Loyola University Chicago - Loyolan Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

Page 28 text:

The LOYOLAN-1925 to justify the importance so apparent to all from Hugh Capet to Henry of Navarre. For on that day was born jacques Marquette. Of Marquette's ancestry not much is known. That they were of an old and noble family, gentlemen and with the right to bear arms, is certain, but that they were particularly distinguished among the multitudinous seignory of the day is not borne out by any easily ascertained evidence of the day. They were of a class most nearly corresponding to the present English gentry, neither noted for special ability or exalted position, nor notorious for the foibles and idiocies that consort with power and pelf. Marquette's father has left no impress upon history. All we know is that he was a judge, and, so, to depict him we must turn to his heroic son and by combined stress of imagination and invocation of the laws of heredity deter- mine for ourselves what manner of man he was. Thus, we may safely vouch for the goodness and probity of his life, not only because of his relationship to his son 3 but because history, Jade scandalmonger that she is, has left his bones in peace and his reputation in that.grateful obscurity to which she most frequently relegates the good. Again invoking the imagination, and not too romantically we hope, we can picture him as a good husband and father, a man not too lavishly endowed with wealth and a brilliance of intellectg in short, he may be considered as a prototype of the average man whose talents find their expression in the rearing of a family and in the means necessary to their upkeep, rather than in the phantom and elusive pages of fame. Of Marquette's mother there exists a paucity of material as great as any imaginative artist could w'ish. She was related to .lohn Baptist De la Salle, and like her husband it would appear she lavished her gifts upon her family and in contradistinction to what seems a strong feminine fashion in France, kept neither salon nor exotic animals. Rather were her energies bent upon the rearing of her children in the God-fearing fashion that once was the wont throughout the world. In Marquette, no doubt, exists the most perfect refiection of his mother's pure and devout character. That Marquette's later life was due to the influence of his childhood is sufficiently apparent to defy contradiction. Reared in such surroundings as he was, undoubtedly the boy's attention nlust have been early fastened upon religiong the example of such a father and the love of a mother like his could scarcely do less. It must have been in his childhood, too, that the loving presence of his earthly mother told him of another mother among whose champions he would soon enroll. The time of this enrollment was soon to come. Not alone father and mother reminded him of things other than those of this earth: Laon itself was a perpetual testimonial to God and religion. From here, in the fifth century, had gone St. Remigius to baptize Clovis: later, a constant succession of lay and clerical had extended the practice of religion so that churches and abbeys dotted the town, and it had become the second most important see in France, possessing a cathedral that even now ranks among the foremost in the glorious field of Gothic perfection. Small wonder it was, that on his seventeenth birthday Marquette left, not attired in hauberk or cuirass to fight an earthly fight, but to don the funereal robes denoting earthly abnegation and enlistment under the crucifix in the company of vlesus, then in its comparative youth. For twelve years Marquette remained in Europe. The first part of this period he spent in the novitiate, that soul-searching and soul-trying assay that determines the chosen of those called. Then strengthened and confirmed in his resolve, he spent many more years in study, markinff time as some might s s Y s 35'- lPage 181

Page 27 text:

.K , lui ffl'-H-' ,.,.i 1. FATHER IIARQUETTE The Marquette Celebration The first of June, in the year of Our Lord 1657, no doubt dawned and sank into obscurity as usual for the prosperous burghers and townsmen of old Laon. yet, all unknown to them, on that day an event had taken place that would be fraught with consequences that would rank as important as those of any other act that had taken place before in this historic old French town on the Ardon. Laon, successive stronghold of Caesar and Merovingian, birthplace of saints and generals, dam alike of doughty citizens and haughty prelate, was yet again lPage 171

Page 29 text:

'I ln- Lr,mYUl.AN-iff! l lx X .R ll . A Y. l 1 X ,-. - Q xx ' , -f l l 'N' . X X5 F X' is 'x fin l'li.fln ttm1'f.'xy Lilrlrlmn Ifuily ,Yrtzxv KI,xI:QL'i1.'1 1'i2 LQABIN AT lix'rR.xNt'r: TU Lil'lIL.XlIO Riviau As reproiluceil liy Vliicago City Building lbepartinent at north end of l.inl-c Bridge for celeliratimi uf the 250th anniversary of lfqitlier M:irqnette's resnlence nn the site of Ciliiezigo. but in reality. girding and strengthening himself for his threefold enemy, the world, the tiesh and the devil. Finally his years of toil and struggle were at end and he received the accolade of his Heavenly Captain, a priest forever after the order of Melchisidechf' A period of teaching ensued. but not in the classroom was Marquettes spirit to he contented. ,-Xlways of a sickly and delicate constitution, more adapted to the life of the recluse and student than that of the vigorous men he Cllviefl. nevertheless, he yearned for the missionary held. He knew what awaited him: hardship, privation, a return to the primeval, almost1 he knew what he must be prepared to meet: the Iroquois. sxvorn enemies of France ever since their IPage 191