Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

Page 27 text:

him a wealth oj written material on mathematics and physics. Today Father Theodor Wulfs name is known to physicists, Erich Wasmann, the biologist, is still living. Co-Patron of Poland, Stanislaus Kostka, the Polish prince in his teens trudged a 1,000 miles, escaping a brother anxious to harden him and was received by Peter Canisius into the Order. Stanislaus has been for centuries a saint everybody loves along with John Berchmans and Aloysius Gonzaga. The bones of another Polish saint. Saint Andrew Bobola, were recently brought out of Russia to Rome by living Jesuits then on a relief expedition to the land of Communism. T Jl hi , he scaffold is the symbol of English Jesu- its. Tyburn Hill welcomed them. Let’s select Edmund Campion, the Oxford youth, who read a poetical address to Queen Elizabeth. No man, except Newman, The scaffold m England, the symbol of the Jes- was aped so assiduously by the Oxford undergraduates as was this future Hopki Jesuit. Even though constantly importuned by Elizabeth and Dudley to share the government’s favors, he joined the Society of Jesus at Rome and, when the English Mission was conceived by Father Robert Parsons, he returned to England and there, working mostly under cover and in disguise, he helped keep thriving the hard-driven faith of his co-religionists. At last, when apprehended by government agents, he was thrown into the Tower and tortured. After being severely racked, he requested a public disputation. This was granted him by the Queen, and before Elizabeth and all the great Protes- tant divines, for four days, he literally stood without chair, table, or time to prepare, undefeated by the arguments bombarding him from all sides. Once, when Campion martyred on Tyburn Hill 23

Page 26 text:

cally in Germany. Fathers Clavius and Kircher are outstanding. The former, known as the Euclid of the 16th Century,” intimate friend of Galileo and esteemed by Kepler, Brahe, and so forth, more than any other man is responsible for the execu- tion and defense of the Gregorian Calendar. To him we owe our present method of reckoning the years and seasons. Kircher was an intellectual giant, specialized in volcanic study. On one occasion he had himself lowered into Mount Vesuvius to measure the crater. His ”Mundus Subterraneus” is a pioneer work in subterranean physics. He was the father of the study of hieroglyphics, having correctly supplied missing portions of the Pamphy- lian obelisk. He gave impetus to the comparative study of Aryan languages, wrote medical treatises, formed an artificial language, perfected one of the earliest count- ing machines, a speaking tube and aeolian harp. Finally, he was the inventor of the magic lantern, the forerunner of our modern motion pictures and left behind Crowds attend Jesuit Morality Play, ijth Century 22

Page 28 text:

Edmund Campion reading to Queen Elizabeth he extended his arms in a gesture, his audience was horrified to see that the fingers had been torn from his hands by the rack. Finally, after a framed trial, he was hanged, drawn and quartered on Tyburn Hill. One of Campion s contemporaries, who worked with him, was Robert Parsons. The year 1594 was a notable date in Parson s life. In that year he published, on the death of Elizabeth, his renowned “Conference about the next succession to the crown of England, wherein he upheld popular sovereignty and repudiated the divine right of kings. This treatise had a direct influence on both Milton s and Hobbes politi- cal theories. It was he, who along with Bellarmine, introduced scholastic politics into English Whig thought, which was later to reach fruition in the British Bill of Rights and the American Declaration of Independence. Also in 1594, Parsons founded the English College at Saint Omer s, which, after persecution had subsided in England, was transferred to Stonyhurst, the leading Jesuit college in England at the present time. Among the graduates of Stonyhurst 24