Archaeology

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+


Princeton Geniza Lab @GenizaLab | Twitter

[Avatar]

LOL, love it.

--A

[Forestal]

I'm currently in the second year of my archaeology degree. I wish I could use the phrase "They said a lot of things that would take too long to explain". Instead, most books and essays that I've been reading end up saying the same thing in 14 different ways just to bloat their length. It's terribly frustrating.

[Fist and Faith]

Didn't know you were doing archaeology. A shame Kins doesn't hang out here these days.

[Avatar]

Yeah, I miss him too.

Fascinating field I've always thought.

--A

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

A History of Black Catholics in the United States

Daniel Rudd, Mary Elizabeth Lange and Augustus Tolton (CNS photo/courtesy National Black Catholic Congress/courtesy of the Archdiocese of Chicago Archives and Records Center/courtesy of the Catholic Review)


=========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

Editor’s note: The following essay was authored by Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. in the May 3, 1980 issue of America. Father Davis was an expert in Black Catholic history and died in 2015. You can read his obituary here. This article maintains the magazine style in use at the time of its publication.

=========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================


A little over 50 years ago, writing in AMER­ICA (July 21, 1928) on “The Unknown Field of Negro History,� John LaFarge, S.J., noted: “No words need be wasted to show the importance of the history of the Negro for our national history: His life is a background for a great part of it. On the Negro, as on a pivot, turned the decisive struggle for the nation’s existence ….�

The history of the black Catholic com­munity is just as important for the history of the Catholic Church in the United States. More than we realize, the history of the black Catholic community is co­extensive with the history of the American Catholic community. What is needed to­day are historical studies that no longer simply probe the ministry and apostolate to blacks but rather focus the spotlight on the black Catholic community itself to deter­mine its role in the Catholic drama of the last two centuries.

True, the history of the black Catholic community is very small compared to the history of black America at large which formed the black church, Protestant in its affiliation and its creed, uniquely African in its ethos and its celebration. The heroes of black people in this country are the black pastors and the black prophets. Alongside of this now glorious tradition, the story of the small group of black Catholics, that clung proudly and even at times desperately to its Roman and universalist traditions, to its saints, its pastors and its religious sisters, seems perhaps insignificant. They were the minority that was ministered to but seem­ingly did not minister, that was preached to but did not preach, that was provided for but did not provide. And yet without that black Catholic community American Catholicism would not have the character­istics it has today.

[…]

There is nothing elusive, however, about the solid black Catholic community in Maryland that numbered about 3,000 slaves, which the future Archbishop John Carroll described in his report to Cardinal Antonelli, the Secretary of State of Pius IX, in 1785. This black Catholic communi­ty with its long tradition of Catholic faith would be the nucleus of black Catholicism not only in southern Maryland where it began but also in Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and the Catholic centers of Nelson County and Hardin County in Kentucky. It was in this tradition of black Catholicism in southern Maryland, one might add, that the young Father LaFarge first exercised his priestly ministry. Nor is there anything elusive about the black Catholic community that existed in Archbishop Carroll’s day in southern Louisiana, rich in tradition, distinctive in language and culture, and self-confident in its particular identity. As Randall M. Miller has pointed out, this rich source of black Catholic history has not yet been fully exploited. It is time that the modern methods of historical research were used to reveal how and why the faith managed to survive.

“Survival� is a key word in black history, and it is a pivotal question in the history of black Catholicism. If the slaves were catechized, there had to be a community that not only received the catechesis but internalized and passed it on. What prompted slave parents to transmit their faith to their children? What prompted slave families to go to extraordinary lengths to practice their religion and receive the sacraments? How did these people make the Catholic tradition their own? What were the forms of worship they used to nourish their spiritual life not only in the sanctuary but in their homes? It was not only the work of their white priests.

Part of the answer lies in one of the most remarkable phenomena of black Catholicism, the emergence of black Catholic sisterhoods. In 1829 four black women under the leadership of Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange formed the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore under a rule of lite drawn up by the French Sulpician priest Jacques Joubert. When the majority of blacks were slaves and when schooling for black children was practically nonexistent, these courageous women against terrific odds began the instruction of black children in Baltimore. The story of their survival with little support from either clergy or faithful, the last-minute assistance given them by the saintly John Neumann, the spread of their congregation to other areas despite the incredible poverty of the sisters — all of this is a little-known aspect of Catholic history in this country.

The work of the Oblate Sisters and the work also of the second group of black sisters in Louisiana, the Sisters of the Holy Family, founded in 1842, are a reminder that even in the period of slavery the black Catholic community took a leading role in its own evangelization and education. Here too the modern historian has a rich source for future research. A study of the individ­uals in these two religious orders, a study of their family backgrounds, of their students and their milieu will reveal much about the makeup of the black Catholic community, the personality and the attitudes of this community, and the role it envisaged for it­self both before the Civil War and after­wards. It is significant that at a time when there were no black priests, black families had a sense of faith that enabled them to send their daughters to a convent and their children to be educated.

In less than a generation after the Civil War, black Catholics attempted the forma­tion of a national organization to coordi­nate their efforts for more Catholic schools and even for an end to racial discrimination on the parish level. This effort was spear­headed by a remarkable black layman, Daniel Rudd, who was born in Bardstown, Kentucky in 1854. In 1889 he began the first black Catholic newspaper, the Amer­ican Catholic Tribune, a weekly which he edited from 1889 to 1899, first in Cincinnati and then in Detroit. Mr. Rudd was both a militant Catholic and a militant supporter of civil rights for blacks. His major thesis, which was the underlying philosophy ex­pressed in each issue of his weekly news­paper and which he made the subject of lectures in various parts of the country, was simply this: The one great hope for blacks in the United States was the Catholic Church. “The Holy Roman Catholic Church,� he wrote, “offers to the op­pressed Negro a material as well as spiritual refuge; superior to all the inducements of other organizations combined.� Not only did he publish almost singlehandedly his newspaper — which at one point was claimed to have a circulation of 10,000 — he also began the series of Catholic Afro­-American congresses, which met for the first time in Washington, D.C., in 1889. They were to have four more meetings dur­ing the 1890’s, which is significant when it is recalled that there were only two national Catholic congresses of the laity during this same period.

[…]

In 1924 Dr. Thomas Wyatt Turner, who died in 1978 at the age of 101, established the Federated Colored Catholics in the United States, an organization of black Catholics working for an end to discrim­ination within the American Catholic Church. Composed of lay leaders from the black Catholic community, it was both a continuation of the work of Daniel Rudd and a forerunner of the black civil rights organizations of the 1960’s. Dr. Turner respectfully but deliberately parted com­pany from the efforts of Rev. John LaFarge, S.J., and Rev. William Markoe, S.J., who with other leading white and black Catholics organized the Catholic In­terracial Councils in 1934. Dr. Turner saw the need for black Catholics to be the leaders in their own development. His con­ception of the role of black Catholics with­in the church would become the position of black Catholics at the end of the 1960’s. The black Catholics who formed the Black Catholic Clergy Caucus and the Black Sis­ters Conference in 1968 and the National Office for Black Catholics in 1970 are the lineal descendents of the black conscious­ness of Dr. Turner and of Mr. Rudd.

On the other hand, the black Catholic community in the last 204 years has been a microcosm of the Catholic Church in America. There are no black American saints, but there are saintly black Catholics like Pierre Toussaint, who walked the streets of old New York in the first part of the 19th century dispensing charity and practicing the works of mercy despite his own poverty. There is the saintly foundress of a religious order, Mary Elizabeth Lange. There is the saintly parish priest, Augustine Tolton of Chicago, the first recognized black priest in this country, who knew suf­fering and lived in total dedication to his ministry, dying at the early age of 43 in 1897. There is a family with a secret trag­edy, the Healy brothers: James Augustine Healy, the first black bishop in this country (bishop of Portland, Maine in 1875); Sher­wood, pastor and chancellor in Boston; Patrick, a Jesuit and president of George­town University. Aloof from the black Catholic community, half white and half black, their racial identity a source of am­bivalence — they are a symbol of many black priests and religious who found racial identification a source of pain.

The black Catholic community also has its many converts: famous ones like the great poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay, who left Communism to find his spiritual home in the Catholic Church in the last years of his life; or the Air Force General Daniel James, who died in 1978. It has had its share of artists, politi­cians, educators, physicians and jurists. In relation to the black community as such during the last two centuries, it probably has varied little in achievement and success and it has shared completely in the oppres­sion that all American blacks have experi­enced. In what lay the difference?

No doubt it lay in the religious con­sciousness that was their gift of faith. It was the sense of “catholic� in the root meaning of the word that seemed to permeate the black Catholic consciousness. In 1889 when black Americans were beginning one of the most tragic decades in the history of the United States in terms of lynchings and the passage of legislation insuring segre­gation, the first Catholic Afro-American Congress was held in January in the parish hall of St. Augustine’s church in Washington, D.C. At the last session the congress members drew up an address to their Catholic fellow citizens in which they expressed the following:

Knowing too that our divinely estab­lished and divinely guided church … will be the innate force of her truth, gradually prevailing … and … anxious not to forestall in any way the time marked by God for bringing about this great work, we feel confident that this … expression of our convictions, of our hopes and of our resolutions, will have … the advantage of proving that we — the Catholic repre­sentatives of our people — have earnestly contributed our humble share to the … work for whose final accomplish­ment all our brothers are ardently yearn­ing.

This has been the unique role of the black Catholic community in American history: to speak to the church in this coun­try, about justice and brotherhood in terms of the church’s own tradition, to speak to their fellow black men and women in terms of the church’s universal call to all people and to speak to the nation in terms of the church’s real identity as “catholic� in a racist society. It is because of the existence of the black community within the Cath­olic Church from the very beginning of its existence in this country that the history of the Catholic Church in this country is unique.

[Avatar]

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

(Gotta love the Arch, RIP.)

--A

[Cord Hurn]

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

(Gotta love the Arch, RIP.)

--A

A very inspiring person, indeed.

[Avatar]

One of my favourite religious people. (Along with my late great aunt Dame Felicitas, and honestly, the current Pope who I personally am in general quite impressed with.)

--A

[Fist and Faith]

I never heard of him before. My favorite religious person would be Furls Fire.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

Historic Anatok plantation, birthplace of Daniel Rudd, demolished by archdiocese

The Anatok property, demolished. (Image: BCM)


The Archdiocese of Louisville has quietly demolished Bardstown, Kentucky's historic Anatok plantation, the birthplace of legendary Black Catholic journalist and activist Daniel Rudd.

The news was announced this week by Preserve Anatok, LLC, a preservationist group that had long sought to save the 175-year-old property.

“Unfortunately, the Anatok Committee was unable to raise necessary funds to save Anatok,� the organization said on Monday via social media.

“We are deeply saddened by this historic loss.�


Preserve Anatok LLC on Wednesday | Facebook



The group had been directly involved in the efforts since joining with the Kentucky Trust for Historic Preservation to sign a lease agreement with the archdiocese in April 2020 — forming the committee and ramping up fundraising efforts to turn the property into a historic monument focused on Rudd.

Given 18 months to raise $750,000, their efforts proved futile amidst a reported “lack of cooperation� from the archdiocese’s attorney, as well as insufficient donations by the deadline. Their efforts were said to have been progressing as of last summer.

The property had sat vacant for close to 17 years, last serving as a hospital administration building from 1988 to 2005. It was built in 1847 by Charles and Matilda Haydon as a home for their family and the enslaved African Americans they held in bondage.



The Anatok property, prior to the addition of asphalt surrounding the mansion in the 2010s. (Eerie Indiana)


Rudd was born in 1854 to a mother owned by the Haydons and was raised Catholic there in Bardstown, then the seat of one of the earliest dioceses in America. He was a parishioner at St Joseph Cathedral (located across the street from the plantation), and was emancipated during the Civil War before moving to Ohio.

There, he founded America’s first Black Catholic newspaper in 1885, taking it national the next year as the American Catholic Tribune — one of the first newspapers owned, published, and printed by an African-American.

He also founded the short-lived Colored Catholic Congress in 1889, a national, social justice-minded gathering of Black Catholic men and precursor to the National Black Catholic Congress of today.

The Diocese of Bardstown had become the Archdiocese of Louisville in 1841, less than a decade before Anatok was constructed, and with the transfer came a shift in historical focus away from the small farming community.

Anatok successively became a convent for the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth — who have their own history of slaveholding — from 1929 to 1971, and a private residence once again until 1988.

Rudd’s childhood parish of St Joseph’s was named a basilica in 2002, affirming the importance of the region’s history as a Catholic stronghold in the Upper South and the former frontier.

Even so, various threats of demolition have faced Anatok since it was acquired by the Archdiocese of Louisville’s Bethlehem High School located nextdoor, including a protracted legal battle beginning in 2012 — shortly after the release of the first Rudd biography — in which the school sought to expand onto the property.

A court order halted the move by the nearly all-White school, and grassroots preservationists raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to retain the property (deemed then as now an insufficient sum by the archdiocese).

Still, no moves were made and the site remained largely untouched for the better part of the next decade.

In November 2020, during Black Catholic History Month, the archdiocese unveiled a memorial marker for Rudd at his grave in the city’s St Joseph Catholic Cemetery, also adding tombstones nearby for the previously unmarked graves of his parents.

Now, a little more than a year later, the most historic site connected to the monumental Catholic figure is no more.


Preserve Anatok LLC on Thursday | Facebook



The archdiocese does not appear to have made any announcement concerning the demolition, occurring during Black History Month as well as Catholic Press Month, meant to honor journalists connected to the Church.

[…]

[Avatar]

I never heard of him before. My favorite religious person would be Furls Fire.

You never heard of the (late) Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu before? Guy won a Nobel Peace Prize. I'm shocked Fist, shocked I tell you.

--A

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

Christian monastery possibly pre-dating Islam found in UAE

This March 14, 2022, handout photo from the Department of Archaeology and Tourism of Umm al-Quwain shows an ancient Christian monastery uncovered on Siniyah Island in Umm al-Quwain, United Arab Emirates. An ancient Christian monastery possibly dating as far back as the years before Islam rose across the Arabian Peninsula has been discovered on an island off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, officials announced Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022. (Credit: Nasser Muhsen Bin Tooq/Department of Archaeology and Tourism of Umm al-Quwain via AP)


SINIYAH ISLAND, United Arab Emirates — An ancient Christian monastery possibly dating as far back as the years before Islam spread across the Arabian Peninsula has been discovered on an island off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, officials announced Thursday.

The monastery on Siniyah Island, part of the sand-dune sheikhdom of Umm al-Quwain, sheds new light on the history of early Christianity along the shores of the Persian Gulf. It marks the second such monastery found in the Emirates, dating back as many as 1,400 years — long before its desert expanses gave birth to a thriving oil industry that led to a unified nation home to the high-rise towers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

The two monasteries became lost to history in the sands of time as scholars believe Christians slowly converted to Islam as that faith grew more prevalent in the region.

[…]

For Timothy Power, an associate professor of archaeology at the United Arab Emirates University who helped investigate the newly discovered monastery, the UAE today is a “melting pot of nations.�

“The fact that something similar was happening here a 1,000 years ago is really remarkable and this is a story that deserves to be told,� he said.

The monastery sits on Siniyah Island, which shields the Khor al-Beida marshlands in Umm al-Quwain, an emirate some 30 miles northeast of Dubai along the coast of the Persian Gulf. The island has a series of sandbars coming off of it like crooked fingers. On one, to the island’s northeast, archaeologists discovered the monastery.

Carbon dating of samples found in the monastery’s foundation date between 534 and 656. Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was born around 570 and died in 632 after conquering Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia.

Viewed from above, the monastery on Siniyah Island’s floor plan suggests early Christian worshippers prayed within a single-aisle church at the monastery. Rooms within appear to hold a baptismal font, as well as an oven for baking bread for communion. A nave also likely held an altar and an installation for communion wine.

Next to the monastery sits a second building with four rooms, likely around a courtyard — possibly the home of an abbot or even a bishop in the early church.

Historians say early churches and monasteries spread along the Persian Gulf to the coasts of present-day Oman and all the way to India. Archaeologist have found other similar churches and monasteries in Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

In the early 1990s, archaeologists discovered the first Christian monastery in the UAE, on Sir Bani Yas Island, today a nature preserve and site of luxury hotels off the coast of Abu Dhabi, near the Saudi border. It similarly dates back to the same period as the new find in Umm al-Quwain.

However, evidence of early life along the Khor al-Beida marshlands in Umm al-Quwain dates as far back as the Neolithic period — suggesting continuous human inhabitance in the area for at least 10,000 years, Power said.

Today, the area near the marshland is more known for the low-cost liquor store at the emirate’s Barracuda Beach Resort. In recent months, authorities have demolished a hulking, Soviet-era cargo plane linked to a Russian gunrunner known as the “Merchant of Death� as it builds a bridge to Siniyah Island for a $675 million real estate development.

Power said that development spurred the archaeological work that discovered the monastery. That site and others will be fenced off and protected, he said.

“It’s a really fascinating discovery because in some ways it’s hidden history — it’s not something that’s widely known,� Power said.