Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (18)

§ 196.6. =The Catholic Church in Württemberg.=--Even after
the founding of the bishopric of Rottenberg [Rottenburg] the
government maintained strictly the previously exercised rights of
sovereignty over the Catholic church, to which almost one-third
of the population belonged, and the almost universally prevalent
liberalism of the Catholic clergy found in this scarcely any
offence. A new order of divine service in 1837, which, with the
approval of the episcopal council, recommended the introduction
of German hymns in the services, dispensing the sacraments in
the German language, restriction of the festivals, masses, and
private masses, processions, etc., did indeed cause riots in
several places, in which, however, the clergy took no part. But
when in 1837, in consequence of the excitement caused throughout
Catholic Germany by the Cologne conflict (§ 193, 1), the hitherto
only isolated cases of lawless refusal to consecrate mixed
marriages had increased, the government proceeded severely to
punish offending clergymen, and transported to a village curacy
a Tübingen professor, Mack, who had declared the compulsory
celebration unlawful. Called to account by the nuncio of Munich
for his indolence in all these affairs and severely threatened,
old Bishop Keller at last resolved, in 1841, to lay before
the chamber a formal complaint against the injury done to the
Catholic church, and to demand the freeing of the church from
the sovereignty of the state. In the second chamber this motion
was simply laid _ad acta_, but in the first it was recommended
that the king should consider it. The bishop, however, and the
liberal chapter could not agree as to the terms of the demand,
contradictory opinions were expressed, and things remained
as they were. But Bishop Keller fell into melancholy and died
in 1845. His successor took his stand upon the memorial and
declaration of the Upper Rhenish bishops, and immediately in 1853
began the conflict by forbidding his clergy, under threats of
severe censure, to submit as law required to civil examinations.
The government that had hitherto so firmly maintained its
sovereign rights, under pressure of the influence which a lady
very nearly related to the king exercised over him, gave in
without more ado, quieted the bishop first of all by a convention
in 1854, and then entered into negotiations with the Roman curia,
out of which came in 1857 a concordat proclaimed by the bull
_Cum in sublimi_, which, in surrender of a sovereign right of
the state over the affairs of the church, far exceeds that of
Austria (§ 198, 2). The government left unheeded all protests and
petitions from the chambers for its abolition. But the example
of Baden and the more and more decided tone of the opposition
obliged the government at last to yield. The second chamber
in 1861 decreed the abrogation of the concordat, and a royal
rescript declared it abolished. In the beginning of 1862 a bill
was submitted by the new ministry and passed into law by both
chambers for determining the relations of the Catholic church to
the state. The royal _placet_ or right of permitting or refusing,
is required for all clerical enactments which are not purely
inter-ecclesiastical but refer to mixed matters; the theological
endowments are subject to state control and joint administration;
boys’ seminaries are not allowed; clergymen appointed to office
must submit to state examination; according to consuetudinary
rights, about two-thirds of the benefices are filled by the
king, one-third by the bishops on reporting to the civil court,
which has the right of protest; clergy who break the law are
removable by the civil court, etc. The curia indeed lodged
a protest, but the for the most part peace-loving clergy reared,
not in the narrowing atmosphere of the seminaries but amid
the scientific culture of the university, in the halls of
Tübingen, submitted all the more easily as they found that in
all inter-ecclesiastical matters they had greater freedom and
independence under the concordat than before.

§ 196.7. =The Imperial Territory of Alsace and Lorraine
since 1871.=--After Alsace with German Lorraine had again, in
consequence of the Franco-Prussian war, been united to Germany
and as an imperial territory had been placed under the rule
of the new German emperor, the secretary of the Papal States,
Cardinal Antonelli, in the confident hope of being able to secure
in return the far more favourable conditions, rights and claims
of the Catholic church in Prussia with the autocracy of the
bishops unrestricted by the state, declared in a letter to the
Bishop of Strassburg, that the concordat of 1801 (§ 203, 1) was
annulled. But when the imperial government showed itself ready
to accept the renunciation, and to make profit out of it in the
opposite way from that intended, the cardinal hasted in another
letter to explain how by the incorporation with Germany a new
arrangement had become necessary, but that clearly the old must
remain in force until the new one has been promulgated. Also a
petition of the Catholic clergy brought to Berlin by the bishop
himself, which laid claim to this unlimited dominion over all
Catholic educational and benevolent institutions, failed of
its purpose. The clergy therefore wrought for this all the
more zealously by fanaticizing the Catholic people in favour of
French and against German interests. On the epidemic about the
appearance of the mother of God called forth in this way, see
§ 188, 7. In 1874 the government found itself obliged to close
the so-called “little seminaries,” or boys’ colleges, on account
of their fostering sentiments hostile to the empire. Yet in
1880 the newly appointed imperial governor, Field-marshal von
Manteuffel (died 1885), at the request of the States-Committee,
allowed Bishop Räss of Strassburg to reopen the seminary at
Zillisheim, with the proviso that his teachers should be approved
by the government, and that instruction in the German language
should be introduced. Manteuffel has endeavoured since, by
yielding favours to the France-loving Alsatians and Lorrainers,
and to their ultramontane clergy, to win them over to the idea of
the German empire, even to the evident sacrifice of the interests
of resident Germans and of the Protestant church. But such
fondling has wrought the very opposite result to that intended.

§ 197. THE SO-CALLED KULTURKAMPF IN THE GERMAN EMPIRE.[550]

Ultramontanism had for the time being granted to the Prussian state, which had not only allowed it absolutely free scope but readily aided its growth throughout the realm (§ 193, 2), an indulgence for that offence which is in itself unatoneable, having a Protestant dynasty. Pius IX. had himself repeatedly expressed his satisfaction at the conduct of the government. But the league which Prussia made in 1866 with the “church-robbing Sub-alpine,” _i.e._ Italian, government, was not at all to the taste of the curia. The day of Sadowa, 3rd July, 1866, called from Antonelli the mournful cry, _Il mondo cessa_, “The world has gone to ruin,” and the still more glorious day of Sedan, 2nd September, 1870, completely put the bottom out of the Danaid’s vessel of ultramontane forbearance and endurance. This day, 18th January, 1871, had as its result the overthrow of the temporal power of the papacy as well the establishment of a new and hereditary German empire under the Protestant dynasty of the Prussian Hohenzollerns. German ultramontanism felt itself all the more under obligation to demand from the new emperor as the first expiation for such uncanonical usurpation, the reinstatement of the pope in his lost temporal power. But when he did not respond to this demand, the ultramontane party, by means of the press favourable to its claims, formally declared war against the German empire and its governments, and applied itself systematically to the mobilization of its entire forces. But the empire and its governments, with Prussia in the van, with unceasing determination, supported by the majority of the States’ representatives, during the years 1871-1875 proceeded against the ultramontanes by legislative measures. The execution of these by the police and the courts of law, owing to the stubborn refusal to obey on the part of the higher and lower clergy, led to the formation of an opposition, commonly designated after a phrase of the Prussian deputy, Professor Virchow, “_Kulturkampf_,” which was in some degree modified first in 1887. The imperial chancellor, Prince Bismarck, uttered at the outset the confident, self-assertive statement, “We go not to Canossa,”--and even in 1880, when it seemed as if a certain measure of submission was coming from the side of the papacy, and the Prussian government also showed itself prepared to make important concessions, he declared, “We shall not buy peace with Canossa medals; such are not minted in Germany.” Since 1880, however, the Prussian government with increasing compliance from year to year set aside and modified the most oppressive enactments of the May laws, so as actually to redress distresses and inconveniences occasioned by clerical opposition to these laws, without being able thereby to obtain any important concession on the part of the papal curia, until at last in 1887, after the government had carried concession to the utmost limit, the pope put his seal to definitive terms of peace by admitting the right of giving information on the part of the bishops regarding appointments to vacant pastorates, as well as the right of protest on the part of the government against those thus nominated.

§ 197.1. =The Aggression of Ultramontanism.=--Even in the
revolution year, 1848, German ultramontanism, in order to obtain
what it called the freedom of the church, had zealously seconded
many of the efforts of democratic radicalism. Nevertheless, in
the years of reaction that followed, it succeeded in catching
most of the influential statesmen on the limed twig of the
assurance that the episcopal hierarchy, with its unlimited sway
over the clergy and through them over the feelings of the people,
constituted the only certain and dependable bulwark against the
revolutionary movements of the age, and this idea prevailed down
to 1860, and in Prussia down to 1871. But the overthrow of the
concordat in Baden, Württemberg and Darmstadt by the states of
the realm after a hard conflict, the humiliation of Austria in
1866, and the growth in so threatening a manner since of the
still heretical Prussia, produced in the whole German episcopate
a terrible apprehension that its hitherto untouched supremacy
in the state would be at an end, and in order to ward off this
danger it was driven into agitations and demonstrations partly
secret and partly open. On 8th October, 1868, the papal nuncio in
Munich, Monsignor Meglia, uttered his inmost conviction regarding
the Württemberg resident thus: “Only in America, England, and
Belgium does the Catholic church receive its rights; elsewhere
nothing can help us but the revolution.” And on 22nd April, 1869,
Bishop Senestray [Senestrey] of Regensburg declared plainly in a
speech delivered at Schwandorff: “If kings will no longer be of
God’s grace, I shall be the first to overthrow the throne....
Only a war or revolution can help us in the end.” And war at
last came, but it helped only their opponents. Although at
its outbreak in 1870 the ultramontane party in South Germany,
especially in Bavaria, for the most part with unexampled
insolence expressed their sympathy with France, and after the
brilliant and victorious close of the war did everything to
prevent the attachment of Bavaria to the new German empire, their
North German brethren, accustomed to the boundless compliance of
the Prussian government, indulged the hope of prosecuting their
own ends all the more successfully under the new regime. Even
in November, 1870, Archbishop Ledochowski of Posen visited the
victorious king of Prussia at Versailles, in order to interest
him personally in the restoration of the Papal States. In
February, 1871, in the same place, fifty-six Catholic deputies of
the Prussian parliament presented to the king, who had meanwhile
been proclaimed Emperor of Germany, a formal petition for
the restoration of the temporal power of the pope, and soon
afterwards a deputation of distinguished laymen waited upon
him “in name of all the Catholics of Germany,” with an address
directed to the same end. The _Bavarian Fatherland_ (Dr. Sigl)
indeed treated it with scorn as a “belly-crawling-deputation,
which crawled before the magnanimous hero-emperor, beseeching
him graciously to use said deputation as his spittoon.” And the
_Steckenberger Bote_, inspired by Dr. Ketteler, declared: “We
Catholics do not entreat it as a favour, but demand it as our
right.... Either you must restore the Catholic church to all
its privileges or not one of all your existing governments will
endure.” At the same time as the insinuation was spread that the
new German empire threatened the existence of the Catholic church
in Germany, a powerful ultramontane election agitation in view of
the next Reichstag was set on foot, out of which grew the party
of the “Centre,” so called from sitting in the centre of the hall,
with Von Ketteler, Windthorst, Mallinkrodt (died 1874), and the
two Reichenspergers, as its most eloquent leaders. Even in the
debate on the address in answer to the speech from the throne
this party demanded intervention, at first indeed only diplomatic,
in favour of the Papal States. In the discussion on the new
imperial constitution A. Reichensperger sought to borrow from
the abortive German landowners’ bill of 1848, condemned indeed as
godless by the syllabus (§ 185, 2), principles that might serve
the turn of ultramontanism regarding the unrestricted liberty
of the press, societies, meetings, and religion, with the most
perfect independence of all religious communities of the State.
Mallinkrodt insisted upon the need of enlarged privileges for
the Catholic church owing to the great growth of the empire
in Catholic territory and population. All these motions were
rejected by the Reichstag, and the Prussian government answered
them by abolishing in July, 1871, the Catholic department of
the Ministry of Public Worship, which had existed since 1841
(§ 193, 2). The _Genfer Korrespondenz_, shortly before highly
praised by the pope, declared: If kings do not help the papacy
to regain its rights, the papacy must also withdraw from them
and appeal directly to the hearts of the people. “Understand
ye the terrible range of this change? Your hours, O ye princes,
are numbered!” The Berlin _Germania_ pointed threateningly to
the approaching _revanche_ war in France, on the outbreak of
which the German empire would no longer be able to reckon on
the sympathy of its Catholic subjects; and the _Ellwanger kath.
Wochenblatt_ proclaimed openly that only France is able to guard
and save the Catholic church from the annihilating projects
of Prussia. And in this way the Catholic people throughout all
Germany were roused and incited by the Catholic press, as well as
from the pulpit and confessional, in home and school, in Catholic
monasteries and nunneries, in mechanics’ clubs and peasants’
unions, in casinos and assemblies of nobles. Bishop Ketteler
founded expressly for purposes of such agitations the Mainz
Catholic Union, in September, 1871, which by its itinerant
meetings spread far and wide the flame of religious fanaticism;
and a Bavarian priest, Lechner, preached from the pulpit that
one does not know whether the German princes are by God’s or by
the devil’s grace.

§ 197.2. =Conflicts Occasioned by Protection of the Old Catholics,
1871-1872.=--That the Prussian government refused to assist
the bishops in persecuting the Old Catholics, and even retained
these in their positions after excommunication had been hurled
against them, was regarded by those bishops as itself an act
of persecution of the Catholic church. To this opinion they
gave official expression, under solemn protest against all
encroachments of the state upon the domain of Catholic faith and
law, in a memorial addressed to the German emperor from Fulda, on
September 7th, 1871, but were told firmly and decidedly to keep
within their own boundaries. Even before this Bishop =Krementz
of Ermeland= had refused the _missio canonica_ to Dr. Wollmann,
teacher of religion at the Gymnasium of Braunsberg, on account
of his refusing to acknowledge the dogma of infallibility, and
had forbidden Catholic scholars to attend his instructions.
The minister of public worship, Von Mühler, decided, because
religious instruction was obligatory in the Prussian gymnasia,
that all Catholic scholars must attend or be expelled from the
institution. The Bavarian government followed a more correct
course in a similar case that arose about the same time; for
it recognised and protected the religious instructions of the
anti-infallibilist priest, Renftle in Mering, as legitimate, but
still allowed parents who objected to withhold their children
from it. And in this way the new Prussian minister, Falk,
corrected his predecessor’s mistake. But all the more decidedly
did the government proceed against Bishop Krementz, when
he publicly proclaimed the excommunication uttered against
Dr. Wollmann and Professor Michelis, which had been forbidden by
Prussian civil law on account of the infringement of civil rights
connected therewith according to canon law. As the bishop could
not be brought to an explicit acknowledgment of his obligation
to obey the laws of the land, the minister of public worship
on October 1st, 1872, stripped him of his temporalities.
But meanwhile a second conflict had broken out. The Catholic
field-provost of the Prussian army and bishop _in partibus_,
Namszanowski, had under papal direction commanded the
Catholic divisional chaplain, Lünnemann of Cologne, on pain
of excommunication, to discontinue the military worship in the
garrison chapel, which, by leave of the military court, was
jointly used by the Old Catholics, and so was desecrated. He
was therefore brought before a court of discipline, suspended
from his office in May, 1872, and finally, by royal ordinance
in 1873, the office of field-provost was wholly abolished.

§ 197.3. =Struggles over Educational Questions, 1872-1873.=--In
the formerly Polish provinces of the Prussian kingdom the
Polonization of resident Catholic Germans had recently assumed
threatening proportions. The archbishop of Posen and Gnesen,
Count =Ledochowski=, whom the pope during the Vatican Council
appointed primate of Poland, was the main centre of this
agitation. In the Posen priest seminary he formed for himself,
in a fanatically Polish clergy, the tools for carrying it out,
and in the neighbouring Schrimm he founded a Jesuit establishment
that managed the whole movement. Where previously Polish and
German had been preached alternately, German was now banished,
and in the public schools, the oversight of which, as throughout
all Prussia, lay officially in the hands of the clergy, all means
were used to discourage the study of the German language, and
to stamp out the German national sentiment. But even in the two
western provinces the Catholic public schools were made by the
clerical school inspectors wholly subservient to the designs of
ultramontanism. In order to stem such disorder the government,
in February, 1872, sanctioned the =School Inspection Law=
passed by the parliament, by which the right and duty of school
inspection was transferred from the church to the state, so that
for the sake of the state the clerical inspectors hostile to the
government were set aside, and where necessary might be replaced
by laymen. A pastoral letter of the Prussian bishops assembled
at Fulda in April of that year complained bitterly of persecution
of the church and unchristianizing of the schools, but advised
the Catholic clergy under no circumstances voluntarily to resign
school inspection where it was not taken from them. By a rescript
of the minister of public worship in June, the exclusion of all
members of spiritual orders and congregations from teaching in
public schools was soon followed by the suppression of the Marian
congregations in all schools, and it was enjoined in March, 1873,
that in Polish districts, where other subjects had been taught in
the higher educational institutions in the German language, this
also would be obligatory in religious instruction. Ledochowski
indeed directed all religious teachers in his diocese to use the
Polish language after as they had done before, but the government
suspended all teachers who followed his direction, and gave
over the religious instruction to lay teachers. The archbishop
now erected private schools for the religious instruction of
gymnasial teachers, and the government forbad attendance at them.

§ 197.4. =The Kanzelparagraph and the Jesuit law,
1871-1872.=--While thus the Prussian government took more and
more decided measures against the ultramontanism that had become
so rampant in its domains, on the other hand, its mobile band
of warriors in cassock, dress coat, and blouse did not cease to
labour, and the imperial government passed some drastic measures
of defence applicable to the whole empire. At the instance of
the Bavarian government, which could not defend itself from
the violence of its “patriots,” the Federal Council asked the
Reichstag to add a new article to the penal code of the empire,
threatening any misuse of the pulpit for political agitation
with imprisonment for two years. The Bavarian minister of public
worship, Lutz, undertook himself to support this bill before
the Reichstag. “For several decades,” he said, “the clergy
in Germany have assumed a new character; they are become the
simple reflection of Jesuitism.” The Reichstag sanctioned the
bill in December, 1871. Far more deeply than this so-called
=Kanzelparagraph=, the operation of which the agitation of the
clergy by a little circumspection could easily elude, did the
=Jesuit Law=, published on July 4th, 1872, cut into the flesh
of German ultramontanism. Already in April of that year had a
petition from Cologne demanding the expulsion of the Jesuits
been presented to the Reichstag. Similar addresses flowed in
from other places. The Centre party, on the other hand, organized
a regular flood of petitions in favour of the Jesuits. The
Reichstag referred both to the imperial chancellor, with the
request to introduce a law against the movements of the Jesuits
as dangerous to the State. The Federal Council complied with this
request, and so the law was passed which ordained the removal
of the Jesuits and related orders and congregations, the closing
of their institutions within six months, and prohibited the
formation of any other orders by their individual members, and
the government authorised the banishment of foreign members and
the interning of natives at appointed places. A later ordinance
of the Federal Council declared the Redemptorists, Lazarists,
Priests of the Holy Ghost, and the Society of the Heart of Jesus
to be orders related to the Society of Jesus. Those affected
by this law anticipated the threatened interning by voluntarily
removing to Belgium, Holland, France, Turkey, and America.

§ 197.5. =The Prussian Ecclesiastical Laws, 1873-1875.=--In
order to be able to check ultramontanism, even in its pædagogical
breeding places, the episcopal colleges and seminaries, and at
the same time to restrict by law the despotic absolutism of the
bishops in disciplinary and beneficiary matters, the Prussian
government brought in other four ecclesiastical bills, which in
spite of violent opposition on the part of the Centre and the
Old Conservatives, were successively passed by both houses of
parliament, and approved by the king on May 11th, 12th, 13th,
and 14th, 1873. Their most important provisions are: As a
condition for admission to a spiritual office the state requires
citizenship of the German empire, three years’ study at a German
university, and, besides an exit gymnasial examination preceding
the university course, a state examination in general knowledge
(in philosophy, history, and German literature), in addition to
the theological examination. The episcopal boys’ seminaries and
colleges are abolished. The priest seminaries, if the minister
of worship regards them as fit for the purpose, may take the
place of the university course, but must be under regular state
inspection. The candidates for spiritual offices, which must
never be left vacant more than a year, are to be named to the
chief president of the province, and he can for cogent reasons
lodge a protest against them. Secession from the church is
freely allowed, and releases from all personal obligations
to pay ecclesiastical dues and perform ecclesiastical duties.
Excommunication is permissible, but can be proclaimed only
in the congregation concerned, and not publicly. The power of
church discipline over the clergy can be exercised only by German
superiors and in accordance with fixed processional procedure.
Corporal punishment is not permissible, fines are allowed
to a limited extent, and restraint by interning in so-called
_Demeriti_ houses, but only at furthest of three months, and when
the party concerned willingly consents. Church servants, whose
remaining in office is incompatible with the public order, can
be deposed by civil sentence. And as final court of appeal in all
cases of complaint between ecclesiastical and civil authorities
as well as within the ecclesiastical domain, a royal court
of justice for ecclesiastical affairs is constituted, whose
proceedings are open and its decision final.--But even the
May Laws soon proved inadequate for checking the insolence of
the bishops and the disorders among the Catholic population
occasioned thereby. In December, 1873, therefore, by sovereign
authority there was prescribed a new formula of the episcopal
Oath of Allegiance, recognising more distinctly and decisively
the duty of obedience to the laws of the state. Then next a bill
was presented to the parliament, which had been kept in view in
the original constitution, demanding obligatory civil marriage
and abolition of compulsory baptism, as well as the conducting
of civil registration by state officials. In February, 1874, it
was passed into law. On the 20th and 21st =May, 1874=, two other
bills brought in for extending the May Laws of the previous
year, in consequence of which a bishop’s see vacated by death,
a judicial sentence, or any other cause, must be filled within
the space of a year, and the chapter must elect within ten days
an episcopal administrator, who has to be presented to the chief
president, and to undertake an oath to obey the laws of the
state. If the chapter does not fulfil these requirements, a lay
commissioner will be appointed to administer the affairs of the
diocese. During the episcopal vacancy, all vacant pastorates, as
well as all not legally filled, can be at once validly supplied
by the act of the patron, and, where no such right exists,
by congregational election. Parochial property, on the illegal
appointment of a pastor, is given over to be administered by a
lay commissioner.--The empire also came to the help of the May
Laws by an imperial enactment of May 4th, 1874, sanctioned by the
emperor, which empowers the competent state government to intern
all church officers discharged from their office and not yielding
submission thereto, as well as all punished on account of
incompetence in their official duties, and, if this does not help,
to condemn them to loss of their civil rights and to expulsion
from the German federal territory.--Also in its next session the
imperial house of representatives again gave legislative sanction
to the _Kulturkampf_; for in January, 1875, it passed a bill
presented by the Federal Council on the deposition on oath as
to personal rank, and on divorce with obligatory civil marriage,
which, going far beyond the Prussian civil law of the previous
year, and especially ridding Bavaria of its strait-jacket canon
marriage law enforced by the concordat, abolished the spiritual
jurisdiction in favour of that of the civil courts, and gave it
to the state to determine the qualifications for, as well as the
hindrances to, divorce, without, however, touching the domain of
conscience, or entrenching in any way upon the canon law and the
demands of the church.

§ 197.6. =Opposition in the States to the Prussian May
Laws.=--Bishop Martin of Paderborn had even beforehand refused
obedience to the May Laws of 1873. After their promulgation, all
the Prussian bishops collectively declared to the ministry that
“they were not in a position to carry out these laws,” with the
further statement that they could not comply even with those
demands in them which in other states, by agreement with the pope,
are acknowledged by the church, because they are administered
in a one-sided way by the state in Prussia. On these lines also
they proceeded to take action. First of all, the refractoriness
of several of the seminaries drew down upon them the loss of
endowment and of the right of representation; and in the next
place, the refusal of the bishops to notify their appointment of
clergymen led to their being frequently fined, while the church
books and seals were taken away from clergymen so appointed,
all the official acts performed by them were pronounced invalid
in civil law, and those who performed them were subjected to
fines. But here, too, again Bishop Martin, well skilled in church
history (he had been previously professor of theology in Bonn),
had beforehand in a pastoral instructed his clergy that “since
the days of Diocletian there had not been seen so violent
a persecution of the name of Jesus Christ.” Soon after this
Archbishop Ledochowski, in an official document addressed to
the Chief President of Poland, compared the demand to give
notification of clerical appointments with the demand of ancient
Rome upon Christian soldiers to sacrifice to the heathen gods.
And by order of the pope prayers were offered in all churches for
the church so harshly and cruelly persecuted. And yet the whole
“persecution” then consisted in nothing more than this, that a
newly issued law of the state, under threat of fine in case of
disobedience, demanded again of the bishops paid by the state
what had been accepted for centuries as unobjectionable in the
originally Catholic Bavaria, and also for a long while in France,
Portugal, and other Romish countries, what all Prussian bishops
down to 1850 (§ 193, 2) had done without scruple, what the
bishops of Paderborn and Münster even had never refused to
do in the extra-Prussian portion of these dioceses (Oldenburg
and Waldeck), as also the Prince-Bishop of Breslau, since the
issuing of the similar Austrian May Laws (§ 198, 4) in the
Austro-Silesian part of his diocese, what the episcopal courts
of Württemberg and Baden had yielded to, although in almost all
these states the demand referred to broke up the union with the
papal curia. Yet before a year had passed the cases of punishment
for these offences had so increased that the only very inadequate
fines that could be exacted by the seizure of property had to
be changed into equivalent sentences of imprisonment. The first
prelate who suffered this fate was Archbishop Ledochowski, in
February, 1874. Then followed in succession: Eberhard of Treves,
Melchers of Cologne, Martin of Paderborn, and Brinkmann of
Münster. The ecclesiastical court of justice expressly pronounced
deposition against Ledochowski in April, 1874; against Martin in
January, 1875, and against the Prince-Bishop Förster of Breslau
in October, 1875, who alone had dared to proclaim in his diocese
the encyclical _Quod nunquam_ (§ 197, 7). But the latter had
even beforehand withdrawn the diocesan property to the value
of 900,000 marks to his episcopal castle, Johannisberg, in
Austro-Silesia, where with a truly princely income from Austrian
funds he could easily get over the loss of the Prussian part
of his revenues. Martin, who had been interned at Wesel, fled
in August, 1875, under cloud of night, to Holland, from whence
he transferred his agitations into Belgium, and finally to
London (died 1879). Ledochowski found a residence in the Vatican.
Brinkmann was deposed in March, and Melchers in June, 1876,
after both had beforehand proved their enjoyment of martyrdom
by escaping to Holland. Eberhard of Treves anticipated his
deposition from office by his death in May, 1876. Blum of Limburg
was deposed in June, 1877, and Beckmann of Osnabrück died in
1878.--In the Prussian parliament and German Reichstag the Centre
party, supported by Guelphs, Poles, and the Social Democrats, had
meanwhile with anger, scorn, and vituperation, with and without
wit, fought not only against all ecclesiastical, but also against
all other legislative proposals, whose acceptance was specially
desired by the government. And all the representatives of the
ultramontane press within and without Europe vied with one
another in violent denunciation of the ecclesiastical laws, and
in unmeasured abuse of the emperor and the empire. But almost
without exception the Roman Catholic officials in Prussia, as
well as the Protestants and Old Catholics, carried out “the
Diocletian persecution of Christians” in the judicial and police
measures introduced by the church laws. A number of Catholic
notables of the eastern provinces of their own accord, in a
dutiful address to the emperor, expressly accepted the condemned
laws, and won thereby the nickname of “State Catholics.” The
great mass of the Catholic people, high and low, remained
unflinchingly faithful to the resisting clergy in, for the most
part, only a passive opposition, although even, as the Berlin
_Germania_ expressed it, “the Catholic rage at the Bismarckian
ecclesiastical polity could condense itself into one Catholic
head” in a murderous attempt on the chancellor in quest of health
at Kissingen, on July 13th, 1874. It was the cooper, Kullmann,
who, fanaticised by exciting speeches and writings in the
Catholic society of Salzwedel, sought to take vengeance, as
he himself said, upon the chancellor for the May Laws and “the
insult offered to his party of the Centre.”--In the further
course of the Prussian _Kulturkampf_, however, fostered by
the aid of the confessional, the insinuating assiduity of
the clerical press, and the all-prevailing influence of the
thoroughly disciplined Catholic clergy over the popish masses,
the Centre grew in number and importance at the elections from
session to session, so that from the beginning of 1880, by the
unhappy division of the other parties in the Reichstag as well
as Chamber, it united sometimes with the Conservatives, sometimes
and most frequently with the Progressionists and Democrats
renouncing the _Kulturkampf_, and was supported on all questions
by Poles, Danes, Guelphs, and Alsatian-Lorrainers, as clerical
interest and ultramontane tactics required, in accordance with
the plan of campaign of the commander-in-chief, especially of
the quondam Hanoverian minister, Windthorst, dominated far more
by Guelphic than by ultramontane tendencies. The Centre was thus
able to turn the scale, until, at least in the Reichstag, after
the dissolution and new election of 1887, its dominatory power
was broken by the closer combination of the conservative and
national liberal parties.

§ 197.7. =Share in the Conflict taken by the Pope.=--=Pius IX.=
had congratulated the new emperor in 1871, trusting, as he
wrote, that his efforts directed to the common weal “might bring
blessing not only to Germany, but also to all Europe, and might
contribute not a little to the protection of the liberty and
rights of the Catholic religion.” And when first of all the
Centre party, called forth by the election agitation of German
ultramontanism, opened its politico-clerical campaign in the
Reichstag, he expressed his disapproval of its proceedings upon
Bismarck’s complaining to the papal secretary Antonelli. Yet
a deputation of the Centre sent to Rome succeeded in winning
over both. In order to build a bridge for the securing an
understanding with the curia, now that the conflict had grown
in extent and bitterness, the imperial government in May, 1872,
appointed the Bavarian Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe to the vacant
post of ambassador to the Vatican. But the pope, with offensive
recklessness, rejected the well-meant proposal, and forbade
the cardinal to accept the imperial appointment. From that time
he gave free and public expression on every occasion to his
senseless bitterness against the German empire and its government.
In an address to the German Reading Society at Rome in July, 1872,
he allowed himself to use the most violent expressions against
the German chancellor, and closed with the prophetic threatening:
“Who knows but the little stone shall soon loose itself from
the mountain (Dan. ii. 34), which shall break in pieces the foot
of the colossus?” But even this diatribe was cast in the shade
by the Christmas allocution of that year, in which he was not
ashamed to characterize the procedure of the German statesmen
and their imperial sovereign as “_impudentia_.” And after the
publication of the first May Laws he addressed a letter to the
emperor, in which, founding upon the fact that even the emperor
like all baptized persons belonged to him, the pope, he cast in
his teeth that “all the measures of his government for some time
aimed more and more at the annihilation of Catholicism,” and
added the threatening announcement that “these measures against
the religion of Jesus Christ can have no other result than
the overthrow of his own throne.” The emperor in his answer
made expressly prominent his divinely appointed call as well as
his own evangelical standpoint, and with becoming dignity and
earnestness decidedly repudiated the unmeasured assumptions of
the papacy, and published both letters. In the same style of
immoderate pretension the pope again, in November, 1875, in one
encyclical after another, gave vent to his anger against emperor
and empire, especially its military institutions. In place of
the deposed and at that time imprisoned archbishop, Ledochowski,
he appointed in 1874 a native apostolic legate, who was at last
ascertained to be the Canon Kurowski, when he was in October,
1875, condemned to two years’ imprisonment. But the pope took
the most decided and successful step by the =Encyclical _Quod
nunquam_, of 5th February, 1875=, addressed to the Prussian
episcopate, in which he characterized the Prussian May Laws as
“not given to free citizens to demand a reasonable obedience,
but as laid upon slaves, in order to force obedience by fears of
violence,” and, “in order to fulfil the duties of his office,”
declared quite openly to all whom it concerns and to the
Catholics throughout the world: “_Leges illas irritas esse,
utpote quæ divinæ Ecclesiæ constitutioni prorsus adversantur_;”
but upon those “godless” men who make themselves guilty of the
sin of assuming spiritual office without a divine call, falls _eo
ipso_ the great excommunication. On the other hand he rewarded,
in March, 1875, Archbishop Ledochowski, then still in prison, but
afterwards, in February, 1876, settled in Rome, for his sturdy
resistance of those laws, with a cardinal’s hat, and to the not
less persistent Prince-Bishop Förster of Breslau he presented
on his jubilee as priest the archiepiscopal pall. In the next
Christmas allocution he romanced about a second Nero, who, while
in one place with a lyre in his hand he enchanted the world by
lying words, in other places appeared with iron in his hand,
and, if he did not make the streets run with blood, he fills
the prisons, sends multitudes into exile, seizes upon and with
violence assumes all authority to himself. Also to the German
pilgrims who went in May, 1877, to his episcopal jubilee at Rome,
he had still much that was terrible to tell about this “modern
Attila,” leaving it uncertain whether he intended Prince Bismarck
or the mild, pious German emperor himself.

§ 197.8. =The Conflict about the Encyclical _Quod nunquam_ of
1875.=--By this encyclical the pope had completely broken up the
union between the Prussian state and the curia, resting upon the
bull _De salute animarum_ (§ 193, 1); for he, bluntly repudiating
the sovereign rights of the civil authority therein expressly
allowed, by pronouncing the laws of the Prussian state invalid,
authorized and promoted the rebellion of all Catholic subjects
against them. The Prussian government now issued three new laws
quickly after one another, cutting more deeply than all that went
before, which without difficulty received the sanction of all the
legislative bodies.

I. The so called =Arrestment Act= (_Sperrgesetz_) of
April 22nd, 1875, which ordered the immediate suspension
of all state payments to the Roman Catholic bishoprics and
pastorates until those who were entitled to them had in
writing or by statement declared themselves ready to yield
willing obedience to the existing laws of the state.

II. A law of May 31st, 1875, ordering the =Expulsion of
all Orders and such like Congregations= within eight
months, the minister of public worship, however, being
authorized to extend this truce to four years in the case
of institutions devoted to the education of the young,
while those which were exclusively hospital and nursing
societies were allowed to remain, but were subject to
state inspection and might at any time be suppressed by
royal order.

III. A law of June 12th, 1875, declaring the formal =Abrogation
of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Eighteenth Articles of
the Constitution= (§ 193, 2).

And finally in addition there came the enforcement during this
session of the Chamber of laws previously introduced on the
rights of the Old Catholics (§ 190, 2), and, on June 20th, 1875,
on the administration of church property in Catholic parishes.
The latter measures aimed at withdrawing the administration
referred to from the autocratic absolutism of the clergy, and
transferring it to a lay commission elected by the community
itself, of which the parish priest was to be a member, but not
the president. Although the Archbishop of Cologne in name of
all the bishops before its issue had solemnly protested against
this law, because by it “essential and inalienable rights of
the Catholic church were lost,” and although the recognition
of it actually involved recognition of the May Laws and the
ecclesiastical court of justice, yet all the bishops declared
themselves ready to co-operate in carrying out the arrangements
for surrendering the church property to the administration
of a civil commission. They thus indeed secured thoroughly
ultramontane elections, but at the same time put themselves
into a position of self-contradiction, and admitted that the
one ground of their opposition to the May Laws, that they were
one-sidedly wrought by the state, was null and void.

§ 197.9. =Papal Overtures for Peace.=--=Leo XIII.=, since 1878,
intimated his accession to the Emperor William, and expressed his
regret at finding that the good relations did not continue which
formerly existed between Prussia and the holy see. The Emperor’s
answer expressed the hope that by the aid of his Holiness
the Prussian bishops might be induced to obey the laws of the
land, as the people under their pastoral care actually did;
and afterwards while in consequence of the attempt on his life
of June 2nd, 1873, he lay upon a sickbed, the crown prince on
June 10th answered other papal communications by saying, that
no Prussian monarch could entertain the wish to change the
constitution and laws of his country in accordance with the
ideas of the Romish church; but that, even though a thorough
understanding upon the radical controversy of a thousand
years could not be reached, yet the endeavour to preserve a
conciliatory disposition on both sides would also for Prussia
open a way to peace which had never been closed in other states.
Three weeks later the Munich nuntio Masella was at Kissingen and
conferred with the chancellor, Prince Bismarck, who was residing
there, about the possibility of a basis of reconciliation.
Subsequently negotiations were continued at Gastein, and then
in Vienna with the there resident nuntio Jacobini, but were
suspended owing to demands by the curia to which the state could
not submit. Still the pope attempted indirectly to open the way
for renewed consultation, for he issued a brief dated February
24th, 1880, to “Archbishop Melchers of Cologne” (deposed by
the royal court of justice), in which he declared his readiness
to allow to the respective government boards notification
of new elected priests before their canonical institution.
Thereupon a communication was sent to Cardinal Jacobini that the
state ministry had resolved, so soon as the pope had actually
implemented this declaration of his readiness, to make every
effort to obtain from the state representatives authority to
set aside or modify those enactments of the May Laws which were
regarded by the Romish church as harsh. But the pope received
this compromise of the government very ungraciously and showed
his dissatisfaction by withdrawing his concession, which besides
referred only to the unremovable priests, therefore not to
_Hetzkaplane_ and succursal or assistant priests, and presupposed
the obtaining the “_agrément_,” _i.e._ the willingly accorded
consent, of the state, without by any means allowing the setting
aside of the party elected.

§ 197.10. =Proof of the Prussian Government’s willingness to be
Reconciled, 1880-1881.=--Notwithstanding this brusque refusal
on the part of the papal curia, the government, at the instance
of the minister of public worship, Von Puttkamer (§ 193, 6),
resolved in May, 1880, to introduce a bill which gave a wide
discretionary power for moderating the unhappy state of matters
that had prevailed since the passing of the May Laws, throughout
Catholic districts, where 601 pastorates stood wholly vacant and
584 partly so, and nine bishoprics, some by death and others by
deposition. Although the need of peace was readily admitted on
both sides, the Liberals opposed these “Canossa proposals” as far
too great; the Centre, Poles, and Guelphs as far too small. Yet
it obtained at last in a form considerably modified, through a
compromise of the conservatives with a great part of the national
liberals the consent of both chambers. This law, sanctioned on
=July 14th, 1880=, embraced these provisions:

1. The royal court shall no longer depose from office
any church officers, but simply pronounce incapable of
administering the office;

2-4. The ministry of the state is authorized to give the
episcopal administrator charged by the church with
the interim administration of a vacant bishopric a
dispensation from the taking of the prescribed oath;
further, an administration by commission of ecclesiastical
property may be revoked as well as appointed; also state
endowments that had been withdrawn are to be restored for
the benefit of the whole extent of the diocese;

5. Spiritual official acts of a duly appointed clergyman by
way merely of assistance in another vacant parish are to
be allowed;

6. The minister of the interior and of public worship are
empowered to approve of the erection of new institutions
of religious societies which are devoted wholly to the
care of the sick, as to allow revocably to them the care
and nurture of children not yet of school age; and more
recently added were

7. The particular, according to which Articles 2, 3, and 4
cease to operate after January 1st, 1882.

The government was particularly careful to carry out the
provisions temporarily recognised in Article 3, for the
restoration of orderly episcopal administration by regularly
elected episcopal administrators in bishoprics made vacant by
death. Fulda, which was longest vacant, from October, 1873, had
to be left out of account, since in that case there was only
one member of the chapter left and so a canonical election
was impossible. But without difficulty in March, 1881, the
Vicar-General Dr. Höting for Osnabrück and Canon Drobe for
Paderborn, without taking the oath of allegiance, succeeded in
obtaining independent administration of the property as well as
the restoration of state pay for the entire dioceses, though they
did not give the notification required by the May Laws for the
interim administration. In October, 1881, the deposed Prince
Bishop Förster of Breslau died, and the suffragan bishop, Gleich,
elected by the chapter, undertook with consent of the government
the office of episcopal administrator.--Meanwhile the pope,
by a hearty letter of congratulation to the emperor on his
birthday, March 22nd, had given new life to the suspended
peace negotiations. And now also, when the respective chapters
transferred their right of election to the pope, the orderly
appointments of the Canon Dr. Korum of Metz, a pupil of the
Jesuit faculty of Innspruck [Innsbrück], very warmly recommended
by Von Manteuffel, governor of Alsace and Lorraine, to the
episcopal see of Treves, in August, 1881, of Vicar-General
Kopp of Hildesheim to Fulda in December, 1881, of the episcopal
administrators Höting and Drobe, in March and May, 1882,
respectively to Osnabrück and Paderborn, were duly carried
into effect. For Breslau the chapter drew up a list of seven
candidates, but the government pointed out the Berlin provost,
Rob. Herzog, as a mild and conciliatory person. The chapter now
laid its right of election in the hands of the pope, and in May,
1882, Herzog was raised to the dignity of prince-bishop. There
now remained vacant only the sees of Cologne, Posen, Limburg
and Münster, which had been emptied by the depositions of the
civil courts.--Meanwhile, too, the negotiations carried on at
the instance of the government by privy councillor Von Schlözer,
with the curia at Rome for the restoration of the embassy to the
Vatican had been brought to a close. The chamber voted for this
purpose an annual sum of 90,000 marks, and Schlözer himself was
appointed to the post in March, 1882.

§ 197.11. =Conciliatory Negotiations, 1882-1884.=--With January
1st, 1882, the three enactments of the July law of 1880, which
might be enforced at the discretion of the government, ceased to
operate. Von Gossler, minister of public worship since June, 1881,
on behalf of government, introduced a new bill into the Chamber
on January 16th, 1882, for their re-enactment and extension,
which by a compromise between the Conservatives and the Centre,
after various modifications secured a majority in both houses.
This second revised law embraced the following points:

1. Renewal of the three above-named enactments till
April 1st, 1884;

2. Restoration of the “Bishop’s Paragraph,” lost in 1880, in
this new form: If the king has pardoned a bishop set aside
by the ecclesiastical court, he becomes again the bishop of
his diocese recognised by the state;

3. The setting aside of the examination in general knowledge
(_Kulturexamen_) for those who bring a certificate of
having passed the Gymnasium exit examination, or have
attended with diligence lectures on philosophy, history
and German literature during a three years’ course at a
German university, or at a Prussian seminary of equal rank,
and have given proof of this by presenting evidence to the
chief president;

4. The setting aside of the rights of the patron and
congregation of themselves filling the vacant pastorates
during a vacancy in the episcopal see.

The new law obtained royal sanction on =May 31st, 1882=. But its
two most important articles, 2 and 3, remained for a long time
a dead letter, and even Article 1 was only carried out by the
resumption of the state emoluments for the Hohenzollerns and the
five newly instituted bishoprics (§ 197, 10), but not for the
other seven. But the ill humour of the ultramontane Hotspurs was
raised to the boiling point by the fate of the bill introduced by
the Centre into the Reichstag to set aside the Expatriation Law
of May 4th, 1874, which seemed to the government indispensable
on account of its applicability to the agitations against the
empire of the Polish clergy. This bill, after violent debates,
was carried on January 18th, 1882, by a two-thirds majority;
but it was cast out by the Federal Council on June 6th, almost
unanimously, only Bavaria and Reuss _jüngere Linie_ voting in
its favour. This was the result mainly of the failure of all the
attempts of Von Schlözer to render the government’s concessions
acceptable to the papal curia.--On the other hand, the government
of its own accord brought in a third revision scheme in June,
1883, by which it sought to relieve as far as possible the
troubles of the Catholic church. By adopting this law:

1. The obligation of notification on the part of the bishops
and the right of the state to protest on the change of
temporary assistants and substitutes into regular spiritual
officers, were abolished; as also

2. the competence of the court for ecclesiastical affairs in
appeals against the protest of the chief president, which
now therefore, according to the generally prevailing rule,
are referred to the minister of worship, the whole ministry,
the parliament, the king;

3. the immunity from punishment in the execution of their
office guaranteed in Article 5 of the July law of 1880
(§ 197, 10) was extended to all spiritual offices whether
vacant or not;

4. the ordaining of individual candidates in vacant dioceses
by bishops recognised by the state was declared to be legal.