STUDENTS FROM MANY LANDS

New Zealand Tablet, 16 September 1909, Page 1452

STUDENTS FROM MANY LANDS

About the middle of July the Holy Father received in audience the Rector and students of the College of Propaganda. His Holiness congratulated the students on having reached the end of the scholastic year, and merited the repose of their long vacation. But it was not necessary that anything unusual should happen to make such an audience interesting. It was enough to see the venerable white figure of the Father of Christendom in the midst of those hundred young men of every race, color, clime, and nationality under the sun, all of whom will in a few years be scattered to the four corners of the world. In connection with the audience it may be interesting to reproduce here an article on the College of Propaganda, which appeared in a recent issue of the Catholic Herald of India. The writer says : — At the entrance of the Piazza di Spagna, the centre of the English district in Rome, is the Piazza Mignanelli, which recalls Turner, who painted many a picture as he sat at his window here. But the locality possesses a higher interest than even the memory of Turner can suggest. For it is the entrance to the lecture halls of the Propaganda College. Entering by the Piazza di Spagna is the printing office of the Propaganda. On the right of the printing establishment you see a door surmounted by a cross and a globe with the legend 'Euntes ergo docete omnes gentes ' (Going therefore teach ye all nations). You have wandered through the gilded aisles of St. Peter's and jobserved the confessionals ranged beneath its walls with their significant inscriptions, ' Pro Lingua Gallica, Pro Ling ua Hispanica, Pro Lingua Germanica, Pro Lingua Anglica,' and so on through all known tongues, but to find the realisation of the Church's universality, you must come to the Schools of Propaganda. At 8 o'clock on a sunny Roman morning you place yourself under the column of the Immaculata, opposite Piazza Mignanelli. The column under which you stood was erected by Christian martyrs at the will of a pagan master. Was it revealed to the holy martyrs that the pile which they were erecting would in after ages proclaim the fact of Mary's sinlessncss, and through her, her Son's Divinity for Whom they wore their chains ? Presently there comes a band of five or six hundred church students of every race and land under the sun for their morning lecture in the schools hard by. From two sides of the Piazza of Spagna come two more bands cf students, the one American with their swinging gait, the other you notice as Oriental, Syrians. The Yankee you could not mistake for his very walk proclaims his nationality, springing forward with long strides and looking all around him with the confident self-assurance of the freeborn son of Columbia. The contrast in the physiognomy of the American and the Oriental is not less marked, the one fair and clean shaven, the other dark and bearded denizens of worlds distinct in everything from the restless West. From the placid East they come hither for one end — the priesthood of the One Religion. Other bands arrived, and You Saw Before You a Panorama of Color, but sustained by an infinite variety of red, yellow, and blue, in every shade and hue. Here was another party ( f Americans — each college sends its students in detachments of fifteen with red sashes and black soutanes plentifully trimmed with pale blue, fastened with buttons of the same color. Over the cassock they wore an overcoat — the soprana — with wide arm-holes, and a long streamer flyiag from each shoulder. That of the Americans was black, but as they strode along the wind lifted it, revealing the pale blue lining underneath. Here also was a group of Bohemians in black and yellow, and pressing close behind them some students from the Emerald Isle in red and black with long tassels hanging from the wide brimmed hats. A band of Poles followed, wearing green sashes. A band r.f Ruthenians, tall and bearded, came next, flaunting their colors of sky blue and gold. Stalwart Scots in episcopal purple and sultan red, and brown-robed, barefooted Franciscans, hailing also from the Green Isle, followed. Close upon them came a band of Armenians, small wiry figures with untrimmed beards, and robed in huge black cloaks with enormous sleeves. Looking now at the Piazza, you thought that half Rome's population consisted of ecclesiastics, but fresh arrivals kept coming on the scene. Some students of the Servite Order in their old world dress, Canons Regular in white and black, Carmelites, Trappists, Redemptorists, Carthusians, came on, having hi their ranks Frenchmen, Italians, Canadians, Danes, Spaniards, and other nationalities, undistinguishable in the crowd. The Greeks, too, were there, clad, like the Armenians, in a monstrous garment of capacious sleeves, but with hair flowing over their shoulders and closely cropped beards. From the right of the Piazza came another band, black clad, with abundant trimmings of scarlet. These were students from the Urban College. As they ' defiled past you, two by two, you saw from their color and physiognomy that they were gathered to the bosom of Rome from the four ends of the world, Europeans and Asiatics of every nation, < and full-blooded, thiok-lipped, woolly-haired negroes.

If you had left over any Latin from your college days you might have recognised their conversation. -For how otherwise could that stout Dutchman be understood by his pale-faced Chinese companion, or the swarthy Spaniard by the red-faced Norwegian? Italians, and those to whom long residence in Rome made Italian a second mother tongue, conversed in the lingua Italiana. Flat-footed, ovalfaced, reticent Chinese and their lively cousins from Japan,; negroes from the West Indies and from Africa, passed by, paired off with Scotchmen, and Danes, Russians, Chaldeans, and Maronites from Mount Lebanon. There were' French Swiss, and German Swiss, and Italian Swiss, with Scotchmen, Canadians, and Australians. There were Americans of every race that has found a home beneath the star spangled banner, making acquaintance with the land of their forebears in the persons of their fellow-students; Dutch from Holland and Dutch from the Cape, Austrians, and Roumanians, Swedes, Germans, and Italians, Spaniards from the Iberian Peninsula, and from South America, Englishmen, Arabs, and Bulgarians, and yet we have not named All the Nationalities and Races that made up that motley gathering. How can harmony dwell in so cosmopolitan a gathering, where diversity of race must of necessity imply diversity of character? What is the common element binding them together? you wondered. If one Sunday you went to the college chapel you would find High Mass celebrated perhaps by a Dutchman, assisted by a Chinaman and a Scotchman as deacon and subdeacon, with acolytes who represented Madrid and Yokohama and Dublin, and a circle of faces whose features and colors bespoke a score of nations. The students had all disappeared, and the Piazza was empty. We spied a professor in soutane and broadbrimmed hat, with his eyes on a paper, hurrying to the door. We wanted, if possible, to get in, and confronted him. He surveyed us with a keen glance, and tried us with a little Italian. We shook our heads and said : 'Ne parlate Italiano.' He asked ' Voi parlate,' but the query was intercepted by our companion, who uttered the word ' lnglese,' whereupon to our great joy the professor addressed us in English, and took us up a flight of marble steps into a hall quite alive with the hum of a hundred voices. It was the hall devoted to philosophy. The students were busy arranging pen and paper on desks. We sat ourselves down on a hard narrow bench. Presently appeared the lecturer, another priest, stout, tall, and white haired, from whose keen, sharp glance our unwonted presence did not escape. A dead silence ensued, and the lecturer began. Alas, we had forgotten that the language of the schools was Latin. We could still translate Caesar and Livy, and spell out a Latin epitaph, but it was quit*) another matter to sit for the first time under a professor who spoke Latin as fluently as if it were his own native tongue. Out of the jargon of words some came home to our ears. He seemed to have a good deal to say •cf Spencer, for he asked often 'Quid dicit Spencer?' More than once he said ' Hoc dicit Kantius,' referring probably to the nebulous German author, Kant. Several times he said ' Darvinius ' and words like ' evolutio,' ' falsa,' ' futilis ' came floating to our ears, leading us to suspect that the author of the Origin of Species was being rather sharply handled. The College of Propaganda, which is the chief Christian seminary of the world, established by Pope Gregory XV. in 1622, gathers together in its wonderful library the literature of the world in every department, and in all known languages. From its press have issued hundreds of editions of the Scriptures in not merely the languages of the civilised nations, but also in languages hardly known to the most learned linguists. The latest discoveries in the sciences, philology, paleontology, geology, botany are discussed by the most eminent scientists of the day, and the result of their investigations are recorded among its archives, which moreover contain valuable accounts of strange and foreign lands. The Propaganda is thus the depository of valuable , scientific information, and a source of the most precious knowledge of the history, habits, and language of the human race. We would close this paper with an excerpt from the writings of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. During a visit to Rome he entered St. Peter's. In the vast church a surprise awaited him, which he thus relates : ' I listened to the music as it died away. Standing, as I was, behind a massive pillar, which obscured my view, I caught the words of a sermon pronounced in faultless English, and moving forward to catch a view of the speaker, to my astonishment I beheld there in the pulpit of St. Peter's a full-blooded negro preaching the Gospel of Christ; and I said: "Nowhere else could I have witnessed such a scene but in the Catholic Church." All honor to the College of Propaganda for its grand work on behalf of Christian civilisation.' Had it been our good fortune to be in Rome on the feast of the Epiphany we might have been present at the wonderful festival of the 'tongues of fire,' when the students are required to recite, each in his "own native tongue, an appropriate theme. There are living men who have heard at the festival of tongues recitations in as- many

as fifty-seven languages. And there was not very long ago a man, the great linguist, Cardinal Mezzofanti, who comprehended them all ! But Aye had seen much — we had heard a Greek Mass in the Greek Church in via Babuino, a Syrian Mass, an Armenian Mass, and an Ambrosian Mass — all rites which were strange to us. Long ago we had learned that the Church is Catholic and One,, but we have seen ample demonstration- of the fact; and the meaning of the phrase came home to us with, startling - vividness. Amidst the diversities of rite and usage we have learned hoAv broad is the Church, and how It, only It, can truly claim to be called Catholic.