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 TIRASPOL

739

TISIO

Tiraspol for Chersonese), Diocese of (Tibas- roLENsis; Chersonensis), in Southern Russia, suffragan of Mohilev, covers the governments of Saratov, Samara, Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, Taurida, and Bessarabia. It is one of the hirgest dioceses HI the world, and has an area of 462,504 square miles. There are in the diocese 3.50,000 Latin Christians, ihiefly the descendants of German colonists, in 100 iKirishes, about 40,000 Armenian Catholics in 50 I here is one parish. The priests number about 210, liO being Armenians. The bishop lives at Saratov, I he capital of the government of the same name. The ecclesiastical institutions are, besides the cathe- dral chapter, the seminary for priests at Saratov, which has a rector, an inspector, a spiritual director, and five professors; there is also a seminary for boys at the same place, with three professors. Religious orders are not permitted. For some years the Ar- lui-nian Catholics have had an Apo.stolic administrator I if their own (Sarkis Ter Abrahamian) to whom all Armenian Catholics in the whole of Russia are subject. In important decisions he is dependent on the Bishop of Tiraspol.
 * iarishes, and over 300 Chaldean Catholics for whom

During the second half of the eighteenth century large numbers of German cplonists went to Russia at the urgent request of the Empress Catherine II. These emigrants were chiefly from Bavaria, Wiirtem- berg, Saxony, .\lsace-Lorraine, the Tyrol, and Swit- zerland; they settled in the fruitful but uninhabited lands in the southern part of Russia. The colonies founded by them have retained their German names, as Mannheim, Munich, etc., as well as the German language and character. Among the half-million German settlers there were about 180,000 Catholics, who settled in villages of their own, apart from the members of other confessions. These Catholic villages were generally in the basin of the Volga and of the Caspian Sea. The Catholics were cared for spiritually at first by a few priests who had emigrated with them, but these pastors soon succumbed to privations and the unaccustomed cHmate. After this the Russian Government sent Catholic priests from the provinces on the Baltic. Alexander I transferred the pastoral care of the Catholic colonies to the Jesuits, who came among them in 1803. Unfortunately, the expulsion of the Jesuits from Russia in 1820 put an end to their fruitful labours. The Jesuits were replaced by priests from various Polish monasteries, chiefly Dominicans, Carmelites, Trinitarians, and Vincentians, many of them old, feeble men, and unacquainted with the German language. The difference in tongues, the racial antipathy between priests and settlers, and the great distance from the residence of the bi.shop (St. Peters- burg) enormously increased the difficulties of spiritual administration. Thus religious conditions grew graduafly more and more intolerable. Negotiations between Rome and St. Petersburg led finally, in 1847, to a concordat, by "A'hich, in addition to several other dioceses, a German diocese was established for the colonists of Southern Russia, to be suffragan to Mohilev.

Saratov on the right bank of the Volga was settled upon as the see of the bi.shop, but the diocese received its name from the small town of Tiraspol, which in the fourteenth century had been the capital of the Diocese of Kherson. Besides its vast extent, the new diocese was also singular on account of the varying nationaUties of its inhabitants, who included German, French, and Italian colonists, besides Ru.ssians, Poles, Armenians, Kirghiz, Circiissians, O.s.'jctes, Daghestanians, and other peoples. The Govern- ment promised to build a cathedral, an episcopal residence, a building for the episcopal curia, and a seminarj', and to provide for the endowment of the cathedral chapter. In 1850 the first bishop, the

German Dominican Ferdinand Helanus Kahn, was installed. The auxiliary bishop was a Pole. The promises of the Government were not fulfilled. On account of age and ill-health the bishop was unable to correct the existing grievances, nor was he suffi- ciently energetic to make the Government fulfil its obligations. In 1857 a seminary was opened, it is true, but in rented and inadequate quarters; the number of German teachers was also insufficient. After Bishop Kahn's death (1864) the see remained vacant for eight years, all communication between Russia and the Holy See being at that time suspended. It was not until 1872 that the rector of the seminary, Franz Xaver Zottmann, was appointed bishop (b. at Ornbau in the Bavarian Diocese of Eichstiitt in 1826). In 1864 he had visited Eichstatt and there secured some professors for the seminary.

Bishop Zottmann laboured by speech, writing, and example, and by extraordinary activity in all directions, for the spiritual, moral, and material improvement of his diocese. He collected the monej' necessary to build a suitable cathedral, obtained a building for the seminaries, and spared no sacrifice to train a capable body of German parish priests. Without abandoning the rights of the Church, he kept on good terms with the Government, and thus could do much that was forbidden to the Polish bish- ops. He could issue pastoral letters in the diocese, undertake journeys for makmg confirmations and for visitation, arrange collections of money, and even go to Rome, where, in 1S82, he was the first Russian Catholic bishop to pay homage to the pope. On account of illness he resigned in 1888, and died in his native city on 12 December, 1901. He had made his diocese one of the best organized in Russia. His work was worthily carried on, after his resigna- tion, by Anton Zerr, who came from a German colony near Odessa, and had been educated at the Tiraspol seminary. Zerr resigned in 1902 on account of ill-health, and was succeeded by Eduard von der Ropp. Scarcely two years had elapsed before von der Ropp was transferred to the See of Vilna. He was followed by the iiresent bishop, Joseph Kessler, b. at Louis, a village of German colonists in the Government of Samara, in 1862; consecrated 28 October, 1904.

Keller, Die deutschm Kolonien in SMrussland (Odcaaa. 1905); Zottmann, Franz X. von Zottmann, Bishof der Diozese Tiraspol (Munich, 1904); Kalholische Missionen (1905-06), 12.5 sq.; Deutscher Volkskalender /tir Stadt und Land auf das Jalir 1911 (Odessa, 1911), 177-90.

Joseph Lins.

Tirso de Molina. See Tellez, Gabriel.

Tisio da Garofalo, BErrvENuro, an Italian paint.er of the Ferrarese school; b. in 1481 at (^larofalo, whence, as w;is the custom among artists, he took his name; d. at Ferrara, 6 (or 16) Sejitember, 1559. With MazzoUno (1481-1530) and Do.sso Dossi (1479- 1541), Garofalo makes up the modest triumvirate of the Ferrarese school in the sixteenth centurj'. At an earlier date the school could boast of such men as Cosimo Tura, Francesco Cossa, and Ercole Robert!, and .at one time in the sixteenth century Wius perhaps the foremost school of poetry and painting in Italy. In the wonderful frescoes of the Schifan6ja Palace (1470), depicting the fife of Prince Borso d'Este, it created an a\stheticisin all its own, half allegory .and half realism, portraying the world of the <lay in heroic fiishion with all the jjoinp and circumstance of fe.stal parade, and a magnificent display like that described in the "Trionfi" of Petrarch. These frescoes are not only the most precious document we p(is.seBs of the courtier life .and the worldly ideal of the fifteenth cen- turj-, but they mark in Italy the beginning of what is known as "genre painting", that is, sketches from real life, but characterizetl by a good taste, a dignity, and a decorative sense so sadly lacking in similar work of the