“A Loyal Disciple of the Saintly La Salle”: Brother Chrysostom, F.S.C. (1863-1917)

Joseph John Conlon was born in 1863 in New Haven, Connecticut, where he received his early schooling. He then entered Manhattan College, which the De La Salle Christian Brothers established in 1853. The brothers were founded in seventeenth–century France by St. John Baptist De La Salle to meet the educational needs of the poor. They made their first American foundation in 1845 in Baltimore, and in 1848 they came to New York.

After graduating from Manhattan, Joseph taught for a year at La Salle College in Philadelphia, founded in 1863. He then joined the brothers, taking Chrysostom as his religious name. (Most orders don’t do this anymore, but a religious name was intended to show that a radical change had been made.) After completing his novitiate (a sort of basic training period for religious), he taught at St. Joseph’s College, Buffalo (now St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute).

From 1888 until his death in 1917, he was at Manhattan College, where he taught English, philosophy, oratory and psychology. He wrote several textbooks on Scholasticism, the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, which Pope Leo XIII had mandated in 1879 as part of the standard curriculum for Catholic schools and seminaries. By the time of his death, Brother Chrysostom had taught at Manhattan for nearly thirty years, and was something of an institution there. He was remembered as

serious and gentle in disposition… a loyal disciple of the saintly La Salle. Both as a student and a teacher he edified many by his zeal and tireless devotion. His death removes from the [college] one of its most valued members.

Manhattan College lore has it that Chrysostom Hall, named in his honor, is haunted by his ghost.