II. PRACHATITZ

The young man who left the Niagara Mission so precipitously was born on March 28, 1811, in a two-story stone house in Prachatitz, close to Budweis in Bohemia. He was baptized John Nepomucene Neumann that same day in the parish church of St. James. He was named after the patron saint of Bohemia, St. John Nepomuk, a fourteenth century martyr.

His father, Philip Neumann, was a Bavarian who had migrated to Bohemia in 1801 to avoid the Napoleonic wars. He had married there, and founded a small factory for weaving knit stockings. After the sudden death of his first wife, he had married Agnes Lebis, the daughter of a Czech harness maker.

John, the third child of this marriage, was preceded and followed by two sisters and eventually a brother, Wenzel. The family was well off, employing a household servant and four or five journeymen as weavers on their stocking looms. They were exemplary Catholics.

Philip Neumann was a man of influence in the town. He had established an alms system for aiding the impoverished. John's mother, Agnes, attended daily Mass, frequently accompanied by her tiny son. It was a happy household whose daily life revolved around the Church and its holy days from Advent and Christmas to Lent, Easter, and Pentecost.

At seven John was enrolled in the local school where he demonstrated good learning ability. Like his father, he became an ardent reader, often to the annoyance of his mother who called him her bibliomaniac. In later years he confessed that his occasional selection by teachers for public recitations was due more to his father's prominence as a town councillor than to his own talents. He was a short, stocky, serious youngster with wide brown eyes, always well-groomed, and concerned about his duties.

John Neumann was born in 1811 in this two-story house in Prachatitz, Bohemia. Happily, his alert, boyish features were preserved in this portrait.

When he was ten, he passed the examinations for admission to the Gymnasium or secondary school at Budweis. In the fall of 1821, he went trudging off with a group of youngsters to Budweis, the provincial capital, some fifteen miles distant on a direct line between Linz and Prague.

John roomed with a private family; and while he did well in his studies, he was frequently lonesome and unhappy with his living situation. He was tempted to quit school on several occasions but he carried on, and when it became time to choose a profession, he considered studying medicine. He finally chose the priesthood, toying with the idea of joining the Jesuits or the Redemptorists, or going on the foreign missions.

While still in Prachatitz, John had attended Latin classes taught by a local priest. He added to his knowledge of the language and literature while at the Gymnasium where it was an important course. He spent much time copying passages from the classic authors including Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Terence, and Livy. He had also achieved a knowledge of Greek for reading the New Testament.

In 1829, at eighteen, John Neumann entered the course in philosophy taught by the Cistercian monks at Budweis. His mental horizon widened. Being an earnest student, he was not content with the textbook refutation of erroneous ideologies and heretical opinions placed before him by his instructors. He read the books and original texts by the authors whose ideas were being refuted by the teachers in class. To do so, he had acquired a short bookshelf of volumes on the Index of Forbidden Books. At the end of the course he burned them.

The curriculum in the school of philosophy included religion, higher mathematics, Latin philology, and the natural sciences. For each of these subjects he put together a sizeable notebook. This method of study was in keeping with the learning by listening to lectures, memorizing and repeating almost word for word what the professor said in class. It was characteristic of the pedagogic system down through the ages to modern times. It was responsible for numerous dull teachers and lackluster students. John seems to have bridled at it instinctively. He had a prejudice against memorizing. But he did prepare voluminous notebooks, scrupulously copied, all through his career as a student, including his major seminary days. This meticulous work gave him a well-informed and orderly mind later as a preacher, parish priest and church administrator.

John gained early his reputation for reading, which he pursued diligently all his life. Many of his books have been kept by his Redemptorist brothers

Neumann's preferences were for botany and astronomy. With the aid of friends he constructed a celestial globe, acquired a telescope, and read a popular book of meditations on the structure of the universe, but botany became his main interest. Armed with a microscope, he studied plant life, flowers, ferns, and the tiny animals that inhabited them. Eventually, he was able to identify close to a thousand different species, an accomplishment he greatly increased while tramping through the woods on his missionary work in the new world.

Among his classmates Neumann was considered shy. He had no interest in girls other than his sisters who frequently came to Budweis for an outing or a shopping spree. Attractive young women were closed books with nice covers as far as he was concerned. He was, however, a cheerful companion to his fellow students, playing the zither or guitar, taking long walks over the countryside, while discussing philosophical questions, observing the stars, searching for rare flowers, and wondering about the future.

In 1831, he transferred to the seminary at Budweis and was registered as a clerical student at the end of that year. In 1833, he was awarded one of the two places reserved for clerical students from Budweis at the provincial seminary in Prague. The faculty of theology was part of the university there, and Neumann thought it would afford him more competent professors as well as an opportunity to study both French and English. He had been reading the Letters from Missionaries in the New World, published by the Leopoldine Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Vienna, and had decided that as a priest he would go on the foreign missions in America where he would need to know both languages. He was greatly attracted by the idea of the Indian missions described in reports by Father Frederic Baraga from Michigan and the Redemptorist, Father Simon Sandaerl, from Wisconsin.

Thus far he had the rudiments of both languages, and had frequently tried to use them with travellers, and with a group of English workmen employed in Budweis.

Enrolled in the theology faculty at Prague, Neumann discovered that neither French nor English were taught there; and restrictions were placed on his attending classes in the faculty of literature. He tried reading Shakespeare on his own, but found the going hard, and he was frequently troubled by the worldliness and sexual frivolity of some of the plays.

In the regular classes for dogma, sacred scripture, moral theology, and canon law, Neumann was bored with the lassitude of most of the professors who were content to read outdated lectures to their students. He also felt he was frequently being put down by Dr. Anton Rost, president of the seminary. Nevertheless, he assembled a formidable array of notebooks - written in his neat gothic script - dealing particularly with the Sacred Scriptures that he managed to carry with him on his journeys in America. His study of the Letters of St. Paul increased his intense desire to imitate the great missionary saints.

In October, 1834, at the start of his second year in Prague, Neumann began an intimate diary of his soul. It is a record of his innermost thoughts and experiences, almost totally introspective, but containing useful information of many of his daily doings and relationships with people. He wrote these reflections with occasional lapses - a whole year is missing - in both German and French, down to his joining the Redemptorists in 1840.

Modelled in good part on St. Augustine's Confessions, the journal of his soul is a document concerned mainly with his acceptance of God's graces. It is at times a painful record of his sins and faults, his scruples in regard to confession and communion, and his failure to achieve perfection.

If read out of context, this daily examination of his conscience could give the impression of morbidity, that he indulged a narcissistic obsession with scruples about obedience to the law of God, sexual feelings and impure thoughts, and self-induced worries. Actually, it is the reflections of a highly sensitive person intent on achieving internal perfection, and totally in keeping with an inner religious conscientiousness cultivated by saintly people down through the centuries.

The diary is helpful in understanding the somewhat erratic record of his seminary studies in Prague, and aids greatly in comprehending his eventual decision to leave home and head for the missions in America. But it must be read with an awareness of the intense religious values it represents. For Neumann's journal of the soul - even more rigidly than Pope John's more famous Journal - gives evidence of the deep struggle that betrays the inner working of great virtue at a level of spiritual insight almost beyond our comprehension.

Upon passing the examinations at the close of his courses in theology, Neumann was declared fit for ordination to the priesthood. His disappointment was understandably great when he and his classmates were informed that there would be no ordinations in the Diocese of Budweis that year.

Neumann spent the summer and fall at home in Prachatitz. As a well-educated young man, and a cleric, he was not expected to get involved in the family business. He put himself on a schedule of prayer, study, reading, and translation work, stiffer than the routine of seminary life. He rose at five-thirty each morning and retired at ten-thirty each night. But he was restless and ill at ease. He was reading mainly French books dealing with an intense type of inner spiritual awareness which upset his usual equilibrium.

During his years as a Redemptorist missionary, Neumann wrote this catechism, which has been published in numerous editions, in German and English

To further his desire for ordination and the missions, he visited influential clergymen in the vicinity of Prachatitz and Budweis including Canon Hermann Dichtl, his counsellor and confidant. The good prelate was a great advocate of the Church's missionary activities and wrote about John to friends in Linz and Strasbourg, asking them to help him find an American bishop who would take him into his diocese. He encouraged John to apply for a travel grant from the Leopoldine Society in Vienna. The request was turned down, however, as he was not yet a priest, and he had no bishop to vouch for him. Meanwhile, he varied his daily routine with pilgrimages to shrines scattered throughout the countryside seeking spiritual solace. Finally, he broke the news to his family that he was thinking of setting out for the missions in America.

Neumann had heard that the Bishop of Philadelphia, Francis Kenrick, was looking for German-speaking priests to care for the immigrants rushing into his vast diocese. Several American bishops were also known to be touring Europe in search of seminarians for their missionary territories. Eventually, friends and the local clergy rallied, supplying him with a sum of money to get him to the new world. He was advised to travel through Strasbourg where the seminary president had control of financial assistance for missionaries.

Early on the morning of February 8, 1836, John Neumann slipped out of the house in Prachatitz on his way to Budweis, Paris, and New York. The night before he left he confided his planned departure to his sister Veronica but he did not have the heart to say good-bye to his parents. Instead, he wrote them a letter of farewell from Budweis.

His enthusiasm for his adventure was somewhat dampened by the less than encouraging reception given him by the aged Bishop of Budweis who failed to give him official letters allowing him to be ordained by another bishop. He was saddened too, by the sudden withdrawal of two companions who were to leave with him. Nevertheless, he boarded the stagecoach for Linz in Bavaria amid a flurry of snow. At the end of the long and wearying journey he was welcomed with open arms by the seminary rector, Canon Stolzenthaler who gave him hospitality and took him to dine with the bishop, Gregory Ziegler, a Benedictine greatly interested in the missions. Here he received an ego boost as well as letters of recommendation to prelates in Munich and Strasbourg.

From Linz, Neumann travelled by stagecoach to Munich. After considerable searching he found his cousin, Philip Janson, a mounted hussar in the imperial guard. The two young men took in the sights of the city. Lodged in the seminary, Neumann was introduced to Father John Henni, a missionary from America, who greatly upset him when he informed him that Bishop Kenrick was no longer looking for German-speaking priests. Henni suggested instead that he contact Monsignor Simon Brut~, the Bishop of Vincennes, visiting in Rome at the time, who, he felt sure, would be glad to take Neumann in. He thought it would be wise for Neumann to go to Paris and await the bishop at the Seminary of St. Sulpice. He also said that Neumann could obtain funds in Strasbourg.

In Strasbourg, Neumann was shown hospitality by Canon Andrews Rass but given no money. Instead, the prelate offered him several books in German that he thought would be of great value in the United States. Neumann pushed on to Nancy where he visited a group of nuns from Bohemia in training there. He browsed through the books stalls, and was entertained by a group of the local clergy interested in the missions. On the journey to Paris he was joined by Father Albert Schaefer, a young priest who also hoped to meet Bishop Bruté. They were refused rooms in the Seminary of St. Sulpice, but put up in a lodging of the Society for the Foreign Missions for twenty francs a month.

Neumann was delighted with Paris, but disappointed to find there was no word of Bishop Bruté's arrival. He set out to discover the city's shrines and monuments. He visited Montmartre, the site of the founding of the Jesuits by St. Ignatius and his companions in the sixteenth century; he heard the great Dominican preacher, Lacordaire, in Notre Dame; he toured the zoo and the Louvre -and chastised himself severely in his journal for exposing himself to worldliness and curiosity in gazing at pictures of nudes and frivolous bucolic scenes. All his life he had to struggle with his passions and emotions. But he accepted the temptations he experienced as part of man's normal condition. And while he fought to overcome the longings of the flesh and wavered occasionally in concern lest he had taken momentary pleasure in forbidden thoughts or actions, his inward battle did not overwhelm him. He was not obsessed with sex; as a celibate he had foresworn indulgence in its pleasures. He abided by that decision.

The one passion he indulged in was his great attraction for buying books. He found Paris the bookman's paradise with innumerable stalls and shops chock full of old tomes and the latest editions of novels, poetry, history, spiritual reading and theology. After considerable hesitation, counting his francs, he bought a copy of Bourdaloue's sermons, a Greek dictionary, a grammar book, and a Greek New Testament. He toyed with purchasing an English Travel Book but bought several religious treatises instead. He also acquired a small crucifix that attracted his attention.

A month later with still no sign of Bishop Bruté, Neumann took account of his rapidly diminishing funds and suddenly decided to depart for Le Havre and board a ship for America. He bought a ticket on the stagecoach, and arranged to have his baggage sent by freight directly from Paris to New York. But he arrived five minutes late for the departure of the coach, took a local carriage to the city's limits, and walked to Nanterre at night in the rain. In the darkness he lost his new crucifix and several relics.

He finally secured a place on another stagecoach that carried him to Le Havre. Here he aw the ocean for the first time. It took him ;several days to arrange for passage on the American schooner, Europa, a three-masted, two hundred and six foot-long vessel. Despite his disinclination to bargain, he obtained a place on board for ninety francs and a pallet and provisions for another fifty.

On April 20, 1836, Neumann set sail from Le Havre. His travelling companions were mostly German emigrants from Alsace whom he considered a rough group. He spent most f his time on board reading the Imitation of Christ and the Phiothea or Love of God of St. Francis de Sales, attempting to practice his Spanish on a young Mexican boy, and confiding his hopes and fears to his journal that he kept in Latin to protect himself from the prying eyes of fellow passengers.

The journey itself was uneventful. He was seasick at first; and the ship experienced several periods of calm. His hat and maps were stolen; and one day he was accused of being proud and disdainful by a bibulous Bavarian. Finally,on June 2nd in the rain he landed in New York.