For twenty years, from 1890 to 1910, Father Henry Ganss served as pastor of Saint Patrick's Catholic Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. During that time he produced historical and musical works achieving international appreciation. He has merited entries in two prominent works of reference-The Dictionary of American Biography and The New Catholic Encyclopedia-rare for one whose activities one would assume deserved only parochial notice. He had, one newspaper records, "a charm that made the circle of his friends far outrun professional or church lines." The paper expanded this remark by naming among those friends a renowned musician, John Philip Sousa, and a famous music critic, James Gibbons Huneker, the latter a lapsed Catholic, the former an Episcopalian and Freemason. A rival newspaper confirms the picture, recalling Ganss as "a man of commanding presence, pleasing address, and winning disposition," adding, "church lines were forgotten in dealing with" Ganss.
Ganss's historical writings fall into two groups, local and European. His History of Saint Patrick’s Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, (1895) is still useful, and alone amongst local historians of his day, Ganss cites the learned monographs and public records he quotes. 4 Such a practice one may trace to his education by the German Benedictines of Saint Vincent Abbey (now Archabbey) near Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Ganss, born on 22 February, 1855, to Hessian immigrants settled in the city of Lancaster, was at age thirteen sent to Saint Vincent; his parents wanted him to get a classical education from the Church. Ganss discerned a call to the priesthood-but not monastic life-and in 1878 was ordained for the diocese of Harrisburg.
During his ten years at Saint Vincent, Ganss was taught by priests who had studied in Bavaria. Boniface Wimmer, founder abbot, had studied at Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University under Joseph von Gorres, historian of mediaeval mysticism, and Father Alphonse Heimler, college president in Ganss's day, had studied there as well. Ganss regarded Wimmer as a saint, and of Heimler he recalled, "Educator he was to a superlative degree, but to this he added the attribute of a most sagacious and successful administrator." While Heimler's "ungovernable temper" made his regime "more Spartan than maternal," his students could speak fluent Latin and German as well as English. Also looming large in Ganss's education was Joseph Maurice Schwab, a layman originally from Munich. Schwab taught music, Ganss's passion since childhood, and Ganss admired Schwab's strict discipline, although Schwab did not appreciate Ganss's fondness for such modern composers as Richard Wagner.
As for the reverence Ganss had for Abbot Boniface Wimmer, one scene will suffice. After the ordination Mass, with "[t]he holy unction of my ordination still moist on my hands, " Ganss encountered Wimmer "in the monastery corridor." Wimmer hastened towards Ganss and addressed him "affectionately by my Christian name; "he wished Ganss "the fullest measure of God's grace in the holy priesthood" and then "dropt [sic] on his knees and asked for my blessing." Ganss said later, "I felt the way poor St. Peter felt at the feetwashing on Holy Thursday."
Ganss himself once said of the Germanic method of historiography, "It begins with original research and penetrates the very fountainhead." He further claimed, "It lifts history from the humble sphere of a profession to that of an authoritative science." He was too good a musician, though, to declare history only a science; he saw its artistic aspect and appreciated that the first recorded story-tellers were poets. While he praises Leopold von Ranke of Germany, foremost of the scientific historians of the nineteenth century, Ganss also has good words for Thomas Babington Macaulay, a Scot whose lyrical English prose sometimes outshines his research. Ganss was confident that patient archival study would triumph over hackwork; he concluded, "the Catholic Church has nothing to fear, all to hope and gain by the new scientific school of history." These sentiments were in the wake of Pope Leo XIII opening the Vatican Archives to secular scholars, saying that the Church had nothing to fear from the truth.
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