OF AMERICA

By Mrs Marie A. SHIPLEY, née BROWN.

The fact tliat America was discovered by the Norsemen, A. D. 1000, is now generally conceded, but the ahnost invariable conclusion is reached by savants and historians that no results were produced by thèse voyages, inasmuch as the Norsemen failed to effect a permanent settlement, established no intercourse with Europe and failed to make their discoveries known, outside of Scandinavia. It is thèse, to my mind, unfounded conclusions, that I hâve for several years strenuously oppOsed,for reasons that can be demonstrated to be sound and convincing. Résides m y self, there is a single class of persons who also express the firm belief that the Norsemen, on the contrary, did effect a permanent settlement, or at least one of several centuries duration in Yinland, that they sustained constant intercourse with Europe during that period, and made their discoveries known in ail parts of the world where their journeys extended, — thèse persons are the theologians and historical writers of the Roman Catholic Church. ^\^ith thèse I am not in the slightest sympathy ; I only note the fact that they, by one road, and 1, by quite another, hâve arrived at the same conclusion. I am also warranted in saying that the Roman Catliolics are the only persons of ail who hâve made this historical question a study, who are qualified to express a judgment upon it. The scholars and historians of other religions faiths believe that they hâve made an exhaustive study of the sul)ject by merely poring over the Icelandic Sagor, whereas the Romanish

know that the entire chronicles of the Viuland colonies hâve been written or compilée! by Ihemsctves^ by their own priests, monks and bishops, and that their boast is well-founded when they déclare that (heir monks accompanied Bjarni and Lief on those first voyages, that theirs was the first mission, a Roman Catholic one,in what is now New England, that the first American pilgrimag'e to Rome was that of Gudrid from Vinland, that Snorre, her son, was the first child of European parentage, baptized there into the Catholic failli, and much more of the same sort. A prominent Jesuit, in Washington, [U. S. A.], Rev. W™ J. Ciarke, said in the Centennial discourse that he delivered in Philadelphia on the l"' of July, 187G, that « there was a little catholic republic on that continent seven Imndred, perhaps eight hundred years ago, » and he quoted Rient's statement that the crusades were preached in America in 1276.

Few Roman Catholic authors, lecturers or editors, hesitate now to say tliat Colurabus derived information in Rome that confîrmed bis belief in the existence of a Western continent. Father Bodfîsh made a very plain statement of this nature before the Bostonian Society, in Boston. After calUng attention to the fact that it was the duty of a bishop placed at a distance, as was Bishop Erile, who had gone to Vinland in 1121, « to report from time to time to the Pope, not only on ecclesiastical matters, but of the geography of the country and character ofthe peoplc, » lie added that it was probable that « Columbus had the benefit of the knowledge possessed at Rome thus derived. » D"" Richard H. Ciarke, of New-York, the brother of the Jesuit priest in Washington, in an erudite article in the American Catholic Quarterli/ Review, for April, 1888, entitled : « America discovered and christianized by the Northmen, » asserted that Columbus never divulged to the public the extent of his knowledge of facts pointing to lands in the Western océan. At Rome also Columbus must hâve heard of the Norse expéditions to Groenland and Vinland. » Like statements hâve even found their way into the catholic newspapers, on évidence

that Columbus bas not only lost saintship, but even the popular favor of the great body of adhérents who once extoUed him to the skies. Tlie « New-York Catholic News, » of september 9^**, quotes a paragraph from one of its contemporaries : The sett- 1ers remained in Rhode Island for three years. They then returned to Greenland and Iceland. A record of their discoveries and observations whas made. Gudrid went to Rome and visited the lioly father, the pontifï John XVII. The Norsemen were too severely pressed with other work to make any permanent settlements in Yinland. Rutwritten accounts of their discoveries were preserved in Iceland, and were collected by Adam von Bremen in 1076, and were actually published in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1379. Of course, therefore, Columbus was not the discoverer of America. Ile did not disclose this land to awakening Europe. » The comment of the « Catholic News » is in the same strain : « Hère is the distinct admission, » it says, « that the Norsemen were Catholics and that reports of their discovery were made to the Pope. » Would the Church of Rome be so willing to drop Colombus, if it had not a better discoverer to fall back upon, in Leif Erikson ? But why this sudden change of base ? What a sharp contrast between the Catholic writers of the o\à i^egiine, Shotorno, Navarrete,Muîioz, De Lorgnes, and thèse modem writers who so cooUy consign Columbus to his true level? But the leading American historiens, George Bancroft, Washington Irving, Prescott, hâve failed to educate the American nation one whit beyond the Navarrete standpoint, and in that spirit they are undertaking to carry eut the AVorld's Columbian Pair programme, in

The Dublin Revieiv, for November, 1841, also contains a remarkable statement, which goes to confirm the position I hold, namely, that the Roman Catholics hâve written the bulk of the history of the Norse discovery of America, but for some reason or other hâve not allowed the fuU records to come before the world. This is the passage referred to : « Now the main part of

this évidence, so consistent, yet so diversified, was extant in the âge of Çolumbus, a most keen and scrutinizing inquirer into geographical questions. Indeed, we hâve reason to believe that some évidences of American discoveries existed in that day, among his fellow-countrymen, which are now lost. » Moosmûl- 1er, too, a Bénédictine monk, who has ardently devoted himself to this subject, points out that « the knowledge of the existence of Western lands, and consequently of America, was in no wise confined to Iceland, » and adds : « For tlie elucidation of thèse voyages to iinknown lands in those remote times,there is placed at the disposai of the historian a proportionately rich source of material. A séries of parchment manuscripts remains extant in which more or less mention of America occurs, evidently under the names used by the Icelanders. Also a quantity of paper manuscripts, which, however, mostly contain only accounts from old parchment documents at présent lost, should not remain unregarded. »

The bare fact of the Norse discovery of America rests mainly on the évidence contained in the Codex Flatoiensis, which is commonly asserted to hâve been committed to writing between the years 1387 and 1395. But by whom? By two Roman Catholic priests, natives of Iceland presumably, Ion Thordarson and Magnus Thorhallsson ; but according to Rafn, « vve are principally indebted to the learned Bishop Thorlak Runolfson for the oldest ecclesiastical code of Iceland, published in the year 1123, and it is also probable that the accounts of thèse voyages were originally compiled by him. » It is a significant fact, too, that the Codex Flatoiensis was found in a mojiastenj , on the island of Flatô. Moosmiiller shows that the Bénédictines foUowed the émigration from Norway to Iceland (just as they subsequently foUowed that from Iceland to Greenland and Vinland), and that they had in Iceland nine establishments, seven for men and two for women, mostly founded during the twelfth century. The monks from the abbey of Thingeyri, Cunlog, Odde, and others, were writers. The monks of the monastery of Helgafeli,

he affirms, <( were from its very foundation acquainted with the discovery of America. » The nunnery of Glaumboe was founded in the year 1015. It was hère that Gudrid retired afterthe death of her husband, Thorfiun, and after her pilgrimag'e to Rome. In the very nature of things there must hâve been detailed accounts of this eventful pilgrimag-e in both Rome and Iceland. Abbot Magnus of Helg-afell, afterwards Bishop of Skalholt, was the person with whom Columbus conferred when in Iceland, in 1477. MoosmûUer concludes that several members of the order occupied the episcopal chair of Holum, in the northern part of Iceland. There was also the Bénédictine monastery of Modrnvalle and the nunnery in the town of Reinisnes. From this may be reaUzed the power exercised by the Church of Rome in Iceland at the time Greenland and Vinland were being settled ; and to thèse new colonies the power was rapidly extended. Who then coidd bave recorded events so vitally affecting- the growth of the Church, save its own functionaries and chosen scribes ? The only mystery, as yet unsolved, is,whatbecame of thèse records? Are they still in existence? For it is plain that only the fragments were left in Iceland, or transferred to the libraries of Copenhagen.

The author of the « Landnama-bok, » AreUum Frode, was also a priest. This work of bis, as Wheaton says, <' is to be considered rather as a chronicle of the Christian Middle Ages than a childof the Northern muse. » Paul Riant, who pursued scientific researches in Stockholm, Upsala and Copenhagen with the object of tracing out and reveaUng to the world the connection of the Scandinavian kingdoms with the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades, testifies that the most important of thèse new sources of history were the chronicles or Sagor which were transcribed in Iceland during the Middle Ages, and for the most part by Bénédictines ; the oldest document of this kind dated from 1117. He names another historié source, Iceland's Yearbooks, which were composed at varions times and in several pbbeys or churches on the island. Besides thèse, a large number

of old codices, he affirms, g-ive one a knowledge of the eventsin the eleventli and twclffch centuries, while « first in the list stand the collections of Norway'sand Iceland's civil and religions laws, which are of varions âges, but of which the oldest dates from the middle of the twelfth century. » He affirms, with good reason, that « the Norse colonies in Iceland and America were thus, at the founding^ of the bishoprics of Garda in Greenland, Holar and Skalholt in Iceland, closely bound to the national Church.» What then could bave been more proper and consistent than for Adam of Bremen, a canon of the Church, to incorporate his mention of the new discovery, Vinland, in his ecclesiastical history of the north of Europe, and for another contemporary historian, Ordericus Vitalis, an Englishman, who became the Bishop of Rouen, in Normandy, to do the same in his ecclesiastical history ? A parallel to this is found in the announcement of the modej'n Roman Catholic writer before referred to, Dr. Richard H. Clarke, that he intends to write the ecclesiastical history of Vinland; in fact he styles the wholesubject « an attractive and important branch of ecclesiastical history. » He is right; ecclesiastical history it is !

But where does Dr. Clarke propose to get his materials for his history of the (( Norse Church » on the American continent? Let hirri tell us in his own words : « We must also turn to the Roman Archives, to the treasures of the Vatican, now so generously made accessible to the world by Pope Léo XllI, for the détails of the ecclesiastical history of the Northmen in America so far as the same may be contained in Papal buUs, briefs and letters, and in the reports and relations of the bishops and missionaries who took part in the conversion of the baxbarians of the north of Europe, and in forming their missions, churches and episcopal sees. There is one subject more especially, he continues, « now most imperfectly explored and involved in doubt and confusion, which is the Episcopate of the western hémisphère, involving the exact names of the seventeen or eighteen bishops, the dates of their appointments, the exact

order of succession, their history and services in the cause of Christianity, what reports they raade to Rome, when and where and by whom consecrated, their deatlis and burials, and tlie churches which they founded... The Roman archives would certainly go far to clear up our doubts and to supply the deficiencies in our earliest ecclesiastical history. »

Yes, he certainly pursues his aim with an unerring instinct, knows exactly what to seek and where to seek it; the reports that those Greenland bishops made to Rome, if they could be unearthed, would clear up ail the mystery that bas settled so impenetrably upon this subject. But in this instance we bave the spectacle before us of a man doing, in the cause of superstition and mediaevalism, what the non-sectarian savaJits and historians of the world, of advanced Europe as well as of untrained, ignorant America, bave stubbornly refused to do in the cause of science and truth ! There is much said now-a-days about the duty of treating history by scientific methods and purging it of legend and tradition. Is not the Norse discovery and colonization of America a good subject to begin with ? Nay, is it not imperative that an era of historié accuracy be inaugurated before the proposed célébration in Chicago, in 1893, implicates ali historians in that huge international sham ?

It may pertinently be asked, how did it happen that the recording of Norse events, the writingof the history of the Norse race in America, fell so completelyinto Romish hands, and why this discovery and colonization undertaking of theirsshould differ so essentially from their achievements in Gt. Britain, Normandy, Iceland, Russia, Switzerland, scoring for them their 07ie failure in a national career of transcendent brilliancy and power?

The answer is not hard to find. The discovery of America by Leif Elrikson occurred at the transition point, when the Viking Age ceased and mediaevalism began. The very year that might hâve given the Norse race a new world and an empire compared with which ail their other conquests were as nothing, and this, too, without the necessity of doing battle with the armed

forces of civilized nations, the very date that might hâve made them the suprême race on earth, the year 1000, marked their subjugation under the only master to which they had ever succumbed, the Roman Catholic Ghurch. Consequently it was not the Vikings, the proud, défiant, independent, freedom-loving Norsemen, who planted those colonies in Greenland and Vinland, but the submissive vassals of the Pope, whose spirits were completely broken. Their former grand aims were relinquished, their ambition quenched ; their new selves looked with superstitious contempt and condemnation upon their former selves, and thenceforth they had nothing to do but obey the mandates of the Pope. Leif Erikson, who might hâve stood forth in history as the peer of Rolf and ïlastings, and Ragnar Lodbrok, or of the three Swedish brothers who founded the Empire of Russia, became instead a missionary, on a par with the meanest and most ignorant drudges who force distasteful doctrines upon the lielpless, and forfeited the honors which a grateful posterity would hâve heeped upon him.

He seems to hâve turned ont a better missionary than discoverer and explorer, for it is related that soon ail the inhabitants of the Greenland colonies were converted. Gudrid, too, who possessed traits that might hâve made her a heroine of the grand old Norse type, a second Aslôg, simply made a pilgrimage to Rome, as her crowning act, and then buried herself in an Icelandic nunnery.

If we read the account of the Greenland colonies written by a contemporary, Ivar Bardsen, a Greenlander, who was for many years procurator of Garda, the episcopal see of Greenland, and speaks of everything he describes as an eye-witness, we findno reproduction on Greenland soilofthe intellectual, splendid and heroic life led by the people of Iceland ; the colonies were a Roman Catholic mission pure and simple, and the colonists had changed ail their habits and occupations as well as way of thinking. They were no longer law-makers, cultivating Ihose peaceful arts that had enabled them to build up many a

commonwealth, nortillers of the soil, nor even hunters, for the Church had appropriated ail the large domains, the best islands and fjords, and the hunting-grounds ; one conldnot even engage in whale-fishery or hunt reindeer without the consent of the bishop. Ivar Bardsen's account is little more than a description of Church property and the conséquent restrictions of tlie people's privilèges. A few extracts will sliow the cliaracter of the whole : « Near this » (Ketilsfjord) « is a Churcli, called the Church of Arôs, dedicated to the Iloly Cross. Tliis church owns everything on the outside as far as Uerjulfsnaos, islands and socks, and vvhatever the sea throws up, and on the inside everything as far as Petersvig. At Petersvig is a large inhabited district, called Vatsdal, near which is a large lake, two nautical miles broad, abounding in fish. Petersvig church owns tlie whole district of Vatsdal... The church of Dyrnaes owns everything as far as Midfjord. Midfjord stretches out froni Eriksfjord due northwest. Further inside of Eriksfjord is the church of Solfjall, which owns ail Midfjord ; still farther inward of the fjord is the church of Leide, which owns ail up to the end of tlie fjord, as well as on the opposite side as far as Burfjall. Ail beyond Burfjall belongs to the cathedral church. »

The reports of the bishops, if they could be found, including thatof Bishop Erik of Vinland and the various priests and missionaries who were eitlier stationed tliere or travelled back and forth between Greenland and this newer colony, vvould probably not dififer materially from Ivar Bardsen's account, inasmuch as they would only describe Church work and Cliurch gains, but dry and duU as such détails would be, they are indispensable to the fuU knowledge of the Vinland colony, and would fix beyond a doubt its location, extent and period of existence. The state of things depicted by Ivar Bardsen and which must hâve been partially at least true of Vinland also, gives grounds for the exultant boasts of the Roman Catholic writers, of which the following passage, by John Gilmary Shea, is a good spécimen : « The Catliolic Cliurch », lie affirms, « is the oldest organiza-

tion in the United States, and the only one that has retained the same life and polity and forms through each succeeding âge. Her history is interwoven in the whoie fabric of the country's annals... In this she has no parallel. No other institution in the land can trace back an origin in ail the nationalities that once controlled the portions of North America now subject to the laws of the republic. Ail others are récent, local and variable. She alone can everywhere claim to rank as the oldest. »

Ail this is undeniably true, and would be cause for deep sorrow among ail liberal-minded nations, were it not for the one fact that the power of Rome thus early established in Vinland was broken, through the failure of the then Catholic mother country, Norway, to sustain the Vinland and Greenland colonies. Her commerce and navigation with them gradually ceased, about the year 1406, after the crown had secured the monopoly of their trade, and they were left, at the last, even without the necessaries of life. Norway, in short, abandoned thèse colonies ! Worsaa, Egede, Rafn, and Finn Magnusen, ail testify to this fact. In « Grônlands Historislia Mindesmaerke » there is a transcript made by Finn Magnusen from an old Latin manuscript that he fouiid in Iceland, « which may perhaps throw some light on the cause of Norway's désertion of her colonies. It runs thus : « In 1342 the inhabitants of Greenland fell away of their own accord from the true faith and the Christian religion, and having cast offallgood ways and true virtues, turned to the people of America. » Grantz mentions that with the exception of Thorwald and his brother Leif, « the rest of the Greenlanders, the Icelanders, and especially the Norwegians, that resorted from time to time to Wineland, were probably still heathens, who would rather live in a strange land than embrace the Christian religion, which Olaus Tryggveson propagated with impetuousity in Norway. » It is not unlikely that when persécution and the rough devices of proselytism failed, désertion followed and the non- Catholic colonies in the new world were left to their fate !

It is maintained by ail supporters of the claim of Golumbus as

the discoverer of America, that the discovery of that land by the Norsemen produced no results, wliile, on the contrary, this discovery is valuable solely for its results^ for the voyages of Leif Erikson and his followers, and their colonies, which must hâve lasted, at the most moderato computation, for several centuries, certainly until 1342, the time of the gênerai défection from the « true faith,» led, by a direct and comparatively swiftprocess to the re-discovery of that same Atlantic coast by John and Sébastian Cabot, and its subséquent colonization during the reign of Queen Elisabeth, that is to say under the auspices of a Protestant government.

The Catholic Church, however, loth to acknowledge itself foiled, and ever seeking to regain its ancient supremacy over the North American continent, is not likely to hâve lost or destroyed the records, the briefs, papal Bulls, reports of bishops, etc., which comprise the liistory of its rule in Greenland and Vinland. They are undoubtedly still in existence, avvaiting the search of the scientists and historians of Europe.

MIGRATION DES GAELS EN AMÉRIQUE AU MOYEN-AQE Par M. E. Beauvois.

L'auteur développe ses idées sur les migrations d'Européens en Amérique pendant le moyen-àge, et spécialement des migrations des Gaôls. Des prêtres irlandais nommés papas seraient venus à deux reprises en Amérique : une première fois au huitième siècle de l'ère chrétienne, et une deuxième fois au quatorzième siècle.

Ces prêtres auraient fait connaître la religion chrétienne aux peuplades américaines; c'est ainsi que s'expliquent les nombreuses analogies que les premiers conquérants espagnols du seizième siècle ont constatées entre les religions indigènes et le

christianisme. La preuve la plus curieuse de cette influence des prêtres catholiques serait l'existence dûment constatée d'un crucifix auquel les indigènes rendaient un culte Un de ces crucifix existe encore aujourd'hui à Mérida dans le Yucatan, où, depuis le temps de Cortez, il est l'objet d'une véritable idolâtrie.

[Le comité de publication du compte-rendu regrette vivement que M. E. Beauvois n'ait pas voulu lui laisser son important manuscrit.]