Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (16)

§ 191.9. =The Chief Representatives of the New
Scholasticism.=--The official and most masterly representative of
this school for the whole Catholic world was the Jesuit =Perrone=,
1794-1876, professor of dogmatics of the _Collegium Romanum_,
the most widely read of the Catholic polemical writers, but not
worthy to tie the shoes of Bellarmin [Bellarmine], Bossuet, and
Möhler. In his “_Prælectiones Theologicæ_,” nine vols., which has
run through thirty-six editions, without knowing a word of German,
he displayed the grossest ignorance along with unparalleled
arrogance in his treatment of Protestant doctrine, history, and
personalities (§ 175, 2). The German Jesuit =Kleutgen= who, under
Pius IX., was the oracle of the Vatican in reference to German
affairs, introduced the new Roman scholasticism by his work “_Die
Theologie der Vorzeit_,” into the German episcopal seminaries,
whose teachers were mostly trained in the _Collegium Germanicum_
at Rome. Alongside of Perrone and Kleutgen, in the domain of
morals, the Jesuit =Gury= holds the first place, reproducing
in his works the whole abomination of probabilism, _reservatio
mentalis_, and the old Jesuit casuistry (§ 149, 10), with the
usual lasciviousness in questions affecting the sexes. Among
theologians of this tendency in German universities we mention
next =Denzinger= of Würzburg, who seeks in his works “to
lead dogmatics back from the aberrations of modern philosophic
speculations into the paths of the old schools.” His zealous
opposition to Güntherism did much to secure its emphatic
condemnation.

§ 191.10. =The Munich Congress of Catholic Scholars, 1863.=--In
order if possible to heal the daily widening cleft between the
scientific university theologians and the scholastic theologians
of the seminaries, and bring about a mutual understanding and
friendly co-operation between all the theological faculties,
Döllinger and his colleague Haneberg summoned a congress
at Munich, which was attended by about a hundred Catholic
scholars, mostly theologians. After high mass, accompanied with
the recitation of the Tridentine creed, the four days’ conference
began with a brilliant presidential address by Döllinger “On the
Past and Present of Catholic Theology.” The liberal views therein
enunciated occasioned violent and animated debates, to which,
however, it was readily admitted as a religious duty that all
scientific discussions and investigations should yield to the
dogmatic claims of the infallible authority of the church, as
thereby the true freedom of science can in no way be prejudiced.
A telegraphic report to the pope drawn up in this spirit by
Döllinger was responded to in a similar manner on the same
day with the apostolic blessing. But after the proceedings
_in extenso_ had become known, a papal brief was issued which
burdened the permission to hold further yearly assemblies with
such conditions as must have made them utterly fruitless. They
were indeed acquiesced in with a bad grace at the second and
last congress at Würzburg in 1864, but the whole scheme was
thus brought to an end.

§ 191.11. =Theological Journals.=--The most severely scientific
journal of this century is the Tübingen _Theol. Quartalschrift_,
which, however, since the Vatican Council has been struggling
to maintain a neutral position between the extremes of the Old
and the New Catholicism. In order if possible to displace it the
Jesuits Wieser and Stenstrup of Innsbruck [Innsbrück] started in
1877 their _Zeitschrift für Kath. Theologie_. The ably conducted
_Theol. Litteraturblatt_, started in 1866 by Prof. Reusch of Bonn,
had to be abandoned in 1878, after raising the standard of Old
Catholicism.

§ 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.

§ 193.2. =The Golden Age of Prussian Ultramontanism,
1841-1871.=--In the Cologne-Posen conflict Rome had won an almost
complete victory, and with all its satellites now thought only
of how it might in the best possible manner turn this victory to
account, in which the all too trustful government sought to aid
it to the utmost. This movement received a further impulse in
the revolution of 1848 (§ 192, 4). In Prussia as well as in other
German lands, and there in a special degree, the Catholic church
managed to derive from the revolutionary movements of those times,
and from the subsequent reaction, substantial advantage. The
constitution of 1850 declared in Article xv.: “The evangelical
and the Roman Catholic Church as well as every other religious
society regulates and administers its affairs independently;”
in Article xvi.: “The correspondence of religious societies
with their superiors is unrestricted, the publication of
ecclesiastical ordinances is subject only to those limitations
which apply to all other documents;” in Article xviii.:
“The right of nomination, proposal, election, and institution
to spiritual office, so far as it belongs to the state, is
abolished;” and in Article xxiv.: “The respective religious
societies direct religious instruction in the public schools.”
Under the screen of these fundamental privileges the Catholic
episcopate now claimed one civil prerogative after another,
emancipated itself wholly from the laws of the state, and, on
the plea that God must be obeyed rather than man, made the canon
law, not only in purely ecclesiastical but also in mixed matters,
the only standard, and the decision of the pope the final appeal.
At last nothing was left to the state but the obligation of
conferring splendid endowments upon the bishops, cathedral
chapters, and seminaries for priests, and the honour of being at
home the executioner of episcopal tyranny, and abroad the avenger
of every utterance unfavourable in the doctrine and worship,
customs and enactments of the Catholic church. With almost
incredible infatuation the Catholic hierarchy was now regarded
as a main support of the throne against the revolutionary
tendencies of the age and as the surest guarantee for the loyalty
of subjects in provinces predominantly Catholic. Under protection
of the law allowing the formation of societies and the right
of assembling, the order of Jesuits set up one establishment
after another, and made up for defects or insufficient energy
of ultramontane pastoral work, agitation and endeavour at
conversion on the part of other peaceably disposed parish
priests, by numerous missions conducted in the most ostentatious
manner (§ 186, 6). Although according to Article xiii. of the
constitution religious societies could obtain corporative rights
only by special enactments, the bishops, on their own authority,
without regarding this provision, established religious orders
and congregations wherever they chose. As these were generally
placed under foreign superiors male or female, to whom in Jesuit
fashion unconditional obedience was rendered, each member being
“like a corpse,” without any individual will, they spread without
hindrance, so that continually new cloisters and houses of the
orders sprang up like mushrooms over the Protestant metropolis
(§ 186, 2). Education in Catholic districts fell more and more
into the hands of religious corporations, and even the higher
state educational institutions, so far as they dealt with the
training of the Catholic youth (theological faculties, gymnasia,
and Training schools), were wholly under the control of the
bishops. From the boys’ convents and priests’ seminaries,
erected at all episcopal residences, went forth a new generation
of clergy reared in the severest school of intolerance, who,
first of all acting as chaplains, by espionage, the arousing
of suspicion and talebearing, were the dread of the old parish
priests, and, as “chaplains at large,” stirred up fanaticism
among the people, and secured the Catholic press to themselves
as a monopoly. For the purposes of Catholic worship and education
the government had placed state aid most liberally at their
disposal, without requiring any account from the bishops as to
their disposal of the money. Although the number of Catholics
in the whole country was only about half that of the Protestants,
the endowment of the Catholic was almost double that of the
evangelical church. The civil authority readily helped the
bishops to enforce any spiritual penalties, and thus the inferior
clergy were brought into absolute dependence upon their spiritual
superiors. In the government department of Public Worship, from
1840 to 1848 under the direction of Eichhorn, there was since
1841 a subsection for dealing with the affairs of the Catholic
church which, although restricted to the guarding of the rights
of the king over against the curia and that of the state over
against the hierarchy, came to be in an entirely opposite
sense “the civil department of the pope in Prussia.” Under Von
Mühler’s ministry, 1862-1872, it obtained absolute authority
which it seems to have exercised in removing unfavourable acts
and documents from the imperial archives. And thus the Catholic
church, or rather the ultramontane party dominant in it since
1848, grew up into a power that threatened the whole commonwealth
in its very foundations.--By the annexation of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau in 1866, four new bishoprics, those of Hildesheim,
Osnabrück, Fulda and Limburg were added to the previous
eight.--Continuation § 197.

§ 193.3. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia down to
1848.=--On the accomplishment of the union by Frederick
William III. and the confusions arising therefrom, see § 177.
=Frederick William IV.= on his accession declared his wish in
reference to the national evangelical church, that the supreme
control of the church should be exercised only in order to secure
for it in an orderly and legal way the independent administration
of its own affairs. The realization of this idea, after a church
conference of the ordinary clergy from almost all German states
had been held in Berlin without result, was attempted at Berlin
by a general synod, opened on Whitsunday, 1846. The synod at
its eighteenth session entered upon the consideration of the
difficult question of doctrine and the confession. The result
of this was the approval of an ordination formula drawn up by
Dr. Nitzsch (§ 182, 10), according to which the candidate for
ordination was to make profession of the great fundamental
and saving truths instead of the church confession hitherto
enforced. And since among these fundamental truths the doctrines
of creation, original sin, the supernatural conception, the
descent into hell and the ascension of Christ, the resurrection
of the body, the last judgment, everlasting life and everlasting
punishment were not included, and therefore were not to be
enforced, since further by this ordination formula the special
confessions of Lutheran and Reformed were really set aside,
and therewith the existence of a Lutheran as well as a Reformed
church within the union seemed to be abolished, a small number
of decided Lutherans in the synod protested; still more decided
and vigorous protests arose from outside the synod, to which
the _Evang. Kirchenzeitung_ opened its columns. The government
gave no further countenance to the decisions of the synod, and
opponents exercised their wit upon the unfortunate _Nicænum_ of
the nineteenth century, which as a _Nitzschenum_ had fallen into
the water. In March, 1847, the king issued a patent of toleration,
by which protection was assured anew to existing churches, but
the formation of new religious societies was allowed to all who
found not in these the expression of their belief.

§ 193.4. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia,
1848-1872.=--When the storms of revolution broke out in 1848,
the new minister of worship, =Count Schwerin=, willingly aided
in reorganizing the church according to the mind of the masses
of the people by a constitutional synod. But before it had met
the reaction had already set in. The transition ministry of
=Ladenberg= was assured by consistories and faculties of the
danger of convoking such a synod of representatives of the people.
Instead of the synod therefore a =Supreme Church Council= was
assembled at Berlin in 1850, which, independent of the ministry,
and only under the king as _præcipuum membrum ecclesiæ_, should
represent the freedom of the church from the state as something
already realized. On March 6th, 1852, the king issued a cabinet
order, in consequence of which the Supreme Church Council
administered not only the affairs of the evangelical national
church as a whole, but also was charged with the interests of the
Lutheran as well as the Reformed church in particular, and was
to be composed of members from both of those confessions, who
should alone have to decide on questions referring to their own
confession. On the _Itio in partes_ thus required in this board,
only Dr. Nitzsch remained over, as he declared that he could find
expression for his religious convictions in neither of the two
confessions, but only in a consensus of both. The difficulty
was overcome by reckoning him a representative equally of both
denominations. Encouraged by such connivance in high places to
entertain still bolder hopes, the Lutheran societies in 1853
presented to the king a petition signed by one hundred and sixty
one clergymen, for restoring Lutheran faculties and the Lutheran
church property. But this called forth a rather unfavourable
cabinet order, in which the king expressed his disapproval of
such a misconception of the ordinances of the former year, and
made the express declaration that it never was his intention to
break up or weaken the union effected by his father, that he only
wished to give the confession within the union the protection
to which it was undoubtedly entitled. After this the separate
Lutheran interest so long highly favoured fell into manifest and
growing disfavour. Still the ministerial department of worship
under =Von Raumer=, 1850-1858, continued to conduct the affairs
of schools and universities in the spirit of the ecclesiastical
orthodox reaction, and issued the endless school regulations
conceived in this spirit of the privy councillor Stiehl. The
Supreme Church Council also exhibited a rare activity and passed
many wholesome ordinances. The evangelical church won great
credit by the care it took of its members scattered over distant
lands, in supplying them with clergy and teachers. The evident
favour with which Frederick William IV. furthered the efforts of
the Evangelical Alliance of 1857 (§ 178, 3) was the last proof
of decided aversion from the confessional movement which he was
to be allowed to give. A long and hopeless illness, of which he
died in 1861, obliged him to resign the government to his brother
=William I.= When this monarch in October, 1855, began to rule
in his own name, he declared to his newly appointed ministers
that it was his firm resolve that the evangelical union, whose
beneficent development had been obstructive to an orthodoxy
incompatible with the character of the evangelical church, and
which had thus almost caused its ruin, should be maintained
and further advanced. But in order that the task might be
accomplished, the organs for its administration must be carefully
chosen and to some extent changed. All hypocrisy and formalism,
which that orthodoxy had fostered, is wherever possible to be
removed. The “new era,” however, marked by the appearance of
liberal journals, by no means answered to the expectations which
those words excited. The ministry of =Von Bethmann-Hollweg=,
1858-1862, filled some theological and spiritual offices in this
liberal spirit; Stahl withdrew from the Supreme Church Council;
the proceedings against the free churches, as well as the severe
measures against the re-marriage of divorced parties, were
relaxed. But the marriage law laid down by the ministry with
permission of civil marriage was rejected by the House of Peers,
and the hated school regulations had to be undertaken by the
minister himself. The ecclesiastically conservative ministry of
=Von Mühler=, 1862-1872, which, however, wanted a fixed principle
as well as self-determined energy of will, and was therefore
often vacillating and losing the respect of all parties, was
utterly unfit to realize these expectations. The Supreme Church
Council published in 1867 the outlines of a provincial synodal
constitution for the six East Provinces which were still without
this institution, which the Rhine Provinces and Westphalia had
enjoyed since 1835. For this purpose he convened in autumn, 1869,
an extraordinary provincial synod, which essentially approved
the sketch submitted, whereupon it was provisionally enacted.

§ 193.5. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia,
1872-1880.=--After the removal of Von Mühler, the minister of
worship, in January, 1872, his place was taken by =Dr. Falk=,
1872-1879. The hated school regulations were now at last set
aside and replaced by new moderate prescriptions, conceived in
an almost unexpectedly temperate spirit. On September 10th, 1873,
the king issued a congregational and synodal constitution
for the eastern provinces, with the express statement that the
position of the confession and the union should thereby be in no
way affected. It prescribed that in every congregation presided
over by a pastor, elected by the ecclesiastically qualified
church members, _i.e._ those of honourable life who had taken
part in public worship and received the sacraments, there should
be a church council of from four to twelve persons, and for
more important matters, _e.g._ the election of a pastor, a
congregational committee of three times the size, half of which
should be reappointed every third year. To the district synod,
presided over by the superintendent, each congregation sends as
delegates besides the pastor a lay representative chosen by the
church council from among its members or from the congregational
committee. According to the same principle the District Synods
choose from their members a clerical and a lay representative to
the provincial synod, to which also the evangelical theological
faculty of the university within the bounds sends a deputy, and
the territorial lord nominates a number of members not exceeding
a sixth part of the whole. The general synod, in which also the
two western provinces, the Rhenish and Westphalian, take part,
consists of one hundred and fifty delegates from the provincial
synods, and thirty nominated by the territorial lords, to which
the faculties of theology and law of the six universities within
the bounds send each one of their members. Although this royal
decree had proclaimed itself final, and only remitted to an
=Extraordinary General Synod= to be called forthwith the task of
arranging for future ordinary general synods, yet at the meeting
of this extraordinary synod in Berlin, on November 24th, 1875,
a draft was submitted of a constitution modified in various
important points. Of the three demands of the liberal party
now violently insisted upon--

1. Substitution of the “filter” system in the election of
provincial and general synod members for that of the
community electorate.

2. Strengthening of the lay element in all synods; and

3. Abolition of the equality of small village communities with
large town communities

the first was by far the most important and serious in its
consequences, but the other two bore fruit through the decree
that two-thirds of the members of the district and provincial
synods should be laymen, and the other one-third should be freely
elected to the district synod from the populous town communities,
for the provincial synods from the larger district synods.
Also in reference to the rights belonging to the several grades
of synods, considerable modifications were made, whereby the
privileges of communities were variously increased (_e.g._ to
them was given the right of refusing to introduce the catechisms
and hymn-books sanctioned by the provincial synods), while those
of the district and provincial synods were lessened in favour
of the general synod, and those of the latter again in favour
of the high church council and the minister of public worship.
After nearly four weeks’ discussion the bill without any serious
amendments was passed by the assembly, and on January 20th, 1876,
received the royal assent and became an ecclesiastical law.
But in order to give it also the rank of a law of the state,
a decision of the States’ Parliament on the relation of church
and state was necessary. The parliament had already in 1874,
when the original congregational and synodal constitution was
submitted to it, in order to advance the movement, approved
only the congregational constitution with provisional refusal
of everything going beyond that. In May, 1876, the bill already
raised by the king into an ecclesiastical law, passed both houses
of parliament, and had here also some amendments introduced with
the effect of increasing and strengthening the prerogative of
the state. The main points in the law as then passed are these:
The general synod, whose members undertake to fulfil their
duties agreeably to the word of God and the ordinances of the
evangelical national church, has the task of maintaining and
advancing the state church on the basis of the evangelical
confession. The laws of the state church must receive its assent,
but any measure agreed upon by it cannot be laid before the king
for his sanction without the approval of the minister of public
worship. It meets every sixth year; in the interval it, as well
as the provincial synods, is represented by a synodal committee
chosen from its members. The head of the church government is
the Supreme Church Council, whose president countersigns the
ecclesiastical laws approved by the king. The right of appointing
to this office lies with the minister of public worship; in
the nomination of other members the president makes proposals
with consent of the minister. Taxation of the general synod for
parliamentary purposes needs the assent of the minister of state,
and must, if it exceeds four per cent. of the class and income
tax, be agreed to by the Lower House, which also annually has
to determine the expenditure on ecclesiastical administration.

§ 193.6. When preparations were being made for the extraordinary
general synod, the king had repeatedly given vigorous expression
to his positive religious standpoint, and from the proposed
lists of members for that synod submitted by the minister of
public worship all names belonging to the _Protestantenverein_
were struck out. Still more decidedly in 1877 did he show
his disapproval in the Rhode-Hossbach troubles (§ 180, 4), by
declaring his firm belief in the divinity of Christ, and when the
then president of the Brandenburg consistory, Hegel, tendered his
resignation, owing to differences with the liberal president of
the Supreme Church Council, Hermann, the king refused to accept
it, because he could not then spare any such men as held by
the apostolic faith. In May, 1878, Hermann was at last, after
repeated solicitations, allowed to retire, Dr. Hermes, member of
the Supreme Church Council, was nominated his successor, and the
positive tendency of the Supreme Church Council was strengthened
by the admission of the court preachers, Kögel and Baur. His
proposals again disagreeing with the royal nominations for the
provincial synod and for the =First Ordinary General Synod= of
autumn, 1879, led the minister of public worship, Dr. Falk, at
last, after repeated solicitation, to accept his resignation.
It was granted him in July, 1879, and the chief president of the
province of Silesia, =Von Puttkamer=, a more decided adherent
of the positive union party, was named as his successor;
but in June, 1881, he was made minister of the interior, and
the undersecretary of the department of public worship, =Von
Gossler=, was made minister. The general synod, October 10th
till November 3rd, consisted of fifty-two confessionalists,
seventy-six positive-unionists, fifty-six of the middle party
or evangelical unionist, and nine from the ranks of the left,
the _Protestantenverein_; three confessionalists, twelve
positive-unionists, and fifteen of the middle party were
nominated by the king. The measures proposed by the Supreme
Church Council:

1. A marriage service without reference to the preceding civil
marriage, with two marriage formulæ, the first a joint
promise, the second a benediction;

2. A disciplinary law against despisers of baptism and marriage,
which threatened such with the loss of all ecclesiastical
electoral rights, and eventually with exclusion from the
Lord’s supper and sponsor rights; and

3. A law dealing with _Emeriti_,

were adopted by the synod and then approved by the king. On the
other hand a series of independent proposals conceived in the
interests of the high-church party remained in suspense. The last
effected elections for the general synod committee resulted in
the appointment of three positive-unionist members, including the
president, two confessionalists, and two of the middle party.[549]

§ 193.7. =The Evangelical Church in the Annexed Provinces.=--In
1866 the provinces of Hanover, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein were
incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia. In these political
particularism, combined with confessional Lutheranism, suspicion
of every organized system of church government as intended
to introduce Prussian unionism, even to the extreme of open
rebellion, led to violent conflicts. The king, indeed, personally
gave assurance in Cassel, Hanover and Kiel that the position of
the church confession should in no way be endangered. “He will
indeed support the union where it already existed as a sacred
legacy to him from his forefathers; he also hopes that it may
always make further progress as a witness to the grand unity of
the evangelical church; but compulsion is to be applied to no
man.” The consistories of these provinces were still to continue
independent of the Supreme Church Council. But the ministerial
order for the restoration of representative synodal constitution
increasingly prevailed, although the wide-spread suspicion and
individual protests against the system of church government,
such as the temporary prohibition of the Marburg consistory of
the mission festival, as avowedly used for agitation against
the intended synodal constitution, helped to intensify the
bitterness of feeling. But on the other hand many preachers by
their unbecoming pulpit harangues, and their refusal to take
the oath of allegiance or service, to pray in church for their
new sovereign, and to observe the general holiday appointed
to be held in 1869 on November 10th (Luther’s birthday),
etc., compelled the ecclesiastical authorities to impose fines,
suspension, penal transportation, and deposition. In the Lutheran
=Schleswig-Holstein= a new congregational constitution was
introduced in 1869 by the minister Von Mühler, as the basis of a
future synodal constitution, which was adopted by the _Vorsynode_
of Rendsburg in 1871, preserving the confessional status laid
down, without discussion. In 1878 an advance was made by the
institution of district or provostship synods, and in February,
1880, the first General Synod was held at Rendsburg. As in Old
Prussia so also here the conservative movement proved victorious.
The laity obtained majorities in all synods, and the supremacy
of the state was secured by the subordination of the church
government under the minister of public worship.

§ 193.8. =In Hanover=, where especially Lichtenberg, president of
the upper consistory, and Uhlhorn, member of the upper consistory
(since 1878 abbot of Loccum), although many Lutheran extremists
long remained dissatisfied, temperately and worthily maintained
the independence and privileges of the Lutheran church, the first
national synod could be convened and could bring to a generally
peaceful conclusion the question of the constitution only in
the end of 1869, after the preliminary labour of the national
synod committee. In 1882 the Reformed communities of 120,000
souls, hitherto subject to Lutheran consistories, obtained an
independent congregational and synodal constitution. Against
the new marriage ordinance enacted in consequence of the
civil marriage law (§ 197, 5), Theod. Harms (brother, and from
1865 successor of L. Harms, § 184, 1), pastor and director of
Hermannsburg missionary seminary, rebelled from the conviction
that civil marriage did not deserve to be recognised as marriage.
He was first suspended, then in 1877 deposed from office, and
with the most of his congregation retired and founded a separate
Lutheran community, to which subsequently fifteen other small
congregations of 4,000 souls were attached. As teacher and pupils
of the seminary made it a zealous propaganda for the secession,
the missionary journals and missionary festivals were misused
for the same purpose, and as Harms answered the questions of the
consistory in reference thereto, partly by denying, partly by
excusing, that court, in December, 1878, forbad the missionary
collections hitherto made throughout the churches at Epiphany
for Hermannsburg, and so completely broke off the connection
between the state church and the institution which had hitherto
been regarded as “its pride and its preserving salt.” A reaction
has since set in in favour of the seminary and its friends on
the assurance that the interests of the separation would not be
furthered by the seminary, and that several other objectionable
features, _e.g._ the frequent employment in the mission service
of artisans without theological training, the sending of them out
in too great numbers without sufficient endowment and salary, so
that missionaries were obliged to engage in trade speculations,
should be removed as far as possible; but since the seminary
life was always still carried on upon the basis of ecclesiastical
secession, it could lead to no permanent reconciliation with the
state church. Harms died in 1885. His son Egmont was chosen his
successor, and as the consistory refused ordination, he accepted
consecration at the hands of five members of the Immanuel Synod
at Magdeburg.

§ 193.9. =In Hesse= the ministry of Von Mühler sought to bring
about a combination of the three consistories of Hanau, Cassel,
and Marburg, as a necessary vehicle for the introduction of a
new synodal constitution. In the province itself an agitation
was persistently carried on for and against the constitutional
scheme submitted by the ministers, which wholly ignored the old
church order (§ 127, 2), which, though in the beginning of the
seventeenth century through the ecclesiastical disturbances of
the time (§ 154, 1), it had passed out of use, had never been
abrogated and so was still legally valid. A _Vorsynode_ convened
in 1870 approved of it in all essential points, but conventions
of superintendents, pastoral conferences and lay addresses
protested, and the Prussian parliament, for which it was not yet
liberal enough, refused the necessary supplies. As these after
Von Mühler’s overthrow were granted, his successor, Dr. Falk,
immediately proceeded in 1873 to set up in Cassel the court
that had been objected to so long. It was constituted after the
pattern of the Supreme Church Council, of Lutheran, Reformed, and
United members with _Itio in partes_ on specifically confessional
questions. The clergy of Upper Hesse comforted themselves
with saying that the new courts in which the confessions were
combined, if not better, were at least no worse than the earlier
consistories in which the confessions were confounded; and they
felt obliged to yield obedience to them, so long as they did not
demand anything contradictory the Lutheran confession. On the
other hand, many of the clergy of Lower Hesse saw in the advance
from a merely eventual to an actual blending of the confessional
status in church government an intolerable deterioration. And so
forty-five clergyman of Lower and one of Upper Hesse laid before
the king a protest against the innovation as destructive of the
confessional rights of the Hessian church contrary to the will
of the supreme majesty of Jesus Christ. They were dismissed with
sharp rebuke, and, with the exception of four who submitted, were
deposed from office for obstinate refusal to obey. There were
about sixteen congregations which to a greater or less extent
kept aloof from the new pastors appointed by the consistories,
and without breaking away from the state church wished to remain
true to the old pastor “appointed by Jesus Christ himself.”--In
autumn, 1884, the movement on behalf of the restoration of a
presbyterial and synodal constitution of the Hessian evangelical
church, which had been delayed for fourteen years, was resumed.
A sketch of a constitution, which placed it under three
general superintendents (Lutheran, Reformed, United) and
thirteen superintendents, and, for the fair co-operation of
the lay element in the administration of church affairs (the
confession status, however, being beyond discussion), provided
suitable organs in the shape of presbyteries and synods, with a
predominance of the lay element, was submitted to a _Vorsynode_
that met on November 12th, consisting of two divisions, like a
Lower and Upper House, sitting together. The first division, as
representative of the then existing church order, embraced, in
accordance with the practice of the old Hessian synods, all the
members of the consistory, _i.e._ the nine superintendents and
thirteen pastors elected by the clergy; the second, consisting at
least of as many lay as clerical members, was chosen by the free
election of the congregation. The royal assent was given to the
decrees of the _Vorsynode_ in the end of December, 1885, and the
confessional status was thereby expressly guaranteed.

§ 194. THE NORTH GERMAN SMALLER STATES.

In most of the smaller North German states, owing to the very slight representation of the Reformed church, which was considerable only in Bremen, Lippe-Detmold, and a part of Hesse and East Friesland, the union met with little favour. Yet only in a few of those provinces did a sharply marked confessional Lutheranism gain wide and general acceptance. This was so especially and most decidedly in Mecklenburg, but also in Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony. On the other hand, since the close of 1860, in almost all those smaller states a determined demand was made for a representative synodal constitution, securing the due co-operation of the lay element.--The Catholic church was strongest in Hanover, and next come some parts of Hesse, which had been added to the ecclesiastical province of the Upper Rhine (§ 196, 1), but in the other North German smaller states it was only represented here and there.