Propagation of Christianity

PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY. - I. L'OPERA APOSTOLICA. - It is easy to follow the stages of the growing expansion of the faith in the apostolic age: the first called were the Hebraizing Jews; beginning with Pentecost (30), numerous Hellenizing Jews who had come to Jerusalem from the diaspora were converted; then evangelization extended to the Samaritans and even beyond the Palestinian milieu, to some distant follower of the Mosaic Law (the eunuch of Queen Candace). Afterward came the conversion of the Gentiles, beginning with the centurion Cornelius and his household at Caesarea in Palestine.

From then on the preaching of the Christian faith "to every creature," without distinction between Jews and Gentiles, became ever more firmly established. Through the work especially of St. Peter and St. Paul, Antioch in Syria became an important center of evangelical radiation, where for the first time there was talk of "Christians" and of the "catholic" Church. Peter established his see there for a time; Paul made it the starting point of his apostolic expeditions. The universal mission of the Church was affirmed at the Council of Jerusalem, with the declaration that the Mosaic Law could not be imposed on converted Gentiles. Conscious of the primacy conferred on him by Christ, Peter gave the p. of C. its definitive driving center, fixing at Rome the see of the Catholic Church.

The chief mission of St. Paul (v.) was to preach the Gospel to all peoples. He took care to organize Christian communities in the commercial metropolises and in the most famous centers of Greek thought and mythological worship, from which the doctrine of Christ could easily spread to nearby localities. His principal co-workers were Barnabas, the apostle of Cyprus; John Mark, founder of the Church of Alexandria, who was also the interpreter of St. Peter; Luke, the faithful companion of St. Paul on the second and third journeys; Timothy, bishop of Ephesus, and Titus, who evangelized the island of Crete and Dalmatia.

Of the other Apostles, James the Greater, James the Less and Jude Thaddeus remained among the Jewish Christians in Palestine. Of the others there is no reliable information; only of St. John is it known that he presided over the development of the Churches in Asia Minor: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. At his death, around the year 100, Christianity was solidly established in Syria, Asia Minor, Macedonia and at Rome; it flourished in some parts of Egypt, Cyrenaica, Greece, Gaul and Spain and, passing beyond the limits of the Empire, had been spread in the direction of Mesopotamia and Adiabene (Assyria).

II. THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY AFTER THE DEATH OF THE APOSTLES UP TO THE SETTLEMENT OF THE BARBARIANS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The Apostles and their co-workers, prophets and teachers, were essentially itinerant missionaries, concerned with preaching Jesus Christ where he was not yet known, and with laying in the most important centers the foundations of communities which, directed by monarchical bishops, successors of the Apostles, became metropolitan churches, that is, mothers of daughter churches, thanks to the constant proselytism of the faithful: rich and poor, senators and patricians, slaves and workmen, merchants and soldiers. The oral teaching of Christian philosophers, moralists and exegetes, as well as the writings of the apologists, contributed to spreading the new faith in pagan circles. The passage of the epistle to Diognetus (VI, 1; 2nd cent.) is most eloquent: « Quod est in corpore anima, hoc sunt in mundo christiani ».

Testimonies proving the spread of Christianity in the world then known are not lacking. Rome in the middle of the 3rd cent., under Pope Cornelius, possessed a fully organized clergy with important works of assistance; at the Synod of 251, 60 bishops of Italy were present. In Gaul it is known for certain that flourishing communities existed in the 2nd cent. at Lyons and Vienne, and then at Marseilles, Arles, Orange, Toulouse, Autun, Rouen, Paris, Sens, Besançon, Bordeaux, Bourges, Reims. For Spain, the results of St. Paul's apostolate are unknown, but the existence of churches in the 2nd cent. is affirmed by Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., I, 10, 2) and by Tertullian (Adv. Jud., 7). In the following century, St. Cyprian wrote to the Churches of León-Astorga and Mérida and recalled that of Saragossa (Ep. 67). At the Council of Elvira (ca. 300), 19 bishops and 24 presbyters took part.

In Germany, Christianity spread, at least from the 2nd cent., along the left bank of the Rhine. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., I, 10, 2) mentions churches founded in Germanis. The sees of Cologne and Trier probably date from the 3rd cent. Monuments and inscriptions attest the existence of Christians, in the 4th cent., at Metz, Mainz, Strasbourg, Bonn and Xanten. In the Roman provinces of Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia, Dacia and Dalmatia, the faith was preached at least from the 3rd cent., in which one notes the erection of several dioceses in the Danubian provinces:

Poetovium (Pettau) in Styria, Siscia (Sissak) in Croatia, Lauriacum (Lorch) in Noricum, Salona in Dalmatia; the see of Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg) in Raetia probably dates from the 4th cent. As for Britain, it seems that Christianity penetrated there for the first time in the 2nd cent. through travelers come from Asia Minor. Tertullian (Adv. Jud., 7) speaks of the « Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita ». At the Council of Arles (314), the bishops of York, London and Lincoln took part (Eboracum, Londinium, Colonia Lindensium).

It is probable that in Roman Africa the preaching of the Gospel goes back to the end of the 1st cent. One notes there a rapid multiplication of episcopal sees, even in localities of lesser importance. At the Synod of Carthage, presided over by Bishop Agrippinus (ca. 220), 70 bishops were present; at the one celebrated in 256, St. Cyprian found himself surrounded by 87 colleagues. In Egypt, Christianity spread from the central see of Alexandria as far as the Thebaid and Libya, so that at the end of the 3rd cent. about 100 episcopal sees were counted there. In Ethiopia the first evangelization would be due to the work carried out at the court of Aksum by two young Christians from Tyre, Frumentius and Edesius, of whom the first was consecrated bishop by St. Athanasius of Alexandria.

At the end of the 3rd cent., Christianity was the prevailing religion throughout Asia Minor, except in the center and the south-eastern part (Cappadocia-Cilicia); at Nicomedia (Bithynia), an imperial residence, a grand church rose facing the imperial Palace. As for Syria, at the Council of Antioch (268), where Paul of Samosata was deposed, about 86 bishops were present. From Syria the faith spread into Osrhoene (Edessa) and beyond, into Mesopotamia (Nisibis), Assyria and the independent kingdom of Armenia. In Georgia (Iberia), the Christian faith penetrated perhaps already in the last decade of the reign of Constantine the Great (325); in southern Arabia (Yemen) the bishop Theophilus, sent by the emperor Constantius, worked with success; in the interior of Asia, Turkestan, India, China and Mongolia, the Nestorians, come from Persia, later distinguished themselves also for their proselytism.

At the moment when the Roman Empire recognized for Christianity full legal existence (313), Christianity had become, by its numerical strength as by its intrinsic value, a moral power whose growing affirmation in the public life of the Empire no political authority could have held back.

III. THE PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The missionary work accomplished in the Middle Ages comprises essentially the conversion of the Germanic, Scandinavian, Slavic and kindred peoples in Europe (4th-13th centuries), and the apostolic attempts of the Mendicant Orders in the Baltic countries, in Eastern Europe, in Asia and in Africa (13th-15th centuries).

1. The conversion of the Germanic, Scandinavian, Slavic and kindred peoples in Europe. a) Conversion of the Germanic peoples

The first barbarians who converted to Christianity were the Goths (Visigoths), settled in the 3rd century on the lower Danube and on the western and northern shore of the Black Sea. Theophilus, bishop of "Gothia", took part in the Council of Nicaea (325). But the principal architect of their conversion was one of their own countrymen, the bishop Ulfilas (341-83), translator of the Bible into the Gothic language. He suffered from the Arian infusion, and from him the Goths learned Christian doctrine under this form and carried it with them, transmitting it to the Ostrogoths, Lombards, Burgundians and Vandals in their successive migrations into Italy, southern France and Spain. Here they embraced the Catholic faith following the example of King Reccared (586-601). The conversion of the Lombards to Catholicism occupied the whole of the 7th century.

The Franks passed directly from paganism to the Christian faith, following the example of King Clovis (496). They had a decisive influence on the fortunes of the Church in the 6th-9th centuries, both for its armed defense against the Arians and the Mohammedans, and for the protection of the papacy — "Vestra fides nostra victoria est", wrote St. Avitus, bishop of Vienne, to Clovis. St. Gregory the Great strove to establish relations with the Merovingians (letters to Childebert III and to Brunhilda); the bishops Germanus of Auxerre, Venantius Fortunatus of Poitiers, Eligius of Noyon, Nicetius of Trier, Vedast of Arras, Amandus of Maastricht, Lambert of Tongres and many others adapted their ministry to the rural organization of the Franks; monks such as St. Columbanus (junior), the promoter of the Irish monastic migrations, consolidated the work begun by the bishops and extended it to the Burgundians, Alemanni and Lombards.

In Ireland, in fact, the faith had been solidly established in the course of the 5th century by St. Patrick (c. 385-461) and by his disciples Benignus, Finnian, Brendan, Enna, Kevin, Comgall, by means of monasteries, centers of Christian formation and of culture (Bangor, Clonard, Durrow, Derry) erected in every tribe. From the island of Iona (Hy), St. Columba (senior), an Irish monk (521-97), propagated Christianity in the Hebrides and in Scotland. The evangelization of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who had invaded England from the 5th century onward, was an eminently Roman work, begun in 597 by St. Augustine and his companions under the mandate of St. Gregory the Great. The first hearth of the Christian faith was in the Kingdom of Kent (Canterbury) under King Ethelbert. Soon episcopal sees were erected at London, Rochester and York. The instructions attributed to Gregory the Great, given to Bishop Augustine (601), on the manner of respecting as much as possible the usages and customs of the newly converted and on liturgical eclecticism, have a universal missiological significance.

The conversion of the barbarians remaining in Germany — Thuringians, Alemanni, Bavarians, Frisians and Saxons — was above all the work of missionaries come from Ireland and from England. The name of Kilian is linked to the evangelization of Thuringia and Franconia; Gall and Pirmin preached Christ among the Alemanni and the Suevi; Rupert, Corbinian and Emmeram among the Bavarians, from the end of the 7th century to the first half of the 8th. From 690 to 739, Willibrord, monk and bishop of Utrecht, devoted himself to the conversion of the Frisians according to the mandate received from Pope Sergius I. Boniface (v.) was an untiring preacher of the faith in Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Alemannia, organizer of the dioceses in Germany and reformer of the decadent Frankish Church. The conversion of the Saxons, imposed by force of arms by Charlemagne, was brought to a successful conclusion through persuasion under Louis the Pious (814-40).

The first preacher of the faith in Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden) was St. Ansgar (v.), to whom Louis the Pious entrusted the see of Hamburg (831), whose jurisdiction extended to the Scandinavian peoples and to the Germanic peoples of Nordalbingia. His principal co-workers were Gautbert, Ansfrid and Rimbert. The conversion of the Danish kings, beginning with Harald Bluetooth (650-86), with the consequent erection of dioceses (Schleswig, Aarhus, Ribe, Lund, Trondheim, Skara, Uppsala), as well as the educating work of the monks of Cluny, gave a solid foundation to the evangelization. King Olaf Tryggvesson promoted the propagation of the faith in the Faroe Islands, the Hebrides, the Orkneys, in Ireland and in Greenland.

b) The conversion of the Slavic and kindred peoples in Europe. — In the conversion of the Slavs a threefold factor intervened: the episcopate and the Empire of the West, the patriarchate of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, and, between the two, the moderating power of the Holy See. Among the Southern Slavs, the Slovenes came to the faith through the work of the bishops of Salzburg, Passau and Aquileia (8th-9th centuries); the conversion of the neighboring Croats, south of the Sava, along the Adriatic Sea, is contemporary with that of the Serbs, who depended on the Byzantine Empire. To the evangelization of the Bulgarians (of Tartar origin but soon fused with the Slavs) there contributed, after the conversion of Prince Boris (865), for a brief time the Roman priests sent by Pope Nicholas I, and then the clergy of the Constantinopolitan patriarchate (869). To the branch of the Western Slavs belong the Moravians, Bohemians and Poles. Among the Moravians, Germanic missionaries ignorant of the Slavic language had attempted without success to propagate Christianity (830-40). In 865, the Byzantine emperor Michael III sent them the two brothers Cyril and Methodius (v.), who possessed the South Slavic language. With the approval of Pope Adrian II, they celebrated the liturgy in the Slavonic language. Despite the politico-ecclesiastical opposition of the bishops of Passau, Salzburg and Freising, Methodius remained until his death (885) a strenuous defender of preaching and of the liturgy in the Slavic language. His disciples, Clement, Naum, Angelar, expelled from Pannonia, carried with them into Bulgaria the Slavic liturgical books composed by Cyril and Methodius.

In Bohemia the Gospel was preached through the successive work of missionaries come from the diocese of Regensburg (840) and of St. Methodius or of his collaborators. From 880 onward, Bohemia had Catholic princes, among them St. Wenceslaus, murdered by his brother Boleslaus I (929). In 973 the diocese of Prague was erected, as a suffragan of Mainz. The first propagators of Christianity among the Poles were certain Bohemian priests in the retinue of Princess Dobrawa, who went as bride to the Polish prince Mieszko I, who converted in 966. The see of Poznań was erected in 968 and that of Gniezno in 999. The Poles undertook the evangelization of Prussia and Pomerania (11th-12th centuries) and then that of Samogitia.

Among the Eastern Slavs, the first to hear the good news were those who occupied Podolia, northern Galicia, Volhynia and the region around Kiev, formerly called Rus, Ruthenians and today Ukrainians. They had missionaries who came from Bulgaria, from Germany and from the Byzantine Empire. The princes Vladimir (980-1013) and Yaroslav (1013-54) organized the Church there with the metropolitan see of Kiev (v.). The great monastery near Kiev (Pechersk Lavra) became the principal center of the national and religious life of the Russians. The Hungarians too, of Tatar stock, set out toward Christianity following the example of their princes: Stephen, who received the royal crown from Pope Sylvester II; his son St. Emeric; Bela I (1061), who won the final victory over the pagans. The conversion of the Cumans, peoples of Finno-Turkic origin who settled in Hungary after the Mongol invasions in southern Russia and Romania, was undertaken by King Bela IV toward the middle of the 13th century, with the help of the Dominicans and the Franciscans.

2. The apostolic attempts of the mendicant Orders in the Baltic countries, in Eastern Europe, in Asia and in Africa (13th-15th centuries). A characteristic note of their missionary method was to establish personal and peaceful contacts, both with dissident Christians in order to lead them to union, and with Muslims for the liberation of the faithful reduced to slavery (Trinitarians and Mercedarians), and with the Mongols in the hope of converting them and bringing them closer to the Holy See and to Christian princes.

In Livonia, Prussia, Finland and Lithuania, against the Baptism imposed by violence by the military Orders, the Friars Minor and Preachers set up preaching. In the course of the 13th century, they established themselves in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Bulgaria, despite the intrigues of the dissident clergy and the cruelties of the Mohammedan masters. First the Dominicans (end of the 13th century), then the Franciscans (end of the 14th century) created the "Societates peregrinantium pro Christo", societies of professional missionaries trained in special schools who, in Eastern Europe, at Pera near Constantinople, Caffa in Crimea, Trebizond, Chios and along the Caspian Sea, prepared themselves for the apostolic conquests in Asia and in Africa.

To establish missions among the Mongols of Persia, of Kiptchak, of China and of Turkestan was, for a century and a half, the great purpose of the popes, from Innocent IV (1245) to Boniface IX (1392). Their most faithful informants on the internal state of the immense Tatar Empire were missionary explorers, such as Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, William of Rubruck, Ascelino of Lombardy and Andrew of Longjumeau. In Persia, Armenia and Georgia, episcopal sees were founded in the first half of the 14th century (Sultanieh 1318). In Kiptchak, north of the Black Sea, between Hungary and the Urals, the Friars Minor had about twenty residences, and episcopal sees arose there at Kaffa, Tana, Sarai, Kerch, Matrega. The invasions of Tamerlane (end of the 14th century) marked the decline of this flourishing mission.

Giovanni da Montecorvino penetrated into China passing through the Indies, and arrived at Khan-Baliq (Peking) in 1293. In this city he built in 1299 the first Catholic church of China. An episcopal see was erected, besides at Peking, also at Zaiton, a port of Fo-Kien. The Friars Minor worked in China until the Chinese dynasty of the Ming, hostile to Christianity, supplanted the Tatar dynasty of the Genghis-Khans, benevolent toward the missionaries (1368). In Turkestan, the p. of c. was violently hindered by Muslim fanaticism. In India there passed several Dominican and Franciscan missionaries destined for China, Odoric of Pordenone, Giovanni Marignola, Nicholas of Pistoia. In 1329, Giordano da Severac became the first bishop of Quilon. Beginning in 1215, the Friars Minor began to go to the Holy Land, where, between 1273 and 1325, many sanctuaries were entrusted to them. They strove to preserve the faith among Catholics. West of Morocco, in the Canary Islands, discovered in the first half of the 14th century, it seems that the preaching of the faith was organized there only beginning in the 15th century, through the work of the Franciscans, to whom Sixtus IV enjoined in 1476 to defend the natives, especially the converts, against the slave trade.

Let us note, finally, the contribution made by the Friars Minor and Preachers to apologetic literature based on knowledge of the doctrines being combated and to the technical formation of missionaries, by means of knowledge of languages and of the environment. To this end, St. Raymond of Peñafort promoted the founding of special colleges in Muslim lands (Murcia, Tunis) and in Christian lands (Valencia, Xativa, Barcelona). At his request, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa contra Gentiles. Two other Dominicans, Raymond Martin in Spain and Riccoldo da Monte Croce in Bagdad, refuted the errors of the Muslims, of the Jews and of the Gentiles (Pugis Pidei, contra legem Saracenorum). At Oxford, Roger Bacon composed the geographical treatise on the Holy Land (1267) and compiled a Greek and a Hebrew grammar. The work of the Franciscan tertiary Raymond Lull (v.) should also be remembered.

Fredegando Callaey

IV. THE PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY IN MODERN TIMES

With the end of the 15th century and the events that marked it, the propagation of Christianity in modern times takes on a character different from that which it had in earlier times and moves in other directions, beyond the seas. The events that conditioned these new paths of evangelization are two: the discovery of the sea route to the East Indies (1498: the landing of Vasco da Gama at Calicut), and that of the Americas (1492).

After the bottling up of Islam in the Mediterranean, Portugal advanced freely over the seas of the East, from Goa to Macao, to Japan, and began its work of colonization, which — however deep it may have been — constituted in a certain way the trajectory and, at the same time, the base of the propagation of the Gospel in those great regions now no longer inaccessible, or only with difficulty accessible, by land. For its part, the other Catholic Iberian power, Spain, thanks to the Genoese Columbus, was actually discovering new, unsuspected countries for the colonization and the evangelizing ambition of the Church: millions of men of the most diverse races appeared on the horizon of Catholicism. Both Iberian nations received from the papacy a kind of privileged investiture, at once civil and religious, made up of rights and duties (v. PADROADO, PATRONATO); thus a new era began, of fruitful, though not free from dangers, ecclesiastical-state collaboration for the evangelization of the newly discovered or rediscovered lands. On this track, then, the diffusion of the Gospel set out for about a century and a half, until the creation of the specialized central missionary body, the S. Congregation de Propaganda Fide in 1622.

The course of Christianity, in this period of a colonial type, which availed itself of the old religious Orders, but above all of the new ones that had arisen in the meantime, such as the Capuchins and the Jesuits, was marked by the same course as colonization, from the geographical and historical point of view, with some generous overstepping beyond those limits. The missions along the whole perimeter of Africa, dotted with Portuguese fortresses, began in this period, although they did not obtain lasting results (v. AFRICA). Better fortunes, on the other hand, were had by the apostolate in the East Indies (Goa, a diocese in 1534), to which the apostolate of St. Francis Xavier (v.) gave a decisive impulse; the whole of Asia colonized by Portugal, or within its sphere of influence, was missionarily "occupied" at its most prominent points, with the erection of ordinary dioceses, beginning with India, and then also in Siam, Cambodia, Burma, the Philippines, China, Japan, missions all begun at the close of the 16th century. And immediately afterward, at the beginning of the 17th century, also Cochinchina and Tonkin (v. ASIA and the entries for the individual countries).

In the Spanish sphere of influence, that is, predominantly in the Americas, and, at a later time, again in the Philippines, it is the same process that established itself, but to a greater depth; with the missions, in fact, the Church took possession of those lands, succeeding in founding there not only the first centers of propaganda, but the first Christian nations (v. AMERICA and the entries for the individual American nations), and several of them already in this very earliest period of little more than a century. By the middle of the 16th century (1546), in fact, Mexico already had an archdiocese (Mexico, city), with five suffragan dioceses.

The period following this regime of patronage — which, however, continued still in the Americas, and, to a certain extent, also in Asia — was distinguished by a twofold penetration, geographical and moral: geographical, in that Christianity pushed beyond the primitive fortresses of the colonizing nations, venturing into the interior regions; moral, because of the consequent more direct contact with the indigenous populations. A sample of this greater and more effective missionary penetration, in the 17th century, is given by the results obtained in the Chinese Empire, especially following the activity of Fr. Matteo Ricci (v.), and in the countries of Indochina, especially in the Kingdoms of Annam, of Tonkin (v. the individual entries and RHODES). This twofold penetration, which was brought about with the cooperation of new religious families, above all of the Foreign Missions of Paris and of the Lazarists, was also facilitated by the new and growing influence of France, in the East (China, Siam, Indochina) and in the West (Canada), and strongly promoted by the new Congregation de Propaganda Fide (1622), which, inserting into the ancient dioceses of patronage — especially in Asia — the new "apostolic vicariates," entrusted to missionaries of other, non-Portuguese nations, broadened the horizons of the missionary world, strengthening its fruitfulness.

With the end of the 17th century, then, it can be said that the Church had set foot in all the countries of Asia and the Americas, even if, in fact, its missionaries were not yet present in every land, because of the scarcity of personnel and the difficulties of access; in any case, over all those territories the network of ecclesiastical-missionary units was by then extended, which indicated their "occupation" at least de iure.

The 18th century, the age of the greatest jurisdictional and methodological controversies and of bloody persecutions in the Far East, saw the apostolate push still further beyond the boundaries reached, penetrating into Tibet (1703), then into Korea (1784), with a thrust to the Caroline Islands (1710).

Finally, with the 19th century, two other great parts of the world, Africa and Australia, or rather, the islands of Oceania, entered fully into the orbit of the missionary Church, which had at its disposal new forces, providentially arisen precisely in that era.

A few decades before the middle of the century (1833: vicariate of eastern Oceania; 1841: vicariate of the Two Guineas) the first missions were created, which could be called "central," in that they were destined for a real penetration in depth into the archipelagos of Oceania and into the interior of the African continent: a penetration that, in fact, took place with a continuous rhythm, and that is being realized down to the present day from the regions of the great lakes of central Africa, through the work of the White Fathers, to the most inaccessible and most resistant tribes of the unexplored center of New Guinea, through the work of the Missionaries of the Sacred Hearts of Picpus and of the Fathers of the Divine Word.

It is also from the second twenty years of the 19th century that the first evangelization of the various Italian tribes of the northwest and north of Canada dates, on the initiative of Msgr. Provencher (v.) of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who occupied almost all the regions up to the Glicale Ocean, going to seek out the Eskimos in their igloos, and writing what was called the "white epic" (v. CANADA; GROLLIER, P.-H.; TACHE, A. A.).

With this it can be said that the geographical-missionary map of the world, at least in its general lines, was complete, and the Catholic apostolate also penetrated, to a certain extent, into the heart of these geographical units, casting there the evangelical seed.

Exceptions are the lands so-called "closed" to evangelical propaganda: Afghanistan, Arabia, Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim, Outer Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan. To these countries should be added those regions of predominantly Muslim religion (independent or colonized) where, although religious freedom is legalized and recognized, in fact the missionary cannot penetrate, or only in passing, and with many limitations; they are Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and other neighboring countries; and, until a few months ago, they were certain autonomous States of India, now conglomerated into Hindustan, and certain regions of Indonesia, or portions of British or Dutch colonial territories, prohibited under the pretext of personal security.

Apart from these very recent territories, the total population of the large countries closed to the Gospel amounts to approximately 32 million inhabitants. Such is the course of the Gospel through these last four centuries, with the corresponding territorial ecclesiastical "occupation."

Giovanni Battista Tragella