the Catholic Congress (1889), the opening of the Catholic University
(1889), the Columbian Educational Exhibit at Chicago (1893),
the establishment of the Apostolic Delegation at Washington
1893).
The Catholic Church in the United States conducts no foreign missions, but takes care of its own percentage of Indians and Negroes. Of the Indian population of the United States about 48,194 are Catholics, and they are attended by 65 priests, who look after 96 churches or chapels; there are 50 schools conducted by members of 16 sisterhoods, in which 4430 children are educated. The Catholic negroes are about 138,573 in number. They have 47 churches conducted by 43 white clergymen; 114 schools, in which 6294 children are educated by 31 sisterhoods, who also conduct 11 charitable institutions. The expenses of these missions are borne by private charity, and by a general annual collection.
Authorities.—General History: John Gilmary Shea, Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll (New York, 1888); The Catholic Church in Colonial Days (New York, 1886); The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the United States (New York, 1886).—Bishop O'Gorman, A History of the Catholic Church in the United States (1895). This work contains a useful bibliography.—Clarke, Lives of the Deceased Bishops (1872). Statistics: The Annual Directory of the Catholic Clergy. Of these, two are published; one by D. & J. Sadlier, New York, the other (Hoffmanns') by M. Wiltzius & Co. of Milwaukee. The Catholic general statistics of the eleventh (1890) census may be found in The Religious Forces of the United States, by H. K. Carroll (New York, 1893). See also U.S. Census, Special Report on Religious Bodies in 1906 (1910). Legislation: Acta et Decreta Concilii Plenarii Baltimorensis, iii. (Baltimore, 1886). This is illustrated and brought into relation with the general laws of the Church in Smith's Elements of Ecclesiastical Law (New York). In connexion with this may be read Humphrey's Urbs et Orbis (London, 1899), an account of the general government of Roman Catholicism.
- (✠ J. G.)
ROMANCE, originally a composition written in “Romance” language: that is to say, in one of the phases on which the Latin tongue entered after or during the dark ages. For some centuries by far the larger number of these compositions were narrative fictions in prose or verse; and since the special “Romance” language of France—the earliest so-called—was the original vehicle of nearly all such fictions, the use of the term for them became more and more accepted in a limited sense. Yet for a long time there was no definite connotation of fiction attached to it, but only of narrative story: and the French version of William of Tyre's History of the Crusades, a very serious chronicle written towards the close of the 12th century, bears the name of Roman d'Éracle simply because the name of the emperor Heraclius occurs in the first line. But if the explanation of the name “Romance” is quite simple, certain and authentic, the same is by no means the case with its definition, or even with the origin of the thing to which that name came mostly to be applied. For some centuries an abstraction has been formed from the concrete examples. “Romance,” “romanticism,” “the romantic character,” “the romantic spirits,” have been used to express sometimes a quality regarded in itself, but much more frequently a difference from the supposed “classical” character and spirit. The following article will deal chiefly with the matter of Romance, excluding or merely referring to accounts of such individual romances as are noticed elsewhere. But it will not be possible to conclude without some reference to the vaguer and more contentious signification.
Speculations on the origin of the peculiar kind of story which we recognize rather than define under the name of romance have been numerous and sometimes confident; but a wary and well-informed criticism will be slow to accept most of them. It is certain that many of its characteristics are present in the Odyssey; and it is a most remarkable fact that these characteristics are singled out for reprehension—or at least for comparative disapproval—by the author of the Treatise on the Sublime. The absence of central plot, and the Romance in antiquity. prolongation rather than evolution of the story; the intermixture of the supernatural; the presence and indeed prominence of love-affairs; the juxtaposition of tragic and almost farcical incident; the variety of adventure arranged rather in the fashion of a panorama than otherwise: all these things are in the Odyssey, and they are all, in varying degrees and measures, characteristic of romance. Nor are they absent from the few specimens of ancient prose fiction which we possess. If the Satyricon was ever more than a mass of fragments, it was certainly a romance, though one much mixed with satire, criticism and other things; and the various Greek survivals from Longus to Eustathius always and rightly receive the name. But two things were still wanting which were to be all-powerful in the romances proper—Chivalry and Religion. They could not yet be included, for chivalry did not exist; and such religion as did exist lent itself but ill to the purpose except by providing myths for ornament and perhaps pattern.
A possible origin of the new romance into which these elements entered (though it was some time before that of chivalry definitely emerged) has been seen by one of the least hazardous of the speculations above referred to in the hagiology or “Saint's Life,” which arose at an early though uncertain period, developed itself pretty rapidly, and spreading over all Christendom (which by degrees meant all Europe and parts of Asia) provided The “Saint's Life.” centuries with their chief supply of what may be called interesting literature. If the author of On the Sublime was actually Longinus, the minister of Zenobia, there is no doubt that examples both sacred and profane of the kind of “fiction” (“imitation” or “representation”) which he deprecated were mustering and multiplying close to, perhaps in, his own time. The Alexander legend of the pseudo-Callisthenes is supposed to have seen the light in Egypt as early as A.D. 200, and the first Greek version of that “Vision of Saint Paul,” which is the ancestor of all the large family of legends of the life after death, is pretty certainly as old as the 4th century and may be as old as the 3rd. The development of the Alexandreid was to some extent checked or confined to narrow channels as long as something like traditional and continuous study of the classics was kept up. But hagiology was entirely free from criticism; its subjects were immensely numerous; and in the very nature of the case it allowed the tendencies and the folk-lore of three continents and of most of their countries to mingle with it. Especially the comparative sobriety of classical literature became affected with the Eastern appetite for marvel and unhesitating acceptation of it; and the extraordinary beauty of many of the central stories invited and necessitated embroidery, continuation, episode. Later, no doubt, the adult romance directly reacted on the original saint's life, as in the legends of St Mary Magdalene most of all, of St Eustace, and of many others. But there can be very little doubt that if the romance itself did not spring from the saint's life it was fostered thereby.
Proceeding a little further in the cautious quest—not for the definite origins which are usually delusive, but for the tendencies which avail themselves of opportunities and the opportunities which lend themselves to tendencies—we may notice two things very important to the subject. The one is that as Graeco-Roman civilization began to spread North and East it met, to appearance which approaches certainty, matter The gathering of matter. which lent itself gladly to “romantic” treatment. That such matter was abundant in the literature and folk-lore of the East we know: that it was even more abundant in the literatures and folk-lore of the North, if we cannot strictly be said to know, we may be reasonably sure. On the other hand, as the various barbarian nations (using the word in the wide Greek sense), at least those of the North, became educated to literature, to “grammar,” by classical examples, they found not a few passages in these examples which were either almost romances already or which lent themselves, with readiness that was almost insistence, to romantic treatment. Apollonius Rhodius had made almost a complete romance of the story of Jason and Medea. Virgil had imitated him by making almost a complete romance of the story of Aeneas and Dido: and Ovid, who for that very reason was to become the most popular author of the middle ages early and late, had gone some way towards romancing a great body of mythology. We do not know exactly who first applied to the legendary tale of Troy the methods which the
