"Philosophia"

GEORGETOWN COLLEGE PHILOSOPHY LECTURE NOTES BY A STUDENT WHO WOULD LATER BE AN UNSUCCESSFUL PETITIONER IN AN EFFORT TO INCORPORATE THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS IN WORCESTER MASSACHUSETTS: THE PROFESSOR ADVOCATED SELLING GEORGETOWN'S SLAVES

[EDUCATION]. [PHILOSOPHY]. McMULLEN, A[ugustine], Georgetown College student, future priest in the Society of Jesus. GABARIA, Father John Stephen, S. J. AMsS in Latin by McMullen of philosophy lectures given by Father John Stephen Gabaria, S. J., at Georgetown College, Georgetown, D. C. Small 4to, original 1/2 calf, marbled boards, with McMullen's gold bordered red morocco ownership label on front cover, lettering label "Philosophia" on spine, and gold stamped "Tome III", pp. 287. [Georgetown, District of Columbia] February-July 6, 1838.

Future Reverend Augustine McMullen, S. J., became a professor of Latin and Greek, and assistant professor of French, at Georgetown College in 1851. In 1856 Rev. McMullen succeeded Father Peter Miller, S. J., as the mission's assistant to superior Father Thomas Lilly, at St. Inigo's, St. Mary's Co., Maryland, caring for the two missions, St. Nicholas and St. George's. This manuscript is McMullen's transcription of Father Gabaria's philosophy lectures, evidently written by a studious young man not entirely happy about his course in metaphysics and ethics. At the end of the manuscript he has written "Deo Gratias. Fr. Gabaria finished his lectures July 6th 1838. A. M. Finis. School was broken up on 7th A. M." He ends with "BVMH," or "To the honor of the blessed Virgin," and AMDG," or "ad majorem de gloriam (For the greater glory of God"), possibly thankful to be done with Father Gabaria class! Here are "Metaphysicae", pp. 1-169, and "Institutiones Ethicae", pp. 171-287. OCLC locates another set of manuscript notes for Gabaria's lectures, 1839-1840, in the papers of professor of rhetoric, and President of Georgetown College, Rev. John Early, S. J., two-time president of Georgetown University. Father Gabaria, who apparently never published anything, was a Jesuit professor at Georgetown College, and part of the majority group in the Maryland mission who advocated selling their slaves in order to raise money for education, a matter much in the news in recent years. "They wanted to establish a Jesuit presence in the great cities of the North, and feared that if the Union dissolved over the slavery question, the Jesuits would find themselves barred from access to the urban North."-Francis Michael Walsh, Resurrection: The Story of the Saint Inigoes Mission 1634-1994, chapter 10, p. 44 (1996, online). McMullen was also involved in a matter before the Massachusetts legislature in 1849 concerning the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. The college was founded in 1844 by Bishop Thomas Fenwick (1782-1846), of Boston, who had twice been president of Georgetown College, in Maryland. "A few days before his death, he conveyed the real estate to the Trustees of the Catholic College in Georgetown, D. C., an institution incorporated by Act of Congress The expressed condition of the deed was, that the 'Bishop of Boston' for the time being should always have the right of sending to the institution, without charge, one pupil in each fifty. It is wholly under the "care of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus," or the Jesuits, so called, and the proprietory right is still held by Georgetown College, which is also a Jesuit College...At the last session of our legislature, George Fenwick [and five others, including Augustine McMullen] petitioned that they and their successors might be made a corporation by the name of "The College of the Holy Cross..."-Art. III. The Massachusetts Legislature, and the College of the Holy Cross, in The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany, volume XLVII, fourth series, volume XII...July...1849. The Rev. John Early, S. J., was presidnent of the Holy Cross at this time. The House turned the petitioners down 117 to 84, with 52 being absent.