HARTMANN, ANASTASIUS. — Titular Bishop of Derbe, born on 24 February 1803 at Altwis (Hitzkirch, Lucerne), he entered the Capuchin novitiate at Baden (Aargau) on 17 September 1821; ordained a priest on 24 September 1825, he was a preacher, spiritual director and novice master, lecturer in philosophy and theology, and in 1841 professor of theological controversies at the S. Fedele da Sigmaringa Missionary College in Rome, of which he was vice-rector until his departure in 1843 for the mission of Agra (India).
In 1845 he was appointed the first apostolic vicar of Patna, where he vigorously promoted missionary activity, erecting churches, stations, schools and charitable institutions, and provided religious care for the Irish troops, as well as defending the Catholic religion against Protestant missionaries. From 1849 to 1854 he simultaneously administered the apostolic vicariate of Bombay, which had been disrupted by internal factions; he successfully resisted the Indo-Lusitanian schism of Goa; in 1854 he was appointed its apostolic vicar, and also apostolic administrator of Punach. In poor health, he returned to Europe in 1856; in Rome he worked at Propaganda on a new general organization of the missions in India and contributed to the negotiations for a concordat with Portugal; as interim procurator of the Order’s missions, he reorganized their administration. In 1860 he returned to India as apostolic vicar of Patna and restored this mission after its recent devastation; he defended the rights of Catholic schools and, in Calcutta in 1865, safeguarded the laws concerning Christian marriage before the English government. Exhausted by his labors, he died of cholera at his residence in Kurjee, a suburb of Patna, on 24 April 1866. The process of beatification was initiated in 1906.
He composed many monographs on sacred, historical, linguistic and natural disciplines, most of which remained in manuscript. He earned the title of “Canisius of Hindustan,” not only for his activity but also for the Masihi Tālim, seu Catechismus hindustanus (Bombay 1852), which went through several editions, and for his translation of the New Testament into Urdu (Patna 1864). In 1850 he founded the newspaper The Bombay Catholic Examiner, in which he published his highly regarded pastoral letters.