Part 2 — THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE ISLAND OF NEW YORK.[88] THE COLONIAL DAYS.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE ISLAND OF NEW YORK.[88] THE COLONIAL DAYS.

The appearance of a new edition of the brief but valuable and attractive work which the present Bishop of Newark issued in 1853, is a matter of congratulation. The Catholics of New York City have a history in this land, and it is too little known. Bishop Bayley was the first to supply the want; he wrote, as the title-page shows, while still connected with the diocese of New York as secretary to the late distinguished archbishop; and of course with singular advantages for correctness of details and for a just view of his subject. We may here ask our readers to pause and look back with us at the early history of Catholicity in this busy metropolis, and trace the progress of the church from its small beginning toward its present development, when we behold it with its archbishop, its zealous and active secular clergy, its regular clergy, embracing Franciscans of the Observance and Capucins, Dominicans, Jesuits, Redemptorists, Priests of Mercy, Paulists; its various orders and congregations devoted to the instruction of youth, the care of the orphan, the foundling, the wayward and the erring, whom it shelters in its asylums, hospitals, and protectorates, with a Catholic Publication Society, and several publishing houses and journals.

This progress the Brief Sketch of Bishop Bayley enables us to trace down to the year 1853, his duties as bishop depriving him of the leisure needed to collect and arrange materials to continue it to the present time, by including an account of the progress since the work originally appeared. But even then, as the title shows, it professed to treat rather of the earlier history than of that which is almost contemporaneous.

The early history of the Catholic Church on the island of New York is indeed an attractive and interesting theme. It opens with the romantic story of the early Jesuit missions; for of the visits of the Catholic navigators, Verazzani and Sebastian Gomez, we have too little detail to know whether a priest actually said mass on our island.

The first priest who is known to have set his foot on the island of Manhattan was an illustrious missionary, who, while on his way from Quebec to his mission ground on the upper lakes, was in 1643 taken by the Mohawks, tortured almost beyond the power of human endurance, spared to become the slave of savages, bearing their burdens in their winter hunts, in their fishing trips to Saratoga Lake and the Hudson, on their trading visits to the Dutch Fort Orange, where Albany now stands, bearing all, enduring all, with a soul ever wrapt in prayer and union with God, till at last the Dutch overcame his reluctance and saved him from the hands of his savage captors, as they were about to put him to death. Covered with wounds and bruises, mutilated, extenuated, scarce human in dress or outward form, such was Isaac Jogues, the first Catholic priest to enter our great city, then in its infancy, to meet with respect and kindness from the Dutch, with the reverence due to a martyr from the two Catholics, sole children of the ancient faith then in New Amsterdam.

The stay of this illustrious missionary was brief, and his ministry was limited to the confessional, his chapel and vestments having fallen into the hands of the Indians, and greedily seized as trophies.

Governor Kieft displayed great humanity in his care of the missionary, and seized the first opportunity to enable him to return to Europe. Panting for martyrdom, Father Jogues remained in his native land only to obtain needed dispensations and permission to return to his labors. On reaching Canada, he found peace almost made with the Mohawks, and, proceeding as envoy to their territory, concluded a treaty. He was invited to plant a mission among them, as his associates had done among their kindred, the Hurons. But when he returned to do so, prejudices had sprung up, a hatred of Christianity as something baneful had seized them, the missionary was arrested, treated as a prisoner, and in a few days put to death on the banks of Caughnawaga Creek, on the 18th of October, 1646.

The next priest known to have visited New York was the Italian Father Bressani, who underwent a similar course of suffering, was captured, tortured, enslaved, and ransomed by the kindly Dutch; and by them sent to France. Although he subsequently published a short account of the Huron missions, he is entirely silent as to New Amsterdam, and we know nothing in regard to any exercise of the ministry during his stay on our island.

The first priest who came here actually to extend his ministry to any Catholics in the place was the Jesuit Father Simon Le Moyne, the discoverer of the salt springs at Syracuse, and the successful founder of the Mohawk and Onondaga missions. His visit was repeated, and there would seem to be a probability that he may have actually offered the holy sacrifice. The real field of his labors, and those of his associates, was, however, the castles of the Five Nations of Iroquois, in which, for many years, regular Catholic chapels subsisted, winning many to the faith, and saving many by baptism in infancy or in fatal illness. The converts at last began to emigrate to Canada, where three villages of Catholic Iroquois still attest the power of the gospel as preached by the early missionaries. Political jealousies, infused by the English, gradually intensified the innate dislike of the pagans to Catholicity, and prejudice, debauchery, and penal laws at last drove the Catholic missionaries from a field in which they had labored with such courageous and unremitting zeal.

For years the only Catholic missionary in their territory was Father Milet, held at Oneida as a prisoner. Flying visits alone after this kept up the faith, and in 1709, Father Peter Mareuil, on the outbreak of war, retired to Albany, and the mission in the Iroquois country virtually closed. The later and tardy Protestant efforts were in a measure built on these early Catholic labors, and from Dellius to Zeisberger they gladly availed themselves of the pupils of the Jesuits to form their own instructions.

This Iroquois church has its martyr missionary Jogues; its martyred neophytes, who died at the hands of their countrymen rather than renounce Jesus to bow the knee to Aireskoi; and its holy virgin in Catharine Tehgahkwita, the Genevieve of New France. Then came the growth of mustard-seed in the Dutch colony. We hear of the freedom of worship achieved and established by the founders of the Dutch republic. It is indeed a favorite theme. Catholic and Protestant alike battled with Spain, and the blood of both won the liberty of the Seven United Provinces. Then as now Catholics formed nearly half the population of Holland. But as soon as freedom was obtained, the Protestants turned on the Catholics, who had fought by their sides, deprived them of civil rights, put their religion under a ban, expelled them from their ancient churches. In fact, they halted in their course of tyranny and oppression, only when fear dictated a little prudence.

The very church given to the English Puritans under Robinson, by the Dutch authorities, was the church of the Catholic Beguines, whose residences encircled the chapel of which Dutch laws deprived them, in order to give it to foreigners who reviled the creed that erected it and the worship of the Most High so long offered within its walls.

When New Netherland was colonized, this fierce intolerance of the dominant party in Holland excluded Catholics from the new settlement as rigorously as Puritan fanaticism banished them from the shores of New England. The Catholic Hollander could not emigrate to the new land. No worship was permitted but that of the Protestant church of Holland. It is well to talk of Dutch toleration, but it is the veriest myth ever concocted; and in New Netherland, though men were received who had denied Christ and been pirates on Salee rovers, Catholicity was excluded.

Gradually a few Catholics did creep into the colony. Father Jogues on his visit in 1643 found an Irishman and a Portuguese woman, forerunners of the four hundred thousand now on Manhattan Island. Le Moyne, as we have stated, subsequently visited the island, and a Dutch domine avers that he did so in order to give the consolations of religion to some Catholic sailors and residents; but the fanaticism of Holland was here, and as an illustration of the freedom of worship supposed to exist, we find that in 1658 a Catholic in Brooklyn was punished for objecting to support a Reformed minister.

By the reduction of New York, in 1664, to the English sway, restrictions were really if not explicitly removed. James, Duke of York, was a Catholic, and his province of New York was for a time governed by Colonel Thomas Dongan, also a Catholic. His character and career are known to our readers. Under his administration Catholic priests for the first time took up their residence on the island. Unfortunately, we have little more than the names of three clergymen and some indication of the period of their stay; though hostile notices tell us of one terrible crime they perpetrated—they actually did erect a "Jesuit colledge," and taught boys Latin. The King's Farm was assigned as the place for this institution of learning; but before Catholicity could take an enduring form, James II. was hurled from his throne for trying to make the Anglican bishops speak a little toleration. As has often happened, intolerance, with the banner-cry of "Liberty," became the order of the day. New York soon enjoyed the benefit of a governor of a true bigot stamp, grandson of one of the bloodiest butchers in the blood-stained annals of Ireland, Coote, Earl of Bellomont. He disgraced the colonial legislation with penal laws against Catholics, and characteristically lied in the preamble of his act. But he was a stanch Protestant, and had some curious dealings with Captain Kidd. The result of this change in New York affairs was that the King's Farm slipped into the hands of the Episcopalians, and they built Trinity Church on it. There is some squabbling now about this property; why not settle the matter amicably by devoting it to the object originally intended—"a Jesuit colledge"?

Under the harrying that began with Leisler's usurpation of authority in the province on the fall of James, and his mad brain full of plots and "diabolical designs of the wicked and cruel papists," such Catholics as had settled in New York seem gradually to have removed elsewhere; or, if they remained, reared families who were strangers to the faith.

Thus far Catholicity in New York had a strange history. Is it a dream? Fact first: Enlightened Dutch Protestants, champions of liberty of conscience, exclude Catholics, and when they creep in, tax them to support a church against the dictates of their conscience. Fact second: Enlightened English Protestants, after a great and glorious revolution, and of course full of toleration, passed penal laws subjecting Catholic priests to imprisonment for life with murderers and criminals. Fact third: Catholics during the brief period of their influence gave the colony a legislature, a bill of rights, freedom of worship to all Christians, and a college, and first attempted to elevate and christianize the negro slave. Bishop Bayley thus narrates one of these glorious works:

"The first act of the first assembly of New York convened by Colonel Dongan was the 'Charter of Liberty,' passed October 30th, 1683, which, among other things, declares that 'no person or persons which profess faith in God by Jesus Christ shall, at any time, be any ways molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any difference of opinion, or matter of religious concernment, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of the province; but that all and every such person or persons may, from time to time and at all times, freely have, and fully enjoy, his or their judgments or consciences in matters of religion, throughout all the province—they behaving themselves peaceably and quietly, and not using this liberty to licentiousness, nor to the civil injury or outward disturbance of others.' By another enactment, all denominations then in the province were secured in their liberty and discipline, and the like privilege was granted to others who might come into it."

For fifty years the history of Catholicity on New York island is a blank. A priest was occasionally brought in as a prisoner on some Spanish ship taken by a privateer; that is all. Catholics are scarcely alluded to. But an awakening came in 1741 in one of the wildest excitements in our annals. Catholics had, indeed, nothing to do with it, and for a long time no breath implicated the few Catholics with the supposed dangers, till a silly letter of General Oglethorpe put the idea into the heads of the New York authorities. Then the negro question and the Catholic question, which have so long alternately afforded a topic for sensation, and have at times been so oddly combined, met for the first time in New York annals.

Bishop Bayley thus describes the negro plot:

"The year 1741 was made memorable by one of those popular excitements which shows that whole communities as well as individuals are sometimes liable to lose their wits. Upon a rumor of a plot made by the negroes to burn the city and massacre the inhabitants, the whole body of the people were carried away by a sudden excitement. The lieutenant-governor offered a reward of one hundred pounds and full pardon to any free white person who would make known the author or authors of certain attempts to set fire to houses in various parts of the city. A servant-girl, named Mary Burton, living with a man named Hughson, who had been previously condemned for receiving stolen goods, came forward to claim the reward, declaring that certain negroes who frequented her master's house (he kept a small tavern) had made a plot; one of the accused, named Cuffee, she declared had said that 'a great many people had too much, and others too little,' and that such an unequal state of things should not continue long.[89] The pretended disclosures increased the excitement, and the lawyers of the city, to the number of seven, with the attorney-general, were called together to take council in regard to the matter. They certainly manifested very little coolness or judgment, and may be said to have led on the unfair and unjust trials which followed. The accused had no counsel allowed them; the attorney-general and the whole bar were on the side of the prosecution; the evidence was loose and inconclusive, and came without exception from the mouths of interested persons of bad character. Yet, upon such evidence as this, four white persons were hanged, eleven negroes were burned at the stake, eighteen hanged, and fifty were transported and sold, principally in the West Indies.[90] Among those hung was the unfortunate Mr. John Ury. Whether he was really a Catholic priest or not, he was certainly condemned and hung as such. We have no other evidence upon the matter than Horsmanden's account, and from this it does not clearly appear whether he was really a priest or a nonjuring clergyman of the Church of England.[91] The most conclusive fact in favor of his being a priest is founded upon the circumstance that, when arraigned as a priest, tried as a priest, and condemned as a priest, he never formally denied it, nor exhibited any evidence of his being ordained in the Church of England.[92]

"The persons most to blame were the judges and lawyers. The speech of the attorney-general on the trial of Ury, the sentence given by Horsmanden upon certain of the negroes, and that by the chief-justice on others, are so harsh, cruel, and abusive that we could hardly believe it possible that they had uttered them, if they were not published with the authority of Horsmanden himself. It is evident, however, that their 'holy horror of Popery' had as much to do with the whole matter as their fear of insurrection among the blacks."

Of course after this attack of insanity New York was scarcely a place for a Catholic to reside. There must have been a few; but evidently they avoided attracting attention. The next Catholic sensation was that of a poor creature whose life had been a sad defiance of all religion and morality, but who, at her death, sent some money to the Rev. Mr. Inglis, rector of Trinity Church, with a request that she should be buried in the church. She was indeed interred there, till a clamor rose fierce and loud. She was not only a public sinner but a Catholic; the latter, too terrible a sin to forgive, so she was taken up; but Mr. Inglis never recovered from the stigma.

Not long before the Revolution, the few Catholics in New York were again the object of the zeal of the Jesuit fathers, with whom so much of our history is connected. The mission of the sons of St. Ignatius, which in Maryland was coeval with the settlement of that colony, gradually extended to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, aided chiefly by the bequest of Sir John James. The mission was one involving some danger, and hence required great caution; but finally a Catholic priest stood in New York to begin to gather the faithful, and administer the sacraments of which they had been so long deprived. The priest who formed this first congregation, the nucleus of St. Peter's, and thus of all the Catholic institutions on the Island of Manhattan, was a German Jesuit, Father Ferdinand Steinmeyr, known on the American mission as Father Farmer. A man of extensive learning, not only in the theological studies of his church, but in the natural sciences, the Royal Society of London had been glad to add his name to their list of members. Here he would have been a fit associate for Colden, Franklin, and Barton, but the gratification of this taste would have made him too conspicuous in a prejudiced and hostile community; and the man of science submitted to be passed by without notice, anxious only to do his duty as a missionary, and gather the lost sheep of Israel. The reticence required unfortunately leaves us without any direct information as to his visits, and we do not positively know when or where this man, whose learning would have adorned the colony of New York, first offered the holy sacrifice for the pioneer congregation of Catholics in this city. Bishop Bayley has collected the various early notes and hints on this interesting point, but it is after all involved in great obscurity. Yet this founder of Catholicity in New York City lived so recently, that the writer, who can claim neither gray hairs nor advanced years, remembers several who had received the sacraments of the church at his hands.

Father Farmer came undoubtedly with the address of some German Catholic, and his visit would thus be less likely to attract attention, as German clergymen of various denominations often passed through the city. Mr. Idley, a German of the early day, claimed that mass was first said in his house in Wall street, and the claim may not be unfounded.

Father Farmer continued these occasional visits until the breaking out of hostilities with England. The defeat of Washington on Long Island threw New York into the hands of the English, and for the next seven years his pastoral visits became impossible.

So long as the colonial dependence prevailed, the British government stimulated anti-Catholic fanaticism, because while this spirit was fanned the colonies readily gave men and money to aid in the reduction of Canada. That French colony, after many fruitless attempts, at last fell under the combined efforts of the mother country and the colonies; but Canada, once reduced, became the object of sounder and more dispassionate statesmanship. By the surrender, the Canadians were guaranteed certain rights, as the Irish were by the treaty of Limerick. Protestant governments have never been over-scrupulous on such points, and it was as easy to break faith with the Canadians as with the Irish, but this time England was honest. The Catholic Church was left almost intact in Canada; nay, its clergy continued under British rule to gather tithes and receive certain traditional honors.

This was too much for the people of the older colonies to brook. They had not lavished blood and treasure for this. The very bigotry nurtured by English rule now turned against it. And what wonder, then, that the first standard of revolt reared in New York expressed this long-cherished feeling, this hatred of Catholics so long encouraged by government, what wonder that the flag of American freedom that first floated to the breeze in New York bore the motto, "No Popery"!

How little we can fathom the designs of the Almighty! Who looking on that flag could see in it the germ of a freedom of the church which she then nowhere out of the patrimony of St. Peter really possessed? Yet it was there. Down to the French alliance, this anti-Catholic feeling nerved the Whigs and discouraged the friends of British rule. Then it changed, and the Tory papers caught up every occasion to show how zealously Protestant the British party was. While the selectmen of Boston followed a Catholic procession through the streets, and Congress went to mass, the British authorities in New York are pointed out by a pamphleteer of the day as beyond reproach. They showed their anti-Catholic zeal in this way:

"In 1778, in the month of February, a large French ship was taken by the British, near the Chesapeake, and sent for condemnation into New York, at that time still in possession of the English. Among her officers was a priest, of the name of De la Motte, of the order of St. Augustine, who was chaplain of the vessel. Being permitted to go at large in the city, he was solicited by his countrymen, and by those of his own faith, to celebrate mass. Being advised of the existence of a prohibitory law, he applied to the commanding officer for permission, which was refused; but M. de la Motte, not knowing the language very well, mistook what was intended for a refusal as a permission, and accordingly celebrated mass. For this he was arrested, and kept in close confinement until exchanged. This was under Governor Tryon's administration."

Benedict Arnold—for even this precious worthy may come in as an illustration—when he sat down in New York in his uniform of a British brigadier, to write his address to his countrymen justifying the step which he had taken, and which we are accustomed to characterize by the ugly name of treason, made his strong anti-Catholic feeling justify his course. He had entered the movement as a thorough Protestant; but when Congress began to favor popery, he foresaw the ruin of his country, and as a true Protestant made his peace with England. Strong as the anti-Catholic feeling had been in the hearts of the colonists, we do not find that this appeal of Arnold to their prejudices induced a single man to desert the American ranks; it is far more likely that it may have sent some Irish soldiers from the British ranks to swell Washington's regiments.

We are apt to associate our republic with the idea of unbounded religious toleration. As we have shown, hostility to Catholics was a potent element in arousing the people to declare against Great Britain, and the State governments as originally framed bear deeply impressed the traces of that common feeling which once, in Lyons, proclaimed in one line free toleration in matters of religion, and in the next prohibited the mass under terrible penalties. If freedom was dreamed of, it was to be one which we were not to enjoy.

The anti-Catholic feeling that characterized the first national movement was displayed in the convention which in 1777 formed a constitution for the State of New York. There no less a personage than John Jay, subsequently minister to England and chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was the ardent, fiery advocate of intolerance. Catholics of New York owe a debt of gratitude to Gouverneur Morris and Philip Livingston for the manliness with which in that convention they fought the battle of human freedom and sought to check the onslaught of intolerance. But they failed. Under that constitution no Catholic could be naturalized, and the liberty of worship granted was couched in such terms as to justify the legislature at any time in crushing Catholicity, and in point of fact they at once adopted an iron-clad oath that effectually prevented any Catholic from holding office.

The Brief Sketch gives the debates on the interesting questions before the convention; and it notes how, in that curious system of language so common with our public speakers and writers, this constitution found an advocate in the late polished Benjamin F. Butler, of New York, who praised it in an address before the New York Historical Society for its liberality in containing no provision repugnant to civil and religious toleration, as though laws excluding Catholics from citizenship and office were not slightly repugnant.

In point of fact, however, the hostile feeling of the earlier days was soon neutralized, and at the close of the war New York was virtually free to receive a Catholic Church.

How, then, Catholicity took root and grew under the protecting work of men who

"Builded better than they knew,"

how it has spread and done its work of struggle and triumph under the federal government, will be the matter of another article.