January 2020
by Blake Billings '77, Ph. D.
Fr. Gregory Borgstedt became the first autonomous prior of the monastery at Portsmouth when the house was elevated to independent status in 1949. He left the community the next year. Who was this man, who played such important roles in the monastery throughout the decade of the 1940’s, a crucial time in the growth of this community? And how is it that shortly after his house became autonomous, he decided that he must pursue his vocation authentically elsewhere? While he assumes a quieter place in the history of this monastery, alongside more resonant names like Leonard Sargent, Hugh Diman, or Aelred Graham, his role in the life of this community is significant and undeniable. And at a time when this monastery welcomes a new vitality through its relationship with Saint Louis Abbey, it is interesting to consider Fr. Borgstedt’s own journey and pursuit of a life following Benedict’s Rule, a journey which led him through Portsmouth to Scotland, Washington, and back, and eventually on to Elmira, New York, and even to the desert of New Mexico.
Erik Borgstedt joined the school briefly assisting as a lay master in the spring of 1927 at the age of nineteen, its first academic year. He had just converted to Catholicism in 1926, and in the summer of 1927 joined the monastic community and was sent to Fort Augustus in Scotland to begin his novitiate. Portsmouth was then still a small and nascent monastic community, recently invigorated by an infusion of a group of monks of Fort Augustus, leading to Dom Leonard’s temporary return to Downside. Fr. Borgstedt professed solemn vows at Fort Augustus in 1932, having taken the name Gregory, returning to the United States to pursue graduate studies while in residence at Saint Anselm’s in Washington, D.C., itself also a new house still in its own dependency on Fort Augustus. He returned to Portsmouth in 1934 to teach Christian Doctrine, Latin and English. He was named Prior in 1940, at the age of 32, by Wulstan Knowles, succeeding Hugh Diman in that role. As Fr. Hugh approached his eighties, he first resigned his role as prior, and two years later as headmaster. Knowles, now Abbot of Fort Augustus and de jure superior of Portsmouth, entrusted Borgstedt with the role as head of the monastery, with the role as head of the school soon to follow.
The 1940’s, which thus saw Gregory Borgstedt as superior of Portsmouth, were an active period of growth for both the school and the monastic community, and it seems that Fr. Gregory’s quiet guidance and prayerful presence was a stabilizing factor. He presided over the war years, which saw an infusion of international students displaced from Europe by the war. The decade saw the construction of the old squash courts and the old gym, and ultimately St. Bede’s dormitory – all moving away from the solid and somber, and expensive, architectural style of St. Benet’s. The decade saw the entrance of a number of new monks: Fr. Hilary Martin (ordained 1944), Fr. Peter Sider, Fr. Alban Baer, Fr. Andrew Jenks (all ordained 1946), as well as the entry of Julian Stead, Damian Kearney, Leo van Winkle and others. It also saw the passing in 1944 of founder Leonard Sargent, and five years later of Hugh Diman. Fr. Gregory remained the superior of the house, presiding over their requiem Masses, and overseeing the life of the house through this change and consolidation.
Throughout this dedicated and effective service, however, the desire for a more purely contemplative form of monastic life seems to have grown within Fr. Gregory. It does seem significant that not long after his own Portsmouth gained autonomy, and he was named its first autonomous prior, Fr. Gregory, then in his early forties, announced his decision to leave the community. His encounter with the German Benedictine, Damasus Winzen, provided opportunity for concrete discussion of the ideal of a more simple and contemplative practice. Fr. Damasus, who had trained in Rome and become rector and professor of philosophy at Maria-Laach in Germany, had been sent to America in view of threats of the Nazis, and was in residence at Portsmouth for some time. He had been developing a vision of a self-sustaining and contemplative community, finding in Fr. Gregory a kindred spirit in this monastic ideal. Fr. Luke Childs presents in “A Brief History of Portsmouth” (in the school’s Fiftieth Anniversary book) some of Prior Gregory’s written appeal to withdraw from Portsmouth, “to what I would call a more ‘normal’ kind of Benedictine life; …How can one have St. Benedict’s kind of monasticism with temporary abbots, and lectio divina – and manual labor – practically excluded by such work as our type of school…” After reflection in Canada and a Holy Year pilgrimage to Monte Cassino and other Benedictine monasteries, he received permission to resign and departed on January 15, 1951, founding with Fr. Damasus and two others the Benedictine house in Elmira, New York, called Mount Saviour. This community had no school, and sought to live more directly off the land. Fr. Martin Boler, OSB, prior of Mt. Saviour from 1969-2008, wrote of Fr. Gregory’s collaboration with Fr. Damasus: “It is not as if they shared some proportional percentage of effort. Rather it was the total gift of self, and so a crucial contribution without which the foundation would have failed. …(Fr. Gregory’s) real glory comes from his being a column of strength, a constant support in all the day’s burdens and the weight of responsibilities that are the lots of mankind. He was supbrior, novice master, workmaster, master of ceremonies, oblate director, and cellarer – and some of these all at the same time.”
Yet, Fr. Borgstedt’s travels were not yet complete at Mount Saviour. He had maintained his friendship with Fr. Aelred Wall, also a monk of Portsmouth who himself had also served as headmaster, through much of the 1950’s. Fr. Wall, similarly pursuing a simpler and more contemplative monasticism, joined Fr. Borgstedt at Mount Saviour in 1960, and several years later traveled to New Mexico to start a new and even more eremitic community, Christ in the Desert monastery. When Fr. Wall needed assistance there in the early 1970’s, Fr. Borgstedt, now in his mid-sixties, went to join that struggling venture. Fr. Boler writes: “…at an age when most of us look for repose, or at least respite, Father Gregory took up the life of our foundation in New Mexico, Christ in the Desert Monastery, and he was miraculously born again. He loved the Southwest and its people, and he radiated with a new brightness that rivaled the desert sun.” His time there, sadly, came to be limited by illness, as he returned to Mount Saviour battling cancer, and died at the end of 1975.
The present writer never personally encountered Fr. Borgstedt, and must admit to some difficulty in piecing together the enigmatic journey he undertook. While it does not seem on first glance to manifest the Benedictine commitment to stability, that may be too quick a judgment. For clearly, from his conversion to his death, his monastic search seems to have circled again and again around Benedict and the Rule’s dedication to the search for God. Perhaps we need to widen our sense of stability, to allow it to contain a kind of fluidity – for we seem to find here a man of quite singular intention, dedicated to the authentic pursuit of his vocation, committed all along the way in the type of service to others that should define the Christian. We see a love of liturgical life and of the Divine Office. We see a series of three communities, all grateful for the gifts this prayerful man was able to offer. We would do well to hope that some of that spirit still resides in the life of the community now here at Portsmouth.
Standing: Aelred, Andrew, Hilary, John, Crepeau, Julian, Peter, David
Seated: Placid, Crenier, Richard, Prior Gregory Borgstedt, Hugh Diman, Wilfrid, Joseph
(Missing: Alban, Ansgar)
"The Current" features a monthly look at some of the history of the Abbey, inspired by the Abbey's celebration of its 100th year. This month we call your attention to several subtle but significant works of art in the Abbey church.
by Blake Billings, Ph.D.
Many visitors to the Church of St. Gregory the Great note its beautiful Belluschi design, or the brilliant wire sculpture of Lippold. Of more profound significance to this sacred space, while positioned to the side, is the altar of the Blessed Sacrament. Hidden beneath cloth of varied liturgical colors, usually invisible to the eye, is the tabernacle. And visually setting off the entire area is a gentle and reflective tapestry, perfectly fitted to hang beneath the canopy above the altar where the host is reposed. We would like to pull back the veil, in a sense, on the two artists who produced these two works of art that subtly center this sacred heart of the church. The tabernacle, designed well before the present church and used in the chapel of the early priory, was created by a renowned California impressionist painter and liturgical artist, Euphemia Charlton Fortune – who preferred the name “Effie,” and was professionally known as E. Charlton Fortune. The tapestry was produced for its present location by Esther (Fehlen) Puccinelli, a less well-known figure, though with a no less intriguing story..
Effie Fortune was described by Victoria Dalkey in “The Sacramento Bee” as, “witty, independent-minded, outspoken and never-married, … a perfect example of ‘The New Woman’ who came of age at a time when women’s roles were being redefined, though women wouldn’t get the right to vote until (she) was 35.” Sarah Beserra, writing for "Resource Library Magazine," said: “Nothing Euphemia Charlton Fortune ever did was done halfheartedly. Strong willed, adventurous, crusty, generous and immensely talented, she pursued her life-long artistic career with a single-minded passion and energy that is reflected in the work she left behind.” These personality traits may be behind the rumored rift that ultimately developed between her and the equally strong-minded Fr. Hilary Martin, who invited her to the campus. Born and raised in the San Francisco area, Fortune rose to national and international prominence primarily through her painting in the early twentieth century, and her vibrant impressionism remains as appealing today as in the 1910’s. Born in 1885 in Sausalito, she developed as a painter in the San Francisco art community. In the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, however, her family suffered great material loss, including much of her work. She relocated with them to New York, and travelled to Europe, including to her father’s native Scotland. Returning to California in 1912, her own artwork began to reveal more interest in the liturgical and sacred. Fortune created the Monterey Guild in 1928, named in connection with her work in the Monterey area in California. She worked to extend the guild in various locations, including here at Portsmouth, fostering artists and craftspeople who were creating original new artworks and furnishings for churches.
Fr. Hilary and Fr. Peter Sidler, who had a graduate degree in fine arts, had become aware of her work, which by then was well-known on the east coast, and knew of her interest in the development of liturgical art. They invited her to be an artist-in-residence at Portsmouth in the late 1940’s, the first to hold such a role. It was at this time that she produced the tabernacle now in the abbey church, as well as the Calvary in the monastery cemetery. She stayed in a residence that is still in use on the campus, located on the short dirt road linking the main entrance road, below the stone pillars, to Cory's Lane. The building had been retrofitted for residential living, and was specially renovated with skylights for her studio work. Sixth Form students would trudge over to her studio there for her course in arts and aesthetics, among them our Fr. Christopher Davis, '48.
Her continued devotion to liturgical art, fostering artists around the country, led eventually to recognition in Rome, as she was awarded in 1955 the “Pro Ecclesia” medal, given in a private audience with Pius XII, one of the highest awards given to lay people to recognize distinguished service to the church.
Top: Miss Fortune (as she was known at the Abbey)
in her studio on campus;
Above: Fortune's "Christ meets His Mother";
Below: Her Pro Ecclesia certificate, awarded in 1955.
Esther Puccinelli in front of her work, and the Ann Mundstock dance studio San Francisco, @1934; with
Esther Fehlen (later Puccinelli) at far left
The life of Esther Puccinelli is less well documented, though we find some intriguing traces of her journey. She too was raised in the San Francisco area, and as a young woman was involved with a modern dance troupe. Her maiden name was Fehlen, and she was of Swedish heritage, eventually learning some of her weaving skills from aunts she visited in the old country. Her Italian name derives from her husband, the Italian-American sculptor Raimundo Puccinelli. Francesco Jappolo writes of the couple: “He was handsome, even though he was often distressed by bad health. …Women were crazy about him, but he loved his wife Esther, with whom he fell madly in love when he saw her dance. …Esther, who had studied dance with a pupil of Rudolph Van Laban, also worked in the studio of the famous weaver and cloth designer Dorothy Liebes; first in San Francisco and then in New York. Amongst others, she collaborated with people like Frank Lloyd Wright…” (Wall Street International Magazine, June 2014). One finds Esther Fehlen pictured with the dance studio of Ann Mundstock in San Francisco in mid-1930’s, and discovers there hints of a world teeming with artistic creativity and freedom. Her marriage to Raimundo Puccinelli would have no doubt increased her involvement in the world of visual art, though the trajectory of her career is not as visible. Her work with Dorothy Liebes, a nationally recognized weaver once featured in Life magazine, seems most related to the artistry behind her tapestry in the church. She is also listed as offering together with Liebes a summer program at the Indian School in Brigham City, Utah in 1952, and one wonders about interest in or influence by Navajo weaving as well. Puccinelli’s work, exhibited in various galleries around the country, became well enough known for the monastic community to seek her out to create the piece for the altar of the Blessed Sacrament. In his article, “Art and Architecture at Portsmouth Abbey,” John Walker, former director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, describes it as “one of the most beautiful abstract designs I have ever seen.”
We provide below further examples of the work of these two extraordinary artists., with a focus on the tabernacle and the tapestry created for the Blessed Sacrament.
Paintings by E. Charlton Fortune
Calvary by E. Charlton Fortune, located in monastery cemetery, Portsmouth Abbey
Tapestry by Esther Puccinelli for the Blessed Sacrment altar, Oratory of St. Gregory the Great at Portsmouth Abbey,
below are closer views of the weaving.
March 2020
"The Current" features a monthly look at some of the history of the Abbey, inspired by the Abbey's celebration of its 100th year. This month we call your attention to several subtle but significant works of art in the Abbey church.
by Blake Billings '77
“Reading will always accompany the meals of the brothers... Let there be complete silence. No whispering, no speaking: only the reader’s voice should be heard there.” (Rule of St. Benedict 38) And so it goes. First, let it be noted that the effort to attain “complete silence” during a monastic meal may be a slight overstatement, as one is sure to hear the sounds of utensils knocking on plates, or sniffles and coughs, or the shifting in chairs. However, to one first experiencing these meals, the absence of conversation is jarring. And one’s sense of hearing is indeed highlighted, recalling that famous first word of the Rule, “Listen…” On the one hand, the practice of the reading may seem to give the meal a more formal and somber tone. Yet, if one thinks of a parent reading a storybook to his or her child, the occasion seems more familial and nurturing. The reality is perhaps somewhere in between, but the practice continues as the Rule directs.
In Chapter 38 of the Rule, Benedict provides detailed instructions for the practice of the reading, a responsibility which he seems to take quite seriously, providing for the reader both prayer and diluted wine, though directing him to take his meal after his reading:
CHAPTER 38, RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT:
Reading will always accompany the meals of the brothers. The reader should not be the one who just happens to pick up the book, but someone who will read for a whole week, beginning on Sunday. After Mass and Communion, let the incoming reader ask all to pray for him so that God may shield him from the spirit of vanity, Let him begin this verse in the oratory: Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise (Ps 50[51]:17), and let all say it three times. When he has received a blessing, he will begin his week of reading. Let there be complete silence. No whispering, no speaking – only the reader’s voice should be heard there. The brothers should by turn serve one another’s needs as they eat and drink, so that no one need ask for anything. If, however, anything is required, it should be requested by an audible signal of some kind rather than by speech. No one should presume to ask a question about the reading or about anything else, lest occasion be given [to the devil] (Eph 4:27; 1 Tim 5:14). The superior, however, may wish to say a few words of instruction. Because of holy Communion and because the fast may be too hard for him to bear, the brother who is reader for the week is to receive some diluted wine before he begins to read. Afterward he will take his meal with the weekly kitchen servers and the attendants. Brothers will read and sing, not according to rank, but according to their ability to benefit their hearers.
The duty of reader passes through each of the monks in this community. One finds posted on a central notice board the various weekly duties, liturgical and otherwise (see notice at left).
Abbot Matthew Stark has for some time had the duty of choosing the reading for this community. He says this is done “with no particular method,” being based on his own personal preferences, as well as from the recommendations of others or the requests of the community. Remarkably, the monastery has kept records of readings for over a half-century. A binder is kept, currently in the monastery library, where one can peruse the list of books through the decades, and perhaps take note of what was being read during the Reagan administration, or that of Dwight Eisenhower. I noted that Saints and Scholars (Knowles) was being read in my Fourth Form, Crises Facing the Church (Browne) in my Sixth. When the monastic community was somewhat larger, the reading was done for both the noon and the evening meals. At that time, a secular book was chosen for lunch, with spiritual reading for dinner. The archives note, for example, that for October of 2010, reserved for lunch was Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens (Loving), while dinner brought John Henry Newman, by Avery Dulles. July of 1960 witnessed the reading of Barnum’s Own Story: The Autobiography of P.T. Barnum, as well as The Shadow of the Pope, an account published in 1932 by Michael Williams, then editor of Commonweal, of the Anti-Catholic movement in America in the 1920’s. Presently, with the luncheon less well attended due to the community size and competing obligations in the School, the evening reader alone is the staple, and the tenor of the texts is syncopated, with two spiritual readings for every secular book. The community is currently absorbing Toscanini: Musician of Conscience, by Harvey Sachs.
Could the School ever utilize this monastic practice of silence at meals for reading? Abbot Matthew notes that it in fact once did, when the school was smaller, and the Holy Week retreat more of a three-day affair. As part of the retreat, a reading was done for the meals. The Confirmation group also has experimented with the practice at luncheon meetings, as well as for monastic retreats. We will perhaps not soon see the sit-down lunch for the School become an opportunity to follow Chapter 38 of the Rule. Yet, it may hearten our young faculty parents to realize that when they read to their children, they actually echo a time-honored Benedictine tradition. And who knows, perhaps as a Lenten practice, families might put away their phones, if they do not already, and take up a spiritual text to read for a family meal…
Two binder pages, from 1950-60s and 1970s.
April 2020
"The Current" features a monthly look at some of the history of the Abbey, inspired by the Abbey's celebration of its 100th year. This month we call your attention to several subtle but significant works of art in the Abbey church.
Our current pandemic continues to elicit comparisons and connections to past crises. The stark and moving images of Pope Francis addressing and blessing an empty Saint Peter’s Square make us think of history in the making. The Vatican has announced anticipated yet still stunning changes in the celebrations of Holy Week. All major liturgies are to be celebrated at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica, “without the participation of the people.” The pope will not celebrate the chrism Mass, which usually occurs Holy Thursday morning, when priests renew their promises and the oils used for the sacraments with anointing are blessed. Pope Francis will not be able to visit a prison, hospital or other institution, as he has done in previous years. And the washing of feet, already an optional moment in the Holy Thursday liturgy, will be omitted, as there will be no faithful present (More news on this). The continued absence of communal celebrations in person, the reliance on “spiritual communion” and “virtual” liturgies, is also a new and challenging reality for the monastic and extended community at Portsmouth. We currently experience an unprecedented moment in the monastery’s history – and witness both the grief of loss, but the flowering of creative and faithful responses to these hardships. The monastery’s liturgical life, for Holy Week and for some time into the future, will have to be experienced predominantly online through live and recorded broadcast. Our larger community life continues to be experienced “in absentia.”
While much of these realities seem largely unprecedented, events of extraordinary impact have repeatedly touched the history of the Portsmouth community. And as our own personal tragedies have shaped our personal lives, so too have larger, even global, moments of crisis shaped the history of this monastery and School, sometimes with enduring impact. This archival retrospective will survey some of these moments, where we discover there situations in some ways hauntingly similar to our circumstances. Even if we may well be “doomed to repeat” history in some ways, we nevertheless may learn from it. Surely, we may strengthen our sense of solidarity with our predecessors here. And hopefully we may even find some encouragement in all of this, to consider how they endured, responded and persevered.
Pope Francis before an empty
St. Peter's Square
The Influenza Epidemic of 1918. An initial coincidence that should not be overlooked can be found with the year 1918: the year of the purchase of the monastery property in Portsmouth, the end of the Great War, and the height of the Influenza epidemic. As Dom Leonard Sargent was in the process of discerning where to locate his envisioned monastic community and settling on a piece of land known as Hall Manor in Portsmouth, the region was in the process of dealing with the dual global calamities of the Great War and the Spanish Flu. John Hugh Diman, over this period, was in England in the midst of his conversion to Catholicism, serving as a captain in the British Red Cross. Locally, influenza was expanding as the war was receding. As the pandemic began to reach its apex in New England, authorities urged social distancing, places of amusement were closed, public schools were shuttered, hospitals were “taxed to their limits,” and the death toll rose dramatically – phenomena all woefully familiar to us now. At Fort Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts, over 800 would succumb to the flu. Boston would see a month of days with deaths exceeding 100 people. Devens was hit savagely, “the Army surgeon general observed bodies ‘stacked about the morgue like cordwood.’” (see article by Jack Lepiarz). Rhode Island did not escape unscathed. The chronology of events here, particularly at this time, is jarring. Fr. Leonard agreed to terms with Mrs. George Gardner Hall to purchase Hall Manor on October 18, 1918. Across the bay at that very moment, Providence lay in the center of Rhode Island’s influenza crisis. On October 4, it had closed all “non-essential businesses,” as we would now say, and all public schools, not to open them until Monday, October 28. Discussion raged as to how aggressive measures should be, and when the sickness would abate (Read more). In our time of a global pandemic, we revisit this foundational moment for the monastery, in its unfortunate coincidence with the influenza epidemic of 1918.
The Great Depression. Health crises were later supplanted by economic woes. Within the first decade of the School’s existence, severe growing pains affected both the School and the monastery, many from external fiscal events of global proportion. The Great Depression reached into life at Portsmouth, as the monastery struggled to keep its numbers and survive, and the School saw the dire financial realities of the time taking their toll. As economic devastation expanded its impact, Portsmouth’s private school tuition became more difficult to entertain. Father Hugh noted in the Chronicle that as many as one third of the parents were not able to pay in full, the charges for some being reduced by half and more. Fr. Luke Childs writes in “A Brief History of Portsmouth”: “There was also a shortage of monks. In 1933-34 only three resided at the School, along with fourteen lay masters, resident and non-resident, who did all the teaching and coaching, except for religion. Dom Leonard had again left Portsmouth for a time, as had Mr. Taylor.” Leadership in the School was suffering, and a new lay headmaster was appointed, Dr. Gerald Cooper Bateman. “Father Hugh, then in his 67th year, later wrote in a letter, ‘Dr. Bateman took up his duties… at a time when the School required reorganizing and a general stiffening up in practically every department.’” Fr. Luke notes that Bateman’s proven competence and capable commitment to the monastery and School has come to be tempered for some by his support of corporal punishment, caning in particular. Yet Carroll Cavanagh ’32 remarked of Bateman’s tenure that he, “saved the School at a time when it was becoming unstuck, smothered in a proliferation of ineffective discipline. His famous cane and his equally stinging sarcasm were blessed astringents. Bless him, a great fellow. Kindest, most humane, entertaining man you’d ever meet.” While we may more often consider Dr. Bateman’s tenure in light of internal politics or his disciplinary methods, it may be that the larger external societal context and its crises had no small impact on creating the need for his arrival and for his strong hand.
The Hurricane of 1938. Several years after Dr. Bateman’s departure, in the twentieth year of the monastery’s existence, much of the region was devastated by a sudden, unexpected, and more visible calamity: the Hurricane of 1938. The New England region was hit hard by this storm, and the local damage was severe. Joe Baker, in the Newport Daily News, recounts how Island Park in Portsmouth, with many small homes crowded into the exposed waterfront area, was particularly hard hit, with the bodies of sixteen people drowned in the hurricane dug from the wreckage and from submerged automobiles in Hathaway’s peach orchard. The Daily News reported then that, “Many cars washed across the road by the high tide into the swamp on the north side of Anthony’s Road have not yet been reached by WPA (Works Progress Administration) rescue workers. It is feared they contain more bodies.” Baker notes that Town Hall in Portsmouth was used as a temporary morgue as the dead were discovered, with nineteen people dying during the storm in Portsmouth. “The northern part of the town was placed under martial law to maintain order in the storm’s aftermath. Those wishing to drive across the Mount Hope Bridge needed to get a pass from the National Guard, which set up headquarters in Newport.” Fr. Luke’s history notes that the hurricane hit on September 1, 1938, which would have marked the return of students to the School. “The opening day of school in 1938, September 1, also marked the visitation of the great hurricane which delayed the arrival of the boys from New York, destroyed Priory trees and boats, and cut off the School’s electricity for a week, while it destroyed property in Rhode Island and upper Connecticut estimated at over $200,000,000.” Here, a destructive storm reshaped school life, providing a stark reminder of human frailty and the power of nature.
The Second World War. The Second World War was another transformative event, forcing the monastery to make significant adaptations. This conflict saw the largest number of alumni make the ultimate sacrifice, with our “Roll Call” of those killed in action by the war’s end numbering thirteen, all from the classes of 1933-1942. The scope of this loss within a decade of alumni, all from the early years of the School’s existence, was felt surely profoundly in the still relatively small alumni community. Wartime also brought changes in day-to-day life for the monks. Fr. Luke notes that the economic and military demands of the day prompted the monastic community to develop its farming capacity. “In response to the U.S. Agricultural bureau’s plea in January of 1942 for more home-grown products, Portsmouth set to work to make itself as self-sufficient as possible.” Dom Placid’s apple orchard, Dom Hilary’s fully equipped chicken farm and sheep, and Dr. Schehl’s beehives all provided the community with supplies. 250 hens produced 50,000 eggs, “close to the School’s consumption – and 200 cockerels for eating.” In July 1942, the School purchased 120 acres of the neighboring Anthony Farm, extending out to West Main Road. With the gift of eighteen cows, the monastery went back into dairy production, and potatoes and corn were harvested to supply the School and its livestock for the year. “Doms Peter, Alban, and Andrew returned to Portsmouth in August, having completed their novitiate, and immediately plunged into work, Dom Andrew managing both the schedule and the chickens.” In tandem with this turn to self-sufficiency had come a necessary frugality, including the loss of seven lay masters in 1942. The sense of frugality extended to the boys’ allowances: “for a Sixth Former, one dollar a week, for a first Former, thirty-five cents.” This belt-tightening was not done with until the post-war period, which saw the monastery and School able to grow again: “The next half decade would see both school and monastery prosper, the latter with the granting of independence from Fort Augustus on November 21, 1949.”
<<< Children with polio in multiperson ventilator, 1950's
The Polio Epidemic. Yet another national health crisis, the polio epidemic, began to expand in the 1940’s, peaking in 1952 in the United States with nearly 60,000 children contracting the disease, leading to 3,145 deaths. Carl Kurlander writes, “Those who survived this highly infectious disease could end up with some form of paralysis, forcing them to use crutches, wheelchairs or to be put into an iron lung, a large tank respirator that would pull air in and out of the lungs, allowing them to breathe.” At least one Priory boy contracted the disease. Father Christopher Davis ’48 remembers this schoolmate vividly, noting how Father Aelred Wall made special arrangements for the student to reside in St. Benet’s, dedicating great time and care to assist him with the illness. Fr. Chris found this to be a remarkable and memorable Christian witness.
Over the latter part of the twentieth century, to the present moment, we discern an array of additional profound challenges. Wars and other military engagements have drawn in members of our extended community: the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the attacks of 9-11. Our introduction to the nuclear age and its fears touched close to home, with our own Fr. Leo van Winkle’s personal involvement in the Manhattan Project. The social change of the 1960’s, the liturgical change of the Second Vatican Council also produced challenging moments and a testing of assumptions, a regathering of faith. We see echoes of these varied times of adversity and change in our present crisis. One senses, one hopes, that the Coronavirus Pandemic will takes its place in this list of moments undergone, and overcome. Despite the withdrawal from the world associated with monastic life, the world and its woes seems bent on breaking into the cloister. St. Benedict did make provision for the arrival of those outside the walls of the monastery: “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ…” He perhaps did not have in mind the type of “guest” we find ourselves hosting these days, a most unwelcome microbe unconsciously intent on wreaking havoc with us. Yet, in this moment of historical proportions, he would surely have us rely on that same Christ to discern the course of action we are to follow, and turn to Him in faith and in hope, particularly as His Easter approaches.
May 2020
"The Current" features a monthly look at some of the history of the Abbey, inspired by the Abbey's celebration of its 100th year. This month we call your attention to several subtle but significant works of art in the Abbey church.
The monastic community of Portsmouth claims one bishop from amongst its ranks: Bishop Ansgar Nelson. It may seem perhaps not the right time for a brief retrospective on Bishop Ansgar, given our present extraordinary circumstances. Yet, in a way, it may be as good a time as any. My perusal of different reports about him, combined with my own limited and tangential contact with him, made me wonder if his personality and spirituality might not be particularly suited to these times. He was a man familiar with the desert. A man quite capable, in the words of Pascal, of “being alone in his room.” He was a man that his own brethren felt compelled to eulogize as “a stranger on earth.” Yet a stranger who, like the Christ of the Road to Emmaus, could open his companions to the power of the Word; who exhibited a sanctity challenging our this-worldliness. It has been worth the effort, for this writer anyway, to begin to look into the remarkable journey of Portsmouth’s bishop.
His path to “the fullness of priesthood” was an unusual one. And when, upon entering monastic life, he took Saint Ansgar as his patron, he most likely could not have foreseen the parallels that would emerge between that saint’s life and his own. The saint too had been a Benedictine monk, drawn to monastic study and prayer in New Corbie, Germany, only to find himself called to serve King Harald in Denmark, and subsequently sent as a missionary to Sweden. In all of this, he was seen as a humble man of great intellectual ability, who was “prepared to serve God in everything which was enjoined on him because of obedience.” (Bulletin, Jan 1995, p.3) It seems curious, even prophetically resonant, to see Bishop Ansgar’s life trace out a journey of monastic study, leading him to a monastery in Germany, and later as a missionary to Sweden. And one senses in him similarly a quiet and profound spirituality, one rooted in the philosophical tradition of the Church.
Bishop Ansgar Nelson, OSB
Knut Nelson was born in Denmark in 1906, emigrating to the United States with his family in 1927. Within two years of his transplantation, he had converted to Catholicism. Some have suggested he was attracted to the Catholic faith through the appeal of its philosophical tradition; some have pointed to his study of medieval art. It may have been an encounter with Fr. Hugh Diman that prompted the future bishop to visit Portsmouth. In 1930, he joined the nascent community that was heavily populated with adult converts to Catholicism, including Diman and founder Leonard Sargent. Archbishop Richard Cushing noted the significance of his adult conversion in the homily he delivered at his episcopal ordination. Such adult conversion comes, Cushing noted, “after much prayer and pondering, made strong by much reasoning, made holy by much sacrifice, made zealous by much striving.” This serves a bishop well: “what mature vision, what developed and disciplined ability, what admirable and unqualified and indomitable loyalty they bring to the work of the Church.” Cushing hoped that Ansgar would carry on in the line of “zealous convert bishops,” following in the apostolic zeal of Saint Paul. The irony of Ansgar’s path to the episcopacy was not lost on the Archbishop: “Today, ten years after his ordination, but twenty years after his coming to America, he receives the fullness of the priesthood and he returns as an apostle of Jesus Christ to another Nordic land, a land that knows but little of Catholicism and that resembles in myriad natural ways, the land of the new Bishop’s ancestry. Strange indeed are the ways of God’s Providence: …so recently come to our shores from a land where he would hardly have become a priest – and now to return to a land which needs his priesthood so badly!” This sort of thing happens if, “a humble, upright life become entwined with the schemes of God Himself.”
Ansgar's monastic journey had in fact already propelled him back to Europe. After entering monastic life at Portsmouth, he was sent to Fort Augustus in Scotland for his novitiate, as was the practice for the young Portsmouth community, still a dependency of Fort Augustus. And it was the connection between Fort Augustus and the Beuronese Congregation that led to Ansgar’s study at Maria Laach in Germany, in the mid-1930’s, where he made studies in preparation for the priesthood. There he encountered an active study of monasticism and liturgy, and met Father Damasus Winzen, who was later to visit Portsmouth and then found the Mount Saviour community, joined by then Prior of Portsmouth, Gregory Borgstedt. Ordained in 1937, Ansgar returned to Portsmouth by the outbreak of the Second World War, involved in boarding school life as teacher and as housemaster of The Red. Skills he had learned from work with his uncle, a florist in Wellesley, Massachusetts, helped with tree husbandry on the monastery grounds, as the community reinvigorated its independent farming during the war. Ansgar also continued studies at his time, earning an MA in Classics at Brown University. It was also during this period that his lifelong and fascinating friendship with Rabbi William Braude developed. The two studied the Talmud extensively, Ansgar’s study bolstered by his rapid assimilation of Hebrew and Aramaic. The rabbi was astonished at the pace and depth of his acquisition of the languages, and grateful as well for his theological insights into Talmud and scripture. “At the end of the year, he mastered so much Hebrew that he was able to memorize Pirke Abot. So we started the second year by reading the Book of Psalms.” Ansgar supplied texts of Augustine, the rabbi bringing his commentary by Rashi to their shared study. The bishop went on to teach Hebrew to then Brother Caedmon Holmes, who subsequently continued to study with the rabbi, after Ansgar was no longer well enough to make the trip to Providence. (See: The Jews of Rhode Island, p.219).
The journey to Stockholm began in earnest in 1947, though Ansgar had already written articles on the Church in Scandinavia in the preceding years. It could be that he thus came to the attention of Fr. John Lafarge, SJ, chaplain of “St. Ansgar’s Scandinavian-American League,” a Catholic society committed to missionary work in the Nordic lands. Fr. Lafarge was not only well situated to understand missionary needs in Scandinavia, he was also son of a Newport artist. In any case, the Danish-born monk somehow received the call and, like his 9th century namesake, found himself compelled beyond the monastic enclosure and into the demanding ministry of a new and struggling missionary diocese. Archbishop Cicognani, in his address on the occasion of Bishop Ansgar’s ordination, noted his patron saint’s love “of interior life and seclusion, it being his desire to progress in good in the silence of the monastery. But when there opened before him the vast field of the welfare of souls, intrepidly he entered it” (Bulletin, Aug. 1948, p 17). The Archbishop noted the “many difficulties” the saint had faced, and Portsmouth’s bishop certainly would need his intercession amidst his own. Nelson himself numbered the Catholic population of Sweden, a nation of 6.5 million at the time, at a mere 4000 souls in the first year of his service. Underserved by priests, lacking in proper funding, struggling against centuries of persecution and exclusion, and fighting the secularization of culture of the twentieth century, the forces pushing the Church to marginalization were powerful. Add to this that much of any rise in numbers of Catholics in Sweden during this time was actually due to immigration, of Poles and other Catholic laborers, who suffered the double hardship of distance from their native cultures, combined with the absence of Catholic communities to offer support. Not one of the Catholic priests in Sweden possessed a car, “nor even the bishop,” Nelson noted.
Portrait of Ansgar Nelson by E. Charlton Fortune; bust by Matthew Caivano
A Denver priest, Father Harry Schmitt, a student in Rome visiting Stockholm in 1952, contacted Bishop Ansgar, who promptly invited to stay at his home, “a very small apartment on the third floor, where most of the other residents are Communists. He is a saintly man, struggling along on $40 a month, hoping to get money someday for a motorcycle, so that he can get around the vicariate, which includes the whole of Sweden. I spent four days with him, inspired by his example and good cheer” (Denver Catholic Register, Feb 28, 1952). Having begun his ministry in Stockholm as coadjutor Vicar Apostolic, Ansgar was raised to coadjutor bishop when the diocese gained its independent status in 1953. And with the resignation of Bishop Muller in 1957, he became the diocesan bishop, until his resignation in 1962, completing a fifteen year sojourn in the North. His resignation had been prompted by ill health, and he then returned to a more contemplative existence, serving for five years as the chaplain of a convent in Ticino, Switzerland.
In 1967, Bishop Ansgar returned to the United States, and with the exception of a two-year period of service in a parish in South Dakota, spent the remaining twenty years of his life largely within the walls of Portsmouth Abbey. His work included some teaching of philosophy and history. His ministry included not infrequent hospitality extended to guests, and the regular afternoon Mass described this way by Dan McCarthy: “Bishop Ansgar would say Mass each afternoon: sepulchral, solemn, devout. What I can remember about those Masses was how private they were, even with a few people standing there behind him. The altar faced so that his back was to us, a long, angular, stooped back. When he opened his arms in evocation, the span was wide, his arms thin but solid, weighted by his aged hands. There he stood saying Mass with dignity and intensity in his thickly accented English. He was not well. His body would betray him briefly during the service and he would falter or stagger. That was part of the solemnity: the awareness that he was weak, that he could at any moment lose his strength, even die. He appeared very, very old to me.” For many students, he was a hermitic figure, a truly monastic man, of extraordinary scholarly reputation, and of a visible sanctity. Two representations of his likeness – a portrait done by E. Charlton Fortune during her stay at Portsmouth, and a bust done by Matthew Caivano who had spent time in the novitiate – would seem to elicit some of this character. So while I indeed join in the lament of my classmate Dan McCarthy, that my own history with Portsmouth’s Bishop was something of a missed opportunity, I continue to see in those who knew him, in stories I have read about him, and even in the images trying to capturing his likeness, a reflection of a kind of special sanctity which was and remains for Portsmouth truly a blessing.
"Witnessing the piety of Bishop Ansgar Nelson"
Posted August 6, 2009 by Dan McCarthy (Dan McCarthy, son of former faculty member David and Rita McCarthy, graduated from Portsmouth Abbey in 1977).
On late days one summer, I would walk through the rich heat to the small chapel in the sacristy in the rear of the church, off the corridor that joined the monastery and the church together. Bishop Ansgar would say Mass each afternoon: sepulchral, solemn, devout. What I can remember about those Masses was how private they were, even with a few people standing there behind him. The altar faced so that his back was to us, a long, angular, stooped back. When he opened his arms in evocation, the span was wide, his arms thin but solid, weighted by his aged hands. There he stood saying Mass with dignity and intensity in his thickly accented English. He was not well. His body would betray him briefly during the service and he would falter or stagger. That was part of the solemnity: the awareness that he was weak, that he could at any moment lose his strength, even die. He appeared very, very old to me.
I didn’t know what made him so holy in other’s eyes. I knew he had been a bishop, and that he had retired to the Abbey for his final years. I assumed he was a Benedictine. He stood out among the monks, perhaps for his age, his exotic provenance and the dramatic subtext of his daily devotion. My mother developed a relationship with him, as she did with each of the seeming spiritual leaders of the monastery. Maybe it was the combination of her cerebral approach to the core texts of faith, her hunger for knowledge and her charismatic creativity that attracted them. Beyond my surface observations, I didn’t know much else about the Bishop. I felt a certain intimacy because of my mother’s closeness to him, but that presumption of intimacy forestalled any true curiosity about him. It’s odd.
He must have been a priest in Europe during World War II and exposed, on the periphery or at the center, to the atrocities of the war. When he prayed for the redemption of lost souls, for deliverance from evil, he must have had a deep understanding, a witnessing, of suffering and malignancy that took life in the faces he had seen in the past. If I tried, I couldn’t retrieve his personal history from memory. I squandered an opportunity to learn something about life from a man who had experienced much more than I had seen then, than I would ever see, who had lived through a period when humanity had been stripped away and faith had nowhere to hide. He was clearly a generous man who would have been open to sharing. When I looked for him on the web, I discovered that he had come to the U.S. in the 1920s and professed at Portsmouth Priory. He was a priest for 53 years and a bishop for 43: his gift for spiritual leadership was recognized early and cherished for a very long time. He died in Portsmouth in 1990, 83 years old.
What stopped me from going and learning that story when he was alive? Here I am, some 30 years later, trying to imagine the story of a man who I could have asked, learned something from. My imagination. My uncertainty. Youthful ego and pride. I coveted the exception of experience, the lure of wisdom. I was fitted with discontent at my lot. I was in love with my imagination, my flurries of insight, and would stop and look at them with pride, neglecting to probe further, more truthfully, to learn. My loss. The portfolio of things that kept me from going places I might have been able to go. And then the moment passed.
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Ansgar Nelson with Bishop Johann Evangelist Erich Muller