Church History, Volume 3 (of 3) (part 2 of 3)

Church History, Volume 3 (of 3) (part 2 of 3)

§ 182.20. =Ritschl and his School.=--=Ritschl=, 1822-1889, from A.D. 1846 in Bonn, from A.D. 1864 in Göttingen, on his withdrawal from the Tübingen party, applied himself to dogmatic studies and founded a school, the adherents of which, divided into right and left wings, have secured quite a number of academical appointments. After the completion of his great dogmatic work on “Justification and Reconciliation,” Ritschl resumed his historical studies in a “History of Pietism,” which he traces back through the persecuted anabaptists of the Reformation age to the Tertiaries of the Franciscan order and the mysticism of St. Bernard. He earnestly maintains his adherence to the confessions of the Lutheran church, and regards it as the task of his life to disentangle the pure Lutheran doctrine from the accretions of scholastic metaphysics. Even more decidedly than Schleiermacher, he banishes all philosophy from the domain of theology. The grand significance of Kant’s doctrine of knowledge, with its assertion of the incomprehensibility of all transcendent truth except the ethical postulates of God, freedom and immortality, as set forth in a more profound manner by Lotze, is indeed admitted, but only as a methodological basis of all religious inquiries, and with determined rejection of every material support from Kant’s construction of religion within the limits of the pure reason. Ritschl rather pronounces in favour of the formal principle of Protestantism, and declares distinctly that all religious truth must be drawn directly from Scripture, primarily from the New Testament as the witness of the early church uncorrupted by the Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysic, but also secondarily from the Old Testament as the record of the content of revelation made to the religious community of Israel. The truthfulness of the biblical, especially of the New Testament, system of truth, rests, however, not on any theory of inspiration, but on its being an authentic statement of the early church of the doctrine of Christ, inasmuch as to this witness the necessary degree of fides humana belongs. Ritschl’s Christology rests on the witness of Christ to himself in the synoptists, through which he proclaims himself the one prophet who in the divine purpose of grace for mankind has received perfect consecration, sent by God into the world to represent the founding of the kingdom of God on earth foreshadowed in the Old Testament revelation; but no attempt is made to explain how Christ became possessed of the secrets of the divine decree. To him, as the first and only begotten Son of God, standing in essential union with the Father, belongs the attribute of deity and the right of worship. But of an eternal pre-existence of Christ we can speak only in so far as this is meant of the eternal gracious purpose of God to redeem the world through him by means of the complete unfolding of the kingdom of God in the fellowship of love. Whatever goes beyond this in the fourth gospel, its Johannine authenticity not being otherwise contested, as well as in Paul’s epistles and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, resulted from the necessity felt by their writers for assigning a sufficient reason for the assumption of such incomparable glory on the part of Christ. As the archetype of humanity destined for the kingdom of God, Christ is the original object of the divine love, so that the love of God to the members of his kingdom comes to them only through him. And as the earthly founding, so also the heavenly completion, of the kingdom of God is assigned to Christ, and hence after his resurrection all power was given to him, of the transcendent exercise of which, however, we can know nothing. The universality of human sin is admitted by Ritschl as a fact of experience, but he despairs of reaching any dogmatic statement as to the origin of sin through the temptation of a superhuman evil power. But that sin is inherited and as original guilt is under the condemnation of God, is not taught or pre-supposed by the teaching either of Christ or of the apostles. Redemption (reconciliation and justification) consists in the forgiveness of sins, by which the guilt that estranges from God is removed and the sinner is restored into the fellowship of the kingdom of God. Forgiveness, however, is not given on condition of the vicarious penal sufferings of Christ, whose sufferings and death are of significance rather because his life and works were a complete fulfilment of his calling, and witnessed to as such by God’s raising him from the dead. Justification secures the reception of the penitent sinner into the fellowship of the kingdom of God, preached and perfectly developed by Christ, and the sonship enjoyed in its membership, prefigured in Christ himself, which contains in itself the desire as well as the capacity to do good works out of love to God.--The school of Ritschl is represented in Göttingen by its founder and by =Schultz= and =Wendt=, in Marburg by =Herrmann=, in Bonn by =Bender=, in Giessen by =Gottschick= and =Kattenbusch=, in Strassburg by =Lobstein=, in Basel by =Kaftan=, formerly of Berlin.[537]

§ 182.21. Opponents and critics of the school of Ritschl, especially from the confessional Lutheran ranks, have appeared in considerable numbers. Luthardt of Leipzig in A.D. 1878 opened the campaign against Ritschilianism, followed by Bestmann, charging it with undermining Christianity. The Hanoverian synod of A.D. 1882 decided by a large majority that the scientific results of theological science must be ruled by the confessions of the evangelical church. The chief theme at the following Hanoverian Pentecost Conference was the “Incarnation of the Son of God,” the discussion being led by Professor Dieckhoff of Rostock, against whom no voice was raised in favour of the views of Ritschl. Not long after, Professor Fricke of Leipzig published a lecture given by him at the Meissen Conference, on the Present Relations of Metaphysics and Theology, followed by utterances of Kübel of Tübingen, Grau of Königsberg, Kreibig and H. Schmidt at Berlin, all unfavourable to Ritschl’s theology.--The main objections are, according to =Bestmann=: idolatry of Kant, depreciation of the religious factor in Christianity in favour of the ethical by laying out a moral foreground without providing a dogmatic background, reducing the objective fundamental truths of the confession into subjective ethical ideas, etc.; according to =Luthardt=: Ritschl’s position that it does not matter so much what the facts of the Christian faith are in themselves, as what they mean for us, makes his whole dogmatic system hang in the air, if in Christianity we have to do not with what God, Christ, the resurrection are, but only what significance we attach to them, Christianity is stript of all importance, the significance of a thing must have its foundation in the thing itself, etc.; according to =Dieckhoff=: Ritschl on his accepting the divinity of Christ lays down the rule that the special content of what is meant by the term divinity must be transferable to the believer, and so for Ritschl, Christ is a mere man who in his person was the first to represent a relation to God which is destined for all men in like measure, etc.; according to =Fricke=: new Kantian scepticism with regard to ideals and transcendentals, reducing religious elements to moral, with Ritschl’s removal of all metaphysical facts the chief verities of our Christian faith are taken away, at least in the scientific form in which we have them, e.g. the doctrine of the Trinity, our Christology, our theory of satisfaction, in place of which comes the Catholic justitia infusa, etc.; according to =Münchmayer=: “the object of justification with Ritschl is not the individual but the community, it is no act of God upon the individual but an eternal purpose of God for the community, its effect on the individual is not objective divine forgiveness of guilt but a subjective act of incorporation of the individual into the redeemed community; Christ and his work are not the ground of justification, but only the means of revealing the eternal justifying will of God, and therefore finally a continuation of the historical work of Christ by means of his church takes the place of the personal intercession of the exalted Redeemer for the penitent sinner.” Kreibig and Schmidt express themselves in a similar manner.--Ritschl has not himself undertaken any reply, but his disciples have sought to remove what they regard as misunderstandings, and generally to vindicate the system of their master.

§ 182.22. =Writers on Constitutional Law and History.=--The most distinguished writers on the constitutional law of the church are Eichhorn and Dove of Göttingen, Jacobsen of Königsberg, Wasserschleben of Giessen, Richter and Hinschius of Berlin, Friedberg of Leipzig, who belong to the unionist party; while Bickell of Marburg, Mejer of Göttingen and Hanover, Von Scheuerl of Erlangen, and Sohm of Strassburg belong to the confessional Lutherans.--Of ecclesiastical historians (§ 5, 4, 5) the number is so great that we cannot even enumerate their names.--The “Theologische Literaturzeitung” of Schürer and Harnack is a liberal scientific journal, distinguished for its fair criticisms by writers whose names are given.

§ 183. HOME MISSIONS.

In regard to home mission work, the Protestant church long lagged behind the Catholic, which had wrought vigorously through its monkish orders. England first entered with zeal into the field, especially dissenters and members of the low church party, and subsequently also the high church ritualistic party (§ 202, 1, 3), which now takes an active interest in this work. Germany, in view of the scanty means at the disposal of the pietists and the church party, made noble efforts. In other continental countries, but especially in North America, much was done for home missions. Soon the whole Protestant world began to organize benevolent and evangelistic institutions. The laborious Wichern, in A.D. 1849, went through all Germany to arouse interest in home missions, and started a yearly congress on the subject in Wittenberg. Till his death in A.D. 1881, Wichern continued to direct this congress and further the interests which it represented.

§ 183.1. =Institutions.=--The earliest charity school was that founded at Düsselthal by Count Recke-Volmarstein, in A.D. 1816, followed by Zeller’s at Beuggen in A.D. 1820. One of the most famous of these institutions was the =Rauhe Haus= of Wichern, at Horn, near Hamburg, A.D. 1833.[538] Fliedner’s Deaconess Institute at Kaiserswerth is the pride of the evangelical church. It has now 190 branches, with 625 sisters, in the four continents. There are many independent institutions modelled upon it in Germany, England, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, and France. In A.D. 1881 there were in Germany 31, and in the cities of other lands 22, principal deaconess institutions of this German order, with 4,751 sisters and 1,491 fields of labour outside of the institution. The original institute of Kaiserswerth comprises a hospital with 600 patients, a refuge for fallen women and liberated prisoners, an orphanage for girls, a seminary for governesses, and a home for female imbeciles.[539] Löhe founded the deaconess institute of =Neuendettelsau=, on strict Lutheran principles, with hospital, girls’ school, and asylum for imbecile children. In France a most successful institution was founded by pastor Bost of Laforce, in A.D. 1848, for foundlings, imbeciles, and epileptics. In England, George Müller, a poor German student of Halle, a pupil of Tholuck, beginning in A.D. 1832, founded at Bristol five richly endowed orphanages after the pattern of that of A. H. Francke, in which thousands of destitute street children have been educated, and for this and other purposes has spent nearly £1,000,000 without ever asking any one for a contribution, acting on the belief that “the God of Elijah still lives.” The London City Mission employs 600 missionaries. In New York, since A.D. 1855, about 60,000 street children have been placed, by the Society for Poor Children, in Christian families, and 21 Industrial schools are maintained with 10,000 scholars.--Tract Societies in London, Hamburg, Berlin, etc., send out millions of tracts for Christian instruction and awakening. The Society for North Germany successfully pursues a similar work; the Calw Publication Society circulates Christian text-books with woodcuts at a remarkably small price. In Berlin the Evangelical Book Society issues reprints of the older tracts on practical divinity. Christian women, like the English Quakeress Elizabeth Fry, the noble Amalie Sieveking of Hamburg, Miss Florence Nightingale, the heroine of the Crimean war, and the brave Maria Simon of Dresden, who organized the female nursing corps of the wars of 1866, 1870, 1871, helped on the work of home missions in all lands, especially in the departments of tending the poor and the sick.

§ 183.2. The =Order of St. John=, secularized in A.D. 1810, was reorganized by Frederick William IV. in A.D. 1852 into an association for the care of the sick and poor. Under a grand-master it has 350 members and 1,500 associates. Its revenues are formed from entrance fees and annual contributions. It has thirty hospitals. In A.D. 1861 it founded a hospital for men in Beyrout during the persecution of Christians in Syria, and in A.D. 1868 gave aid during the famine that followed the typhus epidemic in East Prussia, and did noble service in the wars of A.D. 1864, 1866, and 1870.

§ 183.3. =The Itinerant Preacher Gustav Werner in Württemberg.=--Abandoning his charge in A.D. 1840, Werner began his itinerant labours, and during the year formed more than a hundred groups of adherents over all Württemberg. His preaching was allegorical and eschatological, and avoided the doctrines of satisfaction and justification. On his repudiating the Augsburg Confession, the church boards refused to recognise him, and he went hither and thither preaching a Christian communism. In A.D. 1842 he bought a site in Reutlingen, built a house, and founded a school for eighty children. In order to develop his views of carrying on industrial arts on a Christian basis, he bought, in A.D. 1850, the paper factory at Reutlingen for £4,000, and subsequently transferred it to Dettingen on a larger scale, at an outlay of £20,000. By A.D. 1862 he had established no less than twenty-two branches, in which manufacturing was carried on, with institutions of all kinds for education, pastoral work, rescuing the lost and raising the fallen. Each member lives and works for the whole; none receives wages; surplus income goes to increase the number and extent of the institutions. Vast multitudes of sunken and destitute families have been by these means restored to respectable social positions and to a moral religious life.

§ 183.4. =Bible Societies.=--The Bible societies constitute an independent branch of the home mission. Modern efforts to circulate Scripture began in England. As a necessary adjunct to missionary societies, the great British and Foreign Bible Society was founded in London in A.D. 1804, embracing all Protestant sects, excepting the Quakers. It circulates Bibles without note or comment. The Apocryphal controversy of A.D. 1825-1827 resulted in the society resolving not to print the Apocrypha in its issues. In consequence of this decision, fifty German societies, including the present society of Berlin, seceded. The New York Association, founded in A.D. 1817, is in thorough accord with the London society. The Baden Missionary Society revived the discussion in A.D. 1852 by making it the subject of essay for a prize, which was won by the learned work of Keerl, who, along with the stricter Lutherans, condemned the Apocrypha. The other side was taken by Stier and Hengstenberg, and most of the consistories advised adherence to the old practice, as all misunderstanding was prevented by Luther’s preface and the prohibition against using passages from the Apocrypha as sermon texts.--Bible societies altogether have issued during the century 180,000,000 Bibles and New Testaments in 324 different languages.[540]

§ 184. FOREIGN MISSIONS.

Protestant zeal for missions to the heathen has gone on advancing since the end of last century (§ 172, 5). Missionary societies increase from year to year. In A.D. 1883 there were seventy independent societies with innumerable branches, which contribute annually about £1,500,000, or five times as much as the Romish church, and maintain 2,000 mission stations, 2,940 European and American missionaries, and 1,000 ordained native pastors and 25,000 native teachers and assistants, having under their care 2,214,000 converts from heathenism. In missionary enterprise England holds the first place, next comes America, and then Germany. Among Protestant sects the Methodists and Baptists are most zealous in the cause of missions, and the Moravian Brethren have wrought most successfully in this department. The missions also did much to prepare the way for the suppression of the slave trade by the European powers in A.D. 1830, and the emancipation of all slaves in the British possessions in A.D. 1834, at a cost of £20,000,000. The noble English philanthropist, William Wilberforce, unweariedly laboured for these ends.--Also in England, Germany, Russia, and France new associations were formed for missions to the Jews, and the work was carried on with admirable patience, though the visible results were very small.

§ 184.1. =Missionary Societies.=--The great American Missionary Society was founded at Boston in A.D. 1810, the English Wesleyan in A.D. 1814, the American Methodist in A.D. 1819, the American Episcopal in A.D. 1820, and the Society of Paris in A.D. 1824. The new German societies were on confessional lines: that of Basel in A.D. 1816, of Berlin in A.D. 1823, the Rhenish with the mission seminary at Barmen in A.D. 1829, the North German, on the basis of the Augsburg Confession, in A.D. 1836. The Dresden Society, which resumed the old Lutheran work in the East Indies (§ 167, 9), founded a seminary at Leipzig in A.D. 1849, in order to get the benefit of the university. Lutheran societies, mostly affiliated with that of Leipzig, were started in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Russia, Bavaria, Hanover, Mecklenburg, Hesse, and America. The Neuendettelsau Institute wrought through the Iowa Synod among the North American Indians, and through the Immanuel Synod among the aborigines of Australia. The Hermannsburg Institute under Harms prosecuted mission work with great zeal. In A.D. 1853, Harms sent out in his own mission ship eight missionaries and as many Christian colonists. It has been objected to this mission, that endeavours after social elevation and industrial training have driven to the background the main question of individual conversion.--The advanced liberal school in Switzerland and Germany sought in A.D. 1883 to start a mission on their own particular lines. They do not propose any opposition to existing agencies, and intend to make their first experiment among the civilized races of India and Japan.

§ 184.2. =Europe and America.=--The Swedish mission in Lapland (§ 160, 7) was resumed in A.D. 1825 by Stockfleth. The Moravians carried on their work among the Eskimos in Greenland, which had now become a wholly Christian country, and also in Labrador, which was almost in the same condition. The chaplain of the Hudson Bay Company, J. West, founded a successful mission in that territory in A.D. 1822. Among the natives and negro slaves in the British possessions, the United States, and West Indies, Moravians, Methodists, Baptists, and Anglican Episcopalians patiently and successfully carried on the work. Among the natives and bush negroes, descendants of runaway slaves, in Guiana, the Moravians did a noble work.--Catholic South America remained closed against Protestant missions. But the ardent zeal of Capt. Allen Gardiner led him to choose the inhospitable shores of Patagonia as a field of labour. He landed there in A.D. 1850 with five missionaries, but in the following year their corpses only were found. The work, however, was started anew in A.D. 1856, and prosecuted with success under the direction of an Anglican bishop.

§ 184.3. =Africa.=--The Moravians have laboured among the Hottentots, the Berlin missionaries among the wild Corannas, and the French Evangelical Society among the Bechuanas. Hahn of Livonia is the apostle of the Hereros. On the East Coast the London Missionary Society has wrought among the warlike Kaffirs, and other British societies are labouring in Natal among the Zulus. On the West Coast the English colony of Sierra Leone was founded for the settling and Christianizing of liberated slaves, and farther south is Liberia, a similar American colony; both in a flourishing condition, under the care of Methodists, Baptists, and Anglican Episcopalians. The Basel missionaries labour on the Gold Coast, Baptists in Old Calabar, and the American and North German Societies on the Gaboon River.--The London missionaries won Radama of Madagascar to Christianity in A.D. 1818, but his successor Ranavalona instituted a bloody persecution of the Christians in A.D. 1835, during which David Jones, the apostle of the Malagassy, suffered martyrdom in A.D. 1843. In the island of Mauritius, where there is an Anglican bishop, many Malagassy Christians found refuge. After the queen’s death in A.D. 1861, her Christian son Radama II. recalled the Christian exiles and the missionaries. He soon became the victim of a palace revolution. His wife and successor Rosaherina continued a heathen till her death in A.D. 1868, but put no obstacle in the way of the gospel. But her cousin Ranavalona II. overthrew the idol worship, was baptized in A.D. 1869, and in the following year burned the national idols. Protestantism now made rapid strides, till interrupted by French Jesuit intrigues, which have been favoured by the recent French occupation.

§ 184.4. Livingstone and Stanley have made marvellous contributions to our geographical knowledge of =Central Africa= and to Christian missions there. The Scottish missionary, David Livingstone, factory boy, afterwards physician and minister, wrought, A.D. 1840-1849, under the London Missionary Society in South Africa, and then entered on his life work of exploration in Central Africa. During his third exploring journey into the interior in A.D. 1865 as a British consul, he was not heard of for a whole year. H. M. Stanley, of the New York Herald, was sent in A.D. 1871, and found him in Ujiji on Lake Tanganyiká. Livingstone died of dysentery on the southern bank of this lake in A.D. 1873. Still more important was Stanley’s second journey, A.D. 1874-1877, which yielded the most brilliant scientific results, and was epoch-making in the history of African missions. He got the greatest potentate in those regions, King Mtesa of Uganda, who had been converted by the Arabs to Mohammedanism, to adopt Christianity and permit a Christian church to be built in his city. Stanley’s letters from Africa roused missionary fervour throughout England. The Church Missionary Society in A.D. 1877 set up a mission station in the capital, and put a steamer on the Victoria Nyanza. The church services were regularly attended, education and the work of civilization zealously prosecuted, Sunday labour and the slave trade prohibited, etc. French Jesuits entered in A.D. 1879, insinuating suspicions of the English missionaries into the ear of the king, and the machinations of the Arab slave-dealers made their position dangerous. Missionaries arrived by way of Egypt with flattering recommendations from the English foreign secretary in the name of the queen. But the traders, by means of an Arabic translation of a letter purporting to be from the English consul at Zanzibar, cast suspicion on the document as a forgery, and represented its bearers as in the pay of the hostile Egyptians. Mtesa’s wrath knew no bounds, and only his favour for the missionary physician saved the mission and led him to send an embassy of three chiefs and two missionaries to England in June, A.D. 1879, to discover the actual truth. His anger meanwhile cooled, and the work of the mission was resumed. He was preparing to put an utter end to the national heathenism, when suddenly a report spread that the greatest of all the Lubaris or inferior deities, that of the Nyanza Lake, had become incarnate in an old woman, in order to heal the king and restore the ancient religion. The whole populace was in an uproar; Mtesa, under threat of deposition, restored heathenism, with human sacrifice, man stealing, and the slave trade. Then the Lubari excitement cooled down. Mtesa, moved by a dream, declared himself again a Mohammedan, and converted the Christian church into a mosque. The English missionaries, stripped of all means, starved, and subjected to all sorts of privations, did not flinch. At last, in January, A.D. 1881, the embassy, sent eighteen months before to England, reached home again, and, by the story of their reception, caused a revulsion of feeling in favour of the English mission, which again flourished under the protection of the king. But Mtesa died in 1884. His son and successor, Mwanga, a suspicious, peevish young despot, addicted to all forms of vice, began again the most cruel persecution, of which Bishop Hannington, sent out from England, with fifty companions, were the victims. Only four escaped.

§ 184.5. =Asia.=--The most important mission field in Asia is =India=. The old Lutheran mission there had great difficulties to contend against: the system of caste distinctions, the proud self-sufficiency of the pantheistic Brahmans, the politico-commercial interests of the East India Company, etc. The Leipzig Society has sixteen stations among the Tamuls, and alongside are English, American, and German missionaries of every school. The Gossner Society works among the Kohls of Chota Nagpore, where a rival mission has been started by the puseyite bishop of Calcutta, Dr. Milman, to which, in A.D. 1868, six of the twelve German missionaries and twelve of the thirty-six chapels were transferred. The Basel missionaries labour in Canara and Malabar. The military revolt in Northern India in A.D. 1857 interrupted missionary operations for two years; but the work was afterwards resumed with great vigour. The Christian benevolence shown during the famine of A.D. 1878, in which three millions perished, made a great impression in favour of the Protestant church. In the preceding years throughout all India only between 5,000 and 10, 000 souls were annually added; but in A.D. 1878 the number of new converts rose to 100,000, and in A.D. 1879 there were 44,000.--The island of =Ceylon= was, under Portuguese and Dutch rule, in great part nominally Christianized; but when compulsion was removed under British rule, this sham profession was at an end. Multitudes fell back into heathenism, and in the first ten years of the British dominion 900 new idol temples were erected. From A.D. 1812 Baptist, Methodist, and Anglican missionaries have toiled with small appearance of fruit. In =Farther India= the American missionaries have wrought since A.D. 1813. Judson and his heroic wife did noble work among the Karens and the Burmans. Also in Malacca, Singapore, and Siam the Protestant missions have had brilliant success. The work in Sumatra has been retarded by the opposition of the Malays and deadly malarial fever. The preaching of the gospel was eminently successful in =Java=, where since A.D. 1814 Baptist missionaries and agents of the London Society have wrought heroically. In Celebes the Dutch missionaries found twenty Christian congregations of old standing, greatly deteriorated for want of pastoral care, but still using the Heidelberg Catechism. At Banjermassin, in A.D. 1835 the Rhenish Society founded their first station in Borneo, and wrought not unsuccessfully among the heathen Dyaks. But in A.D. 1859 a rebellion of the Mohammedan residents led to the expulsion of the Dutch and the murder of all Christians. Only a few of the missionaries escaped martyrdom, and subsequently settled in Sumatra.

§ 184.6. The work in =China= began in A.D. 1807, when the London Missionary Society settled Morrison in Canton, where he began the study of the language and the translation of the Bible. Gutzlaff of Pomerania, in A.D. 1826, conceived the plan of evangelizing China through the Chinese converts, but, though he continued his efforts till his death in A.D. 1854, the scheme failed through the unworthiness of many of the professors. The war against the opium traffic, A.D. 1839-1842, opened five ports to the mission, and led to the transference of Hongkong to the English. The Chinese mission now made rapid strides; but the interior was still untouched. The conflict between the governor of Canton and the English, French, and Americans, and the chastisement administered to the Chinese in A.D. 1857, led the emperor, in A.D. 1858, to make a treaty with the three powers and also with Russia, by which the whole land was opened up for trade and missions, and full toleration granted to Christianity. Popular hatred of strangers, and especially of missionaries, however, occasioned frequently bloody encounters, and in A.D. 1870 there was a furious outburst directed against the French missionaries. During a terrible famine in North China, in A.D. 1878, when more than five millions perished, the heroic and self-sacrificing conduct of the missionaries brought them into high favour. Throughout China there are now 320 organized Christian congregations with 50,000 adherents under 238 foreign missionaries.--After seclusion for three centuries, =Japan=, about the same time as China, was opened by treaty to European and American commerce, notwithstanding the opposition of the old feudal nobility, the so-called Daimios. In A.D. 1871 the mikado’s government succeeded in overcoming completely the power of the daimios and setting aside the shiogun or military vizier, who had exercised supreme executive power. European customs were introduced, but the rigorous enactments against native converts to Christianity were still enforced. A cruel persecution of native Christians was carried on in A.D. 1867, but the Protestant missionaries continued to work unweariedly, preparing dictionaries and reading books. The Buddhist priests sought to get up a rival mission to send agents to America and Europe, whereas many of the leading newspapers expressed the opinion that Japan must soon put Christianity in the place of Buddhism as the state religion.

§ 184.7. =Polynesia and Australia.=--The flourishing Protestant church of Tahiti, the largest and finest of the Society Islands (§ 172, 5), suffered from the appearance of two French Jesuits in A.D. 1836. When Queen Pomare compelled them to withdraw, the French government, resenting this as an indignity to their nation, sent a fleet to attack the defenceless people, proclaimed a French protectorate, and introduced not only Catholic missionaries, but European vices. Amid much persecution, however, the Protestants held their own. In December, 1880, Pomare V. resigned, and the Society Islands became a dependency of France.--In the south-east groups great opposition was shown, but in the north-west Christianity made rapid progress. The island of Raiatea was the centre of the South Sea missions. There from A.D. 1819 John Williams, the apostle of the South Seas, wrought till he met a martyr’s death in A.D. 1839. He went from place to place in a mission ship built by his own hands. The Harvey Group were Christianized in A.D. 1821, and the Navigator Group in A.D. 1830. The French took the Marquesas Islands in A.D. 1838, and introduced Catholic missionaries. The attempt to evangelize the New Hebrides led to the death of Williams and two of his companions. Missionaries of the London Society, A.D. 1797-1799, had failed in the Friendly Islands through the savage character of the natives, but in A.D. 1822 the Methodists made a successful start. The gospel was carried thence to Fiji, which is now under British rule. Both groups have become almost wholly Christianized. The =Sandwich Islands= form a third mission centre, wrought by the American board. Kamehameha I. gladly adopted the elements of Christian civilization, though rejecting Christianity: while his successor Kamehameha II. in A.D. 1829 abolished tabu and overthrew the idol temples. In A.D. 1851 Christianity was adopted as the national religion. The work was more difficult in =New Zealand=, where the Church Missionary Society, represented by Samuel Marsden, the apostle of New Zealand, began operations in A.D. 1814. For ten years the position of the missionaries was most hazardous; yet they held on, and the conversion of the most bloodthirsty of the chiefs did much to advance their cause. In New Guinea the London Society has been making steady progress. Among the stolid natives of the continent of New Holland, the so called Papuans, the labours of the Moravians since A.D. 1849 have not yielded much fruit. Since A.D. 1875 the German-Australian Immanuel Synod, supported by Neuendettelsau, has laboured for the conversion of the heathen in the inland districts.

§ 184.8. =Missions to the Jews.=--In A.D. 1809 the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews (§ 172, 5) was formed by a union of all denominations, but soon passed into the hands of the Anglicans. By the circulation of the Scriptures and tracts, and by the sending out of missionaries, mostly Jewish converts, the work was persevered in amid many discouragements. In A.D. 1818 Poland was opened to its missionaries, and there some 600 Jews were baptized. The society carried on its operations also in Germany, Holland, France, and Turkey. The work in Poland was interrupted by the Crimean war, and was not resumed till A.D. 1875. In Bessarabia Faltin has laboured successfully among the Jews since A.D. 1860. He was joined in the work in A.D. 1867 by the converted Rabbi Gurland, who had studied theology at Halle and Berlin. In A.D. 1871 Gurland accepted a call to similar work in Courland and Lithuania, and since A.D. 1876 has been Lutheran pastor at Mitau. In A.D. 1841 the evangelical bishopric of St. James was founded in Jerusalem by the English and Prussian governments conjointly, presentations to be made alternately, but the ordination to be according to the Anglican rite. The first bishop was Alexander, a Jewish convert. He died in A.D. 1845 and was succeeded by the zealous missionary Gobat, elected by the Prussian government. He died in A.D. 1879 and was succeeded by Barclay, who died in A.D. 1881. It was now again Prussia’s turn to make an appointment. The English demand to have Lutheran ministers ordained successively deacon, presbyter, and bishop had given offence, and so no new appointment has been made. In June 1886 the English-Prussian compact was formally cancelled and a proposal made to found an independent Prussian Evangelical bishopric.

§ 184.9. =Missions among the Eastern Churches.=--In A.D. 1815 the Church Missionary Society founded a missionary emporium in the island of Malta, as a tract depôt for the evangelizing the East; and in A.D. 1846 the Malta Protestant College was erected for training native missionaries, teachers, physicians, etc., for work in the various oriental countries. In the Ionian islands, in Constantinople, and in Greece, British and American missionaries began operations in A.D. 1819 by erecting schools and circulating the scriptures. At first the orthodox clergy were favourable, but as the work progressed they became actively hostile, and only two mission schools in Syra and Athens were allowed to continue. In Syria the Americans made Beyrout their head quarters in A.D. 1824, but the work was interrupted by the Turco-Egyptian conflicts. Subsequently, however, it flourished more and more, and, before the Syrian massacre of A.D. 1860 (§ 207, 2), there were nine prosperous stations in Syria. The founding of the Jerusalem bishopric in A.D. 1841, and the issuing of the Hatti-Humayun in A.D. 1856 (§ 207, 2), induced the Church Missionary Society to make more vigorous efforts which, however, were afterwards abandoned for want of success. Down to the outbreak of the persecution of Syrian Christians in A.D. 1860, this society had five flourishing stations. From A.D. 1831 the Americans had wrought zealously and successfully among the Armenians in Constantinople and neighbourhood, but in A.D. 1845 the Armenian patriarch excited a violent persecution which threatened the utter overthrow of the work. The British ambassador, Sir Stratford de Redcliffe, however, insisted upon the Porte recognising the rights of the Protestant Armenians as an independent religious denomination, and since then the missions have prospered. Among the Nestorians in Turkey and Persia the Americans, with Dr. Grant at their head, began operations in A.D. 1834; but through Jesuit intrigues the suspicions of the Kurds and Turks were excited, and in A.D. 1843 and 1846 a war of extermination was waged against the mountain Nestorians, which annihilated the Protestant missions among them. Operations, however, have been recommenced with encouraging success. Among the deeply degraded Copts in Egypt, and extending from them into Abyssinia, the Moravians had been working without any apparent result from A.D. 1752 to A.D. 1783. In A.D. 1826 the Church Missionary Society, under German missionaries trained at Basel (Gobat, Irenberg, Krapf [Krapff], etc.), took up the work, till it was stopped by the government in A.D. 1837. In A.D. 1855 the Basel missionaries began again to work in Abyssinia with the approval of King Theodore. This state of things soon changed. Theodore’s ambition was to conquer Egypt and overthrow Islam. But when in A.D. 1863 this scheme only called forth threats from London and Paris, he gave loose rein to his natural ferocity and put the English consul and the German missionaries in chains. By means of an armed expedition in A.D. 1868, England compelled the liberation of the prisoners, and Theodore put an end to his own life. After the withdrawal of the English the country was desolated by civil wars, and at the close of these troubles in A.D. 1878 the mission resumed its operations.

III. Catholicism in General.

§ 185. THE PAPACY AND THE STATES OF THE CHURCH.

The papacy, humiliated but not destroyed by Napoleon I., was in A.D. 1814 by the aid of princes of all creeds restored to the full possession of its temporal and spiritual authority, and amid many difficulties it reasserted for the most part successfully its hierarchical claims in the Catholic states and in those whose Protestantism and Catholicism were alike tolerated. Many severe blows indeed were dealt to the papacy even in the Roman states by revolutionary movements, yet political reaction generally by-and-by put the church in a position as good if not better than it had before. But while on this side the Alps, especially since the outbreak of A.D. 1848, ultramontanism gained one victory after another in its own domain, in Italy, it suffered one humiliation after another; and while the Vatican Council, which put the crown upon its idolatrous assumptions (§ 189, 3), was still sitting, the whole pride of its temporal sovereignty was shattered: the States of the Church were struck out of the number of the European powers, and Rome became the capital and residence of the prince of Sardinia as king of United Italy. But reverence for the pope now reached a height among catholic nations which it had never anywhere attained before.

§ 185.1. =The First Four Popes of the Century.=--Napoleon as First Consul of the French Republic, in A.D. 1801 concluded a concordat with =Pius VII.=, A.D. 1800-1823, who under Austrian protection was elected pope at Venice, whereby the pope was restored to his temporal and spiritual rights, but was obliged to abandon his hierarchical claims over the church of France (§ 203, 1). He crowned the consul emperor of the French at Paris in A.D. 1804, but when he persisted in the assertion of his hierarchical principles, Napoleon in A.D. 1808 entered the papal territories, and in May, A.D. 1809, formally repudiated the donation of “his predecessor” Charlemagne. The pope treated the offered payment of two million francs as an insult, threatened the emperor with the ban, and in July, A.D. 1809, was imprisoned at Savona, and in A.D. 1812 was taken to Fontainebleau. He refused for a time to give canonical institution to the bishops nominated by the emperor, and though at last he yielded and agreed to reside in France, he soon withdrew his concession, and the complications of A.D. 1813 constrained the emperor, on February 14th, to set free the pope and the Papal States. In May the pope again entered Rome. One of his first official acts was the restoration of the Jesuits by the bull Sollicitudo omnium, as by the unanimous request of all Christendom. The Congregation of the Index was again set up, and during the course of the year 737 charges of heresy were heard before the tribunal of the holy office. All sales of church property were pronounced void, and 1,800 monasteries and 600 nunneries were reclaimed. In A.D. 1815 the pope formally protested against the decision of the Vienna Congress, especially against the overthrow of the spiritual principalities in the German empire (§ 192, 1). Equally fruitless was his demand for the restoration of Avignon (§ 165, 15). In A.D. 1816 he condemned the Bible societies as a plague to Christendom, and renewed the prohibition of Bible translations. His diplomatic schemes were determined by his able secretary Cardinal Consalvi, who not only at the Vienna Congress, but also subsequently by several concordats secured the fullest possible expression to the interests and claims of the curia.--His successor was =Leo XII.=, A.D. 1823-1829, who, more strict in his civil administration than his predecessor, condemned Bible societies, renewed the Inquisition prosecutions, for the sake of gain celebrated the jubilee in A.D. 1825, ordered prayers for uprooting of heresy, rebuilt the Ghetto wall of Rome, overturned during the French rule (§ 95, 3), which marked off the Jews’ quarter, till Pius IX. again threw it down in A.D. 1846. After the eight months’ reign of =Pius VIII.=, A.D. 1829-1830, =Gregory XVI.=, A.D. 1831-1846, ascended the papal throne, and sought amid troubles at home and abroad to exalt to its utmost pitch the hierarchical idea. In A.D. 1832 he issued an encyclical, in which he declared irreconcilable war against modern science as well as against freedom of conscience and the press, and his whole pontificate was a consistent carrying out of this principle. He encountered incessant opposition from liberal and revolutionary movements in his own territory, restrained only by Austrian and French military interference, A.D. 1832-1838, and from the rejection of his hierarchical schemes by Spain, Portugal, Prussia, and Russia.[541]

§ 185.2. =Pius IX., A.D. 1846-1878.=--Count Mastai Feretti in his fifty-fourth year succeeded Gregory on 16th June, and took the name of Pius IX. While in ecclesiastical matters he seemed willing to hold by the old paths and distinctly declared against Bible societies, he favoured reform in civil administration and encouraged the hopes of the liberals who longed for the independence and unity of Italy. But this only awakened the thunder storm which soon burst upon his own head. The far resounding cry of the jubilee days, “Evviva Pio Nono!” ended in the pope’s flight to Gaeta in November, 1848; and in February, 1849, the Roman Republic was proclaimed. The French Republic, however, owing to the threatening attitude of Austria, hastened to take Rome and restore the temporal power of the pope. Amid the convulsions of Italy, Pius could not return to Rome till April, 1850, where he was maintained by French and Austrian bayonets. Abandoning his liberal views, the pope now put himself more and more under the influence of the Jesuits, and his absolutist and reactionary politics were directed by Card. Antonelli. From his exile at Gaeta he had asked the opinion of the bishops of the whole church regarding the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, to whose protection he believed that he owed his safety. The opinions of 576 were favourable, resting on Bible proofs: Genesis iii. 15, Song of Sol. iv. 7, 12, and Luke i. 28; but some French and German bishops were strongly opposed. The question was now submitted for further consideration to various congregations, and finally the consenting bishops were invited to Rome to settle the terms of the doctrinal definition of the new dogma. After four secret sessions it was acknowledged by acclamation, and on 8th December, 1854 (§ 104, 7), the pope read in the Sixtine chapel the bull Ineffabilis and placed a brilliant diadem on the head of the image of the queen of heaven. The disciples of St. Thomas listened in silence to this aspersion of their master’s orthodoxy; no heed was paid to two isolated individual voices that protested; the bishops of all Catholic lands proclaimed the new dogma, the theologians vindicated it, and the spectacle-loving people rejoiced in the pompous Mary-festival. The pope’s next great performance was the encyclical, Quanta cura, of December 8th, 1864, and the accompanying syllabus cataloguing in eighty-four propositions all the errors of the day, by which not only the antichristian and anti-ecclesiastical tendencies, but also claims for freedom of belief and worship, liberty of the press and science, the state’s independence of the church, the equality of the laity and clergy in civil matters, in short all the principles of modern political and social life, were condemned as heretical. Three years later the centenary of Peter (§ 16, 1) brought five hundred bishops to Rome, with other clergy and laymen from all lands. The enthusiasm for the papal chair was such that the pope was encouraged to convoke an œcumenical council. The jubilee of his consecration as priest in A.D. 1869 brought him congratulatory addresses signed by one and a half millions, filled the papal coffers, attracted an immense number of visitors to Rome, and secured to all the votaries gathered there a complete indulgence. On the Vatican Council which met during that same year, see § 189.[542]

§ 185.3. =The Overthrow of the Papal States.=--In the Peace of Villafranca of 1859, which put an end to the short Austro-French war in Italy, a confederation was arranged of all the Italian princes under the honorary presidency of the pope for drawing up the future constitution of Italy. During the war the Austrians had vacated Bologna, but the French remained in Rome to protect the pope. The revolution now broke out in Romagna. Victor Emanuel, king of Sardinia, was proclaimed dictator for the time over that part of the Papal States and a provisional government was set up. In vain did the pope remind Christendom in an encyclical of the necessity of maintaining his temporal power, in vain did he thunder his excommunicatio major against all who would contribute to its overthrow. A pamphlet war against the temporal power now began, and About’s letters in the Moniteur described with bitter scorn the incapacity of the papal government. In his pamphlet, “Le Pope et le Congrès,” Laguéronnière proposed to restrict the pope’s sovereignty to Rome and its neighbourhood, levy a tax for the support of the papal court on all Catholic nations, and leave Rome undisturbed by political troubles. On December 31st, 1859, Napoleon III. exhorted the pope to yield to the logic of facts and to surrender the provinces that refused any longer to be his. The pope then issued a rescript in which he declared that he could never give up what belonged not to him but to the church. The popular vote in Romagna went almost unanimously for annexation to Sardinia, and this, in spite of the papal ban, was done. A revolution broke out in Umbria and the March of Ancona, and Victor Emanuel without more ado attached these states also to his dominion in A.D. 1860, so that only Rome and the Campagna were retained by the pope, and even these only by means of French support. At the September convention of A.D. 1864 Italy undertook to maintain the papal domain intact, to permit the organization of an independent papal army, and to contribute to the papal treasury; while France was to quit Roman territory within at the latest two years. The pope submitted to what he could not prevent, but still insisted upon his most extreme claims, answered every attempt at conciliation with his stereotyped non possumus, and in A.D. 1866 proclaimed St. Catherine of Siena (§ 112, 4) patron of the “city.” When the last of the French troops took ship in A.D. 1866 the radical party thought the time had come for freeing Italy from papal rule, and roused the whole land by public proclamation. Garibaldi again put himself at the head of the movement. The Papal State was soon encircled by bands of volunteers, and insurrections broke out even within Rome itself. Napoleon pronounced this a breach of the September convention, and in A.D. 1867 the volunteers were utterly routed by the French at Mentana. The French guarded Civita Vecchia and fortified Rome. But in August, 1870, their own national exigencies demanded the withdrawal of the French troops, and after the battle of Sedan the Italians to a man insisted on having Rome as their capital, and Victor Emanuel acquiesced. The pope sought help far and near from Catholic and non-Catholic powers, but he received only the echo of his own words, non possumus. After a four hours’ cannonade a breach was made in the walls of the eternal city, the white flag appeared on St. Angelo, and amid the shouts of the populace the Italian troops entered on September 20th, 1870. A plebiscite in the papal dominions gave 133,681 votes in favour of annexation and 1,507 against; in Rome alone there were 40,785 for and only 46 against. The king now issued the decree of incorporation; Rome became capital of united Italy and the Quirinal the royal residence.

§ 185.4. =The Prisoner of the Vatican, A.D. 1870-1878.=--The dethroned papal king could only protest and utter denunciations. No result followed from the adoption of St. Joseph as guardian and patron of the church, nor from the solemn consecration of the whole world to the most sacred heart of Jesus, at the jubilee of June 16th, A.D. 1875. The measures of A.D. 1871, by which Cavour sought to realize his ideal of a “free church in a free state,” were pronounced absurd, cunning, deceitful, and an outrage on the apostles Peter and Paul. By these measures the rights and privileges of a sovereign for all time had been conferred on the pope: the holiness and inviolability of his person, a body-guard, a post and telegraph bureau, free ambassadorial communication with foreign powers, the ex-territoriality of his palace of the Vatican, embracing fifteen large saloons, 11,500 rooms, 236 stairs, 218 corridors, two chapels, several museums, archives, libraries, large beautiful gardens, etc., as also of the Lateran and the summer palace of Castle Gandolpho, with all appurtenances, also an annual income, free from all burdens and taxes, of three and a quarter million francs, equal to the former amount of his revenue, together with unrestricted liberty in the exercise of all ecclesiastical rights of sovereignty and primacy, and the renunciation of all state interference in the disposal of bishoprics and benefices. The right of the inferior clergy to exercise the appellatio ab abusu to a civil tribunal was set aside, and of all civil rights only that of the royal exequatur in the election of bishops, i.e. the mere right of investing the nominee of the curia in the possession of the revenues of his office, was retained.--To the end of his life Pius every year returned the dotation as an insult and injury, and “the starving holy father in prison, who has not where to lay his head,” received three or four times more in Peter’s pence contributed by all Catholic Christendom. Playing the rôle of a prisoner he never passed beyond the precincts of the Vatican. He reached the semi-jubilee of his papal coronation in A.D. 1871, being the first pope who falsified the old saying, Annos Petri non videbit. He rejected the offer of a golden throne and the title of “the great,” but he accepted a Parisian lady’s gift of a golden crown of thorns. In support of the prison myth, straws from the papal cell were sold in Belgium for half a franc per stalk, and for the same price photographs of the pope behind an iron grating. As once on a time the legend arose about the disciple whom Jesus loved that he would not die, so was it once said about the pope; and on his eighty-third birthday, in A.D. 1874, a Roman Jesuit paper, eulogising the moral purity of his life, put the words in his mouth, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” But he himself by constantly renewed rescripts, encyclicals, briefs, allocutions to the cardinals and to numerous deputations from far and near, unweariedly fanned the flame of enthusiasm and fanaticism throughout papal Christendom, and thundered threatening prophecies not only against the Italian, but also against foreign states, for with most of them he lived in open war. A collection of his “Speeches delivered at the Vatican” was published in 1874, commented on by Gladstone in the Contemporary Review for January, 1875, who gives abundant quotations showing papal assumptions, maledictions, abuse and misunderstanding of the Scriptures with which they abound. On the fiftieth anniversary of the pope’s episcopal consecration, in June, 1877, crowds from all lands assembled to offer their congratulations, with costly presents and Peter’s pence amounting to sixteen and a half million francs. He died February 8th, 1878, in the eighty-sixth year of his age and thirty-second of his pontificate. His heirs claimed the unpaid dotations of twenty million lire, but were refused by the courts of law.[543]--His secretary Antonelli, descended from an old brigand family, who from the time of his stay at Gaeta was his evil demon, predeceased him in A.D. 1876. Though the son of a poor herdsman and woodcutter, he left more than a hundred million lire. His natural daughter, to the great annoyance of the Vatican, sought, but without success, in the courts of justice to make good her claims against her father’s greedy brothers.

§ 185.5. =Leo XIII.=--After only two days’ conclave the Cardinal-archbishop of Perugia, Joachim Pecci, born in A.D. 1810, was proclaimed on February 20th, 1878, as Leo XIII. In autograph letters he intimated his accession to the German and Russian emperors, but not to the king of Italy, and expressed his wish for a good mutual understanding. To the government of the Swiss Cantons he declared his hope that their ancient friendly relations might be restored. At Easter, 1878, he issued an encyclical to all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops, in which he required of them that they should earnestly entreat the mediation of the “immaculate queen of heaven” and the intercession of St. Joseph, “the heavenly shield of the church,” and also failed not to make prominent the infallibility of the apostolic chair, and to condemn all the errors condemned by his predecessors, emphasizing the necessity of restoring the temporal power of the pope, and confirming and renewing all the protests of his predecessor Pius IX., of sacred memory, against the overthrow of the Papal States. On the first anniversary of his elevation he proclaimed a universal jubilee, with the promise of a complete indulgence. He still persisted in the prison myth of his predecessor, and like him sent back the profferred contribution of his “jailor.” In the conflicts with foreign powers inherited from Pius, as well as in his own, he has employed generally moderate and conciliatory language.--He has not hesitated to take the first step toward a good understanding with his opponents, for which, while persistently maintaining the ancient principles of the papal chair, he makes certain concessions in regard to subordinate matters, always with the design and expectation of seeing them outweighed on the other side by the conservation of all the other hierarchical pretensions of the curial system. It was, however, only in the middle of A.D. 1885 that it became evident that the pope had determined, without allowing any misunderstanding to arise between himself and his cardinals, to break through the trammels of the irreconcilable zealots in the college. And indeed after the conclusion of the German Kulturkampf (§ 197, 13, 15), brought about by these means, in an allocution with reference thereto addressed to the cardinals in May, 1887, he gave an unexpected expression to his wish and longing in regard to an understanding with the government on the Italian question, which involved an utter renunciation of his predecessor’s dogged Non possumus, the attitude hitherto unfalteringly maintained. “Would that peaceful counsels,” says he, “embracing all our peoples should prevail in Italy also, and that at last once that unhappy difference might be overcome without loss of privilege to the holy see!” Such harmony, indeed, is only possible when the pope “is subjected to no authority and enjoys perfect freedom,” which would cause no loss to Italy, “but would only secure its lasting peace and safety.” That he counts upon the good offices of the German emperor for the effecting of this longed-for restoration of such a modus vivendi with the Italian government, he has clearly indicated in his preliminary communications to the Prussian centre exhorting to peace (§ 197, 14). The Moniteur de Rome (§ 188, 1), however, interpreted the words of the pope thus: “Italy would lose nothing materially or politically, if it gave a small corner of its territory to the pope, where he might enjoy actual sovereignty as a guarantee of his spiritual independence.”--On Leo’s contributions to theological science see § 191, 12; on his attitude to Protestantism and the Eastern Church, see § 175, 2, 4. He expressed himself against the freemasons in an encyclical of A.D. 1884 with even greater severity than Pius. Consequently the Roman Inquisition issued an instruction to all bishops throughout the Catholic world requiring them to enjoin their clergy in the pulpit and the confessional to make it known that all freemasons are eo ipso excommunicated, and by Catholic associations of every sort, especially by the spread of the third order of St. Francis (§ 186, 2), the injunction was carried out. At the same time a year’s reprieve was given to the freemasons, during which the Roman heresy laws, which required their children, wives, and relatives to denounce them to all clergy and laymen, were to be suspended. Should the guilty, however, allow this day of grace to pass, these laws were to be again fully enforced, and then it would be only for the pope to absolve them from their terrible sin.

§ 186. VARIOUS ORDERS AND ASSOCIATIONS.

The order of the Jesuits restored in A.D. 1814 by Pius VII. impregnated all other orders with its spirit, gained commanding influence over Pius IX., made the bishops its agents, and turned the whole Catholic church into a Jesuit institution. An immense number of societies arose aiming at the accomplishment of home mission work, inspired by the Jesuit spirit and carrying out unquestioningly the ultramontane ideas of their leaders. Also zeal for foreign missions on old Jesuit lines revived, and the enthusiasm for martyrdom was due mainly to the same cause.

§ 186.1. =The Society of Jesus and Related Orders.=--After the suppression of their order by Clement XIV. the Jesuits found refuge mainly among the =Redemptorists= (§ 165, 2), whose headquarters were at Vienna, from which they spread through Austria and Bavaria, finding entrance also into Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Holland, and after 1848 into Catholic Prussia, as well as into Hesse and Nassau. The =Congregation of the Sacred Heart= was founded by ex-Jesuits in Belgium in A.D. 1794, and soon spread in Austria and Bavaria.--The =restored Jesuit order= was met with a storm of opposition from the liberals. The July revolution of A.D. 1830 drove the Jesuits from France, and when they sought to re-establish themselves, Gregory XVI., under pressure of the government, insisted that their general should abolish the French institutions in A.D. 1845. An important branch of the order had settled in Catholic Switzerland, but the unfavourable issue of the Separated Cantons’ War of 1847 drove its members out of that refuge. The revolution of 1848 threatened the order with extinction, but the papal restoration of A.D. 1850 re-introduced it into most Catholic countries. Since then the sons of Loyola have renewed their youth like the eagle. They have forced their way into all lands, even in those on both sides of the ocean that had by legislative enactments been closed against them, spreading ultramontane views among Catholics, converting Protestants, and disseminating their principles in schools and colleges. Even Pius IX., under whose auspices Aug. Theiner had been allowed, in A.D. 1853, in his “History of the Pontificate of Clement XIV.” to bring against them the heavy artillery drawn from “the secret archives of the Vatican,” again handed over to them the management of public instruction, and surrendered himself even more and more to their influence, so that at last he saw only by their eyes, heard only with their ears, and resolved only according to their will.[544] The founding of the Italian kingdom under the Prince of Sardinia in A.D. 1860 led to their expulsion from all Italy, with the exception of Venice and the remnants of the Papal States. When, in A.D. 1866, Venice also became an Italian province, they migrated thence into the Tyrol and other Austrian provinces, where they enjoyed the blessings of the concordat (§ 198, 2). Spain, too, on the expulsion of Queen Isabella in A.D. 1868, and even Mexico and several of the States of Central and Southern America, drove out the disciples of Loyola. On the other hand, they made brilliant progress in Germany, especially in Rhenish Hesse and the Catholic provinces of Prussia. But under the new German empire the Reichstag, in A.D. 1872, passed a law suppressing the Jesuits and all similar orders throughout the empire (§ 197, 4). They were also formally expelled from France in A.D. 1880 (§ 203, 6). Still, however, in A.D. 1881 the order numbered 11,000 members in five provinces, and according to Bismarck’s calculation in A.D. 1872 their property amounted to 280 million thalers. In A.D. 1853 John Beckx of Belgium was made general. He retired in A.D. 1884 at the age of ninety, Anderlady, a Swiss, having been appointed in A.D. 1883 his colleague and successor.--The hope which was at first widely entertained that Leo XIII. would emancipate himself from the domination of the order seems more and more to be proved a vain delusion. In July, 1886, he issued, on the occasion of a new edition of the institutions of the order, a letter to Anderlady, in which he, in the most extravagant manner, speaks of the order as having performed the most signal services “to the church and society,” and confirms anew everything that his predecessors had said and done in its favour, while expressly and formally he recalls anew anything that any of them had said and done against it.

§ 186.2. =Other Orders and Congregations.=--After the storms of the revolution religious orders rapidly recovered lost ground. France decreed, on November 2nd, 1789, the abolition of all orders, and cloisters and in 1802, under Napoleon’s auspices, they were also suppressed in the German empire and the friendly princes indemnified with their goods. Yet on grounds of utility Napoleon restored the Lazarists, as well as the Sisters of Mercy, whose scattered remnants he collected in A.D. 1807 in Paris into a general chapter, under the presidency of the empress-mother. But new cloisters in great numbers were erected specially in Belgium and France (in opposition to the law of 1789, which was unrepealed), in Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Rhenish Hesse, etc., as also in England and America. In 1849 there were in Prussia fifty monastic institutes; in 1872 there were 967. In Cologne one in every 215, in Aachen one in every 110, in Münster one in every sixty-one, in Paderborn one in every thirty-three, was a Catholic priest or member of an order. In Bavaria, between 1831 and 1873 the number of cloisters rose from 43 to 628, all, with the exception of some old Benedictine monasteries, inspired and dominated by the Jesuits. Even the Dominicans, originally such determined opponents, are now pervaded by the Jesuit spirit. The restoration of the =Trappist order= (§ 156, 8) deserves special mention. On their expulsion from La Trappe in A.D. 1791 the brothers found an asylum in the Canton Freiburg, and when driven thence by the French invasion of A.D. 1798, Paul I. obtained from the czar permission for them to settle in White Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. But expelled from these regions again in A.D. 1800 they wandered through Europe and America, till after Napoleon’s defeat they purchased back the monastery of La Trappe, and made it the centre of a group of new settlements throughout France and beyond it.--Besides regular orders there were also numerous =congregations= or religious societies with communal life according to a definite but not perpetually binding rule, and without the obligation of seclusion, as well as =brotherhoods= and =sisterhoods= without any such rule, which after the restoration of A.D. 1814 in France and after A.D. 1848 in Germany, were formed for the purposes of prayer, charity, education, and such like. From France many of these spread into the Rhine Provinces and Westphalia.--In Spain and Portugal (§ 205, 1, 5) all orders were repeatedly abolished, subsequently also in Sardinia and even in all Italy (§ 204, 1, 2), and also in several Romish American states (§ 209, 1, 2), as also in Prussia and Hesse (§ 197, 8, 15). Finally the third French Republic has enforced existing laws against all orders and congregations not authorized by the State (§ 203, 6).--On the 700th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis, in September, 1882, Leo XIII. issued an encyclical declaring the institute of the Franciscan Tertiaries (§ 98, 11) alone capable of saving human society from all the political and social dangers of the present and future, which had some success at least in Italy.

Of what inhuman barbarity the superiors of cloisters are still capable is shown instar omnium in the horrible treatment of the nun =Barbara Ubryk=, who, avowedly on account of a breach of her vow of chastity, was confined since A.D. 1848 in the cloister of the Carmelite nuns at Cracow in a dark, narrow cell beside the sewer of the convent, without fire, bed, chair, or table. It was only in A.D. 1869, in consequence of an anonymous communication to the law officers, that she was freed from her prison in a semi-animal condition, quite naked, starved, and covered with filth, and consigned to an asylum. The populace of Cracow, infuriated at such conduct, could be restrained from demolishing all the cloisters only by the aid of the military.

§ 186.3. =The Pius Verein.=--A society under the name of the Pius Verein was started at Mainz in October, 1848, to further Catholic interests, advocating the church’s independence of the State, the right of the clergy to direct education, etc. At the annual meetings its leading members boasted in grossly exaggerated terms of what had been accomplished and recklessly prophesied of what would yet be achieved. At the twenty-eighth general assembly at Bonn in A.D. 1881, with an attendance of 1,100, the same confident tone was maintained. Windhorst reminded the Prussian government of the purchase of the Sibylline books, and declared that each case of breaking off negotiations raised the price of the peace. Not a tittle of the ultramontane claims would be surrendered. The watchword is the complete restoration of the status quo ante. Baron von Loë, president of the Canisius Verein, concluded his triumphant speech with the summons to raise the membership of the union from 80,000 to 800,000, yea to 8,000,000; then would the time be near when Germany should become again a Catholic land and the church again the leader of the people. At the assembly at Düsseldorf in A.D. 1883, Windhorst declared, amid the enthusiastic applause of all present, that after the absolute abrogation of the May laws the centre would not rest till education was again committed unreservedly to the church. In the assembly at Münster in A.D. 1885, he extolled the pope (notwithstanding all confiscation and imprisoning for the time being) as the governor and lord of the whole world. The thirty-third assembly at Breslau in A.D. 1886, with special emphasis, demanded the recall of all orders, including that of the Jesuits.

§ 186.4. =The various German unions= gradually fell under ultramontane influences. The Borromeo Society circulated Catholic books inculcating ultramontane views in politics and religion. The Boniface Union, founded by Martin, Bishop of Paderborn, aided needy Catholic congregations in Protestant districts. Other unions were devoted to foreign missions, to work among Germans in foreign lands, etc. In all the universities such societies were formed. In Bavaria patriot peasant associations were set on foot, as a standing army in the conflict of the ultramontane hierarchy with the new German empire. For the same purpose Bishop Ketteler founded in A.D. 1871 the Mainz Catholic Union, which in A.D. 1814 had 90,000 members. The Görres Society of 1876 (§ 188, 1) and the Canisius Society of 1879 (§ 151, 1) were meant to promote education on ultramontane lines.--In =Italy= such societies have striven for the restoration of the temporal power and the supremacy of the church over the State. The unions of =France= were confederated in A.D. 1870, and this general association holds an annual congress. The several unions were called “œuvres.” The Œuvre du Vœu National, e.g., had the task of restoring penitent France to the “sacred heart of Jesus” (§ 188, 12); the Œuvre Pontifical made collections of Peter’s pence and for persecuted priests; the Œuvre de Jesus-Ouvrier had to do with the working classes, etc.

§ 186.5. The knowledge of the omnipotence of =capital= in these days led to various proposals for turning it to account in the interests of Catholicism. The Catholic Bank schemes of the Belgian Langrand-Dumonceau in 1872 and the Munich bank were pure swindles; and that of Adele Spitzeder 1869-1872, pronounced “holy” by the clergy and ultramontane press, collapsed with a deficit of eight and a quarter million florins.--Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati invited church members to avoid risk to bank with him. He invested in land, advanced money for building churches, cloisters, schools, etc., and in A.D. 1878 found himself bankrupt with liabilities amounting to five million dollars. He then offered to resign his office, but the pope refused and gave him a coadjutor, whereupon the archbishop retired into a cloister where he died in his eighty-third year. In the Union Générale of Paris, founded in 1876, which came to a crash in 1882, the French aristocracy, the higher clergy and members of orders lost hundreds of millions of francs.

§ 186.6. =The Catholic Missions.=--The impulse given to Catholic interests after 1848 was seen in the zeal with which missions in Catholic lands, like the Protestant Methodist revival and camp-meetings (§ 208, 1), began to be prosecuted. An attempt was thus made to gather in the masses, who had been estranged from the church during the storms of the revolution. The Jesuits and Redemptorists were prominent in this work. In bands of six they visited stations, staying for three weeks, hearing confessions, addressing meetings three times a day, and concluding by a general communion.

§ 186.7. Besides the Propaganda (§ 156, 9), fourteen societies in Rome, three in Paris, thirty in the whole of Catholic Christendom, are devoted to the dissemination of Catholicism among =Heretics= and =Heathens=. The Lyons Association for the spread of the faith, instituted in 1822, has a revenue of from four to six million francs. Specially famous is the =Picpus Society=, so called from the street in Paris where it has its headquarters. Its founder was the deacon Coudrin, a pupil of the seminary for priests at Poictiers [Poitiers] broken up in A.D. 1789. Amid the evils done to the church and the priests by the Revolution, in his hiding-place he heard a divine call to found a society for the purpose of training the youth in Catholic principles, educating priests, and bringing the gospel to the heathen “by atoning for excesses, crimes, and sins of all kinds by an unceasing day and night devotion of the most holy sacrament of the altar.” Such a society he actually founded in A.D. 1805, and Pius VII. confirmed it in A.D. 1817. The founder died in A.D. 1837, after his society had spread over all the five continents. Its chief aim henceforth was missions to the heathen. While the Picpus society, as well as the other seminaries and monkish orders, sent forth crowds of missionaries, other societies devoted themselves to collecting money and engaging in prayer. The most important of these is the =Lyonese Society= for the spread of the faith of A.D. 1822. The member’s weekly contribution is 5 cents, the daily prayer-demand a paternoster, an angel greeting, and a “St. Francis Xavier, pray for us.” The fanatical journal of the society had a yearly circulation of almost 250,000 copies, in ten European languages. The popes had showered upon its members rich indulgences.--After Protestant missions had received such a powerful impulse in the nineteenth century, the Catholic societies were thereby impelled to force in wherever success had been won and seemed likely to be secured, and wrought with all conceivable jesuitical arts and devices, for the most part under the political protection of France. The Catholic missions have been most zealously and successfully prosecuted in North America, China, India, Japan, and among the schismatic churches of the Levant. Since 1837 they have been advanced by aid of the French navy in the South Seas (§ 184, 7) and in North Africa by the French occupation of Algiers, and most recently in Madagascar. In South Africa they have made no progress.--In A.D. 1837-1839 a bloody persecution raged in Tonquin and Cochin China; in A.D. 1866 Christianity was rooted out of Corea, and over 2,000 Christians slain; two years later persecution was renewed in Japan. In China, through the oppressions of the French, the people rose against the Catholics resident there. This movement reached a climax in the rebellion of 1870 at Tientsin, when all French officials, missionaries, and sisters of mercy were put to death, and the French consulate, Catholic churches and mission houses were levelled to the ground. Also in Further India since the French war of A.D. 1883 with Tonquin, over which China claimed rights of suzerainty, the Catholic missions have again suffered, and many missionaries have been martyred.

§ 187. LIBERAL CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS.

Alongside of the steady growth of ultramontanism from the time of the restoration of the papacy in A.D. 1814, there arose also a reactionary movement, partly of a mystical-irenical, evangelical- revival and liberal-scientific, and partly of a radical-liberalistic, character. But all the leaders in such movements sooner or later succumbed before the strictly administered discipline of the hierarchy. The Old Catholic reaction (§ 190), on the other hand, in spite of various disadvantages, still maintains a vigorous existence.

§ 187.1. =Mystical-Irenical Tendencies.=--=J. M. Sailer=, deprived in A.D. 1794 of his office at Dillingen (§ 165, 12), was appointed in A.D. 1799 professor of moral and pastoral theology at Ingolstadt, and was transferred to Landshut in A.D. 1800. There for twenty years his mild and conciliatory as well as profoundly pious mysticism powerfully influenced crowds of students from South Germany and Switzerland. Though the pope refused to confirm his nomination by Maximilian as Bishop of Augsburg in A.D. 1820, he so far cleared himself of the suspicion of mysticism, separatism, and crypto-calvinism, that in A.D. 1829 no opposition was made to his appointment as Bishop of Regensburg. Sailer continued faithful to the Catholic dogmatic, and none of his numerous writings have been put in the Index. Yet he lay under suspicion till his death in A.D. 1832, and this seemed to be justified by the intercourse which he and his disciples had with Protestant pietists. His likeminded scholar, friend, and vicar-general, the Suffragan-bishop =Wittmann=, was designated his successor in Regensburg, but he died before receiving papal confirmation. Of all his pupils the most distinguished was the Westphalian Baron von =Diepenbrock=, over whose wild, intractable, youthful nature Sailer exercised a magic influence. In A.D. 1823 he was ordained priest, became Sailer’s secretary, remaining his confidential companion till his death, was made vicar-general to Sailer’s successor in A.D. 1842, and in A.D. 1845 was raised to the archiepiscopal chair of Breslau, where he joined the ultramontanes, and entered with all his heart into the ecclesiastico-political conflicts of the Würzburg episcopal congress (§ 192, 4). His services were rewarded by a cardinal’s hat from Pius IX. in A.D. 1850. His pastoral letters, however, as well as his sermons and private correspondence, show that he never altogether forgot the teaching of his spiritual father. He delighted in the study of the mediæval mystics, and was specially drawn to the writings of Suso.

§ 187.2. =Evangelical-Revival Tendencies.=--A movement much more evangelical than that of Sailer, having the doctrine of justification by faith alone as its centre, was originated by a simple Bavarian priest, =Martin Boos=, and soon embraced sixty priests in the diocese of Augsburg. The spiritual experiences of Boos were similar to those of Luther. The words of a poor old sick woman brought peace to his soul in A.D. 1790, and led him to the study of Scripture. His preaching among the people and his conversations with the surrounding clergy produced a widespread revival. Amid manifold persecutions, removed from one parish to another, and flying from Bavaria to Austria and thence into Rhenish Prussia, where he died in A.D. 1825 as priest of Sayn, he lighted wherever he went the torch of truth. Even after his conversion Boos believed that he still maintained the Catholic position, but was at last to his own astonishment convinced of the contrary through intercourse with Protestant pietists and the study of Luther’s works. But so long as the mother church would keep him he wished not to forsake her.[545] So too felt his like-minded companions =Gossner= and =Lindl=, who were expelled from Bavaria in A.D. 1829 and settled in St. Petersburg. Lindl, as Provost of South Russia, went to reside in Odessa, where he exercised a powerful influence over Catholics and Protestants and among the higher classes of the Russians. The machinations of the Roman Catholic and Greek churches caused both Gossner and Lindl to leave Russia in A.D. 1824. They then joined the evangelical church, Lindl in Barmen and Gossner in Berlin. Lindl drifted more and more into mystico-apocalyptic fanaticism; but Gossner, from A.D. 1829 till his death in A.D. 1858 as pastor of the Bohemian church in Berlin, proved a sincere evangelical and a most successful worker.--The Bavarian priest Lutz of Carlshuld, influenced by Boos, devoted himself to the temporal and spiritual well-being of his people, preached Christ as the saviour of sinners, and exhorted to diligent reading of the Bible. In A.D. 1831, with 600 of his congregation, he joined the Protestant church; but to avoid separation from his beloved people, he returned again after ten months, and most of his flock with him, still retaining his evangelical convictions. He was not, however, restored to office, and subsequently in A.D. 1857, with three Catholic priests of the diocese, he attached himself to the Irvingites, and was with them excommunicated.

§ 187.3. =Liberal-Scientific Tendencies.=--=Von Wessenberg=, as vicar-general of the diocese of Constance introduced such drastic administrative reforms as proved most distasteful to the nuncio of Lucerne and the Romish curia. He also endeavoured unsuccessfully to restore a German national Catholic church. In the retirement of his later years he wrote a history of the church synods of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which gave great offence to the ultramontanes.--=Fr. von Baader= of Munich expressed himself so strongly against the absolutism of the papal system that the ultramontane minister, Von Abel, suspended his lectures on the philosophy of religion in A.D. 1838. He gave still greater offence by his work on Eastern and Western Catholicism, in which he preferred the former to the latter.[546] The talented =Hirscher= of Freiburg more interested in what is Christian than what is Roman Catholic, could not be won over to yield party service to the ultramontanes. They persecuted unrelentingly =Leop. Schmid=, whose theosophical speculation had done so much to restore the prestige of theology at Giessen, and had utterly discredited their pretensions. When his enemies successfully opposed his consecration as Bishop of Mainz in A.D. 1849, he resigned his professorship and joined the philosophical faculty. Goaded on by the venomous attacks of his opponents he advanced to a more extreme position, and finally declared “that he was compelled to renounce the specifically Roman Catholic church so long as she refused to acknowledge the true worth of the gospel.”

§ 187.4. =Radical-Liberalistic Tendencies.=--The brothers =Theiner= of Breslau wrote in A.D. 1828 against the celibacy of the clergy; but subsequently John attached himself to the German-Catholics, and in A.D. 1833 Augustine returned to his allegiance to Rome (§ 191, 7).--During the July Revolution in Paris, the priest Lamennais, formerly a zealous supporter of absolutism, became the enthusiastic apostle of liberalism. His journal L’Avenir, A.D. 1830-1832, was the organ of the party, and his Paroles d’un Croyant, A.D. 1834, denounced by the pope as unutterably wicked, made an unprecedented sensation. The endeavour, however, to unite elements thoroughly incongruous led to the gradual breaking up of the school, and Lamennais himself approximated more and more to the principles of modern socialism. He died in A.D. 1854. One of his most talented associates on the staff of the Avenir was the celebrated pulpit orator =Lacordaire=, A.D. 1802-1861. Upon Gregory’s denunciation of the journal in A.D. 1832 Lacordaire submitted to Rome, entered the Dominican order in A.D. 1840, and wrote a life of Dominic in which he eulogised the Inquisition; but his eloquence still attracted crowds to Notre Dame. Ultimately he fell completely under the influence of the Jesuits.

§ 187.5. =Attempts at Reform in Church Government.=--In A.D. 1861 =Liverani=, pope’s chaplain and apostolic notary, exposed the scandalous mismanagement of Antonelli, the corruption of the sacred college, the demoralization of the Roman clergy, and the ambitious schemes of the Jesuits, recommended the restoration of the holy Roman empire, not indeed to the Germans, but to the Italians: the pope should confer on the king of Italy by divine authority the title and privileges of Roman emperor, who, on his part, should undertake as papal mandatory the political administration of the States of the Church. But in A.D. 1873 he sought and obtained papal forgiveness for his errors. The Jesuit =Passaglia= expressed enthusiastic approval of the movements of Victor Emanuel and of Cavour’s ideal of a “free church in a free state.” He was expelled from his order, his book was put into the Index, but the Italian Government appointed him professor of moral philosophy in Turin. At last he retracted all that he had said and written. In the preface to his popular exposition of the gospels of 1874, the Jesuit father =Curci= urged the advisability of a reconciliation between the Holy See and the Italian government, and expressed his conviction that the Church States would never be restored. That year he addressed the pope in similar terms, and refusing to retract, was expelled his order in A.D. 1877. Leo XIII. by friendly measures sought to move him to recant, but without success. The condemnation of his books led to their wider circulation. In A.D. 1883 he charged the Holy See with the guilt of the unholy schism between church and state; but in the following year he retracted whatever in his writings the pope regarded as opposed to the faith, morals, and discipline of the Catholic church.

§ 187.6. =Attempts to Found National Catholic Churches.=--After the July Revolution of A.D. 1830 the Abbé =Chatel= of Paris had himself consecrated bishop of a new sect by a new-templar dignitary (§ 210, 1) and became primate of the =French Catholic Church=, whose creed recognised only the law of nature and viewed Christ as a mere man. After various congregations had been formed, it was suppressed by the police in A.D. 1842. The Abbé =Helsen= of Brussels made a much more earnest endeavour to lead the church of his fatherland from the antichrist to the true Christ. His =Apostolic Catholic Church= was dissolved in A.D. 1857 and its remnants joined the Protestants. The founding of the =German Catholic Church= in A.D. 1844 promised to be more enduring. In August of that year, Arnoldi, Bishop of Treves, exhibited the holy coat preserved there, and attracted one and a half millions of pilgrims to Treves (§ 188, 2). A suspended priest, =Ronge=, in a letter to the bishop denounced the worship of relics, seeking to pose as the Luther of the nineteenth century. =Czerski= of Posen had in August, 1844, seceded from the Catholic church, and in October founded the “Christian Catholic Apostolic Church,” whose creed embodied the negations without the positive beliefs of the Protestant confessions, maintaining in other respects the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. Ronge meanwhile formed congregations in all parts of Germany, excepting Bavaria and Austria. A General Assembly held at Leipzig in March, 1845, brought to light the deplorable religious nihilism of the leaders of the party. Czerski, who refused to abandon the doctrine of Christ’s divinity, withdrew from the conference, but Ronge held a triumphal procession through Germany. His hollowness, however, became so apparent that his adherents grew ashamed of their enthusiasm for the new reformer. His congregations began to break up; many withdrew, several of the leaders threw off the mask of religion and adopted the rôle of political revolutionists. After the settlement that followed the disturbances of A.D. 1848 the remnants of this party disappeared.[547]

§ 187.7. The inferior clergy of Italy, after the political emancipation of Naples from the Bourbon domination in A.D. 1860, longed for deliverance from clerical tyranny, and founded in A.D. 1862 a society with the object of establishing a =national Italian church= independent of the Romish curia. Four Neapolitan churches were put at the disposal of the society by the minister Ricasoli, but in 1865, an agreement having been come to between the curia and the government, the bishops were recalled and the churches restored. Thousands, to save themselves from starvation, gave in their submission, but a small party still remained faithful. Encouraged by the events of 1870 (§§ 135, 3; 189, 3), they were able in 1875 to draw up a “dogmatic statement” for the “Church of Italy independent of the Roman hierarchy,” which indeed besides the Holy Scriptures admitted the authority of the universal church as infallible custodian and interpreter of revealed truth, but accepted only the first seven œcumenical councils as binding. In the same year Bishop Turano of Girgenti excommunicated five priests of the Silician town Grotta as opponents of the syllabus and the dogma of infallibility. The whole clergy of the town, numbering twenty-five, then renounced their obedience to the bishop, and with the approval of the inhabitants declared themselves in favour of the “statement.” North of Rome this movement made little progress; but in 1875 three villages of the Mantuan diocese claimed the ancient privilege of choosing their own priest, and the bishop and other authorities were obliged to yield. The Neapolitan movement, however, as a whole seems to be losing itself in the sand.

§ 187.8. =The Frenchman, Charles Loyson=, known by his Carmelite monkish name of Père Hyacinthe, was protected from the Jesuits by Archbishop Darboy when he inveighed against the corruptions of the church, and even Pius IX. on his visit to Rome in 1868 treated him with favour. The general of his order having imposed silence on him, he publicly announced his secession from the order and appeared as a “preacher of the gospel,” claiming from a future General Council a sweeping reform of the church, protesting against the falsifying of the gospel of the Son of God by the Jesuits and the papal syllabus. He was then excommunicated. In A.D. 1871 he joined the German Old Catholics (§ 190, 1); and though he gave offence to them by his marriage, this did not prevent the Old Catholics of Geneva from choosing him as their pastor. But after ten months, because “he sought not the overthrow but the reform of the Catholic church, and reprobated the despotism of the mob as well as that of the clergy, the infallibility of the state as well as that of the pope,” he withdrew and returned to Paris, where he endeavoured to establish a French National Church free of Rome and the Pope. The clerical minister Broglie, however, compelled him to restrict himself to moral-religious lectures. In February, 1879, he built a chapel in which he preaches on Sundays and celebrates mass in the French language. He sought alliance with the Swiss Christian Catholics, whose bishop, Herzog, heartily reciprocated his wishes, and with the Anglican church, which gave a friendly response. But that this “seed corn” of a “Catholic Gallican Church” will ever grow into a fully developed plant was from the very outset rendered more than doubtful by the peculiar nature of the sower, as well as of the seed and the soil.

§ 188. CATHOLIC ULTRAMONTANISM.

The restoration of the Jesuit order led, during the long pontificate of Pius IX., to the revival and hitherto unapproached prosperity of ultramontanism, especially in France, whose bishops cast the Gallican Liberties overboard (§§ 156, 3; 203, 1), and in Germany, where with strange infatuation even Protestant princes gave it all manner of encouragement. Even the lower clergy were trained from their youth in hierarchical ideas, and under the despotic rule of their bishops, and a reign of terror carried on by spies and secret courts, were constrained to continue the profession of the strictest absolutism.

§ 188.1. =The Ultramontane Propaganda.=--In =France= ultramontanism revived with the restoration. Its first and ablest prophet was Count =de Maistre=, A.D. 1754-1821, long Sardinian ambassador at St. Petersburg. He wrote against the modern views of the relations of church and state, supporting the infallibility, absolutism, and inviolability of the pope. He was supported by Bonald, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert. Only Bonald maintained this attitude. Between him and Chateaubriand a dispute arose over the freedom of the press; Lamennais and Lacordaire began to blend political radicalism with their ultramontanism; Lamartine involved himself in the February revolution of 1848 as the apostle of humanity; and Montalembert took up a half-way position. In 1840 Louis =Veuillot= started the Univers Religieux in place of the Avenir, in which, till his death in 1883, he vindicated the extremest ultramontanism.--In =Germany= ultramontane views were disseminated by romancing historians and poets mostly converts from Protestantism. =Görres=, professor of history in Munich, represented the Reformation as a second fall, and set forth the legends of ascetics in his “History of Mysticism” as sound history. The German bishops set themselves to train the clergy in hierarchical views, and by a rule of terror prevented any departure from that theory. The ultramontanising of the masses was carried on by missions, and by the establishment of brotherhoods and sisterhoods. In the beginning of A.D. 1860 there were only thirteen ultramontane journals with very few subscribers, while in January, 1875, there were three hundred. The most important was Germania, founded at Berlin in 1871.--The Civiltà Cattolica of Rome was always revised before publication by Pius IX., and under Leo XIII. a similar position is held by the Moniteur de Rome, while the Osservatore Romano and the Voce della verità have also an official character.

§ 188.2. =Miracles.=--Prince =Hohenlohe= went through many parts of Germany, Austria, and Hungary, performing miraculous cures; but his day of favour soon passed, and he settled down as a writer of ascetical works.--Pilgrimages to wonder-working shrines were encouraged by reports of cures wrought on the grand-niece of the Bishop of Cologne (§ 193, 1), cured of knee-joint disease before the holy coat of Treves (§ 187, 6). Subjected to examination, the pretended seamless coat was found to be a bit of the gray woollen wrapping of a costly silk Byzantine garment 1½ feet broad and 1 foot long.

§ 188.3. =Stigmatizations.=--In many cases these marks were found to have been fraudulently made, but in other cases it was questionable whether we had not here a pathological problem, or whether hysteria created a desire to deceive or pre-disposed the subject to being duped under clerical influence. =Anna Cath. Emmerich=, a nun of Dülmen in Westphalia, in 1812, professed to have on her body bloody wound-marks of the Saviour. For five years down to her death in 1824, the poet Brentano sat at her feet, venerating her as a saint and listening to her ecstatic revelations on the death and sufferings of the Redeemer and his mother. Overberg, Sailer, and Von Stolberg were also satisfied of the genuineness of her revelations and of the miraculous marking of her body. The physician Von Drussel examined the wound-prints and certified them as miraculous; but Bodde, professor of chemistry at Münster, pronounced the blood marks spots produced by dragon’s-blood. Competent physicians declared her a hysterical woman incapable of distinguishing between dream and reality, truth and lies, honesty and deceit. Others famous in the same line were Maria von Wörl, Dominica Lazzari, and =Crescentia Stinklutsch=; also Dorothea Visser of Holland and Juliana Weiskircher from near Vienna.

§ 188.4. Of a very doubtful kind were the miraculous marks on =Louise Lateau=, daughter of a Belgian miner. On 24th April, 1868, it is said she was marked with the print of the Saviour’s wounds on hands, feet, side, brow, and shoulders. In July, A.D. 1868, she fell into an ecstasy, from which she could be awakened only by her bishop or one authorized by him. Trustworthy physicians, after a careful medical examination, reported that she laboured under a disease which they proposed to call “stigmatic neuropathy.” Chemical analysis proved the presence of food which had been regularly taken, probably in a somnambulistic trance. In the summer of 1875 her sister for a time put an end to the affair by refusing the clergy entrance into the house, and she was then obliged to eat, drink, and sleep like other Christians, so that the Friday bloody marks disappeared. But now, say ultramontane journals, Louise became dangerously ill, and clergy were called in to her help, and the marks were again visible. Her patron Bishop Dumont of Tournay being deposed by the pope in 1879, she took part against his successor, and was threatened with excommunication (§ 200, 7). She was now deserted by the ultramontanes and Belgian clergy, and treated as a poor, weak-minded invalid. She died neglected and in obscurity in A.D. 1883.

§ 188.5. Of pseudo-stigmatizations there has been no lack even in the most recent times. In 1845 =Caroline Beller=, a girl of fifteen years, in Westphalia, was examined by a skilful physician. On Thursday he laid a linen cloth over the wound-prints, and sure enough on Friday it was marked with blood stains; but also strips of paper laid under, without her knowledge, were pricked with needles. The delinquent now confessed her deceit, which she had been tempted to perpetrate from reading the works of Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and Emmerich. Theresa Städele in 1849, Rosa Tamisier in 1851, and Angela Hupe in 1863, were convicted of fraudulently pretending to have stigmata. The latter was proved to have feigned deafness and lameness for a whole year, to have diligently read the writings of Emmerich in 1861, to have shown the physician fresh bleeding wounds on hands, feet, and side, and to have affirmed that she had neither eaten nor drunk for a year. Four sisters of mercy were sent to attend her, and they soon discovered the fraud. In 1876 the father confessor of Ernestine Hauser was prosecuted for damages, having injured the girl’s health by the severe treatment to which she was subjected in order to induce ecstasy and obtain an opportunity for impressing the stigmata. =Sabina Schäfer= of Baden, in her eighteenth year, had for two years borne the reputation of a wonder-working saint, who every Friday showed the five wound prints, and in ecstasy told who were in hell and who in purgatory. She professed to live without food, though often she betook herself to the kitchen to pray alone, and even carried food with her to give to her guardian angel to carry to the distant poor. When under surveillance in 1880 she sought to bribe her guardian to bring her meat and drink, fragments of food were found among her clothes, and also a flask with blood and an instrument for puncturing the skin. She confessed her guilt, and was sentenced by the criminal court of Baden to ten weeks’ imprisonment. The ultramontane Pfälzer Bote complained that so-called liberals should ruthlessly encroach on the rights of the church and the family.

§ 188.6. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in France.=--The most celebrated of these manifestations occurred in 1858 at =Lourdes=, where in a grotto the Virgin repeatedly appeared to a peasant girl of fourteen years, almost imbecile, named Bernadette Soubirous, saying “Je suis l’Immaculée Conception,” and urging the erection of a chapel on that spot. A miracle-working well sprang up there. Since 1872 the pilgrimages under sanction of the hierarchy have been on a scale of unexampled magnificence, and the cures in number and significance far excelling anything heard of before.--At the village of =La Salette= in the department of Isère, in 1846 two poor children, a boy of fifteen and a girl of eleven years, saw a fair white-dressed lady sitting on a stone and shedding tears, and, lo, from the spot where her foot rested sprang up a well, at which innumerable cures have been wrought. The epidemic of visions of the Virgin reached a climax in Alsace Lorraine in 1872. In a wood near the village of =Gereuth= crowds of women and children gathered, professing to see visions of the mother of God; but when the police appeared to protect the forest, the manifestation craze spread over the whole land, and at thirty-five stations almost daily visions were enjoyed. The epidemic reached its crisis in Mary’s month, May, 1874, and continued with intervals down to the end of the year. In some cases deceit was proved; but generally it seemed to be the result of a diseased imagination and self-deception fostered by speculative purveyors and the ultramontane press and clergy.

§ 188.7. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in Germany.=--In the summer of 1876 three girls of eight years old in the village of =Marpingen=, in the department of Treves, saw by a well a white-robed lady, with the halo over her head and with a child in her arms, who made herself known as the immaculate Virgin, and called for the erection of a chapel. A voice from heaven said, This is my beloved Son, etc. There were also processions and choirs of angels, etc. The devil, too, appeared and ordered them to fall down and worship him. Thousands crowded from far and near, and the water of the fountain wrought miraculous cures. The surrounding clergy made a profitable business of sending the water to America, and the Germania of Berlin unweariedly sounded forth its praises. Before the court of justice the children confessed the fraud, and were sentenced to the house of correction; and though on technical grounds this judgment was set aside, the supreme court of appeal in 1879 pronounced the whole thing a scandalous and disgraceful swindle.--Weichsel, priest of =Dittrichswald= in Ermland, who gained great reputation as an exorcist, made a pilgrimage to Marpingen in the summer of 1877, and on his return gave such an account of what he had seen to his communicants’ class that first one and then another saw the mother of God at a maple tree, which also became a favourite resort for pilgrims.

§ 188.8. =Canonizations.=--When in 1825 Leo XII. canonized a Spanish monk Julianus, who among other miracles had made roasted birds fly away off the spit, the Roman wits remarked that they would prefer a saint who would put birds on the spit for them. St. Liguori was canonized by Gregory XVI. in 1839. Pius IX. canonized fifty-two and beatified twenty-six of the martyrs of Japan. The Franciscans had sought from Urban VIII. in 1627 canonization for six missionaries and seventeen Japanese converts martyred in 1596 (§ 150, 2), but were refused because they would not pay 52,000 Roman thalers for the privilege. Pius IX. granted this, and included three Jesuit missionaries. At Pentecost, 1862, the celebration took place, amid acclamations, firing of cannons, and ringing of bells. In 1868 the infamous president of the heretic tribunal Arbúes [Arbires] (§ 117, 2) received the distinction. The number of doctores ecclesiæ was increased by Pius IX. by the addition of Hilary of Poitiers in 1851, Liguori in 1870, and Francis de Sales in 1877. And Leo XIII. canonized four new saints, the most distinguished of whom was the French mendicant, Bened. Jos. Labre, who after having been dismissed by Carthusians, Cistercians, and Trappists as unteachable, made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he stayed fifteen years in abject poverty, and died in 1783 in his thirty-sixth year.

§ 188.9. =Discoveries of Relics.=--The Roman catacombs continued still to supply the demand for relics of the saints for newly erected altars. Toward the end of A.D. 1870 the Archbishop of St. Iago de Compostella (§ 88, 4) made excavations in the crypt of his cathedral, in consequence of an old tradition that the bones of the Apostle James the Elder, the supposed founder of the church, had been deposited there, and he succeeded in discovering a stone coffin with remains of a skeleton. The report of this made to Pius IX. gave occasion to the appointment of a commission of seven cardinals, who, after years of minute examination of all confirmatory historical, archæological, anatomical, and local questions, submitted their report to Leo XIII., whereupon, in November, 1884, he issued an “Apostolic Brief,” by which he (without publishing the report) declared the unmistakable genuineness of the discovered bones as ex constanti et pervulgato apud omnes sermone jam ab Apostolorum ætate memoriæ prodita, pronounced the relics generally perennes fontes, from which the dona cælestia flow forth like brooks among the Christian nations, and calls attention to the fact that it is just in this century, in which the power of darkness has risen up in conflict against the Lord and his Christ, these and also many other relics “divinitus” have been discovered, as e.g. the bones of St. Francis, of St. Clara, of Bishop Ambrose, of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, of the Apostles Philip and James the Less, the genuineness of which had been avouched by his predecessors Pius VII. and Pius IX.

§ 188.10. =The blood of St. Januarius=, a martyr of the age of Diocletian, liquefies thrice a year for eight days, and on occasion of earthquakes and such-like calamities in Naples, the blood is brought in two vials by a matron near to the head of the saint; if it liquefies the sign is favourable to the Neapolitans, if it remains thick unfavourable; but in either case it forms a powerful means of agitation in the hands of the clergy. Unbelievers venture to suggest that this precioso sangue del taumaturgo S. Gennaro is not blood, but a mixture that becomes liquid by the warmth of the hand and the heat of the air in the crowded room, some sort of cetaceous product coloured red.

§ 188.11. About 100 clergy, twenty colour-bearers, 150 musicians, 10,000 leapers, 3,000 beggars, and 2,000 singers take part in the =Leaping Procession at Echternach= in Luxemburg, which is celebrated yearly on Whit-Tuesday. It was spoken of in the sixteenth century as an ancient custom. After an “exciting” sermon, the procession is formed in rows of from four to six persons bound together by pocket-handkerchiefs held in their hands; Wilibrord’s dance is played, and all jump in time to the music, five steps forward and two backward, or two backward and three forward, varied by three or four leaps to the right and then as many to the left. Thus continually leaping the procession goes through the streets of the city to the parish church, up the sixty-two steps of the church stair and along the church aisles to the tomb of Wilibrord (§ 78, 3). The dance is kept up incessantly for two hours. The performers do so generally because of a vow, or as penance for some fault, or to secure the saint’s intercession for the cure of epilepsy and convulsive fits, common in that region, mainly no doubt owing to such senseless proceedings. The origin of the custom is obscure. Tradition relates that soon after the death of Wilibrord a disease appeared among the cattle which jumped incessantly in the stalls, till the people went leaping in procession to Wilibrord’s tomb, and the plague was stayed! But the custom is probably a Christian adaptation of an old spring festival dance of pagan times (§ 75, 3; comp. 2 Sam. vi. 14).

§ 188.12. =The Devotion of the Sacred Heart.=--Even after the suppression of the Jesuit order the devotion of the Sacred Heart (§ 156, 6) was zealously practised by the ex-Jesuits and their friends. On the restoration of the order numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods, especially in France, devoted themselves to this exercise, and the revanche movement of A.D. 1870 used this as one of its most powerful instruments. Crowds of pilgrims flocked to Paray le Monial, and there, kneeling before the cradle of Bethlehem, they besought the sacred heart of Jesus to save France and Rome, and the refrain of all the pilgrim songs, “Dieu, de la clemence ... sauvez Rome et la France au nom du sacré-cœur,” became the spiritual Marseillaise of France returning to the Catholic fold. From the money collected over the whole land a beautiful church du Sacré-Cœur has been erected on Montmartre in Paris. The gratifying news was then brought from Rome that the holy father had resolved on July 16th, 1875, the twenty-ninth anniversary of his ascending the papal throne and the two hundredth anniversary of the great occurrences at Paray le Monial, that the whole world should give adoration to the sacred heart. In France this day was fixed upon for the laying of the foundation stone of the church at Montmartre, and the Archbishop of Cologne, Paul Melchers, commanded Catholic Germany to show greater zeal in the adoration of the sacred heart, “ordained by divine revelation” two hundred years before.

§ 188.13. =Ultramontane Amulets.=--The Carmelites adopted a brown, the Trinitarians a white, the Theatines a blue, the Servites a black, and the Lazarites a red, scapular, assured by divine visions that the wearing of them was a means of salvation. A tract, entitled “Gnaden und Ablässe des fünffachen Skapuliers,” published by episcopal authority at Münster in 1872, declared that any layman who wore the five scapulars would participate in all the graces and indulgences belonging to them severally. The most useful of all was the Carmelite scapular, impenetrable by bullets, impervious to daggers, rendering falls harmless, stilling stormy seas, quenching fires, healing the possessed, the sick, the wounded, etc.--The Benedictines had no scapulars, but they had Benedict-medals, from which they drew a rich revenue. This amulet first made its appearance in the Bavarian Abbey of Metten. The tract, entitled, “St. Benediktusbüchlein oder die Medaille d. h. Benediktus,” published at Münster in 1876, tells how it cures sicknesses, relieves toothache, stops bleeding at the nose, heals burns, overcomes the craving for drink, protects from attacks of evil spirits, restrains skittish horses, cures sick cattle, clears vineyards of blight, secures the conversion of heretics and godless persons, etc.--In A.D. 1878 there appeared at Mainz, with approval of the bishop, a book in its third edition, entitled, “Der Seraphische Gürtel und dessen wunderbare Reichtümer nach d. Franz. d. päpstl. Hausprälaten Abbé v. Segur,” according to which Sixtus V. in 1585 founded the Archbrotherhood of the Girdle of St. Francis. It also affirms that whoever wears this girdle day and night and repeats the six enjoined paternosters, participates in all the indulgences of the holy land and of all the basilicas and sanctuaries of Rome and Assisi, and is entitled to liberate 1,000 souls a day from purgatory.--Great miracles of healing and preservation from all injuries to body and soul, property and goods, are attributed by the Jesuits to the “holy water of St. Ignatius” (§ 149, 11), the sale of which in Belgium, France, and Switzerland has proved to them a lucrative business. But the mother of God has herself favoured them with a still more powerful miracle-working water in the fountains of Lourdes and Marpingen.

§ 188.14. We give in conclusion a specimen of =Ultramontane pulpit eloquence=. A Bavarian priest, Kinzelmann, said in a sermon in 1872: “We priests stand as far above the emperor, kings, and princes as the heaven is above the earth.... Angels and archangels stand beneath us, for we can in God’s stead forgive sins. We occupy a position superior to that of the mother of God, who only once bare Christ, whereas we create and beget him every day. Yea, in a sense, we stand above God, who must always and everywhere serve us, and at the consecration must descend from heaven upon the mass,” etc.--An apotheosis of the priesthood worthy of the Middle Ages.

§ 189. THE VATICAN COUNCIL.[548]

Immediately after Pius IX. had, at the centenary of St. Peter in 1867, given a hint that a general council might be summoned at an early date, the Civiltà Cattolica of Rome made distinct statements to the effect that the most prominent questions for discussion would be the confirming of the syllabus (§ 185, 2), the sanctioning of the doctrine of papal absolutism in the spirit of the bull Unam sanctam of Boniface VIII. (§ 110, 1), and the proclamation of papal infallibility. The Civiltà had already taught that “when the pope thinks, it is God who thinks in him.” When the council opened on the day of the immaculate conception, December 8th, 1869, all conceivable devices of skilful diplomacy were used by the Jesuit Camarilla, and friendly cajoling and violent threatening on the part of the pope, in order to silence or win over, and, in case this could not be done, to stifle and suppress the opposition which even already was not inconsiderable in point of numbers, but far more important in point of moral, theological, and hierarchical influence. The result aimed at was secured. Of the 150 original opponents only fifty dared maintain their opposition to the end, and even they cowardly shrank from a decisive conflict, and wrote from their respective dioceses, as their Catholic faith obliged them to do, notifying their most complete acquiescence.

§ 189.1. =Preliminary History of the Council.=--When Pius IX. on the centenary of St. Peter made known to the assembled bishops his intention to summon a general council, they expressed their conviction that by the blessing of the immaculate Virgin it would be a powerful means of securing unity, peace, and holiness. The formal summons was issued on the day of St. Peter and St. Paul of the following year, June 29th, 1868. The end for which the council was convened was stated generally as follows: The saving of the church and civil society from all evils threatening them, the thwarting of the endeavours of all who seek the overthrow of church and state, the uprooting of all modern errors and the downfall of all godless enemies of the apostolical chair. In Germany the Catholic General Assembly which met at Bamberg soon after this declared that from this day a new epoch in the world’s history would begin, for “either the salvation of the world would result from this council, or the world is beyond the reach of help.” This hopefulness prevailed throughout the whole Catholic world. Fostered by the utterances of the Civiltà Cattolica, the excitement grew from day to day. The learned bishop in partibus Maret, dean of the theological faculty of Paris, now came forward as an eloquent exponent of the Gallican liberties; even the hitherto so strict Catholic, the Count Montalembert, to the astonishment of everybody, assumed a bold and independent attitude in regard to the council, and energetically protested in a publication of March 7th, 1870, six days before his death, against the intrigues of the Jesuits and the infallibility dogma which it was proposed to authorize. But the greatest excitement was occasioned by the work “Der Papst und das Konzil,” published in Leipzig, 1869, under the pseudonym Janus, of which the real authors were Döllinger, Friedrich, and Huber of Munich, who brought up the heavy artillery of the most comprehensive historical scholarship against the evident intentions of the curia. The German bishops gathered at the tomb of St. Boniface at Fulda in September, 1869, and issued from thence a general pastoral letter to their disturbed flocks, declaring that it was impossible that the council should decide otherwise than in accordance with holy Scripture and the apostolic traditions and what was already written upon the hearts of all believing Catholics. Also the papal secretary, Card. Antonelli, quieted the anxiety of the ambassadors of foreign powers at Rome by the assurance that the Holy See had in view neither the confirming of the syllabus nor the affirming of the dogma of infallibility. In vain did the Bavarian premier, Prince Hohenlohe, insist that the heads of other governments should combine in taking measures to prevent any encroachment of the council upon the rights of the state. The great powers resolved to maintain simply a watchful attitude, and only too late addressed earnest expostulations and threats.

§ 189.2. =The Organization of the Council.=--Of 1,044 prelates entitled to take part in the council 767 made their appearance, of whom 276 were Italians and 119 bishops in partibus, all pliable satellites of the curia, as were also the greater number of the missionary bishops, who, with their assistants in the propaganda, were supported at the cost of the holy father. The sixty-two bishops of the Papal States were doubly subject to the pope, and of the eighty Spanish and South American bishops it was affirmed in Rome that they would be ready at the bidding of the holy father to define the Trinity as consisting of four persons. Forty Italian cardinals and thirty generals of orders were equally dependable. The Romance races were represented by no less than 600, the German by no more than fourteen. For the first time since general councils were held was the laity entirely excluded from all influence in the proceedings, even the ambassadors of Catholic and tolerant powers. The order of business drawn up by the pope was arranged in all its details so as to cripple the opposition. The right of all fathers of the council to make proposals was indeed conceded, but a committee chosen by the pope decided as to their admissibility. From the special commissions, whose presidents were nominated by the pope, the drafts of decrees were issued to the general congregation, where the president could at will interrupt any speaker and require him to retract. Instead of the unanimity required by the canon law in matters of faith, a simple majority of votes was declared sufficient. A formal protest of the minority against these and similar unconstitutional proposals was left quite unheeded. The proceedings were indeed taken down by shorthand reporters, but not even members of council were allowed to see these reports. The conclusions of the general congregation were sent back for final revision to the special commissions, and when at last brought up again in the public sessions, they were not discussed, but simply voted on with a placet or a non-placet. The right transept of St. Peter’s was the meeting place of the council, the acoustics of which were as bad as possible, but the pope refused every request for more suitable accommodation. Besides, the various members spoke with diverse accents, and many had but a defective knowledge of Latin. Although absolute secresy was enjoined on pain of falling into mortal sin, under the excitement of the day so much trickled out and was in certain Romish circles so carefully gathered and sifted, that a tolerably complete insight was reached into the inner movements of the council. From such sources the author of the “Römischen Briefe,” supposed to have been Lord Acton, a friend and scholar of Döllinger, drew the material for his account, which, carried by trusty messengers beyond the bounds of the Papal State, reached Munich, and there, after careful revision by Döllinger and his friends, were published in the Augsburg Allg. Zeitung. Also Prof. Friedrich of Munich, who had accompanied Card. Hohenlohe to Rome as theological adviser, collected what he could learn in episcopal and theological circles in a journal which was published at a later date.

§ 189.3. =The Proceedings of the Council.=--The first public session of December 8th, 1869, was occupied with opening ceremonies; the second, of January 6th, with the subscription of the confession of faith on the part of each member. The first preliminary was the schema of the faith, the second that on church discipline. Then followed the schema on the church and the primacy of the pope in three articles: the legal position of the church in reference to the state, the absolute supremacy of the pope over the whole church on the principles of the Pseudo-Isidore (§ 87, 2) and the assumptions of Gregory VII., Innocent III. and Boniface VIII., reproduced in the principal propositions of the syllabus (§ 184, 2), and the outlines of a catechism to be enforced as a manual for the instruction of youth throughout the church. On March 6th there was added by way of supplement to the schema of the church a fourth article in the form of a sketch of the decree of infallibility. Soon after the opening of the council an agitation in this direction had been started. An address to the pope emanating from the Jesuit college petitioning for this was speedily signed by 400 subscribers. A counter address with 137 signatures besought the pope not to make any such proposal. At the head of the agitation in favour of infallibility stood archbishops Manning of Westminster, Deschamps of Mechlin, Spalding of Baltimore, and bishops Fessler of St. Pölten, secretary of the council, Senestrey of Regensburg, the “overthrower of thrones” (§ 197, 1), Martin of Paderborn, and, as bishop in partibus, Mermillod of Geneva. Among the leaders of the opposition the most prominent were cardinals Rauscher of Vienna, Prince Schwarzenberg of Prague and Matthieu of Besançon, Prince-bishop Förster of Breslau, archbishops Scherr of Munich, Melchers of Cologne, Darboy of Paris, and Kenrick of St. Louis, the bishops Ketteler of Mainz, Dinkel of Augsburg, Hefele of Rottenburg, Strossmayer of Sirmium, Dupanloup of Orleans, etc.--Owing to the discussions on the =Schema of the Faith= there occurred on March 22nd a stormy scene, which in its wild uproar reminds one of the disgraceful Robber Synod of Ephesus (§ 52, 4). When Bishop Strossmayer objected to the statement made in the preamble, that the indifferentism, pantheism, atheism, and materialism prevailing in these days are chargeable upon Protestantism, as contrary to truth, the furious fathers of the majority amid shouts and roars, shaking of their fists, rushed upon the platform, and the president was obliged to adjourn the sitting. At the next session the objectionable statement was withdrawn and the entire schema of the faith was unanimously adopted at the third public sitting of the council on April 24th. =The Schema of the Church= came up for a consideration on May 10th. The discussion turned first and mainly on the fourth article about the infallibility of the pope. Its biblical foundation was sought in Luke xxii. 32, its traditional basis chiefly in the well-known passage of Irenæus (§ 34, 8) and on its supposed endorsement by the general councils of Lyons and Florence (§ 67, 4, 6), but the main stress was laid on its necessarily following from the position of the pope as the representative of Christ. The opposition party had from the outset their position weakened by the conduct of many of their adherents who, partly to avoid giving excessive annoyance to the pope, and partly to leave a door open for their retreat, did not contest the correctness of the doctrine in question, but all the more decidedly urged the inopportuneness of its formal definition as threatening the church with a schism and provocative of dangerous conflicts with the civil power. The longer the decision was deferred by passionate debates, the more determinedly did the pope throw the whole weight of his influence into the scales. By bewitching kindliness he won some, by sharp, angry words he terrified others. He denounced opponents as sectarian enemies of the church and the apostolic chair, and styled them ignoramuses, slaves of princes, and cowards. He trusted the aid of the blessed Virgin to ward off threatened division. To the question whether he himself regarded the formulating of the dogma as opportune, he answered: “No, but as necessary.” Urged by the Jesuits, he confidently declared that it was notorious that the whole church at all times taught the absolute infallibility of the pope; and on another occasion he silenced a modest doubt as to a sure tradition with the dictatorial words, La tradizione sono io, adding the assurance, “As Abbáte Mastai I believe in infallibility, as pope I have experienced it.” On July 13th the final vote was called for in the general congregation. There were 371 who voted simply placet, sixty-one placet juxta modum, i.e. with certain modifications, and eighty-eight non placet. After a last hopeless attempt by a deputation to obtain the pope’s consent to a milder formulating of the decree, Bishop Ketteler vainly entreating on his knees, to save the unity and peace of the church by some small concession, the fifty hitherto steadfast members of the minority returned home, after emitting a written declaration that they after as well as before must continue to adhere to their negative vote, but from reverence and respect for the person of the pope they declined to give effect to it at a public session. On the following day, July 18th, the fourth and last public sitting was held: 547 fathers voted placet and only two, Riccio of Cajazzo and Fitzgerald of Little Rock, non placet. A violent storm had broken out during the session and amid thunder and lightning, Pius IX., like “a second Moses” (Exod. xix. 16), proclaimed in the Pastor æternus the absolute plenipotence and infallibility of himself and all his predecessors and successors.--It was on the evening preceding the proclamation of this new dogma that Napoleon III. proclaimed war with Prussia, in consequence of which the pope lost the last remnants of temporal sovereignty and every chance of its restoration. Under the influence of the fever-fraught July sun, the council now dwindled down to 150 members, and, after the whole glory of the papal kingdom had gone down (§ 185, 3), on October 20th, its sittings were suspended until better times. The schema of discipline and the preliminary sketch of a catechism were not concluded; a subsequently introduced schema on apostolic missions was left in the same state; and a petition equally pressed by the Jesuits for the defining of the corporeal ascension of Mary had not even reached the initial stage.

§ 189.4. =Acceptance of the Decrees of the Council.=--All protests which during the council the minority had made against the order of business determined on and against all irregularities resulting from it, because not persisted in, were regarded as invalid. Equally devoid of legal force was their final written protest which they left behind, in which they expressly declined to exercise their right of voting. And the assent which they ultimately without exception gave to the objective standpoint of the law and the faith of the Catholic church, was not in the least necessary in order to make it appear that the decisions of the council, drawn up with such unanimity as had scarcely ever before been seen, were equally valid with any of the decrees of the older councils. Thus the bishops of the minority, if they did not wish to occasion a split of unexampled dimensions and incalculable complications, quarrels, and contentions in the church that boasted of a unity which had hitherto been its strength and stay, could do nothing else than yield at the twelfth hour to the pope’s demand that “sacrificio dell’intelletto” which at the eleventh hour they had refused. The German bishops, who had proved most steadfast at the council, were now in the greatest haste to make their submission. Even by the end of August, at Fulda, they joined their infallibilist neighbours in addressing a pastoral letter, in which they most solemnly declared that all true Catholics, as they valued their soul’s salvation, must unconditionally accept the conclusions of the council unanimously arrived at which are in no way prejudiced by the “differences of opinion” elicited during the discussion. At the same time they demanded of theological professors, teachers of religion, and clergymen throughout the dioceses a formal acceptance of these decrees as the inviolable standpoint of their doctrinal teaching; they also took measures against those who refused to yield, and excommunicated them. Even Bishop Hefele, who did not sign this pastoral and was at first determined not to yield nor swerve, at last gave way. In his pastoral proclaiming the new dogma he gave it a quite inadmissible interpretation: As the infallibility of the church, so also that of the pope as a teacher, extends only to the revealed doctrines of faith and morals, and even with reference to them only the definitions proper and not the introductory statements, grounds, and applications, belong to the infallible department. But subsequently he cast himself unreservedly into the arms of his colleagues assembled once again at Fulda in September, 1872, where he also found his like-minded friend, Bishop Haneberg of Spires. Yet he forbore demanding an express assent from his former colleagues at Tübingen and his clergy, and thus saved Württemberg from a threatened schism. Strossmayer held out longest, but even he at last threw down his weapons. But many of the most cultured and scholarly of the theological professors, disgusted with the course events were taking, withdrew from the field and continued silently to hold their own opinions. The inferior clergy, for the most part trained by ultramontane bigots, and held in the iron grasp of strict hierarchical discipline, passed all bounds in their extravagant glorification of the new dogma. And while among the liberal circles of the Catholic laity it was laughed at and ridiculed, the bigoted nobles and the masses who had long been used to the incensed atmosphere of an enthusiastic adoration of the pope, bowed the knee in stupid devotion to the papal god. But the brave heart of one noble German lady broke with sorrow over the indignity done by the Vatican decree and the characterlessness of the German bishops to the church of which to her latest breath she remained in spirit a devoted member. Amalie von Lasaulx, sister of the Munich scholar Ernst von Lasaulx (§ 174, 4), from 1849 superioress of the Sisters of Mercy in St. John’s Hospital at Bonn, lay beyond hope of recovery on a sick-bed to which she had been brought by her self-sacrificing and faithful discharge of the duties of her calling, when there came to her from the lady superior of the order at Nancy the peremptory demand to give in her adhesion to the infallibility dogma. As she persistently and courageously withstood all entreaties and threats, all adjurations and cruelly tormenting importunings, she was deposed from office and driven from the scene of her labours, and when, soon thereafter, in 1872, she died, the habit of her order was stripped from her body. The Old Catholics of Bonn, whose proceedings she had not countenanced, charged themselves with securing for her a Christian burial.--No state as such has recognised the council. Austria answered it by abolishing the concordat and forbidding the proclamation of the decrees. Bavaria and Saxony refused their placet; Hesse, Baden, and Württemberg declared that the conclusions of the council had not binding authority in law. Prussia indeed held to its principle of not interfering in the internal affairs of the Catholic church, but, partly for itself, partly as the leading power of the new German empire, passed a series of laws in order to resume its too readily abandoned rights of sovereignty over the affairs of the Catholic church, and to insure itself against further encroachments of ultramontanism upon the domain of civil life (§ 197). The Romance states, on the other hand, pre-eminently France, were prevented by internal troubles and conflicts from taking any very decisive steps.

§ 190. THE OLD CATHOLICS.

A most promising reaction, mainly in Germany, led by men highly respected and eminent for their learning, set in against the Vatican Council and its decrees, in the so-called Old Catholic movement of the liberal circles of the Catholic people, which went the length, even in 1873, of establishing an independent and well organized episcopal church. Since then, indeed, it has fallen far short of the all too sanguine hopes and expectations at first entertained; but still within narrower limits it continues steadily to spread and to rear for itself a solid structure, while carefully, even nervously, shrinking from anything revolutionary. More in touch with the demands of the Zeitgeist in its reformatory concessions, yet holding firmly in every particular to the positive doctrines of orthodoxy, the Old Catholic movement has made progress in Switzerland, while in other Catholic countries its success has been relatively small.

§ 190.1. =Formation and Development of the Old Catholic Church in the German Empire.=--In the beginning of August, 1870, the hitherto exemplary Catholic professor Michelis of Braunsberg (§ 191, 6), issued a public charge against Pius IX. as a heretic and devourer of the church, and by the end of August several distinguished theologians (Döllinger and Friedrich of Munich, Reinkens, Weber, and Baltzer of Breslau, Knoodt of Bonn, and the canonist Von Schulte of Prague) joined him at Nuremberg in making a public declaration that the Vatican Council could not be regarded as œcumenical, nor its new dogma as a Catholic doctrine. This statement was subscribed to by forty-four Catholic professors of the university of Munich with the rector at their head, but without the theologians. Similarly, too, several Catholic teachers in Breslau, Freiburg, Würzburg, and Bonn protested, and still more energetically a gathering of Catholic laymen at Königswinter. Besides the Breslau professors already named, the Bonn professors Reusch, Langen, Hilgers, and Knoodt refused to subscribe the council decrees at the call of their bishop; whereas the Munich professors, with the exception of Döllinger and Friedrich, yielded. A repeated injunction of his archbishop in January, 1871, drew from Döllinger the statement that he as a Christian, a theologian, a historian, and a citizen, was obliged to reject the infallibility dogma, while at the same time he was prepared before an assembly of bishops and theologians to prove that it was opposed to Scripture, the Fathers, tradition, and history. He was now literally overwhelmed with complimentary addresses from Vienna, Würzburg, Munich, and almost all other cities of Bavaria; and an address to government on the dangers to the state threatened by the Vatican decrees that lay at the Munich Museum, was quickly filled with 12,000 signatures. On April 14th, Döllinger was excommunicated, and Professor Huber sent an exceedingly sharp reply to the archbishop. After several preliminary meetings, the =first congress= of the Old Catholics was held in Munich in September, 1871, attended by 500 deputies from all parts of Germany. A programme was unanimously adopted which, with protestation of firm adherence to the faith, worship, and constitution of the ancient Catholic church, maintained the invalidity of the Vatican decrees and the excommunication occasioned by them, and, besides recognising the Old Catholic church of Utrecht (§ 165, 8), expressed a hope of reunion with the Greek church, as well as of a gradual progress towards an understanding with the Protestant church. But when at the second session the president, Dr. von Schulte, proposed the setting up of independent public services with regular pastors, and the establishing as soon as possible of an episcopal government of their own, Döllinger contested the proposal as a forsaking of the safe path of lawful opposition, taking the baneful course of the Protestant Reformation, and tending toward the formation of a sect. As, however, the proposal was carried by an overwhelming majority, he declined to take further part in their public assemblies and retired more into the background, without otherwise opposing the prevailing current or detaching himself from it. The second congress was held at Cologne in the autumn of 1872. From the episcopal churches of England and America, from the orthodox church of Russia, from France, Italy, and Spain, were sent deputies and hearty friendly greetings. Archbishop Loos of Utrecht, by the part which he took in the congress, cemented more closely the union with the Old Catholics of Holland. Even the German “Protestantenverein” was not unrepresented. A committee chosen for the purpose drew up an outline of a synodal and congregational order, which provides for the election of bishops at an annual meeting at Pentecost of a synod, of which all the clergy are members and to which the congregations send deputies, one for every 200 members. Alongside of the bishop stands a permanent synodal board of five priests and seven laymen. The bishop and synodal board have the right of vetoing doubtful decrees of synod. The choice of pastors lies with the congregation; its confirmation belongs to the bishop. In July, 1873, a bishop was elected in the Pantaleon church of Cologne by an assembly of delegates, embracing twenty-two priests and fifty-five laymen. The choice fell upon Professor Reinkens, who, as meanwhile Bishop Loos of Utrecht had died, was consecrated on August 11th, at Rotterdam, by Bishop Heykamp of Deventer, and selected Bonn as his episcopal residence.

§ 190.2. The first synod of the German Old Catholics, consisting of thirty clerical and fifty-nine lay members, met at Bonn in May, 1874. It was agreed to continue the practice of auricular confession, but without any pressure being put upon the conscience or its observance being insisted upon at set times. Similarly the moral value of fasting was recognised, but all compulsory abstinence, and all distinctions of food as allowable and unallowable, were abolished. The second synod, with reference to the marriage law, took the position that civil regular marriages ought also to have the blessing of the church; only in the case of marriages with non-Christians and divorced parties should this be refused. The third synod introduced a German ritual in which the exorcism was omitted, while the Latin mass was provisionally retained. The fourth synod allowed to such congregations as might wish it the use of the vernacular in several parts of the service of the mass. At all these synods the lay members had persistently repeated the proposal to abolish the obligatory celibacy of the clergy. But now the agitation, especially on the part of the Baden representatives, had become so keen, that at the fifth synod of 1878, in spite of the warning read by Bishop Reinkens from the Dutch Old Catholics, who threatened to withdraw from the communion, the proposal was carried by seventy-five votes against twenty-two. The Bonn professors, Langen and Menzel, foreseeing this result, had absented themselves from the synod, Reusch immediately withdrew and resigned his office as episcopal vicar-general, Friedrich protested in the name of the Bavarian Old Catholics. Reinkens, too, had vigorously opposed the movement; whereas Knoodt, Michelis, and Von Schulte had favoured it. The synod of 1883 resolved to dispense the supper in both kinds to members of the Anglican church residing in Germany, but among their own members to follow meanwhile the usual practice of communio sub una. The number of Old Catholic congregations in the German empire is now 107, with 38,507 adherents and 56 priests.--Even at their first congress the German Old Catholics, in opposition to the unpatriotic and law-defying attitude of German ultramontanism, had insisted upon love of country and obedience to the laws of the state as an absolute Christian duty. Their newly chosen bishop Reinkens, too, gave expression to this sentiment in his first pastoral letter, and had the oath of allegiance administered him by the Prussian, Baden, and Hessian governments. But Bavaria felt obliged, on account of the terms of its concordat, to refuse. At first the Old Catholics had advanced the claim to be the only true representatives of the Catholic church as it had existed before July 18th, 1870. At the Cologne congress they let this assumption drop, and restricted their claims upon the state to equal recognition with “the New Catholics,” equal endowments for their bishop, and a fair proportion of the churches and their revenues. Prussia responded with a yearly episcopal grant of 16,000 thalers; Baden added about 6,000. It proved more difficult to enforce their claim to church property. A law was passed in Baden in 1874, which not only guaranteed to the Old Catholic clergy their present benefices and incomes, freed them from the jurisdiction of the Romish hierarchy, and gave them permission to found independent congregations, but also granted them a mutual right of possessing and using churches and church furniture as well as sharing in church property according to the numerical proportion of the two parties in the district. A similar measure was introduced into the Prussian parliament, and obtained the royal assent in July, 1875. Since then, however, the interest of the government in the Old Catholic movement has visibly cooled. In Baden, in 1886 the endowment had risen to 24,000 marks.

§ 190.3. =The Old Catholics in other Lands.=--=In Switzerland= the Old, or rather, as it has there been called, the Christian, Catholic movement, had its origin in 1871 in the diocese of Basel-Solothurn, whence it soon spread through the whole country. The national synod held at Olten in 1876 introduced the vernacular into the church services, abolished the compulsory celibacy of the clergy and obligatory confession of communicants, and elected Professor Herzog bishop, Reinkens giving him episcopal consecration. In 1879 the number of Christian Catholics in German Switzerland amounted to about 70,000, with seventy-two pastors. But since then, in consequence of the submission of the Roman Catholics to the church laws condemned by Pius IX. they have lost the majority in no fewer than thirty-nine out of the forty-three congregations of Canton Bern, and therewith the privileges attached. A proposal made in the grand council of the canton in 1883 for the suppression of the Christian Catholic theological faculty in the University of Bern, which has existed since 1874, was rejected by one hundred and fifty votes against thirteen.--=In Austria=, too, strong opposition was shown to the infallibility dogma. At Vienna the first Old Catholic congregation was formed in February, 1872, under the priest Anton; and soon after others were established in Bohemia and Upper Austria. But it was not till October, 1877, that they obtained civil recognition on the ground that their doctrine is that which the Catholic church professed before 1870. In June, 1880, they held their first legally sanctioned synod. The provisional synodical and congregational order was now definitely adopted, and the use of the vernacular in the church services, the abolition of compulsory fasting, confession, and celibacy, as well as of surplice fees, and the abandoning of all but the high festivals, were announced on the following Sunday. The bitter hatred shown by the Czechs and the ultramontane clergy to everything German has given to the Old Catholic movement for some years past a new impulse and decided advantage.--=In France= the Abbé Michaud of Paris lashed the characterlessness of the episcopate and was excommunicated, and the Abbés Mouls and Junqua of Bordeaux were ordered by the police to give up wearing the clerical dress. Junqua, refusing to obey this order, was accused by Cardinal Donnet, Bishop of Bordeaux, before the civil court, and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. Not till 1879 did the ex-Carmelite Loyson of Paris lay the foundation of a Catholic Gallican church, affiliated with the Swiss Old Catholics (§ 187, 8).--=In Italy= since 1862, independently of the German movement, yet on essentially the same grounds, a national Italian church was started with very promising beginnings, which were not, however, realized (§ 187, 7). Rare excitement was caused throughout Italy by the procedure of Count Campello, canon of St. Peter’s in Rome, who in 1881 publicly proclaimed his creed in the Methodist Episcopal chapel, there renouncing the papacy, and in a published manifesto addressed to the cathedral chapter justified this step and made severe charges against the papal curia; but soon after, in a letter to Loyson, he declared that he, remaining faithful to the true Catholic church, did not contemplate joining any Protestant sect severed from Catholic unity, and in a communication to the Old Catholic Rieks of Heidelberg professed to be in all points at one with the German Old Catholics. Accordingly he sought to form in Rome a Catholic reform party, whose interests he advocated in the journal Il Labaro. The pope’s domestic chaplain, Monsignor Savarese, has adopted a similar attitude. In December, 1883, he was received by the pastor of the American Episcopal church at Rome into the Old Catholic church on subscribing the Nicene Creed. In 1886 they were joined by another domestic chaplain of the pope, Monsignor Renier, formerly an intimate friend of Pius IX., who publicly separated himself from the papal church, and with them took his place at the head of a Catholic “Congregation of St. Paul” in Rome.--Also the Episcopal Iglesia Española in Spain (§ 205, 4), and the Mexican Iglesia de Jesus (§ 209, 1), must be regarded as essentially of similar tendencies to the Old Catholics.

§ 191. CATHOLIC THEOLOGY, ESPECIALLY IN GERMANY.

Catholic theology in Germany, influenced by the scientific spirit prevailing in Protestantism, received a considerable impulse. From latitudinarian Josephinism it gradually rose toward a strictly ecclesiastical attitude. Most important were its contributions in the department of dogmatic and speculative theology. Besides and after the schools of Hermes, Baader, and Günther, condemned by the papal chair, appeared a whole series of speculative dogmatists who kept their speculations within the limits of the church confession. Also in the domain of church history, Catholic theology, after the epoch-making productions of Möhler and Döllinger, has aided in reaching important results, which, however, owing to the “tendency” character of their researches, demand careful sifting. Least important are their contributions to biblical criticism and exegesis. In general, however, the theological docents at the German universities give a scientific character to their researches and lectures in respect of form and also of matter, so far as the Tridentine limits will allow. But the more the Jesuits obtained influence in Germany, the more was that scholasticism, which repudiated the German university theology and opposed it with perfidious suspicions and denunciations, naturalized, especially in the episcopal seminaries, while it was recommended by Rome as the official theology. The attempt, however, at the Munich Congress of Scholars in 1863 to come to an understanding between the two tendencies failed, owing to the contrariety of their principles and the opposition of the Jesuits.--Outside of Germany, French theology, especially in the department of history, manifested a praiseworthy activity. In Spain theology has never outgrown the period of the Middle Ages. In Italy, on the other hand, the study of Christian antiquities flourished, stimulated by recent discoveries of treasures in catacombs, museums, archives, and libraries.

§ 191.1. =Hermes and his School.=--The Bonn professor, =George Hermes=, influenced in youth by the critical philosophy, passed the Catholic dogma of Trent, assured it would stand the test, through the fire of doubt and the scrutiny of reason, because only what survives such examination could be scientifically vindicated. He died in A.D. 1831, and left a school named after him, mainly in Treves, Bonn, and Breslau. Gregory XVI. in 1835 condemned his writings, and the new Archbishop of Cologne, Droste-Vischering, forbad students at Bonn attending the lectures of Hermesians. These made every effort to secure the recall of the papal censure. Braun and Elvenich went to Rome, but their declaration that Hermes had not taught what the pope condemned profited them as little as a similar statement had the Jansenists. There now arose on both sides a bitter controversy, which received new fuel from the Prusso-Cologne ecclesiastical strife (§ 193, 1). Finally in 1844 professors Braun and Achterfeld of Bonn were deprived of office by the coadjutor-Archbishop Geissel, and the Prussian government acquiesced. The professors of the Treves seminary and Baltzer of Breslau, the latter influenced by Günther’s theology, retracted.--A year before Hermes’ condemnation the same pope had condemned the opposite theory of Abbé =Bautain= of Strassburg, that the Christian dogmas cannot be proved but only believed, and that therefore all use of reason in the appropriation of the truths of salvation is excluded. Bautain, as an obedient son of the church, immediately retracted, “laudabiliter se subjecit.”

§ 191.2. =Baader and his School.=--Catholic theology for a long time paid no regard to the development of German philosophy. Only after Schelling, whose philosophy had many points of contact with the Catholic doctrine, a general interest in such studies was awakened as forming a speculative basis for Catholicism. To the theosophy of Schelling based on that of the Görlitz shoemaker (§ 160, 2), =Francis von Baader=, professor of speculative dogmatics at Munich, though not a professional theologian, but a physician and a mineralogist, attached himself. In his later years he went over completely to ultramontanism. His scholar =Franz Hoffmann= of Würzburg has given an exposition of Baader’s speculative system. At Giessen this system was represented by Leop. Schmid (§ 187, 3). All the Catholic adherents of this school are distinguished by their friendly attitude toward Protestantism.

§ 191.3. =Günther and his School.=--A theology of at least equal speculative power and of more decidedly Catholic contents than that of Baader, was set forth by the secular priest =Anton Günther= of Vienna, a profound and original thinker of combative humour, sprightly wit, and a roughness of expression sometimes verging upon the burlesque. He recognised the necessity of going up in philosophical and theological speculation to Descartes, who held by the scholastic dualism of God and the creature, the Absolute and the finite, spirit and nature, while all philosophy, according to him, had been ever plunging deeper into pantheistic monism. Thence he sought to solve the two problems of Christian speculation, creation and incarnation, and undertook a war of extermination against “all monism and semimonism, idealistic and realistic pantheism, disguised and avowed semipantheism,” among Catholics and Protestants. His first great work, “Vorschule zur Spekul. Theologie,” published in 1828, treating of the theory of creation and the theory of incarnation, was followed by a long series of similar works. His most eminent scholars were =Pabst=, doctor of medicine in Vienna, who gave clear expositions of his master’s dark and aphoristic sayings, and =Veith=, who popularized his teachings in sermons and practical treatises. Some of the Hermesians, such as Baltzer of Breslau, entered the rank of his scholars. The historico-political papers, however, charged him with denying the mysteries of Christianity, rejecting the traditional theology, etc., and Clemens, a privatdocent of philosophy in Bonn, became the mouthpiece of this party. Thus arose a passionate controversy, which called forth the attention of Rome. We might have expected Günther to meet the fate of Hermes twenty years before; but the matter was kept long under consideration, for strong influence from Vienna was brought to bear on his behalf. At last in January, 1857, the formal reprobation of the Güntherian philosophy was announced, and all his works put in the Index. Günther humbly submitted to the sentence of the church. So too did =Baltzer=. But being suspected at Rome, he was asked voluntarily to resign. This Baltzer refused to do. Then Prince-Bishop Förster called upon the government to deprive him; and when this failed, he withdrew from him the missio canonica and a third of his canonical revenues, and in 1870, on his opposing the infallibility dogma, he withheld the other two-thirds. His salary from the State continued to be paid in full till his death in A.D. 1871.

§ 191.4. =John Adam Möhler.=--None of all the Catholic theologians of recent times attained the importance and influence of Möhler in his short life of forty-two years. Stimulated to seek higher scientific culture by the study mainly of Schleiermacher’s works and those of other Protestants, and putting all his rich endowments at the service of the church, he won for himself among Catholics a position like that of Schleiermacher among Protestants. His first treatise of 1825, on the unity of the church, was followed by his “Athanasius the Great,” and the work of his life, the “Symbolics” of 1832, in its ninth edition in 1884, which with the apparatus of Protestant science combats the Protestant church doctrine and presented the Catholic doctrine in such an ennobled and sublimated form, that Rome at first seriously thought of placing it in the Index. Hitherto Protestants had utterly ignored the productions of Catholic theology, but to overlook a scientific masterpiece like this would be a confession of their own weakness. And in fact, during the whole course of the controversy between the two churches, no writing from the Catholic camp ever caused such commotion among the Protestants as this. The ablest Protestant replies are those of Nitsch [Nitzsch] and Baur. In 1835 Möhler left Tübingen for Munich; but sickness hindered his scientific labours, and, in 1838, in the full bloom of manhood, the Catholic church and Catholic science had to mourn his death. He can scarcely be said to have formed a school; but by writings, addresses, and conversation he produced a scientific ferment in the Catholic theology of Germany, which continued to work until at last completely displaced by the scholasticism reintroduced into favour by the Jesuits.

§ 191.5. =John Jos. Ignat. von Döllinger.=--Of all Catholic theologians in Germany, alongside of and after Möhler, by far the most famous on either side of the Alps was the church historian Döllinger, professor at Munich since 1826. His first important work issued in that same year was on the “Doctrine of the Eucharist in the First Three Centuries.” His comprehensive work, “The History of the Christian Church,” of 1833 (4 vols., London, 1840), was not carried beyond the second volume; and his “Text-book of Church History” of 1836, was only carried down to the Reformation. The tone of his writings was strictly ecclesiastical, yet without condoning the moral faults of the popes and hierarchy. Great excitement was produced by his treatise on “The Reformation,” in which he gathered everything that could be found unfavourable to the Reformers and their work, and thus gained the summit of renown as a miracle of erudition and a master of Catholic orthodoxy. Meanwhile in 1838 he had taken part in controversies about mixed marriages (§ 193, 1), and in 1843 over the genuflection question (§ 195, 2), with severely hierarchical pamphlets. As delegate of the university since 1845 he defended with brilliant eloquence in the Bavarian chamber the measures of the ultramontane government and the hierarchy, became in 1847 Provost of St. Cajetan, but was also in the same year involved in the overthrow of the Abel ministry, and was deprived of his professorship. In the following year he was one of the most distinguished of the Catholic section in the Frankfort parliament, where he fought successfully in the hierarchical interest for the unconditional freedom and independence of the church. King Maximilian II. restored him to his professorship in 1849. From this time his views of confessional matters became milder and more moderate. He first caused great offence to his ultramontane admirers at Easter, 1861, when he in a series of public lectures delivered one on the Papal States then threatened, in which he declared that the temporal power of the pope, the abuses of which he had witnessed during a journey to Rome in 1857, was by no means necessary for the Catholic church, but was rather hurtful. The papal nuncio, who was present, ostentatiously left the meeting, and the ultramontanes were beside themselves with astonishment, horror, and wrath. Döllinger gave some modifying explanations at the autumn assembly of the Catholic Union at Munich in 1861. But soon thereafter appeared his work, “The Church and the Churches” (London, 1862), which gave the lecture slightly modified as an appendix. The “Fables respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages” (London, 1871), was as little to the taste of the ultramontanes. Indeed in these writings, especially in the first named, the polemic against the Protestant Church had all its old bitterness; but he is at least more just toward Luther, whom he characterizes as “the most powerful man of the people, the most popular character, which Germany ever possessed.” And while he delivers a glowing panegyric on the person of the pope, he lashes unrelentingly the misgovernment of the Papal States. At the Congress of Scholars at Munich he contended for the freedom of science. Döllinger as president of the congress sent the pope a telegram which satisfied his holiness. But the Jesuits looked deeper, and immediately “il povero Döllinger” was loaded by the Civiltà Cattolica with every conceivable reproach. In A.D. 1868 nominated to the life office of imperial councillor, he voted with the bishops against the liberal education scheme of the government. But his battle against the council and infallibility made the rent incurable, and his angry archbishop hurled against him the great excommunication. Then Vienna made him doctor of philosophy, Marburg, Oxford, and Edinburgh gave him LL.D., and the senate of his university unanimously elected him rector in 1871. But his tabooed lecture room became more and more deserted. He took no prominent part in the organizing of the Old Catholic church (§ 190, 1), but all the more eagerly did he seek to promote its union negotiations (§ 175, 6).

§ 191.6. =The Chief Representatives of Systematic Theology.=--=Klee=, A.D. 1800-1840, of Bonn and Munich, was a positivist of the old school, and during the Hermesian controversy a supporter of the theology of the curia. =Hirscher=, 1788-1865, of Freiburg, numbered by the liberals as one of their ornaments and by the fanatical ultramontanes as a heretic, did much to promote a conciliatory and moderate Catholicism, equally free from ultramontane and rationalistic tendencies, abandoning nothing essential in the Catholic doctrine. =Hilgers=, the Hermesian, afterwards joined the Old Catholics of Bonn. =Staudenmaier= and =Sengler= of Freiburg and =Berlage= of Münster held a distinguished rank as speculative theologians. In the same department, =Kuhn= and =Drey= of Tübingen, =Ehrlich= of Prague, =Deutinger= of Dillingen, a disciple of Schelling and Baader, and as such persecuted, though a pious believing Catholic, =Oischinger= of Munich, who in despair at the proclamation of the Vatican decree suddenly stopped his fruitful literary activity, =Dieringer= of Bonn, who for the same reason not only ceased to write but also in 1871 resigned his professorship and retired to a small country pastorate, and finally, =Hettinger= of Würzburg, best known by his “Apologie d. Christenthums.”--While the above-named, though suspected and opposed by the scholastic party, strove to preserve intact their ecclesiastical Catholic character, other representatives of this tendency by their struggles against scholasticism and then against the Vatican Council, were driven away from their orthodox position. Thus =Frohschammer= of Munich, when his treatise on “The Origin of the Soul,” in which he supported the theory of Generationism in opposition to the Catholic doctrine of creationism, and other works were placed in the Index, asked for a revision on the ground that he taught nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine. He was stripped of all his clerical functions, and students were prohibited attending his lectures. He protested, and his rooms were more crowded than ever. Subsequently, however, repudiated even by the Old Catholics, he drifted more and more, not only from the church, but even from belief in revelation. Against Strauss’ last work he wrote a tract in which he sought to prove that “the old faith is indeed untenable,” but that also “the new science” cannot take its place, that a “new faith” must be introduced by going back to the Christianity of Christ. =Michelis=, a man of wide culture in the department of natural science and philology, as well as theology and philosophy, had in his earlier position as professor in Paderborn, Münster, and Braunsberg, supported by word and pen a strictly ecclesiastical tendency; but the Vatican Council made him one of the first and most zealous leaders of the Old Catholic movement. His most important work is his “Catholic Dogmatics,” of 1881, in which the Old Catholic conception of Christianity is represented as the purified higher unity of the Protestant and Vatican systems of doctrine.

§ 191.7. =The Chief Representatives of Historical Theology.=--The first place after Möhler and Döllinger belongs to Möhler’s scholar Hefele, from 1840 professor at Tübingen and from 1869 Bishop of Rottenburg, distinguished by the liberal spirit of his researches. His treatises on the Honorius controversy made him one of the most dangerous opponents of the infallibility dogma, to which, however, he at last submitted (§ 189, 4). His most important work is the “History of the Councils.” Hase criticised the second edition of the work, severely but not without sufficient grounds, by saying that in it “the bishop chokes the scholar.” =Werner= of Vienna is a prolific writer in the department of the history of theological literature; while =Bach= of Munich and the Dominican =Denifle= have written on the mediæval mystics, the latter also on the universities of the Middle Ages. =Hergenröther= of Würzburg, by his monograph on “Photius and the Greek Schism,” written in the interests of his party, and by his polemic against the anti-Vatican movement, and specially by his “Handbook of Church History,” rendered such service to the papacy and the papal church, that Leo XIII. in 1879 made him a cardinal and librarian of the Vatican, with the task of reorganizing the library.--Among the Old Catholics, =Friedrich= of Munich, besides his historical account of the Vatican Council, had written on Wessel, Huss, and the church history of Germany. =Huber= of Munich, whose “Philosophy of the Church Fathers” of 1859 was put in the Index, while his much more liberal work on Erigena of 1861 passed without censure, in later years wrote an exhaustive account of the Jesuit order and a critical reply to Strauss’ “Old and New Faith.” =Pichler= of Munich, by his conscientious research and criticism, drew down upon him the papal censure, and his book on the “History of the Division of the Eastern and Western Churches” had the honour of being placed in the Index. His later studies and writings estranged him more and more from Romanism, inspired him with the idea of a national German church, and fostered in him a love for the Protestantenverein movement; but his unbridled bibliomania while assistant in the Royal Library of St. Petersburg in 1871, brought his public career to a sad and shameful end. The Old Catholic Professor =Langen= of Bonn, wrote a four-volume work against the Vatican dogma, discussed the “Trinitarian Doctrinal Differences between the Eastern and Western Churches,” in the interests of a union with the Greek church, and published an able monograph on “John of Damascus,” as well as a thorough and impartial “History of the Roman Church down to Nicholas I.,” two vols., 1881, 1885.--In Rome the Oratorian =Aug. Theiner= atoned for the literary errors of his youth (§ 187, 4) by his zealous vindication of papal privileges. His chief works were the continuation of the “Annales Ecclesiastici” of Baronius, and the editing of the historical documents of the various Christian nations. The Jesuits charged him with giving the anti-Vaticanists aid from the library and sought to influence the pope against him so as to deprive him of his office of prefect of the Vatican archives. He was suspended from his duties, and though he still retained his title and occupied his official residence in the Vatican, the doors from it into the library were built up. His edition of the “Acts of the Council of Trent,” which was commenced, was also prohibited. But he succeeded in making a transcript at Agram in Croatia, where in 1874 a portion of it, the official protocol of the secretary of the Council, Massarelli, was printed by the help of Bishop Strossmayer in an elegant style but abbreviated, and therefore unsatisfactory. Cardinal Angelo =Mai=, as principal Vatican librarian, distinguished himself by his palimpsest studies in old classical as well as patristic literature. And quite worthy of ranking with either in carefulness, diligence, and patience was =De Rossi=, who has laboured in the department of Christian archæology, and is well known by his great work, “Roma sotteranea cristiana,” published in 1864 ff.--=Xavier Kraus=, when his “Handbook” had been adversely criticised, hastened to Rome, submitted all his utterances to the judgment of the pope, and proclaimed on his return that in the next edition he would explain what had been misunderstood and withdraw what was objected to. The question now rises, whether the more recent work of =Xav. Funk= can escape a similar censure.

Among Catholic writers on canon lay the most notable are =Walters= of Bonn, =Phillips= of Vienna, =Von Schulte= of Prague and Bonn, who till the Vatican Council was one of the most zealous advocates of the strict Catholic tendency, since then openly on the side of the opposition, a keen supporter, and by word and pen a vigorous promoter, of the Old Catholic movement, and =Vering= of Prague, who occupies the ultramontane Vatican standpoint.

§ 191.8. =The Chief Representatives of Exegetical Theology.=--=Hug= of Freiburg, in his “Introduction,” occupies the biblical but ecclesiastically latitudinarian attitude of Jahn. Leaving dogma unattacked and so himself unattacked, =Mövers= of Breslau, best known by his work on the Phœnicians, a Richard Simon of his age, developed a subtlety of destructive criticism of the canon and history of the Old Testament which astonished even the father of Protestant criticism, De Wette. =Kaulen= of Bonn wrote an “Introduction to the Old and New Testament,” in a fairly scientific spirit from the Vatican standpoint; while =Maier= of Freiburg, wrote an introduction to the New Testament and commentaries on some New Testament books.--The Old Catholic =Reusch= of Bonn wrote “Introduction to the Old Testament,” and “Nature and the Bible” (2 vols., Edin., 1886). =Sepp= of Munich, silent since 1867, began his literary career with a “Life of Christ,” a “History of the Apostles,” etc., in the spirit of the romantic mystical school of Görres. His “Sketch of Church Reform, beginning with a Revision of the Bible Canon,” caused considerable excitement. With humble submission to the judgment of his church, he demanded a correction of the Tridentine decrees on Scripture in accordance with the results of modern science, but the only response was the inclusion of his book in the Index.

§ 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.

§ 194.1. =The Kingdom of Saxony.=--The present kingdom of Saxony, formerly an electoral principality, has had Catholic princes since 1679 (§ 153, 1), but the Catholic church could strike its roots again only in the immediate neighbourhood of the court. Indeed those belonging to it did not enjoy civil and religious equality until 1807, when this distinction was set aside. The erection of cloisters and the introduction of monkish orders, however, continued even then forbidden, and all official publications of the Catholic clergy required the placet of the government. The administration of the evangelical church, so long as the king is Catholic, lies, according to agreement, in the hands of the ministers commissioned in evangelicis. Although several of these have proved defenders of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, the rationalistic Illumination became almost universally prevalent not only among the clergy but also among the general populace. Meanwhile a pietistic reaction set in, especially powerful in Muldenthal, where Rudelbach’s labours impressed on it a Lutheran ecclesiastical character. The religious movement, on the other hand, directed by Martin Stephan, pastor of the Bohemian church in Dresden, came to a sad and shameful end. As representative and restorer of strict Lutheran views he had wrought successfully in Dresden from 1810, but, through the adulation of his followers, approaching even to worship, he fell more and more deeply into hierarchical assumption and neglect of self-vigilance. When the police in 1837 restricted his nightly assemblies, without, however, having discovered anything immoral, and suspended him from his official duties, he called upon his followers to emigrate to America. Many of them, lay and clerical, blindly obeyed, and founded in 1835, in Missouri, a Lutheran church communion (§ 208, 2). Stephan’s despotic hierarchical assumptions here reached their fullest height; he also gave his lusts free scope. Women oppressed or actually abused by him at length openly proclaimed his shame in 1839, and the community excommunicated him. He died in A.D. 1846. Taught by such experiences, and purged of the Donatist-separatist element, a church reaction against advancing rationalism made considerable progress under a form of church that favoured it, and secured also influential representatives in members of the theological faculty of the university of Leipzig distinguished for their scientific attainments. After repeated debates in the chamber over a scheme of a new ecclesiastical and synodal order submitted by the ministry, the first evangelical Lutheran state synod met in Dresden, in May, 1871. On the motion of the government, the law of patronage was here modified so that the patron had to submit three candidates to the choice of the ecclesiastical board. It was also decided to form an upper or state consistory, to which all ecclesiastical matters hitherto administered by the minister of public worship should be given over; the control of education was to remain with the ministry, and the state consistory was to charge itself with the oversight only of religious instruction and ethico-religious training. The most lively debates were those excited by the proposal to abolish the obligation resting upon all church teachers to seem to adhere to the confession of the Lutheran church, led by Dr. Zarncke, the rector of the state university. The commission of inquiry sent down, under the presidency of Professor Luthardt, demanded the absolute withdrawal of this proposal, which aimed at perfect doctrinal freedom. On the other hand, Professor G. Baur made the mediate proposal to substitute for the declaration on oath, the promise to teach simply and purely to the best of his knowledge and according to conscience the gospel of Christ as it is contained in Scripture, and witnessed in the confessions of the Lutheran church. And as even now Luthardt, inspired by the wish not to rend the first State Synod at its final sitting by an incurable schism, agreed to this suggestion, it was carried by a large majority. In consequence of this decision, a number of “Lutherans faithful to the confession,” withdrew from the State church, and on the anniversary of the Reformation in 1871, constituted themselves into an Evangelical Lutheran Free Church, associated with the Missouri synod (§ 208, 2), from which, on the suggestion of some of the members of the community who had returned from America, they chose for themselves a pastor called Ruhland. There were five such congregations in Saxony: at Dresden, Planitz, Chemnitz, Frankenberg, and Krimmitschau, to which some South German dissenters at Stenden, Wiesbaden, Frankfort, and Anspach attached themselves.

§ 194.2. =The Saxon Duchies.=--The Stephan emigration had also decoyed a number of inhabitants from Saxe-Altenburg. In a rescript to the Ephorus Ronneburg, in 1838, the consistory traced back this separatist movement to the fact that the religious needs of the congregations found no satisfaction in the rationalistic preaching, and urged a more earnest presentation from the pulpit of the fundamental and central doctrines of evangelical Christianity. This rescript was the subject of violent denunciation. The government took the opinion of four theological faculties on the procedure of the consistory and its opponents, who published it simply with the praise and blame contained therein, and thus prevented any investigation. Also in =Weimar= and =Gotha= the rationalism of Röhr and Bretschneider, which had dominated almost all pulpits down to the middle of the century, began gradually to disappear, and the more recent parties of Confessional, Mediation, and Free Protestant theology to take its place. The last named party found vigorous support in the university of Jena. A petition addressed to it in 1882 from the Thuringian Church Conference of Eisenach, to call to Jena also a representative of the positive Lutheran theology, was decidedly refused, and, in a controversial pamphlet by Superintendent Braasch, condemned as “the Eisenach outrage” (Attentat). In =Meiningen= the Vorsynode convened there in 1870 sanctioned the sketch of a moderately liberal synodal constitution submitted to it, which placed the confession indeed beyond the reach of legislative interference, but also secured its rights to free inquiry. The first State Synod, however, did not meet before 1878. In =Weimar= the first synod was held in 1873, the second in 1879.

§ 194.3. =The Kingdom of Hanover.=--Although the union found no acceptance in Hanover, after the overthrow of the rationalism of the ancien régime, the union theology became dominant in the university. The clergy, however, were in great part carried along by the confessional Lutheran current of the age. The Preachers’ Conference at Stade in 1854 took occasion to call the attention of the government to the “manifest divergence” between the union theology of the university and the legal and actual Lutheran confession of the state church, and urged the appointment of Lutheran teachers. The faculty, on the other hand, issued a memorial in favour of liberty of public teaching, and the curators filled the vacancies again with union theologians. When in April, 1862, it was proposed to displace the state catechism introduced in 1790, which neither theologically nor catechetically satisfied the needs of the church, by a carefully sifted revision of the Walther catechism in use before 1790, approved of by the Göttingen faculty, the agitation of the liberal party called forth an opposition, especially in city populations, which expressed itself in insults to members of consistories and pastors, and in almost daily repeated bloody street fights with the military, and obliged the government at last to give way.--The negotiations about a concordat with Rome reached up further in 1824 than obtaining the circumscription bull Impensa Romanorum, by which the Catholic church obtained two bishoprics, those of Hildesheim and Osnabrück.--In 1886, Hanover was incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia (§ 193, 8).

§ 194.4. =Hesse.=--Landgrave Maurice, 1592-1627, had forced upon his territories a modified Melanchthonian Calvinism (§ 154, 1), but a Lutheran basis with Lutheran modes of viewing things and Lutheran institutions still remained, and the Lutheran reaction had never been completely overcome, not even in Lower Hesse, although there the name of the Reformed Church with Reformed modes of worship had been gradually introduced in most of the congregations. The communities of Upper Hesse and Schmalcald, however, by continuous opposition saved for the most part their Lutheranism, which in 1648 was guaranteed to them anew by the Darmstadt Recess, and secured an independent form of church government in the Definitorium at Marburg. The union movement, which issued from Prussia in 1817, met with favour also in Hesse, but only in the province of Hanau in 1818 got the length of a formal constituting of a church on the basis of the union. In 1821, however, the elector issued the so-called Reorganization edict, by which the entire evangelical church of the electorate, without any reference to the confession status, but simply in accordance with the political divisions of the state, was put under the newly instituted consistories of Cassel, Marburg, and Hanau, in the formation of which the confession of the inhabitants had not been considered. The Marburg Definitorium indeed protested, but in vain, against this despotic act, which was felt a grievance, less on account of the wiping out of the confession than on account of the loss of independent church government which it occasioned. The government appointed pastors, teachers and professors without enquiring much about their confession. In 1838 the hitherto required subscription of the clergy to the confessional writings, the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, was modified into a formula declaring conscientious regard for them. But in this Bickell, professor of law at Marburg, saw a loss to the church in legal status, an endangering of the evangelical church; the theological professor, Hupfeld, also in the further course of the controversy took his side, while the advocate, Henkel, in Cassel, as a popular agitator opposed him and demanded a State Synod for the formal abolishing of all symbolical books. The government ignored both demands, and the vehement conflict was quieted by degrees. With 1850 a new era began in the keen controversy over the question, which confession, whether Lutheran or Reformed, was legally and actually that of the state. The ministry of Hassenpflug from 1850, which suppressed the revolution, considered it as legally the Lutheran, and determined the ecclesiastical arrangements in this sense, and in this course Dr. Vilmar, member of the Consistory, was the minister’s right hand. But the elector was from the beginning personally opposed to this procedure, and on the overthrow of the ministry in 1855, Vilmar (died 1868) was also transferred to a theological professorship at Marburg. This, however, only gave a new impulse to the confessional Lutheran movement in the state, for the spirit and tendency of the highly revered theological teacher powerfully influenced the younger generation of the Hessian clergy. In consequence of the German war, Hesse was annexed to Prussia in 1866 (§ 193, 9).--On the Catholic church in this state, compare § 196, 1.

§ 194.5. =Brunswick, Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Lippe-Detmold.=--Much ado was made also in =Brunswick= over the introduction of a new constitution for the Lutheran state church in 1869, and at last in 1871 a synodal ordinance was passed by which the State Synod, consisting of fourteen clerical and eighteen lay members, was to meet every four years, so as not to be a too offensive factor in the ecclesiastical administration and legislation, which therefore has left untouched the content of the confession. The first synod of 1872 began by rejecting the injunction to open the sessions with prayer and reading of scripture. =Oldenburg=, which in 1849, by a synod whose membership had been chosen by the original electorate, had been favoured with a democratic church constitution wholly separate from the state, accepted in 1854 without opposition a new constitution which restored the headship of the church to the territorial lords, the administration of the church to a Supreme Church Council and ecclesiastical legislation to a State Synod consisting of clerical and lay members.--The prince in the exercise of his sovereign rights gave a charter in 1878 to the evangelical church of the Duchy of =Anhalt= to a synodal ordinance which, though approved by the Vorsynode of 1876, had been rejected by parliament, and afterwards it gained the assent of the national representatives.--In the Reformed =Lippe-Detmold= there were in 1844 still five preachers who, wearied of the illuminationist catechism of the state church, had gone back to the Heidelberg catechism and protested against the abolition of acceptance on oath of the symbols, as destructive of the peace of the church. The democratic church constitution of 1851, however, was abrogated in 1854, and instead of it, the old Reformed church order of 1684 was again made law. At the same time, religious pardon and equality were guaranteed to Catholics and Lutherans. The first Reformed State Synod was constituted in 1878.

§ 194.6. =Mecklenburg.=--Mecklenburg-Schwerin from 1848 was in possession of a strictly Lutheran church government under the direction of Kliefoth, and its university at Rostock had decidedly Lutheran theologians. When the chamberlain Von Kettenburg, on going over to the Catholic church, appointed a Catholic priest on his estate, the government in 1852, on the ground that the laws of the state did not allow Catholic services which extended beyond simple family worship, held that he had overstepped the limits. A complaint, in reference thereto, presented to the parliament and then to the German Bund, was in both cases thrown out. Even in 1863 the Rostock magistrates refused to allow tower and bells in the building of a Catholic church.--An extraordinary excitement was caused by the removal from office in January, 1858, of Professor M. Baumgarten of Rostock. An examination paper set by him on 2 Kings xi. by which the endeavour was made to win scripture sanction for a violent revolution, obliged the government even in 1856 to remove him from the theological examination board. At the same time his polemic addressed to a pastoral conference at Parchim, against the doctrine of the Mecklenburg state catechism on the ceremonial law, especially in reference to the sanctification of the Sabbath, increased the distrust which the clergy of the state, on account of his writings, had entertained against his theological position as one which, from a fanatical basis, diverged on all sides into fundamental antagonism to the confession and the ordinances of the Lutheran state church. The government finally deposed him in 1858 (leaving him, however, in possession of his whole salary, also of the right of public teaching), on the ground and after the publication of a judgment of the consistory which found him guilty of heretical alteration of all the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith and the Lutheran confession, and sought to prove this verdict from his writings. As might have been foreseen, this step was followed by a loud outcry by all journals; but even Lutherans, like Von Hofmann, Von Scheurl [Scheuerl], and Luthardt, objected to the proceedings of the government as exceeding the law laid down by the ecclesiastical ordinance and the opinion of the consistory as resting upon misunderstanding, arbitrary supposition and inconsequent conclusion.

§ 195. BAVARIA.

Catholic Bavaria, originally an electorate, but raised in 1806, by Napoleon’s favour, into a royal sovereignty, to which had been adjudged by the Vienna Congress considerable territories in Franconia and the Palatine of the Rhine with a mainly Protestant population, attempted under Maximilian Joseph (IV.) I., after the manner of Napoleon, despotically to pass a liberal system of church polity, but found itself obliged again to yield, and under Louis I. became again the chief retreat of Roman Catholic ecclesiasticism of the most pronounced ultramontane pattern. It was under the noble and upright king, Maximilian II., that the evangelical church of the two divisions of the kingdom, numbering two-thirds of the population, first succeeded in securing the unrestricted use of their rights. Nevertheless, Catholic Bavaria remained, or became, the unhappy scene of the wildest demagogic agitation of the Catholic clergy and of the Bavarian “Patriots” who played their game, whose patriotism consisted only in mad hatred of Prussia and fanatical ultramontanism. Yet King Louis II., after the brilliant successes of the Franco-German war, could not object to the proposal of November 30th, 1870, to found a new German empire under a Prussian and therefore a Protestant head.

§ 195.1. =The Bavarian Ecclesiastical Polity under Maximilian I., 1799-1825.=--Bavaria boasted with the most unfeigned delight after the uprooting of Protestantism in its borders as then defined (§ 151, 1), that it was the most Catholic, i.e. the most ultramontane and most bigoted, of German-speaking lands, and, after a short break in this tradition by Maximilian Joseph III. (§ 165, 10), went forth again with full sail, under Charles Theodore, 1777-1779, on the old course. But the thoroughly new aspect which this state assumed on the overthrow of the old German empire, demanded an adapting territorially of the civil and ecclesiastical life in accordance with the relations which it owed to its present political position. The new elector Maximilian Joseph IV., who as king styled himself Maximilian I., transferred the execution of this task to his liberal, energetic, and thoroughly fearless minister, Count Montgelas, 1799-1817. In January, 1802, it was enacted that all cloisters should be suppressed, and that all cathedral foundations should be secularized; and these enactments were immediately carried out in an uncompromising manner. Even in 1801 the qualification of Protestants to exercise the rights of Bavarian citizens was admitted, and a religious edict of 1803 guaranteed to all Christian confessions full equality of civil and political privileges. To the clergy was given the control of education, and to the gymnasia and universities a considerable number of foreigners and Protestants received appointments. In all respects the sovereignty of the state over the church and the clergy was very decidedly expressed, the episcopate at all points restricted in its jurisdiction, the training of the clergy regulated and supervised on behalf of the state, the patronage of all pastorates and benefices usurped by the government, even public worship subjected to state control by the prohibition of superstitious practices, etc. But amid many other infelicities of this autocratic procedure was specially the gradual dying out of the old race of bishops, which obliged the government to seek again an understanding with Rome; and so it actually happened in June, 1817, after Montgelas’ dismissal, that a concordat was drawn up. By this the Roman Catholic apostolic religion secured throughout the whole kingdom those rights and prerogatives which were due to it according to divine appointment and canonical ordinances, which, strictly taken, meant supremacy throughout the land. In addition, two archbishoprics and seven bishoprics were instituted, the restoration of several cloisters was agreed to, and the unlimited administration of theological seminaries, the censorship of books, the superintendance of public schools and free correspondence with the holy see were allowed to the bishops. On the other hand, the king was given the choice of bishops (to be confirmed by the pope), the nomination of a great part of the priests and canons, and the placet for all hierarchical publications. After many vain endeavours to obtain amendments, the king at last, on October 17th, ratified this concordat; but, to mollify his highly incensed Protestant subjects, he delayed the publication of it till the proclamation of the new civil constitution on May 18th following. The concordat was then adopted, as an appendage to an edict setting forth the ecclesiastical supremacy of the state, securing perfect freedom of conscience to all subjects, as well as equal civil rights to members of the three Christian confessions, and demanding from them equal mutual respect. The irreconcilableness of this edict with the concordat was evident, and the newly appointed bishops as well as the clerical parliamentary deputies, declared by papal instruction that they could not take the oath to the constitution without reservation, until the royal statement of Tegernsee, September 21st, that the oath taken by Catholic subjects simply referred to civil relations, and that the concordat had also the validity of a law of the state, induced the curia to agree to it. But the government nevertheless continued to insist as before upon the supremacy of the state over the church, enlarged the claims of the royal placet, put the free intercourse with Rome again under state control, arbitrarily disposed of church property and supervised the theological examinations of the seminarists, made the appointment of all clergy dependent on its approbation, and refused to be misled in anything by the complaints and objections of the bishops.

§ 195.2. =The Bavarian Ecclesiastical Polity under Louis I., 1825-1848.=--Zealous Catholic as the new king was, he still held with unabated tenacity to the sovereign rights of the crown, and the extreme ultramontane ministry of Von Abel from 1837 was the first to wring from him any relaxations, e.g. the reintroduction of free intercourse between the bishops and the holy see without any state control. But it could not obtain the abolition of the placet, and just as little the eagerly sought permission of the return of the Jesuits. On the other hand the allied order of Redemptorists was allowed, whose missions among the Bavarian people, however, the king soon made dependent on a permission to be from time to time renewed. His tolerant disposition toward the Protestants was shown in 1830, by his refusing the demand of the Catholic clergy for a Reverse in mixed marriages, and recognising Protestant sponsors at Catholic baptisms. But yet his honourable desire to be just even to the Protestants of his realm was often paralysed, partly by his own ultramontane sympathies, partly and mainly by the immense influence of the Abel ministry, and the religious freedom guaranteed them by law in 1818 was reduced and restricted. Among other things the Protestant press was on all sides gagged by the minister, while the Catholic press and preaching enjoyed unbridled liberty. Great as the need was in southern Bavaria the government had strictly forbidden the taking of any aid from the Gustavus Adolphus Verein. Louis saw even in the name of this society a slight thrown on the German name, and was specially offended at its vague, nearly negative attitude towards the confession. Yet he had no hesitation in affording an asylum in Catholic Bavaria to the Lutheran confessor Scheibel (§ 177, 2) whom Prussian diplomacy had driven out of Lutheran Saxony, and did not prevent the university of Erlangen, after its dead orthodoxy had been reawakened by the able Reformed preacher Krafft (died 1845), becoming the centre of a strict Lutheran church consciousness in life as well as science for all Germany. The adoration order of 1838, which required even the Protestant soldiers to kneel before the host as a military salute, occasioned great discontent among the Protestant population, and many controversial pamphlets appeared on both sides. When finally the parliament in 1845 took up the complaint of the Protestants, a royal proclamation followed by which the usually purely military salute formerly in use was restored. In 1847 the ultramontane party, with Abel at its head, fell into disfavour with the king, on account of its honourable attitude in the scandal which the notorious Lola Montez caused in the circle of the Bavarian nobility; but in 1848 Louis was obliged, through the revolutionary storm that burst over Bavaria, to resign the crown.

§ 195.3. =The Bavarian Ecclesiastical Polity under Maximilian II., 1848-1864, and Louis II.= (died 1886).--Much more thoroughly than his father did Maximilian II. strive to act justly toward the Protestant as well as the Catholic church, without however abating any of the claims of constitutional supremacy on the part of the state. In consequence of the Würzburg negotiations (§ 192, 4), the Bavarian bishops assembled at Freysing, in November, 1850, presented a memorial, in which they demanded the withdrawal of the religious edict included in the constitution of 1818, as in all respects prejudicial to the rights of the church granted by the concordat, and set forth in particular those points which were most restrictive to the free and proper development of the catholic church. The result was the publication in April, 1852, of a rescript which, while maintaining all the principles of state administration hitherto followed, introduced in detail various modifications, which, on the renewal of the complaints in 1854, were somewhat further increased as the fullest and final measure of surrender.--The change brought about 1866 in the relation of Bavaria to North Germany led the government under Louis II. to introduce liberal reforms, and the offensive and defensive alliance which the government concluded with the heretical Prussia, the failure of all attempts on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war to force it in violation of treaty to maintain neutrality, and then to prevent Bavaria becoming part of the new German empire founded in 1871 at the suggestion of her own king, roused to the utmost the wrath of the Bavarian clerical patriots. In the conflicts of the German government, in 1872, against the intolerable assumptions, claims and popular tumults of the ultramontane clergy, the department of public worship, led by Lutz, inclined to take an energetic part. But this was practically limited to the passing of the so-called Kanzelparagraphen (§ 197, 4) in the Reichstag. Comp. § 197, 14.

§ 195.4. =Attempts at Reorganization of the Lutheran Church.=--Since 1852, Dr. von Harless (§ 182, 13), as president of the upper consistory at Munich, stood at the head of the Lutheran church of Bavaria. Under his presidency the general synod at Baireuth in 1853 showed a vigorous activity in the reorganization of the church. On the basis of its proceedings the upper consistory ordered the introduction of an admirable new hymnbook. This occasioned considerable disagreement. But when, in 1856, the upper consistory issued a series of enactments on worship and discipline, a storm, originating in Nuremberg, burst forth in the autumn of that same year, which raged over the whole kingdom and attacked even the state church itself. The king was assailed with petitions, and the spiritual courts went so far in faint-heartedness as to put the acceptance and non-acceptance of its ordinances to the vote of the congregations. Meanwhile the time had come for calling another general synod (1857). An order of the king as head of the church abolished the union of the two state synods in a general synod which had existed since 1849, and forbad all discussion of matters of discipline. Hence instead of one, two synods assembled, the one in October at Anspach, the other in November at Baireuth. Both, consisting of equal numbers of lay and clerical members, maintained a moderate attitude, relinquishing none of the privileges of the church or the prerogatives of the upper consistory, and yet contributed greatly to the assuaging of the prevalent excitement. Also the lay and clerical members of the subsequent reunited general synods held every fourth year for the most part co-operated successfully on moderate church lines. The synod held at Baireuth in 1873 unanimously rejected an address sent from Augsburg inspired by “Protestant Union” sympathies, as to their mind “for the most part indistinct and where distinct unevangelical.”

§ 195.5. =The Church of the Union in the Palatine of the Rhine.=--In the Bavarian =Palatine of the Rhine= the union had been carried out in 1818 on the understanding that the symbolical books of both confessions should be treated with due respect, but no other standard recognised than holy scripture. When therefore the Erlangen professor, Dr. Rust, in 1832 appeared in the consistory at Spires and the court for that time had endeavoured to fill up the Palatine union with positive Christian contents, 204 clerical and lay members of the Diocesan Synod presented to the assembly of the states of the realm, opportunely meeting in 1837, a complaint against the majority of the consistory. As this memorial yielded practically no result, the opposition wrought all the more determinedly for the severance of the Palatine church from the Munich Upper Consistory. This was first accomplished in the revolutionary year 1848. An extraordinary general synod brought about the separation, and gave to the country a new democratic church constitution. But the reaction of the blow did not stop there. The now independent consistory at Spires, from 1853 under the leadership of Ebrard, convened in the autumn of that year a general synod, which made the Augustana Variata of 1540 as representing the consensus between the Augustana of 1530 and the Heidelberg as well as the Lutheran catechism, the confessional standard of the Palatine church, and set aside the democratic election law of 1848. When now the consistory, purely at the instance of the general synod of 1853, submitted to the diocesan synod in 1856 the proofs of a new hymnbook, the liberal party poured out its bitter indignation upon the system of doctrine which it was supposed to favour. But the diocesan synods admitted the necessity of introducing a new hymnbook and the suitability of the sketch submitted, recommending, however, its further revision so that the recension of the text might be brought up to date and that an appendix of 150 new hymns might be added. The hymnbook thus modified was published in 1859, and its introduction into church use left to the judgment of presbyteries, while its use in schools and in confirmation instruction was insisted upon forthwith. This called forth protest after protest. The government wished from the first to support the synodal decree, but in presence of growing disturbance, changed its attitude, recommended the consistory to observe decided moderation so as to restore peace, and in February, 1861, called a general synod which, however, in consequence of the prevailingly strict ecclesiastical tendencies of its members, again expressed itself in favour of the new hymnbook. Its conclusions were meanwhile very unfavourably received by the government. Ebrard sought and obtained liberty to resign, and even at the next synod, in 1869, the consistory went hand in hand with the liberal majority.

§ 196. THE SOUTH GERMAN SMALLER STATES AND RHENISH ALSACE AND LORRAINE.

The Protestant princely houses of South Germany had by the Lüneville [Luneville] Peace obtained such an important increase of Catholic subjects, that they had to make it their first care to arrange their delicate relations by concluding a concordat with the papal curia in a manner satisfactory to state and church. But all negotiations broke down before the exorbitant claims of Rome, until the political restoration movements of 1850 led to modifications of them hitherto undreamed of. The concordats concluded during this period were not able to secure enforcement over against the liberal current that had set in with redoubled power in 1860, and so one thing after another was thrown overboard. Even in the Protestant state churches this current made itself felt in the persistent efforts, which also proved successful, to secure the restoration of a representative synodal constitution which would give to the lay element in the congregations a decided influence.

§ 196.1. =The Upper Rhenish Church Province.=--The governments of the South German States gathered in 1818 at Frankfort, to draw up a common concordat with Rome. But owing to the utterly extravagant pretensions nothing further was reached than a new delimitation in the bull “Provida sollersque,” 1821, of the bishoprics in the so-called Upper Rhenish Church Province: the archbishopric of Freiburg for Baden and the two Hohenzollern principalities, the bishoprics of Mainz for Hesse-Darmstadt, Fulda for Hesse-Cassel, Rottenburg for Württemberg, Limburg for Nassau and Frankfort; and even this was given effect to only in 1827, after long discussions, with the provision (bull Ad dominicæ gregis custodiam) that the choice of the bishops should issue indeed from the chapter, but that the territorial lord might strike out objectionable names in the list of candidates previously submitted to him. The actual equality of Protestants and Catholics which the pope had not been able to allow in the concordat, was now in 1880 proclaimed by the princes as the law of the land. Papal and episcopal indulgences had to receive approval before their publication; provincial and diocesan synods could be held only with approval of the government and in presence of the commissioners of the prince; taxes could not be imposed by any ecclesiastical court; appeal could be made to the civil court against abuse of spiritual power; those preparing for the priesthood should receive scientific training at the universities, practical training in the seminaries for priests, etc. The pope issued a brief in which he characterized these conditions as scandalous novelties, and reminded the bishops of Acts v. 29. But only the Bishop of Fulda followed this advice, with the result that the Catholic theological faculty at Marburg was after a short career closed again, and the education of the priests given over to the seminary at Fulda. Hesse-Darmstadt founded a theological faculty at Giessen in 1830; Baden had one already in Freiburg, and Würtemberg [Württemberg] had in 1817 affiliated the faculty at Ellwanger with the university of Tübingen, and endowed it with the revenues of a rich convent. In all these faculties alongside of rigorous scientific exactness there prevailed a noble liberalism without the surrender of the fundamental Catholic faith. The revolutionary year, 1848, first gave the bishops the hope of a successful struggle for the unconditional freedom of the church. In order to enforce the Würzburg decrees (§ 192, 4), the five bishops issued in 1851 a joint memorial. As the governments delayed their answer, they declared in 1852 that they would immediately act as if all had been granted them; and when at last the answer came, on most points unfavourable, they said in 1853, that, obeying God rather than man, they would proceed wholly in accordance with canon law.

§ 196.2. =The Catholic Troubles in Baden down to 1873.=--The Grand Duchy of Baden, with two-thirds of its population Catholic, where in 1848 the revolution had shattered all the foundations of the state, and where besides a young ruler had taken the reins of government in his hands only in 1852, seemed in spite of the widely prevalent liberality of its clergy, the place best fitted for such an attempt. The Archbishop of Freiburg, =Herm. von Vicari=, in 1852, now in his eighty-first year, began by arbitrarily stopping, on the evening of May 9th, the obsequies of the deceased grand-duke appointed by the Catholic Supreme Church Council for May 10th, prohibiting at the same time the saying of mass for the dead (pro omnibus defunctis) usual at Catholic burials, but in Baden and Bavaria hitherto not refused even to Protestant princes. More than one hundred priests, who disobeyed the injunction, were sentenced to perform penances. In the following year he openly declared that he would forthwith carry out the demands of the episcopal memorial, and did so immediately by appointing priests in the exercise of absolute authority; and by holding entrance examinations to the seminary without the presence of royal commissioners as required by law. As a warning remained unheeded, the government issued the order that all episcopal indulgences must before publication be subscribed by a grand-ducal special commissioner appointed for the purpose. Against him, as well as against all the members of the Supreme Church Council, the archbishop proclaimed the ban, issued a fulminating pastoral letter, which was to have been read with the excommunication in all churches, and ordered preaching for four weeks for the instruction of the people on these matters. At the same time he solemnly protested against all supremacy of the state over the church. The government drove the Jesuits out of the country, forbad the reading of the pastoral, and punished disobedient priests with fines and imprisonment. But the archbishop, spurred on by Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz, advanced more boldly and recklessly than ever. In May, 1854, the government introduced a criminal process against him, during the course of which he was kept prisoner in his own house. The attempts of his party to arouse the Catholic population by demonstrations had no serious result. At the close of the investigation the archbishop was released from his confinement and continued the work as before. The government, however, still remained firm, and punished every offence. In June, 1855, however, a provisional agreement was published, and finally in June, 1859, a formal concordat, the bull Æterni patris, was concluded with Rome, its concessions to the archbishop almost exceeding even those of Austria (§ 198, 2). In spite of ministerial opposition the second chamber in March, 1860, brought up the matter before its tribunal, repudiated the right of the government to conclude a convention with Rome without the approbation of the states of the realm, and forbad the grand-duke to enforce it. He complied with this demand, dismissed the ministry, insisted, in answer to the papal protest, on his obligation to respect the rights of the constitution, and on October 9th, 1860, sanctioned jointly with the chambers a law on the legal position of the Catholic and Protestant churches in the state. The archbishop indeed declared that the concordat could not be abolished on one side, and still retain the force of law, but in presence of the firm attitude of the government he desisted, and satisfied himself with giving in 1861 a grudging acquiescence, by which he secured to himself greater independence than before in regard to imposing of dues and administration of the church property. Conflicts with the archbishop, however, and with the clerical minority in the chamber, still continued. The archbishop died in 1868. His see remained vacant, as the chapter and the government could not agree about the list of candidates; the interim administration was carried on by the vicar-general, Von Kübel (died 1881), as administrator of the archdiocese, quite in the spirit of his predecessor. The law of October 9th, 1860, had prescribed evidence of general scientific culture as a condition of appointment to an ecclesiastical office in the Protestant as well as the Catholic church. Later ordinances required in addition: Possession of Baden citizenship, having passed a favourable examination on leaving the university, a university course of at least two and half years, attendance upon at least three courses of lectures in the philosophical faculty, and finally also an examination before a state examining board, within one and half years of the close of the university curriculum, in the Latin and Greek languages, history of philosophy, general history, and the history of German literature (later also the so called Kulturexamen). The Freiburg curia, however, protested, and in 1867 forbad clergy and candidates to submit to this examination or to seek a dispensation from it. The result was, that forthwith no clergymen could be definitely appointed, but up to 1874 no legal objection was made to interim appointments of parochial administrators. The educational law of 1868 abolished the confessional character of the public schools. In 1869 state recognition was withdrawn from the festivals of Corpus Christi, the holy apostles, and Mary, as also, on the other hand, from the festivals of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. In 1870 obligatory civil marriage was introduced, while all compulsion to observe the baptismal, confirmational, and funeral rites of the church was abolished, and a law on the legal position of benevolent institutions was passed to withdraw these as much as possible from the administration of the ecclesiastical authorities. On the subsequent course of events in Baden, see § 197, 14.

§ 196.3. =The Protestant Troubles in Baden.=--The union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches was carried out in the Grand Duchy of Baden in 1821. It recognised the normative significance of the Augustana, as well as the Lutheran and Heidelberg catechisms, in so far as by it the free examination of scripture as the only source of Christian faith, is again expressly demanded and applied. A synod of 1834 provided this state church with union-rationalistic agenda, hymnbook, and catechism. When there also a confessional Lutheran sentiment began again in the beginning of 1850 to prevail, the church of the union opposed this movement by gensdarmes, imprisonment and fines. The pastor Eichhorn, and later also the pastor Ludwig, with a portion of their congregations left the state church and attached themselves to the Breslau Upper Church Conference, but amid police interference could minister to their flocks only under cloud of night. After long refusal the grand-duke at last in 1854 permitted the separatists the choice of a Lutheran pastor, but persistently refused to recognise Eichhorn as such. Pastor Haag, who would not give up the Lutheran distribution formula at the Lord’s supper, was after solemn warning deposed in 1855. On the other hand the positive churchly feeling became more and more pronounced in the state church itself. In 1854 the old rationalist members of the Supreme Church Council were silenced, and Ullmann of Heidelberg was made president. Under his auspices a general synod of 1855 presented a sketch of new church and school books on the lines of the union consensus, with an endeavour also to be just to the Lutheran views. The grand-duke confirmed the decision and the country was silent. But when in 1858 the Supreme Church Council, on the ground of the Synodal decision of 1855, promulgated the general introduction of a new church book, a violent storm broke out through the country against the liturgical novelties contained therein (extension of the liturgy by confession of sin and faith, collects, responses, Scripture reading, kneeling at the supper, the making a confession of their faith by sponsors), the Heidelberg faculty, with Dr. Schenkel at its head, leading the opposition in the Supreme Church Council. Yet Hundeshagen, who in the synod had opposed the introduction of a new agenda, entered the lists against Schenkel and others as the apologist of the abused church book. The grand-duke then decided that no congregation should be obliged to adopt the new agenda, while the introduction of the shorter and simpler form of it was recommended. The agitations these awakened caused its rejection by most of the congregations. Meanwhile in consequence of the concordat revolution in 1860, a new liberal ministry had come into power, and the government now presented to the chambers a series of thoroughly liberal schemes for regulating the affairs of the evangelical church, which were passed by large majorities. Toward the end of the year the government, by deposing the Supreme Church Councillor Heintz, began to assume the patronage of the supreme ecclesiastical court. Ullmann and Bähr tendered their resignations, which were accepted. The new liberal Supreme Church Council, including Holtzmann, Rothe, etc., now published a sketch of a church constitution on the lines of ecclesiastical constitutionalism, which with slight modifications the synod of July, 1861, adopted and the grand-duke confirmed. It provided for annual diocesan synods of lay and clerical members, and a general synod every five years. The latter consists of twenty-four clerical and twenty-four lay members, and six chosen by the grand-duke, besides the prelate, and is represented in the interval by a standing committee of four members, who have also a seat and vote in the Supreme Church Council.--Dr. Schenkel’s “Leben Jesu” of 1864 led the still considerable party among the evangelical clergy who adhered to the doctrine of the church to agitate for his removal from his position as director of the Evangelical Pastors’ Seminary at Heidelberg; but it resulted only in this, that no one was obliged to attend his lectures. The second synod, held almost a year behind time in 1867, passed a liberal ordination formula. At the next synod in 1871, the orthodox pietistic party had evidently become stronger, but was still overborne by the liberal party, whose strength was in the lay element. Meanwhile a praiseworthy moderation prevailed on both sides, and an effort was made to work together as peaceably as possible.--In Heidelberg a considerable number attached to the old faith, dissatisfied with the preaching of the four “Free Protestant” city pastors, after having been in 1868 refused their request for the joint use of a city church for private services in accordance with their religious convictions (§ 180, 1), had built for this purpose a chapel of their own, in which numerously attended services were held under the direction of Professor Frommel of the gymnasium. When a vacancy occurred in one of the pastorates in 1880, this believing minority, anxious for the restoration of unity and peace, as well as the avoidance of the separation, asked to have Professor Frommel appointed to the charge. At a preliminary assembly of twenty-one liberal church members this proposal was warmly supported by the president, Professor Bluntschli, by all the theological professors, with the exception of Schenkel and eighteen other liberal voters, and agreed to by the majority of the two hundred liberals constituting the assembly. But when the formal election came round the proposal was lost by twenty-seven to fifty-one votes.

§ 196.4. =Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau.=--In 1819 the government of the Grand Duchy of =Hesse= recommended the union of all =Protestant= communities under one confession. Rhenish Hesse readily agreed to this, and there in 1822 the union was accomplished. In the other provinces, however, it did not take effect, although by the rationalism fostered at Giessen among the clergy and by the popular current of thought in the communities, the Lutheran as well as the Reformed confession had been robbed of all significance. But since 1850 even there a powerful Lutheran reaction among the younger clergy, zealously furthered by a section of the aristocracy of the state, set in, especially in the district on the right bank of the Rhine, which has eagerly opposed the equally eager struggles of the liberal party to introduce a liberal synodal representative constitution for the evangelical church of the whole state. These endeavours, however, were frustrated, and at an extraordinary state synod of 1873, on all controverted questions, the middle party gave their vote in favour of the absorptive union. The state church was declared to be the united church. The clause that had been added to the government proposal: “Without prejudice to the status of the confessions of the several communities,” was dropped; the place of residence and not the confession was that which determined qualifications in the community; the ordination now expressed obligation to the Reformation confessions generally, etc. The members of the minority broke off their connection with the synod, and seventy-seven pastors presented to the synod a protest against its decisions. The grand-duke then, on the basis of these deliberations, gave forthwith a charter to the church constitution, in which indeed the Lutheran, Reformed, and United churches were embraced in one evangelical state church with a common church government; but still also, by restoring the phrase struck out by the synod from § 1, the then existing confessional status of the several communities was preserved and the confession itself declared beyond the range of legislation. Yet fifteen Lutheran pastors represented that they could not conscientiously accept this, and the upper consistory hastened to remove them from office shortly before the shutting of the gates, i.e., before July 1st, 1875, when by the new law (§ 197, 15) depositions of clergy would belong only to the supreme civil court. The opposing congregations now declared, in 1877, their withdrawal from the state church, and constituted themselves as a “free Lutheran church in Hesse.”--The =Catholic= church in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, had under the peaceful bishops of Mainz, Burg (died 1833) and Kaiser (died 1849), caused the government no trouble. But it was otherwise after Kaiser’s death. Rome rejected Professor Leopold Schmid of Giessen, favoured at Darmstadt and regularly elected by the chapter (§ 187, 3), and the government yielded to the appointment of the violent ultramontane Westphalian, Baron von Ketteler. His first aim was the extinction of the Catholic faculty at Giessen (§ 191, 2); he rested not until the last student had been transferred from it to the newly erected seminary at Mainz (1851). No less energetic and successful were his endeavours to free the Catholic church from the supremacy of the state in accordance with the Upper Rhenish episcopal memorial. The Dalwigk ministry, in 1854, concluded a “provisional agreement” with the bishop, which secured to him unlimited autonomy and sovereignty in all ecclesiastical matters, and, to satisfy the pope with his desiderata, these privileges were still further extended in 1856. To this convention, first made publicly known in 1860, the ministry, in spite of all addresses and protests, adhered with unfaltering tenacity, although long convinced of its consequences. The political events of 1886, however, led the grand-duke in September of that year to abrogate the hateful convention. But the minister as well as the bishop considered this merely to refer to the episcopal convention of 1850, and treated the agreement with the pope of 1856 as always still valid. So everything went on in the old way, even after Ketteler’s supreme influence in the state had been broken by the overthrow of Dalwigk in 1871. Comp. § 197, 15.--The Protestant church in the Duchy of =Nassau= attached itself to the union in 1817. The conflict in the Upper Rhenish church overflowed even into this little province. The Bishop of Limburg, in opposition to law and custom, appointed Catholic clergy on his own authority, and excommunicated the Catholic officers who supported the government, while the government arrested the temporalities and instituted criminal proceedings against bishop and chapter. After the conclusion of the Württemberg and Baden concordats, the government showed itself disposed to adopt a similar way out of the conflict, and in spite of all opposition from the States concluded in 1861 a convention with the bishop, by which almost all his hierarchical claims were admitted. Thus it remained until the incorporation of Nassau in the Prussian kingdom in 1866.

§ 196.5. In =Protestant Württemberg= a religious movement among the people reached a height such as it attained nowhere else. Pietism, chiliasm, separatism, the holding of conventicles, etc., assumed formidable dimensions; solid science, philosophical culture, and then also philosophical and destructive critical tendencies issuing from Tübingen affected the clergy of this state. Dissatisfaction with various novelties in the liturgy, the hymnbook, etc., led many formally to separate from the state church. After attempts at compulsion had proved fruitless, the government allowed the malcontents under the organizing leadership of the burgomaster, G. W. Hoffman (died 1846), to form in 1818 the community of Kornthal, with an ecclesiastical and civil constitution of its own after the apostolic type. Others emigrated to South Russia and to North America (§ 211, 6, 7). Out of the pastoral work of pastor Blumhardt at Möttlingen, who earnestly preached repentance, there was developed, in connection with the healing of a demoniac, which had been accompanied with a great awakening in the community, the “gift” of healing the sick by absolution and laying on of hands with contrite believing prayer. Blumhardt, in order to afford this gift undisturbed exercise, bought the Bad Boll near Göppingen, and officiated there as pastor and miraculous healer in the way described. He died in 1880.--After the way to a synodal representation of the whole evangelical state church had been opened up in 1851 by the introduction, according to a royal ordinance, of parochial councils and diocesan synods, the consistory having also in 1858 published a scheme referring thereto, the whole business was brought to a standstill, until at last in 1867, by means of a royal edict, the calling of a State Synod consisting of twenty-five clerical and as many lay members was ordered, and consequently in February, 1869, such a synod met for the first time. Co-operation in ecclesiastical legislation was assigned to it as its main task, while it had also the right to advise in regard to proposals about church government, also to make suggestions and complaints on such matters, but the confession of the evangelical church was not to be touched, and lay entirely outside of its province. A liberal enactment with regard to dissenters was sanctioned by the chamber in 1870.

§ 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.

In spite of repeated declarations of the curia that it could and would agree to the notification only after a previous sufficient guarantee of perfectly free training of the clergy and free administration of the spiritual office, the king while residing at the Castle of Mainau on Lake Constance, on July 11th, 1883, sanctioned the so-called Mainau Law that had passed both houses, and on the 14th, the minister of public worship demanded that the Prussian bishops, without making notification, should fill up vacancies in pastorates by appointing assistants, and should name those candidates who were eligible for such appointment under the conditions of the May Law of the previous year (§ 197, 3). The pope at last, in September, 1883, allowed the dispensation required, but for that time only and without prejudice for the future. By the end of May, 1,884 applications had been made to the senior of the Prussian episcopate appointed to receive such, Marnitz of Kulm, by 1,443 clergymen, of whom the government rejected only 178 who had studied at the Jesuit institutions of Rome, Louvain, and Innsbrück.--In December, 1883, Bishop Blum of Limburg, and in January, 1884, Brinkmann of Münster were restored by royal grace, and for both dioceses, as well as for Ermeland, Kulm and Hildesheim, and at last also on March 31st, shortly before the closing of the door, even for Cologne, in this case, however, revocably, the arrest of salaries ceased, so that only the two archiepiscopal sees of Cologne and Posen remained vacant, and only Posen continued bereft of its endowments. On the other hand the government allowed the three discretionary enactments that were in operation till April 1st, 1884, to lapse without providing for their renewal. Also the proposal for abolishing the Expatriation Law of November, 1884, introduced anew by the Centre and again adopted by the Reichstag by a great majority, was thrown out by the Federal Council; but in the beginning of December, on the opening of the new Reichstag, it was again brought in by the Centre and passed, but was left quite unnoticed by the Federal Council. The repeated motions of the Centre for payment of the bishops’ salaries from the state exchequer, as well as for immunity to those who read mass and dispensed the sacraments, were again thrown out by the House of Deputies in April, 1885.

§ 197.12. =Resumption on both sides of Conciliatory Measures, 1885-1886.=--The next subject of negotiation with the curia was the re-institution of the archiepiscopal see of Posen-Gnesen. In March, 1884, the pope had nominated Cardinal Ledochowski secretary of the committee on petitions, in which capacity he had to remain in Rome. He now declared himself willing to accept Ledochowski’s resignation of the archbishopric if the Prussian government would allow a successor who would possess the confidence of the holy see as well as of the Polish inhabitants of the diocese. But of the three noble Polish chauvinists submitted by the Vatican the government could accept none. Since further no agreement could be reached on the question of the bishop’s obligation to make notification and the state’s right to protest, the negotiations were for a long time at a standstill, and were repeatedly on the point of being broken off. But from the middle of 1885, a conciliatory movement gained power, through the counsels of the more moderate party among the cardinals. Archbishop Melchers, who lived as an exile in Maestricht, was called to Rome, and as a reward for his assistance was made cardinal, and the pope consecrated as his successor in the archbishopric of Cologne, Bishop Krementz of Ermeland (§ 197, 2), who also was acknowledged by the Prussian government and introduced to Cologne on December 15th, 1885, with great pomp, with 20,000 torches and twenty bands of music. After a long list of candidates had been set aside by one side and the other, some here, some there, the pope at last fell from his demand for one of Polish nationality, and in March, 1886, appointed to the vacant see Julius Dinder, dean of Königsberg, a German by nation but speaking the Polish language.--Meanwhile at other points advance was made in the peaceful, yea, even friendly, relations between the pope and the Prussian government. The diplomatist Leo showed his admiring regard for the diplomatist Bismarck by sending him a valuable oil-painting of himself by a Münich [Munich] master, and the latter astonished the world by making the pope umpire in a threatening conflict with Spain on the possession of the Caroline islands. His decision on the main question was indeed in favour of Spain, but not unimportant concessions were also made to Germany. The pope sent the prince two Latin poems as pretium affectionis, and conferred upon him, the first Protestant that had ever been so honoured, at the close of 1885 or beginning of 1886, the highest papal order, the insignia of the Order of Christ, with brilliants, after the cardinal secretary of state Jacobini as president of the papal court of arbitration had been rewarded with the Prussian order of the Black Eagle, and the other members of the court with other high Prussian orders; and at the end of April, 1886, the German emperor sent the pope himself thanks for his mediation, with an artistic and costly Pectoral (§ 59, 7) worth 10,000 marks.--The government had, meanwhile, on February 15th, 1886, brought in a new proposal of revision of church polity, the fourth, and in order to secure the advice of a distinguished representative of the Prussian episcopate, called Bishop Kopp of Fulda to the House of Peers. But as his demands for concessions, suggested to him, not by the pope, but by the Centre, went far beyond what was proposed, they were for the most part decidedly opposed by the minister of worship and rejected by the house. The law confirmed by the king on May 24th, 1886, made the following changes: Complete abolition of the examination in general culture; freeing of the seminaries recognised by the minister as suitable for clerical training, as well as faculties established in universities, seminaries and gymnasia from any special state inspection (as laid down in the May Laws), and subjecting such to the common laws affecting all similar educational institutions. Removal of restrictions requiring ecclesiastical disciplinary procedure to be only before German ecclesiastical courts; Abolition of the Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs and transference of its functions partly to the ministry of worship, which now as court of appeal in matters of church discipline dealt only with those cases which entailed a loss or reduction of official income, partly to the Berlin supreme court, which has jurisdiction in case of a breach of the law of the state by a church officer as well as in case of a refusal to fulfil the oath of obedience; The discretionary enactments of the government of 1880 (§ 197, 10) are again enforced and the modifications of these in Article 6 of that law are extended to all other institutions engaged on the home propaganda; All reading of private masses and dispensing of sacraments are no longer subjected to the infliction of penalties.--Some weeks before royal sanction was given to this law, Cardinal Jacobini had, at the instance of the pope, expressed his profound satisfaction with the success of the advice in the House of Peers, as also particularly at the prospect of other concessions promised by the government. In an official communication to the president of the House of Deputies, he proposed the addition that the notification of new appointments to vacant pastorates should begin from that date. In August there followed, on the part of the government, the hitherto refused dispensation for those trained by the Jesuits in Rome and Innsbrück, and in November, with consent of the minister of public worship, the re-opening of the episcopal seminaries at Fulda and Treves.

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

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

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

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

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

§ 197.15.

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

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

§ 198. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

§ 199. SWITZERLAND.

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

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

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

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

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

§ 199.5. =The Protestant Church in French Switzerland.=--The French philosophy of the eighteenth century had given to the Reformed church of =Geneva= a prevailingly rationalistic tendency. Notwithstanding, or just because of this, Madame Krüdener, in 1814, with her conventicle pietism, found an entrance there, and won in the young theologian Empaytaz a zealous supporter and an apostle of conversion preaching. In the next year a wealthy Englishman, Haldane, appeared there as the apostle of methodistic piety, and inspired the young pastor Malan with enthusiasm for the revival mission. Empaytaz and Malan now by speech and writing charged the national church with defection from the Christian faith, and won many zealous believers as adherents, especially among students of theology. The Vénérable Compagnie of the Geneva clergy, hitherto resting on its lees in rationalistic quiet, now in 1817 thought it might still the rising storm by demanding of theological candidates at ordination the vow not to preach on the two natures in Christ, original sin, predestination, etc., but thereby they only poured oil on the fire. The adherents of the daily increasing evangelical movement withdrew from the national church, founded free independent communities and Réunions under the banner of the restoration of Calvinistic orthodoxy, and were by their enemies nicknamed Momiers, i.e. mummery traders or hypocrites. The government imprisoned and banished their leaders, while the mob, unchecked, heaped upon them all manner of abuse. The persecution came to an end in 1830. Thereafter settling down in quiet moderation, it founded in 1831 the Société évangélique, which, in 1832, established an Ecole de Théologie, and became the centre of the Free church evangelical movement. From that time the Eglise libre of Geneva has existed unmolested alongside of the Eglise Nationale, and the opposition at first so violent has been moderated on both sides by the growth of conciliatory and mediating tendencies. Since 1850, two divergent parties have arisen within the bosom of the free church itself, which without any serious conflict continued alongside of one another, until in May, 1883, the majority of the presbytery resolved to make a peaceful separation, the stricter forming the congregation of the Pelisserie, and the more liberal that of the Oratoire. At the same time a committee was appointed to draw up a confession upon which both could unite in lasting fellowship. But when this failed, a formal and complete separation was agreed upon at the new year.--From Geneva the Methodist revival spread to =Vaud=. The religious movement got a footing, especially in Lausanne. The Grand Council, however, did not allow the contemplated formation of an independent congregation, and in 1824 forbad all “sectarian” assemblies, while the mob raged even more wildly than at Geneva against the “Momiers.” The excitement increased when, in 1839, by decision of the Grand Council, the Helvetic Confession was abrogated. When in 1845 a revolutionary radical government came into office at Lausanne, the refusal of many clergymen to read from the pulpit a political proclamation, caused a thorough division in the church, for the preachers referred to were in a body driven out of the national church. A Free church of Vaud now developed itself alongside of the national church, sorely oppressed and persecuted by the radical government, and spread into other Swiss cantons. It owed its freedom from sectarian narrowness mainly to the influence of the talented and thoroughly independent Alex. Vinet, who devoted his whole energies and brilliant eloquence to the interests of religious freedom and liberty of conscience and to the struggle for the separation of church and state. Vinet was from 1817 teacher of the French language and literature in Basel, then from 1837 to 1845 professor of practical theology at Lausanne, but on the reconstruction of the university he was not re-elected. He died in 1847.[553]--In the canton =Neuchatel= the State Council in 1873 introduced a law, which granted unconditional liberty of conscience, freedom in teaching and worship without any sort of restriction on clergy, teachers and congregations. The Grand Council by forty-seven votes to forty-six gave it its sanction, notwithstanding the almost unanimous protest of the evangelical synod, and refused to appeal to a popular vote. When an appeal to the Federal Council proved fruitless, somewhere about one half of the pastors, including the theological professors and all the students, left the state church, and formed an Eglise libre; while the other half regarded it as their duty to remain in the national church so long as they were not hindered from preaching God’s word in purity and simplicity. Both parties had a common meeting point in the Union évangélique, and a law originally passed in favour of the Old Catholics, which secured to all seceders a right to the joint use of their respective churches, proved also of advantage to the Free church.--The canton =Geneva= issued, in 1874, a Protestant law of worship, which with dogma and liturgy also threw overboard ordination, and maintained that the clergy are answerable only to their conscience and their electors. Yet at the new election of the consistory in 1879, at the close of the legal term of four years, the evangelical and moderate party again obtained the supremacy, and a law introduced by the radical party in the Grand Council, demanding the withdrawal of the budget of worship and the separation of church and state, was, on July 4th, 1880, thrown out by universal popular vote, by a majority of 9,000 to 4,000.

§ 200. HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.

Among the most serious mistakes in the new partition of states at the Vienna Congress was the combining in one kingdom of the United Netherlands the provinces of Holland and Belgium, diverse in race, language, character, and religion. The contagion of French Revolution of July, 1830, however, caused an outbreak in Brussels, which ended in the separation of Catholic Belgium from the predominantly Protestant Holland. Belgium has since then been the scene of unceasing and changeful conflicts between the liberal and ultramontane parties, whose previous combination was now completely shattered. And while, on the other hand, in the Reformed state church of Holland, theological studies, leaning upon German science, have taken a liberal and even radical destructive course, the not inconsiderable Roman Catholic population has fallen, under Jesuit leading, more and more into bigoted obscurantism.

§ 200.1. =The United Netherlands.=--The constitution of the new kingdom created in 1814 guaranteed unlimited freedom to all forms of worship and complete equality of all citizens without distinction of religious confession. Against this the Belgian episcopate protested with bishop Maurice von Broglie, of Ghent, at their head, who refused, in 1817, the prayers of the church for the heretical crown princess and the Te Deum for the newborn heir to the throne. As he went so far as to excite the Catholic people on all occasions against the Protestant government, the angry king, William I., summoned him to answer for his conduct before the court of justice. But he eluded inquiry by flight to France, and as guilty of high treason was sentenced to death, which did not prevent him from his exile unweariedly fanning the flames of rebellion. The number of cloisters grew from day to day and also the multitude of clerical schools and seminaries, in which the Catholic youth was trained up in the principles of the most violent fanaticism. The government in 1825 closed the seminaries, expelled Jesuit teachers, forbad attendance at Jesuit schools abroad, and founded a college at Louvain, in which all studying for the church were obliged to pass through a philosophical curriculum. The common struggle for maintaining the liberty of instruction promised by the constitution made political radicalism and ultramontanism confederates, and the government, intimidated by this combination, agreed, in a concordat with the pope in 1827, to modify the obligatory into a facultative attendance at Louvain College. The inevitable consequence of this was the speedy and complete decay of the college. But the confederacy of the radicals and ultramontanes continued, directing itself against other misdeeds of the government, and was not broken up until in 1830 it attained its object by the disjunction of Belgium and Holland.

§ 200.2. =The Kingdom of Holland.=--In the prevailingly =Reformed= national church rationalism and latitudinarian supernaturalism had to such an extent blotted out the ecclesiastical distinctions between Reformed, Remonstrants, Mennonites, and Lutherans, that the clergy of one party would unhesitatingly preach in the churches of the others. Then rose the poet Bilderdijk, driven from political into religious patriotism, to denounce with glowing fury the general declension from the orthodoxy of Dort. Two Jewish converts of his, the poet and apologist Isaac da Costa, and the physician Cappadose, gave him powerful support. A zealous young clergyman, Henry de Cock, was theological mouthpiece of the party. Because he offended church order, especially by ministering in other congregations, he was suspended and finally deposed in 1834. The greater part of his congregation and four other pastors with him formally declared their secession from the unfaithful church, as a return to the orthodox Reformed church. As separatists and disturbers of public worship, they were fined and imprisoned, and were at last satisfied with the recognition granted them of royal grace in 1839, as a separate or =Christian Reformed Church=. It consists now of 364 congregations, embracing about 140,000 souls, with a flourishing seminary at Kampen. The =Reformed State Church=, with three-fourths of all the Protestant population, persevered in and developed its liberalistic tendencies. The State Synod of 1883 expressly declared that the Netherland Reformed Church demands from its teachers not agreement with all the statements of the confessional writings, but only with their spirit, gist, and essence; and the synod of 1877, by the vote of a majority, stated that no sort of formulated confession should be required even of candidates for confirmation. Yet even amid such proceedings from various sides, a churchly and evangelical reaction of considerable importance set in. Three great parties within the state church carried on a life and death struggle with one another:

1. The Strict Calvinists, whose leader is Dr. Kuyper, formerly pastor in Amsterdam;

2. The so-called Middle Party, which falls into two divisions: the, just about expiring, Ethical Irenical Party, with the Utrecht professor Van Oosterzee (died 1882), and the Evangelical Party with the Gröningen professor Hofstede de Groot, since 1872 Emeritus, as leaders, of which the former, subordinating the confession, regards the Christian life as the main thing in Christianity, and the latter declares itself prepared to take the gospel alone for its creed and confession; and

3. The so-called Modern Party, which, with Professors Scholten and Kuenen as leaders, has its centre at Leyden, and in theology carries out with reckless energy the destructive critical principles of the school of Baur and Wellhausen (§ 182, 7, 18).

The “Moderns” are also the founders and leaders of the “Protestant Federation” after the German model (§ 180), with its annual assemblies since 1873, in opposition to which a “Confessional Union” holds its annual meetings at Utrecht, and operates by means of evangelists and lay preachers in places where there are only “Modern” pastors. The higher and cultured classes in the congregations mostly favour the Gröningen and some also the Leyden school, but the great majority of the middle and lower classes are adherents of Kuyper, and have frequently secured majorities in the Congregational Church Council.--The Dutch school law of 1856 banished every sort of confessional religious education from public schools supported by the state, and so called forth the erection of numerous denominational schools independent of the state, and the founding of a “Union for Christian Popular Education,” which has spread through the whole country. The university law sanctioned, after violent debates in the chamber, in 1876, establishes in place of the old theological faculties, professorships for the science of religion generally, with the exception of dogmatics and practical theology, and left it with the Reformed State Synod to care for these two subjects, either in a theological seminary or by founding for itself the two theological professorships in the universities and supporting them from the sums voted for the state church. The synod decided on the latter course, and appointed to the new chairs men of moderate liberal views. The adherents of the strict Calvinistic party, however, founded a Free Reformed University at Amsterdam, which was opened in autumn, 1880. Its first rector was Kuyper.--The =Lutheran Church= of fifty congregations and sixty-two pastors, with about 60,000 souls, has also had since 1816 a theological seminary. In it neological tendencies prevail.

§ 200.3. The founding of the Free University at Amsterdam, referred to above, led to a series of violent conflicts which threatened to break up the whole Reformed church of the Netherlands by a wild schism. The Reformed State Synod, consisting mainly of Gröningen theologians, but also numbering many members belonging to the Modern or Leyden school, and constituting the supreme ecclesiastical court, had, in spite of its eleventh rule, which makes “the maintenance of the doctrine” a main task of all church government, for a long time admitted the principle of unfettered freedom of teaching, and ordained that even evidence of orthodoxy on the part of candidates for confirmation would no longer be regarded as a condition of their acceptance, their examination referring only to their knowledge, the examining clergy and not the assisting elders being judges in this matter. When now the Free University had been founded in direct opposition to the synod, the latter resolved to reject all its pupils at the examination of candidates, and when, in the summer of 1885, its first student presented himself, actually carried out this resolution. Thereupon the university transferred the examination to a committee, elected by itself, consisting of orthodox Reformed pastors and elders, and a small village congregation agreed to elect the candidate for its poorly endowed, and so for seventeen years vacant, pastorate. But the synod refused him ordination. Therefore the director of a strict Calvinistic Gymnasium, formerly a pastor, performed the ceremony, and the congregation announced its secession from the synodal union. At the same time in Amsterdam a second conflict arose over the question of candidates for confirmation. Three pastors of the “modern” school demanded the elders subject to them, among them Dr. Kuyper, to take part as required in the examining of their candidates; but these refused to give their assistance, because the previous training had not been according to Scripture and the confession, and also the majority of the church council approved of this refusal, as the parents had complained, and declared that the certificate of morality demanded by other pastors could be made out only if candidates for confirmation had previously formally and solemnly confessed their genuine and hearty faith in Jesus Christ as the only and all-sufficient Saviour, which these, however, in accordance with the Dutch practice of the eighteenth century, declined to do. The controversy was carried by appeal through all the church courts, and finally the State Synod ordered the church council to make delivery of the certificates within six weeks on pain of suspension. But this was brought about before the expiry of that period by the outbreak of a far more serious conflict over matters of administration. In Amsterdam the administration of church property lay with a special commission, responsible to the church council, consisting of members, one half from the church council and the other half from the congregations. If in the beginning of January, 1886, the threatened suspension and deposition of the church council should be carried out, in accordance with proper order until the appointment of a new council all the rights of the same, therefore also that of supervising that commission, would fall to the “classical board” (§ 143, 1) as the next highest court. In order to avoid this, the fateful resolution was passed on December 14th, 1885, to alter § 41 of the regulations, so that, if the church council in the discharge of its duty to govern the community in accordance with God’s word and the legalized church confession, it would be so hindered therein that it might feel in conscience obliged to obey God rather than man and accept suspension and deposition, and a church council should be appointed, the administrative commission would be obliged to remain subject, not to this, but to the original commission. The “classical board” annulled this resolution, suspended on January 4th, 1886, for continued obstinacy the previous church council, and constituted itself, pending decision on the part of discipline, interim administrator of all its rights and duties. The suspended majority, however, called a meeting for the same day, and when it found the doors of its meeting place closed, sent for a locksmith to break them open. They were prevented by the police, who then, by putting on a safety lock, strengthening the boards of the door by mailed plates, and setting a watch, greatly reduced the chances of an entrance. But the opposition sent to the watchers a letter by a policeman demanding that the representatives of the church council should be allowed to pass; upon which these, regarding it as an order of the police, withdrew. They then had the mailed plates sawn, took possession of the hall and the archives and treasure box lying there, and refused admission to the classical board. While then the question of law and possession was referred to the courts of law, and there the final decision would not be given before the lapse of a year, the disciplinary procedure took its course through all the ecclesiastical courts and ended in the deposition of all resisting elders and pastors. The latter preached now to great crowds in hired halls. From the capital the excitement increased by means of violent publications on both sides, spread over the whole land and produced discord in many other communities. Wild and uproarious tumults first broke out in Leidendorf, a suburb of Leyden. The pastor and the majority of the church council refused to enter on their congregational list two girls who had been confirmed by liberal churchmen elsewhere, and with by far the greater part of the congregation seceded from the synodal union. The classical board now, in July, 1886, declared the pastorate vacant, and ordered that a regular interim service should be conducted on Sundays by the pastors of the circuit. The uproar among the people, however, was thereby only greatly increased, so that the civil authorities were obliged to protect the deputed preachers, by a large military escort, from rude maltreatment, and to secure quiet during public worship by a company of police in church. And similar conflicts soon broke out on like occasions and with similar consequences in many other places throughout all parts of the land. In December, 1886, the Amsterdam church council also declared its secession from the state church, and a numerously attended “Reformed Church Congress” at Amsterdam, in January, 1887, summoned by Kuyper in the interests of the crowd of seceders, resolved to accept the decision of the law in regard to church property.[554]

§ 200.4. Even after the separation of Belgium there was still left a considerable number of =Catholics=, about three-eighths of the population, most numerous in Brabant, Limburg, and Luxemburg, and these were, as of old, inclined to the most bigoted ultramontanism. This tendency was greatly enhanced when the new constitutional law of 1848 announced the principle of absolute liberty of belief, in consequence of which the Jesuits crowded in vast numbers, and the pope in 1853 organized a new Catholic hierarchy in the land, with four bishops and an archbishop at Utrecht, under the control of the propaganda. The Protestant population went into great excitement over this. The liberal ministry of Thorbecke was obliged to resign, but the chambers at length sanctioned the papal ordinance, only securing the Protestant population against its misapplication and abuse.--On the withdrawal of the French in 1814 there were only eight cloisters remaining; but in 1861 there were thirty-nine for monks and 137 for nuns, and since then the number has considerably increased.--The Dutch =Old Catholics= (§ 165, 8), on account of their protest against the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (§ 185, 2), enjoined upon the Catholic church by the pope, were anew excommunicated, and joined the German Old Catholics in rejecting the decrees of the Vatican Council (§ 190, 1).

§ 200.5. =The Kingdom of Belgium.=--Catholic Belgium obtained after its separation from Holland a constitution by which unlimited freedom of religious worship and education, and the right of confessing opinion and of associating, were guaranteed, and to the state was allowed no interference with the affairs of the church beyond the duty of paying the clergy. Also in Leopold I., 1830-1865, of the house of Saxe-Coburg, it had a king who though himself a Protestant was faithful to the constitution, and, according to agreement, had his children trained up in the Roman Catholic church. The confederacy of radicalism and ultramontanism, however, was broken by the irreconciliable enmity and violent conflict in daily life and in the chambers among clerical and liberal ministers. The ultramontanes founded at Louvain in 1834 a strictly Catholic university, which was under the oversight of the bishops and the patronage of the Virgin; while the liberals promoted the erection of an opposition university for free science at Brussels. That the Jesuits used to the utmost for their own ends the liberty granted them by the constitution by means of missions and the confessional, schools, cloisters, and brotherhoods of every kind is what might have been expected. But liberalism also knew how to conduct a propaganda and to bring the clergy into discredit with the educated classes by unveiling their intrigues, legacy-hunting, etc., while these exercised a great influence chiefly upon bigoted females. The number of cloisters, which on the separation from Holland amounted only to 280, had risen in 1880 in that small territory to 1,559, with 24,672 inmates, of whom 20,645 were nuns.

§ 200.6. After the ultramontane party had enjoyed eight years of almost unchallenged supremacy, the Malou ministry favourable to it was overthrown in June, 1878, and a liberal government, under the presidency of Frère-Orban, took its place. Then began the =Kulturkampf= in Belgium. The charge of public education was taken from the ministry of the interior, and a special minister appointed in the person of Van Humbeeck. He began by changing all girls’ schools under the management of sisters of spiritual orders into communal schools, and in January, 1879, brought in a bill for reorganizing elementary education, which completely secularized the schools; deprived the clergy of all official influence over them, and relegated religious instruction to the care of the family and the church, the latter, however, having the necessary accommodation allowed in the school buildings. The chambers approved the bill, and the king confirmed it, in spite of all protests and agitation by the clergy. The clerical journals put a black border on their issue which published it; the provincial councils under clerical influence nullified as far as possible all money bequests for the public schools, and the bishops assembled in August at Mechlin resolved to found free schools in all communities, and to refuse absolution to all parents who entrusted their children to state schools and all teachers in them, in order thus to cause a complete decay of the public schools, which indeed happened to this extent that within a few months 1,167 communal schools had not a single Catholic scholar. On complaint being made by the government to Leo XIII., he expressed through the Brussels nuncio his regret and disapproval of the proceedings of the bishops; but, on the other hand, he not only privately praised them on account of their former zeal in opposing the school law, but also incited them to continued opposition. When this double dealing of the curia was discovered, the government in June, 1880, broke off all diplomatic relations with the Vatican by recalling their ambassador and giving the nuncio his passports. The ministerial president publicly in the chamber of deputies characterized the action of the Holy See as “fourberie.” Whereupon the pope at the next consistory called princes and peoples as witnesses of this insult. In May, 1882, the results of the inquiry into clerical incitements against the public was read in the chamber, where such startling revelations were made as these: Priests taught the children that they should no longer pray for the king when he had committed the mortal sin of confirming the school law; the ministers are worse than murderers and true Herods; a priest even taught children to pray that God might cause their “liberal” parents to die, etc. Amid such conflicts the Catholic party in parliament split into the parties of the Politici, who were willing to submit to the constitution, and that of the Intransigenti, who, under the direction of the bishops and the university of Louvain, held high above everything the standard of the syllabus. The latter fought with such passionateness, that the pope felt obliged in 1881 to enjoin upon the episcopate “that prudent attitude” which the church in such cases always maintains in “enduring many evils” which for the time cannot be overcome. But undeterred, the government continued to restrict the claims of the clergy, so far as these were not expressly guaranteed by the constitution.--In June, 1884, as the result of the elections for the chamber of deputies, the clerical party again were in power. Malou was once more at the head of a ministry in favour of the clericals, caused the king to dissolve the senate, and in the new elections won there also a majority for his party. No sooner were they in power than the clerical ministry, in conjunction with the majority in the chambers, proceeded with inconsiderate haste, amid the most violent, almost daily repeated explosions from the now intensely embittered liberal and radical section of the population, which only seemed to increase their zeal, to employ their absolute power to the utmost in the interest of clericalism. The restoration of diplomatic relations with the papal curia in the spirit of absolute acquiescence in its schemes was the grand aim of the reaction, as well as a new school law by which the schools were completely given over again to the clergy and the orders. But when at the next communal elections a liberal majority was returned, and protests of the new communal councils poured in against the school law on behalf of the vast number of state certificated teachers reduced by it to hunger and destitution, the Malou ministry found itself obliged to resign in October, 1884. Its place was taken by the moderate ultramontane Beernaert ministry, which sought indeed to quiet the excitement by mild measures, but held firmly in all essential points to the principles of its predecessor.

§ 200.7. An exciting episode in the Belgium Kulturkampf is presented by the appearance of Bishop =Dumont of Tournay=, who, previously an enthusiastic admirer of Pius IX. and a vigorous defender of the infallibility dogma, also a zealous patron of stigmatization miracles at Bois d’Haine (§ 188, 4), now suddenly turned round on the school question and refused to obey the papal injunction. For this he was first suspended, and then in 1880 formally deposed by the pope. He afterwards wrote letters in the most advanced liberal journals with violent denunciations of the pope, whom he would not recognise as pope, but only as Bishop of Rome, and so styled him not Leo, but only Pecci. In these letters Dumont makes the interesting communication that the virgin Louise Lateau, favoured of God, has threatened with excommunication the “intruder” Durousseaux, nominated by the pope as his successor, because she continues to reverence Dumont as the only legitimate Bishop of Tournay. The Vatican pronounced him insane, and the chapter appealed to the civil authorities to have him declared incapable in the sight of the law, which, however, they refused, because they could not regard Dumont’s insanity as proved. On the other hand, Dumont refused to renounce his episcopal office, and accused Durousseaux of having by night, with the help of a locksmith, obtained entrance to his episcopal palace, and having taken forcible possession of a casket lying there, which, besides the diocesan property to the value of five millions, contained also about one and a half millions of his own private means. Pending the issue of the conflict, as to which of the two should be regarded as the true bishop, the palace was now officially sealed up. The attempt to arrest the robbed casket had to be abandoned, because meanwhile the canon Bernard, as keeper of the treasures of the diocese, had fled with its contents to America. He was, however, on legal warrant imprisoned in Havanna and brought back to Belgium in 1882. In April, 1884, the dispute of the bishops was definitively closed by the judgment of the supreme tribunal, according to which Dumont, having been legitimately deposed, has no more claim to the title and revenues of his earlier office; and in 1886 the supreme court of appeal at Brussels condemned Bernard “on account of serious breach of trust” to three years’ imprisonment.

§ 200.8. =The Protestant Church= was represented in Belgium only by small congregations in the chief cities and some Reformed Walloon village congregations. But for several decades, by the zealous exertions of the Evangelical Society at Brussels with thirty-four pastors and evangelists, the work of evangelization not only among Catholic Walloons, but also among the Flemish population, has made considerable progress, notwithstanding all agitation and incitement of the people by the Catholic clergy, so that several new evangelical congregations, consisting mostly of converts, have been formed. In two small places indeed the whole communities, roused by episcopal arbitrariness, have gone over.--The pastor Byse employed by the Evangelical Society at Brussels has taken up the idea that all men by the fall have lost their immortality, and that it could be restored again by faith in Christ, while all the unreconciled are given over to annihilation, the second death of Revelation ii. 11, xx. 15. So long as he maintained this theory merely as a private opinion the society took no offence at it, but when he began to proclaim it in his preaching and in his instruction of the young, and declined to yield to all advice on the matter, the synod of 1882 resolved upon his dismissal. But a great part of his congregation still remain faithful to him.

§ 201. THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES.

Notwithstanding the common Scandinavian-national and Lutheran-ecclesiastical basis on which the civil and religious life is developed, it assumed in the three Scandinavian countries a completely diversified course. While in Denmark the civil life bore manifold traces of democratic tendencies and thereby the relations between church and state were loosened, Sweden, with a tenacity almost unparalleled in Protestant countries, has for a long period held fast in exclusive attachment to the idea of a state church. On the other hand Denmark was far more open to influences from without hostile to the church, on the one side those of rationalism, on the other, those of the anti-ecclesiastical sects, especially of the Baptists and Mormons, than Sweden, which in its certainly barren, if not altogether dead orthodoxy till after the middle of the century was almost hermetically sealed against all heterogeneous influences, but yet could not altogether over-master the pietistically or methodistically coloured movements of religious yearning that arose among her own people. Norway, again, although politically united with Sweden, has, both in national character and in religious development, shown its more intimate relationship with Denmark.

§ 201.1. =Denmark.=--From the close of last century rationalism has had a home in Denmark. In 1825 Professor Clausen, a moderate adherent of the neological school, published a learned work on the opposition of “Catholicism and Protestantism,” identifying the latter with rationalism. First of all in that same year Pastor =Grundtvig= (died 1872), “a man of poetic genius, and skilled in the ancient history of the land,” inspired with equal enthusiasm for the old Lutheranism of his fathers and for patriotic Danism, entered the lists and replied with powerful eloquence, lamenting the decay of Christianity and the church. He was condemned by the court of justice as injurious, after he had during the process resigned his pastoral office. A like fate befell the orientalist Lindberg, who charged Clausen with the breach of his ordination vow. The adherents of Grundtvig met for mutual edification in conventicles, until at last in 1832 he obtained permission again to hold public services. Not less influential was the work of Sören =Kierkegaard= (died 1855), who, largely in sympathy with Grundtvig, without ecclesiastical office, in his writings earnestly pled for a living subjective piety and unweariedly maintained an uncompromising struggle against the official Christianity of the secularized clergy. The wild, unmeasured Danomania of 1848-1849, during the military conflict with Germany, drew opponents together and made them friends. Grundtvig declaimed against everything German, and of the two factors, which he had formerly regarded as the pivots on which universal history turned, Danism and Lutheranism, he now let go Lutheranism as of German origin. He therefore proposed the abrogation of the distinctive German-Lutheran confessions, placed the Apostles’ Creed before and above the Bible and, pressing in a one-sided manner the doctrine of baptismal grace, demanded a “joyous Christianity,” denied the necessity of continued preaching and exercise of repentance, and wished especially to introduce into the schools the Norse mythology as introductory to the study of Christianity. His adherents wrought with the anti-church party for the abolition of the union of church and state. The Danish constitutional law of 1849 abolished the confessional churches of the state church, and Catholics, Reformed, Moravians, and Jews were granted equal civil rights with the Lutherans. Since then the Catholic church has made slow but steady progress in the country, and the increasing Baptist movement was also favoured by a law of the Volkthing of 1857, which abolished compulsory baptism, and only required the enrolment of all children in the church books of their respective districts within the period of one year. Civil marriage had also been granted to dissenters in 1851, and in 1868 the peculiar institution of “electing communities” was founded, by means of which twenty families from one or more parishes which declare themselves dissatisfied with the pastors appointed them, may, without leaving the national church, form an independent congregation under pastors chosen by themselves and maintained at their own cost. The =Schleswig-Holstein= revolution in 1848, occasioned enormous confusion and disturbance in the ecclesiastical conditions of the district. Over a hundred German pastors were expelled and forty-six Schleswig parishes deprived of the use of the German language in church and school. In 1864 both provinces were at last by the Austrian and Prussian alliance rent from the Danish government, and in consequence of the German war of 1866 were incorporated with Prussia.

§ 201.2. =Sweden.=--In Sweden there was formed in 1803, in opposition to the barren orthodoxy of the state church, a religious association which, if not altogether free of pietistic narrowness, was yet without any heretical doctrinal tendency, and exercised a quiet and wholesome influence. From the diligent reading of Scripture and the works of Luther that prevailed among its members it obtained the name of Läsare. The state proceeded against its members with fines and imprisonment, according to the old conventicle law of 1726, and the mob treated them with insults and violence. But in 1842 a fanatical tendency began to show itself under the leadership of a peasant, Erich Jansen, who induced many “Readers” to quit the church and to cast into the fire even Luther’s Postils and Catechism as quite superfluous alongside of Holy Scripture. They mostly emigrated to America in 1846. The law of the land since 1686 threatened every Swede who seceded from the Lutheran state church with imprisonment and exile, loss of civil privileges and the right of inheritance. As might therefore be supposed the French Marshal Bernadotte, who in 1818, under the name of Charles XIV., ascended the throne of Sweden, had been previously in 1810 obliged to repudiate the Catholic confession. Even in 1857 the Reichstag rejected a royal proposal to set aside the Secession as well as the Conventicle Act. But in the very next year, the holding of conventicles under clerical supervision, and in 1860, the secession to other ecclesiastical denominations, were allowed by law. The constitution of 1865 still indeed made adherence to the Lutheran confession a condition of qualification for a seat in either of the chambers. The Reichstag of 1870 at last sanctioned the admission of all Christian dissenters and also of Jews to all offices of state as well as to the membership of the Reichstag. On behalf of dissenters, especially of the numerous Baptists and Methodists, the right of civil marriage was granted in 1879. In 1877, Waldenström, head-master of the Latin school at Gefle, without ecclesiastical ordination, began zealously and successfully by speech and writings (to secure the widest possible circulation of which a joint stock company with large capital was formed) to work for the revival of the Christian life in the Lutheran national church. He vigorously contended against the church doctrine of atonement and justification, repudiating the idea of vicarious penal suffering, and broke through all church order by allowing the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to be dispensed by laymen. He thus put himself, with his numerous following, directed by lay preachers in their own prayer meetings and mission halls, into direct opposition to the church, but by the wise forbearance of the ecclesiastical authorities he has not yet been formally ejected.[555]

§ 201.3. =Norway.=--In Norway, toward the end of last century, rationalism was dominant in almost all the pulpits, and only a few remnants of Moravian revivalism raised a voice against it. But in 1796, a simple unlearned peasant =Hans Nielsen Hauge=, then in his twenty-fifth year, made his appearance as a revival preacher, creating a mighty spiritual movement that spread among the masses throughout the whole land. He had obtained his own religious knowledge from the study of old Lutheran practical theology, and arising at a period of extraordinary spiritual excitement, “his call,” as Hase says, “to be a prophet was like that of the herdsman of Tekoa.” From 1799 he continued itinerating for five years, persecuted, reproached, and calumniated by the rationalistic clergy, ten times cast into prison, under a law of 1741, which forbad laymen to preach, and then set free, until he had gone over all Norway even to its farthest and remotest corners, preaching unweariedly everywhere in houses and in the open air often three or four times a day, and nourishing besides the flame which he had kindled by voluminous writings and an extensive correspondence. He directed his preaching not only against the rationalism of the state clergy, but also against the antinomian religion of feeling, of “Blood and Wounds” theology introduced in earlier days by the Moravians, with a one-sided emphasis and exaggeration indeed, but still in all essentials maintaining the basis and keeping within the lines of Lutheran orthodoxy. In 1804 he was charged with tendencies dangerous to church and state, obtaining money from peasants on false pretences, inciting the people against the clergy, etc., and again cast into prison. The trial this time was carried on for ten years, until at last in 1814 the supreme court sentenced him on account of his invectives against the clergy to pay a fine, but pronounced him not guilty on the other charges. Broken down in spirit and body by his long imprisonment, he could not think of engaging again in his former work. He died in 1824. Numerous peasant preachers, however, issuing from his school were ready to go forth in his footsteps, and till this day the salutary effects of his and their activity are seen in wide circles. The law of 1741 which had been made to tell against them was at last abrogated by the Storthing in 1842. In 1845 the right of forming Christian sects was recognised, and in 1851 even the Jews were allowed the right of settlement previously refused them, and the security of all civil privileges. Since that time even in Norway the Catholic church has made considerable progress; in June, 1878, it had eleven churches and fourteen priests.

§ 202. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

During the course of the century a breach from without was made upon the stronghold of the Anglican established church and its legal standing throughout the United Kingdom. The strong coherence of the Anglican episcopal church had already been weakened internally by the rise within its own bosom of High, Low, and Broad tendencies. The advance of the first-named party to tractarianism and ritualism opened the door to Romish sympathies, while in the last-named school German rationalism and criticism found favour, and the low church party was not ashamed to go hand-in-hand with the evangelical pietistic and methodistic tendencies of the dissenters. There followed numerous conversions to Rome, especially from the aristocratic ranks of the upper ten thousand. The Emancipation Act of 1829 opened the door to both Houses of Parliament to the Catholics, and in 1858 the same privileges were extended to the Jews. Also the bulwarks which the state church had in the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge were undermined, and in 1871 were completely overthrown by the legal abolition of all confessional tests. Down to 1869 the hierarchy of the episcopal state church, though clearly alien to the country, maintained its legal position in Catholic Ireland, till at last the Irish Church Bill brought it there to an end. Repeatedly have bills been introduced in the House of Commons, though hitherto without success, by members of the incessantly agitating Liberation Society, to disestablish the churches of England, Scotland, and Wales.[556]

§ 202.1. =The Episcopal State Church.=--The two opposing parties of the state church corresponded to the two political parties of Tories and Whigs. The high church party, which has its most powerful representatives in the aristocracy, holds aloof from the dissenters, seeks to maintain the closest connexion between church and state, and eagerly contends for the retention of all old ecclesiastical forms and ordinances in constitution, worship, and doctrine. On the other hand the evangelical or low church party, which is more or less methodistically inclined, holds free intercourse with dissenters, associating with them in home and foreign mission work, etc., and with various shades of differences advocates the claims of progress against those of immobility, the independence of the church against its identification with the state, the evangelical freedom and general priesthood of believers against orthodoxy and hierarchism. From their midst arose a movement in 1871, occasioned by the Oxford “Essays and Reviews” and the works of Bishop Colenso, which resulted in the publication, under the authority of the bishops, of the “Speaker’s Commentary,” so-called because suggested by Denison, who had long been speaker of the House of Commons. It is a learned, thoroughly conservative commentary on the whole Bible by the ablest theologians of England. On the revision of the English translation of the Bible see § 181, 4. Besides these two parties, however, there has arisen a third, the broad church party. It originated with the distinguished poet and philosopher, Coleridge (died 1834), and includes many of the most excellent and scholarly of the clergy, especially those most eminent for their acquaintance with German theology and philosophy. They do not form an organized ecclesiastical party like the evangelicals and high church men, but endeavour not only to overcome the narrowness and severity of the former, but also to secure a broader basis and a wider horizon for theology as well as for the church.[557]--The struggle for the legalizing of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister has been energetically pressed since 1850, but though the House of Commons has repeatedly passed the bill, it has been hitherto by small majorities, under the influence of the bishops, rejected by the House of Lords.--A non-official =Pan-Anglican Council= of English bishops from all parts of the world, excluding the laity and inferior clergy, with pre-eminently anti-Romish and anti-ritualistic tendencies, was held in London in 1867 (cf. § 175, 5). When it met the second time in 1878, it was attended by nearly one hundred bishops, one of them a negro. Of the three weeks’ debates and their results, however, no detailed account has been published.

§ 202.2. =The Tractarians and Ritualists.=--The activity of the dissenters and the episcopal evangelical party’s attachment to them stirred up the adherents of the high church party to vigorous guarding of their interests, and drove them into a one-sided exaggerated accentuation of the Catholic element. The centre of this movement since 1833 was the university of Oxford. Its leaders were Professors Pusey and Newman, its literary organ the Tracts for the Times, from which the party received the name of =Tractarians=. This was a series of ninety treatises, published 1833-1841, on the basis of Anglo-Catholicism, which sought, while holding by the Thirty-nine Articles, to affirm with equal decidedness the genuine Protestantism over against the Roman papacy, and, in the importance which it attached to the apostolical succession of the episcopate and priesthood and the apostolical tradition for the interpretation of Scripture, the genuine Catholicism over against every form of ultra-Protestantism. In this way, too, their dogmatics in all the several doctrines, as far as the Thirty-nine Articles would by any means allow, was approximated to the Roman Catholic doctrine, and indeed by-and-by passed over entirely to that type of doctrine. Newman’s Tract 90 caused most offence, in which, with thoroughly jesuitical sophistry, it was argued that the Thirty-nine Articles were capable of an explanation on the basis of which they might be subscribed even by one who occupied in regard to the church doctrine and practice an essentially Roman Catholic standpoint. The university authorities now felt obliged to declare publicly that the tracts were by no means sanctioned by them, and that especially the application of the principles of Tract 90 to the conduct of students in the matter of subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles is not allowable. Bishop Bagot of Oxford, hitherto favourable to the tractarians, refused to permit the continued issue of the tracts. The other bishops also for the most part spoke against them in their pastorals, and a flood of controversial pamphlets roused the wrath of the non-Catholic populace. But on the other hand tractarianism still found favour among the higher clergy and the aristocracy. In 1845 Newman went over to the Catholic church, and has since led a retired life devoted to theological study. Pius IX. paid him no attention, but in 1879 Leo XIII. acknowledged and rewarded his services to the Catholic church by elevating him to the rank of cardinal. The majority of the tractarians disapproved of Newman’s step and remained in the Anglican church. Thus acted Pusey (died 1882), the recognised leader of the party, after whom they were now called =Puseyites=. Many, however, followed Newman’s example, so that by the end of 1846 no less than one hundred and fifty clergymen and prominent laymen were received into the widely opened door of the Catholic church.[558]--The following twelve years, 1846-1858, were occupied by two dogmatico-ecclesiastical conflicts vitally affecting the interests of the tractarians.

1. =The Gorham Case.= The Thirty-nine Articles took essentially Lutheran ground in treating of baptism, recognising it as a vehicle of regeneration and divine sonship, and the tractarians laid uncommonly great stress upon this article. So also the Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Philpotts, refused to institute the Rev. Cornelius Gorham because of his views on this subject. Gorham accused him before the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the Court of Arches decided in favour of the bishop. The Court of Appeal, however, the judicial committee of the Privy Council, annulled the episcopal judgment, and ordered that Gorham should be installed in his office. In vain did Philpotts, by a protest before the Court of Queen’s Bench, and then before the Court of Common Pleas, against the jurisdiction of the Privy Council in this case, in vain, too, did Blomfield, Bishop of London, insist upon the revival of Convocation, which for one and a half centuries had been inoperative as a spiritual parliament with upper and lower houses, and in vain did a tractarian assembly of more than 1,500 distinguished clergymen and laymen lodge a solemn protest. The judgment of the Privy Council stood, and Gorham was inducted to his office in 1850. Many of the protesters now went over to the Catholic church, and about 600 others, like the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers 230 years before (§ 143, 4), under ecclesiastical oppression, emigrated to New Zealand.

2. =The Denison Eucharist Case.=--The Puseyite Archdeacon Denison of Taunton, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, had in 1851 in open defiance of the Thirty-nine Articles, which represent Calvin’s views of the Lord’s Supper, affirmed in preaching and writing that unbelievers as well as believers eat and drink the body and blood of the Lord. Over this he was involved in a sharp discussion with a neighbouring clergyman called Ditcher. In 1854 Ditcher accused Denison before his bishop, who, after vain efforts to reconcile the parties, referred the matter to the Court of Arches, which sought, but in vain, to end the strife by compromise. Ditcher now in 1856 brought his complaint before the Queen’s Bench, which obliged the archbishop to take up the matter again. A commission appointed by him declared that the complaint was quite justifiable, and threatened Denison, when he refused any sort of retraction, with deposition. But the Court of Appeal in 1858 stayed the judgment on the ground of a technical error in procedure, and Denison remained in office.

§ 202.3. From the middle of 1850 the tractarians, who had hitherto confined themselves to the development of the Romanizing system of doctrine, began to apply its consequences to the church ritual and the Christian life, and so won for themselves the name of =Ritualists=, which has driven out their earlier designation. Wherever possible they showed their Catholic zeal by introducing images, crucifixes, candles, holy water, mass dresses, mass bells, and boy choristers, urged the restoration of the seven sacraments, especially of extreme unction, auricular confession, the sacrificial theory and Corpus Christi day, of prayers for the dead and masses for souls, invocation of saints and the blessed Virgin; they also praised celibacy and monasticism, etc. Ritualism has from the first shown singular skill in party organization. The English Church Union, founded in 1860, has now nearly 200,000 members, of these about 3,000 clergymen and 50 bishops, and it embraces 300 branches over the whole domain of the Anglican church. Numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods, guilds and orders, organized after the style of Roman Catholic monasticism, promote the interests of ritualism, and zealously prosecute home and foreign mission work. The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament originated in 1862, was able in 1882 to celebrate Corpus Christi day in 250 churches along with the Romish church, dispensing only with the procession. The Society of the Holy Cross, founded in 1873 consists only of priests, and forms a kind of directory for all branches of the ritualistic propaganda. The English Order of St. Augustine has a threefold division, into spiritual brothers who are preparing for priests’ orders, lay brothers who are being qualified as lay preachers, both under the strictest vows, and a sort of tertiaries, who are free from vows. Among the sisterhoods which already supply nurses to all the great hospitals of the capital, the most important is that called “by the name of Jesus.” They take, like the Beguines of the middle ages, the three vows, but not as binding for life. By the ultra high church party the genuine apostolic succession of the ordination of the first Protestant archbishop, Matthew Parker, and so the genuineness of all subsequent ordinations going back to him, were doubted; three Anglican bishops are said to have had episcopal consecration anew conferred on them by a Greek Catholic bishop. The reckless and wilful procedure of the ritualists in imitating the Roman Catholic ritual in public worship called forth frequent violent disturbances at their services, and noisy crowds flocked to their churches. Most frequent and violent were the riots in 1859 and 1860 in the parish of St. George’s, London, where scarcely any service was held without disgraceful scenes of hissing, whistling, stamping, and cries of “No popery.” The offscouring of all London flocked to the Sunday services as to a public entertainment. Instead of hymns, street songs were sung, instead of responses blasphemous cries were shouted forth, while cushions and prayer-books were hurled at the altar decorations, etc. These unseemly proceedings were caused by the ritualistic rector, Bryan King, who had introduced the objectionable ceremonial, and obstinately continued it in spite of the decided opposition and protests of his colleague, Mr. Allen. King’s removal in 1860 first put an end to these disturbances, which police interference proved utterly unable to check. The ritualistic Church Union, called into existence by these proceedings, was opposed by an anti-ritualistic Church Association, and from both multitudes of complaints and appeals were brought before the ecclesiastical and civil tribunals. The first case they brought up was that of Rev. A. H. MacConochie, of Holborn, who, having been admonished by the ecclesiastical courts on account of his ritualistic practices in 1867, appealed to the Privy Council. And although this court decided in 1869 that all ceremonies not authorized by the prayer-book are to be regarded as forbidden, he and his followers continued to act on the principle that whatever is not there expressly prohibited ought to be permitted. The Public Worship Regulation Bill, introduced by Archbishop Tait, and passed by Parliament, which legislatively determined the procedure in ritualistic cases, did not prevent the constant advance of this movement. The Court of Arches now issued a suspension against the accused, and condemned them to prison when they continued to officiate, until they declared themselves ready to obey or to demit their office. Tooth of Hatcham, Dale of London, Enraght of Bordesdale, and Green of Miles Platting were actually sent to prison in 1880. But the first three were soon liberated by the Court of Appeal finding some technical flaw in the proceedings against them, while Green, in whose case no such flaw appeared, lay in confinement for twenty months. The ritualists still persistently continued their practice, and their opponents renewed their prosecutions; these were followed by appeals to the higher courts, presenting of petitions to both the Houses of Parliament, addresses with vast numbers of signatures for and against to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to Convocation which had meanwhile been restored, to the Cabinet, to the Queen, etc. The result was that many cases were abandoned, some obnoxious parties transferred elsewhere, and a very few deposed.

§ 202.4. =Liberalism in the Episcopal Church.=--The more liberal tendency of the broad church party had also many supporters who scrupled not to pass beyond the traditional bounds of English orthodoxy. In opposition to the orthodoxy zealousy inculcated at Oxford, rationalism found favour at the rival university of Cambridge, and vigorous support was given to the views of the Tübingen school of Baur in the London Westminster Review. And even in high church Oxford, there were not wanting teachers in sympathy with the critical and speculative rationalism of Germany. Great excitement was caused in 1860 by the “Essays and Reviews,” which in seven treatises by so many Oxford professors contested the traditional apologetics and hermeneutics of English theology, and set a sublimated rationalism in its place. In Germany these not very important treatises would probably have excited little remark, but in the English church they roused an unparalleled disturbance; more than nine thousand clergymen of the episcopal church protested against the book, and all the bishops unanimously condemned it. The excitement had not yet subsided when from South Africa oil was poured upon the flames. Bishop Colenso of Natal (died 1883), who had zealously carried on the mission there, but had openly expressed the conviction that it is unwise, unscriptural, and unchristian to make repudiation by Caffres living in polygamy, of all their wives but one, a condition of baptism, had occasioned still greater offence by publishing in 1863 in seven vols. a prolix critical disquisition on the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua, in which he contested the authenticity and unconditional credibility of these books by arguments familiar long ago but now quite antiquated and overthrown in Germany. During a journey to England undertaken for his defence he was excommunicated and deposed by a synod of the South African bishops in Capetown. The Privy Council, as supreme ecclesiastical court in England, cleared him, as well as the authors of the Essays, from the charge of heresy. An important aid for the dissemination of liberal religious views is afforded by the Hibbert Lectureship. Robert Hibbert (died 1849), a wealthy private gentleman in London, assigned the yearly interest of a considerable sum for “the spreading of Christianity in its simplest form as well as the furthering of the unfettered exercise of the individual judgment in matters of religion.” The Hibbert trustees are eighteen laymen who dispense the revenues in supplementing the salaries of poorly paid clergymen of liberal views, in providing bursaries for theological students at home and abroad, and in other such like ways, but since 1878 especially, by advice of distinguished scholars, in the endowment of annual courses of lectures, afterwards published, on subjects in the domain of philosophy, biblical criticism, the comparative science of religion and the history of religion. The first Hibbert Lecturer was the celebrated Oxford professor, Max Müller, in 1878. Among other lecturers may be named Renan of Paris in 1880; Kuenen of Leyden in 1882; Pfleiderer of Berlin, in 1885. The battle waged with great passionateness on both sides since 1869 for and against the removal of the Athanasian Creed, or at least its anathemas, from the liturgy has not yet been brought to any decided result.

§ 202.5. =Protestant Dissenters in England.=--Down nearly to the end of the eighteenth century all the enactments and restrictions of the Toleration Act of 1689 (§ 155, 3) continued in full force. But in 1779 the obligation of Protestant dissenters to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles was abolished, and the acknowledgment of the Bible as God’s revealed word substituted. The right of founding schools of their own, hitherto denied them, was granted in 1798. In 1813 the Socinians were also included among the dissenters who should enjoy these privileges. After a severe struggle the Corporation and Test Acts were set aside in 1826, affording all dissenters entrance to Parliament and to all civil offices. The necessity of being married and having their children baptized in an episcopal church was removed by the Marriage and Registration Act of 1836 and 1837, and divorce suits were removed from the ecclesiastical to a civil tribunal in 1857. In 1868 compulsory church rates for the episcopal parish church were abolished. Lord Russell’s University Bill of 1854, by restricting subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles to the theological students, opened the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to dissenters, while the University Tests Bill of 1871 made the adherents of all religious confessions eligible for all university honours and emoluments at both seminaries. Thus one restriction after another was removed, so that at last the episcopal church has nothing of her exclusive privileges left beyond the rank and title of a state church, and the undiminished possession of all her ancient property, from which her prelates draw princely revenues.

§ 202.6. =Scotch Marriages in England.=--The saints of the English Revolution had indeed resolved in 1653 to introduce civil marriage (§ 162, 1). But the reaction under Cromwell set this unpopular law aside, and the Restoration made marriage by an Anglican clergyman, even for dissenters, an indispensable condition of legal recognition. But in no country, especially among the higher orders, were private marriages, without the knowledge and consent of the family, so frequent as here, and clergymen were always to be found unscrupulous enough to celebrate such weddings in taverns or other convenient places. When an end had been put to such irregularities on English soil by an Act of Parliament of 1753, lovers seeking secret marriage betook themselves to Scotland. In that country there prevailed, and still prevails, the theory that a declaration of willingness on both sides constitutes a perfectly valid marriage. The Scottish ecclesiastical law indeed requires church proclamation and ceremony, but failure to observe this requirement is followed only by a small pecuniary fine. Fugitive English couples generally made the necessary declaration before a blacksmith at Gretna-Green, who was also justice of the peace in this small border village, and were then legitimately married people according to Scottish law. Only in 1856 were all marriages performed in this manner without previous residence in Scotland pronounced by Act of Parliament invalid.

§ 202.7. =The Scottish State Church.=--The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, from the beginning strictly Calvinistic in constitution, doctrine and practice, has, generally speaking, preserved this character. Only in recent times has the endeavour of the so-called Moderates to introduce a milder type of doctrine won favour. The Established Church, as a national church properly so-called and recognised by law, dates from the political union of England and Scotland in the kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, and the Anglican Episcopal Church there was then reduced to a feebly represented dissenting denomination. Patronage, set aside indeed in the Reformation age, but restored under Queen Anne in 1712, and since then, in spite of all opposition from the stricter party, continued, because often misused to secure the intrusion of inacceptable ministers upon congregations, gave occasion to repeated secessions. Thus the Secession Church broke off in 1732, and the Relief Church in 1752, the latter going beyond the former’s protest against patronage by unconditional repudiation of Erastianism, i.e. the theory of the necessary connection of Church and State (§ 144, 1), and the assertion of the spiritual independence of the church, and expressed firmly the principles of Voluntaryism, i.e. the payment of all ecclesiastical officers, etc., by voluntary contributions. Both parties united in 1847 in the United Presbyterian Church, which now embraces one-fifth of the population.--Twice that number joined the secession of the Free Church in 1843. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland granted to congregations in 1834 the right of vetoing presentations to vacancies. The civil courts, however, upheld the absolute right of patrons, and at the Assembly of 1843 about two hundred of the most distinguished ministers, with the great Dr. Chalmers (died 1847) at their head, left the state church, and, as Non-Intrusionists, founded the Free Church of Scotland, which at its own cost formed new parishes and distinguished itself by Christian zeal in every direction. It differs from the United Presbyterian Church in restricting its opposition to the abuse of patronage, without repudiating right off every sort of state aid and endowment as unevangelical. But even to it the law passed in 1846, granting to all congregations the right of veto, seemed now no longer a sufficient motive to return to the state church. Even when in 1874, parliament, at the call of the government, formally abolished the rights of patronage through all Scotland and gave to the congregations the right of choosing their own ministers, the General Assembly of the Free Church by a great majority refused to reunite with the state church brought so near it, because it conceded to the civil courts unwarrantable interference with its internal affairs, especially the right of suspending its clergy.[559]

§ 202.8. =Scottish Heresy Cases.=--The Glasgow presbytery lodged before the United Presbyterian Synod in Edinburgh of 1878 a charge against the Rev. Fergus Ferguson of heresy, because his teaching was in conflict with the church doctrine of the atonement in saying that sinners, apart from Christ’s intervention, would not suffer eternal punishment but extinction, and that the same fate still lay before unbelievers and the impenitent. After five days’ violent discussion, the majority of the synod, while strongly dissenting from his views and urging him to avoid it in his preaching and catechising, resolved to retain him in office as having proved his adherence to the orthodox doctrine of the atonement. But when, at next year’s synod, the Rev. D. Macrae of Gourock asserted that, in spite of the Westminster Confession, it was allowable for ministers to deny the eternity of punishment, and would not promise to preach otherwise, he was unanimously deposed.--Far more exciting and long continued were the proceedings begun in the Free Church in 1876, against Professor Robertson Smith of Aberdeen, who was charged before his presbytery with offensive statements about angels, but especially with contradicting the inspiration of Scripture by contesting the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. After various proposals of deposition, suspension, rebuke, acquittal, had been made, the General Assembly of 1880, after much deliberation and discussion, by a majority found the charge of heterodoxy not proven, but earnestly exhorted the accused to greater circumspection and moderation, and the decision was greeted with thundering applause from the students and waving of handkerchiefs from the ladies present. But when, very soon after this acquittal, several other contributions by him appeared in the Encyclopædia Britannica, on the Hebrew Language and Literature, and Haggai, in the spirit of the Wellhausen criticism (§ 182, 18), as also an article on Animal Worship among the Arabians and in the Old Testament, in the Journal of Philology, the Commission sitting in Edinburgh reinstituted proceedings against him. In October, 1880, Smith vindicated before that court his scientific attitude toward the Old Testament, maintaining that a moderate criticism of the biblical books was reconcilable with the maintenance of their inspired authority. The majority of the Commission, however, voted for his expulsion from his chair. Smith protested both against the competence and against the judgment of the Commission, but declared himself ready to submit to the judgment of the General Assembly. Meanwhile he accepted an invitation from Glasgow to deliver public lectures there on the Old Testament, which were received with extraordinary favour. This course was published under the title: “The Old Testament in the Jewish Church.” The General Assembly of May, 1881, now decided by a large majority to remove him from his academical chair, with retention of his license and his professor’s salary, which latter, however, Smith declined. But his numerous sympathizers presented him with a scientific library worth £3,000, and promised an annual stipend equal to his former salary. In 1883 he received the appointment as Professor of Arabic in Cambridge and the large revenues of that office allowed him to decline the offer of his friends.[560]

§ 202.9. =The Catholic Church in Ireland.=--The Catholic inhabitants of Ireland under Protestant proprietors, and forced to pay tithes for the support of the Protestant clergy, were always deprived of civil rights. In 1809 O’Connell (died 1847), an agitator of great popular eloquence, placed himself at the head of the oppressed people, in order in a constitutional way to secure religious and political freedom and equality. At last, in 1829, the Emancipation Bill, supported by Peel and Wellington, was passed, which on the basis of the formal declaration of the whole Catholic episcopate that papal infallibility and papal sovereignty in civil matters was not part of the Catholic faith nor could be joined therewith either in Ireland or anywhere else in the Catholic world, gave to Catholics admission to parliament and to all civil and military appointments. But the hated tithes remained, and were enforced, when refused, by military force. After long debates in both houses of parliament, the Tithes Bill was adopted in 1838, which transferred the tithe as a land-tax from tenants to proprietors, which, however, was only a postponing of the question. It was thus regarded by O’Connell. He declared that justice for Ireland could only be got by abolishing the legislative union with Great Britain existing since 1800, and restoring her independent parliament. For this purpose he organized the Repeal Association. In 1840 another no less powerful popular agitator arose in the person of the Irish Capuchin, Father Mathew, the apostle of temperance, who with unparalleled success persuaded thousands of those degraded by drink to take vows of abstinence from spirituous liquors. He kept apart from all political agitation, but the fruits of his exertions were all in its favour. O’Connell in 1843 organized monster meetings, attended by hundreds of thousands. The government had him tried, the jury found him guilty, but the House of Lords quashed the conviction and liberated him from prison in 1844. The Peel ministry now sought to soothe the excitement by passing in 1845 the Legacy Act, which allowed Catholics to hold property in their own names, and the Maynooth Bill, by which the theological seminary at Maynooth received a rich endowment from the State. Continued famine, and consequent emigration of several hundreds of thousands to America and Australia, relieved Ireland of a considerable portion of its Catholic population, while Protestant missions by Bible and tract circulation and by schools had some success in evangelizing those who remained. On November 5th, 1855, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, the Redemptorists at Kingstown, near Dublin, erected and burnt a great bonfire in the public streets of Bibles which they had seized, and the primate archbishop of Ireland justified it by reference to the example of the believers at Ephesus (Acts xix. 19).

§ 202.10. The Fenian movement, originating among the American Irish, which since 1863 created such terror among the English, was the result of political rather than religious agitation. Although this movement failed in its proper end, namely the complete separation of Ireland from England, it yet forced upon the government the conviction of the absolute necessity of meeting the just demands of the Irish by thorough-going reforms and putting an end to the oppressions which the native farmers suffered at the hands of foreign landowners, and the grievances endured by the Catholic church by the maintenance of the Anglican church established in Ireland. The carrying out of these reforms was the service rendered by the Gladstone ministry. By the Irish Land Bill of 1870 the land question was solved according to the demands of justice, and by the Irish Church Bill of 1869, which deprived the Anglican church in Ireland of the character of a state church and put it on the same footing as other denominations, the church question was similarly settled. The dignitaries of the Anglican church thus lost their position as state officials and their seats in the House of Lords. The rich property of the hitherto established church was calculated and applied partly to compensating for losses caused by this reform, partly to creating benevolent institutions for the general good. But neither the Church Bill, nor the Land Bill, nor the Universities Bill, which in 1880 founded by state aid a Catholic university in Dublin, secured the reconciliation of the Irish. “Eternal hatred of England” was and is the battle cry; “Ireland for the Irish, and only for them,” is their watchword. In order to carry out this scheme an Irish “National League” was formed, and innumerable secret “Moonlighters,” under the supposed leadership of “Captain Moonshine,” committed atrocities by burning farm steadings and mutilating cattle, murdering and massacring by dagger and revolver, petroleum and dynamite, and directed their operations against the representatives of the government, against proprietors who sought rent, against tenants who paid rent, against officials who endeavoured to enforce it, and against everything that was, or was called, English. In order to cut at the root of this lawlessness, which by proclamation of a state of siege was only restricted, not overthrown, the government of 1881 passed further agrarian reforms: All tenant rights were to be purchased by the surplus of the fund formed by the disestablishment of the Irish church, and where this did not suffice, by state grants, and the right to conclude contracts for rent and to determine its amount was transferred from the proprietors to a newly-constituted land court, without whose permission, after the lapse of the fifteen years’ term, no rent contract could be made. But even this did not stop almost daily repeated murders and acts of destruction. The government now sought the aid of the pope through the mediation of a Catholic member of parliament on a visit to Rome; but these merely confidential negotiations led to no considerable result. In May, 1883, the curia, on the occasion of a collection promoted by the National League as a magnificent national present to the great (Protestant) leader of the agitation, Mr. Parnell, in a circular letter, forbad “proprio motu,” the bishops in the strictest manner taking any part in the movement, and urged them to dissuade their members from doing so. But only Archbishop McCabe of Dublin (died 1885), from the first an opponent of the League, issued a pastoral against it to be read in all the pulpits of his diocese. The other bishops ignored the papal command, and among the Catholic people the opinion obtained that they owed to the pope obedience in spiritual but not in political matters. The collections for the Parnell fund were continued with redoubled zeal. The attempts of dynamitards, supplied with materials by their American compatriots, and other agrarian offences have not yet been finally stopped.

§ 202.11. =The Catholic Church in England and Scotland.=--The Emancipation Act, passed mainly for the relief of the Irish, naturally also benefited English Catholics, who in 1791 had been allowed to hold Catholic services. Led by the numerous accessions of Puseyites to entertain the most extravagant hopes, Pius IX. in 1850 issued a bull, by which the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England was reinstituted with twelve suffragan bishoprics under one archbishop of Westminster. The bull occasioned great excitement in the Protestant population (Anti-Papal Aggression), and the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill forbade the use of ecclesiastical titles not sanctioned by the law of the land. After the first excitement had passed, the Catholic bishops, at their head the learned and brilliant and zealous ultramontane Cardinal Archbishop Wiseman (died 1865), and his successor, surpassing him, if not in genius and learning, at least in ultramontane zeal, the Puseyite convert Manning, made a cardinal in 1875, used with impunity their condemned titles, until in 1871 the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was formally revoked by act of parliament. Conversions in noble families were particularly numerous in the later decades. Since 1850 the number of Catholics in England and Scotland has quadrupled. This has been caused in great part by Irish emigration, for the middle and lower ranks of the English have scarcely been affected by the conversion fever, which as the latest form of the fitful humour of the English had so rich a harvest in the families of the nobility. In 1780 all London had only one Catholic place of worship, the chapel of the Sardinian embassy, which on June 2nd of that year was wrecked and burnt by a raging mob. Now the English capital has two episcopal dioceses, ninety-four Catholic churches and chapels (besides about 900 Anglican churches) with 313 clergymen, and forty-four cloisters. In the House of Lords sit twenty-eight Roman Catholic peers, and in both countries there are forty-seven Catholic baronets. Since 1847 England has a specifically Catholic university at Kensington, under the episcopate, and with the pope as its supreme head, which, however, with its poor staff of teachers and its expensive course attracts but a few of the Catholic youth of England. Since the Anti-Papal Aggression of 1850 failed, the Protestant people have shown themselves comparatively indifferent to such assumptions of the papacy.--In the Act of Union of 1707 (§ 155, 3), =Scotland= was guaranteed the absolute exclusion of every sort of Roman Catholic hierarchy for all time to come. But in recent times the number of its Catholic inhabitants so greatly increased, that Pius IX. in his last years, not unaided by the English government, eagerly urged the re-establishment of the hierarchy, and Leo XIII. was able at his first consistory of the college of cardinals in March, 1878, to make appointments to the two newly-erected archdioceses and their bishoprics. On the following Easter Sunday the allocution relating thereto was read in all Catholic churches in Scotland. The restoration was thus carried out in spite of all protests and demonstrations of Scottish Protestants.

§ 202.12. =German Lutheran Congregations in Australia.=--Besides the dominant Anglican church, emigration has led to the formation of a considerable number of German Lutheran congregations, which are distributed in three synods.

1. The Victoria Synod was founded in 1852 by pastor Göthe. It adopted at first the union platform, but subsequently attached itself more decidedly to the Lutheran confession.

2. Pastor Karch, who in 1830 emigrated with a number of Prussian Lutherans, in order to avoid the union, laid the foundation of the Immanuel Synod. Since 1875 it has been supplied with preachers from the missionary institute of Neuendettelsau. It is distinguished by its missionary zeal for the conversion of the natives, pursues with special interest the study of the prophetic word, and makes chiliasm an open question which need not rend the church.

3. The South Australian Synod, on the other hand, is the decided opponent of any sort of chiliasm, and has assumed an attitude of violent antagonism to the Immanuel Synod.

§ 203. FRANCE.

In France, lauded as the eldest daughter of the church after the overthrow of the first Empire, ultramontanism, under the secret and open co-operation of the Jesuits, has ever arisen with revived youth and vigour out of all the political convulsions which have since passed over the land. And though indeed Gallicanism seemed again to obtain strength under the second Empire and, down to the close of that period, found many able champions among learned theologians like Bishop Maret (§ 189, 1), and even among exalted prelates like the noble Archbishop Darboy of Paris, a martyr of his office under the Commune (§ 212, 4), its influence faded gradually, and in the latest phase of France’s political development, the third republic, seems utterly to have disappeared, so that even the “Kulturkampf” which broke out in 1879 could not give it life again.--The number of Protestant churches and church members, in spite of bloody persecutions during the Bourbon restoration, and many arbitrary restrictions by Catholic prefects under the citizen king and the second Empire, by numerous accessions of whole congregations and groups of congregations through zealous evangelization efforts, by means of school instruction, itinerant preaching, and Bible colportage, has increased during the century fourfold. In the Reformed church the opposition of methodistically tinctured orthodoxy, reinforced from England and French Switzerland, and rationalistic freethinking, led to sharp conflicts. Also in the Lutheran church, more strongly influenced by Germany, similar discussions arose, but a more conciliatory spirit prevailed and violent struggles were avoided.

§ 203.1. =The French Church under Napoleon I.=--In 1801 Napoleon as Consul concluded with Pius VII. a =Concordat= which, adopting the concordat of Francis I. (§ 110, 14), abandoning the pragmatic sanction of Bourges, and only haggling about the limits to be fixed for the two powers, gave no consideration to the idea of a wholesome internal reform of the French Church: Catholicism is the acknowledged religion of the majority of the French people; the church property belongs to the state, with the obligation to maintain the clergy and ordinances; the clergy who had taken the oath and those who were expatriated were all to resign, but were eligible for election; new boundaries were to be marked out for the episcopal dioceses with reference to the political divisions of the country; the government elects and the pope confirms the bishops, and these, with approval of the government, appoint the priests. The one-sided =Organic Articles= of the first Consul of 1802, which were annexed to the publication of the Concordat as a code of explanatory regulations, made any proclamation of papal orders and decrees of all foreign councils dependent on previous permission of the government, as also the calling of synods and consultative assemblies of the clergy. They further ordained that all official services of the clergy should be gratuitous, and transferred to the civil council the right and duty of strict inquiry into any clerical breach of civil laws and any misuse or excessive exercise of clerical authority. The thirty-first article, however, created that unhappy order of Desservants or curates, the result of which was that interim appointments were made to most of the benefices in order to squeeze state pay in supplement to the inadequate ecclesiastical endowments, and so their holders were at the absolute mercy of the bishops who could transport or dispense with them at any moment. For further particulars about the friendly and hostile relations of Napoleon and the pope, see § 185, 1. By an imperial decree of 1810, the four articles of the Gallican Church (§ 156, 3) were made laws of the Empire; and a French National Council of 1811 sought to complete the reconstruction of the church according to Napoleon’s ideas, but proved utterly incapable for such a task, and was therefore dissolved by the emperor himself.--To pacify the Protestants, dissatisfied with the Concordat, amid flattering acknowledgment of their services to the state, to science and to the arts, an appendix was attached to the Organic Articles, securing to them liberty of religious worship and political and municipal equality with Catholics. For training ministers for the Reformed Church a theological seminary was founded at Montauban, and for Lutherans an academy with a seminary at Strassburg. Napoleon also afterwards proved himself on every occasion ready to help the Protestants. He was equally forward in recognising public opinion in France. The National Institute of France in 1804 offered a prize for an essay on the influence of Luther’s Reformation on the formation and advance of European national life, and awarded it to the treatise of the Catholic physician Villers (Essai sur l’influence de la réf. de Luther, etc.), which in all respects glorified Protestantism. Even the Catholic clergy during the first Empire exhibited an easy temper and tolerance such as was never shown before or since. The obligatory civil marriage law introduced by the Revolution in 1792, obtained place in the Code Napoléon in 1804, and was with it introduced in Belgium and the provinces of the Rhine.[561]

§ 203.2. =The Restoration and the Citizen Kingdom.=--The =Charter= of the Bourbon Restoration under Louis XVIII. (1814-1824) and Charles X. (1824-1830) made Catholicism the state religion and granted toleration and state protection to the other confessions. A new concordat concluded with Pius VII. in 1817, by which that of Napoleon of 1801, with the Organic Articles of the following year, were abrogated, and the state of matters previous to 1789 restored, was so vigorously opposed by the nation, that the ministry were obliged to withdraw the measure introduced in both chambers for giving it legislative sanction. Ultramontanism, however, in its boldest form, steadily favoured by the government, soon prevailed among the clergy to such an extent that any inclination to Gallicanism was denounced as heresy and intolerance of Protestantism lauded as piety. In southern France the rekindled hatred of the Catholic mob against the Reformed broke out in 1815 in brutal and bloody persecution. The government kept silence till the indignation of Europe obliged it to put down the atrocities, but the offenders were left unpunished. Connivance in such lawlessness on the part of the government contributed largely to its overthrow in the July revolution of 1830. The Catholic Church then lost again the privilege of a state religion, and the hitherto persecuted and oppressed Protestants obtained equal rights with the Catholics. But even under the new constitutional government of Orleans, ultramontanism soon reasserted itself. The Protestants had to complain of much injury and injustice from Catholic prefects, and the Protestant minister Guizot claimed for France the protectorate of the whole Catholic world. The Reformed Church meanwhile flourished, though vacillating between methodistic narrowness and rationalistic shallowness, growing both inwardly and outwardly, and also the Lutheran communities, which outside of Alsace were only thinly scattered, enjoyed great prosperity. In the February revolution of 1848 the Catholic clergy readily yielded obedience to the citizen king Louis Philippe, and, on the ground that the Catholic church is suited to any form of government which only grants liberty to the church, did not refuse their benediction to the tree of freedom with the sovereign people at the barricades.

§ 203.3. =The Catholic Church under Napoleon III.=--Louis Napoleon, as president of the new republic (1848-1852), and still more decidedly as emperor (1852-1870), inclined to follow the traditions of his uncle, regarded the concordat of 1801 as still legally in force and seemed specially anxious to arouse zeal for the Gallican liberties. Although his bayonets secured the pope’s return to Rome (§ 185, 2) and even afterwards supported his authority there, he did not fulfil the heart’s wish of the emperor by the people’s grace to place the imperial crown upon his head in his own person. Severely strained relations between the imperial court and the episcopate resulted in 1860 from a pamphlet against the papacy inspired by the government (§ 185, 3). Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, was one of the oldest and most determined defenders of the interests of the papal see, and from Poitiers the emperor was pretty openly characterized as a second Pilate. The government did not venture directly to interfere between the two, but reminded the bishops that the emperor’s differences with the pope referred only to temporal affairs. It also forbade the forming of separate societies for the collecting of Peter’s pence, and dissolved the societies of St. Vincent, instituted for benevolent purposes, but misused for ultramontane agitations. When Archbishop Desprez of Toulouse, like his predecessors in 1662 and 1762, on May 16th, 1862, with pompous phrases of piety appointed the jubilee festival of the “fait glorieux,” by which at Toulouse three hundred years before, by means of shameful treachery and base breach of pledges 4,000 Protestants were murdered (§ 139, 15), a shout of indignation rose from almost all French journals and the government forbade the ceremonial. It also refused permission to proclaim the papal encyclical with the syllabus (§ 185, 2) and condemned several bishops who disobeyed for misuse of their office. Under the influence of the ultramontane empress Eugenie, however, the relation of the government to the curia and the higher clergy of the empire, since the one could not do without the other, became more friendly and intimate, till the day of Sedan, September 2nd, 1870, put an end to the Napoleonic empire and the temporal power of the papacy which it had maintained.

§ 203.4. =The Protestant Churches under Napoleon III.=--After the revolution of 1848, the Lutherans at an assembly in Strassburg and the Reformed in Paris consulted about a new organization of their churches. But as the latter resolved in order to maintain constitutional union amid doctrinal diversity, entirely to set aside symbol and dogma, pastor Fr. Monod and Count Gasparin, the noble defenders of French Protestantism, lodged a protest, and with thirty congregations of the strict party constituted a new council at Paris in 1849, independent of the state, as the Union des églises évangéliques de France with biennial synods. Louis Napoleon gave to the Reformed Church a central council in Paris with consistories and presbyteries; to the Lutheran, an annual general consistory as a legislative court and a standing directory as an administrative court. The Lutheran theological faculty at Strassburg with its vigorous unconfessional science represents the westernmost school of Schleiermacher’s theology. The academy at Montauban, with Adolph Monod at its head, represents Reformed orthodoxy, not strictly confessional but coloured by methodistic piety, and Coquerel in Paris, was the head of the rationalistic party of the Reformed national church. The lead in the reaction against rationalism since 1830 has been taken by the Société évangélique at Paris, which, aiming at the Protestantising of France, and using for this end Bible colportage, tract distribution, the sending out of evangelists, school instruction, etc., has developed an extraordinarily restless and successful activity. It has been powerfully supported by the evangelical society of Geneva. The number of Protestant clergymen in France has steadily risen, and almost every year in and out of the Catholic population new evangelical congregations have been formed, in spite of endless difficulties put in the way by Catholic courts. In Strassburg, in 1854, the Jesuits persuaded the Catholic prefects to recall and arrest the revenues of the former St. Thomas institute, which since the Reformation had been applied to the maintenance of a Protestant gymnasium. The prefect of Paris, however, was instructed to desist from his claims. In the speech from the throne in 1858, the emperor declared that the government secured for Protestants full liberty of worship, without forgetting, however, that Catholicism is the religion of the majority, and the Moniteur commented on this imperial speech so evidently in the spirit of the Univers, that the prefects could not be in doubt how to understand it. By General Espinasse, who, after the Orsini attempt on the emperor’s life in 1858, officiated for a long time as Minister of the Interior, the prefects were expressly instructed, to extend their espionage of the ill-affected press to the proceedings of the evangelical societies, and to prohibit the colportage of Protestant Bibles. On a change of minister, however, the latter enactment was withdrawn, and only agents of foreign Bible societies were interfered with. By an imperial decree of 1859, the right of permitting of the opening of new Protestant churches and chapels was taken from the local courts and transferred to the imperial council of state. For every Protestant congregation, so soon as it numbered 400 souls, the legal state salary for the clergymen would be paid.

§ 203.5. =The Catholic Church in the Third French Republic.=--The Gambetta government, the national vindication of the 4th September, 1870, resigned its power in February, 1871, into the hands of the National Assembly elected by the whole nation, which, although through clerical influence upon the electors predominantly monarchical and clerical, appointed the old Voltairean Thiers (died, 1877), formerly ministerial president under Louis Philippe, as alone qualified for the difficult post of president of the republic. In the necessary second vote, indeed, there was a considerable increase of the republican and as such thoroughly anti-clerical party; but even in its ranks it was admitted that the establishment of France as leader of all Europe in the fight against ultramontanism and the co-operation therein of the clergy were the absolutely indispensable means for the political Revanche, after which the hearts of all Frenchmen longed as the hart for the water streams. A petition from five bishops and other dignitaries to the National Assembly for the restoration of the temporal power of the pope was set aside as inopportune. But Archbishop Guibert of Paris, without asking the government, proclaimed the infallibility dogma, and the minister of instruction, Jules Simon, contented himself with warning the episcopate in a friendly way against any further illegal steps of that kind. The clerical party was also successful in its protest to the National Assembly against the education law, which by raising the standard of instruction, placing it under the supervision of the state and making inspection of schools obligatory, proposed to put an end to the terrible ignorance of the French people as the chief cause of their deep decay. Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans was appointed president of the commission for examining it, and so its fate was sealed. Meanwhile the people, by frequent manifestations of the Virgin, were roused to a high pitch of religious excitement. Crowds of pilgrims encouraged by miraculous healings flocked to our Lady of La Salette, at Lourdes, etc. (§ 188, 6), and the consecration of Notre Dame de la Deliverance at Bayeux was celebrated as a brilliant national festival. When in May, 1873, Thiers gave way before the machinations of his opponents and, under the new president, Marshal Macmahon, the thoroughly clerical ministry of the Duc de Broglie got the helm of affairs, the pilgrimage craze, mariolatry and ultramontane piety, aided by the prefects and mayors, increased to an unparalleled extent among all ranks. Under the Buffet ministry of 1875 the influence of clericalism was unabated. To him it owed its most important acquisition, the right of creating free Catholic universities wholly independent of the State, with the privilege of conferring degrees. But when in 1876 the new elections for the National Assembly gave an anti-clerical majority, Buffet was obliged to resign. The new Dufaure ministry, with the Protestant Waddington as minister of instruction, declared indeed that it continued the liberty of instruction, but decidedly refused the right of conferring degrees. The proposal to this effect met with the hearty support of the new chamber of deputies. But all the greater was the jubilation of the clericals when the senate by a small majority refused its consent, and all the more eagerly was the founding of new free Catholic universities carried on, at Paris, Angers, Lyons, Lille and Toulouse, but notwithstanding every effort they only attracted a very small number of scholars,--in 1879, when they flourished most, at all the five there were only 742 students.

§ 203.6. =The French “Kulturkampf,” 1880.=--The Dufaure ministry was succeeded in December, 1876, by the semi-liberal ministry of Jules Simon, which again was driven out in a summary fashion by president Macmahon on May 16th, 1877, and replaced, on the dissolution of the chamber, by a clerical ministry under Duc de Broglie. But in the newly elected chamber the republican anti-clerical majority was so overwhelming that Macmahon, on January 30th, 1879, abandoning his motto of government, J’y suis et j’y reste, was at last obliged, between the alternatives offered him by Gambetta, Se soumettre ou se démettre, to choose the latter. His successor was Grévy, president of the Chamber, who entrusted the protestant Waddington with the forming of a new ministry in which Jules Ferry was minister of instruction. Ferry brought in a bill in March to abolish the representation of the clergy in the High Council of Education by four archiepiscopal deputies, continuing indeed the free Catholic universities, but requiring their students to enroll in a state university which alone could hold examinations and give degrees, and finally enacting by Article 7 that the right of teaching in all educational institutions should be refused to members of all religious orders and congregations not recognised by the state. The chamber deputies accepted this bill without amendment on July 9th, but the senate on March 7th, 1880, after passing six articles refused to adopt the seventh. On March 29th, the president of the republic issued on his own authority two decrees, based indeed upon earlier enactments (1789-1852), gone into desuetude indeed, but never abrogated (§ 186, 2), demanded the dissolution of the Society of Jesus, containing 1,480 members in 56 institutions, within three months, and insisted that the orders and congregations not recognised by the State, embracing 14,033 sisters in 602 institutions and 7,444 brothers in 384 institutions, in the same time should by production of their statutes and rules seek formal recognition or else be broken up. A storm of protests on the part of the bishops greeted these “March Decrees,” and riotous demonstrations made before the Minister of Instruction at his residence at Lille expressed the protests of the students of the Catholic university there. The pope now broke his reserve and by a nuncio sent the president of the republic a holograph letter in which he declared that he must interfere on behalf of the Jesuits and the threatened orders, because they were indispensably necessary to the wellbeing of the church. He did not wish that they should have recourse to unlawful means, but it must be understood that they would appeal to the courts for protection of their threatened civil liberties. When therefore on the morning of June 30th the police began their work of expelling the Jesuits from their houses, these lodged a complaint before the courts of invasion of their domestic peace and infringement of their personal liberty. Their schools were closed on August 31st, the end of the school year; meanwhile they had taken the precaution to transfer most of them to such as would be ready afterwards to restore them. The enforcement of the second of the March Decrees against the other orders was delayed for a while. A compromise proposed by the episcopate, favoured by the pope and not absolutely rejected even by the minister Freycinet, Waddington’s successor, according to which instead of the required application for recognition all these orders should sign a declaration of loyalty, undertaking to avoid all participation in political affairs and to do nothing opposed to existing order, brought about the overthrow of this ministry in September, 1880, by the machinations from other motives of the president of the chamber and latent dictator, Leon Gambetta. At the head of the new ministry was Ferry, who held the portfolio of instruction, and under him the carrying out of the second March Decree began on October 16th, 1880. Up to the meeting of the chamber in November 261 monasteries had been vacated; the rest, as from the first all female congregations, were spared, so that France with its colonies and mission stations still number 4,288 male and 14,990 female settlements of spiritual orders, the former with about 32,000, the latter with about 166,200 inmates.--The expulsion of the Jesuits, as well as the more recent of the other orders, was, however, stoutly opposed. The police told off for this duty found doors shut and barricaded against them or defended by fanatical peasants and mobs of shrieking women, so that they had often to be stormed and broken up by the military. Still more threatening than this opposition was the reaction which began to assert itself at the instance of the almost thoroughly ultramontane jurists of the country, a survival of the times of Napoleon III. and Macmahon. An advocate Rousse, who publicly stated the opinion that the March Decrees were illegal and therefore not binding, was supported by 2,000 attorneys and over 200 corporations of attorneys and by many distinguished university jurists. More than 200 state officials and many judiciary and police officers, together with several officers of the army, tendered their resignations so as to avoid taking part in the execution of the decrees. When it became clear that unfavourable verdicts would be given by the courts invoked by the Jesuits against the executors of the decree, as indeed was soon actually done by several courts, the government lodged an appeal against their competence before the tribunal of conflicts which also actually in regard to all such cases pronounced them incompetent and their decisions therefore null and void; but the complainers insisted that their complaints should be taken to a Council of State as the only court suitable to deal with charges against officials, which, as might be expected, was not done.

§ 203.7. In the future course of the French “Kulturkampf” the most important proceedings of the government were the following: The abolition of the institute of military chaplains, highly serviceable in ultramontanizing the officers, was carried out in 1880, as well as the requirement that the clergy and teachers should give military service for one year, and subsequently also military escorts to the Corpus Christi procession were forbidden. In 1880 the Municipal Council of Paris, with the concurrence of the prefect of the Seine, forbad the continuance of the beautiful building of the church of the Heart of Jesus begun in 1875 on Montmartre (§ 188, 12), confiscating the site that had been granted for it. In 1881 the churchyards were relieved of their denominational character, and the following year the right of managing them, with permission of merely civil interment without the aid of a clergyman, was transferred from the ecclesiastical to the civil authorities. By introducing in 1880 high schools for girls with boarding establishments an end was put to the education of girls of the upper ranks in nunneries, which had hitherto been the almost exclusive practice. Far more sweeping was the School Act brought in by the radical minister of worship, Paul Bert, and first enforced in October, 1886, which made attendance compulsory, relegated religious instruction wholly to the church and home, and absolutely excluded all the clergy from the right of giving any sort of instruction in the public schools, and demanded the removal of all crucifixes and other religious symbols from the school buildings. In December, 1884, a tax was imposed on the property of all religious orders, also the state allowance for the five Catholic seminaries with only thirty-seven students was withdrawn, and many other important deductions made upon the budget for Catholic worship, which at first the senate opposed, but at last agreed to. The Divorce Bill frequently introduced since 1881, which permitted parties to marry again, and gave disposal of the matter to the civil court, got the assent of the senate only in the end of July, 1884. The clericals were also greatly offended by the decree passed in May, 1885, which closed the church of St. Genoveva, the former Pantheon, as a place of worship and made it again a burial place for distinguished Frenchmen. This resolution was first carried out by placing there the remains of Victor Hugo. Amid these and many other injuries to its interests the Roman curia, concentrating all its energies upon the German “Kulturkampf,” endeavoured to keep things back in a moderate way. Yet in July, 1883, the pope addressed to president Grévy a friendly but earnest remonstrance, which he treated simply as a private letter and, without communicating it officially to his cabinet, answered that apart from parliament he could not act, but that so far as he and his ministry were able they would seek to avoid conflict with the holy see. And in fact the government, especially after the overthrow of the Gambetta ministry in 1882, often successfully opposed the proposal of the radical chamber, e.g. the separation of church and state, the abrogation of the concordat, the recall of the embassy to the Vatican, the abolition of religious oaths in the proceedings of the courts, the stopping of the state subvention of a million francs for payment of salaries in seminaries for priests, etc.

§ 203.8. =The Protestant Churches under the Third Republic.=--Since the French Reformed began to emulate their Catholic countrymen in wild Chauvinism, fanatical hatred of Germany and unreasoning enthusiasm for the Revanche, they were left by the advancing clerical party unmolested in respect of life, confession and worship during the time of war. The Lutherans on the other hand, consisting, although on French territory, mainly of German emigrants and settlers, even their French members not so disposed to Chauvinistic extravagance, were obliged to atone for this double offence by expulsion from house and home and by various injuries to their ecclesiastical interests. After the conclusion of peace, especially under Thiers’ moderate government, this fanaticism gradually cooled down, so that the expelled Germans returned and the churches and institutions that had been destroyed were restored, so far as means would allow. By the decree of Waddington, the minister of instruction, of date March 27th, 1877, instead of the theological faculty of Strassburg, now lost for the French Lutheran church, one for both Protestant churches was founded in Paris.--The =Lutheran Church=, in consequence of the cession of Alsace-Lorraine, had only sixty-four out of 278 pastorates and six out of forty-four consistories remaining. At the general synod convened at Paris, in July, 1872, by the government for reorganising the Lutheran church it was resolved: To form two inspectorates independent of each other--Paris, predominantly orthodox, Mömpelgard, predominantly liberal; the general assembly, which meets every third year alternately at Mömpelgard and Paris, to consist of delegates from both. The two inspectorates are to correspond in administrative matters directly with the minister of public instruction, but in everything referring to confession, doctrine, worship and discipline, the general assembly is the supreme authority. In regard to the confessional question they agreed to the statement, that the holy Scripture is the supreme authority in matters of faith, and the Augsburg Confession the basis of the legal constitution of the church. An express undertaking on the part of the clergy to this effect is not, however, insisted upon. Only in 1879 could this constitution obtain legal sanction by the State, and that only after considerable modification in the direction of liberalism, especially in reference to electoral qualification. In consequence of this the first ordinary general assembly held in Paris in May, 1881, found both parties in a conciliatory mood.--=The Reformed Church=, with about 500 pastorates and 105 consistories, summoned by order of government a newly constituted General Assembly at Paris, in June, 1872. Prominent among the leaders of the orthodox party was the aged ex-minister Guizot; the leaders of the liberals were Coquerel and Colani. The former supported the proposal of Professor Bois of Montauban, who insisted on the frank and full confession of holy Scripture as the sovereign authority in matters of faith, of Christ as the only Son of God, and of justification by faith as the legal basis of instruction, worship and discipline; while the latter protested against every attempt to lay down an obligatory and exclusive confession. The orthodox party prevailed and the dissenters who would not yield were struck off the voting lists. When now in consequence of the complaint of the liberal party the summoning of an ordinary general assembly was refused by the government, the orthodox party repeatedly met in “official” provincial and general assemblies without state sanction. The council of state then declared all decisions regarding voting qualifications passed by the synod of 1872 to be null and void, the minister of worship, Ferry, ordered the readmission of electors struck from the lists, and his successor Bert legalized, by a decree of March 25th, 1882, the division of the Parisian consistorial circuit into two independent consistories of Paris and Versailles, moved for by the liberal party but opposed by the orthodox. But upon the elections for the new consistory of Paris, ordered in spite of all protests, and for the presbyteries of the eight parishes assigned to it, contrary to all expectation, in seven of these the elections with great majorities were in favour of the orthodox, and the first official document issued by the new consistory was a solemn protest against the decree to which it owed its existence. Under such circumstances the government as well as the liberal party had no desire for the calling of an official general assembly, and the latter resolved at a general assembly at Nimes, in October, 1882, to institute official synods of their own for consultation and protection of their own interests.

§ 204. ITALY.

In Italy matters returned to their old position after the restoration of 1814. But liberalism, aiming at the liberty and unity of Italy, gained the mastery, and where for the time it prevailed, the Jesuits were expelled, and the power of the clergy restricted; where it failed, both came back with greatly increased importance. The arms of Austria and subsequently also of France stamped out on all sides the revolutionary movements. Pius IX., who at first was not indisposed, contrary to all traditions of the papacy, to put himself at the head of the national party, was obliged bitterly to regret his dealings with the liberals (§ 185, 2). Sardinia, Modena and Naples put the severest strain upon the bow of the restoration, while Parma and Tuscany distinguished themselves by adopting liberal measures in a moderate degree. Sardinia, however, in 1840 came to a better mind. Charles Albert first broke ground with a more liberal constitution, and in 1848 proclaimed himself the deliverer of Italy, but yielded to the arms of Austria. His son Victor Emanuel II. succeeded amid singularly favourable circumstances in uniting the whole peninsula under his sceptre as a united kingdom of Italy governed by liberal institutions.

§ 204.1. =The Kingdom of Sardinia.=--Victor Emanuel I. after the restoration had nothing else to do but to recall the Jesuits, to hand over to them the whole management of the schools, and, guided and led by them in everything, to restore the church and state to the condition prevailing before 1789. Charles Felix (1821-1831) carried still further the absolutist-reactionary endeavours of his predecessor, and even Charles Albert (1831-1849) refused for a long time to realize the hopes which the liberal party had previously placed in him. Only in the second decade of his reign did he begin gradually to display a more liberal tendency, and at last in 1848 when, in consequence of the French Revolution, Lombardy rose against the Austrian rule, he placed himself at the head of the national movement for freeing Italy from the yoke of strangers. But the king gloried in as “the sword of Italy” was defeated and obliged to abdicate. Victor Emanuel II. (1849-1878) allowed meanwhile the liberal constitution of his father to remain and indeed carried it out to the utmost. The minister of justice, Siccardi, proposed a new legislative code which abolished all clerical jurisdiction in civil and criminal proceedings, as also the right of asylum and of exacting tithes, the latter with moderate compensation. It was passed by parliament and subscribed by the king in 1850. The clergy, with archbishop Fransoni of Turin at their head, protested with all their might against these sacrilegious encroachments on the rights of the church. Fransoni was on this account committed for a month to prison and, when he refused the last sacrament to a minister, was regularly sentenced to deposition and banishment from the country. Pius IX. thwarted all attempts to obtain a new concordat. But the government went recklessly forward. As Fransoni from his exile in France continued his agitation, all the property of the archiepiscopal chair was in 1854 sequestered and a number of cloisters were closed. Soon all penalties in the penal code for spreading non-Catholic doctrines were struck out and non-Catholic soldiers freed from compulsory attendance at mass on Sundays and festivals. The chief blow now fell on March 2nd, 1855, in the Cloister Act, which abolished all orders and cloisters not devoted to preaching, teaching, and nursing the sick. In consequence 331 out of 605 cloisters were shut up. The pope ceased not to condemn all these sacrilegious and church robbing acts, and when his threats were without result, thundered the great excommunication in July, 1855, against all originators, aiders, and abettors of such deeds. Among the masses this indeed caused some excitement, but it never came to an explosion.

§ 204.2. =The Kingdom of Italy.=--Amid such vigorous progress the year 1859 came round with its fateful Franco-Italian war. The French alliance had not indeed, as it promised, made Italy free to the Adriatic, but by the peace of Villafranca the whole of Lombardy was given to the kingdom of Sardinia as a present from the emperor of the French. In the same year by popular vote Tuscany, including Modena and Parma, and in the following year the kingdom of the two Sicilies, as well as the three provinces of the States of the Church, revolted and were annexed, so that the new kingdom of Italy embraced the whole of the peninsula, with the exception of Venice, Rome and the Campagna. Prussia’s remarkable successes in the seven days’ German war of 1866 shook Venice like ripe fruit into the lap of her Italian ally, and the day of Sedan, 1870, prepared the way for the addition of Rome and the Campagna (§ 185, 3).--In Lombardy and then also in Venice, immediately after they had been taken possession of, the concordat with Austria was abrogated and the Jesuits expelled. Ecclesiastical tithes on the produce of the soil were abolished throughout the whole kingdom, begging was forbidden the mendicant friars as unworthy of a spiritual order, ecclesiastical property was put under state control and the support of the clergy provided for by state grants. In 1867 the government began the appropriation and conversion of the church property; in 1870 all religious orders were dissolved, with exception for the time being of those in Rome, wherever they did not engage in educational and other useful works. In May, 1873, this law was extended to the Roman province, only it was not to be applied to the generals of orders in Rome. Nuns and some monks were also allowed to remain in their cloisters situated in unpeopled districts. The amount of state pensions paid to monks and nuns reached in 1882 the sum of eleven million lire, at the rate of 330 lire for each person. The abolition of the theological faculties in ten Italian universities in 1873, because these altogether had only six students of theology, was regarded by the curia rather as a victory than a defeat. The newly appointed bishops were forbidden by the pope to produce their credentials for inspection in order to obtain their salaries from the government. The loss of temporalities thus occasioned was made up by Pius IX. out of Peter’s pence flowing in so abundantly from abroad; each bishop receiving 500 and each archbishop 700 lire in the month. Leo XIII., however, felt obliged in 1879, owing to the great decrease in the Peter’s pence contributions, to cancel this enactment and to permit the bishops to accept the state allowance. In consequence of the civil marriage law passed in 1866 having been altogether ignored by the clergy, nearly 400,000 marriages had down to the close of 1878 received only ecclesiastical sanction, and the offspring of such parties would be regarded in the eye of the law as illegitimate. To obviate this difficulty a law was passed in May, 1879, which insisted that in all cases civil marriage must precede the ecclesiastical ceremony, and clergymen, witnesses and parties engaging in an illegal marriage should suffer three or six months’ imprisonment; but all marriages contracted in accordance merely with church forms before the passing of this law might be legitimized by being entered on the civil register.--Finally in January, 1884, the controversy pending since 1873 as to whether the rich property of the Roman propaganda (§ 156, 9) amounting to twenty million lire should be converted into state consols was decided by the supreme court in favour of the curia, which had pronounced these funds international because consisting of presents and contributions from all lands. But not only was the revenue of the propaganda subjected to a heavy tax, but also all increase of its property forbidden. In vain did the pope by his nuncios call for the intervention of foreign nations. None of these were inclined to meddle in the internal affairs of Italy. The curia now devised the plan of affiliating a number of societies outside of Italy to the propaganda for receiving and administering donations and presents.

§ 204.3. =The Evangelization of Italy.=--Emigrant Protestants of various nationalities had at an early date, by the silent sufferance of the respective governments, formed small evangelical congregations in some of the Italian cities; in Venice and Leghorn during the seventeenth century, at Bergamo in 1807, at Florence in 1826, at Milan in 1847. Also by aid of the diplomatic intervention of Prussia and England, the erection of Protestant chapels for the embassy was allowed at Rome in 1819, at Naples in 1825, and at Florence in 1826. When in 1848 Italy’s hopes from the liberal tendencies of Pius IX. were so bitterly disappointed, Protestant sympathies began to spread far and wide through the land, even among native Catholics, fostered by English missionaries, Bibles and tracts, which the governments sought in vain to check by prisons, penitentiaries and exile. Persecution began in 1851 in Tuscany, where, in spite of the liberty of faith and worship guaranteed by the constitution of 1848, Tuscan subjects taking part in the Italian services in the chapel of the Prussian embassy at Florence were punished with six months’ hard labour, and in the following year the pious pair Francesco and Rosa Madiai were sentenced to four years’ rigorous punishment in a penitentiary for the crime of having edified themselves and their household by reading the Bible. In vain did the Evangelical Alliance remonstrate (§ 178, 3), in vain did even the king of Prussia intercede. But when, stirred up by public opinion in England, the English premier Lord Palmerston offered to secure the requirement of Christian humanity by means of British ships of war, the grand-duke got rid of both martyrs by banishing them from the country in 1853. In proportion as the union of Italy under Victor Emanuel II. advanced, the field for evangelistic effort and the powers devoted thereto increased. So it was too since 1860 in Southern Italy. But when in 1866 a Protestant congregation began to be formed at Barletta in Naples, a fanatical priest roused a popular mob in which seventeen persons were killed and torn in pieces. The government put down the uproar and punished the miscreants, and the nobler portion of the nation throughout the whole land collected for the families of those murdered. The work of evangelization supported by liberal contributions chiefly from England, but also from Holland, Switzerland, and the German Gustav-Adolf-Verein (§ 178, 1), advanced steadily in spite of occasional brutal interferences of the clergy and the mob, so that soon in all the large cities and in many of the smaller towns of Italy and Sicily there were thriving and flourishing little evangelical congregations of converted native Catholics, numbering as many as 182 in 1882.

§ 204.4. The chief factor in the evangelization of Italy as far as the southern coast of Sicily was the old =Waldensian Church=, which for three hundred years had occupied the Protestant platform in the spirit of Calvinism (§ 139, 25). Remnants consisting of some 200,000 souls still survived in the valleys of Piedmont, almost without protection of law amid constant persecution and oppressions (§ 153, 5), moderated only by Prussian and English intervention. But when Sardinia headed Italian liberalism in 1848 religious liberty and all civil rights were secured to them. A Waldensian congregation was then formed in the capital, Turin, which was strengthened by numerous Protestant refugees from other parts of Italy. But in 1854 a split occurred between the two elements in it. The new Italian converts objected, not altogether without ground, against the old Waldensians that by maintaining their church government with its centre in the valleys, the so-called “Tables” and their old forms of constitution, doctrine and worship, much too contracted and narrow for the enlarged boundaries of the present, they thought more of Waldensianizing than of evangelizing Italy. Besides, their language since 1630, when a plague caused their preachers and teachers to withdraw from Geneva, had been French, and the national Italian pride was disposed on this domain also to unfurl her favourite banner “Italia farà da se.” The division spread from Turin to the other congregations. At the head of the separatists, afterwards designated the “Free Italian Church” (Chiesa libera), stood Dr. Luigi Desanctis, a man of rich theological culture and glowing eloquence, who, when Catholic priest and theologian of the inquisition at Rome, became convinced of the truth of the evangelical confession, joined the evangelical church at Malta in 1847 and wrought from 1852 with great success in the congregation at Turin. After ten years’ faithful service in the newly formed free church he felt obliged, owing to the Darbyite views (§ 211, 11) that began to prevail in it, to attach himself again in 1864 to the Waldensians, who meanwhile had been greatly liberalised. He now officiated for them till his death in 1869 as professor of theology at Florence, and edited their journal Eco della verità. This journal was succeeded in 1873 by the able monthly Rivista Cristiana, edited at Florence by Prof. Emilio Comba.--After Desanctis left the Chiesa libera its chief representative was the ex-Barnabite father Alessandro Gavazzi of Naples. Endowed with glowing eloquence and remarkable popularity as a lecturer, he appeared at Rome in 1848 as a politico-religious orator, attached himself to the evangelical church in London in 1850, and undertook the charge of the evangelical Italian congregation there. He returned to Italy in 1860 and accompanied the hero of Italian liberty, Garibaldi, as his military chaplain, preaching to the people everywhere with his leonine voice with equal enthusiasm of Victor Emanuel as the only saviour of Italy and of Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of sinners. He then joined the Chiesa libera, and, as he himself obtained gradually fuller acquaintance with evangelical truth, wrought zealously in organizing the congregations hitherto almost entirely isolated from one another. At a general assembly at Milan in 1870, deputies from thirty-two congregations drew up a simple biblical confession of faith, and in the following year at Florence a constitutional code was adopted which recognised the necessity of the pastoral office, of annual assemblies, and a standing evangelization committee. They now took the name “=Unione della Chiesa libere in Italia=.” The predominantly Darbyist congregations, which had not taken part in these constitutional assemblies, have since formed a community of their own as =Chiesa Cristiana=, depending only on the immediate leading of the Holy Spirit, rejecting every sort of ecclesiastical and official organization, and denouncing infant baptism as unevangelical.--Besides these three national Italian churches, English and American Methodists and Baptists carry on active missions. On May 1st, 1884, the evangelical denominations at a general assembly in Florence, with the exception only of the Darbyist Chiesa Cristiana, joined in a confederation to meet annually in an “Italian Evangelical Congress” as a preparation for ecclesiastical union. When, however, the various Methodist and Baptist denominations began to check the progress of the work of union, the two leading bodies, the Waldensians and the Free Church party, separated from them. A committee chosen from these two sketched at Florence in 1885 a basis of union, according to which the Free Church adopted the confession and church order of the Waldensians, subject to revision by the joint synods, their theological school at Rome was to be amalgamated with the Waldensian school at Florence, and the united church was to take the name of the “Evangelical Church of Italy.” But a Waldensian synod in September, 1886, resolved to hold by the ancient name of the “Waldensian Church.” Whether the “Free Church” will agree to this demand is not yet known.

§ 205. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

No European country has during the nineteenth century been the scene of so many revolutions, outbreaks and civil wars, of changes of government, ministries and constitutions, sometimes of a clerical absolutist, sometimes of a democratic radical tendency, and in none has revolution gone so unsparingly for the time against hierarchy, clergy and monasticism, as in unfortunate Spain. Portugal too passed through similar struggles, which, however, did not prove so dreadfully disordering to the commonwealth as those of Spain.

§ 205.1. =Spain under Ferdinand VII. and Maria Christina.=--Joseph Bonaparte (1808-1813) had given to the Spaniards a constitution of the French pattern, abolishing inquisition and cloisters. The constitution which the Cortes proclaimed in 1812 carried out still further the demands of political liberalism, but still declared the apostolic Roman Catholic religion as alone true to be the religion of the Spanish nation and forbad the exercise of any other. Ferdinand VII., whom Napoleon restored in December, 1813, hastened to restore the inquisition, the cloisters and despotism, especially from 1815 under the direction of the Jesuits highly esteemed by him. The revolution of 1820 indeed obliged him to reintroduce the constitution of 1812 and to banish the Jesuits; but scarcely had the feudal clerical party of the apostolic Junta with their army of faith in the field and Bourbon French intervention under the Duke of Angoulême again made his way clear, than he began to crush as before by means of his Jesuit Camarilla every liberal movement in church and state. But all the more successful was the reaction of liberalism in the civil war which broke out after Ferdinand’s death under the regency of his fourth wife, the intriguing Maria Christina (1833-1837). The revolution now erected an inquisition, but it was one directed against the clergy and monks, and celebrated its autos de fe; but these were in the form of spoliation of cloisters and massacres of monks. Ecclesiastical tithes were abolished, all monkish orders suspended, the cloisters closed, ecclesiastical goods declared national property, and the papal nuncio sent over the frontier. A threatening papal allocution of 1841 only increased the violence of the Cortes, and when Gregory XVI. in 1842 pronounced all decrees of the government null and void, it branded all intercourse with Rome as an offence against the state.

§ 205.2. =Spain under Isabella II., 1843-1865.=--Ferdinand VII., overlooking the right of his brother Don Carlos, had, by abolishing the Salic law, secured the throne to Isabella, his own and Maria Christina’s daughter. After the Cortes of 1843 had declared Isabella of age in her thirteenth year, the Spanish government became more and more favourable to the restoration. After long negotiations and vacillations under constantly changing ministries a concordat was at last drawn up in 1851, which returned the churches and cloisters that had not been sold, allowed compensation for what had been sold, reduced the number of bishoprics by six, put education and the censorship of the press under the oversight of the bishops, and declared the Catholic religion the only one to be tolerated. But although in 1854 the Holy Virgin was named generalissima of the brave army and her image at Atocha had been decorated by the queen with a band of the Golden Fleece, a revolution soon broke out in the army which threatened to deal the finishing stroke to ultramontanism. Meanwhile it had not fully permeated the republican party. The proposal of unrestricted liberty to all forms of worship was supported by a small minority, and the new constitution of 1855 called upon the Spanish nation to maintain and guard the Catholic religion which “the Spaniards profess;” yet no Spaniard was to be persecuted on account of his faith, so long as he did not commit irreligious acts. A new law determined the sale of all church and cloister property, and compensation therefore by annual rents according to the existing concordat. Several bishops had to be banished owing to their continued opposition; the pope protested and recalled his legates. Clerical influence meanwhile regained power over the queen. The sale of church and cloister property was stopped, and previous possessors were indemnified for what had been already sold. Owing to frequent change of ministry, each of which manifested a tendency different from its predecessor, it was only in 1859 that matters were settled by a new concordat. In it the government admitted the inalienability of church property, admitted the unrestricted right of the church to obtain new property of any kind, and declared itself ready to exchange state paper money for property that had fallen into decay according to the estimation of the bishops. The queen proved her Catholic zeal at the instigation of the nun Patrocinio by fanatical persecution of Protestants, and hearty but vain sympathies for the sufferings of the pope and the expatriated Italian princes. Pius IX. rewarded Isabella, who seemed to him adorned with all the virtues, by sending her in 1868 the consecrated rose at a time when she was causing public scandal more than ever by her private life, and by her proceedings with her paramour Marforio had lost the last remnant of the respect and confidence of the Spanish nation. Eight months later her reign was at an end. The provisional government now ordered the suppression of the Society of Jesus, as well as of all cloister and spiritual associations, and in 1869 the Cortes sanctioned the draught of a new civil constitution, which required the Spanish nation to maintain the Catholic worship, but allowed the exercise of other forms of worship to strangers and as cases might arise even to natives, and generally made all political and civil rights independent of religious profession.

§ 205.3. =Spain under Alphonso XII., 1875-1885.=--When Isabella’s son returned to Spain in January, 1875, in his seventeenth year, he obtained the blessing of his sponsor the pope on his ascending the throne, promised to the Catholic church powerful support, but also to non-Catholics the maintenance of liberty of worship. How he meant to perform both is shown by a decree of 10th February, 1875, which, abolishing the civil marriage law passed by the Cortes in 1870, gave back to the Catholic church the administration of marriage and matters connected therewith; for all persons living in Spain, however, “who professed another than the true faith,” as well as for “the bad Catholics,” to whom ecclesiastical marriage on account of church censures is refused, liberty was given to contract a civil marriage; but this did not apply to apostate priests, monks, and nuns, to whom any sort of marriage is for ever refused, and whose previously contracted marriages are invalid, without, however, affecting the legitimacy of children already born of such connections.--Against the draught of the new constitution, whose eleventh article indeed affords toleration to all dissenting forms of worship, but prohibits any public manifestation thereof outside of their place of worship and burial grounds, Pius IX. protested as infringing upon the still existing concordat in its “noblest” part, and aiming a serious blow at the Catholic church. The Cortes, however, sanctioned it in 1876.

§ 205.4. =The Evangelization of Spain.=--A number of Bibles and tracts, as well as a religious paper in Spanish called el Albo, found entrance into Spain from the English settlement at Gibraltar, without Spain being able even in the most flourishing days of the restoration to prevent it, and evangelical sympathies began more or less openly to be expressed. Franc. Ruat, formerly a lascivious Spanish poet, who was awakened at Turin by the preaching of the Waldensian Desanctis, and by reading the Bible had obtained knowledge of evangelical truths, appeared publicly after the publication of the new constitution of 1855 as a preacher of the gospel in Spain. The reaction that soon set in, however, secured for him repeated imprisonments, and finally in 1856 sentence of banishment for life. He then wrought for several years successfully in Gibraltar, next in London, afterwards in Algiers among Spanish residents, till the new civil constitution of 1868 allowed him to return to Spain, where, in the service of the German mission at Madrid, he gathered around him an evangelical congregation, to which he ministered till his death in 1878. While labouring in Gibraltar he won to the evangelical faith among others the young officer Manuel Matamoros, living there as a political refugee. This noble man, whose whole career, till his death in exile in 1866, was a sore martyrdom for the truth, became the soul of the whole movement, against which the government in 1861 and 1862 took the severest measures. By intercepted correspondence the leaders and many of the members of the secret evangelical propaganda were discovered and thrown into prison. The final judgment condemned the leaders of the movement to severe punishment in penitentiaries and the galleys. Infliction of these sentences had already begun when the queen found herself obliged, by a visit to Madrid in 1863 of a deputation of the Evangelical Alliance (§ 178, 3), consisting of the most distinguished and respected Protestants of all lands, to commute them to banishment.--After Isabella’s overthrow in 1868, permission was given for the building of the first Protestant church in Madrid, where a congregation soon gathered of more than 2,000 souls. In Seville an almost equally strong congregation obtained for its services what had been a church of the Jesuits. Also at Cordova a considerable congregation was collected, and in almost all the other large cities there were largely attended places of worship. Several of those banished under Isabella, who had returned after her overthrow, Carrasco, Trigo, Alhama, and others, increased by new converts who had received their theological training at Geneva, Lausanne, etc., and supported by American, English and German fellow-labourers, such as the brothers F. and H. Fliedner, wrought with unwearied zeal as preachers and pastors, for the spreading and deeper grounding of the gospel among their countrymen. With the restoration of the monarchy in 1875, the oppression of the Protestants was renewed with increasing severity. The widest possible interpretation was given to the prohibition of every public manifestation of dissenting worship in Article XI. of the constitution. The excesses and insults of the mob, whose fanaticism was stirred up by the clergy, were left unpunished and uncensured. Even the most sorely abused and injured Protestants were themselves subjected to imprisonment as disturbers of the peace. No essential improvement in their condition resulted from the liberal ministry of Sagasta in 1881. Nevertheless the number of evangelical congregations continued steadily though slowly to increase, so that now they number more than sixty, with somewhere about 15,000 native Protestant members.--Besides these an Iglesia Española arose in 1881, consisting of eight congregations, which may be regarded to some extent as a national Spanish counterpart to the Old Catholicism of Germany. Its founder and first bishop is Cabrera, formerly a Catholic priest, who, after having wrought from 1868 in the service of the Edinburgh (Presbyterian) Evangelization Society as preacher in Seville, and then in Madrid, received in 1880 episcopal consecration from the Anglican bishop Riley of Mexico (§ 209, 1), then visiting Madrid. Although thus of Anglican origin, the church directed by him wishes not to be Anglican, but Spanish episcopal. It attaches itself therefore, while accepting the thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church, in the sketch of its order of service in the Spanish language, more to the old Mozarabic ritual (§ 88, 1) than to the Anglican liturgy.[562]

§ 205.5. =The Church in Portugal.=--Portugal after some months followed the example of the Spanish revolution of 1820. John VI. (1816-1826) confirmed the new constitution, drawn up after the pattern of the democratic Spanish constitution of 1812, enacting the seizure of church property and the suppression of the monasteries. But a counter revolution, led by the younger son of the king, Dom Miguel, obliged him in 1823 to repudiate it and to return to the older constitution. But he persistently resisted the reintroduction of the Jesuits. After his death in 1826, the legitimate heir, Pedro I. of Brazil, abandoned his claims to the Portuguese throne in favour of his daughter Donna Maria II. da Gloria, then under a year old, whom he betrothed to his brother Dom Miguel. Appointed regent, Dom Miguel took the oath to the constitution, but immediately broke his oath, had himself proclaimed king, recalled the Jesuits, and, till his overthrow in 1834, carried on a clerical monarchical reign of terror. Dom Pedro, who had meanwhile vacated the Brazilian throne, as regent again suppressed all monkish orders, seized the property of the church, and abolished ecclesiastical tithes, but died in the same year. His daughter Donna Maria, now pronounced of age and proclaimed queen (1834-1853), amid continual revolutions and changes of the constitution, manifested an ever-growing inclination to reconciliation with Rome. In 1841 she negotiated about a concordat, and showed herself so submissive that the pope rewarded her in 1842 with the consecrated golden rose. But the liberal Cortes resisted the introduction of the concordat, and maintained the right of veto by the civil government as well as the rest of the restrictions upon the hierarchy, and the Codigo penal of 1882 threatened the Catholic clergy with heavy fines and imprisonment for every abuse of their spiritual prerogatives and every breach of the laws of the State. In 1857 a concordat was at last agreed to, which, however, was adopted by the representatives of the people not before 1859, and then only by a small majority. Its chief provisions consist in the regulating of the patronage rights of the crown in regard to existing and newly created bishoprics. The relation of government to the curia, however, still continued strained. The constitution declares generally that the Catholic Apostolic Romish Church is the state religion. A Portuguese who passes over from it to another loses thereby his civil rights as a citizen. Yet no one is to be persecuted on account of his religion. The erection of Protestant places of worship, but not in church form, and also of burial grounds, where necessary, is permitted.--Evangelization has made but little progress in Portugal. The first evangelical congregation, with Anglican episcopal constitution, was founded at Lisbon by a Spanish convert, Don Angelo Herrero de Mora, who in the service of the Bible Society had edited a revision of the old Spanish Bible in New York, and had there been naturalized as an American citizen. Consisting originally of American and English Protestants, about a hundred Spanish and Portuguese converts have since 1868 gradually attached themselves to it, the latter after they had been made Spanish instead of Portuguese subjects. After the pattern of this mother congregation, two others have been formed in the neighbourhood of Lisbon and one at Oporto.

§ 206. RUSSIA.

The Russian government since the time of Alexander I. has sought amid many difficulties to advance the education and enlightenment of the people, and to elevate the orthodox church by securing a more highly cultured clergy, and to increase its influence upon the life of the people; a task which proved peculiarly difficult in consequence of the wide-spread anti-ecclesiastical spirit (§ 210, 3) and the incomparably more dangerous antichristian Nihilism (§ 212, 6).--The Catholic church, mainly represented in what had before been the kingdom of Poland, had, in consequence of the repeated revolutionary agitation of the Poles, in which the clergy had zealously taken part by stirring up fanaticism among the people and converting their religion and worship into a vehicle of rebellion, so compromised itself that the government, besides taking away the national political privileges, reduced more and more the rights and liberties granted to the church as such.--The prosperous development of the evangelical church in Russia, which, through the absolutely faultless loyalty of its members, had hitherto enjoyed the hearty protection of the government, in 1845 and 1846, and afterwards in 1883, in consequence of numerous conversions among Esthonian and Livonian peasants, was checked by incessant persecutions.

§ 206.1. =The Orthodox National Church.=--The evangelical influences introduced from the West during the previous century, especially among the higher clergy, found further encouragement under Alexander I., A.D. 1801-1825. Himself affected by the evangelical pietism of Madame Krüdener (§ 176, 2), he aimed at the elevation of the orthodox church in this direction, founded clerical seminaries and public schools, and took a lively interest in Bible circulation among the Russian people. But under Nicholas I., A.D. 1825-1855, a reaction proceeding from the holy synod set in which unweariedly sought to seal the orthodox church hermetically against all evangelical influences. Also during the reign of Alexander II., A.D. 1855-1881, a reign singularly fruitful in civil reforms, this tendency was even more rigidly illustrated, while with the consent and aid of the holy synod every effort was put forth to improve the church according to its own principles. Specially active in this work was Count Tolstoi, minister of instruction and also procurator of the holy synod. A committee presided over by him produced a whole series of useful reforms in 1868, which were approved by the synod and confirmed by the emperor. While the inferior clergy had hitherto formed an order by themselves, all higher ranks of preferment were now opened to them, but, on the other hand, the obligation of priests’ sons to remain in the order of their fathers was abolished. The clamant abuse of putting mere clerks and sextons to do the work of priests was also now put a stop to, and training in clerical seminaries or academies was made compulsory. Previously only married men could hold the offices of deacon and priest; now widowers and bachelors were admitted, so soon as they reached the age of forty years. In order to increase the poor incomes many churches had not their regular equipment of clergy, and instead of the full set of priest, deacon, sub-deacon, reader, sexton, and doorkeeper, in the poorer churches there were only priest and reader. Order was restored to monastic life, now generally grown dissolute, by a fixed rule of a common table and uniform dress, etc. In 1860 an Orthodox Church Society for Missions among the peoples of the Caucasus, and in 1866 a second for Pagans and Mohammedans throughout the empire, were founded, both under the patronage of the empress. The Russian church also cleverly took advantage of political events to carry on missionary work in Japan (§ 184, 6). A society of the “Friends of Intellectual Enlightenment,” founded in St. Petersburg in 1872, aimed chiefly at the religious improvement of the cultured classes in the spirit of the orthodox church by means of tracts and addresses, while agreeing with foreign confessions as to the nature and characteristics of the true church. Under Alexander III., since A.D. 1881, the emperor’s former tutor Pobedownoszew, with the conviction of the incomparable superiority of his church, and believing that by it and only by it could the dangerous commotions of the present be overcome (§ 212, 6) and Russia regenerated, as procurator of the holy synod has zealously wrought in this direction.--But meanwhile a new impulse was given to the evangelical movement in aristocratic circles by Lord Radstock, who appeared in St. Petersburg in 1870. The addresses delivered by him in French in the salons of the fashionable world won a success scarcely to be looked for. The most famous gain was the conversion of a hitherto proud, worldly, rich and popular Colonel of the Guards, called Paschcow, who now turned the beautiful ball-room of his palatial residence into a prayer-meeting room, and with all the enthusiasm of a neophyte proclaimed successfully among high and low the newly won saving truth in a Biblical evangelical spirit, though not without a methodistic flavour. The excitement thus created led to police interference, and finally, when he refused to abstain from spreading his religious views among the members of the orthodox church by the circulation of evangelical tracts in the Russian language, he was, at the instigation of the holy synod and its all powerful procurator, banished first from St. Petersburg and then in 1884 from the empire, whereupon he withdrew to London.

§ 206.2. =The Catholic Church.=--After the Greeks in the old West Russian provinces (§ 151, 3), who had been forcibly united to Rome in 1596, had again in 1772, in consequence of the first partition of Poland, come under Russian rule, the government sought to restore them also to the orthodox national church. This was first accomplished under Nicholas I., when at the synod of Polosk in 1839 they themselves spontaneously expressed a wish to be thus reunited with the mother church. Rome thus lost two million members. But the allocution directed against this robbery by Gregory XVI. was without effect, and the public opinion of Europe saw a case of historical justice in this reunion, though effected not without severe measures against those who proved obstinate and rebellious. Yet there always remained a considerable remnant, about one-third of a million, under the bishop of Chelun, in the Romish communion. But even these in 1875, after many disturbances with the prelate Popiel at their head, almost wholly severed their connection with the pope, and were again received into the bosom of the orthodox national church. In a memorial addressed to the emperor for this purpose, they declared they were led to this on the one hand by the continual endeavour of the curia and its partisans, by Latinizing their old Greek liturgy and Polandizing the people, to overthrow their old Russian nationality, and on the other hand, by their aversion to the new papal dogmas of the immaculate conception of Mary and the infallibility of the pope.--The insurrection of the Poles against Russian rule in 1830, which even Pope Gregory XVI. condemned, bore bitter fruits for the Catholic church of that country. The organic statute of 1832 indeed secured anew to the Poles religious liberty, but the bishops were prohibited holding any direct communication with Rome, the clergy deprived of all control over the schools, and the Russian law regarding mixed marriages made applicable to that province. By an understanding with the curia in 1847 the choice of the bishops was given to the emperor, their canonical investiture to the pope. The mildness with which Alexander II. treated the Poles and the political troubles in the rest of Europe fostered the hope of restoring the old kingdom of Poland. Reckless demonstrations were made in the beginning of 1861, pilgrimages to the graves of the martyrs of freedom were organized, political memorial festivals were celebrated in churches, a general national mourning was enjoined, mourning services were held, revolutionary songs were sung in churches, etc. The Catholic clergy headed the movement and canonized it as a religious duty. In vain the government sought to put it down by making liberal concessions, in vain they applied to Pius IX. to discountenance it. When in October the country lay in a state of siege, and the military forced their way into the churches to apprehend the ringleaders of rebellion, the episcopal administrator, Bialobezeski, denounced that as church profanation, had all the Catholic churches in Warsaw closed, and answered the government’s request to reopen them by making extravagant demands and uttering proud words of defiance. The military tribunal sentenced him to death, but the emperor commuted this to one year’s detention in a fortress, with loss of all his dignities and orders. Meanwhile the eyes of the pope had at length been opened. He now confirmed the government’s appointment of Archbishop Felinsky, who entered Warsaw in February, 1862, and reopened the churches. After the suppression of the revolt in 1864, almost all cloisters, as nurseries of revolution, were abolished; in the following year the whole property of the church was taken in charge by the State, and the clergy supported by state pay. The pope, enraged at this, gave violent expression to his feelings to the Russian ambassador at Rome during the New Year festivities of 1866, whereupon the government completely broke off all relations with the curia. Consequently in 1867 all the affairs of the Catholic church were committed to the clerical college at St. Petersburg, and intercourse between the clergy and the pope prohibited. Hence arose many conflicts with Catholic bishops, whose obstinacy was punished by their being interned in their dioceses. In 1869 the Russian calendar was introduced, and Russian made the compulsory language of instruction. But in 1870 greater opposition was offered to the introduction of Russian in the public services by means of translations of the common Polish prayer and psalm-books. Pietrowitsch, dean of Wilna, read from the pulpit the ukase referring to this matter, but then cast it together with the Russian translations into the flames, with violent denunciations of the government, and gave information against himself to the governor-general. He was agreeably to his own desire imprisoned, and then transported to Archangel. The same sentence was pronounced against several other obstinate prelates and clergy, among them Archbishop Felinsky, and thus further opposition was stamped out.--Leo XIII. soon after entering on his pontificate in 1878 took the first step toward reconciliation. His efforts reached a successful issue first in February, 1883. The deposed prelates were restored from their places of banishment, with promise of a liberal pension, and were allowed to choose their residences as they pleased, only not within their former dioceses. In their stead the pope consecrated ten new bishops nominated by the emperor, who amid the jubilation of the people entered their episcopal residences. With reference to the Roman Catholic seminaries and clerical academies at Warsaw, the curia granted to the government the right of control over instruction in the Russian language, literature and history, but committed instruction in canonical matters solely to the bishops, who, after obtaining the approval of the government, appointed the rector and inspector and canonical teachers. Vacant pastorates were filled by the bishops, and only in the case of the more important was the approval of the government required. As to the language to be used, it was resolved that only where the people speak Russian were the clergy obliged to employ that language in preaching and in their pastoral work.

§ 206.3. =The Evangelical Church.=--The Lutheran church in Russia, comprising two and a half millions of Germans, Letts, Esthonians and Finns, is strongest in Livonia, Esthonia and Courland, is the national church in Finland, and is also largely represented in Poland, in the chief cities of Russia, and in the numerous German colonies in South Russia. In 1832 it obtained, for the Baltic provinces and the scattered congregations in central Russia, a church constitution and service book, the latter on the basis of the old Swedish service book, the former requiring all religious teachers in church and school to accept the Formula of Concord. Annual provincial synods have the initiative in calling in, when necessary for legislative purposes, the aid of the general synod.--In Poland the Reformed and Lutheran churches were in 1828 united under one combined consistory. By an imperial ukase of 1849, however, the independent existence of both churches was restored. Protestants enjoyed all civil rights and had absolute liberty in the exercise of their religion; but in central Russia down to recent times, when a more liberal spirit began to prevail, they were prohibited putting bells in their churches. The old prohibition of evangelical preaching and the teaching of religion in the Russian tongue also continued; but the attempt made for some decades in St. Petersburg and the surrounding district to preach the gospel to Germans who had lost their mother tongue, in the Russian language, has been hitherto ungrudgingly allowed by the government. Quitting the national church or returning from it to a church that had been left before, is visited by severe penalties, and children of mixed marriages, where one parent belongs to the national orthodox church, are claimed by law for that church. Only Finland counts among her privileges the right of assigning children of mixed marriages to the church of the father. The Lutheran church in Livonia, with the island of Oesel, suffered considerable, and according to the law of the land irreparable, loss by the secession of sixty or seventy thousand Letts and Esthonians to the orthodox church under the widespread delusion that thereby their economic position would be improved. Disillusions and regret came too late, and the ever increasing desire for restoration to the church forsaken in a moment of excitement could only obtain arbitrary and insufficient satisfaction in Lutheran baptism of infants seemingly near death, and in permission at irregular intervals and without previous announcement to sit at the Lord’s Table according to the Lutheran rite. In 1865, not indeed legislatively but administratively, the contracting of mixed marriages in the Baltic provinces was permitted without the enforcement of the legal enactment requiring that the children should be trained in the Greek church. In Esthonia, however, in 1883 there was a new outbreak of conversions in Leal, where five hundred peasants went over to the orthodox church, declaring their wish to be of the same faith as the emperor and the whole of the Russian people. By imperial decree in 1885 the suspension of the law against withdrawing again from the national church, which had existed for twenty years, was abolished. At the instigation of Pobedownoszew the Imperial Council granted an annual subsidy of 100,000 roubles for furthering orthodoxy in the Baltic provinces. No evangelical church could be built in these provinces without the approval of the orthodox bishop of the diocese, and any evangelical pastor who should dissuade a member of his church from his purpose of joining the orthodox church, was liable to punishment.--In order to supply the want of churches and schools, preachers and teachers in the Lutheran congregations of Russia, a society was formed in 1858 similar to the Gustav-Adolfs-Verein, under the supervision of the General Consistory of St. Petersburg, which has laboriously and zealously endeavoured to improve the condition of the oppressed church.[563]

§ 207. GREECE AND TURKEY.

In the spirited struggle for liberty Greece freed herself from the tyranny of the Turkish Mohammedan rule and obtained complete civil independence. But the same princes representing all the three principal Christian confessions, who in 1830 gave their sanction to this emancipation within lamentably narrow limits, in 1840 conquered again the Holy Land for the Turks out of the hands of a revolting vassal. And so inextricable were, and still are, the political interests of the Christian States of Europe with reference to the East, that in the London parliament of 1854 it could be affirmed that the existence of Turkey in a condition of utter impotence was so necessary, that if it did not exist, it would require to be created. On two occasions has Russia called out her whole military force to emancipate from the Turkish yoke her Slavic brethren of a common race and common faith, without being able to give the finishing blow to the “sick man” who had the protection of European diplomacy.

§ 207.1. =The Orthodox Church of Greece.=--Deceived in their expectations from the Vienna Congress, the Greeks tried to deliver themselves from Turkish tyranny. In 1814 a Hetairia was formed, branches of which spread over the whole land and fostered among the people ideas of freedom. The war of independence broke out in 1821. Its first result was a fearful massacre, especially in Constantinople. The patriarch Gregorius [Gregory] with his whole synod and about 30,000 Christians were in three months with horrid cruelty murdered by the Turks. The London Conference of 1830 at last declared Greece an independent state, and an assembly of Greek bishops at Nauplia in 1833 freed the national church of Greece from the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople, who was under the control of Turkey. Its supreme direction was committed to a permanent Holy Synod at Athens, instituted by the king but in all internal matters absolutely independent. The king must belong to the national church, but otherwise all religions are on the same footing. Meanwhile the orthodox church is fully represented, the Roman Catholic being strongest, especially in the islands. The University of Athens, opened in 1856 with professors mostly trained in Germany, has not been unsuccessful in its task even in the domain of theology.

§ 207.2. =Massacre of Syrian Christians, 1860.=--The Russo-Turkish war ending in the beginning of 1856, in which France and England, and latterly also Sardinia took the part of the sick man, left the condition of the Christians practically unchanged. For though the Hatti Humayun of 1856 granted them equal civil rights with the Moslems, this, however well meant on the part of the Sultan of that time, practically made no improvement upon the equally well meant Hatti Sherif of Gülhane of 1839. The outbreak of 1860 also proved how little effect it had in teaching the Moslems tolerance towards the Christians. Roused by Jesuit emissaries and trusting to French support, the Maronites of Lebanon indulged in several provoking attacks upon their old hereditary foes the Druses. These, however, aided by the Turkish soldiery were always victorious, and throughout all Syria a terrible persecution against Christians of all confessions broke out, characterized by inhuman cruelties. In Damascus alone 8,000, in all Syria 16,000 Christians were murdered, 3,000 women taken to the harems, and 100 Christian villages destroyed. After the massacre had been stopped, 120,000 Christians wandered about without food, clothing, or shelter, and fled hither and thither in fear of death. Fuad Pasha was sent from Constantinople to punish the guilty, and seemed at first to proceed to business energetically; but his zeal soon cooled, and French troops, sent to Syria to protect the Christians, were obliged, yielding to pressure from England, where their presence was regarded with suspicion, to withdraw from the country in June, 1861.

§ 207.3. =The Bulgarian Ecclesiastical Struggle.=--The Bulgarian church, with somewhere about two and a half million souls, was from early times subject to the patriarch of Constantinople (§ 73, 3), who acted toward it like a pasha. He sold the Bulgarian bishoprics and archbishoprics to the highest bidders among the Greek clergy, who were quite ignorant of the language of the country, and had only one end in view, namely to recoup themselves by extorting the largest possible revenue. No thought was given to the spiritual needs of the Bulgarians, preaching was wholly abandoned, the liturgy was read in a language unknown to the people. It was therefore not to be wondered at that the Bulgarian church was for years longing for its emancipation and ecclesiastical independence, and made every effort to obtain this from the Porte. Turkey, however, sympathized with the patriarch till the revolt in Crete in 1866-1869 and threatening political movements in Bulgaria broke out. Then at last in 1870 the sultan granted the establishment of an independent Slavic ecclesiastical province under the designation of the Bulgarian Exarchate, with liberty to attach itself to the other Slavic provinces upon a two-thirds majority of votes. The patriarch Gregorius [Gregory] protested, but the Sublime Porte would not thereby be deterred, and in May, 1872, Anthimos the Exarch elect was installed. The patriarch and his synod now stigmatized Phyletism, the struggle for a national church establishment, as accursed heresy, and excommunicated the exarch and the whole Bulgarian church. Only the patriarch Cyril of Jerusalem dissented, but he was on that account on his return home treated with indignity and abuse and was deposed by a synod at Jerusalem.

§ 207.4. =The Armenian Church.=--To the Gregorian-Armenian patriarch at Constantinople (§ 64, 3), equally with his orthodox colleague (§ 67, 7), had been assigned by the Sublime Porte civil jurisdiction as well as the primacy over all members of his church in the Turkish empire. When now in 1830, at the instigation of France, an independent patriarchate with equal rights was granted to the United Armenians (§ 72, 2), the twofold dependence on the Porte and on the Roman curia created difficulties, which in the meantime were overcome by giving the patriarch, who as a Turkish official exercised civil jurisdiction, a primacy with the title of archbishop as representative of the pope. The United Armenians, like the other united churches of the East, had from early times enjoyed the liberty of using their ancient liturgy, their old ecclesiastical calendar, and their own church constitution with free election of their bishops and patriarchs, and these privileges were left untouched down to 1866. But when in that year the Armenian Catholic patriarch died, the archbishop Hassun was elected patriarch, and then a fusion of the two ecclesiastical powers was brought about, which was expected to lead to absolute and complete subjection under papal jurisdiction and perfect assimilation with the Romish constitution and liturgy, at the same time Hassun with a view to securing a red hat showed himself eager and zealous in this business. By the bull Reversurus of 1867 Pius IX. claimed the right of nominating the patriarchs of all united churches of the East, of confirming bishops chosen by these patriarchs, in cases of necessity even choosing these himself, and deciding all appeals regarding church property. But the Mechitarists of St. Lazzaro (§ 164, 2) had already discovered the intriguing designs of France and made these known among their countrymen in Turkey. These now, while Monsignore Hassun was engaged combating the infallibility dogma at the Vatican Council of 1870, drove out his creatures and constituted themselves into a church independent of Rome, without however, joining the Gregorian-Armenians. The influence of France being meanwhile crippled by the Prussian victory, the Porte acquiesced in the accomplished fact, confirmed the appointment of the newly chosen patriarch Kupelian, and refused to yield to the pope’s remonstrances and allocutions. In 1874, however, it also recognised the Hassun party as an independent ecclesiastical community, but assigned the church property to the party of Kupelian, and banished Hassun as a fomenter of disturbance, from the capital. The hearty sympathies which on the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war the Roman curia expressed so loudly and openly for the victory of the crescent over the schismatic Russian cross, made the Sublime Porte again regard the Hassunites with favour, so that Hassun in September, 1877, returned to Constantinople, where the churches were given over to his party and a great number of the Kupelianists were won over to his side. He was eagerly aided not only by the French but also by the Austrian ambassador, and the patriarch Kupelian, now sorely persecuted from every side, at last resigned his position and went in March, 1879, to Rome to kneel as a penitent before the pope. By an irade of the sultan, Hassun was now formally restored, and in 1880 he was adorned with a red hat by Leo XIII. Shortly before this the last of the bishops of the opposing party, with about 30,000 souls, had given in his submission.

§ 207.5. =The Berlin Treaty, 1878.=--Frequent and severe oppression, refusal to administer justice, and brutal violence on the part of the Turkish government and people toward the defenceless vassals drove the Christian states and tribes of the Balkan peninsula in 1875 into a rebellion of desperation, which was avenged, especially in Bulgaria in 1876, by scandalous atrocities upon the Christians. When the half-hearted interference of European diplomacy called forth instead of actual reforms only the mocking sham of a pretended free representative constitution, Russia held herself under obligation in 1877 to avenge by arms the wrongs of her brethren by race and creed, but owing to the threats of England and Austria could not fully reap the fruits of her dearly bought victory as had been agreed upon in the Treaty of San Stefano. By the =Berlin Conference=, however, of 1878 the principalities of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro, hitherto under the suzerainty of Turkey, were declared independent, and to them, as well as to Greece, at the cost of Turkey, a considerable increase of territory was granted, the portion between the Balkans and the Danube was formed into the Christian principality of Bulgaria under Turkish suzerainty, but East Roumelia, south of the Balkans, now separated from Bulgaria, obtained the rank of an autonomous province with a Christian governor-general. To Thessaly, Epirus, and Crete were granted administrative reforms and throughout the European territory left to the Porte it was stipulated that full religious and political rights be granted to members of all confessions. The administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina was given over to Austria, and that of Cyprus, by means of a separate treaty, to England. The greater part of Armenia, lying in Asia, belongs to Russia.

§ 208. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.[564]

The Republic of the United States of America, existing since the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and recognised by England as independent since the conclusion of Peace in 1783, requires of her citizens no other religious test than belief in one God. Since the settlers had often left their early homes on account of religious matters, the greatest variety of religious parties were gathered together here, and owing to their defective theological training and their practical turn of mind, they afforded a fruitful field for religious movements of all sorts, among which the revivals systematically cultivated by many denominations play a conspicuous part. The government does not trouble itself with religious questions, and lets every denomination take care of itself. Preachers are therefore wholly dependent on their congregations, and are frequently liable to dismissal at the year’s end. Yet they form a highly respected class, and nowhere in the Protestant world is the tone of ecclesiastical feeling and piety so prevailingly high. In the public schools, which are supported by the State, religious instruction is on principle omitted. The Lutheran and Catholic churches have therefore founded parochial schools; the other denominations seek to supply the want by Sunday schools. The candidates for the ministry are trained in colleges and in numerous theological seminaries.

§ 208.1. =English Protestant Denominations.=--The numerous Protestant denominations belong to two great groups, English and German. Of the first named the following are by far the most important:

1. =The Congregationalists= are the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers who emigrated in 1620 (§ 143, 4). They profess the doctrines of the Westminster Confession (§ 155, 1).

2. =The Presbyterians=, of Scotch origin, have the same confession as the Congregationalists, but differ from them by having a common church government with strict Synodal and Presbyterial constitution. By rejecting the doctrine of predestination the Cumberland Presbyterians in 1810 formed a separate body and have since grown so as to embrace in the south-western states 120,000 communicants.

3. =The Anglican Episcopal Church= is equally distinguished by moderate and solid churchliness. Even here, however, Puseyism has entered in and the Romish church has made many proselytes. But when at the general conference of the Evangelical Alliance at New York in 1873, bishop Cummins of Kentucky took part in the administration of the Lord’s Supper in the Presbyterian church and was violently attacked for this by his Puseyite brethren, he laid the foundation of a “Reformed Episcopal Church,” in which secession other twenty-five Episcopal ministers joined. They regard the episcopal constitution as an old and wholesome ordinance but not a divine institution, also the Anglican liturgy and Book of Common Prayer, though capable of improvement, while they recognise the ordinations of other evangelical churches as valid, and reject as Puseyite the doctrine of a special priesthood of the clergy, of a sacrifice in the eucharist, the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the elements, and of the essential and invariable connection between regeneration and baptism.

4. =The Episcopal Methodists= in America formed since 1784 an independent body (§ 169, 4). Their influence on the religious life in the United States has been extraordinarily great. They have had by far the most to do with the revivals which from the first they have carried to a wonderful pitch with their protracted meetings, inquiry meetings, camp meetings, etc. They reached their climax in the camp meetings which, under the preaching mostly of itinerant Methodist preachers frequently in the forest under the canopy of heaven, produced religious awakening among the multitudes gathered from all around. Day and night without interruption they continued praying, singing, preaching, exhorting; all the horrors of hell are depicted, the excitement increases every moment, penitent wrestlings with sighs, sobs, groans, convulsions and writhings, occur on every side; grace comes at last to view; loud hallelujahs, thanksgivings and ascription of praise by the converted mix with the moanings of those on “the anxious bench” pleading for grace, etc. In San Francisco in 1874 there were “=Baby-Revivals=,” at which children from four to twelve years of age, who trembled with the fear of hell, sang penitential hymns, made confession of sin, and wrote their names on a sheet in order to engage themselves for ever for Jesus. Since 1847 the Methodist church had been divided into two hostile camps, a southern and a northern. The first named tolerated slavery, while the members of the latter were decided abolitionists and excommunicated all slave-owners as unworthy of the name of Christian. Another party, the Protestant Methodists, has blended the episcopal and congregational constitution.

5. =The Baptists= are split up into many sects. The most numerous are the Calvinistic Baptists. Their activity in proselytising is equally great with their zeal for missions to the heathen. In opposition to them the Free-Will Baptists are Arminian and the Christian Baptists have adopted Unitarian views.[565]

§ 208.2. =The German Lutheran Denominations.=--The German emigration to America began in Penn’s time. In the organization of church affairs, besides Zinzendorf and the Herrnhut missionaries, a prominent part was taken by the pastor Dr. Melchior Mühlenberg (died 1787), a pupil of A. H. Francke, and the Reformed pastor Schlatter from St. Gall; the former sent by the Halle Orphanage, the latter by the Dutch church. The Orphanage sent many earnest preachers till rationalism broke in upon the society. As at the same time the stream of German emigration was checked almost completely for several decades, and so all intercourse with the mother country ceased, crowds of Germans, impressed by the revivals, went over to the Anglo-American denominations, and in the German denominations themselves along with the English language entered also English Puritanism and Methodism. In 1815 German emigration began again and grew from year to year. At the synod of 1857 the Lutheran church with 3,000 pastors divided into three main divisions:

1. The American Lutheran church had become in language, customs, and doctrine thoroughly Anglicised and Americanized; Zwinglian in its doctrine of the sacraments, it was Lutheran in scarcely anything but the name, until in its chief seminary at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in 1850 a reaction set in in favour of genuine Lutheran and German tendencies.

2. A greatly attenuated Lutheranism with unionistic sympathies and frequent abandonment of the German language also found expression in the congregations of the Old Pennsylvanian Synod.

3. On the other hand, the strict Lutheran church held tenaciously to the exclusive use of the German language and the genuine Lutheran confession. The Prussian emigration with Grabau and the Saxon Lutheran settlers with Stephan constituted its backbone (§ 194, 1). To them a number of Bavarian Lutherans attached themselves who had emigrated under the leadership of Löhe, whose missionary institute at Neuendettelsau supplied them with pastors. The Saxon Lutherans were meanwhile grouped together in the Missouri Synod, which Löhe’s missionaries also joined, so that it soon acquired much larger proportions than the Buffalo Synod formed previously by the Prussian Lutherans under Grabau. But very soon the two synods had a violent quarrel over the idea of office and church which, owing to the reception by the Missouri Synod of several parties excommunicated by the Buffalo Synod, led to the formal breach of church fellowship between the two parties. The Missouri Synod, with Dr. Walther at its head, attached all importance to sound doctrine; the clerical office was regarded as a transference of the right of the congregation and excommunication as a congregational not a clerical act. The Buffalo Synod, on the other hand, in consequence of serious conflict with pietistic elements, had been driven into an overestimation of external order, of forms of constitution and worship, and of the clerical office as of immediately divine authority, and carried this to such a length as led to the dissolution of the synod in 1877. Löhe’s friends, who had not been able to agree with either party, formed themselves into the Synod of Iowa, with their seminary at Wartburg under Fritschel. On all questions debated between the synods they took a mediating position. The Missourians, however, would have nothing to do with them, while those of Buffalo long maintained tolerably friendly relations with them. But the historical view of the symbols taken by the Iowans, their inclination toward the new development of Lutheran theology, and above all their attitude toward biblical chiliasm, which they wished to treat as an open question, seemed to those of Buffalo, as well as to the Missourians, a falling away from the church confession, and led to their excommunication by that party also.

In opposition to all this splitting up into sections a General Council of the Lutheran Church in America was held in 1866, which sought to combine all Lutheran district synods, of which twelve, out of fifty-six, with 814 clergymen, joined it, Iowa assuming a friendly and Missouri a distinctly hostile attitude. The ninth assembly at Galesburg in Illinois in 1875 laid down as its fundamental principle, “Lutheran pulpits only for Lutheran preachers, and Lutheran altars only for Lutheran communicants.” The native Americans, however, insisted upon exceptions being allowed, e.g. in peril of death, etc. On the question of the limits of these exceptions, however, subsequent assemblies have not been able to agree.

§ 208.3. But also in the Synodal Conference founded and led by the Missouri Synod, embracing five synods, doctrinal controversies sprang up in 1860. A large number with Dr. Walther at their head held a strict doctrine of =predestination= which they regarded as the mark of genuine Lutheranism. God has, they taught, chosen a definite number of men from eternity to salvation; these shall and must be saved. Salvation in Christ is indeed offered to all, but God secures it only for His elect, so that they are sure of it and cannot lose it again, not indeed intuitu fidei but only according to His sovereign grace. Even one of the elect may seem temporarily to fall from grace, but he cannot die without returning into full possession of it. Prof. Fritschel protested against this in 1872 as essentially Calvinistic, and opposition also arose in the Missouri Pastoral Conference. Prof. Asperheim, of the seminary of the Norwegian Synod at Madison in Wisconsin, who first pronounced against it in 1876, was deprived of his office and obliged to withdraw from the synod. The controversy broke out in a violent form at the conferences of about 500 pastors held at Chicago in 1880 and at Milwaukee three months later in 1881, at the former of which Prof. Stellhorn of Fort Wayne, at the latter Prof. Schmidt of Madison, offered a vigorous opposition. Walther closed the conference with the words: “You ask for war, war you shall have.” The result was that the whole of the Ohio Synod and a large portion of the Norwegian Wisconsin Synod, broke away from communion with the Missouri Synod.--Walther and his adherents went so far in their fanaticism as to pronounce not only their American opponents but all the most distinguished Lutheran theologians of Germany, Philippi as well as Hofmann, Luthardt as well as Kahnis, Vilmar as well as Thomasius, Harms as well as Zöckler, etc., bastard theologians, semipelagians, synergists and rationalists, and to refuse church fellowship not only with all Lutheran national churches in Europe, but also with German Lutheran Free Churches, which did not unconditionally attach themselves to them. These Missouri separatist communities, though everywhere quite unimportant, are in Europe strongest in the kingdom of Saxony; they have also a few representatives in Nassau, Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse.

§ 208.4. =German-Reformed and other German-Protestant Denominations.=--The German-Reformed church has its seminary at Mercersburg in Pennsylvania. Its confession of faith is the Heidelberg Catechism, its theology an offshoot of German evangelical union theology, but with a distinctly positive tendency. Although the union theology there prevailed among the Reformed as well as the Lutherans, a German Evangelical Church Union was formed at St. Louis in 1841 which wished to set aside the names Reformed and Lutheran. It established a seminary at Marthasville in Missouri. The Herrnhuters are also represented in America. Several German Methodist sects have recently sprung up:

1. The “United Brethren in Christ,” with 500 preachers, founded by a Reformed preacher Otternbein (died 1813).

2. The “Evangelical Communion,” commonly called Albrechtsleute, founded by Jac. Albrecht, originally a Lutheran layman, whom his own followers ordained in 1803, with 500 or 600 preachers working zealously and carrying on mission work also in Germany (§ 211, 1).

3. The Weinbrennians or Church of God, founded by an excommunicated Reformed pastor of that name in 1839. They carry the Methodist revivalism to the most extravagant excess and are also fanatical opponents of infant baptism.

§ 208.5. =The Catholic Church.=--A number of English Catholics under Lord Baltimore settled in Maryland in 1634. The little community grew and soon filled the land. There alone in the whole world did the Roman Catholic church though dominant proclaim the principle of toleration and religious equality. Consequently Protestants of various denominations crowded thither, outnumbered the original settlers, and rewarded those who had hospitably received them with abuse and oppression. The Catholics were also treated in other states as idolaters and excluded from public offices and posts of honour. Only after the Declaration of Independence in 1783 was this changed by the sundering of the connection of church and state and the proclamation of absolute religious liberty. The number of Catholics was greatly increased by numerous emigrations, specially from Ireland and Catholic Germany. They now claim seven million members, with a cardinal at New York, 13 archbishops, 64 bishops, about 7,000 churches and chapels. A beautiful cathedral was erected in New York in 1879, the immense cost of which, exceeding all expectation, was at last defrayed by very unspiritual and unecclesiastical methods, e.g. lotteries, fairs, dramatic exhibitions, concerts, and even dearly sold kisses, etc. The Roman Catholics have also a university at St. Louis, 80 colleges, and 300 cloisters.

§ 209. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC STATES OF SOUTH AMERICA.

To the predominantly Protestant North America the position of the Roman Catholic states of South America forms a very striking contrast. Nowhere else was the influence and power of the clergy so wide-spread and deeply rooted, nowhere else has the depravation of Catholicism reached such a depth of superstition, obscurantism, and fanaticism. During the second and third decades of our century the Spanish states, favoured by the revolutionary movement in the mother country, one after another asserted their independence, and the Portuguese Brazil established herself as an independent empire under the legitimate royal prince of Portugal, Pedro I. in 1822. Although the other new states adopted a republican constitution, they could not throw aside the influence of the Catholic clergy and carry out the principles of religious freedom proclaimed in their constitutions. The Catholicism of the Creoles, half-castes, and mulattoes was of too bigoted a kind and the power of the clergy too great to allow any such thing. Mexico went furthest in the attempt, and Brazil, under Dom Pedro II. from 1831, astonished the world by the vigorous measures of its government in 1874 against the assumptions of the higher clergy.--In spite of all hindrances a not inconsiderable number of small evangelical congregations have been formed in Romish America, partly through emigration and partly by evangelization.

§ 209.1. =Mexico.=--Of all the American states, Mexico, since its independence in 1823, has been most disturbed by revolutions and civil wars. The rich and influential clergy, possessing nearly a half of all landed property, was the factor with which all pretenders, presidents and rulers had to reckon. After most of the earlier governments had supported the clergy and been supported by them, the ultimately victorious liberal party under president Juarez shook off the yoke in 1859. He proclaimed absolute religious freedom, introduced civil marriage, abolished cloisters, pronounced church possessions national property and exiled the obstinate bishops. The clerical party now sought and obtained foreign aid. Spain, France and England joined in a common military convention in 1861 in supporting certain claims of citizens repudiated by Juarez. Spain and England soon withdrew their troops, and Napoleon III. openly declared the purpose of his interference to be the strengthening of the Latin race and the monarchical principle in America. At his instigation the Austrian Grand-Duke Maximilian was elected emperor, and that prince, after receiving the pope’s blessing in Rome, began his reign in 1864. Distrusted by all parties as a stranger, in difficulties with the curia and clergy because he opposed their claims to have their most extravagant privileges restored, shamefully left in the lurch by Napoleon from fear of the threatening attitude of the North American Union, and then sold and betrayed by his own general Bazaine, this noble but unfortunate prince was at last sentenced by Juarez at a court-martial to be shot in 1867. Juarez now maintained his position till the end of his life in 1872, and strictly carried out his anticlerical reforms. After his death clericalism again raised her head, and the Jesuits expelled from Guatemala swarmed over the land. Yet constitutional sanction was given to the Juarez legislation at the congress of 1873. The Jesuits were driven across the frontiers, obstinate priests as well as a great number of nuns, who had gathered again in cloisters and received novices, were put in prison.--Also =Evangelization= advanced slowly under sanction of law, though regarded with disfavour by the people and interfered with often by the mob. It began in 1865 with the awakening of a Catholic priest Francisco Aguilar and a Dominican monk Manuel Aguas, through the reading of the Scriptures. They laid the foundation of the “Iglesia de Jesus” of converted Mexicans, with evangelical doctrine and apostolic-episcopal constitution, which has now 71 congregations throughout the whole country with about 10,000 souls. This movement received a new impulse in 1869, when a Chilian-born Anglican episcopal minister of a Spanish-speaking congregation in New York, called Riley, took the control of it and was in 1879 consecrated its bishop. Besides this independent “Church of Jesus” North American missionaries of various denominations have wrought there since 1872 with slow but steady success.

§ 209.2. =In the Republics of Central and Southern America=, when the liberal party obtained the helm of government through almost incessant civil wars, religious freedom was generally proclaimed, civil marriage introduced, the Jesuits expelled, cloisters shut up, etc. But in =Ecuador=, president Moreno, aided by the clergy, concluded in 1862 a concordat with the curia by which throughout the country only the Catholic worship was tolerated, the bishops could condemn and confiscate any book, education was under the Jesuits, and the government undertook to employ the police in suppressing all errors and compelling all citizens to fulfil all their religious duties. And further the public resolved in 1873, although unable to pay the interest of the national debt, to hand over a tenth of all state revenues to the pope. But Moreno was murdered in 1875. The Jesuits, who were out of favour, left Quito. The tithe hitherto paid to the pope was immediately withheld, and in 1877 the concordat was abrogated. As Ecuador in Moreno, so =Peru= at the same time in Pierola had a dictator after the pope’s own heart. The republic had his misgovernment to thank for one defeat after another in the war with Chili.--=Bolivia= in 1872 declared that the Roman Catholic religion alone would be tolerated in the country, and suffered, in common with Peru, annihilating defeats at the hand of Chili.--When at St. Iago in Chili, during the festival of the Immaculate Conception in 1863, the Jesuit church La Compania was burnt and in it more than 2,000 women and children consumed, the clergy pronounced this disaster an act of grace of the blessed Virgin, who wished to give the country a vast number of saints and martyrs. But here, too, the conflicts between church and state continued. In 1874 the Chilian episcopate pronounced the ban against the president and the members of the national council and of the Lower House who had favoured the introduction of a new penal code which secured liberty of worship, but it remained quite unheeded. When then the archiepiscopal chair of St. Iago became vacant in 1878, the pope refused on any condition to confirm the candidate appointed by the government. After the decisive victory over Peru and Bolivia, the government again in December, 1881, urgently insisted upon their presentation. The curia now sent to Chili, avowedly to obtain more accurate information, an apostolic delegate who took advantage of his position to stir up strife, so that the government was obliged to insist upon his recall. As the curia declined to do so, his passports were sent to the legate in January, 1883, and a presidential message was addressed to the next congress which demanded the separation of the church and state, with the introduction of civil marriage and register of civil station, as the only remaining means for putting down the confusion caused by papal tergiversation. The result of the long and heated debates that followed was the promulgation of a law by which Catholicism was deprived of the character of the state religion and the perfect equality of all forms of worship was proclaimed.--=Guatemala= in 1872 expelled the Jesuits whose power and wealth had become very great. In 1874 the president Borrias opened a new campaign against the clergy by forbidding them to wear the clerical dress except when discharging the duties of their office, and closing all the nunneries.--In =Venezuela=, in 1872, Archbishop Guevara of Caracas, who had previously come into collision with the government by favouring the rebels, forbade his clergy taking part in the national festival, and put the cathedral in which it was to be celebrated under the interdict. Deposed and banished on this account, he continued from the British island of Trinidad his endeavours to stir up a new rebellion. The president, Guzman Blanco, after long fruitless negotiations with the papal nuncio, submitted in May, 1876, to the congress at St. Domingo the draft of a bill, which declared the national church wholly independent of Rome. The congress not only homologated his proposals, but carried them further, by abolishing the episcopal hierarchy and assigning its revenues to the national exchequer, for education. Now at last the Roman curia agreed to the deposition of Guevara and confirmed the nomination of his previously appointed successor. But president Blanco now asked congress to abolish the law, and this was agreed to.--In the United States of =Colombia= since 1853, and in the =Argentine Republic= since 1865, perfect liberty of faith and worship have been constitutionally secured. From the latter state the Jesuits had been banished for a long time but had managed to smuggle themselves in again. When in the beginning of 1875 Archbishop Aneiros of Buenos Ayres addressed to the government which favoured the clerical party rather than to the congress which was the only competent court, a request to reinvest the Jesuits with the churches, cloisters, and properties held by them before their expulsion, a terrible outbreak took place, which the archbishop intensified to the utmost by issuing a violent pastoral. A mob of 30,000 men, convened by the students of the university, wrecked the palace of the archbishop, then attacked the Jesuit college, burnt all its furniture and ornaments on the streets and by means of petroleum soon reduced the building itself to flames. Only with difficulty did the military succeed in preventing further mischief. In October, 1884, the papal nuncio was expelled, because, when the government decidedly refused his request to prevent the spread of Protestant teaching and to place Sunday schools under the oversight of the bishops, he replied in a most violent and passionate manner. About the same time the republic of =Costa-rica= issued a law forbidding all religious orders, pronouncing all vows invalid, and threatening banishment against all who should contravene these enactments, and also an education act which forbade all public instruction apart from that provided by the State.

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