Chapter XVIII: Part 18

§ 197.13. =Definitive Conclusion of Peace, 1887.=--In February,
1887, the state journal published a new form of oath for the
bishops, sanctioned by royal ordinance, in which the obligation
hitherto enforced “to conscientiously observe the laws of the
state,” was omitted, and the asseveration added, “that I have
not, by the oath, taken to his Holiness the pope and the church,
undertaken any obligation which can be in conflict with the oath
of fidelity as a subject of his Royal Majesty.”--The promised
fifth revision, meanwhile accepted by the pope in its several
particulars and acknowledged by him as sufficient basis for
a definitive peace, was on February 13th, 1887, contrary to
precedent, first laid before the House of Peers. Bishop Kopp
proposed a great number of changes and additions, of which
several of a very important nature were accepted. The most
important provisions of this law, which was passed on =April
29th, 1887=, are the following: The obligation on bishops to
make notification applies only to the conferring of a spiritual
office for life, and the right of protest by the state must
rely upon a basis named and belonging to the civil domain;
All state compulsion to lifelong reinstatement in a vacant
office is unlawful; The previously insured immunity for reading
mass and dispensing the sacraments is now applied to members
of all spiritual orders again allowed in the kingdom; The
duty of ecclesiastical superiors to communicate disciplinary
decisions to the Chief President is given up. Those orders and
congregations which devote themselves to aiding in pastoral work,
the administering of Christian benevolence, and, on Bishop Kopp’s
motion, those which engage in educational work in girl’s high
schools and similar institutions, as well as those which lead
a private life, are to be allowed and are to be also restored
to the enjoyment of their original possessions; The training of
missionaries for foreign work and the erection of institutions
for this purpose are to be permitted to the privileged orders
and congregations.--Bishop Kopp, and also the pope, with lively
gratitude, accepted these ordinances as making the reconciliation
an accomplished fact; but they also expressed the hope that
the success of this peaceful arrangement will be such as shall
lead to further important concessions to the rightful claims
of the Catholic church. After this conclusive revision, besides
the extremely contracted obligation of notification by the
bishops and the almost completely insignificant right of civil
protest, there remain of the _Kulturkampf_ laws only: the
_Kanzelparagraph_, the Jesuit and the exile enactments (all
of them imperial and not Prussian laws), and the abrogation
of the three articles of the Prussian constitution (§ 197, 8).
Insignificant as the concessions of the papal curia may seem
in comparison to the almost complete surrender of the Prussian
government, it can hardly be said that Bismarck has been untrue
to his promise not to go to Canossa. With him the main thing
ever was to restore within the German empire the peace that
was threatened by thunderclouds gathering from day to day in
the political horizon in east and west, and thus, as also by
nurturing and developing the military forces, to set aside the
danger of war from without. But for this end, the sovereignty
of the Centre, which hampered him on every side, allying itself
with all elements in the Chamber and Reichstag hostile to the
government and the empire, must be broken. But this was possible
only if he succeeded in breaking up the unhallowed artificial
amalgamation of Catholic church interests for which the Centre
contended with the political tendencies of the party hostile
to the empire, by recognising those interests in a manner
satisfactory to the pope and to all right-minded loyal German
Catholics, and so estranging them from the political schemes of
the leader of the Centre. This indeed would have scarcely been
possible with Pius IX., but with the much clearer and sharper
Leo XIII. there was hope of success. And the statesmanlike
insight and self-denial of the prince succeeded, though at first
only in a limited measure, and this was a much more important
gain for the state than the papal concessions of episcopal
notification and the state’s right of protest.--When in the
beginning of 1887, at the same time that the fear was greatest of
a war with France and Russia, the renewal and enlargement of the
military budget, hitherto for seven years, was necessary, and its
refusal by the Centre and its adherents was regarded as certain,
Bismarck prevailed on the pope to intervene in his favour. The
pope did it in a confidential communication to the president
of the Centre, in which he urged acceptance of the septennial
act in the Reichstag for the security of the Fatherland and the
conserving of peace on the continent, expressly referring to the
friendly and promising attitude of the imperial government to
the papacy and the Catholic church. But the president kept the
communication secret from the members of his party, and they
continued strenuously and unanimously opposed to the Septennate.
The Reichstag was consequently dissolved. The pope now published
this correspondence with the leaders of the Centre, thirty-seven
Rhenish nobles separated from the party, and the new elections to
the Reichstag were mainly favourable to the government. Although
the Deputy Windthorst as chief leader of the Prussian _Ecclesia
militans_ had on every occasion protested his and his party’s
profoundest reverence for and conditional submission to every
expression of the papal will, and shortly before (§ 186, 3) had
styled the pope “Lord of the whole world,” he opposed himself,
as he had done on the Septennate question, on the fifth revision
of the ecclesiastical laws, to the will of the infallible pope
by publishing a memorial proving the absolute impossibility of
accepting this proposed law, which, however, this time also he
failed to carry out.

§ 197.14. =Independent Procedure of the other German Governments.=

1. =Bavaria’s= energy in the struggle against ultramontanism
(§ 197, 4) soon cooled. Yet in 1873 the Redemptorists were
instructed to discontinue their missionary work (§ 186, 6),
and all theological students were forbidden to attend the
Jesuit German College at Rome (§ 151, 1). Also in 1875,
the jubilee processions organized by the episcopate without
obtaining the royal _Placet_ were inhibited.

2. =Württemberg=, which since 1862 possessed more civil
jurisdiction over Catholic church affairs and exercised it
more freely (§ 196, 6) than Prussia laid claim to in 1873,
could all the more easily maintain ecclesiastical peace,
since its peaceful Bishop Hefele (§ 189, 3, 4; 191, 7)
avoided all occasion of conflict and strife.

3. In =Baden= the _Kulturkampf_ that had here previously
broken out (§ 196, 2) was continued all the more keenly.
In 1873 public teaching, holding of missions and assisting
in pastoral work, had been refused to all religious orders
and fraternities. But the main blow, followed by the
comprehensive church legislation of February 19th, 1874,
which closed all boys’ seminaries and episcopal institutions,
allowed none to hold a clerical office or discharge any
ecclesiastical function without a three years’ course
at a German university and a state examination in general
culture (§ 196, 2), strictly forbad all influencing of
public elections by the clergy, and made deposition follow
the second conviction of a church officer. The expedient
hitherto resorted to of appointing mere deputy priests so
as to avoid the examination, was consequently frustrated.
The rapid increase of vacant pastorates, after five years’
opposition, at last moved the episcopal curia to sue for
peace at the hands of the government, and when the latter
showed an exceedingly conciliatory spirit, the curia
with consent of the pope in February, 1880, withdrew its
prohibition of the request for dispensation from the state
examination, and the government now on its part with the
Chambers passed a law, by which the obligation to undergo
this examination was abolished, and the certificate of
the exit examination, three years’ attendance at a German
university, and diligent attention to at least three
courses of the philosophical faculty, was held as sufficient
evidence of general culture. The Baden _Kulturkampf_ seems
to have been definitely concluded by the election and
recognition of Dr. Orbin to the see of Freiburg, vacant for
fourteen years, when he without scruple took the oath of
allegiance. This, however, did not check, far less put an
end to the tumults of the fanatical ultramontane Irredenta.

§ 197.15.

4. =Hesse-Darmstadt= in 1874 followed the example of Prussia
and Baden in excluding all spiritual orders from teaching
in public schools, and on April 23rd, 1875, issued five
ecclesiastical laws which were directed to restoring under
penal sanctions the state of the law, which before 1850
(§ 196, 4) had been unquestioned. Essentially in harmony with
the Prussian May Laws of 1873 and 1874, they go beyond these
in several particulars. All clergymen receiving appointments,
_e.g._, must have gone through a full university course;
all religious orders and congregations were to be allowed
to die out; public roads and squares could be used
for ecclesiastical festivals only by permission of the
government to be renewed on each occasion. The “contentious”
Bishop Ketteler of Mainz, who stirred up the fire to the
utmost with the Prussian brand, and had kindled also a
similar flame in Hesse over the proposal of this law, held
still that to view martyrdom at a distance was the better
part, and carefully avoided any overt act of disobedience.
But he immediately refused to co-operate in restoring the
Catholic theological faculty at Giessen, and the government
consequently abandoned the idea. The Mainz see after
Ketteler’s death in 1877 remained long vacant, as the
government felt obliged to reject the electoral list
submitted by the chapter. A candidate satisfactory to the
Vatican and the government was only found in May, 1886, in
the person of Dr. Haffner, a member of the chapter. After
Prussia had concluded its definitive peace with Rome, the
Hessian government, in May, 1887, laid before the house of
representatives a revision of ecclesiastical legislation of
1875, like that of Prussia, only not going so far, for which
meanwhile the approval of the papal curia had been obtained.
It agrees to the erection of a Catholic clerical seminary,
and Catholic students’ residences in this seminary and
in the state-gymnasia; erection of independent boys’
institutions preparatory to the seminary for priests is,
however, still refused; the existing duty of bishops to
make notification, and the right of the state to protest
in regard to appointments to vacant pastorates are also
retained. There is no word of rehabilitating religious
orders and congregations, nor of any limitation of the law
about the exercise of ecclesiastical punishment and means
of discipline.

5. Last of all among the German states affected by the
_Kulturkampf_, the kingdom of =Saxony=, with only 73,000
Catholic inhabitants, at the instance of the second Chamber
in 1876, came forward with a Catholic church law modelled
upon the Prussian May Laws, with its several provisions
modified, in spite of the contention of the talented heir
to the throne, Prince George, that the power of the state
in relation to the Catholic church could only be determined
by a concordat with the Roman curia.

§ 198. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

To the emperor of Austria there was left, after the re-organization of affairs by the Vienna Congress, of the Roman empire, only the name of defender of the papal see, and the Catholic church, and the presidency of the German Federal Council. The remnants of the Josephine ecclesiastical constitution were gradually set aside and Catholicism firmly established as the state religion; yet the government asserted its independence against all hierarchical claims, and granted, though only in a very limited degree, toleration to Protestantism. The revolution year 1848 removed indeed some of these limits, but the period of reaction that followed gave, by means of a concordat concluded with the curia in 1855, to the ultramontane hierarchy of the country an unprecedented power in almost all departments of civil life, and prejudicial also to the interests of the Protestant church. After the disastrous issue of the Italian war in 1859, and still more that of the German war in 1866, the government was obliged to make an honest effort to introduce and develop liberal institutions. And after an imperial patent of 1861 had secured religious liberty, self-administration, and equal rights to the Protestant church, the constitutional legislation of 1868 freed Catholic as well as Protestant civil, educational, and ecclesiastical matters from the provisions of the concordat that most seriously threatened them, and by the declaration of papal infallibility in 1870 the government felt justified in regarding the entire concordat as antiquated and declaring it abolished. In its place a Catholic church act was passed by the state in 1874. But the _Kulturkampf_ struggle which was thus made imminent also for Austria was avoided by pliancy on both sides.

§ 198.1. =The Zillerthal Emigration.=--In the Tyrolese
=Zillerthal= the knowledge of evangelical truth had spread
among several families by means of Protestant books and Bibles.
When the Catholic clergy from 1826 had pushed to its utmost
the clerical guardianship by means of auricular confession, an
opposition arose which soon from the refusal to confess passed on
to the rejection of saint worship, masses for the dead, purgatory,
indulgences, etc., and ended in the formal secession of many to
the evangelical church in 1830, with a reference to the Josephine
edict of toleration. The emperor Francis I., to whom on the
occasion of his visit to Innsbrück in 1832 they presented their
petition, promised them toleration. But the Tyrolese nobles
protested, and the official decision, given at last in 1834,
ordered removal to Transylvania or return to the Catholic church.
The petitioners now applied, as those of Salzburg had previously
done (§ 165, 4), by a deputation to the king of Prussia, who,
after by diplomatic communications securing the emperor’s
consent to emigration, assigned them his estate of Erdmannsdorf
in Silesia for colonization. There now the exiles, 399 in number,
settled in 1837, and, largely aided by the royal munificence,
founded a new Zillerthal.

§ 198.2. =The Concordat.=--After the revolution year 1848,
the government were far more yielding toward the claims of the
hierarchy than under the old Metternich _régime_. In April, 1850,
an imperial patent relieved the papal and episcopal decrees of
the necessity of imperial approval, and on August 18th, 1855,
a concordat with the pope was agreed to, by which unprecedented
power and independence was granted to the hierarchy in Austria
for all time to come. The first article secured to the Roman
Catholic religion throughout the empire all rights and privileges
which they claimed by divine institution and the canon law.
The others gave to the bishops the right of unrestricted
correspondence with Rome, declared that no papal ordinance
required any longer the royal _placet_, that prelates are
unfettered in the discharge of their hierarchical obligations,
that religious instruction in all schools is under their
supervision, that no one can teach religion or theology without
their approval, that in catholic schools there can be only
catholic teachers, that they have the right of forbidding all
books which may be injurious to the faithful, that all cases
of ecclesiastical law, especially marriage matters, belong to
their jurisdiction, yet the apostolic see grants that purely
secular law matters of the clergy are to be decided before a
civil tribunal, and the emperor’s right of nomination to vacant
episcopal sees is to continue, etc. The inferior clergy, who
were now without legal protection against the prelates, only
reluctantly bowed their necks to this hard yoke; the liberal
Catholic laity murmured, sneered, and raged, and the native press
incessantly urged a revision of the concordat, the necessity of
which became ever more apparent from concessions made meanwhile
willingly or grudgingly to the “Non-Catholics.” But only after
Austria, by the issue of the German war of 1866, was restricted
to her own domain, and finally freed from the drag of its
ultramontane Italian interests, found herself obliged to make
every effort to reconcile the opposing parties within her own
territories, could these views prove successful. But since the
government nevertheless held firmly by the principle that the
concordat, as a state contract regularly concluded between two
sovereigns, could be changed only by mutual consent, the liberal
majority of the house of deputies resolved to make it as harmless
as possible by means of domestic legislation, and on June 11th,
1867, the deputy Herbst moved the appointment of a committee for
drawing up three bills for restoring civil marriage, emancipation
of schools from the church, and equality of all confessions
in the eye of the law. The motion was carried by a hundred and
thirty-four votes against twenty-two. The Cisleithan (_i.e._
Austrian excluding Hungary) episcopate, with Cardinal Rauscher
of Vienna at their head, presented an address to his apostolic
majesty demanding the most rigid preservation of the concordat,
denouncing civil marriage as concubinage, and the emancipation
of schools as their dechristianizing. An imperial autograph
letter to Rauscher rebuked with earnest words the inflammatory
proceedings of the bishops, and at the same time the ultramontane
ambassador to Rome, Baron Hübner, was recalled. After the
arrangement with Hungary was completed, the first Cisleithan, the
so-called Burger, ministry was constituted under the presidency
of Prince Auersperg, composed of the most distinguished leaders
of the parliamentary majority. All the three bills were passed
by a large majority, and obtained imperial sanction on =May 25th,
1868=. The papal nuncio of Vienna protested, the pope in an
allocution denounced the new Austrian constitution as _nefanda
sane_ and the three confessional laws as _abominabiles leges_.
“We repudiate and condemn these laws,” he says, “by apostolic
authority, as well as everything done by the Austrian government
in matters of church policy, and determine in the exercise of
the same authority that these decrees with all their consequences
are and shall be null and void.” But all Vienna, all Austria
held jubilee, and the Chancellor von Beust rejected with energy
the assumptions of the curia over the civil domain. The bishops
indeed issued protests and inflammatory pastorals, and forbad the
publication of the marriage act, but submitted to the threats of
compulsion by the supreme court, and Bishop Rudigier of Linz, who
went furthest in inciting to opposition, was in 1869 taken into
court by the police, and sentenced to twelve days’ imprisonment,
but pardoned by the emperor. Toward the Vatican Council Austria
assumed at first a waiting policy, then in vain remonstrated,
warned, threatened, and finally, on July 30th, 1870, after the
proclamation of infallibility, declared that the concordat was
antiquated and abolished, because by this dogma the position of
one of the contracting parties had undergone a complete change.

§ 198.3. =The Protestant Church in Cisleithan Austria.=--Down to
1848 Protestantism of both confessions in Austria enjoyed only a
very limited toleration. The storms of this year first set aside
the hated official name of “Non-Catholics,” and won permission
for Protestant places of worship to have bells and towers.
But the repeated petitions for permission to found branches
of the _Gustavus Adolphus Union_, the persistently maintained
law that Catholic clergymen, even after they had formally become
Protestants, could not marry, because the _character indelibilis_
of priestly consecration attached itself even to apostates, and
many such facts, prove that the government was far from intending
to grant to the Protestants civil equality with the Catholics.
But the unfortunate result of the Sardinian-French war of 1859,
and the fear thereby increased of the falling asunder of the
whole Austrian federation, induced the government to address
itself earnestly to the introduction of liberal institutions,
and also to do justice to the Protestant church. The presidency
of the two Protestant consistories in Vienna, hitherto given to
a Catholic, was now assigned to a Protestant; meetings of the
Gustavus Adolphus Union were now allowed, and a share was given
to the Protestant party in the ministry of public worship by
the appointment of three evangelical councillors. After the
entrance on office of the liberal minister Von Schmerling,
an imperial patent was issued on April 8th, 1864, by which
unrestricted liberty of faith, independent administration of
all ecclesiastical, educational, and charitable matters, free
election of pastors, even from abroad, full exercise of civil and
political rights, and complete equality with Catholics was given
to the Protestants of the German and Slavonian crown territories.
Also in 1868, under the reactionary ministry of Belcredi,
on the expiry of the legal term of the Evangelical Supreme
Church Council, it was reorganized, two evangelical school
councillorships were created, and the pecuniary position of
the evangelical clergy considerably improved. But in spite of
all privileges legally granted to the evangelical church, it
continued in many cases, in presence of the concordat, which
down to 1870 still remained in force, exposed to the whims and
caprice, sometimes of the imperial courts, sometimes of the
Catholic clergy.

§ 198.4. =The Clerical Landtag Opposition in the Tyrol.=--In the
=Tyrol=, after the publication of the imperial patent of April,
1861, a violent movement was set on foot by clerical agitation.
The Landtag, by a great majority, pronounced the issuing of it
the most serious calamity which the country, hitherto honest,
true, and happy in its undivided attachment to the Catholic faith,
could have suffered, and concluded that Non-Catholics in the
Tyrol should only by way of dispensation be allowed, but that
publicity of Protestant worship and formation of Protestant
congregations should be still forbidden. The Schmerling ministry,
indeed, refused to confirm these resolutions. The agitation
of the clergy, however, which fanned in all possible ways the
fanaticism of the people, grew from year to year, until at last
the Belcredi ministry of 1866 came to an agreement with the
Landtag, sanctioned by the emperor, according to which the
creation of an evangelical landed proprietary in the Tyrol was
not indeed formally forbidden, but permission for an evangelical
to possess land had in each case to be obtained from the Landtag.
The ecclesiastical laws of 1868 next called forth new conflicts.
Twice was the Landtag closed because of the opposition thus
awakened, until finally in September, 1870, the estates took
the oath to the new constitution with reservation of conscience.
But now, when in December, 1875, the ministry of worship
gave approval to the formal constituting of two evangelical
congregations in the Tyrol, at Innsbrück and Meran, the clerical
press was filled with burning denunciations, and the majority
of the Landtag meeting in the following March thought to give
emphasis to their protest by leaving the chamber, and so bringing
the assembly to a sudden close. In June, 1880, the three bishops
of the Tyrol uttered in the Landtag a fanatical protest against
the continuance of the meanwhile established congregations, which
the Landtag majority renewed in July, 1883.

§ 198.5. =The Austrian Universities.=--Stremayr, minister
of public worship, introduced in 1872 a scheme of university
reorganization, by which the exclusively Catholic character which
had hitherto belonged to the Austrian universities, especially
those of Vienna and Prague, should be removed. Up to this time
a Non-Catholic could there obtain no sort of academical degree,
but this was now to be obtainable apart from any question of
confession. The office of chancellor, held by the archbishops
of Prague and Vienna, was restricted to the theological faculty,
to the state was assigned the right of nominating all professors,
even in the theological faculty, and the German language
was recommended as the medium of instruction. Candidates of
theology have to pass through a full and comprehensive course
of theological science in a three years’ university curriculum,
before they can be admitted into an episcopal seminary for
practical training. In spite of the opposition of the superior
clergy, the bill passed even in the House of Peers, and became
law in 1873.--In Innsbrück, where according to ancient custom
the rector was chosen from the four faculties in succession, the
other faculties protested against the election when, in 1872,
the turn came to the theological (Jesuit) faculty, and they
carried their point. The new organization law gave the choice
of rector to the whole professoriate, and a subsequent imperial
order withdrew from the general of the Jesuits the right of
nominating all theological professors.--Much was done, too, for
the elevation of the evangelical theological faculty in Vienna
by bringing able scholars from Germany, by giving a right to
the promotion to the degree of doctor of theology, etc. But its
incorporation in the university, though often moved for, was
hindered by the continued opposition of the Catholic theologians
as well as philosophers, and in 1873 it did not meet with
sufficient support in the House of Peers. Even the use of certain
halls in the university buildings, promised by the minister,
could not yet be obtained.

§ 198.6. =The Austrian Ecclesiastical Laws, 1874-1876.=--At last
the government in January, 1874, introduced the long-promised
Catholic church legislation into the Reichstag, intended to
supply blanks occasioned by the setting aside of the concordat.
Its main contents are these:

I. The concordat, hitherto only diplomatically dealt with,
is now legislatively annulled; the bishops have to present
all their manifestoes not before but upon publication to
the state government for its cognisance; every vacancy of
an ecclesiastical office, as well as every new appointment
to such, is to be notified to the civil court, which
can raise objections against such appointment within
thirty days; the minister of worship then decides on the
admissibility or inadmissibility of the candidate; legal
deposition of a church officer involves withdrawal of the
emoluments; the performance of unusual practices in public
worship of a demonstrative character can be prohibited by
the civil court; any misuse of ecclesiastical authority in
restraining any one from obeying the laws of the land or
from exercising his civil rights is strictly interdicted.

II. The ecclesiastical revenues and the income of the
cloisters are subjected to a progressive taxation on
behalf of a religious fund, mainly for improving the
condition of the lower clergy, for which the episcopate
hitherto, in spite of all entreaties, had done practically
nothing.

III. Newly formed religious societies received state
recognition if their denomination and principles contain
nothing contrary to law and morality or offensive to those
of another faith.

IV. The state grants or refuses its approval of the
establishment of spiritual orders, congregations, and
ecclesiastical societies; institutions and legacies for
them amounting to over three thousand gulden require
state sanction; any member is free to quit any order;
all orders must report annually on the personal changes
and disciplinary punishments that have taken place; at any
time when occasion calls for it they may be subjected to
a visitation by the civil court.[551]

In vain did the pope by an encyclical seek to rouse the
episcopate to violent opposition, in vain did he adjure the
emperor in a letter in his own hand not to suffer the church
to be put into such disgraceful bondage; the House of Deputies
approved the four bills, and the emperor in =May, 1874=,
confirmed at least the first three, while the fourth was being
debated in the House of Peers. The bishops now issued a joint
declaration that they could obey these laws only in so far as
they “were in harmony with the demands of justice as stated
in the concordat.” But it did not go to the length of actual
conflict. Neither to the pope and episcopate, nor to the
government was such a thing convenient at the time. Hence the
attitude of reserve on both sides, which kept everything as
it had been. And when notwithstanding Bishop Rudigier of Linz,
threatened with fines on account of his refusal to notify the
newly appointed priests, appealed to the pope, he obtained
through the Vienna nuncio permission to yield on this point,
“_non dissentit tolerari posse_.” But all the more urgently did
the nuncio strive to prevent the passing of the sweeping cloister
law. In January, 1876, it was passed in the House of Peers with
modifications, to which, however, the emperor refused his assent.
Also the revised marriage law of the same date, which removed
the hindrances to marriage incorporated even in the book of civil
law, and no longer recognised differences of religion, Christians
and non-Christians, the remarriage of separated parties of whom
at the time of the first marriage only one party belonged to the
Catholic church, higher consecration and the vows of orders, did
not pass the House of Peers.

§ 198.7. =The Protestant Church in the Transleithan
Provinces.=--In =Hungary= since 1833 the Reichstag had by bold
action won for the Protestants full equality with the Catholics,
but in consequence of the revolution, the military lordship
of the Protestant Haynau in 1850 again put in fetters all
independent life in both Protestant churches. The Haynau decree
was, indeed, again abrogated in 1854, but full return to the
earlier autonomy of the church, in spite of all petitions and
deputations, could never be regained, all the less as Hungary in
all too decided a manner rejected the constitutional proposals
submitted by the Government in 1856. The liberal imperial patent
of September 1st, 1859, which secured independent administration
and development to the Protestant church in the crown possessions
of Hungary, got no better reception. In the German-Slavonian
districts of North Hungary, as well as in Croatia, Slavonia, and
Austrian Servia, it was greeted with jubilation and gratitude,
but the Magyar Hungarians declined on many, for the most part
frivolous, grounds, mainly because it emanated from the emperor,
and did not originate in an autonomous synod. When the government
showed its intention of going forward with it, the opposition was
carried to the utmost extreme, so that the emperor was obliged
temporarily to suspend proceedings in May, 1860. Still the
ecclesiastical joined with the political movement continued
to increase until in 1867 the imperial chancellor, Von Beust,
succeeded in quieting both for a time by the Hungarian Agreement.
On June 8th of that year, the emperor, Francis Joseph, on
ratifying the agreement, was solemnly crowned King of Hungary.
The hated patent had been shortly before revoked by an
imperial edict, with the direction to order church matters
in a constitutional way. After a complete reconciliation, at
a General Protestant Convention in December, 1867, with the
Patent congregations, hitherto denounced as unpatriotic, it was
concluded that to the state belonged only a right of protection
and oversight of the church, which is autonomous in all its
internal affairs, but to all confessions perfect freedom in law,
and that there should be not a separate religious legislation
for each, but a common one for all confessions. A committee
first appointed in 1873 for this purpose, with the motto, “A
Free Church in a Free State,” constituted, and then adjourned
_ad kalendas Græcas_.

§ 199. SWITZERLAND.

The Catholic church of Switzerland, after long continued troubles, obtained again a regular hierarchical organization in 1828. Since that time the Jesuits settled there in crowds, and assumed to themselves in most of the Catholic cantons the whole direction of church and schools. The unfortunate issue of the cantonal war of 1847 led indeed to their banishment by law, but, favoured by the bishops, they knew how still to re-enter by back doors and secretly to regain their earlier influence. The city of Calvin was the centre of their plots, not only for Switzerland, but also for all Cisalpine Europe, until at last the overstrained bow broke, and the Swiss governments became the most decided and uncompromising opponents of the ultramontane claims. In 1873 the papal nuncio, in consequence of a papal encyclical insulting the government, was banished.--In Protestant Switzerland, besides the destructive influence of the Illumination, antagonistic to the church, and radical liberalism, there appeared a soil receptive of pietism, separatism, and fanaticism, whose first cultivation has been ascribed to Madame Krüdener (§ 176, 2). In the Protestant church of German Switzerland the religious and theological developments stood regularly in lively connexion with similar movements in Germany, while those in the French cantons received their impulse and support from France and England. From France, to which they were allied by a common language, they learned the unbelief of the encyclopædists (§ 165, 14), while travelling Englishmen and those residing in the country for a longer period introduced the fervour and superstition of Methodism and other sects.

§ 199.1. =The Catholic Church in Switzerland till 1870.=--The
ecclesiastical superintendence of Catholic Switzerland was
previously subject to the neighbouring foreign bishoprics.
But for immediate preservation of its interests the curia had
appointed a nunciature at Lucerne in 1588. When now, in 1814, the
liberal Wessenberg (§ 187, 3), already long suspected of heresy,
was called as coadjutor to Constance, the nuncio manœuvred with
the Catholic confederates till these petitioned the pope for the
establishment of an independent and national bishopric. But when
each of the cantons interested claimed to be made the episcopal
residence negotiations were at last suspended, and in 1828 six
small bishoprics were erected under immediate control of Rome.
At the end of 1833 the diocesan representatives of Basel and
St. Gall assembled in Baden to consult about the restoration
of a national Swiss Metropolitan Union and a common state
church constitution for securing church and state against the
encroachments of the Romish hierarchy. But Gregory XIV. condemned
the articles of conference here agreed upon, which would have
given to Switzerland only what other states had long possessed,
as false, audacious, and erroneous, destructive of the church,
heretical, and schismatic, and among the Catholic people a revolt
was stirred up by ultramontane fanaticism, under the influence
of which the whole action was soon frustrated. On the occasion of
a revision of the constitution of the canton of Aargau, a revolt,
led by the cloisters, broke out in 1841. But the rebels were
defeated, and the grand council resolved upon the closing of all
cloisters, eight in number. Complaint made against this at the
diet was regarded as satisfied by the Aargau Agreement of 1843
restoring three nunneries. An opposition was organized against
the revision of the constitution of Canton =Lucerne= in 1841.
The liberal government was overthrown, and the new constitution,
in which the state insisted on its _placet_ in ecclesiastical
matters and the granting of cantonal civil rights to those
only who professed attachment to the Roman Catholic church, was
submitted to the pope for approval. At last, in 1844, the academy
of Lucerne was given over to the Jesuits, for which Joseph Leu,
the popular agitator, as member of the grand council, had wrought
unweariedly since 1839. In Canton =Vaud= the parties of old or
clerical and young Switzerland contended with one another for
the mastery. The latter suffered an utter defeat in 1844, and the
constitution which was then carried allowed the right of public
worship only to the Catholic church. In consequence of this
victory of the clerical party Catholic Switzerland with Lucerne
at its head became a main centre of ultramontanism and Jesuitism.
At the diet of 1844, indeed, Aargau, supported by numerous
petitions from the people, moved for the banishment of all
Jesuits from all Switzerland, but the majority did not consent.
The Jesuit opponents expelled from Lucerne now organized twice
over a free volunteer corps to overthrow the ultramontane
government and force the expulsion of the Jesuits, but on both
occasions, in 1844 and 1845, it suffered a sore defeat. In face
of the threateningly growing increase of the excitement, which
made them fear a decisive intervention of the diet, the Catholic
cantons formed in 1845 a =separate league= (_Sonderbund_) for
the preservation of their faith and their sovereign rights. This
proceeding, irreconcilable with the Act of Federation, led to
a civil war. The members of the _Sonderbund_ were defeated, the
ultramontane governments had to resign, and the Jesuits departed
in 1847. The new Federal constitution which Switzerland adopted
in 1848, secured unconditional liberty of conscience and equality
of all confessions, and the expulsion of the Jesuits in terms
of the law. But since that time ultramontanism has gained the
supremacy in Catholic Switzerland, and in spite of the existing
law against the Jesuits all the threads of the ultramontane
clerical movements in Switzerland were in the Jesuits’ hands.
These were never more successful than in Canton =Geneva=, where
the radical democratic agitator Fazy leagued himself closely with
ultramontanism to compass the destruction of the old Calvinistic
aristocracy, and by bringing in large numbers the lower class
Catholics from the neighbouring France and Savoy he obtained a
considerable Catholic majority in the canton, and in the capital
itself made Catholics and Protestants nearly equal.

§ 199.2. =The Geneva Conflict, 1870-1883.=--The Catholic church
of Canton Geneva, on the founding of the six Swiss bishoprics
by a papal bull, had been incorporated “for all time to
come,” after the style of the concordat, with the bishopric of
Freiburg-Lausanne. But the government made no objection when the
newly elected priest of Geneva, Mermillod, a Jesuit of the purest
water, assumed the title and rank of an episcopal vicar-general
for the whole canton. But when in 1864 the pope nominated him
bishop of Hebron _in partibus_ and auxiliary bishop of Geneva, it
made a protest. Nevertheless, when, in the following year, Bishop
Marilley of Freiburg by papal orders transferred to him absolute
power for the canton with personal responsibility, and in 1870
formally renounced all episcopal rights over it, so that the pope
now appointed the auxiliary bishop independent bishop of Geneva,
it was evident a step had been taken that could not be recalled.
The government renewed its protest and made it more vehement, in
consequence of which, in January, 1873, by a papal brief which
was first officially communicated to the government after it
had already been proclaimed from all Catholic pulpits, Mermillod
was appointed apostolic vicar-general with unlimited authority
for Canton Geneva, and the district was thus practically made
a Catholic mission field. A demand made of him by the state
to resign this office and title and divest himself of every
episcopal function, was answered by the declaration that he
would obey God rather than man. The _Bund_ then expelled him
from Federal territory until he would yield to that demand.
From Ferney, where he settled, he unceasingly stirred up the
fire of opposition among the Genevan clergy and people, but the
government decidedly rejected all protests, and by a popular vote
obtained sanction for a Catholic church law which restricted the
rights of the diocesan bishop who might reside in Switzerland,
but not in Canton Geneva, and without consent of the government
could not appoint there any episcopal vicar, and transferred the
election of priests and priests’ vicars to the congregations. The
next elections returned Old Catholics, since the Roman Catholic
population did not acknowledge the law condemned by the pope and
took no part in the voting. By decision of the grand council of
1875 the abolition of all religious corporations was next enacted,
and all religious ceremonies and processions in public streets
and squares forbidden. Leo XIII. made an attempt to still
the conflict, for in 1879 he gave Bishop Marilley the asked
for discharge, and confirmed his elected successor, Cosandry,
as bishop of Freiburg, Lausanne, and Geneva, without however
removing Mermillod from his office of vicar apostolic of Geneva.
But this actually took place after the death of Cosandry in 1882
by the appointment of Mermillod as his successor in 1883. As
he now ceased to style himself a vicar apostolic, the Federal
council removed the decree of banishment as the occasion of
it had ceased, but left each canton free as to whether or not
it should accept him as bishop. Freiburg, Neuenburg, and Vaud
accepted him, and Mermillod had a brilliant entry into Freiburg,
which he made his episcopal residence. But Geneva refused to
recognise him, because it had already officially attached itself
to the Old Catholic Bishop Herzog of Berne, and Mermillod went so
far in his ostentatious love of peace as to declare that he would
not in future enter Genevan territory.

§ 199.3. =Conflict in the Diocese of Basel-Soleure,
1870-1880.=--Bishop Lachat of Soleure, whose diocese comprised
the Cantons Bern, Soleure, Aargau, Basel, Thurgau, Lucerne, and
Zug, had been previously in conflict with the diocesan conference,
_i.e._ the delegates of the seven cantons entrusted with the
oversight of the ecclesiastical administration, on account of
introducing the prohibited handbook on morals of the Jesuit Gury
(§ 191, 9), which ended in the closing of the seminary aided
by the government, and the erection of a new seminary at his
own cost. Although the diocesan conference next forbad the
proclamation of the new Vatican dogma, the bishop threatened
excommunicated Egli in Lucerne in 1871, and Geschwind in
Starrkirch in 1872, who refused. The conference ordered the
withdrawal of this unlawful act, and on the bishop’s refusal,
deposed him in January, 1873. The dissenting cantons, Lucerne and
Zug, indeed declared that after as well as before they would only
recognise Lachat as lawful bishop, the chapter refused to make
the required election of administrator of the diocese, the clergy
in Soleure and in =Bernese Jura= without exception took the
side of the bishop, as also by means of a popular vote the
great majority of Catholics in Thurgau. But amid all this the
conference did not yield in the least. Lachat was compelled by
the police to quit his episcopal residence, and withdrew to a
village in Canton Lucerne. The council of the Bernese government
resolved to recall the refractory clergy of the Jura, took their
names off the civil register and forbad them to exercise any
clerical functions. The outbreaks incited by rebel clergy in
the Jura were put down by the military, sixty-nine clergymen
were exiled, and, so far as the means allowed, replaced by
liberal successors introduced by the Old Catholic priest Herzog
(§ 190, 3) in Olten. In November, 1875, permission to return home
was granted to the exiles in consequence of the revised Federal
constitution of 1874, according to which the banishment of Swiss
burghers was no longer allowed. The Bernese government felt all
the more disposed to carry out this enactment of the National
Council, as it believed that it had obtained the legal means for
checking further rebellion and obstinacy among those who should
return. On January, 1874, by popular vote a law was sanctioned
reorganizing the whole ecclesiastical affairs of the =Canton
Bern=. By it all clergy, Catholic as well as Protestant, are
ranked as civil officers, the choice of whom rests with the
congregations, the tenure of office lasting for six years. All
purely ecclesiastical affairs for the canton rest in the last
instance with a synod of the particular denomination, for the
several congregations with a church committee, both composed of
freely elected lay and clerical members. But if a dispute in a
particular congregation should arise about a synodal decree, the
congregational assembly decides on its validity or non-validity
for the particular congregation. All decrees of higher church
courts and pastorals must have state approval, which must never
be refused on dogmatic grounds. If a congregation splits over any
question, the majority claims the church property and pastor’s
emoluments, etc. And this law was next extended in October 31st,
1875, in the matter of penal law by the so-called Police
Worship Law. It imposes heavy fines up to 1000 francs or a
year’s imprisonment for any clerical agitation against the law,
institutions or enactments of the civil courts, as well as for
every outbreak of hostilities against members of other religious
bodies, refuses to allow any interference of foreign spiritual
superiors without leave granted by government in each particular
case, forbids all processions and religious ceremonies outside
of the fixed church locality, etc. In the same year the first
Catholic Cantonal Synod declared its attachment to the Christian
or Old Catholic church of Switzerland. But it was otherwise
after the newly elected Grand Council of the canton of its
own accord, on September 12th, 1878, granted the returned Jura
clergy complete amnesty for all the past, and on the assumption
of future submission to existing laws of state, recognised
them again eligible for election to spiritual offices which had
previously been denied them. Not only did the Roman Catholic
people regularly take part in elections of priests, church
councils, and synods, undoubtedly with the approval of the new
pope Leo XIII., who had in February addressed a conciliatory
letter to the members of the Federal Council, but also the
extremest of the Jura now submitted without scruple to the new
election required by the law, and won therein for the most part
the majority of votes. In the Catholic Cantonal Synod convened in
Bern, in January, 1880, were found seventy-five Roman Catholics
and only twenty-five Old Catholic deputies. The latter were
naturally defeated in all controversies. The synod declared
that the connexion with the Christian Catholic national bishopric
was annulled, that auricular confession was obligatory, that
marriages of priests were forbidden, etc. Since now the law
assigns the state pay of the priest as well as all the church
property in the case of a split to the majority for the time
being, the inevitable consequence was that Old Catholics of the
Jura district were deprived of all share in these privileges,
and had to make provision for their own support. Also in Canton
=Soleure=, the law that all pastors must be re-elected after
the expiry of six years, came in force in 1872, and then the
thirty-two Roman Catholic clergymen concerned were with only two
exceptions re-elected, while, on the other hand, the Old Catholic
priest Geschwind of Starrkirch was rejected.--But all efforts
to restore the bishopric of Basel-Soleure came to grief over the
person of Bishop Lachat, whom the curia would not give up and the
Federal Council would not again allow, until at last a way out of
the difficulty was found. The canton Tessin, which previously in
church matters belonged to the Italian dioceses of Milan and Como,
was, in 1859, by decree of the Federal Council, detached from
these. But Tessin insisted on the founding of a bishopric of its
own, while the Federal Council wished to join it to the bishopric
of Chur. Thus the matter remained undecided, till in September,
1884, the papal curia came to an understanding with the Federal
Council that Lachat should be appointed vicar-apostolic for
the newly founded bishopric of Tessin, and that to the vacated
bishopric of Basel-Soleure the “learned as well as mild” Provost
Fiala of Soleure should be called. In this way all the cantons
referred to, with the exception of Bern, were won.[552]

§ 199.4. =The Protestant Church in German Switzerland.=--Among
all the German cantons, =Basel= (§ 172, 5), which unweariedly
prosecuted the work of home and foreign missions, fell most
completely under the influence of rationalism and then of the
liberal Protestant theology. While pietism obtained powerful
support and encouragement in its missionary institutions and
movements, and there, though developing itself on Reformed soil,
assumed, in consequence of its manifold connection with Germany,
a colour almost more Lutheran than Reformed, the university by
eminent theological teachers of scientific ability represented
the Mediation school in theology of a predominantly Reformed type.
In the Canton =Zürich=, on the other hand, the advanced theology,
theoretical and practical, obtained an increasing and finally
an almost exclusive mastery in the university and church. But
yet, when in 1839 the Grand Council called Dr. David Strauss
to a theological professorship, the Zürich people rose to a man
against the proposal, the appointment was not enforced, the Grand
Council was overthrown, and Strauss pensioned. The victory and
ascendency of this reaction, however, was not of long continuance.
Theological and ecclesiastical radicalism again won the upper
hand and maintained it unchecked. In the other German cantons the
most diverse theological schools were represented alongside of
one another, yet with steadily increasing advantage to liberal
and radical tendencies. The theological faculty at =Bern=
favoured mainly a liberal mediation theology, and an attempt
of the orthodox party in 1847, to set aside the appointment of
Professor E. Zeller by means of a popular tumult, miscarried.
From 1860 ecclesiastical liberalism prevailed in German
Protestant Switzerland, frequently going the length of
the extremest radicalism and showing its influence even in
the cantonal and synodal legislation. The starting of the
“_Zeitstimmen für d. ref. Schweiz_,” in 1859, by Henry Lang,
who had fled in 1848 from Württemberg to Switzerland, and died
in 1876 as pastor in Zürich, marked an epoch in the history of
the radical liberal movement in Swiss theology. In Fred. Langhans,
since 1876 professor at Bern, he had a zealous comrade in the
fight. During 1864-1866, Langhans published a series of violent
controversial tracts against the pietistic orthodox party in
Switzerland, which zealously prosecuted foreign missions, and in
1866 he founded the _Swiss Reform Union_, while Alb. Bitzius, son
of the writer known as Jer. Gotthelf (§ 174, 8) started as its
organ the “_Reformblätter aus d. bernischen Kirche_,” which was
subsequently amalgamated with the _Zeitstimmem_.--After more or
less violent conflicts with pietistic orthodoxy, still always
pretty strongly represented, especially in the aristocracy, the
emancipation of the schools from the church and the introduction
of obligatory civil marriage were accomplished in most cantons,
even before the revised Federal constitution of 1874 and the
marriage law of 1875 gave to these principles legal sanction
throughout the whole of Switzerland. In almost all Protestant
cantons the re-election or new election to all spiritual offices
every six years was ordained by law, in many the freeing of
the clergy from any creed subscription with the setting aside
of confessional writings as well as of the orthodox liturgy,
hymnbooks and catechisms was also carried, and the withdrawing
of the Apostles’ Creed from public worship and from the baptismal
formula was enjoined. The Basel synod in 1883, by thirty-six to
twenty-seven votes, carried the motion to make baptism no longer
a condition of confirmation; and although the Zürich synod in
1882 still held baptism obligatory for membership in the national
church, the Cantonal Council in 1883, on consulting the law of
the church, overturned this decision by 140 against 19 votes.