From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

Who rivaled all but Gallia’s Knightly King.

Nicolas Michel.

We entered Bagdad in the full glory of a Mesopotamian sunset. Her mosques glowed with amber and light primrose; her minarets with the most delicate rose and gold. The noble crowns of stately palm trees cast masses of shade over gardens and fountains and, trembling under a gentle breeze from Oman’s Sea, played almost mystically in the quivering and departing sunlight. Throngs of Turks and Arabs, Kurds and Persians pressed feverishly through the narrow streets. The color notes of the red and green, blue and white robes of the men and women struck a pleasant harmony with the drab of the walls and the maroon and olive green of the fretted bay windows which projected over the gradually darkening thoroughfares of the picturesque city of Harun-al-Rashid.

We felt ourselves at once in the thrall of the quiet and subtle spell which the famed home of the Caliphs had cast over us, but, notwithstanding this, we lost no time in repairing to the home of the Carmelite Fathers, who had been advised of our arrival and who gave us a welcome such as is accorded only by the generous and warm-hearted missionaries of the Orient. Once under their hospitable roof we felt that we were a member of their religious family. So fully was our every want foreseen and our every desire anticipated that we saw at a glance that our sojourn among these devoted fathers would be fully as pleasant and as profitable as had been our stay among the whole-souled Capuchins of Urfa and the zealous and scholarly Dominicans of Mosul. Nor were we mistaken, for every hour we spent with the good Carmelite priests of Bagdad was replete with pleasure, instruction, and edification.

The story of the going of the Carmelites to Bagdad and the record of their labors since their arrival there is as interesting as it is inspiring. Their formal taking possession of the Mission of Bagdad, the Carmelites tell us, took place in the first decade of the seventeenth century, under the most dramatic circumstances. The zealous Father Paul-Simon, superior of their mission in Persia, who had been sent by the Shah as an envoy to the Sovereign Pontiff, arrived at Bagdad so exhausted by the fatigues of a long and trying journey and the inroads of disease that, when he reached the gate of the city, he prostrated himself on the ground and gave up the ghost.

A little more than a quarter of a century after this tragic occurrence, was created the Latin bishopric of Bagdad, usually known as the See of Babylon. This was due to the progress which the Church had made in Persia—a progress that was the result of the fruitful missionary labors in that land of Carmelites, Jesuits, and Dominicans and to the protection and liberty which had been accorded them by the wise and enlightened Shah, Abbas the Great. Recognizing the necessity of a bishop as head of the Persian mission, Abbas, in 1830, sent Father Thaddée, a Carmelite, to Rome, to request the Holy Father to create a Latin bishopric in Ispahan, his capital, with a permanent coadjutorship which should guarantee the new episcopate from too long vacancies. As a result of the Persian monarch’s interest in the Church, Father Thaddée was promoted to the new See of Ispahan. He received as coadjutor Father Perez, likewise a Carmelite, who was given the specially created title of Bishop of Babylonia, which at that time was a part of the Persian Empire.

In the meantime, a pious lady of Meaux, France—Marie Ricouard—put at the disposition of the Holy See six thousand Spanish doubloons for the creation and endowment of a bishopric in partibus infidelibus, on the double condition that to the donor should be reserved the presentation of the first titular and that the following bishops should always be of French nationality.

Pope Urban VIII by his bull, Super Universas, decreed in June 1838, that the sum named should be appropriated to the See of “Babylon or Bagdad,” with the formal stipulation that all future incumbents of this bishopric should be obliged to reside there personally under pain of forfeiting all right to the fruits of the Ricouard foundation. At the same time the Sovereign Pontiff named as the first bishop of the new see Father Bernard de Sainte-Thérèse, of Paris, who had been proposed by the donor of the fund mentioned, and ordained that thenceforth no one should be promoted to this see unless he had been born in France. This wish of the Pope and of the pious donor has thus far never been transgressed, and there is no reason to doubt that it will continue to assure to France the honor of seeing one of her sons occupy the See of Bagdad.[420]

In the year 1677 a special act, signed at Constantinople by the Ambassador of Louis XIV, named the superior of the Carmelites in Basra consul of France, in perpetuum. At a later date the French King gave the title and prerogatives of consul to the Bishop of Bagdad. This was an immense help to the bishop in his ministry for it gave him increased power with the civil government and enhanced immensely his prestige among the Mohammedans. From the time of Francis I, when a treaty of peace and amnity and commerce was signed by the French Government and the Sublime Porte, the French had enjoyed full religious liberty throughout the Ottoman Empire and France continued for centuries to be with the Moslem the favored nation of Europe.[421]

But, although the consular positions which were held by the Carmelite superior of Basra and the bishop of Bagdad and, still more, the treaty of amnity which had been established between the French and Ottoman governments—especially after the Ottoman Turks gained possession of Mesopotamia in A. D. 1534—had given the French missionaries in the Near East increased power and prestige, they still had to confront difficulties innumerable and sacrifices that were calculated to appall all but the noblest heroes.