Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/47

 RHODESIA

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RHODESIA

Mahomet II; on 24 October, 1522, Villiers de I'lsle Adam had to make an honorable capituhition to Solyman II and deUver the island dcfinitivelv to the Turks. From 1328 to 1546 Rhodes was a Latin metropolitan, having for suffragans the sees of Melos, Nicaria, Carpathos, Chios, Tinos, and Mycone; the list of its bishops is to be found in Le Quien (Oriens christ., Ill, 1049) and Eubel (Hierarehia eatholica medii a!vi, I, 205; II, 148; III, 188). The most distinguished bishop is Andreas Colossensis (the archdiocese was called Rhodes or Colossi) who, in 1416 at Constance and 1439 at Florence, defended the rights of the Roman Church against the Greeks, and especially against Marcus Eugenicus. After the death of Marco Cattaneo, the last residential arch- bishop, Rhodes became a mere titular bishopric, while Naxos inherited its metropolitan rights. On 3 March, 1797 it became again a titular archbishopric but the title was thenceforth attached to the See of Malta. Its suffragans are Carpathos, Leros, Melos, Samos, and Tenedos. By a decree of the Congrega- tion of the Propaganda, 14 August, 1897, a prefecture Apostolic, entrusted to the Franciscans, was es- tablished in the Island of Rhodes; it has in addition jurisdiction over a score of neighbouring islands, of which the principal are Carj)athos, Leros, and Calymnos. There are in all 320 Catholics, while the island, the capital of the vilayet of the archipelago, contains 30,000 inhabitants. The Franciscans have three priests; the Brothers of the Christian Schools have established there a scholasticate for the Orient as well as a school; the Franciscan Sisters of Gcmona have a girls' school. The most striking feature of the city, in addition to a series of medieval towers and fortifications, is the Street of the Knights, which still preserves their blason (Order of St. John) and the date of the erection of each house or palace; several of the mosques are former churches.

MEUR8IUS, Creta, Cyprus, Rhodus (Amsterdam, 167.5) ; Coro- NELLi, Isola di Rodi geographica, storica (Venice, 1702) ; Le Quien, Oriens christ., I, 923-30; Paulsen, CommerUatio exhibens Rhodi descriptionem macedonica cetate (Gottingen, 1818) ; Menge, Ueber die Vorgesch. der Insel Rhodus (Cologne, 1827) ; Rottiers, Description des monuments de Rhodes (Brussels, 1828); Ross, Reisen auf den griech. Inseln, III, 70-113; Idem, Reisen nach Kos, Halikarnassos, Rhodos (Stuttgart, 1840); Berg, Die Insel Rhodos (Brunswick, 1860); Schneiderwirth, Gesch. der Insel Rhodos (Heiligenstadt, 1868); Gu^rin, L'ile de Rhodes (Paris, 1880); BiLLiOTi AND Cotteret, L'tle de Rhodes (Paris, 1891); Becker, De Rhodiorum primordiis (Leipzig, 1882) ; Torr, Rhodes in Ancient Times (Cambridge, 1885) ; Idem, Rhodes in Modern Times (Cam- bridge, 1887); Schumacher, De Republica Rhodiorum commentatio (Heidelberg, 1886); Von Gelder, Gesch. der alien Rhodier (La Haye, 1900); Smith, Did. of Greek and Roman Geogr., s. v.; FiLLiON in VioouRoux, Diet, de la Bible, a. v.; Missiones catholicce (Rome, 1907).

S. Vailh6.

Rhodesia, a British possession in South Africa, bounded on the north and north-west by the Congo Free State and German East Africa; on the east by German East Africa, Nyassaland, and Portuguese East Africa; on the south by the Transvaal and Bechuanaland ; on the west by Bechuanaland and Portuguese West Africa. Cecil John Rhodes, to whom the colony owes its name, desired to promote the expansion of the British Empire in South Africa. The Dutch South African Republic and Germany were contemplating annexations in the neighbour- hood of the Zambesi River. To thwart these enemies of unity without delay and without the aid of the British Parliament was the task to which Mr. Rhodes and his colleagues set themselves. Early in 1S88 Lobengula, King of Matabeleland, entered into a treaty with Great Britain and on 30 October of the same year he granted to Rhodes's agents "the complete and exclusive charge over all metals and minerals" in his dominions. On 28 October, 1889, the British South Africa Company was formed under a royal charter. The company, on Lobengula's advice, first decided to open up Mashonaland, which

lies north and west of Matabeleland and south of the Zambesi. In Sejitember, 1890, an expeditionary column occupied that country and, in the next four years, much was done to develop its resources. In 1893 the company, who questioned the right of the Matabele to make annual raids among their neigh- bours the Mashonas, came to blows with King Lobengula. Five weeks of active operations and the death of the king, i)robably by self-administered poi.son, brought the whole of Southern Rhodesia under the absolute control of the company.

After the war, the settlement and opening up of the country was carried on under the direction of Mr. Rhodes who, on the ruins of Lobengula's royal kraal at Bulawayo, built Government House, and in the vicinity, laid out the streets and avenues of what was intended soon to become a great city. At one time Bulawayo had a population of some 7000 white inhabitants and seemed to be fulfilling the dreams of its founder when its progress and that of the whole country was cut short by the cattle pest, the native rebellion of 1896, and by years of stagnation and inactivity consequent upon the Boer War. Its white population (1911) is 5200. Besides Southern Rho- desia the chartered company own the extensive ter- ritories of North-western and North-eastern Rhodesia which lie north of the Zambesi and which, with the more populous southern province, cover an area of some 450,000 square miles and form a country larger than France, Germany, and the Low Countries combined. The black population is less than 1,500,- 000, while the whites hardly exceed 16,000. All the native tribes of Rhodesia belong to the great Bantu family of the negro race. Before the arrival of the pioneer columns the dominant race south of the Zambesi were the Matabele, an off-shoot of the Zulus, who conquered the country north of the Limpopo River in the middle of the last century. They formed a military caste which lived by war and periodical raids upon their weaker neigh- bours. The destruction of this military despotism was a necessary step to the evangelizing of the coun- try. Before the arrival of the Matabele warriors the principal inhabitants of Southern Rhodesia were the Makaranga whose ancestors had formed the once powerful emjiire of Monomotapa. North-western Rhodesia or Barotseland is ruled partly by an ad- ministrator residing at Livingstone, near the Vic- toria Falls of the Zambesi an(l partly by its native King Lewanika, the chief of the Barotse, who has been heavily subsidised by the company. The pre- dominant people in North-eastern Rhodesia are the Awemba and the Angoni whose raiding propensities and cooperation with the Arab slave drivers caused much trouble and expense until their definitive an- nexation by the company in 1894.

The earliest attempt to evangelize Matabeleland was made in 1879 when three Jesuit Fathers, travel- ling by ox-wagon, accomplished the journey of some twelve hundred miles between Grahamstown and Bulawayo. They were hospitably received by King Lobengula who had been assured by some resident traders that the missionaries had come for his people's good. He granted them a free passage through his dominions and allowed them to train his subjects in habits of industry but not to preach the Gospel of Christ which, as he well knew, would lead to drastic changes, not only in the domestic life of his people, but in his whole system of government. For some fourteen years the missionaries held their ground awaiting events and it was only through the conquest of the country by the company that free missionary work was rendered possible. It was dur- ing this period that Baron von Hubner, who was not without personal experience of South Africa, declared that he would never contribute a penny to the Zambesi Mission, since he thought it contrary to his