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| A side altar from the basilica in Emmitsburg. |
Along US 15 in Maryland just shy of the Pennsylvania border is a rather Catholic area, complete with a seminary, university, shrine, and pilgrimage grotto. A tall gilded statue of Mary rises from the edge of the Appalachians and looks over the northern Maryland piedmont.
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| The scale is less than impressive, but it was a hard shot to take without |
A shrine, indeed a full blown basilica, is one of the central features of the small town of Emmitsburg, Maryland. The grounds and edifices, of course, are dedicated to the honor and memory of Elizabeth Ann Seton, who in 1975 was made the first United States-born saint. Emmitsburg became a place of rest for Elizabeth only after years of difficulties both financially and physically. She was actually a New Yorker, and an Episcopalian by birth; her beginnings can be experienced in another shrine near the battery park at the southern tip of Manhattan.
Things might have remained quiet and simple for her in New York, but Elizabeth fell in love with William Seton. William was a businessman with a small fleet of ships at his disposal, but found himself at the unfortunate end of both a failing business (due to naval problems during the Napoleonic wars) and a rather weak constitution. His doctors recommended he spend time in the warmer climate of Italy, and took up an invitation to stay with a business partner in Livorno. Elizabeth came along, of course, and while there encountered Roman Catholicism in living color. She fell in love. When she returned to the United States in 1805, she was received into the Church.
To make ends meet for her family, she opened a school for girls. In keeping with a history of difficulty, many parents refused to send their children to a school run by a Catholic, and Elizabeth might well have disappeared into obscurity had it not been for a chance meeting with a Sulpician abbot. Eventually, the Sulpicians invited Elizabeth to Emmitsburg to run a Catholic school. At the time, this was something of a radical concept; the United States was largely Protestant, and in the Catholic areas of the world a Catholic school was pretty much a given, or just considered a school. Elizabeth did not know it, but she was being a pioneer in what has since become a grand American tradition of specifically Catholic schools. As her husband had passed away and her children were growing up and leaving for their own lives, Elizabeth took her mission of education a step further by founding a religious community dedicated to the education and care of the children of the poor. In doing so, she founded the first congregation of religious sisters formed in the United States.
The area which became her resting place is among the oldest cores of Catholic culture within the United States and is rather notable in being a historical center focused on works of peace rather than war. Just to the north is Gettysburg, while nearby to the southwest are Antietam and Monocacy National Battlefields. These anniversaries have largely overshadowed the 200 year remembrance of the passing of the saint, but it is hard for most travelers passing between the battlefields not to notice a very different legacy that exists in this place. Near Mount Saint Mary's University, along with the giant statue, is a place of repose with lovely gardens and trails built into the verdant edge of the Appalachians.
The heat and a lack of time meant that I did not stop and take pictures of this place, but you have my assurances that it is worth going to even for non-Catholics. I do confess to a certain bias here. Mom and I would stop there every time we drove down 15 en route to I-95 and southern Florida each year, and aside from experiencing the shrine of the North American martyrs in Midland, Ontario, the holy sites around Emmitsburg and the story of Elizabeth were among the sacred geography responsible for lighting the flame of a vocation to the priesthood in your author.
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| The main portion of the basilica. The thing is actually pretty huge. |
As far as the area goes, aside from being riddled with tons of historical sites, things are rural and half-wild. This is the highly developed eastern coast of the United States, but it is also where the coast gives way to the great wall of the Appalachians, and many places feature undeveloped patches, especially along the ridge lines. For an urban sophisticate like Elizabeth, moving out here must have been quite the transformation of lifestyle (not that she was worried about it).
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| Looking west from US 15 northbound, just a few miles south of Emmitsburg. Those mountains a few miles over are the foothills of the Appalachians and part of Catoctin Mountain Park, something of a federal version of a metropark for the DC area. |
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