Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/737

 SECCHI

669

SECCHI

the establishment of a see. As the people could not get along with their bishop in Trau, they chose their own bishops until fifty years later the energetic Boniface VIII established the see and appointed as first bishop the Franciscan, Sis- gorich. The building of the cathedral, which was not consecrated until a century later, was begun in 1443. The Dominican bishop, Vincenzo Arri- goni, did much for the see; he held seven synods between 1602-26. John Berzich attended the Vienna synod in 1849. Johann Zaffron was Pater concilii of the Vatican council. Despite the additions of Scar- dona (1813), parts of Tiau and Tinin (1828), the bishopric Sebenico has but 93,000 Catholics with 54 priests, 83 friars in 7 stations, and 68 nuns in 4 stations.

Farlati, Illyricum sacrum, IV (Venice, 1775), 449-500; Thei- NER, Vetera monumenta Slavorum meridionalium historiam illus- trantia (Rome. 1863), nos. 80, 82 aq., 210 sq., 498, 505, 521, 523 sq., 570; Idem, Monum. Hungnri/e (Rome, 1859), I, 381, II, 490 Gams, Series episcop. eccles. (Ratisbon, 1873), 419.

C. WOLFSGRUBER.

Secchi, Angelo, astronomer, b. at Reggio in Emilia, Italy, 18 June, 1818; d. 26 Feb., 1878. He was the son of a joiner, Antonio Kecchi. His mother (nee Luise Belgieri), a practical middle-class woman, had her son taught even sewing and knitting. After studying for several years in the gymnasium kept by the Jesuits in his native town, Secchi in his six- teenth year entered the Jesuit Order at Rome on 3 Nov., 1833. After completing his humanistic and philosophical studies at the Roman College, on account of his extraordinary talent for the natural sciences he was appointed tutor of mathematics and physics at Rome in 1839, and professor of physics in the Jesuit college at Loreto in 1841. In the autumn of 1844 he began the study of theology under the most distinguished professors (Passaglia, Perrone, Patrizi, Ant. Ballerini), and on 12 Sept., 1847, was ordained priest by Mgr Canali. At the outbreak of the Roman revolution in 1848, he had to leave Rome with all his fellow-Jesuits. Accom- panied by his teachers, de Vico and Pianciani, he travelled first through Paris to England, where he re- sided for a short period at Stonyhurst College. On 24 Oct., 1848, he sailed with twenty other exiled Jesuits from Liverpool to the United States, which he reached on 19 Nov. Secchi's companion, de Vico, renowned as the discoverer of several comets, had succumbed in London to typhus fever contracted in conse- quence of the hardships of the journey, and in death was honoured in an enthusiastic notice by John Herschel in the "Monthly Notices of the Astronomi- cal Society". Secchi settled in Georgetown, near Washington, District of Columbia, where the Amer- ican Jesuits conducted a university and an observa- tory (then under the care of Father Curley). Here he brought his suddenly interrupted theological studies to a close by a brilHant examination for the doctorate, and joined the faculty of the university as professor of physics. Astronomy as yet claimed little of his attention, as he wished to perfect himself as a physicist. Of decisive importance for his later achievements in the domain of meteorology was his close friendship with the celebrated hydrographer, meteorologist, and astronomer, F. M. Maury, who lived in Wa.shington. To this friendship, through the medium of Secchi, Italy owed its first acquaintance with the epoch-making discoveries of the great Ameri- can, whose valuable services in marine meteorology and navigation cannot be overrated. In later years Secchi dedicated to his friend, "as a token of our mutual friendship", his work, "Sui recenti progres.si della Meteorologia" (Rome, 1861), and on his death in 1873 gave him an enduring memorial in a warm and touching necrology (cf. "BuUettino meteorolo- igco del CoUegio Romano", XII, Rome, 1873).

Contrary to expectation, Secchi's residence at George- town soon came to an end, when the Roman revolu- tion was forcibly terminated by the French general, Oudinot. On 21 September, 1849, he had to begin his return journey to England, and in 1850 he under- took the direction of the observatory in the Roman College, for which post his teacher de Vico had warm- ly recommended him on his death-bed. Because of the instability of the foundation walls and the want of modern instruments, Secchi was at first (1850-52) compelled to be content with his investigation con- cerning the radiation of the sun, the rings of Saturn, and the planetoids. By the end of 1852, however, his energy had succeeded in having a new observa- tory prepared on the firm vault of the Church of St. Ignatius in the Roman College, and fitted with new instruments. From this time date Secchi's brilliant scientific activity and the European fame of his observatory. On account of the extraordinary variety of his investigations, we must distinguish three persons in Secchi; the astronomer, the meteor- ologist, and the physicist.

As an astronomer Secchi began with a revision of the great catalogue of the double stars made by W. Struvc at Dorpat (1824-37). After seven years of strenuous labour he was able to print the chief por- tion of his results in the "Memorie del CoUegio Romano ;' (Rome, 18.59) with 10,000 verified double stars; this was continued in two supplements, pub- lished by his assistant in 1868 and 1875. One of the best calculators of the courses of the double stars, the astronomer Doberck of Dublin, has to a great extent taken Secchi's catalogue as the basis of his calculations. Hand in hand with this gigantic task went his study of the physical conditions of the planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, and of the four great moons of Jupiter. On the discovery of spec- trum analysis by Kirchhoff and Bunsen (I860), Secchi was the first to investigate closely the spec- tra of Uranus and Neptune. From 1852 the moon also became the subject of his investigations. He made so exact a micrometrical map of the great crater of the moon (Copernicus) that the Royal Society of London had numerous photographic copies made of it, and had them distributed among those interested in astronomy. All Secchi's studies on the planets were included in his great work, "II quadro fisico del sistema solare secondo le piil recenti osservazioni " (Rome, 1859). However, the chief object of his study was the sun, with its wonderful facula; and spots, to which he devoted from the very beginning his ince-ssant attention, industriously "registering his observations. Epoch-making for the study of the sun was his expedition to Spain to ob- serve the total eclipse of 18 July, 1860, becau.se by him and his fellow-observer it was first definitively established by photographic records that the corona and the prominences rising from the chromosphere (i. e. the red protuberances around the edge of the eclipsed disc of the sun) were real features of the sun itself, and not optical delusions or illuminated moun- tains on the moon. When, on the occasion of the eclipse of the sun of 18 August, 1868, the French astrononier Pierre Janssen demonstrated practically the possibility of studying the protuberances even in clear daylight by certain manipulations of the spectroscope (this had been independently shown in theory by Norman Lockyer in London), Secchi was one of the first to keep a regular diary of all phenomena connected with the protuberances and of all other data concerning the physics of the sun. He thus laid the foundation of the unique "Sun Records", which have been continued to the present day; no other observatory in the world possesses a work of this character which has been kept so long (cf. Millosevich, " Commemorazione del P. Secchi", Rome, 1903, p. 20).