In Memoriam: Condé Benoist Pallen
Walsh, James J.
214 THE COMMONWEAL June 26, 1929 IN MEMORIAM: CONDE BENOIST PALLEN
By JAMES J. WALSH T HE death of Cond6 Benoist Pallen removes from the scene in the United States a man who for almost half...
...He insisted that we should see it...
...reel Garden The splintered urn, The trees, the trees, The white stone And the violet leaves...
...When mystery stories became rife, he wrote Ghost House (I928) a tale with rather more scien-tific connotation than most mystery stories...
...Louis University and during this time lectured in many cities of the country on Catholic subjects...
...He told his young wife when he married her that he was afraid she would have to have a rival in his affections in his devotion to the Catholic cause...
...As the managing editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia he did more than any other layman to assure the success of that work which has meant so much for making readily available to the English-speaking world what should be known about the Catholic Church...
...The cankered bud, The crying bees, But the white stone-- The trees, the trees...
...The very first Catholic book that he read made a convert of him...
...Pallen published a series of books...
...While engaged in this effort he called my attention to the fact that a number of the encyclo- pedias declared that dissection had been prevented and June 26, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 215 the development of scientific anatomy sadly hampered by a papal bull which forbade the cutting up of human bodies...
...Paris in rock With marble hair, The ageless fruit Embedded there...
...Diana in The chiseled wheat, A wounded woodcock At her feet...
...No wonder that after a series of experiences like this, Dr...
...After nearly half a cen- tury of experiencing the blessedness of work and of life, Dr...
...In an article with the title, The Poisoning of the Wells, printed in the Messenger, the monthly organ of the Jesuits in the East at that time, the Reverend John J. Wynne pointed out the number of errors and prejudices of all kinds which had crept into encyclopedias and were maintained there though modern historical investigation had shown them to be entirely wrong...
...I pray that such thoughts as these may help you bear your loss...
...I can forget The moth-like rose, The velvet fingers Where it grows...
...Pallen was the son of Dr...
...They were direct and forcible and set a good many people to thinking...
...Before the middle of the fourteenth century Guy de Chauliac tells how his teacher, Bertruccio, made a series of dissections giving his students an excellent opportunity to know human anatomy...
...speaking countries...
...Dr...
...He thought that he knew all about the Church though he had obtained his information entirely from Protes- tant sources...
...All sorts of historical errors had crept into these encyclopedias, so that it was practically impossible for those outside of the Church to secure proper information...
...The man who at critical times and in difficult pecuniary emergencies helped the project over the hard spots which some- times threatened to be serious obstacles to its success deserves a credit and a kudos in American life that will not soon be allowed to fade...
...Between 1887 and 1897 he was for some ten years the editor of Church Progress, the weekly paper of the St...
...Pallen had "seen further into the real meaning of the Idylls of the King than any of my commentators...
...214 THE COMMONWEAL June 26, 1929 IN MEMORIAM: CONDE BENOIST PALLEN By JAMES J. WALSH T HE death of Cond6 Benoist Pallen removes from the scene in the United States a man who for almost half a century played an important r61e in the dissemination of truth as he saw it...
...So far from reseating it, she said that nothing would give her greater pleasure in life than to share his efforts or at least facilitate them in every way...
...During the past five years Dr...
...In his volume, Back to Mother Church, he confessed that though he had been for twenty years professor of history he had never read a Catholic book...
...Just when the first volumes of the Encyclopedia were being published, there was, as if providentially, a strik- ing demonstration of the need of first-hand informa- tion with regard to the Church...
...HELEN PEARC...
...In the midst of her family duties, she kept this promise completely and thus enabled her husband to accomplish all that he did...
...Pallen with his sincerest sympathy and the words, "I feel the public loss of the whole country in the death of one who gave so largely to the men and women of his time of the rich fruits of a sincere and high-minded search for the everlasting truth...
...He also published The Feast of Thaliarchus, a dramatic poem...
...Before the publication of the Catholic Encyclopedia, English-speaking non-Catholics had no source of in- formation to which they could go in the confidence that it represented the thought of the Church of Christ...
...For some years after his re- turn he occupied the post of professor of philosophy at St...
...For twenty years his life was given to that, and during the past five years it has been devoted in similar fashion to Universal Knowledge and the Catholic Dictionary...
...I told him quite frankly that I thought per- haps some mediaeval Pope had issued such a document...
...Professor Von Ru- ville of Halle-Wittenberg, Luther's old university of Wittenberg transferred to Halle, became a convert...
...The Catholic Encyclopedia, however, constituted a definite presentation of what should be known about the Church, and came to be recognized by the scholarly world as thoroughly authoritative...
...This one example makes it easy to understand how much Dr...
...His Dialogues of a Commuter, which appeared first serially and consisted of conversations with friends and acquaintances who took the train with him morning and evening and talked about religious subjects, attracted no little atten- tion...
...Pallen was ready to devote himself wholeheartedly to the Catholic Encyclopedia in order to supply infor- mation founded on original documents with regard to matters relating to the Catholic Church...
...In 1886 he married Georgiana McDougal Adams, daugh- ter of John Adams of Tennessee...
...Here was a successful marriage and a wedding of souls for a great purpose...
...Louis, and of Anne, the daughter of Louis A. Benoist, a prominent banker...
...The papal decree, De Sepulturis, forbade this practice as both abhorrent to human na- ture and likely to lead to the spread of disease...
...Father Wynne called attention par- ticularly to certain encyclopedias just then in the course of publication, to which a large number of Catholics had subscribed, as being especially offensive in this regard...
...Until within a few months of his death, Dr...
...This work for truth and for the Church makes it easy to understand the cablegram from his Holiness Pope Pius XI condoling with the family for the loss of their husband and father...
...Montrose Pallen, a well-known member of the medical fraternity of St...
...While at Rome he was a fellow-student of the present Pope, Plus XI...
...About the beginning of the twentieth century Catho- lics were aroused to bring about the elimination of sources of flagrant misinformation with regard to the Church, notably certain encyclopedias in the English...
...Now that courses in the philosophy of Saint Thomas are being offered in many of the secu- lar universities and reverence for the Angelic Doctor of the thirteenth century has come back, Pallen's fore- sightedness can be more properly appreciated...
...Before he began his work on the Catholic Encyclo- pedia, and at intervals since, Dr...
...This is the document which supposedly prevented dissection...
...They were published in book form by Macmillan under the title of Man to Man (1927...
...This led to the cancellation of subscriptions, and touched publishers on the pecuniary nerve...
...In later years he wrote A Memorial of Andrew J. Shipman (1917...
...This was the work of twenty years of his maturity...
...Pallen's association with the publication of the new encyclopedia, Universal Knowledge, and with the Catholic Dictionary issued under the auspices of the Board of Universal Knowledge, has conferred added prestige on him...
...Pallen continued to occupy himself in one way or another with what had been the supreme object of his life, Catholic apologetics...
...The beveled line Of column and wall, A purple lip At the fountain's bowl...
...He wrote brief volumes on The Philosophy of Literature (1897) and on Epochs of Literature (1898...
...In this work Cond6 Pallen, as the revisory editor of the New International Encyclopedia and of the Encyclopedia Americana, was most prominent...
...The book of his which attracted most attention was The Meaning of the Idylls of the King (19o4) which drew from Lord Tennyson himself a letter of praise and the declaration that Dr...
...As a matter of fact the history of dissec- tion can be traced from a few years after the issuance of the bull and came, in the next generation, to be a very common practice in Italy...
...Pallen, sent a letter of condolence to Mrs...
...He anticipated by nearly fifty years an intellectual move- ment that is now a prominent feature of serious educa- tion...
...It proved to be a decree of Pope Boniface VIII (13Ol) forbidding a practise that had crept in during the crusades--the dis- membering and boiling of the bodies of noblemen who had been killed, to ensure their preservation for burial in their own homes...
...Pallen's work as the managing editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia meant for seekers after truth...
...He then went to Rome with the definite purpose of studying Thom- istic philosophy...
...It also makes it clear why Presi- dent Hoover, though unacquainted with Dr...
...Pallen faced the future with a calm assurance of faith that made his passing only an incident in existence...
...As a result, definite efforts were made by the editors of these encyclopedias to bring about the correction of errors in them so as to harmonize them with the find- ings of recent historical research...
...Their ten children are all alive, and most of them were not far from him during his last years...
...The son, born in 1858, was graduated from Georgetown University in 188o and received the degree of A. M. in 1883...
...He published a collection of poems, The Death of Sir Launcelot and Other Poems (19o2) followed not long after by The New Rubaiyat, a study on life as the poet sees it...
...Many were inclined to think that anything written by Catholics about religion was just so much propaganda and had no necessary connection with the realities of Catholic truth...
...Pallen's insistence on getting the orig- inal documents led me to present them in the volume, The Popes and Science, for what was true with regard to anatomy proved to be also true with regard to vari- ous papal documents which had been supposed to hamper other sciences, especially surgery, astronomy and chemistry...
...To supply readily available material with regard to the Church, her history and problems, was to accom-plish a really great work for truth...
...Louis archdiocese, and lectured throughout the country on Catholic subjects as well as at the Catholic summer school on Lake Champlain, the western summer school and the Catholic winter school in New Orleans...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 8
