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Foreword o n Christmas Day 499, King Clovis of the Franks professed his belief in Christianity, and Saint Remigius, bishop of Rheims, baptized him. The Catholic monarch’s fervent act of faith permeated the subjects of his kingdom . France came to be known as the “Eldest Daughter of the Church,” a prestigious title among the emerging nations of Christendom. This title was not entirely without merit. Over the centuries, the Eldest Daughter served in the Crusades, a notable feat for those times. France hosted the Successor of Peter during the papal residence at Avignon (1304–78). France and her colonial empire flourished during the reign of the Catholic monarchs. In the age of Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) the church enjoyed unprecedented prestige, while during the French Revolution (1789–95) the church experienced the ravages of civil war. But French Catholicism is far more the “Deposit of Faith,” and Catholic traditions are deeply rooted in the people of the small hamlets, rural villages, and town centers across France. As late as the nineteenth century , French folk of the countryside halted their daily routines at the sound of the steeple bell and with devotion recited the “Angelus Domini nunciavit Mariae” at dawn, noon, and in the evening. This was the France from which the United States was to draw the religious fervor needed to reinforce the Christian faith of frontier settlers in the Ohio Valley, the Lower Mississippi Valley, the emerging state of Texas, and westward to New Mexico. The call went forth to several of the finest religious communities of men in the land, notably the Congregation of the Mission, the Vincentians of Saint Vincent de Paul; the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which Saint Eugene de Mazenod, bishop of Marseilles, founded; and the Society of Mary, which Blessed Joseph Chaminade established. The teaching Brothers of the Society of Mary went on to found St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, in 1853. Nor were the daughters of Catholic France to be outdone. The Ursulines; the Sisters of the Incarnate Word; those of the Order of Divine Providence; and the Vincentians (Daughters of Charity) also joined in the | xii | f o r e w o r d edifying endeavor to bring faith, charitable work, and education to the United States beyond the Appalachian Highlands. Patrick Foley’s volume Missionary Bishop has capsulated this splendid history of the missionary undertaking in the life and times of Jean-Marie Odin. In Hauteville, a rural community of sturdy family homes west of the city of Lyon, France, was the farmhouse in which Jean-Marie was born February 25, 1800. The author’s pen vividly outlines the early life of Odin, including his studies at the Sulpician grande seminaire in Lyon, leading him onward to the order of subdeacon and ultimately his decision to follow in the footsteps of French missionaries trailblazing frontiers west of the Mississippi River in the United States. At St. Mary of the Barrens Seminary in Perryville, Missouri, he completed his priestly studies and was ordained in 1823, served as seminary instructor, and was received into the Congregation of the Mission. His first assignments as a frontier missionary in Missouri and Arkansas prepared him for his later service in Texas. In 1839, Vincentian Father John Timon, a veteran missionary assigned to Texas, requested that Odin accompany him. Timon returned to Missouri and Odin ventured to Texas as vice-prefect in 1840. Laboring as vicar apostolic of Texas from 1841 to 1847, he was then named first bishop of Galveston. Odin held that hierarchical office until 1861, when he succeeded Antoine Blanc as second archbishop of New Orleans. For more than twenty years Odin worked among the frontier settlers in Texas and then spent another decade doing the same in Louisiana as archbishop during the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Catholics of diverse cultures as well as Protestants were drawn to him by his learning and his extraordinary generosity in laboring for so many. Foley’s skillful narration of Odin’s life provides new insights, especially into the history of nineteenth-century Texas, by enabling the reader to observe French missionaries and their collaborators treading the almost limitless Texas landscape to serve encampments of settlers and to preach the Gospel in English , French, Spanish, and German. The Gallic missionaries enkindled anew the dormant cinders and ancient roots of Catholicism planted by the Franciscans almost two centuries earlier, again giving the Catholic Church an important role in the state’s history. Significantly...

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