Enciclopedia Cattolica

BORNEO SETTENTRIONALE, PREFETTURA APOSTOLICA DI

Borneo Settentrionale, Prefecture of

Volume II · p. 1106 · 1949

English translation · Testo originale italiano

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

NORTH BORNEO, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE OF. — By a decree of Propaganda on 4 Sept. 1855 an apostolic prefecture was erected in British BORNEO “in the island of Labuan and its dependent territories, together with other regions of the island of Borneo not subject to any other jurisdiction,” and entrusted to Fr. Carlo Cuarteron, who arrived at Labuan in 1857 with two priests of the Milan Foreign Missions. When these latter passed in 1858 to the apostolic vicariate of Hong-Kong, Cuarteron remained at Labuan until 1879, devoting himself especially to the redemption of numerous Christian Filipinos enslaved by pirates. In 1880 the prefecture

Article illustration

His portraits were highly praised by the fashion of the time; in one of them he portrayed the Empress Catherine II walking in the park of Tsarskoye Selo. His style recalls that of many French and Italian painters of the age. At the end of his life, following a profound spiritual crisis, he devoted all his activity

Article illustration
(from O. Baccari, Nelle foreste del Borneo)
*": Borneo - Orang Kaya Tumsuggong, chief of the Kayan of the Barram.

Article illustration
Borneo - The oldest Catholic of the apostolic vicariate of B. visiting a missionary (1937).

to strictly religious subjects (church of St. Joseph at Mogilev; convent of Torsök, in the government of Tver, 1795). In 1794 he was named an ordinary member of the Academy of St. Petersburg.

BIBL.: K. Waliszewski, Autour d'un trône; Catherine II de Russie, ses collaborateurs, ses amis, ses favoris, Paris 1894; A. Benua, Scuola di pittura russa, St. Petersburg 1904; J. Ostrouchov, Galleria Tretjakov a Mosca, Moscow 1908; I. Grabar, Storia dell'arte russa (in Russian), 1909; L. Réau, L'art russe, de Pierre le Grand à nos jours, Paris 1922, pp. 117, 128; M. Gibellino-Krascenninico, Storia dell'arte russa, II, Rome 1937, pp. 95, 142.