Part 36

§ 191.12. =The Popes and Theological Science.=--What kind of theology =Pius IX.= wished to have taught is shown by his proclaiming St. Liguori (§ 165, 2) and St. Francis de Sales (§ 157, 1) _doctores ecclesiæ_. =Leo XIII.=, on the other hand, in 1879 recommended in the encyclical _Æterni patris_, in the most urgent way, all Catholic schools to make the philosophy of the angelical Aquinas (§ 103, 6) their foundation, founded in 1880 an “Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” three out of its thirty members being Germans, Kleutgen, Stöckl, and Morgott, and gave 300,000 lire out of Peter’s pence for an edition of Aquinas’ works with the commentaries of “the most eminent expositors,” setting aside “all those books which, while professing to be derived from St. Thomas are really drawn from foreign and unholy sources;” _i.e._, in accordance with the desires of the Jesuits, omitting the strictly Thomist expositors (§ 149, 13), and giving currency only to Jesuit interpretations. No wonder that the Jesuit General Beckx in such circumstances submitted himself “humbly,” being praised for this by the pope as a saint. But a much greater, indeed a really great, service to the documentary examination of the history of the Christian church and state has been rendered by the same pope, undoubtedly at the instigation of Cardinal Hergenröther, by the access granted not only to Catholic but also to Protestant investigators to the exceedingly rich treasures of the Vatican archives. Though still hedged round with considerable limitations, the concession seems liberality itself as compared with the stubborn refusal of Pius IX. to facilitate the studies of any inquirer. With honest pride the pope could inscribe on his bust placed in the library: “_Leo XIII. Pont. Max. historiæ studiis consulens tabularii arcana reclusit a 1880_.”--But what the ends were which he had in view and what the hopes that he cherished is seen from the rescript of August, 1883, in which he calls upon the cardinals De Luca, Pitra, and Hergenröther, as prefects of the committee of studies, of the library and archives, while proclaiming the great benefits which the papacy has secured to Italy, to do their utmost to overthrow “the lies uttered by the sects” on the history of the church, especially in reference to the papacy, for, he adds, “we desire that at last once more the truth should prevail.” Therefore archives and library are to be opened to pious and learned students “for the service of religion and science in order that the historical untruths of the enemies of the church which have found entrance even into the schoolbooks should be displaced by the composition of good writings.” The firstfruits of the zeal thus stimulated were the “_Monunenta ref. Lutheranæ ex tabulariis S. Sedis_,” Ratisbon, 1883, published by the assistant keeper of the archives P. Balan as an extinguisher to the Luther Jubilee of that year. But this performance came so far short of the wishes and expectations of the Roman zealots that by their influence the editor was removed from his official position. The next attempt of this sort was the edition by Hergenröther of the papal _Regesta_ down to Leo X.

IV. Relation of Church to the Empire and to the States.

§ 192. THE GERMAN CONFEDERATION.

The Peace of Luneville of 1801 gave the deathblow to the old German empire, by the formal cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France, indemnifying the secular princes who were losers by this arrangement with estates and possessions on the right of the Rhine, taken from the neutral free cities of the empire and the secularized ecclesiastical principalities, institutions, monasteries, and orders. An imperial commission sitting at Regensburg arranged the details of these indemnifications. They were given expression to by means of the imperial commission’s decree or recess of 1803. The dissolution of the constitution of the German empire thus effected was still further carried out by the Peace of Presburg of 1805, which conferred upon the princes of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, in league with Napoleon, full sovereignty, and to the two first named the rank of kings, and was completed by the founding of the Confederation of the Rhine of 1806, in which sixteen German princes formally severed themselves from the emperor and empire and ranked themselves as vassals of France under the protectorate of Napoleon. Francis II., who already in 1804 had assumed the title of Emperor of Austria as Francis I., now that the German empire had actually ceased to exist, renounced also the name of German emperor. The unhappy proceedings of the Vienna Congress of the German Confederation and its permanent representation in the Frankfort parliament during 1814 and 1815, after Napoleon’s twice repeated defeat, led finally to the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.

§ 192.1. =The Imperial Commission’s Decree, 1803.=--The significance of this for church history consists not merely in the secularization of the ecclesiastical principalities and corporations, but even still more in the alteration caused thereby in the ecclesiastical polity of the territorial governments. With the ecclesiastical principalities the most powerful props of the Catholic church in Germany were lost, and Protestantism obtained a decided ascendency in the council of the German princes. The Catholic prelates were now simply paid servants of the state, and thus their double connexion with the curia and the state brought with it in later times endless entanglements and complications. On the other hand, in states hitherto almost exclusively Protestant, _e.g._ Württemberg, Baden, Hesse, there was a great increase of Catholic subjects, which attracted but little serious attention when the confessional particularism in the consciousness of the age was more unassuming and tolerant than ever it has been before or since.

§ 192.2. =The Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine.=--Baron Carl Theod. von Dalberg, distinguished for his literary culture and his liberal patronage of art and science, was made in 1802 Elector of Mainz and Lord High Chancellor of the German empire. When by the recess of 1803 the territories of the electorate on the left of the Rhine were given over to France and those on the right secularized, the electoral rank was abolished. The same happened with respect to the lord high chancellorship through the creation of the Rhenish Confederation. Dalberg was indemnified for the former by the favour of Napoleon by the gift of a small territory on the right of the Rhine, and for the latter by the renewal of the prince-primacy of the Confederation of the Rhine with a seat in the Federal council. He still retained his episcopal office and fixed its seat at Regensburg. The founding of a metropolitan chapter at Regensburg embracing the whole domain of the Rhenish Confederation he did not succeed in carrying out, and in 1813 he felt compelled to surrender also his territorial possessions. His spiritual functions, however, as Archbishop of Regensburg, he continued to discharge until his death in 1817.

§ 192.3. =The Vienna Congress and the Concordat.=--The Vienna Congress of 1814, 1815, had assigned it the difficult task of righting the sorely disturbed political affairs of Europe and giving a new shape to the territorial and dynastic relations. But never had an indispensably necessary redistribution of territory been made more difficult or more complicated by diplomatic intrigues than in Germany. Instead of the earlier federation of states, the restoration of which proved impossible, the federal constitution of June 8th, 1815, created under the name of the German Confederation a union of states in which all members of the confederation as such exercised equal sovereign rights. Their number then amounted to thirty-eight, but in the course of time by death or withdrawal were reduced to thirty-four. The new distribution of territory, just as little as the Luneville Peace, took into account confessional homogeneity of princes and territories, so that the combination of Catholic and Protestant districts with the above referred to consequences, occurred in a yet larger measure. But the federal constitution secured in Article XVI. full toleration for all Christian confessions in the countries of the confederation. The claims of the Romish curia, which advanced from the demand for the restoration of all ecclesiastical principalities and the return of all impropriated churches and monasteries to their original purposes, to the demand for the restoration of the holy Roman-German empire in the mediæval and hierarchical sense, as well as the solemn protest against its conclusions laid upon the table of the congress by the papal legate Consalvi, were left quite unheeded. But also a proposal urgently pressed by the vicar-general of the diocese of Constance, Baron von Wessenberg (§ 187, 3), to found a German Catholic national church under a German primate found no favour with the congress; and an article recommended by Austria and Prussia to be incorporated in the acts of the confederation by which the Catholic church in Germany endeavoured to secure a common constitution under guarantee of the confederation, was rejected through the opposition of Bavaria. And since in the Frankfort parliament neither Wessenberg with his primacy and national church idea nor Consalvi with a comprehensive concordat answering to the wishes of the curia, was able to carry through a measure, it was left to the separate states interested to make separate concordats with the pope. Bavaria concluded a concordat in 1817 (§ 195, 1); Prussia in 1821 (§ 193, 1). Negotiations with the other German states fell through owing to the excessiveness of the demands of the hierarchy, or led to very unsatisfactory results, as in Hanover in 1824 (§ 194, 1) and the states belonging to the ecclesiastical province of the Upper Rhine in 1837 (§ 196, 1). In the time of reaction against the revolutionary excesses of 1848 the curia first secured any real advance. Hesse-Darmstadt opened the list in 1854 with a secret convention (§ 196, 4); then Austria followed in 1855 with a model concordat (§ 198, 2) which served as the pattern for the concordats with Württemberg in 1857 (§ 196, 6), and with Baden in 1859 (§ 196, 2), as well as for the episcopal convention with Nassau in 1861 (§ 196, 4). But the revived liberal current of 1860 swept away the South German concordats; the Vatican Council by its infallibility dogma gave the deathblow to that of Austria, and the German “_Kulturkampf_” sent the Prussian concordat to the winds, and only that of Bavaria remained in full force.

§ 192.4. =The Frankfort Parliament and the Würzburg Bishops’ Congress of 1848.=--As in the March diets of 1848 the magic word “freedom” roused through Germany a feverish excitement, it found a ready response among the Catholics, whose church was favoured in the highest degree by the movement. In the Frankfort parliament the ablest leaders of Catholic Germany had seats. Among the Catholic population there were numerous religio-political societies formed (§ 186, 3), and the German bishops, avowedly for the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the building of Cologne cathedral, set alongside of the Frankfort people’s parliament a German bishops’ council. After they had at Frankfort declared themselves in favour of unconditional liberty of faith, conscience, and worship, the complete independence of all religious societies in the ordering and administering of their affairs, but also of freeing the schools from all ecclesiastical control and oversight, as well as of the introduction of obligatory civil marriage, the bishops’ council met in October at Würzburg under the presidency of Archbishop Geissel of Cologne with nineteen episcopal assistants and several able theological advisers. In thirty-six sessions they reached the conclusion that complete separation between church and state is not to be desired so long as the state does not refuse to the church the place of authority belonging to it. On the other hand, by all means in their power they are to seek the abrogation of the _placet_ of the sovereign, the full independence of ecclesiastical legislation, administration and jurisdiction, with the abolition of the _appellatio tanquam ab abusu_, the direction and oversight of the public schools as well as the control of religious instruction in higher schools to be given only by teachers licensed for the purpose by the bishops, and finally to demand permission to erect educational institutions of their own of every kind, etc., and to forward a copy of these decisions to all German governments. The main object of the Würzburg assembly to secure currency for their resolutions in the new Germany sketched out at the Frankfort parliament, was indeed frustrated by that parliament’s speedy overthrow. Nevertheless in the several states concerned it proved of great and lasting importance in determining the subsequent unanimous proceedings of the bishops.

§ 193. PRUSSIA.

To the pious king Frederick William III. (1797-1840) it was a matter of heart and conscience to turn to account the religious consciousness of his people, re-awakened by God’s gracious help during the war of independence, for the healing of the three hundred years’ rent in the evangelical church by a union of the two evangelical confessions. The jubilee festival of the Reformation in 1817 seemed to him to offer the most favourable occasion. The king also desired to see the Catholic church in his dominions restored to an orderly and thriving condition, and for this end concluded a concordat with Rome in 1821. But it was broken up in 1836 over a strife between canon and civil law in reference to mixed marriages. Frederick William IV. was dominated by romantic ideas, and his reign (1840-1858), notwithstanding all his evangelical Christian decidedness, was wanting in the necessary firmness and energetic consistency. In the Catholic church the Jesuits were allowed unhindered to foster ultramontane hierarchical principles, and in the evangelical church the troubles about constitution, union, and confession could not be surmounted either by its own proper guardian, the episcopate, or by the superior church councils created in 1850. And although the notifications of William I. on his entrance upon the sole government in 1858 were hailed by the liberals as giving assurance that a new era had dawned in the development of the evangelical national church, this hope proved to be premature. With the exaltation of the victory-crowned royal house of Prussia to the throne of the newly erected German Empire on January 18th, 1871, a new era was actually opened for ecclesiastical developments and modifications throughout the land.

§ 193.1. =The Catholic Church to the Close of the Cologne Conflict.=--The government of =Frederick William III.= entered into negotiations with the papal curia, not so much for the old provinces in which everything was going well, but rather in the interests of the Rhine provinces annexed in 1814, whose bishops’ sees were vacant or in need of circumscription. The first Prussian ambassador to the Roman curia (1816-1823) was the famous historian Niebuhr. Although a true Protestant and keen critic and restorer of the history of old pagan Rome he was no match for the subtle and skilful diplomacy of Consalvi. In presence of the claims of the curia he manifested to an almost incredible extent trustful sympathy and acquiescence, even taking to do with matters that lay outside of Prussian affairs, eagerly silencing and opposing any considerations suggested from the other side. A complete concordat, however, defining in detail all the relations between church and state was not secured, but in 1821 an agreement was come to, with thankful acknowledgment of the “great magnanimity and goodness” shown by the king, by the bull _De salute animarum_, sanctioned by the king through a cabinet order (“in the exercise of his royal prerogative and without detriment to these rights”), according to which two archbishoprics, Cologne and Posen, and six bishoprics, Treves, Münster, Paderborn, Breslau, Kulm, and Ermeland, with a clerical seminary, were erected in Prussia and furnished with rich endowments. The cathedral chapter was to have the free choice of the bishop; but by an annexed note it was recommended to make sure in every such election that the one so chosen would be a _grata persona_ to the king. The union thus effected between church and state was of but short duration. The decree of Trent forbade Catholics to enter into mixed marriages with non-Catholics. A later papal bull of 1741, however, permitted it on condition of an only passive assistance of the clergy at the wedding and an engagement by the parents to train up the children as Catholics. The law of Prussia, on the other hand, in contested cases made all the children follow the religion of their fathers. As this was held in 1825 to apply to the Rhine provinces, and as the bishops there had, in 1828, appealed to the pope, Pius VIII. when negotiations with the Prussian ambassador Bunsen (1824-1838) proved fruitless, issued in 1830 a brief which permitted Catholic priests to give the ecclesiastical sanction to mixed marriages only when a promise was given that the children should be educated as Catholics, but otherwise to give only passive assistance. When all remonstrances failed to overcome the obstinacy of the curia, the government turned to the Archbishop of Cologne, Count =Spiegel=, a zealous friend and promoter of the Hermesian theology (§ 191, 1), and arranged in 1834 a secret convention with him, which by his influence all his suffragans joined. In it they promised to give such an interpretation to the brief that its observance would be limited to teaching and exhortation, but would by no means extend to the obligation of submitting the children to Catholic baptism, and that the mere _assistentia passiva_ would be resorted to as rarely as possible, and only in cases where absolutely required. Spiegel died in November, 1835. In 1836 the Westphalian Baron =Clement Droste von Vischering= was chosen as his successor. Although before his elevation he had unhesitatingly agreed to the convention, soon after his enthronization he strictly forbad all the clergy celebrating any marriage except in accordance with the brief, and blamed himself for having believed the agreement between convention and brief affirmed by the government, and having only subsequently on closer examination discovered the disagreement between the two. At the same time, in order to give effect to the condemnation that had been meanwhile passed on the Hermesian theology, he gave orders that at the confessional the Bonn students should be forbidden to attend the lectures of Hermesians. When the archbishop could not be prevailed on to yield, he was condemned in 1837 as having broken his word and having incited to rebellion, and sent to the fortress of Minden. =Gregory XIV.= addressed to the consistory a fulminating allocution, and a flood of controversial tracts on either side swept over Germany. Görres designated the archbishop “the Athanasius of the nineteenth century.” The government issued a state paper justifying its procedure, and the courts of law sentenced certain refractory priests to several years’ confinement in fortresses or prisons. The moderate peaceful tone of the cathedral chapter did much to quell the disturbance, supporting as it did the state rather than the archbishop. The example of Cologne encouraged also =Dunin=, Archbishop of Gnesen and Posen, to issue in 1838 a pastoral in which he threatened with suspension any priest in his diocese who would not yield unconditional obedience to the papal brief. For this he was deposed by the civil courts and sentenced to half a year’s imprisonment in a fortress, but the king prevented the execution of the sentence. But Dunin fled from Berlin, whither he had been ordered by the king, to Posen, and was then brought in 1839 to the fortress of Kolberg. While matters were in this state Frederick William IV. came to the throne in 1840. Dunin was immediately restored, after promising to maintain the peace. Droste also was released from his confinement with public marks of respect, but received in 1841, with his own and the pope’s approval, in the former Bishop of Spires, Geissel, a coadjutor, who in his name and with the right of succession administered the diocese. The government gave no aid to the Hermesians. The law in regard to mixed marriages continued indeed in force, but was exercised so as to put no constraint of conscience upon the Catholic clergy. Of his own accord the king declined further exercise of the royal prerogative, allowing the bishops direct intercourse with the papal see, whereas previously all correspondence had to pass through royal committees, with this proviso by the minister Eichhorn, “that this display of generous confidence be not abused,” and with the expectation that the bishops would not only communicate to the government the contents of their correspondence with the pope, but also the papal replies which did not deal exclusively with doctrine, and would not speak and act against the wish and will of the government. But Geissel, recommended by Louis of Bavaria to his son-in-law Frederick William IV. instead of Baron von Diepenbrock (§ 187, 1) who was first thought of, by his skilful and energetic manœuvring, going on from victory to victory, raised ultramontanism in Prussia to the very summit of its influence and glory.