The Pope's Services to Irish Students

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 35, 7 September 1922, Page 9

The Pope's Services to Irish Students

The debt owed. by students of early Irish history to the new Pope is indicated in an interesting and scholarly study of-Pius XI. which Bishop Shahan, Rector of the Catholic University of America, contributes as the leading article in the current issue of the Catholic Edusational lieview. . After reviewing the early years of Achille Ratti and the atmosphere in which his love for literature and philology was developed, the Bishop continues: "One of the most honorable offices to which an Italian scholar can aspire is a place in the learned body known as the Doctors of the Ambrosian Library, founded at Milan some three centuries ago (1609), by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo and committed by him to the perpetual custody of nine scholars, whose sole occupation should be the administration of their researches. The great Cardinal also decreed that it should be a public library for the use of the citizens and of visiting scholars, the of its kind in Europe, and strictly administered in that4ense to the present day. Occasion offering, the young professor of ecclesiastical history and Hebrew in the Archiepiscopal Seminary was appointed (1888) one of the Doctors of the Ambrosiana, and entered upon his duties with the joy and zeal of one who had found his true calling. "The saintly and enlightened archbishop, who in the early years of the 17th cenutry, before the white man had founded Boston or Baltimore, endowed richly this unique institution, not only gave it a great number of books and valuable manuscripts, Greek, Latin, and Oriental, but created large galleries of sculpture and paintings, also a museum of coins, engravings, prints, and other rare objects. At his behest it became at once and remained an active democratic centre of good studies, open to all Milan and to the learned men of Europe, who sought principally the great collection of manuscripts, some 15,000 of which Cardinal Federigo had gathered from all parts of Europe and the Orient, and which ranks after the Vatican Library in the number and importance of its treasures. Its printed books number at present about 500,000. "Abbate Ratti was soon the right-hand and the confidant of Antonio Ceriani, the Prefect of the Library, a learned , Orientalist, and one of the foremost scholars in the delicate arts of reading and interpreting ancient manuscripts, particularly scriptural and liturgical texts of an early date. In this field Ceriani remains to this day a conjure-name ,for all trained critical workers in the slow and difficult restoration of the original text of the Scriptures. "When this learned priest passed away in 1907 he , had endowed his young assistant not only with a large .^share of his vast scholarship, but also with his intellectual apparatus of acumen and cultivated industry, and with that rare sense of vision or savor which alone opens to the critical philologian or medievalist the world that lies behind the shadowy fragments of his classical or ecclesiastical page, stained or torn, faded or worm-eaten, ragged or incomplete. "It was in these surroundings, amid the opportunities ~ of a great intellectual and art centre, among like-minded men, in the heart of a community intensely Catholic and heir to a rich and varied culture no .longer common that the young priest was destined to prepare himself, however unwittingly, for the Chair of Peter. For 20 years he was the humble and devoted servant of all the scholars of Europe and America, who had reason to seek his aid. Magliabecchi scarcely surpassed him in the extent of his literary good-will and fraternal service. During those years he devoted himself entirely to the service •of a' studious public, the study and elucidation of the manuscripts committed to his care and the better organisation of the library, art galleries, and the; museum.

"The Ambrosiana possesses several valuable old Irish' manuscripts from the Monastery, of Bobbio that nestles quasi-inaccessible in the Apennines between Piacenza and Genoa, and for centuries kept alive in Northern Italy the love of learning which characterised :its sixth century Irish - founder, St. Columbanus. Abbate - Ratti cherished these rare survivals of ancient Irish culture and wrote with scholarly distinction about them, visited Bobbio itself with the hope of tracing the remnants of its library scattered during the French Revolution, and welcomed whatever scholar came to consult the Antiphonary of Bangor, the Bobbio Missal or any other of the old Irish manuscripts which Cardinal Federigo secured when the decay of Bobbio permitted these treasures to be carried off -to Turin, Florence or Rome; "In 1891 he visited Vienna, and .in 1893 Paris, on both occasions an attache of a cardinalitial embassy. He was the guest of Oxford on the occasion of the Roger •Bacon celebration, and was received with much distinction. At one time he thought of visiting the United States, but the death of a near relative removed all motive. * "However absorbed in historical, literary, artistic,. or critical studies, he never lost touch with the religious life of Milan. He was a friend and confidant of the chimneysweeps, and prepared them regularly for their First Communion. To the Ladies of the Cenacle, the Children of Maryland other religious associations he gave many years of service, counsel, and spiritual direction. He was always much in demand as a popular preacher of the ' Month of Mary,' and for many years was the helpful director of an* association of- Catholic female teachers. He was ever devoted to the ecclesiastical authority and the clergy of Milan, whose pride in him grew from year to year as various high diocesan offices were confided to him." .— sw