- Sorin, a French priest, was 27 when he landed in Indiana in 1841, and the next year he laid the foundation for the higher-learning school in South Bend.
French Catholic priest Edward Sorin arrived in Indiana with the confidence of a young man who didn't know what he was facing.
Indiana of the 1840s was no longer frontier, but it had its raw side.
A few Potawatomi Indians were around. So were former fur traders who only recently had been acclimated to more civilized arrangements. The population was growing but still small.
With virtually nothing to work with, Sorin would go on to create the University of Notre Dame. Through it all, this French missionary showed a passion for doing the right thing that would become the heart of the institution.
Sorin's arrival in Vincennes, Ind., at age 27 didn't get off to a smooth start. The local bishop apparently thought Sorin — a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross order — was somebody he could bully.
In the Catholic Church, priests are either diocesan — under the rule of a bishop — or in an order, as Sorin was. Those in an order report to the head of the order, not to a bishop.
Bishop Celestin Guynemer de la Hailandiere and Sorin were soon at odds. Hailandiere argued that the Holy Cross mission should be under his control.
If Hailandiere thought Sorin was going to roll over, he was mistaken. Once, the bishop came away from an argument convinced he had won. Wasn't Sorin's silence a sign of surrender? But Sorin left and proceeded to do as he had.
In South Bend
The bishop seemed to tire of Sorin. He gave the Holy Cross order some land in South Bend, originally a fur-trading post, with the stipulation that it build a school on the land. While Vincennes is in southern Indiana and has mild winters, South Bend winters can be fierce. And only a few shacks were on the land.
If Sorin wanted to do things his way, let him do it in a cold, desolate place — at least that appeared to be the bishop's message.
Edward Sorin (1814-93) was born near Ahuille, France. He was the seventh of nine children. Although many of the locals were peasants, Sorin's family was well off. Julien Sorin, his father, owned the land he farmed, and the family lived in a three-story manor.
While much of France after the French Revolution had abandoned the Catholic faith, that was not true in the region where Sorin grew up.
Being a priest probably still carried an aura of danger. Only 30 years before Sorin's birth, the French Revolution guillotined, starved, drowned or bludgeoned to death about 3,000 Catholic priests.
Sorin was also born too late to fight the U.S. persecution of Indians, who were brutally expelled from Indiana in 1838-39. Only a few Potawatomi eluded the death march to Kansas. At least one French priest accompanied the Indians on the trek and paid with his life.
The relationship between French Catholics and the Indians was historically friendly. Unlike the British, the French fur traders had no desire to drive away the tribes or change the Indian way of life.
Yet while most French missionaries sided with the Indians, the backdrop wasn't all pure. In 1843, Sorin learned that a priest — in apparent collusion with the bishop — had gained some land in Michigan from the Potawatomi under questionable circumstances.
Sorin urged a Louisiana bishop to pressure Hailandiere "to renounce purely and simply all his rights to this land." The request fell flat.
Five years later, Sorin was vindicated. A Michigan court voided the church deeds to the land and cited the missionary and Hailandiere for "fraud and undue influence."
Hailandiere was never prosecuted because he returned to France a year before the verdict came down.
After Sorin arrived in South Bend, he named the area Notre Dame-du-lac. With the Holy Cross brothers under his command, work began on the campus. The first Main Building was finished by 1844.
Notre Dame struggled at first because it tried to impose a French academic regimen on Americans. Sorin was realistic enough to change the curriculum while relaxing religious observances imposed on students.
The difficulties Notre Dame faced in the early years were chiefly economic. Sorin constantly struggled with money issues. But he was determined to succeed.
Marvin R. O'Connell, in his book "Edward Sorin," wrote that the priest succeeded because of "his self-confidence, his willingness to take up any challenge and embark on any adventure and, less attractively, his propensity to ride roughshod over opponents."
Sorin went to extremes to make sure Notre Dame survived.
Two years after the Gold Rush began in 1848, Sorin sent four Holy Cross brothers — plus a farmer, a student and an apprentice tradesman — on a mission to dig for gold in California. They took off with food, supplies and 3 gallons of brandy and whiskey.
Maybe it was the distance, maybe the timing. Or maybe it was the whiskey. But the mission failed.
The farmer, the student and the tradesman deserted. One Holy Cross brother died. A second quit, writing Sorin that "you shall never see me again." Only two of the seven returned to Notre Dame.
Although the Gold Rush fiasco didn't endear Sorin to his religious superiors in France, a priest sent from France in 1848 to evaluate the Notre Dame founder sent back a glowing report: Sorin had turned a raw mission into a shining institution in less than seven years.
On another occasion, Sorin showed his aggressive side.
In 1854, a typhus epidemic struck the university. One of every five Holy Cross missionaries died. The sickness spared the students, who were housed separately.
Sorin had to find a solution. If the epidemic became known, parents would pull out their students and leave the university empty.
One clue came from the Potawatomi. Tribal lore said a poisonous fish lived in the lake at Notre Dame. Sorin became convinced that some truth lay in the story. He figured the water was the killer.
Sorin learned that a nearby farmer named Rush had a dam that caused the Notre Dame lake to rise and sink, creating a marsh that bred flies and mosquitoes. But Rush refused to remove the dam or sell the land. It was as though he enjoyed obstinacy, even if people were dying.
Then one day before Mass, Sorin summoned five or six of the most physically imposing Holy Cross brothers. Sorin told them to listen to no one, to stop at nothing, but to tear down that dam.
They did, and Rush backed down and sold the parcel to Notre Dame. Never again did typhus plague Notre Dame.
The Doer
Sorin faced other challenges and triumphed over them.
In the Civil War, inflation threatened the university's finances. Sorin made students pay a third of their tuition, room and board in gold.
When President Lincoln threatened to draft Holy Cross brothers into the military, Sorin used his contacts to enlist the support of Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman to get Lincoln to drop the plan.
When a fire destroyed most of the campus in 1879, a 66-year-old Sorin stood amid the rubble and said: "If it were all gone, I should not give up." Notre Dame was rebuilt.
Sorin's efforts weren't always against head winds. One factor that helped him was the expansion of the railroad. It let the university draw students from afar.
Sorin's Keys
•Founded the University of Notre Dame in 1842, overcoming financial obstacles, epidemics and meddling by clerics who outranked him. Rebuilt the university after a fire destroyed it in 1879.
•Named head of the Congregation of Holy Cross order in 1868 and saved it from financial chaos.
No comments:
Post a Comment