When driven out of their country, the Portuguese Jesuits betook themselves to Brazil, where their help was greatly needed; the Italians went to New Mexico and California; and the French missions of China and Syria benefited by the anti-clericalism of the home government; for Zikawei became an important scientific world-centre and Beirut obtained a university. The latter was, until the war broke out, a great seat of Oriental studies.
The most imposing institutions in Beirut, a city with a population of over 150,000, made up of Mussulmans, Greeks, Latins, Americans and Jews, are those of the Jesuits. They maintain and direct outside of Beirut 192 schools for boys and girls with 294 teachers and 12,000 pupils. There is, in the city, a university with a faculty of medicine (120 students) founded in 1881 with the help of the French government; its examinations are conducted before French and Ottoman physicians and its diplomas are recognized by both France and Turkey. The university has also a seminary (60 students) for all the native Rites. Up to 1902 it had sent out 228 students including three patriarchs, fifteen bishops, one hundred and fifteen priests and eighty-three friars. Its faculty of philosophy and theology grants the same degrees as the Gregorian University in Rome. Its faculty of Oriental languages and sciences, founded in 1902, teaches literary and conversational Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopic; the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages; the history and geography of the Orient; Oriental archæology; Græco-Roman epigraphy and antiquities. Its classical college has 400 pupils and its three primaries 600. A printing-house, inaugurated in 1853, is now considered to be the foremost for its output in that part of the world. Since 1871 it has published a weekly Arabic paper, and since 1898 a fortnightly review in the same language, the editors of which took rank at once among the best Orientalists. Besides continually adding to their collection of philological papers, they contribute to many scientific European reviews. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, II, 393.)
There are Jesuit colleges, also, throughout India, such as the great institutions of Bombay and Calcutta with their subsidiary colleges, and further down the Peninsula are Trichinopoly, all winning distinction by their successful courses of study. Indeed the first effort the Society makes in establishing itself in any part of the world, where conditions allow it, is to organize a college. If they would relinquish that one work they would be left in peace.
An interesting personage appears in connection with the University of Beirut: William Gifford Palgrave. It is true that one period of his amazing career humiliated his former associates, but as it is a matter of history it must needs be told.
He was the son of an eminent English Protestant lawyer, Sir Francis Palgrave, and had Jewish blood in his veins. He was born in 1826, and after a brilliant course of studies at Oxford began his romantic career as a traveller. He went first to India and was an officer of Sepoys in the British army. While there, he became a Catholic, and afterwards presented himself at the novitiate of Negapatam as an applicant for admission. Unfortunately his request was granted, and forthwith he changed his name to Michael Cohen, as he said to conceal his identity. This was a most amazing mask; for Palgrave would have escaped notice, whereas everyone would immediately ask, who is this Jesuit Jew? How he was admitted is a mystery, especially as he proclaimed his race so openly.
After his novitiate he was sent to Rome to begin his theology — another mystery. Why was he not compelled to study philosophy first like everyone else? Then he insisted that Rome did not agree with his health, and he was transferred to Beirut to which he betook himself, not in the ordinary steamer, but in a sailing vessel filled with Mussulmans. On the way, he picked up Arabic. Inside of a year, namely in 1854, he was made a priest and given charge of the men's sodality which he charmed by his facility in the use of the native tongue; in the meantime he made many adventurous journeys to the interior to convert the natives, but failed every time. In 1860 he was sent to France for his third year of probation under the famous Father Fouillot, whom he fascinated by his scheme of entering Arabia Petrea as its apostle. He succeeded in getting Louis Napoleon to give him 10,000 francs on the plea that he would thus carry out the scheme of the Chevalier Lascaris whom Napoleon Bonaparte had sent to the East.
At Rome, he found the Father General quite cold to the proposition, and when he had the audacity to ask Propaganda for permission to say Mass in Arabic, he was told: "Convert your Arabs first and then we shall see about the Mass." The brother who was to go with him fell ill, and the General then insisted that he should not attempt the journey without a priest as companion; whereupon Palgrave persuaded the Greek Bishop of Zahlé to ordain one of the lay professors of the college, after a few days' instruction in moral theology. Fortunately this improvised priest turned out well, and he became His Beatitude Mgr. Geraigri, patriarch of the Greek Melchites.
In 1862 the travellers set out by way of Gaza in Palestine, Palgrave as a physician, the other as his assistant. They covered the entire Arabian peninsula and were back again in Beirut at the end of fourteen months. Palgrave had made no converts, and was himself a changed man. Even his sodalists remarked it. What had happened no one ever knew. In 1864 he was sent to Maria-Laach in Germany, where the saintly Father Behrens wrestled with him in vain for a while, but he left the Society and passed over to Protestantism, securing meanwhile an appointment as Prussian consul at Mossul. In the following year he published an account of his travels and the book was a European sensation. In it he made no secret of his having been a member of the Society, which he says was "so celebrated in the annals of courageous and devoted philanthropy. The many years I spent in the East were the happiest of my life." In 1884 he was British consul at Montevideo and remained there till 1888 when he died.
For twenty years he seemed never to have been ashamed of his apostasy, but three or four years before his death the grace of God found him. The change was noticed on his return from a trip to England. He had become a Catholic again. He went to Mass and received Holy Communion. Although a government official, he refused to go to the Protestant Church even for the queen's jubilee, in spite of the excitement caused by his absence. He died of leprosy. A Jesuit attended him in his last sickness, and he was buried with all the rites of the Church. These details are taken from a recent publication by Father Jullien, S. J., entitled "Nouvelle mission de la Compagnie de Jésus en Syrie" (II, iii.)
The great difficulty that confronts educators of youth in our times, is state control. In the United States it has not yet gone to extremes, but every now and then one can detect tendencies in that direction. Meantime the Society has developed satisfactorily along educational lines. According to the report of October 10, 1916 (Woodstock Letters, V 45), there were 16,438 students in its American colleges and universities. Of these 13,301 were day scholars and 3,137 boarders. There were 3,943 in the college departments, 10,502 in the high schools and 1,416 in the preparatory. Besides all this, there were commercial and special sections numbering 737. The total increase over the preceding year was 523.