Redeemer, which he had sung so frequently on the open sea to the sound of the murmuring waves--he is the first to make it reverberate in the new islands in the same way. When he inst.i.tutes the Spanish colony he causes it to be commenced by the construction of a temple, where he first provides that the popular fetes shall be celebrated by august ceremonies.
Here, then, is what Columbus aimed at and what he accomplished when he went in search, over so great an expanse of sea and of land, of regions up to that time unexplored and uncultivated, but whose civilization, renown, and riches were to rapidly attain that immense development which we see to-day.
In all this, the magnitude of the event, the efficacy and the variety of the benefits which have resulted from it, tend a.s.suredly to celebrate he, who was the author of it, by a grateful remembrance and by all sorts of testimonials of honor; but, in the first place, we must recognize and venerate particularly the divine project, to which the discoverer of the New World was subservient and which he knowingly obeyed.
In order to celebrate worthily and in a manner suitable to the truth of the facts the solemn anniversary of Columbus, the sacredness of religion must be united to the splendor of the civil pomp. This is why, as previously, at the first announcement of the event, public actions of grace were rendered to the providence of the immortal G.o.d, upon the example which the Supreme Pontiff gave; the same also now, in celebrating the recollection of the auspicious event, we esteem that we must do as much.
We decree to this effect, that the day of October 12th, or the following Sunday, if the respective diocesan bishops judge it to be opportune, that, after the office of the day, the solemn ma.s.s of the very Holy Trinity shall be celebrated in the cathedral and collegial churches of Spain, Italy, and the two Americas. In addition to these countries, we hope that, upon the initiative of the bishops, as much may be done in the others, for it is fitting that all should concur in celebrating with piety and grat.i.tude an event which has been profitable to all.
In the meanwhile, as a pledge of the celestial favors and in testimony of our fraternal good-will, we affectionately accord in the Lord the Apostolic benediction to you, venerable brothers, to your clergy, and to your people.
Given at Rome, near St. Peter's, July 16th of the year 1892, the fifteenth of our Pontificate.
LEO XIII., _Pope_.
TO SPAIN.
CAPEL LOFFT.
O generous nation! to whose n.o.ble boast, Ill.u.s.trious Spain, the providence of Heaven A radiant sky of vivid power hath given, A land of flowers, of fruits, profuse; an host Of ardent spirits; when deprest the most, By great, enthusiastic impulse driven To deeds of highest daring.
WRAPPED IN A VISION GLORIOUS.
The Rev. JOHN LORD, LL. D., a popular American lecturer and Congregational minister. Born in Portsmouth, N. H., December 27, 1810.
Wrapped up in those glorious visions which come only to a man of superlative genius, and which make him insensible to heat and cold and scanty fare, even to reproach and scorn, this intrepid soul, inspired by a great and original idea, wandered from city to city, and country to country, and court to court, to present the certain greatness and wealth of any state that would embark in his enterprise. But all were alike cynical, cold, unbelieving, and even insulting. He opposes overwhelming universal and overpowering ideas. To have surmounted these amid such protracted opposition and discouragment const.i.tutes his greatness; and finally to prove his position by absolute experiment and hazardous enterprise makes him one of the greatest of human benefactors, whose fame will last through all the generations of men. And as I survey that lonely, abstracted, disappointed, and derided man--poor and unimportant; so hara.s.sed by debt that his creditors seized even his maps and charts; obliged to fly from one country to another to escape imprisonment; without even listeners and still less friends, and yet with ever-increasing faith in his cause; utterly unconquerable; alone in opposition to all the world--I think I see the most persistent man of enterprise that I have read of in history. Critics ambitious to say something new may rake out slanders from the archives of enemies and discover faults which derogate from the character we have been taught to admire and venerate; they may even point out spots, which we can not disprove, in that sun of glorious brightness which shed its beneficent rays over a century of darkness--but this we know, that whatever may be the force of detraction, his fame has been steadily increasing, even on the admission of his slanderers, for three centuries, and that he now s.h.i.+nes as a fixed star in the constellation of the great lights of modern times, not only because he succeeded in crossing the ocean when once embarked on it, but for surmounting the moral difficulties which lay in his way before he could embark upon it, and for being finally instrumental in conferring the greatest boon that our world has received from any mortal man since Noah entered into the ark.