John Augustine Tame

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Father JA Zahm, photograph around 1896 in Rome

John Augustine Zahm (born June 14, 1851 in New Lexington , Ohio , †  November 10, 1921 in Munich ) was an American Roman Catholic priest , author , scientist and explorer .

Life

John Augustine Zahm was born as the eldest son of Jacques Michael Zahm (born March 2, 1828 in Olsberg, Lorraine and immigrated to Ohio in the same year) and Mary Ellen Braddock (born February 27, 1827 in Loretto , Pennsylvania). It was a very religious and educated family.

He studied at the Catholic University of Notre Dame , Indiana, where he later held a professorship himself. After his novitiate in the Congregation of the Holy Cross and graduation, he was ordained a priest on June 4, 1875. He has published scientific articles and travelogues since his days as a seminarian. After graduation, he became a lecturer in physics and chemistry at Notre Dame (although he would have preferred to teach literature) and at the same time (for a period of nine years) Vice Rector.

In the following years he shifted his interest again more strongly to theology and became a lecturer in apologetics . Above all, Zahm tried to mediate between Catholicism and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution . Between 1891 and 1896 he published several books and articles on the subject, which culminated in the book Evolution and Dogma . In it he defended certain aspects of the theory of evolution as true, arguing that even the great Doctors of the Church, Thomas Aquinas and Augustine , had taught the microbial theory. The Vatican disapproved of the book in 1898, whereupon Zahm accepted the contradiction and no longer wrote about the relationship between theology and science. Towards the end of his life - around a quarter of a century later - he was able to determine, however, that his views prevailed in many theological faculties.

Pope Leo XIII. had awarded Zahm a doctorate in philosophy in 1895 for his work as a Christian scientist: shortly before the publication of Evolution and Dogma .

After several activities for his congregation, he was appointed General Procurator of the Congregation of the Holy Cross , based in Rome, in April 1896 . He liked to go to Dante's country, but found himself in opposition to the Holy See in the Vatican because of his publications . Only the politically wise interventions of the well-placed American clergy, especially Denis O'Connell , saved Tahm and his procurator from humiliation. Until 1906, Father Zahm then performed various tasks in the congregation in the USA, including overall supervision of the university.

He was the author (sometimes under the pseudonym Mozan's) of a number of books on the relationship between scientific theory and Catholic doctrine, from women in science to travelogues through South America and the Middle East. Tame tried to turn Notre Dame into a large university like the one in Heidelberg or Bologna . He built buildings, a campus art gallery and library. As an avid Dante reader and connoisseur, he built the third largest Dante library in America in Notre Dame. Thanks to his work, Notre Dame was the first electrified university in the USA.

The original crew of the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition, v. l. To the right: Zahm, Rondon, Kermit, Cherrie, Miller, four Brazilians, Roosevelt, Fiala

Zahm was friends with the 26th President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt , who also loved reading Dante in Italian. It was Tahm who initiated President Roosevelt on a scientific expedition to South America. The expedition to the Rio da Dúvida (River of Doubt, now the Rio Roosevelt ), carried out in 1913, was also accompanied by Theodor's son Kermit , George Cherrie and Colonel Da Silva Cândido Rondon . This trip ended in disaster, however, in which one man drowned, another was murdered and Roosevelt himself was almost killed from an infected wound. They lost boats to waterfalls and rapids and often did not have enough food. Malaria and other infections attacked them, from which some almost died and the consequences of which the participants were worried for years to come.

Zahm wanted to write a book about historical and archaeological studies of the Holy Land and was traveling to the Middle East when he developed pneumonia and died on November 10, 1921 in a Munich hospital. His manuscript From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon was published posthumously .

He had never started his planned biography about Dante.

Fonts

  • Evolution and Dogma. Chicago 1895.
  • Bible, Science and Faith. 1894.
  • Scientific theory and Catholic doctrine. Chicago 1896.
  • as HJ Mozans: Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena. New York 1910.
  • Along the Andes and down the Amazon. New York 1911.
  • as HJ Mozans: Woman in science. New York 1913.
  • From Berlin to Baghdad and Babylon. New York, London 1922.

literature

  • Mariano Artigas, Thomas F. Glick, Rafael A. Martínez: Negotiating Darwin. The Vatican confronts evolution 1877-1902. Baltimore 2006, pp. 124-202.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j François Angelier: Dictionnaire des Voyageurs et Explorateurs occidentaux du XIIIe au XXe siècle . Pygmalion (Éditions Flammarion), Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-7564-0156-0 , p. 723 f .
personal data
SURNAME Tame, John Augustine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Roman Catholic priest, author, scientist, and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH New Lexington , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 1921
Place of death Munich