Father Demetrius A. Gallitzin: Son of the Russian Enlightenment

FATHER DEMETRIUS A. GALIJTZIN: SON OF THE RUSSIAN ENLIGHTENMENT Daniel L. SchlaflyJr.* Father Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin (Dmitrii Dmitrievich Golitsyn) (1770-1840) cut a striking figure in early American Catholic history. He was born into one of Russia's most prominent families on December 22, 1770, in The Hague, where his father, Prince Dmitrii Alekseevich Golitsyn , was serving as Russian minister to The Netherlands. There, as in his previous diplomatic post in Paris, the senior Golitsyn avidly pursued the broad intellectual interests that earned him a distinguished reputation in the Russian and European Enlightenment.1 His mother, Amalia von Schmettau, was the daughter of a Prussian field marshal. She, too, was devoted to culture and learning and, after separating from her husband in 1774, continued her own studies and carefully supervised the education of young Mitri and his sister Marianne in a Rousseauvian spirit which sought to develop the heart and the body as well as the mind. In 1786 she returned to the CathoUc Church into which she had been baptized, led both her children to the faith in 1787, and went on to play a leading role in German pre-Romantic CathoUc circles.2 *Mr. Schlafly is an associate professor of history in Saint Louis University. 1A friend of Voltaire, Diderot, and Helvétius, Golitsyn published studies on geography, mineralogy, electricity, politics, and other subjects. See Nina I. Bashkina et al. (eds.), The United States and Russia.The Beginning ofRelations, 1765-1815 (Washington, D.C, 1980), for the text of a letter he wrote in 1777 to Benjamin Franklin discussing theories of lightning and electricity, pp. 41-43. Golitsyn so admired Franklin that he corresponded with the American although it was inappropriate for a Russian diplomat to have contact with the as yet unrecognized representative of the rebellious American colonies. N. N. Bolkhovitinov, Rossiia otkryvaetAmeriku, 1 732-1799 (Moscow, 1991), p. 32. For Golitsyn 's life, see G. K.Tsverava,DmitriiAlekseevich Golitsyn: 1 734-1803 (Leningrad, 1985). Also see N. N. Bolkhovitinov, The Beginnings of Russian-American Relations, 1775-1815, trans. Elena Levin (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975), pp. 16-17 aadpassim, in addition to his Rossiia otkryvaetAmeriku. Unfortunately, Golitsyn's personal papers, preserved in Braunschweig, Germany, where he died in 1803, which undoubtedly contained material on his son's life, were destroyed in World War II. The little that Tsverava and Bolkhovitinov have on Demetrius is taken from sources already used by Gallitzin s earlier biographers. 2On her life and career, see, in addition to Tsverava, Pierre Brachin. Le Cercle de Mün716 BY DANIEL L. SCHLAFLY1JR.717 Mitri arrived in Baltimore in 1792 for what was to be a stop on a grand tour of the United States and the West Indies but instead presented himself to Bishop John Carroll as a candidate for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1795 after studies at the new St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, the first priest to receive aU of his minor and major orders in the United States. Named pastor of a tiny settlement in the wilds of western Pennsylvania in 1799, GaUitzin worked tirelessly and effectively there until his death on May 6, 1840. He founded a flourishing Catholic community, still bearing the name of Loretto which GaUitzin gave it, spending over $150,000 of his own, his family's, and his friends' money to realize his dream, going deeply into debt in the process. He eagerly embraced his adopted country, becoming an American citizen in 1802, even raising and training a militia company in the War of 1812, although this indirectly aided the Napoleon he loathed for invading Russia.3 GaUitzin also was an early and eloquent apologist for Catholicism , publishing a number of tracts responding to Protestant charges of Roman errors, immorality, and anti-Americanism. His A Defence of Catholic Principles,for example, which was published in 1816, enjoyed great success both in Europe and America for its erudition and tolerant tone, as well as for the author's appreciation of the political liberty and religious freedom of his adopted land.4 ster (1779-1806) et la pensée religieuse de F. L. Stolberg (Lyon, 1952), and Ewald Reinhard , Die Münsterische "famila sacra":Der Kreis...