Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/230

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

ISLAM

ISLAM summons to the pulpit, which he regarded as inter- ruptions of his literary activities. The years 175S and 1759 deprived him of his three greatest patrons — Pope Benedict XIV, Queen Maria Barbara, and King Ferdinand VI — and ushered in for him a period of bitter trials. As early as 1758 the per- secution of his order in Portugal began, and the ear- liest symptoms of a similar storm soon made their appearance in Spain. Sent to Galicia in 17G0, Isia devoted himself with great spiritual fruits to giving public missions and the Exercises of St. Ignatius. The royal decree, which two years later forbade any Jesuit to publish a new book, paralyzed his literary activity, and, after various preparatory decrees of a like nature, the Jesuits were finally banished from every part of Spain in 1767. Isla, moreover, was visited by a per- sonal affliction, an apoplectic stroke causing a teinpo- rary paralysis of the mouth antl tongue. The painful journey into exile — first to Corsica for a resilience of fourteen dreary months, and thence to the Papal States — his grief at the suppression of his order, the eight succeeding years of distress pendmg his deliver- ance by death, are described by Isla himself with his usual imperturbable good-humour in his letters to his sister. The concluding years of his life were made somewhat more pleasant, thanks to the noble hospi- tality extentled to him by Count Tedeschi at Bologna. He died in the seventy-ninth year of his age. Isla's fame rests much less on his activity as a preacher and his other pastoral labours than on his humorous and satirical writings. His earliest literary experiment was the "Juventud triunfante" (the "Triumph of Youth"), a description of a festival, in which Isla gives a skilfully exaggerated account of the already excessively elaborate preparations made by the University of Salamanca to celebrate the canonization of Stanislaus Kostka and Aloysius Gon- zaga (1727). His second publication may be de- scribed as a pure satire on the singular methods of the surgery of his day. For his next subject he was again to choose a national festival, celebrating for little Navarre the accession of Ferdinand VI. This work he entitled: "Triunfo del Amor y de la Lealtad: Dia grande de Navarra" ("The Triumph of Love and Loyalty", or "The Great Day of Navarre"); it was not intended to be a formal satire on the exaggerated national consciousness of the Navarrese, but the bom- bastic extravagance of the language renders it rather a masterly travesty than a serious eulogy. Thework, however, which keeps Isla's name still living in the pages of literature, is his romance on pulpit oratory, the "Historia del Famoso predicador Fray Gerundio de Campazas" (History of the celebrated preacher. Fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes), whorn he himself called a "preaching Don Quixote". It is a clever satire, in which he exposes the complete decay of contemporary pulpit-oratory in Spain. In the form of a broadly sketched biography, this clever romance, in spite of the condemnation of the Inquisition, circu- lated throughout Europe in numerous editions and translations. The latest critical edition appeared at Leipzig in 1SS5 (prepared by Professor Eduard Lidforss). The work was first translated into English by Baretti (London, 1772); there are three transla- tions in German, and many in French. One modern critic (Zarnckes, "Lit. Centralblatt fiir Deut.", 1886) sets Isla's romance above Don Quixote. Another work of Isla's, written in the last years of his life, long engaged the attention of literary critics, namely, his adaptation of "Gil Bias ", which appeared posthumously under the title " Adventuras de Gil Bias de Santillane, robadas d Espafia, adoptadas en Francia por Moris. Le Sage, restituidas d su patria y A, su lengua nativa por un Espanol zeloso, que no sufre que se burlen desu nacion" (Adventures of Gil Blasof Santil- lana, stolen from Spain and appropriated in 1' ranee by M. Le Sage, restored to their country and their native tongue by a jealous Spaniard, who will not suffer his country to be made sport of). Isla's sermons were published in sLx volumes at Madrid in 1792 and 1793, but no new edition has been issued, nor have they been translated in other languages. They are, however, highly esteemed in Spain and occupy an important place in the history of the development of pulpit ora- tory in that country. Of his many translations from other tongues, that of P. Croiset's "Anni^e chr6- tienne", unfortunately not completed, is the most important. His three apologetic works for his order could not be printed at that period; one of them has been lost, a second has been recently published. Among his literary remains was discovered a transla- tion of the Italian burlesque epic "II Cicerone" by Abbot Gian Carlo Passeroni, a picture of contempo- rary Italian life in society and literary circles. Isla's intimate correspondence with his sister was published in four volumes in 1785-86, a new edition being issued fifteen years later with two additional volumes. Monlau has inserted this correspondence with forty- four further letters in the "Select Works of Isla" (1850; new ed., 1870). The second centenary of Isla's birth was celebrated with great festivity in many towns in Spain on 24 March, 1903, clearly indicating that his name still lives in the memory of his countrymen. There are five more or less complete Biographies of Isla: by DK Salas (Madrid, 1803): von Murr, Journal (Nurem- berg, 1783), II; Monlau ia Selected Works of Isla (Madrid, 1850); GoDEAu, Les Prlcheurs burlesques en Espagne au XVIII' siicle. Etude sur le P. Isla (Paris, 1891): Baumgartner in Stimmen aus Maria-Loach (1905), 82-92, 182-205, 299-315. Nicholas Scheid. Islam, an Arabic word which, since Mohammed's time, has acquired a religious and technical signifi- cance denoting the religion of Mohammed and of the Koran, just as Clvristianity denotes that of Jesus and of the Gospels, or Judaism that of Moses, the Prophets, and of the Old Testament. Grammatically, the word Islam is the infinitive of the so-called fourth verbal form of the regular in- transitive stem saliina, "to be safe ", "to be secure", etc. In its second verbal form {sallama) it means "to make some one safe", and "to free", "to make secure", etc. In its third form (salama) it signifies "to make peace", or "to become at peace", i. e. "to be reconciled ". In its fourth form (aslatna), the infinitive of which is islam, it acquires the sense of "to resign", "to submit oneself", or "to surrender". Hence Islam, in its ethico-religious significance, means the "entire surrender of the will to God ", and its pro- fessors are called Muslimun (sing. Muslim), which is the participial form, that is "those who have surren- dered themselves", or "believers", as opposed to the "rejectors" of the Divine message, who are called Kafirs, Mushriks (that is those who associate various gods with the Deity), or pagans. Historically, of course, to become a Muslim was to become a follower of Mohammed and of his religion; and it is very doubtful whether the earliest Muslims, or followers of Mohammed, had any clear notion of the ethico- religious significance of the term, although its later theological development is entirely consistent and logical. According to the Shafiites (one of the four great Mohammedan schools of theology), Islam, as a priniciple of the law of God, is "the manifesting of humility or submission, and outward conforming with the law of God, and the taking upon oneself to do or to say as the Prophet has done or said"; and if this outward manifestation of religion is coupled with "a firm and internal lielief of the heart", i. e. faith, then it is called Inian. Hence the Moham- medan theological axiom "Islam is with the tongue, and Iman is with the heart." Acconling to the Hanafites (another of the four above-mentioned schools), however, no distinction is to be made be- tween the two terms, as Iman, according to them, is essentially includeil in Islam.