PRESENTATION
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PRESENTATION
city in their work, and in course of time two fine con-
vents were built within the city limits, besides con-
vents at Sonoma and Berkeley. The earthquake of
1906 destroyed both of their convents in the city, with
practically their entire contents; but the sisters have
courageously begim their work afresh, and bid fair to
accomplish as much good work as in the past.
The Presentation Convent, St. Michael's, New York City, was founded 8 Sept., 1874, by Mother Joseph Hickey, of the Presentation Convent, Terenure, Co. DiJblin, with two sisters from that convent, two from Clondalkin, and seven postulants. Rev. Arthur J. Donnelly, pastor of St. Michael's Church, on com- pleting his school building, went to Ireland in 1873 to invite the Presentation Nuns to take charge of the girls' department. The consent of the nuns having been obtained, Cardinal CuUen applied to the Holy See for the necessary Brief authorizing the nuns to leave Ireland and proceed to New York, which was accorded by Pius IX. The work of the nuns at St. Michael's has been eminently successful. From 1874 to 1910 there have been entered on the school register 16,781 names. In 1884 the sisters took charge of St. Michael's Home, Green Ridge, Staten Island, where over two hundred destitute children are cared for.
In 1886 Mother Magdalen Keating, with a few sis- ters, left New York at the invitation of Rev. P. J. Garrigan, afterwards Bishop of Sioux City, and took charge of the schools of St. Bernard's Parish, Fitch- burg, Massachusetts. The mission proved most flour- ishing, and has branch houses in West Fitchburg and CHnton, Massachusetts; Central Falls, Rhode Island; and Berlin, New Hampshire. The order was intro- duced into the Diocese of Dubuque by Mother M. Vincent Hennessey in 1874. There are now branch- houses at Calmar, Elkader, Farley, Key West, Lawler, Waukon, Clare, Danbury, Whittemore, and Madison, Nebraska. The order came to Fargo, North Dakota, in 1880 under Mot her Mary John Hughes, and possesses a free school, home, and academy. St. Colman's, Watervliet, New York, was opened in 1881, the sisters having charge of the flourishing orphanage. In 1886 some sisters from Fargo went to Aberdeen, South Dakota, and since then, under the guidance of Mother M. Joseph Butler, they have taken charge of schools at Bridgewater, Bristol, Chamberlain, Elkton, Jefferson, Mitchell, Milbank, and Woonsocket, besides two hos- pitals. There are in the United States 4.38 members of the order, who conduct 32 parochial schools, at- tended by 6909 pupils; 5 academies, with 416 pupils; 3 orphanages, with 519 inmates; 2 hospitals.
Mother M. Stanislaus.
Nagle, Nano (Honoria), foundress of the Presen- tation Order, b. at Ballygriffin, Cork, Ireland, 1728; d. at Cork, 20 April, 1784. After an elementary edu- cation in Ireland, where Catholic schools were then proscribed, she went to France for further studies, where some of her kinsmen were living in the suite of the exiled King James, and entered on a brilliant social life in the court circles of the capital. One morning, when returning from a ball, she was struck by the sight of crowds of working-men and women waiting for a church to be opened for early Mass. .\ few weeks later she returned to Ireland, and only the stringent laws then in force against Catholic educational activ- ity prevented her from consecrating herself at once to the Christian training of Irish children, who were growing up in ignorance of their Faith. A short time spent as a postulant at a convent in France confirmed her belief that her mission lay rather in Ireland, a con- viction strengthened by the advice of her directors. Her fir.st step on returning to Ireland was to familiarize herself with the work of some ladies who had privately organized a school in Dublin, and, on the death of her mother and sister, she went to Cork, where in the face of the most adverse conditions she began her crusade
against the ignorance and vice there prevalent. Her
first pupils were gathered secretly, and her part in the
undertaking having been discovered, it was only after
a period of opposition that she secured the support of
her relatives. In less than a year, however, she had
established two schools for boys and five for girls, with
a capacity for about two hundred. The foundress her-
self conducted the classes in Christian doctrine and
instructed those preparing for First Communion,
searching the most abandoned parts of the city for
those in need of spiritual and temporal help. Her
charity extended also to aged and infirm women, for
whom she established an asylum at Cork, and espe-
cially to working-women, whose perseverance in faith
and virtue was a source of solicitude to her. The de-
mands of her numerous charit able undert akings proving
excessive for her resources, she solicited contributions
from house to house, at the cost of much humiliation.
For the purpose of perpetuating her work she de-
cided to found a convent; and a community of Ursu-
lines, young Irishwomen trained especially for the
purpose, was sent to Cork in 1771, although they did
not venture to assume their religious garb for eight
years. As the Ursuline Rule, with which Nano had
not thoroughly acquainted herself, did not permit
entire consecration to the visitation of the sick and the
education of poor children, she resolved to form a
community more peculiarly adapted to the duties she
had taken up, while remaining a devoted friend of the
Ursulines. In 1775 she founded the Presentation
Order (see above). She set an example of charity and
self-abnegation to her community, giving seven hours
daily to the class-room and four to prayer, in addition
to the demands of her duties as superior and her work
of visitation. It was said there was not a single garret
in Cork that she did not know. Her austerities and
the persistence with which she continued her labours
in the most inclement weather brought on a fatal ill-
ness; she died exliorting her community to spend
themselves for the poor. Her remains were interred in
the cemetery of the Ursuline convent she had built.
Florence Rudge McGahan.
Presentation, Religious Congregations op THE. — (1) Daughters of the Presentation, founded in 1627 by Nicolas Sanguin (b. 1580; d. 1653), Bishop of Senlis, a prelate who was atoning by a life of sanc- tity for the errors of an ill-spent youth. Having given himself unstintingly to the service of the plague- stricken during a pest which devastated Senlis during the early years of his episcopate, he turned his atten- tion to the fovmdation of a teaching order to combat the prevailing ignorance and the resulting vice in the diocese. Two young women from Paris, Catherine Dreux and Marie de la Croix, began the work of teaching in 1626 and the following year were formed into a religious community, which shortlj^ afterwards was enclosed under the Rule of St. .\ugustine. The opposition of the municipal authorities gave way be- fore the Bull of erection granted by Urban VHI (4 Jan., 1628) and letters patent of Louis XIII granted in 1630, the year in which the first solemn profession was held. In 1632 papal permission was obtained for two of Bishop Sanguin's sisters and a companion to leave for a time their monastery of Moncel of the Order of St. Clare, to form the new community in the religious life. Seven years later they were re- ceived as members into the new order, over which they presiiied for more than thirty years. Tlie con- gregation did not survive the Revolution, although imder Bonaparte one of the former members orga- nized at Senlis a school which was later taken over by the municipality. The habit was black serge over a robe of white serge, with a white guimpe, a black bandeau, and veil. The original constitutions .seem to have been altered by Mgr Sanguin's nephew and suc- cessor in the See of Senlis, owing to the frequent ref-
