A Deserter's Adventures

Dom Felice Vaggioli wrote this autobiography between 1909 and 1911, after the publication in Italy of his History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants. One of the first Benedictine monks to be sent to New Zealand, he arrived in 1879 and returned home in 1887, having worked in Gisbourne, Auckland and the Coromandel. A Deserter's Adventures is Vaggioli's title, as he was a concientious objector, or "draft-dodger," as a young monk and so termed himself "a deserter." This is typical of the individual who emerges from these pages: always questioning, and always applying a strong sense of justice and fine logic to the many dilemmas he found himself in as a missionary priest in New Zealand.