BARBELIN
286
BARBER
177 chapels. The diocese was annexed to Huesca in
the sixteenth century, but was afterwards made inde-
pendent and remained so vmtil the Concordat of 1S51,
which annexed it once more to Huesca, preserving its
name and administration. It is administered at
present by the titular Bishop of Claudiopolis. Don
Juan Antonio Ruano, preconized Bishop of L6rida.
Among its bishops, Ramon II, who is venerated as a
saint, and the above-mentioned Ramiro, called the
Monk, a prince of the royal house of Aragon, deserve
special mention.
Bartolom^ and Lupercio Argensola, historians and classical Spanish wTiters, were born in Bar- bastro. Bartolom^ is the author of the "Historia de las Molucas", "Anales de Aragon", and "Regla de Perfeccion"; Lupercio wrote three tragedies, "Isabel", "Jebg", and ".\lejandro", and some poems published with others viTitten by his brother Bartolom^. The cathedral, the episcopal palace, the seminary, and the college of the Clerks Regular of the Pious Schools, or Piarists, are among the most noted buildings in the city. Besides the semi- nary for the education of young ecclesiastics, there are, in the diocese, various communities of both sexes devoted to a contemplative hfe and the education of the young. The Piarists, the Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Poor Clares, and the Capuchin nuns have foundations in the capital, the Benedic- tines in the town of Pueyo, and the Discalced Car- melites in Graus and Salas-Altas. There are schools in all the towns of the diocese.
Fi.onEZ, Espana Sagrada, an.i its continuation by Father lost HE LA Canal (1836), XLVI, 148-70; XLVIIl. 225-28; HoMAN t>E HnEScA. Teotro de las I^lesias de Aragun (1870), IX; M ^ , z. Bibl. hist. Esp. (1858), 47-8.
TiRso Lopez.
Barbelin, Felix-Jos-ph, styled the "Apostle of Philadelphia ", b. at Luneville," Province of Lorraine, France, '30 May, 1S08; d. in Philadelphia, 8 June, 1869. He was the oldest of six children, of whom -five became religious, his youngest brother Ignace- Xavier being the founder of the Apostolic School at Amiens. He received his early training at the home of a reverend grand-uncle, and made his philosophical and theological studies in a seminary of which another grand-uncle was president. He entered the Society of Jesus, 7 January, 1831, at Whitemarsh, Maryland, U. S. A., and for some years was stationed at George- town College, D. C, as disciplinarian and teacher of French. In 1836 he became assistant pastor of Holy Trinity Church at Georgetown, and in 1838 was trans- ferred to Philadelphia, thereafter the scene of his apostolic labours. For more than a quarter of a century he was pastor of Old St. Joseph's, Willing's Alley, which became, mainly during his term of office, the centre from which radiated Catholic in- fluences throughout the city and diocese. His zeal was untiring. He founded St. Joseph's Hospital in his adopted city, and was the first to establish sodali- ties for men and women and for the young who were always the objects of his fatherly solicitude. In 1852 he was appointed the first President of St. Joseph's College. His many good works brought him into contact with most "of the Catholics of the city, while his charity towards all and particularly his love of children and devotion to their interests made him an object of veneration to Catholics and Protestants alike. His memory is still held in bene- diction.
His life was written by Eleanoh C. Donnelly (Philadelphia, 1886); Woodstock Letters, IV, 108; V, 81.
Edward P. Spill.vne.
Barbelo and Barbelites. See Gnostics.
Barber Family, The. — Daniel Barber, soldier of the Revolution, Episcopalian minister and convert, b. at Simsburj-, Connecticut, U. S. A., 2 October, 175C; d. at Saint Inigoes, Maryland, 1834. The
conversion of the Barber family, despite the preju-
dices of a Puritan education and environment, was
one of the most notable and far-reaching in its lesults
of any recorded in the early annals of the Church
in New England. Daniel Barber has left a " History
of My Own Times" (Washington, 1827), in which he
states that his father and mother were Congrega-
tional Dissenters of strict Puritanic rule and he
continued in that sect until his twenty-seventh year,
when he joined the Episcopalians. Previous to this
he had served two terms as a soldier in the Conti-
nental army. In his thirtieth year he was ordained
a minister o"f the Episcopalian Church at Schenectady,
New York. He married Chloe Case, daughter of
Judge Owen of Simsbury, Connecticut, and about
1787, with his wife, Iris three sons, and a daughter,
moved to Claremont, New Hampshire. He exer-
cised the duties of the ministrj- for thirty years
without doubt concerning the soundness of his
ordination, when one day the chance reading of a
Catholic book opened up for him the whole issue of
the validity of AngUcan orders, by impugning
Parker's consecration. This doubt was further
increased by a visit for conference to the famous
Bishop Cheverus, then a priest in Boston, and the
inability of his Episcopalian associates to offer any
satisfactory refutation of the arguments advanced
by the Cathohc priest. Father Cheverus also gave
him a number of Cathohc books, which he and the
other members of his family read eagerly.
In 1807, at the instance of her parents, he baptized Fanny, daughter of General Ethan Allen, who sub- sequently became a convert and died a nun in the convent of the Hotel-Dieu, Montreal. A visit he made there greatly impressed him, and Miss Allen's change of faith indirectly had much to do with his own conversion. The books Father Cheverus gave him he not only studied carefully himself, but gave them to his wife and children. His son, Virgil Horace, who was a minister in charge of an Episco- palian academy at Fairfield, near Utica, New York, was specially attracted by these books when with his wife he visited his father, and he took Milner's "End of Controversy" back to New York. This visit resulted in the conversion of both husband and wife in 1817. The following year Virgil returned to Claremont from New York, taking with him Father Charles Ffrench, a Dominican who was officiating there at St. Peter's church. The priest remained a week in Daniel Barber's house preaching and saying Mass, with the result that he had seven converts, including Mrs. Daniel Barber and her children, Mrs. Noah Tyler, who was Daniel Barber's sister, and her eldest daughter Rosetta. Mrs. Tyler was the mother of William Tyler, first Bishop of Hartford, Connecticut. Her husband and six other children were subsequently converted, and four of the daugh- ters became Sisters of Charity.
Mrs. Daniel Barber was a woman of great strength of mind and resolution. She died in her seventy- ninth year, 8 February, 1825. Her husband was not baptized with her, but on the fifteenth of Novem- ber, 1818. gave up his place as minister of the Epis- copalian parish of Claremont. He then went to visit friends in Maryland and Washington, where he took the final step and entered the Church. He spent the rest of his hfe, after the death of his wife, in Maryland and Pennsylvania, near liis son ^'irgil, and he died in 1834 at the house of the Society of Jesus at Saint Inigoes, Maryland. Two pamphlets, printed at Wasliington, "Cathohc Worships and Piety Explained and Recommended in Sundry Letters to a Very Dear Friend and Others" (1821), and "History of My Own Times", give interesting details of his" life and show him to have been honest in his convictions and earnestly desirous of knowing the truth and disposed to embrace it when found.
