It is difficult to fully assess the impact of those who have gone before us here at Portsmouth Abbey. We often note the foundational impact of Leonard Sargent, as well as that of the school’s founder, Fr. Hugh Diman. We rightly also consider the important impact of our priors and abbots, or the spiritual guidance many of us have received from monastic brethren who have influenced our personal lives. From this extensive list, we now highlight a monk who very early in his monastic life was, to quote one of his brethren, “a leading figure in the community,” and whose influence we still may discern visibly in the monastery and grounds we are now blessed to experience. We will not try to convey the personal impact of Dom Hilary Martin on the generations of monks and students who encountered him. Several have already written movingly of that.* But we will parse out a segment of his lasting and anonymous impact on much of the visible, tangible experience that still shapes Portsmouth Abbey as we know it. Particularly, we must consider the space we inhabit: in the land, in the buildings, and in the aesthetic and the works of art express its character. 

The Land. Our historical record rightly associates the beautiful location with the property acquired by our monastic founder, Leonard Sargent. But this initial property consisted of about 70 acres of land. We now enjoy close to 600 acres. The most extensive addition to that acreage came thanks to Br. Hilary Martin, who not long after joining the monastic community was, in 1942, able to use his patrimony to purchase for the monastery the adjacent Anthony Farm through the trust he had created. These hundreds of acres remain under the ownership of the monastery, creating an extensive grounds, place of dreams and discovery for students over several decades. This expanse eventually became unmanageable for the monastery and was leased long-term in 2000 to the Carnegie Abbey Club, a 99-year lease later transferred to the Aquidneck Club. The wilderness was transformed into a more accessible and still beautiful resource. Prior to this present status, the monastery’s interest in and control of this property over the years had helped to preserve the monastic grounds that we now enjoy, if only as a buffer, protecting the land from a number of changes that may have radically altered its character. Notably, land to the north, for many years zoned for heavy industrial use, once served the Kaiser Aluminum corporation and some of its manufacturing processes. The Narragansett Bay area also nearly became home to an oil refinery, a prospect that launched “Save the Bay” and elicited lobbying efforts from the monastery. Such industrial growth may well have encroached substantially on monastic life here, particularly if the grounds had been limited to Leonard Sargent’s original parcel. 

At the time of this acquisition, the land of “The Anthony Farm” played more than an aesthetic role. Fr. Damian Kearney writes that the farm became significant to the monastery and school during “the lean war years of rationing,” providing much needed staples. Dom Hilary, “the senior of the brothers” in his novitiate, took a leadership role in developing the monastery’s agricultural work and became chief shepherd of a notorious, omnipresent flock of sheep, with a beloved succession of sheep dogs. Having returned to Portsmouth in 1942, Hilary “at once... became a leading figure in the community,” Fr. Damian notes, having returned from Fort Augustus Abbey in Scotland due to the war, completing with his confreres their novitiate at St. Anselm's in Washington, D.C. He would be ordained in 1944. 

Beyond the enhancement of the grounds or the provision of farm products, the closeness to the land also carried fundamental pastoral meaning. This went beyond supplying possibilities for “labora” to accompany the monastic “ora.” Working the land also resonated with Fr. Hilary’s sense of environmental stewardship, an interest shared by several other Portsmouth monks, such as Dom Joseph Woods who at this time had also been associated with the Catholic Worker and its farming projects. James Macquire notes this theological concern, quoting in the Portsmouth Bulletin (1991) notes found after Fr. Hilary’s death that had formed the basis of a retreat he had given: “Whatever else in ascetic theology is right or wrong, there can be no question that the attitude of Saint Francis was a right attitude. His childlike acceptance of all created things, and the welcome he extended to them as his brothers and sisters was correct... It is a point that hardly needs establishing that our use of creatures in the widest sense, that is, of all the material blessings God gives us, food, warmth, exercise, work, recreation, leisure, amusements, friendships, and so on, is of the greatest importance to our spiritual lives... We cannot afford to use these gifts recklessly without regard to our supernatural end... our use of creatures must be an art.” Expressing insights of yet clearer contemporary import, Fr. Hilary goes on to state, “... the captain of a ship must apportion his supplies with a view to sailing efficiently; he cannot afford to overload his ship with an indefinite quantity.”

The Belluschi Buildings. In addition to natural land that embraces us, Fr. Hilary also realized that we must also turn our spiritual efforts to the buildings which the human imagination conceives and that human hands construct. We see Hilary Martin’s manifest influence here, particularly in the stunning series of buildings designed by Pietro Belluschi, including the church at the center of our worship, the monastery that houses the community, and the collection of structures at the center of the Abbey grounds. Before discovering his monastic vocation, Victor Martin was a product of MIT, having even received an appointment to the faculty, and maintained personal connections there. His architectural expertise and his vibrant professional network facilitated the relationship with MIT, leading to an extensive and fruitful association with Portsmouth. Several earlier buildings no longer exist, such as Hilary’s beloved St. Bede’s dormitory, opened in 1951 and his campus home for decades. Also now demolished, a humble two-court squash facility, replaced by our present multi-court facility with fitness center. These, together with what is now called the “upper gym” (for many years the sole gym), had been created by Anderson & Beckwith, a firm associated with MIT. An extraordinary opportunity next arose under the leadership of Aelred Graham, with a building program envisioning a new monastery and church.
 

Fr. Hilary turned again to MIT, this time to Dean Pietro Belluschi, whose work came to have a defining impact on the look and feel of the entire monastery and school. Fifteen buildings ensued, with their relative placement shaping the grounds, including the monastery building itself, the signature church of St Gregory, the Cortazzo administration building, the former Science Building, the Burden Classroom Building. While none of these buildings bear the name of Hilary Martin, Fr. Damian argues they would not have come into being, “without the advice, support, cooperation and driving force of Father Hilary.” Fr. Damian adds, “Dom Hilary was also the one chiefly responsible for the arduous task of raising the funds needed to cover the expenses.” 

The Presence of Art. Hilary’s interest in architecture extended yet further, shaping the presence of many of the works of art inhabiting those spaces. He was influential in bringing to campus E. Charlton Fortune, the school’s first Artist in Residence, whom he helped establish in a studio on campus. Her work endures in the very tabernacle in our church, in the crucifixion scene in the cemetery, and in several paintings in the monastery’s collection. A perusal of our historic records of important artistic acquisitions, such as the stained glass that illuminates the slype and enhances the corridor outside the refectory, the medieval roundels in the lobby of the dining hall, also bear his name. We could extend this artistic sphere of relationships even to the invitation to Richard Lippold to create the signature wire sculpture that defines the visual, indeed the spiritual, experience of our church. An intriguing addendum to his impact is found in his creation of a Zen Garden adjacent to the superior’s quarters in the monastery, which he designed while Aelred Graham was prior, in light of Graham’s profound interest in Buddhism. 
 

Life of the Spirit. In pointing to such defining elements in our living encounter with art, we have no doubt only scratched the surface of Dom Hilary’s impact.  And while we have attended to the visible treasury and it lingering record, much more important is the substance of monastic life. Here, a list of witnesses bear testimony to Hilary Martin’s significance in their lives. Whether in the hospitality he could provide in his simple apartment in St. Bede’s, the instruction he could offer during his European student trips, or a mere encounter with his “charismatic personality” (as Fr. Damian frames it), Dom Hilary was indeed himself a force of nature. While it is much harder to trace this invisible heritage of prayer, the life of the spirit, and friendship handed down through our community, we can at least point to some of its traces. It we may also find it reflected in the inescapable beauty of the environment he so profoundly helped to shape. 

Dom Hilary with Abbot Matthew Stark and Bishop Louis Gelineau at Graduation (1974)
 

NOTES: 

* We can mention here James MacGuire’s 1991 article in the Portsmouth Bulletin (“Dom Hilary Martin: After Ten Years”), the moving words of Carter Burden’s tribute to Fr. Hilary which he includes there, as well as the comprehensive survey of Fr. Hilary’s impact given by Fr. Damian Kearney, delivered in 2011 to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Fr. Hilary’s death, found in the Portsmouth Review (James P. MacGuire, Catholicism and the American Experience: Portsmouth Review, 2014; reprinted from Portsmouth Abbey Bulletin, 1991).