Cardinal Gasquet: Scholar

...Cardinal Gasquet di,ed at Rome, April 4, 1929, in his eighty-third year, after a brief illness, preceded, however, two or three years ago, by a slight paralytic stroke from which he never fully recovered...

...The little London boy whom Manning once took to see Cardinal Wiseman had reached the summit of life, but on its pleasant level was granted another decade of admirable service to religion, letters, his country and mankind...

...313 CARDINAL GASQUET: SCHOLAR' By BISHOP SHAHAN THAT Abbot Gasquet would have been an influential modern essayist is evident from two works, written, one imagines, in some hours of leisure— The Old English Bible (1897) and The Eve of the Reformation (1900...

...After the adverse decision of Leo XIII (Apostolicae Curae, September 18, 1896) Abbot Gasquet published his Leaves from My Diary (1894-1896) that gave to the public some interesting information as to the meetings and discussions of the Papal Commission during those two years...

...Physically he seemed unequal to the constant strain of travel, solicitation and public speaking...

...Apropos of the feeling aroused in some Anglican circles by the formal refusal of Leo XIII to recognize the validity of Anglican Orders, Abbot Gasquet has the following to say: With every allowance for the feelings of those among the clergy of the Established Church who, holding advanced doctrines on the Eucharist, regard themselves as being "sacrificing priests" quite as really as ourselves, it is somewhat hard to see what ground of complaint any one of them has with the papal decision...

...Quite notable are his much discussed studies on the Pre-Reformation Bible, and his admirable story of the Hampshire Recusants, that tough English stock which would not bend the knee to Baal, in the person of Elizabeth and her agents...

...They remain what they were before...

...an example to those who knew him best, and an encouragement to aim at all that is highest...

...When the question of the validity of Anglican orders was brought before Rome in 1894, Leo XIII appointed Abbot Gasquet a member of the Papal Commission appointed to study exhaustively the facts of the controversy and report to the Pope...

...of an industrious worker, zealous always for the cause of religion and the Church...

...On his return he wrote for the Dublin Review an account of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and published (1914) the four sermons, Breaking with the Past, that he preached in Saint Patrick's Cathedral, New York, during the advent of 1913...

...His purpose was the collection of funds for the great Benedictine work that was destined to occupy the remainder of his days, the restoration of the Latin vulgate text of the Scriptures, as it left the hands of Saint Jerome...

...This must necessarily be a process of time, and needs the expenditure of much money...

...In these are found some twenty delightful studies that probably no contemporary hand could have produced...

...Of his own administration of the archives he says: In all probability more than sixty thousand volumes [of manuscript material] beside innumerable single documents, are under my charge at the present moment...

...In our own day he belongs with Lingard, with Janssen and Pastor, Hegenroether and Denifle, to mention only a few of our new-school historians who stand out in recent times as foremost exponents of Catholic veracity and ability in the great Assize of Judgment...

...Several of these studies were written originally for the Downside Review, the Dublin Review, and the Tablet...

...His genial, kindly nature, his typical English manner and personality, his pleasant humor, his sincerity and cordiality, his humble and simple monastic temper, earned and kept for him the friendship of hosts of visitors to Rome and its holy sites and memories...

...In 1907 Pius XI made him president of the Commission for the Revision of the Latin Vulgate...

...Abbot Gasquet visited the United States in 1913, and was for some time the guest of the Catholic University of America...

...In 1918 Benedict XV appointed him prefect of the Vatican archives, and the next year made him librarian of the Holy Roman Church...

...He met a cordial response from the Knights of Columbus, and from individual subscribers...

...The names of the more prominent are commemorated in a large bronze inscription in the vestibule of San Calisto...

...of a man of simple but deep unostentatious piety, as is revealed in the little tract Religio Religiosi written on the occasion of his jubilee of monastic profession...

...314 When Pius X raised him to the purple in 1914, there was universal approval in which many nonCatholics joined, notably the foremost representatives of the historical guild in every country...

...Unfortunately much has to be done in arranging, stamping, binding and indexing, before all these can be made accessible to the public...

...Since Cardinal Gasquet wrote these lines, the Carnegie Association for the Advancement of Knowledge has come to the aid of the Holy See in a very generous way in the improvement of the material conditions and equipment of the archives, and our Library of Congress has cooperated in a handsome and efficient manner by the aid of its experts, the gift of its wonderful card-index of over one million cards, and the hospitality offered to several officials of the world's most venerable treasury of human thought in past ages...

...An introduction of nearly one hundred pages makes known to the reader the literary history of the Rambler, and the Home and Foreign Review, shortloved periodicals (1858-1864) that aroused the distrust and disapproval of Cardinal Wiseman and other ecclesiastical authority in England...

...Though not an alumnus of the College he compiled the work with full sympathy and with a proper intelligence of the long career and the peculiar vicissitudes of that famous nursery of English priests, saints and martyrs...

...Its rich archives, dating from the fourteenth century and well preserved despite so many enemies, were placed at his disposal, particularly the abundant material accumulated since the beginning of the sixteenth century when the English Pilgrims Hostel, itself the successor of the eighth-century Schola Anglorum, gave way to the new English College, founded by Cardinal Allen...

...I do not know how better to close this imperfect sketch of a great monk, historian and prelate than with the words of Dom Cuthbert Butler, his disciple, friend and admirer (the Tablet, April 13, 1929): He leaves the memory of a singularly beautiful character, of great natural charm and kindliness...

...On the occasion of the Cardinal's Golden Jubilee of monastic profession in 1924, King George V honored his royal office by sending a telegram to the eminent scholar in which he expressed the earnest hope that his life may long be preserved in the discharge of the duties of his office, and to carry on those works which have made him famous and reverenced by his brethren in the British empire...

...the "new learning," Erasmus, Lutheranism in England, the English parish, its guilds and chantries, pilgrimages and relics, conflicts of authority, civil and ecclesiastical...

...They deal mostly with contemporary history...

...This meant a transfer of residence to Rome, and the cessation of his former activities in the manuscript depositories of London, where he was by this time "amicus curiae," a revered and welcome figure...

...For the fourth centenary of its reopening (1518) he published (1920) A History of the Venerable English College, Rome, from the earliest times to the present day...

...In the vast domain of letters Cardinal Gasquet was near kin to Bede and Alcuin, to the founders of Oxford and Cambridge, and to all the high-grade scholars who have honored England in a thousand years...

...At the height of his labors in the field of pre-reformation English monasticism he edited (1906) in Lord Acton and His Circle a correspondence (nearly two hundred letters) of that historian with Richard Simpson and others...

...Almost any one of them could be easily enlarged into a rich and useful volume...

...Already I have experienced the great interest of the present Pope, and his generous assistance in obtaining laborers...

...They deal with monastic subjects, libraries and books, the daily life of the monks, religious instruction in the monasteries, their schools and teaching, their ecclesiastical art and church ornaments...

...For this "reversal of attainder" the monks and friars of the days of Henry VIII were doubtless grateful from their seats of bliss...

...Surely the living authority of the Roman Church has the right and when the question had been raised a duty, to determine the answer without being considered either offensive or aggressive...

...These, however, are not very easy to find, for the work not only requires technical knowledge, but devotion and even enthusiasm...

...The great Benedictine plant of Sant' Anselmo on the lonely Aventine welcomed him, and here he laid the foundations of that marvelous scriptural opus of genuine Benedictine toil and accuracy, whose first fruits he lived to offer recently to his apostolic Maecenas...

...The whole question was essentially, so far as the Roman authorities were concerned, a domestic one...

...The great scholar, tall, spare and gaunt, was surely more at home in the British Museum, London Record Office or Vatican archives...

...For the Royal Historical Society Proceedings (1919) he wrote a brief account of the Vatican archives, condensed from the earlier works of Garampi and Marini...