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lessons at the foot of Trajan's column when they examined the bas-reliefs of that monument. How often have I gazed on that wonderful column' said one of these clerics, Georges Sincai, who afterwards became one of the first Roumanian historians. These scholars of the great Emperor, having returned home, whispered even beyond the Carpathians into the ears of the Walachians and the Moldavians the renown of Trajan's name and the lessons to be learned from that far-off epic in stone. They spoke of this trophy of the Roman name as a trophy of the Roumanian name. Thus they helped the Roumanian personality to know itself better, to defend itself better, and they prepared the way for the declaration that Bishop Sulut, the first 'United Catholic' Metropolitan of Transylvania between 1851 and 1867, was one day to make even under the yoke of Budapest: In our heart as well as in the heart of the whole nation, towards all the members of the nation, is found this impulse, this supernatural sense, by which we love our Roumanian brethren who dwell in the Danube Principalities or anywhere else in the world.'

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Latinism in Transylvania began to struggle in order to live again, Slavism in Bohemia struggled so as not to die. By a touching foundation Bohemian patriotism called God to its rescue. There were in the Cathedral of St. Vit in Prague in the beginning of 1680 two priests officially charged to implore of God the preservation of the Czech people'; and in order that their prayers should be fervent and sure these priests should be Czechs, or even Poles, or even Croats, or even Slovaks. So the good Canon Pechina de Tchechorad decided when he generously established the two prebends. He looked upon all these people as of the same illustrious Slav race.' About the same time another priest prophesied the joyful hour will follow the hour of sadness, and the Czech tongue will win back the place that belongs to it.' He was Bohuslas Balbin, a Jesuit, whose works were forbidden by the censor. He saw Germanism filter into Bohemia.

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'No people,' he said, 'migrate in such great numbers as the German; they arrive in bands, and it would seem natural that they should learn our language. Not at all, they mean to impose their own on us; their chances of success would be null without the unforeseen complicity of many Czechs who favour them through ambition, cupidity,,

vanity, or stupidity, forgetting the word of Tacitus that it is a part of freedom to be governed by one's own.'

In these feverish lines is summed up the whole history of the Germanization of Bohemia, such as was carried out for two centuries after Balbin and even under Francis Joseph. Side by side with these Jesuits who hawked about, like carriers of heresy, the Czech books of the sixteenth century, other Jesuits spread abroad by the thousand Catholic books written in Czech and prepared Czech translations of the Sacred Text. 'We are as salt in the eyes,' said the priest Betskowsky, 'and an eternal thorn in the heart of our neighbours and even of some of our fellowcountrymen.' When he died, in 1725, this priest left an historical work in which the eighteenth-century Czech could become familiar with the national past. Before the century expired another priest, Dobrovsky, opened up another avenue of thought by joining with the Slav brethren of Russia in scientific relations from which arose Slav philology.

A Croatian priest resident in Rome, Georges Krijanitch, strove by herculean efforts to restore and enrich his despised native language, and to make it an instrument of science. Then burying himself in Russia, he strove to realize the dream of a Pan-Slav idiom composed of the riches of the Russian, Croatian and Slav tongues, a union of the Churches, one Slav people, one Slav Church united to Rome. He wrote a book entitled La Politique, in which this linguistic attempt was set forth and which seemed to echo the offensive of the Czech Balbin against the infiltrations of the Germans. Krijanitch had asked that the hospital St. Jerome of the Illyrians in Rome, which received Croats, Dalmatians, Bosniaks and Slavs, should also receive the Slovenes of Carniola and of Styria. He was not successful. The Germanic tide, the currents of which were directed by Vienna, spread out over the whole Slovene country. It was one of the many griefs of Krijanitch that one day the Slovene personality might, through being forgotten, lose its own memory. But one hundred and fifty years later Napoleon, the great éveilleur of national souls, shook up the Southern Slavs.

Our race will be glorified, I dare to hope it.

A miracle is about to be performed, I predict it.

Leaning with one hand on Gaul, I give the other to Greece to save her. At the head of Greece is Corinth, in the centre of Europe is Illyria. Corinth is called the eye of Greece, Illyria will be the jewel of the world.

So prophesied a Slovene monk, Vodnik, in 1797, who became the founder of the first popular journal known to the Southern Slavs. In this Ode à l'Illyrie ressuscitée the Hapsburg and the Grand Turk might have read their future destinies. It prepared the way for Yugo-Slavia. Austria soon learned that the lyricism of the monk had for ever awakened the Slovenes. In 1814 a little rustic, named Antoine Slomsek, entered the Gymnasium of Cilli. He spoke Slovene, and the other boys asked him to be their master. Afterwards as a priest and then as a bishop Slomsek always continued to teach the mother tongue. Poetry for children, sermons for adults, grammars and chants succeeded one another from Slomsek's pen to revive the soul of his people. Vienna forbade him to establish the society he had in mind for the propagation of the Slovene language. However, in 1846, he issued an Annual Review called Miettes, crumbs of daily bread for the year. Editors now disputed among themselves for his pen. Vienna ordered that on the banks of the Drave and the Save the priest in teaching Catechism should use German. The Slovenes partly gave way but the deserters were severely reprimanded by the bishop in the last article that came from pen. In 1862 Slomsek was laid to rest.

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Soon another Slovene poet arose among the clergy, a priest named Gregoriec, who sang in his poems of a certain Ash Wednesday. Arise, my poor people,' he cried, until now trampled under foot in the dust; it is not the day of ashes which is your day, it is the day of the Resurrection.' Vienna continued to Germanize, but these voices of the Church conveyed the impression that at certain fateful times the sepulchral stones rose up for the peoples as formerly for their God.

In 1860, when Austria fell back before Italy; a magnificent interpreter of the Slav fraternity rose up in the person of Strossmayer, bishop of the small Croatian town of Diakovo. In a loud voice that carried he demanded the application of the federal principle whilst maintaining the Danube Empire. The bitterness of the friction with the Magyars, whom Strossmayer considered to his last day as race, haughty, egotistical, and tyrannical in the highest degree,' raised in his soul no desire of vengeance. All his pastoral letters were inspired with this thought, that in order to be worthy of liberty, they must extend the same liberty to those of different race and religion with whom

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VOL. XIV-27

they come into contact. It is the teaching of the Cross, and the law of every human group that desires to be worthy of the fruits of Redemption.' The Governments of Vienna and Budapest did not know how to unravel this teaching, but Strossmayer did not despair of converting them.

In him was incarnated the idealism of 1848; he willed not the death of Austria but that it be converted and live -live by allowing every one of its peoples to live its life. I would give my life,' he wrote to Gladstone, 'to save this great country that has a magnificent task to perform in the new condition of the world.' The Dual Monarchy did not understand. In the Croatian Diet the Magyar element through underhand dealings secured an unjust preponderance. Strossmayer then, over these caricatures of parliamentary assemblies, shook the dust of his episcopal mules. He devoted himself to the exercise of a kind of intellectual sovereignty that would extend even to the Slav brethren and that would propagate, as a pledge of the future, the splendours of the old Croatian culture. The Academy of Zagreb was opened in 1867, and the University Zagreb in 1874. He loved these institutions and devoted his eloquence, his revenues, and his heart to them. A young canon named Racki was the Professor of History. Does Austria,' asked Racki one day, wish to desert the rôle that belongs to her, to betray the Slavs who maintain her, for the greater glory of the Germans who lie in wait for her destruction? Such a policy corresponds neither to the traditions of the Hapsburg dynasty nor to its true interests, and it compromises its future.' Misunderstood in Vienna, he returned to his brethren, and wherever there were Slavs his science became a patriotic work. He was the first historian of the Yugo-Slav peoples, the defender of the Croatian claims in Dalmatia, the interpreter of the constitutional right which Croatia enjoyed since the Middle Ages. On the day of his death the rough draft of a treaty of alliance for the union of Croatia and Dalmatia, Istria and Carniola, Herzegovina and Bosnia as one and the same people was found on his table. Before his time Yugo-Slav history was less known to the Yugo-Slavs themselves than was that of Germany, France or England. But in the hands of this priest it become a powerful agent of propaganda, and the publications of the Academy of Zagreb, which at the end of the century exceeded three hundred volumes, was a

witness to the learned world that in this corner of the Danube basin a new science was born, the educatrix of a conscience.

Strossmayer, with the Cross in his hand, had devoted himself to the national service, and considered himself the 'divinely-appointed defender' of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He desired, as such, a place at the Congress of Berlin. Thus the Church, with a mother's ambition, was watching over the second youth of these peoples as she had in the Middle Ages watched over the first, she who had been the depositary of their traditions, their songs, their poems.

III-LIBERTY OF THE PEOPLES AND UNION OF THE

CHURCHES

'It is in the seminaries,' said Emile de Laveleye in 1867, 'that the national movement imbibed this force of expansion which was spread everywhere in the basin of the Danube.' All these apostles of the Roumanian, the Slovene, the Croatian ideal had this trait in common, that beyond the limits of their Church they would seek out in the churches cut off from Rome the brethren of their race to whom they would extend their patriotic apostolate. But since there was to be an end to this division of their peoples why not also an end to the division of their churches? This idea of union became contagious. These workers of the future national unity marched forward, in the name even of their nationality, imbued with the idea of the union of the churches.

Slomsek, in 1851, got approved by Pius IX the association of prayer which he had founded under the patronage of SS. Cyril and Methodius to obtain from God the religious unity of the Slav world, and invited all the separated brothers and sisters to pray with their own flocks. Strossmayer, who, though Bishop of Diakovo, had episcopal jurisdiction over Bosnia, and was vicar-apostolic of Serbia, seemed to see in these very titles an appeal to throw the bridges, in the name of the Roman Church, across towards the other Slavs. He considered that the first step towards religious unity would be the acquisition from Rome of the right to use the Slav liturgy by the Slav churches united to Rome. Racki, who was in Rome in 1857, drew up a memorial on the question for the Roman Congregation in charge. He saw in the Academy of Zagreb, which was undenominational, a providential bond of union between East and

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