The events of which the United States have, during late years, been the theatre of action, have revived in the recollection of the editors of the Historisch-politische Blätter of Munich the name of Loretto, a small and unpretending town of Pennsylvania, the founder of which was Prince Demetrius Angustin Gallitzin, the son of the remarkable woman of whom Germany has a right to be proud. The occasion has suggested to them a biographical sketch, which, full of interest and appositeness, will unquestionably be read in Belgium and France with as much avidity as in Germany.
Twenty years have elapsed since Prince Gallitzin, who had exchanged the luxuries of princely courts for the poverty of those who herald the glad tidings, slept in the Lord, after forty years of apostleship in the wild regions of the Alleghany mountains. The work set up by the pious missionary yet remains, marked by all the elements of thrifty life, and the little oasis will long continue to be what it was at its origin—the cradle of a Christian civilization, which will go on spreading its blessings to the remotest boundaries, still retaining the unobtrusive modesty which moved its founder's thought. Indeed, had the matter rested with Gallitzin's own wishes, his very name would have passed into vague tradition in those extended regions. It might even have slept in oblivion; for the prince, so careful was he to avoid anything that could attract the attentions of the world, lived and exercised his holy ministry for many years under the borrowed name of Schmidt.
In Father Lemcke, however, and fortunately too, a canon of the abbey of the Benedictines of St. Vincent in Pennsylvania, was found a man who, better than any other, had it in his power to preserve the reminiscences of the noble missionary, and accurately to depict for us the traits of his manly character. Not only did the biographer of the prince know him personally, but he was also his friend, his confidant, his confessor, and his co-laborer in the missions. After Gallitzin's death, Father Lemcke came into possession of his papers, letters, and memoranda, which supplied him with desirable data on the period of life preceding their ministerial connection. He, and he alone, therefore, was in a condition to write a true biography of the prince, and he deemed it a duty to [{146}] rescue from oblivion the memory of this distinguished man. In connection with this subject, Father Lemcke indulges in a judicious remark: "The life of Gallitzin," says he, "is so intimately inwoven with the events which occurred during his own times, that it holds out to future generations an interest like to that which is offered to us in the life of a Bonifacius or of an Ansgarius, by reason of the facts which have characterized the epochs in which they lived."
Gallitzin belonged to the phalanx of missionaries who, in the United States, scattered the seeds of spiritual life. When the prince stepped on the soil of that vast territory, there was but one prelate, Rt. Rev. John Carroll of Baltimore, the first bishop of the United States, who, from the circumstances of the Church, had been obliged to seek Europe for his episcopal consecration. [Footnote 23] He had been but two years installed—from 1790—and had but uncertain and broken intercourse with his flock. His surroundings, restricted in numbers, but devoted to the holy cause, were mainly composed of, French priests. In this infant church Gallitzin was the second priest consecrated by the Bishop of Baltimore, and missioned, as a true pioneer of civilization, to carry the cross through the untouched forests of the New World, There is an unvarying likeness in all great undertakings; yet it required but a short time—a relatively short time—considerably to increase the number of those men who had devoted themselves to the task. In contrast with the bishop, who, in the course of five years, could ordain and rely on two priests only to feed the flock of the Lord, "The Catholic Almanac" of the day exhibits to us, for the United States, seven archbishops, thirty-six bishops, and four apostolic vicars, with the ministry of two thousand priests, with the addition of convents of various orders, of seminaries, of colleges, of numberless benevolent institutions, with over 4,000,000 of Catholics living under the protection of the laws, in the practice and enjoyment of their faith.
[Footnote 23: There are new details on this distinguished man in a recently published work: "Die Katholische Kirche in den Vereinigten Staatm von Nord Amerika," etc., etc. Regensburg. 1864.]
The Germans delight in recalling to mind that one of those who helped to lay the foundations of the Church in North America was the offspring of a princely house of the Fatherland. Gallitzin was a German on the maternal side; and the noble parent could well claim both the spiritual and natural motherhood of her son, the latter of which was, perhaps, glory enough. How magnificent a mission was that of Princess Amelia Gallitzin! While gathering around her circle the choice spirits which seemed destined to keep bright the torch of faith in Germany, and its living convictions in the midst of a superficial society without belief and without its guiding lights, the princess was rearing for the New World a son who was about to turn aside from a career which his birth and his wealth justly reserved for him, and take up the arduous and thankless labors of the apostleship. This very son it was who, through the work of faith, was destined to be the founder and civilizer of a now flourishing colony.
Strangely enough, nothing in young Gallitzin gave earnest of such a vocation. His almost feminine nature had marked him for a timid, shrinking child; but what was still worse, and a source of deep anxiety to his mother, to this was added a lack of decision, which seemed so deeply rooted in him that not even the iron will of the princess could, during the course of many years, draw out any perceptible results. We have a letter of the princess of the date of 1790, two years before the departure of Demetrius for America, in which she reiterates on this ground her former complainings, her exhortations, and her admonitions. It is proper, however, to advert that the incipient [{147}] method of training pursued by the princess herself was not free from defect; for, daring the nonage of her son, she herself wavered and hesitated between various systems of philosophy—a course which necessarily must have drawn her into many an error.
There was, therefore, a defectiveness in the main foundation of the training of young Gallitzin, who was reared in a sort of religious indifferentism. But a complete revulsion took place when, after leaving Münster, the princess was led to rest her convictions, not on this or the other system of philosophy, but on the rock of Christian faith—when, from her relations with such men as Furstenberg and Overberg, she herself had gained a greater degree of firmness and steadfastness. This reacted on the education of the son, in the greater decision and authority exerted by the mother; and it was not without fit intention that Demetrius, in the sacrament of confirmation, received the surname of Angustin.
Born on the 22d of December, 1770, at the Hague, where his father, a favorite of the Empress Catherine, was accredited as ambassador of Russia, young Gallitzin saw before him the opening of a career bound to lead to the highest dignities of either military or administrative service. Nothing, therefore, was spared in giving him a complete education, according to the requirements of the world. This education, developed and closed under his mother's eyes, must be perfected by travel; but whither to direct it was a question of moment. The aristocratic banks of the Rhine were ravaged by the revolutions and war had converted Europe into a vast battle-field. It opportunely happened, at that time, that a young priest, by the name of Brodius, whom the princess had known through the family of the Droste, and who had been admitted to her circle, was about crossing the Atlantic as a missionary to America. The princess had had occasions to value the rare endowments of this priest, and knew how justly her confidence in him could extend. She therefore proposed to him the companionship of her son in a journey which seemed to her to be the only practicable one warranted by the times. The princess, fortunately, met with no opposition on the part of the prince, her husband. An admirer of Washington, and still more so of the philosophic Jefferson, he readily agreed that his son should devote a couple of years to a visit to the United States, so as to judge for himself of the institutions all that country. He earnestly charged him to be introduced to these two great men; while the princess on her part armed him with a letter of recommendation to the Right Reverend Bishop Carroll.
In August, 1792, when twenty-two years of age, young Gallitzin took ship at Rotterdam on his way to America. No one could, certainly, have then stirred him with the idea that the land of America was marked out as a theatre for the evolutions of his existence. Was there a presentiment in that parting hour which, he could not know, was to mark an eternal farewell? Was it a last return of the original indecision of character which made him linger at the roadstead to which his mother had accompanied him? No one can now tell; but what we can say is that when, on the crests of the foaming billows, he caught sight of the yawl which was to carry him on board, his heart failed him, and he turned back to retrace his steps. Then did his mother turn back to him and, with a look of disappointment, "Dimitri," said she, "I blush for thee"—and, grasping his arm, she urged him on to the boat. In a moment, and how no one could tell, the young prince was engulfed in the waves. As quick as thought the practised hands of the sailors fished him up from the waters, and wafted him to the vessel that was to bear him away. Such was his farewell to Europe; but this sea baptism had regenerated him into a new man, as, at a later period, he told the story to his biographer.