Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/400

 VERBIEST

346

VERBIEST

Cunemao, near Verapoly, with 3 Tertiary Fathers, 3 lay brothers and some postulants. For Women, St. Teresa's Carmelite Convent, with 7 Tertiary sisters; St. Joseph's Convent, Verapoly, with 8 sisters; and St. Joseph's Convent, Kottayam, with 4 sisters, be- sides novice.s in each convent. Educational Insli- tulions for Boys. — St. Joseph's Preparatory Seminary, founded in 1908, with 16 students; St. Albert's High School, Ernakulam, teaching up to matriculation with 600 pupils, of whom above 100 are boarders. For Girls. — St. Teresa's Convent Boarding School, Ernakulam, with 191 pupils; St. Joseph's Boarding School Convent, Verapoly, with 95 pupiL; St. Joseph's Convent Boarding School with 144 pupils; all under Tertiary Carmelite sisters. Also 10 ver- nacular schools and 123 parochial schools, with a collective roll of 462.5 boys and 2918 girls. Chari- table rnslilutions for Boys. — St. Joseph's Orphanage, Ernakulam, vernacular, English and industrial schools, with 30 orphans; Good Shepherd Orphanage, Kot- tayam, under Brothers of St. Teresa, with industrial school, etc., 28 orphans. For Girls. — St. Teresa's Orphanage, Ernakulam, with 84 orphans; St. Joseph's Orphanage, Verapoly, with 4.5 orphans; St. Joseph's Orphanasc Kottayam, with 39 orphans, all under Cannclitc Sisters. Various. — St. Joseph's Hospital, Magiiunicl, and dispensary with 128 indoor and about 12,000 outdoor patients during the year. Four catechumenates at Verapoly, Magnumel, Cranganore and Kottayam. The number of conversions re- corded in 1909 was 632. The publications of the archdiocese are: "Messenger of the Sacred Heart" in Malayalam; " Promptuarium Canonico-Litur- picum" for the clergy; both printed at the Industrial School Press, Ernakulam.

Ernest R. Hull.

Verbiest, Ferdinand, missionary and astronomer, b. at Pittheni near Courtrai, Belgium, 9 Oct., 1623; d. at Peking, 28 January, 16SS. He entered the Society of Jesus on 2 Sept., 1641, and studied theol- ogy at Seville, where he defended public theses in 16.5.5. In 16.58 with thirty- five new missionaries he accompanied Father Martin Martini on his re- turn to China after liaving se- cured at Rome t he Decree of Alexan- chr VII for the 1 1 ilorat ion of the I 'hinese rites (see Hicci, Matteo). lie reached Macao in 16.59, and was e.xercising his min- istry in Shen-si when in 1660 he was called to Peking to assist, and eventually to replace. Father Adam Schall in his astronomical labours. He was among those imprisoned during the persecution of 1664. Father Schall, the chief of those accused, being unable to make himself understood by his judges. Father Verbiest, himself loaded with nine chains, <lef ended him with courage and eloquence. In fact the Church in China owed to Father Verbiest the recovery of peace and greater security than it had before the Outbreak. In 166St the yoimgemperor coin- niamlnl a public test, which allowed the priest to prove beyond ilispute the nicriis of European a.stronomy compared with the ancient astronomy of China. Father Verbiest and the mandarin who had instigated

Ferdinand Verbiest

From an engraving in Du Halde's

Description do la Chine

the persecution and who had taken Father Schall's place as president of the bureau of mathematics, were each commissioned to determine in advance the length of the shadow thrown by a gnomon of a given height at noon of a certain day; then the absolute and relative positions of the sun and the planets on a given date; and finally the moment of a lunar eclipse. The results of the test, which the emperor, ministers, and nobles established in person, were a triumph for the astronomy of the missionaries. Father Ver- biest was immediately placed at the head of the Bureau of Mathematics, and, out of consideration for him, his exiled brethren were authorized to return to their missions.

Thenceforth K'ang-hi's benevolence towards Father Verbiest and the Christian religion increased steadily. The emperor requested the priest, to construct instru- ments like those of Europe, and in May, 1674, Verbiest was able to present him with six, made under his direction: a quadrant, six feet in radius; an azimuth compass, six feet in diameter; a sextant, eight feet in radius; a celestial globe, six feet in diam- eter; and two armillary spheres, zodiacal and equi- noctial, each six feet in diameter. These large instru- ments, all of brass and with decorations which made them notable works of art, were, despite their weight, very easy to manipulate, and a credit to Verbiest's mechanical skill as well as to his knowledge of astron- omy and mathematics. They are still in a perfect state of preservation, and at the time of the expedition against the Boxers (1900) the international troops admired them on the platform of a tower of the im- perial palace where P^ither Verbiest installed them more than two centuries and a, half ago. K'ang-hi made use of the talents of the Belgian Jesuit in various other ways, e. g. the transportation of enormous blocks of stone, the construction of an aqueduct, and the casting of cannons. Not only did Father Verbiest. cast 132 cannons of far superior power than those possessed by the Chinese, but he invented a new gun-carriage.

At the same time the missionary had to write in Chinese a collection of works explaining the con- struction of the instruments, their object, and the manner of using them. The emperor also desired him to compile astronomical tables indicating the movements of the planets and the solar and lunar eclipses for 2000 years to come; moreover, he had him give on certain days a course in mathematics and astronomy, at which many of the great mandarins as well as the 160 students of the Bureau of Mathematics assisted. In his desire to acquire the European sciences, K'ang-hi himself became a pupil of the missionary; for five whole months he summoned him almost daily to his presence, setting aside in his behalf all the laws of Chine.se etiquette and detaining him for whole days, while Father ^'erbiest explained the astro- nomical books compiled in Chinese liy himself and his fellow-religious, and finally studying like a school-boy under his direction arithmetic, rectilinear and spher- ical geometry, geodesy, topography, etc. On behold- ing the earnestness with which K'ang-hi endeavoured to learn especially the chart of the heavens, Father Verbiest began to ho|)e that "as a star of old brought the magi to the adoration of the true Ciod, so the princes of the I*'ar East t hrough knowledge of the stars would be brought to reciignize and adore the Lord of the -stars". K'ang-hi did not fulfil this hojie, but his bent for the European sciences, by inclinmg him to favour more and more the missionaries who made them known to him, became the means of salvation for thousands of his subjects. Through his influence with the emiicrpr Father \'erbiest ilid more for the spread of the (Sospel than any of the missi(maries who preached it in the jirovinccs; nevertheless he found time for the direct exercise of the apostolale, espe- cially in the composition of short works in Chinese on