Sulpicians in the United States

The Sulpicians came to the United States at the very rise of the American Hierarchy. When the French Revolution was threatening to involve them in the impending ruin of the Church the superior-general, Father Emery, looking for a place of refuge abroad, was meditating an establishment at Gallipolis, a French settlement on the Ohio; but the papal nuncio at Paris, Cardinal Dugnani, made the happier suggestion of Baltimore, which had just been erected into the first American see. An interview in London between Bishop Carroll, who had come to England (1790) for episcopal consecration, and Father Nagot resulted in the bishop gladly accepting the offer of Father Emery to found a theological seminary at Baltimore. On 10 July, 1791, four Sulpicians landed at Baltimore: Francis Charles Nagot, Superior, Anthony Gamier, Michael Levadoux, and John Tessier. They purchased the One Mile Tavern on the edge of the city, dedicated the house to the Blessed Virgin, and in October opened classes with five students whom they had brought from France. This was the beginning of St. Mary's, the first American seminary, which still stands on the same spot. The number of Sulpicians was augmented the following year by the arrival of Flaget, David, Chicoisneau, Ambrose Maréchal, Richard, and Ciquard, and in 1795 by the accession of Dubourg, nearly all of whom were destined to become important figures in the history of the American Church. These ten or eleven new workers were a large accession to the small body of American priests, then only about thirty-five, who were endeavouring to serve a diocese extending from the Atlantic to the Mississippi Valley. The Church was in its infancy; there was no organized community of priests (since the suppression of the Jesuits), no teaching sisterhood, no Catholic schools. An academy for boys was about to open at Georgetown. Non-Catholic education in Maryland was almost as backward as the Catholic. In these conditions Bishop Carroll's greatest need and most difficult task, as he had long recognized, was to recruit a sufficiently numerous and fit clergy, if possible native, which he could hope for only from a seminary. Naturally, he welcomed the coming of the Sulpicians as "a great and auspicious event" for his diocese.

But the time was not ripe for a seminary as there were no students prepared to enter it. Georgetown Academy, founded chiefly to develop priestly vocations, instead of being an aid to the seminary drew on St. Mary's few students to recruit its teaching staff. The natural remedy of opening a preparatory seminary at Baltimore was forbidden (see below). The almost hopeless condition may be judged from the fact that during each of the first three years there were only five students and in the next year, 1794, only two, nearly all of whom were from Europe; from 1795 to 1797 there were none at all. So with little or no opportunity of cultivating their own field, the Sulpicians offered themselves to the bishop for any work at hand. Flaget, David, Ambrose Maréchal, and Dubourg taught at the Georgetown Academy; Dubourg, an enterprising and energetic man, being made president (1796-99), greatly increased its numbers and prestige. Ciquard worked among the Indians of Maine; Levadoux, Dilhet, and Richard among the French and the Indians of Illinois and Michigan. Richard, still well remembered at Detroit, which some years ago placed his statue on the city hall, deserves special mention. He restored religion, established Catholic schools, founded a young ladies' academy and a preparatory seminary for young clerics set up the first printing press in the West, published the first newspaper in Michigan and the first Catholic paper in the United States; was a founder, vice-president, and professor of the University of Michigan and the only Catholic priest ever elected to Congress. Gallitzin, a pioneer priest in Western Pennsylvania, converted six thousand non-Catholics. The Sulpicians at Baltimore ministered in the churches of the city and the missions of the country. They were considered as clergy of the cathedral and are credited with having introduced into the United States some of the dignity and splendour of old-world Catholic worship.

St. Mary's Seminary

After a trial of ten or eleven years the seminary at Baltimore had no prospects of success; an academy which Dubourg had opened for foreign boys was not allowed to receive Americans (see below); the Sulpicians there had no means of support. Meanwhile, the Revolution in France had passed, religion was restored by Napoleon, and the seminaries were being reopened. In these circumstances of 1802 only one course seemed possible to the superior-general in Paris: to recall his subjects to France gradually. Bishop Carroll, who had the highest esteem for the Sulpicians and regarded them as the hope of his diocese, was very deeply afflicted by this resolution, and in many letters begged Father Emery not to carry it out. "If it be necessary for me", he wrote, "to bear the terrible trial of seeing the greater number of them depart, I implore you to leave here at least a germ which may produce fruit in the season decreed by the Lord." Nevertheless, Gamier (who afterwards became superior-general), Ambrose Maréchal, and Levadoux departed for France in 1803, though with the greatest reluctance; Nagot was detained from going by ill-health. The seminary seemed doomed. It was saved by Pius VII, whom Father Emery, moved by the bishop's appeals, consulted at Paris in 1804. "My son," said the pope, "let it stand, let that seminary stand. It will bear fruit in its own time." Father Emery accepted these words as the voice of God, and the Sulpicians remained. But progress was slow; St. Mary's College, Baltimore, and Mt. St. Mary's, Emmitsburg, both founded by the Sulpicians (see below), furnished few students to the seminary. Still, Bishop Carroll had the consolation of seeing thirty priests ordained from there before his death in 1815.

Under the second superior, Father Tessier (1810-29), the seminary became solidly established, although the number of ordinations averaged only two or three a year. His chief support up to 1817 was Father Ambrose Maréchal, whose abilities raised him in that year to the Archbishopric of Baltimore. In 1822 St. Mary's Seminary was endowed by Pius VII with all the privileges of a Catholic university. The third superior, Father Louis Regis Deluol (1829-49), a man of exceptional ability and character, exerted a strong influence not only on the seminary and college over which he presided, but on the general affairs of the Church in America. St. Charles' College was founded during his administration. St. Mary's College was suppressed under his successor, Father Francis L'Homme (1849-60). The Irish immigration, the spread of Catholicism, and the foundation of St. Charles' College, contributed to render the seminary as fruitful in vocation in the one decade of Father L'Homme's administration as it had been in the preceding sixty years. Two directors at St. Mary's, Fathers Alphonse Flammant (1856-64) and Francis Paulinus Dissez (1857-1907), deserve mention here as saintly men who deeply influenced Cardinal Gibbons, the first Archbishop Keane of Dubuque, and other leaders of the American Church. A half-century of teaching at St. Mary's made Father Dissez one of the best known and most venerated priests of America.

St. Mary's prospered and grew under the fourth superior, Father Joseph Paul Dubreul (1860-78), and still more under his successor, Father Alphonse Magnien (1878-1902), who saw an enrolment of over three hundred students. Father Dubreul built the central portion of the present seminary in 1878: the building was completed by Father Magnien. All that remains from the old days is the sisters house, in which Mother Seton began her work as a Sister of Charity, and the seminary chapel, built in 1806, which long served as a parish church and was regarded in those days as a gem of architecture. Both Dubreul and Magnien were marked types of the true ecclesiastic, and moulded the character of hundreds of priests now living. Probably no priest in our day was better known or better loved by priests than the good and genial "Abbé" Magnien. He was the close friend and trusted adviser of Cardinal Gibbons, who said of him some time after his death: "I had been so much accustomed to consult the venerable Abbé on important questions, and to lean upon him in every emergency, that . . . I feel as if I had lost my right arm. He was indeed dimidium animœ meœ." The present superior, Father Edward Randall Dyer, D.D., was appointed in Aug., 1902, after Father Magnien's health had failed. St. Mary's Seminary has given over thirty bishops and eighteen hundred priests to the Church of America, of whom more than fourteen hundred are still living. The largest of our American seminaries, and national in its scope, it draws its students from every quarter of the country. It has always taken a leading part in the seminary conferences of the Catholic Educational Association. It was the scene of the Third Plenary Council and of many notable ecclesiastical gatherings. Its archives and library are rich in materials of early American Church History.

St. Mary's College, Baltimore

The impossibility of getting students for the seminary led the fathers to teach Latin to a few boys in 1793-94, in the hope of recruiting vocations; but this was discontinued through fear of injuring the Georgetown Academy. Father Dubourg resigned the presidency of Georgetown in 1799 in order to found a college at Havana. Unsuccessful in the attempt, he returned to Baltimore in Aug., 1799, with three young Spaniards; these, with a few French boys, he lodged and instructed at the seminary. In the following year a building was erected for them alongside the seminary, and the institution was named St. Mary's College. In deference to the wishes of the bishop, no American boys were admitted, but many students came from Cuba, San Domingo, Jamaica, and Porto Rico, besides French boys from the United States. In 1803 the doors were opened to American students, without distinction of creed; and in 1805 the college was raised to the rank of a university by an act of the legislature. The students numbered then, or in the following year, 106, which was considered a remarkable success; for the history of all higher education in Maryland up to that time had been, almost without exception, a record of failures. It drew students from the whole country, but chiefly from Maryland and the neighbouring states, north and south. Many were non-Catholics. Some continued to come from the West Indies and from Central America. The college had vicissitudes chiefly financial, but it maintained a high standard and enjoyed a high reputation, for it was conducted by able men who brought the culture of France to a country where education was still in a very crude condition. Its student roll rose at times to two hundred or over. Among its eleven presidents are numbered Archbishops Dubourg and Eccleston, and Bishops David, Bruté, and Chance; and the names of many bishops and notable priests and citizens are found on the list of its professors and students.

Despite its half-century of useful and distinguished work, it did not adequately fulfil the main purpose of its foundation; a college, frequented by sons of rich parents, and containing many non-Catholics, was found unfavourable to the fostering, and even to the preservation, of priestly vocations. Accordingly it was resolved in 1848, on the occasion of the official visit of Father Faillon from Paris, to suppress St. Mary's College and start an ecclesiastical college. In the autumn of that year, St. Charles' College was opened (see below); and in 1852 St. Mary's College by order of the superior-general, Father de Courson, was closed at the height of its prosperity. By an understanding with the Jesuits, Loyola College supplied its place.

Mount St. Mary's, Emmitsburg

The necessity of a strictly clerical school had forced itself upon the mind of Father Nagot in the first years of St. Mary's College. In 1806 this saintly old man of over seventy gathered about a dozen boys around him at Pigeon Hill, Adams Co., Pennsylvania, in a Catholic region that had long been ministered to by the Jesuits. After two years of instruction, they were transferred to the care of the Rev. John Dubois, pastor of Emmitsburg, Maryland, who himself was already instructing a few boys. In 1808 Father Dubois, who had become a