Church History (Volumes 1-3) (part 8 of 9)

Church History (Volumes 1-3) (part 8 of 9)

§ 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.

§ 209.3. =Brazil.=--In Brazil down to 1884, the “Catholic Apostolic Roman Religion” was, according to the constitution, the religion of the empire. But from 1828 there was a Protestant congregation in Rio de Janeiro, and through the inland districts, in consequence of immigration, there were 100 small evangelical congregations, with twenty-five ordained pastors, whose forms of worship were of various kinds. In earlier times Protestant marriage was regarded as concubinage, but in 1851 a law was passed which gave it civil recognition. But the bishops held to their previous views and demanded of married converts a repetition of the ceremony. Since 1870, however, the government has energetically opposed the claims of the clergy who wished only to acknowledge the authority of Rome. Protestant marriages were pronounced equally legitimate with Catholic marriages, no civil penalties are incurred by excommunication, all papal bulls are subject to the approval of the government, and it was insisted that announcement should be made of all clergy nominated. The clergy considered freemasonry the chief source of all this liberal current, and against it therefore they directed all their forces. The pope assisted by his brief of May, 1873, condemning freemasonry. At the head of the rebel prelates stood Don Vitalis Gonsalvez de Oliveira, bishop of Olinda and Pernambuco. He published the papal brief without asking the imperial permission, pronounced the ban upon all freemasons and suspended the interdict over all associations which refused to expel masonic brothers from their membership. In vain the government demanded its withdrawal. It then accused him of an attack upon the constitution. The supreme court ordered his detention, and he was placed in the state prison at Rio de Janeiro in January, 1874. The trial ended by his being sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, which the emperor as an act of grace commuted to detention in a fortress, and set him free in a year and a half. In consequence of this occurrence the Jesuits were, in 1874, expelled from the country. The increasing advent of monks and nuns from Europe led the government, in 1884, to appoint a commission to carry out the law already passed in 1870, for the secularization of all monastic property after providing pensions for those entitled to support. In the same year all naturalized non-Catholics were pronounced eligible for election to the imperial parliament and to the provincial assemblies. The members belonging to the evangelical churches now number about 50,000, of whom 30,000 are Germans.[566]

V. Opponents of Church and of Christianity.

§ 210. SECTARIANS AND ENTHUSIASTS IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC AND ORTHODOX RUSSIAN DOMAINS.

It cannot be denied that since the Tridentine attempt to define the church doctrine far fewer sects condemning the church as such have sprung from Roman Catholicism than from Protestantism. Yet such phenomena are not wanting in the nineteenth century. Their scarcity is abundantly made up for by the numberless degenerations and errors (§ 191) which the Catholic church or its representatives in the higher and lower grades of the clergy not only fell into, but actually provoked and furthered, and thus encouraged an unhealthy love for religious peculiarities. Were the absence of new heretical, sectarian and fanatical developments something to be gloried in for itself alone, the Eastern church, with its absolute stability, would obtain this distinction in a far higher degree. In the Russian church, however, the multitude of sects which amid manifold oppressions and persecutions continue to exist to the present day, in spite of many persistent and even condemnable errors, witnesses to a deep religious need in the Russian people.

§ 210.1. =Sects and Fanatics in the Roman Catholic Domain= (§ 187, 6-8, § 190).--On the Catholic Irvingites see § 211, 10.

1. =The Order of New Templars= sprang from the Freemasons (§ 172, 2). Soon after their establishment in France the Jesuits sought to carry out their own hierarchical ideas. The fable of an uninterrupted connection between freemasonry as a “temple of humanity” and the Templars of the Middle Ages, and the introduction therewith in their secret ceremonies of exercises, borrowed from the chivalry of romance, afforded a means toward this end. The idea was started in the Jesuit college at Claremont and was approved and accepted by the local lodge. In A.D. 1754 a great number of their noble members, who were disgusted with the Jesuit templar farce, withdrew in order as “New Templars” to continue the old order in the spirit of modern times. In consequence, however, of the revolution that broke out in A.D. 1789 they could no longer hold their ground as a band of nobles. Napoleon favoured the reorganization of the order freed from those limits. The day of Molay’s death (§ 112, 7) was publicly celebrated with great pomp in Paris, A.D. 1808 and the order spread among all French populations. On the Bourbon restoration the grand-master was, at the instigation of the Jesuits, cast into prison and the order suppressed. After the July revolution he was liberated and a new temple was opened in Paris in A.D. 1833. The show-loving Parisians for a long time took pleasure in the peculiar rites and costume of the templars. When this interest declined the order passed out of view. Its religion, which professed to be a primitive revelation carried down in the Greek and Egyptian mysteries, from which Moses borrowed, then further developed by Christ and transmitted in esoteric tradition by John and his successors the grand-masters of the templars, taught a divine trinity of being, act and consciousness, the eternity of the world alongside of God and an indwelling of God in man. It declared the Roman Catholic church to be the only true Christianity (église chrétienne primitive). Its sacred book consisted of an apocryphal gospel of John in accordance with its own notions.

2. On the communistic society of =St. Simonians=, which also sprang up in France, see § 212, 2.

3. St. Simon’s secretary was =Aug. Comte=, the founder of the Positivist philosophical school (§ 174, 2) and he maintained intimate relations with his master all through life. In his later years he undertook by carrying his philosophical doctrine into the practical domain to sketch out a “religion of humanity,” and thus became the founder of a Positivist religious sect. The men of science indeed who had adopted his philosophical principles (Littré, Renan, Taine, Lewes, Leslie Stephens, Tyndall, Huxley, Draper, etc.), repudiate it; but in the middle and lower ranks some were found longing for an object of worship, who endeavoured on the basis of his Calendrier positiviste and _Catechisme positiviste_ to form a religious society for the worship of humanity. His festival calendar divides the year into thirteen months of four weeks each, named after the thirteen great benefactors of mankind (among whom Christ does not appear), while the weeks are named after lesser heroes. By the profound veneration of woman, which savours greatly of Mariolatry, as well as by the fantastic worship of heroes, geniuses and scholars, which is a mimicry of the popish saint worship, and by the adoption of a sacerdotalism like that of Catholicism, this religion of humanity shows itself to be an antichristian growth on Roman Catholic soil.

§ 210.2.

4. =Thomas Pöschl=, in the second decade of the century, presents an instance of a degeneration of originally pietistic tendencies into mischievous fanaticism. A Catholic priest at Ampfelwang near Linz, he sought under the influence of Sailer’s mysticism to awaken in his congregation a more lively Christianity by means of prayer meetings and the circulation of tracts, in which he proclaimed the approaching end of the world. When the district in which he lived was, in 1814, attached to Austria, he was committed to prison, and his followers accepted as their leader the peasant =Jos. Haas=, who led them further still into fanatical excesses. His fanaticism at length went so far that on Good Friday of 1817 a young maiden belonging to their party suffered a voluntary death after the example of Christ for her brothers and sisters. Pöschl professed the deepest horror at this cruel deed for which he was blamed. He died in close monastic confinement in 1837.

5. The Antinomian sect of the =Antonians=, most numerous in the Canton Bern, had its beginning among the Roman Catholics. Its founder was Antoni Unternährer, born and reared at Shüpfheim, near Lucerne, in the Catholic faith. From 1802 he resided at Amfoldingen, near Thun, where he stood in high repute among the peasants as a quack doctor, gave himself out as the son of God a second time become man, and proclaimed by word and writing the perfect redemption from the curse of the law by the introduction of the true freedom of the sons of God, which was to show itself first of all in the absolutely unrestricted intercourse of the sexes. After two years’ confinement in a house of correction he was banished from the Canton Bern and transported to his native place, where, abandoning all pastoral duties, he died in a police cell in 1814. The sect, which had meanwhile spread widely, and at Gsteig near Interlaken had obtained a new leader in the person of Benedict Schori, a third incarnation of Christ, could not be finally suppressed, notwithstanding the liberal use of the prison, till the beginning of 1840. Even at this day scattered remnants of Antonians are to be found in Canton Bern.

6. When the Austrian constitution of 1849 gave unconditional religious toleration, the Bohemian =Adamites= (§ 115, 5), of whom remnants under the mask of Catholicism had continued down to the nineteenth century, ventured again publicly to engage in proselytising efforts. An official enquiry instituted on this occasion declared that the sect, consisting of Bohemian peasants and artisans, had its headquarters among the mystics of the Krüdener school, that its religious doctrine was a mixture of communism, freethinking and quietism, and that its members were in their ordinary public life blameless, but that in their secret nightly assemblies, where they dispensed with clothes, they celebrated orgies regardless of marriage or relationship.

7. =David Lazzaretti=, formerly a carrier in Tuscany, appeared in his native place after an absence of several years, in 1872, declaring that he was descended from a natural son of Charlemagne and had been entrusted by the Apostle Peter with a message to the pope, pointing to a cross that had been burnt upon his brow by the apostle himself. He startled those of the Vatican, where he was quite unknown, by declaring that the bones of his ancestors lay under the ruins of an old Franciscan cloister in Sabina, of whose existence nobody was aware, the discovery of which seemed to vouch for his claims. These were all the more readily admitted when it was found that he made the restoration of the Pope’s temporal power his main task. The number of his adherents, mostly peasants, soon increased immensely, reaching, it is said, 40,000. On Monte Labro they built a church with a strong “David’s Tower,” over which “St. David” appointed two priests who, when they had made certain changes in worship at the call of the prophet, were excommunicated by the bishop. David now began to spread his socialistic and communistic ideas. He insisted that his adherents should surrender their goods to him as representative of the society, and promised down to December 31st, 1890, the introduction of community of goods throughout Italy and afterwards in other countries. In Arcidosso, the prophet’s birthplace, a beginning was to be made, but in its overthrow on August 18th, 1878, he met his death, and his befooled followers waited in vain for the fulfilment of his dying promise that he would rise again on the third day.

§ 210.3. =Russian Sects and Fanatics.=--After the attempt under Nicholas I. at the forcible conversion of the =Raskolniks=, especially the purely schismatic =Starowerzians= or Old Believers (§ 163, 10), had proved fruitless, the government of Alexander II. by patience and concession took a surer way to reconciliation and restoration. In October, 1874, their marriages, births and deaths, which had hitherto been without legal recognition, were put on the regular register and so their lawful rights of inheritance were secured. Under Alexander III. in 1883 an imperial decree was issued, which gave them permission to celebrate divine service after their own methods in their chapels, which had not before the legal standing of churches, and declared them also eligible for public appointments.--To the =Duchoborzians= (§ 166, 2), sorely oppressed under Catherine II. and Paul I., Alexander I., after they had laid before him the confession which they had adopted, granted toleration, but assigned them a separate residence in the Taurus district. Under Nicholas I. they were to the number of 3,000 transported to the Transcaucasian mountains in 1841, where they were called Duchoborje.--The Württemberg Pietist colonists of South Russia originated among the peasants the widespread sect of the =Stundists= soon after the abolition of serfdom in 1863. The originator of those separatist meetings for the study of Scripture, which led first of all to the condemnation of image worship and making the sign of the cross as unbiblical, and subsequently to a complete withdrawal from the worship of the orthodox church and the forming of conventicles, was the peasant and congregational elder Ratusny of Osnowa near Odessa, to whom, at a later period, with equal propagandist zeal, the peasant Balabok attached himself. The latter was, in 1871, sentenced to one year’s imprisonment at Kiev and the loss of civil rights, and in 1873, at Odessa, a great criminal prosecution was instituted against Ratusny and all the other leaders of the sect, which, however, after proceeding for five years ended in a verdict of acquittal. A process started in 1878 against the so-called =Schaloputs= had a similar issue. This sect, spread most widely among the Cossacks of Cuban, rejects the Old Testament, the sacraments and the doctrine of the resurrection, but believes in a continued effusion of the Holy Spirit upon the prophets of the church who have prepared themselves for their vocation by complete abstinence from flesh and spirituous liquor as well as by incessant prayer and frequent fasting.

§ 210.4. About the middle of the eighteenth century among the “Men of God,” the strict interpretation of the prescriptions of their founder Danila Filipow (§ 163, 10) had led many to abstain wholly from sexual relations; when a peasant Andrew Selivanov appeared as a reformer and founded the sect of the =Skopzen= or mutilators, who, building on misinterpreted passages of Scripture (Matt. v. 28-30, xix. 12; Rev. xiv. 4) insisted upon the destruction of sexual desire by castration and excision of the female breasts, generally performed under anæsthetics, as a necessary condition of entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The first Skopzic congregation was gathered round him in the village of Sosnowka. The “men of God” enraged at his success denounced him to the government. He was punished with the knout and condemned in 1774 to hard labour at Irkutzk. The idea that Peter III., who died in 1762, was still alive, then widely prevailed. The “men of God” had also adopted this opinion, and proclaimed him their last-appearing Christ, who would soon return from his hiding-place to call to account all unbelievers. Selivanov, who knew of this, now gave himself out for the exiled monarch, and was accepted as such by his adherents in his native place. When Paul I., Peter’s son, assumed the reins of government in 1796, a Skopzic merchant of Moscow told him secretly that his father was living at Irkutzk under the name of Selivanov. The emperor therefore brought him to Petersburg and shut him up as an imbecile in an asylum. After Paul’s death, however, his adherents obtained his release. He now lived for eighteen years in honour at Petersburg, till in 1820 the court again interfered and had him confined in a cloister at Suzdal, where after some years he died. Sorely persecuted by Nicholas I. many of his followers migrated to Moldavia and Walachia where they, dwelling in separate quarters at Jassy, Bucharest and Galatz, lived as owners of coach-hiring establishments, and by rich presents obtained proselytes. Still more vigorously was the propaganda carried on in the Moscow colonies on the Sea of Azov. There in Morschansk lived the spiritual head of all Russian Skopzen, the rich merchant Plotizyn. After the government got on the track of this society, Plotizyn’s house was searched and a correspondence revealing the wide extension of the sect was found, together with a treasure of several, some say as much as thirty, millions of roubles, which, however, in great part again disappeared in a mysterious manner. Plotizyn and his companions were banished to Siberia and sentenced to hard labour, the less seriously implicated to correction in a cloister.--The secret doctrine of the Skopzen so far as is known is as follows: God had intended man to propagate not by sexual intercourse but by a holy kiss. They broke this command and this constituted the fall. In the fulness of time God sent his Son into the world. The central point of his preaching transmitted to us in a greatly distorted form was the introduction of the baptism of fire (Matt. iii. 11), i.e. mutilation by hot irons for which, in consideration of human weakness, a baptism of castration may be substituted (Matt. xix. 12). Origen is regarded by them as the greatest saint of the ancient church; to his example all saints conformed who are represented as beardless or with only a slight beard. The promised return of the Christ (in this alone diverging from the doctrine of the “men of God”), took place in the person of the emperor Peter III. whom an unstained virgin bore, who was called the empress Elizabeth Petrovna. The latter after some years transferred the government to a lady of the court resembling her and retired into private life under the name of Akulina Ivanovna, where she still remains invisible behind golden walls, waiting for the things that are to come. Her son Peter III., who had also himself undergone the baptism of fire, escaped the snares of his wife, reappeared under the name of Selivanov, performed many miracles and converted multitudes, obtained as a reward the knout, and was at last sent to Siberia. Emperor Paul recalled him and was converted by him. Under Alexander I. he was again arrested and imprisoned in the cloister of Suzdal. But he was conveyed thence by a divine miracle to Irkutzk, where he now lives in secret, whence at his own time he shall return to judge the living and the dead.--They kept up an outward connection with the state church although they regarded it as the apocalyptic whore of Babylon. In their own secret services inspired psalms were sung, and after exciting dances prophecies were uttered.[567]

§ 211. SECTARIES AND ENTHUSIASTS IN THE PROTESTANT DOMAIN.

The United States of America with their peculiar constitution formed the favourite ground for the gathering and moulding of sects during this age. There, besides the older colonies of Quakers, Baptists and Methodists from England, we meet with Swedenborgianism and Unitarianism, while Baptists and Methodists began to send missionaries into Europe, and from England the Salvation Army undertook a campaign for the conquest of the world. But also on the European continent independent fanatical developments made their appearance.--A new combination of communism with religious enthusiasm is represented by the Harmonists and by the Perfectionists in North America. The Grusinian Separatists and the Bavarian Chiliasts are millenarians of German extraction, of whom the former sought deliverance from the prevailing antichristian spirit in removal from, and the latter in removal to, South Russia. The Amen churches sought to gather God’s people of the Jewish Christian communities together in Palestine, while the so-called German Temple sought to gather the Gentile Christians. As Latter Day Saints, besides the Adventists, the Darbyites established themselves on an independent basis; the Irvingites, with revival of the apostolic offices and charisms, and their American caricature, the Mormons, with the addition of socialistic and fantastic gnostic tendencies. The religion of the Taiping rebellion in China presented the rare phenomenon of a national Chinese Christianity of native growth, and a still rarer manifestation is met with in American-European spiritualism with pretended spirit revelations from the other world.

§ 211.1. =The Methodist Propaganda.=--From 1850 the American Methodists, both the Albrechtsleute (§ 208, 4) and the Episcopal Methodists, have sent out numerous missionaries, mostly Germans into Germany, whose zeal has won considerable success among the country people. In North-West Germany Bremen is their chief station, whence they have spread to Sweden, Central and Southern Germany, and Switzerland, and have stations in Frankfort, Carlsruhe, Heilbronn, and Zürich.--Of a more evanescent character was the attempt made on Germany by the so-called =Oxford Holiness Movement=. In 1866 the North American Methodists celebrated their centenary in New York by the appointment of a great revival and holiness committee, in which were also members of many other denominations. Among them the manufacturer, =Pearsall Smith=, of Philadelphia, converted in 1871, exhibited extraordinary zeal. In September, 1874, he held at Oxford great revival meetings, from which the designation of the Oxford movement had its origin. By some Germans there present his opinions were carried to Germany. In spring, 1875, he began his second European missionary tour. While his two companions, the revivalists Moody and Sankey, travelled through England for the conversion of the masses, Smith went to Germany, and proceeding from Berlin on to Switzerland, gave addresses in English, that were interpreted, in ten of the large cities. The most pious among clergy and laity flocked from far and near to hear him. The new apostle’s journey became more and more a triumphal march. He was lauded as a reformer called to complete the work of Luther; as a prophet, who was to fructify the barren wastes of Germany with the water of life. The core of his doctrine was: Perfect holiness and the attainment of absolute perfection, not hereafter, but now! now! now! with the constant refrain: “Jesus saves me now;” not remission of sins through justification by faith in the atoning efficacy of Christ’s blood, which only avails for outward sinful actions, but immediate extinction of sins by Christ in us, proved in living, unfaltering, inner, personal experience, etc. By a great international and interconfessional meeting at Brighton, lasting for ten days, in June, 1875, at which many German pastors, induced by the payment of travelling expenses, were present, the crown was put upon the work. But at the height of his triumph, under the daily increasing tension and excitement the apostle of holiness showed himself to be a poor sinful son of man, for he strayed into errors, “if not practically, at least theoretically,” which his admirers at first referred to mental aberration, but which they hid from the eyes of the world under a veil of mystery. Toward the end of the Brighton conference he declared to his hearers: “Thus plunge into a life of divine unconcern!” and, “All Europe lies at my feet.” And in subsequent private conversations he developed a system of ethics that “would suit Utah rather than England,” to which he then so conformed his own conduct that his admirers, “although satisfied of the purity of his own intentions,” were obliged energetically to repudiate and with all speed send away across the sea the man whom their own unmeasured adulation had deceived.

§ 211.2. =The Salvation Army.=--An extremely fantastic caricature of English Methodism is the =Salvation Army=. The Methodist evangelist, =William Booth=, who in 1865 founded in one of the lowest quarters of London a new mission station, fell upon the idea in 1878, in order to make an impression on the rude masses, to give his male and female helpers a military organisation, discipline and uniform, and with military banners and music to undertake a campaign against the kingdom of the devil. The General of the Salvationists is Booth himself, his wife is his adjutant, his eldest daughter field-marshal; his fellow-workers male and female are his soldiers, cadets and officers of various ranks; chief of the staff is Booth’s eldest son. Their services are conducted according to military forms; their orchestra of trombone, drum and trumpet is called the Hallelujah Brass Band. Their journal, with an issue of 400,000, is the War Cry; another for children, is The Little Soldier, in which Jane, four years old, dilates on the experiences of her inner life; and Tommy, eleven years old, is sure that, having served the devil for eleven years, he will now fight for King Jesus; and Lucy, nine years old, rejoices in being washed in the blood of the Lamb. The army attained its greatest success in England. Its numerous “prisoners of war” from the devil’s army (prostitutes, drunkards, thieves, etc.) are led at the parade as trophies of war, and tell of their conversion, whereupon the command of the general, “Fire a Volley,” calls forth thousands of hallelujahs. Liberal collections and unsought contributions, embracing several donations of a £1,000 and more, are given to the General, not only to pay his soldiers, but also to rent or to purchase and fit up theatres, concert halls, circuses, etc., for their meetings, and to build large new “barracks.” Its wonderful success has secured for the army many admirers and patrons, even in the highest ranks of society. Queen Victoria herself testified to Mrs. Booth her high satisfaction with her noble work. At the Convocation, too, in the Upper as well as the Lower House, distinguished prelates spoke favourably of its methods and results, and so encouraged the formation of a Church Army, which, under the direction of the mission preacher Aitken, pursues similar ways to those of the Salvation Army, without, however, its spectacular displays, and has lately extended its exertions to India. The temperance party after the same model has formed a Blue Ribbon Army, the members of which, distinguished by wearing a piece of blue ribbon in the buttonhole, confine themselves to fighting against alcohol. In opposition to it public-house keepers and their associates formed a Yellow Ribbon Army, which has as its ensign the yellow silk bands of cigar bundles. Soon after the first great success of the Salvation Army, a Skeleton Army was formed out of the lowest dregs of the London mob, which, with a banner bearing the device of a skeleton, making a noise with all conceivable instruments, and singing obscene street songs to sacred melodies, interrupted the marches of the Salvation, and afterwards of the Church, Army: throwing stones, filthy rotten apples and eggs, and even storming and demolishing their “barracks.”--In 1880 a detachment of the Salvation Army, with Railton at its head, assisted by seven Hallelujah Lasses, made a first campaign in America, with New York as its head-quarters. In the following year, under Miss Booth, it invaded France, where it issues a daily bulletin, “En Avant.” In 1882 it appeared in Australia, then in India, where Chunder Sen, the founder of the Brama-Somaj, showed himself favourable. In Switzerland it broke ground in 1882, in Sweden in 1884, and in Germany, at Stuttgart, in November, 1886. Africa, Spain, Italy, etc., followed in succession. These foreign corps outside of England also found considerable success. Almost everywhere they met with opposition, the magistrates often forbidding their meetings, and inflicting fines and imprisonment, and the mob resorting to all sorts of violent interference. Nowhere were both sorts of opponents so persistent as in Switzerland in 1883 and 1884, especially in Lausanne, Geneva, Neuenburg, Bern, Beil, etc. Although General Booth himself at the annual meeting in April, 1884, boasted that £393,000 had been collected during the past year for the purposes of the army, and over 846 barracks in eighteen countries of the world had been opened, and now even spoke of strengthening the army by establishing a Salvation Navy, the increasing extravagances caused by the army itself, as well as the far greater improprieties of those more or less associated with it, has drawn away many of its former supporters.

§ 211.3. =Baptists and Quakers.=--=Baptist= sympathies and tendencies often appeared in Germany apart from an anti-ecclesiastical pietism or mysticism. But this aberration first assumed considerable proportions when a Hamburg merchant, Oncken, who had been convinced by his private Bible reading of the untenableness of infant baptism, was baptized by an American baptist in 1834, and now not only founded the first German baptist congregation in Hamburg, but also proved unwearied in his efforts to extend the sect over all Germany and Scandinavia by missions and tract distribution. Oncken died in 1884. Thus gradually there were formed about a hundred new Baptist German congregations in Mecklenburg, Brandenburg (Berlin), Pomerania, Silesia, East Prussia (Memel, Tilsit, etc.), Westphalia, Wupperthal, Hesse, Württemberg and Switzerland. In Sweden (250 congregations with 18,000 souls) they were mainly recruited from the “Readers,” who after 1850 went over in crowds (§ 201, 2). They also found entrance into Denmark and Courland, but in all cases almost exclusively among the uncultured classes of labourers and peasants. After long but vain attempts at suppression by the governments during the reactionary period of 1850, they obtained under the liberal policy of the next two decades more or less religious toleration in most states. They called themselves the society of “baptized Christians,” and maintained that they were “the visible church of the saints,” the chosen people of God, in contrast to the “hereditary church and the church of all and sundry,” in which they saw the apocalyptic Babylon. Even the Mennonites who “sprinkle,” instead of immersing, “all,” i.e. without proper sifting, they regard as a “hereditary” church. With the Anglo-American Baptists they do indeed hold fellowship, but take exception to them in several points, especially about open communion.--A peculiar order of Baptists has arisen in Hungary in the =Nazarenes= or Nazirites, or as they call themselves: “Followers of Christ.” Founded in 1840 by Louis Henefey originally a Catholic smith, who had returned home from Switzerland, the sect obtained numerous adherents from all three churches, most largely from the Reformed church, favoured perhaps by the not yet altogether extinguished reminiscences of the Baptist persecutions of the eighteenth century (§ 163, 2). They practised strict asceticism, refused to take oaths or engage in military service, and kept the bare Puritan forms of worship, in which any one was allowed to preach whom the Holy Spirit enlightened. Their congregations embraced weak and strong friends, and also weak and strong brethren. The strong friends after receiving baptism joined the ranks of weak brethren, and then again became strong brethren on their admission to the Lord’s Supper. The church officers were singers, teachers, evangelists, elders, and bishops.--In North America =Quakerism=, under the influence of increasing material prosperity, had lost much of its primitive strictness in life and manners. The more lax were styled Wet-, and their more rigorous opponents Dry-Quakers. Enthusiasm over the American War of Independence of 1776-1783, spreading in their ranks, led to further departures from the rigid standard of early times. Those who took weapons in their hands were designated Fighting Quakers. The General Assembly disapproved but tolerated these departures; neither the Wet nor the Fighting Quakers were excommunicated, but they were not allowed any part in the government of the community. In 1822 a party appeared among them, led by Elias Hicks, which carried the original tendency of Quakerism to separate itself from historical Christianity so far as to deny the divinity of Christ, and to allow no controlling authority to Scripture in favour of the unrestricted sway of reason and conscience. This departure from the traditions of Quakerism, however, met with vigorous opposition, and the protesting party, known as Evangelical Friends, pronounced more decidedly than ever for the authority of Scripture. In England, notwithstanding the wealth and position of its adherents, Quakerism, since the second half of the eighteenth century, has suffered a slow but steady decrease, while even in America, to say the least, no advance can be claimed. In Holland, Friesland, and Holstein, Quaker missionaries had found some success among the Mennonites, without, however, forming any separate communities. In 1786 some English Quakers succeeded in winning a small number of proselytes in Hesse, who in 1792, under the protection of the prince of Waldeck, formed a little congregation at Friedersthal, near Pyrmont, which still maintains its existence.--On the sects of Jumpers and Shakers, variously related to primitive, fanatical Quakerism, see § 170, 7.[568]

§ 211.4. =Swedenborgians and Unitarians.=--In the nineteenth century =Swedenborgianism= has found many adherents. In England, Scotland and North America the sect has founded many missionary and tract societies. In Württemberg the procurator Hofacker and the librarian Tafel, partly by editions and translations of the writings of Swedenborg, partly by their own writings, were specially zealous in vindicating and spreading their views. A general conference of all the congregations in Great Britain and Ireland in 1828 published a confession of faith and catechism, and thirteen journals (three English, seven American, Tafel’s in German, one Italian and one Swedish) represent the interests of the party. The liberal spirit of modern times has in various directions introduced modifications in its doctrine. Its Sabellian opposition to the church doctrine of the Trinity and its Pelagian opposition to the doctrine of justification, have been retained, and its spiritualising of eschatological ideas has been intensified, but the theosophical magical elements have been wholly set aside and scarcely any reference is ever made to revelations from the other world.--From early times the =Unitarians= had a well ordered and highly favoured ecclesiastical institution in Transylvania (§ 163, 1). But in England the law still threatened them with a death sentence. This law had not indeed for a long time been carried into effect, and in 1813 it was formally abrogated. There are now in England about 400 small Unitarian congregations with some 300,000 souls. The famous chemist Jos. Priestly may be regarded as the founder of North American Unitarianism (§ 171, 1), although only after his death in 1804 did the movement which he represented spread widely through the country. Then in a short time hundreds of Unitarian congregations were formed. Their most celebrated leaders were W. Ellery Channing, who died in 1842, and Theodore Parker, who died in 1860, both of Boston.

§ 211.5. =Extravagantly Fanatical Manifestations.=--The English woman Johanna Southcote declared that she was the “woman in the sun” of Revelation xii. or the Lamb’s wife. In 1801 she came forth with her prophecies. Her followers, the =New Israelites= or Sabbatarians, so called because they observed the Old Testament law of the Sabbath, founded a chapel in London for their worship. A beautiful cradle long stood ready to receive the promised Messiah, but Johanna died in 1814 without giving birth to him.--A horrible occurrence, similar to that recorded in § 210, 2, took place some years later, in 1823, in the village of Wildenspuch in Canton Zürich. =Margaret Peter=, a peasant’s daughter, excited by morbid visions in early youth, was on this account expelled from Canton Aargau, and was carried still farther in the direction of extreme mysticism by the vicar John Ganz, by whom she was introduced to Madame de Krüdener (§ 176, 2). Amid continual heavenly visions and revelations, as well as violent conflicts with the devil and his evil spirits, she gathered a group of faithful followers, by whom she was revered as a highly gifted saint, among them a melancholy shoemaker, Morf, whom Ganz introduced to her. The spiritual love relationship between the two in an unguarded hour took a sensual form and led to the birth of a child, which Morf’s forbearing wife after successfully simulating pregnancy adopted as her own. This deep fall, for which she wholly blamed the devil, drove her fanaticism to madness. The ridiculous proceedings in her own house, where for a whole day she and her adherents beat with fists and hammers what they supposed to be the devil, led the police to interfere. But before orders arrived from Zürich, she found refuge in an asylum, and there the end soon came. Margaret assured her followers that in order that Christ might fully triumph and Satan be overthrown, blood must be shed for the salvation of many thousand souls. Her younger sister Elizabeth voluntarily allowed herself to be slain, and she herself with almost incredible courage allowed her hands and feet to be nailed to the wood and then with a stroke of the knife was killed, under the promise that she as well as her sister should rise again on the third day. The tragedy ended by the apprehension and long confinement of those concerned in it.--The sect of =Springers= in Ingermannland had its origin in 1813. Arising out of a religious excitement not countenanced by the church authorities, they held that each individual needed immediate illumination of the Holy Spirit for his soul’s salvation. So soon as they believed that this was obtained, the presence of the Spirit was witnessed to by ecstatic prayer, singing and shouting joined with handshaking and springing in their assemblies. The special illumination required as its correlate a special sanctification, and this they sought not only in repudiation of marriage, but also in abstinence from flesh, beer, spirits and tobacco. The “holy love,” prized instead of marriage, however, here also led to sensual errors, and the result was that many after the example of the Skopzen (§ 210, 4) resorted to the surer means of castration.--Among the Swedish peasants in 1842 appeared the singular phenomenon of the =Crying Voices= (Röstar). Uneducated laymen, and more particularly women and even children, after convulsive fits broke out into deep mutterings of repentance and prophesyings of approaching judgment. The substance of their proclamations, however, was not opposed to the church doctrine, and the criers were themselves the most diligent frequenters of church and sacrament.--In the beginning of 1870 the wife of a settler at Leonerhofe, near San Leopoldo in Brazil, =Jacobina Maurer=, became famous among the careless colonists of that region as a pious miracle-working prophetess. In religious assemblies which she originated, she gave forth her fantastic revelations based upon allegorical interpretations of Scripture, and founded a congregation of the “elect” with a communistic constitution, in which she assumed to herself all church offices as the Christ come again. Rude abuse and maltreatment of these “Muckers” on the part of the “unbelieving,” and the interference of the police, who arrested some of the more zealous partisans of the female Christ, brought the fanaticism to its utmost pitch. Jacobina now declared it the duty of believers to prepare for the bliss of the millennium by rooting out all the godless. Isolated murders were the prelude of the night of horror, June 25th-26th, 1874, on which well organized Mucker-bands, abundantly furnished with powder and shot, went forth murdering and burning through the district for miles around. The military sent out against them did not succeed in putting down the revolt before August 2nd, after the prophetess with many of her adherents had fallen in a fanatically brave resistance.

§ 211.6. =Christian Communistic Sects.=--The only soil upon which these could flourish was that of the Free States of North America. Besides the small Shaker communities (§ 170, 7) still surviving in 1858, the following new fraternities are the most important:

1. The =Harmonites=. The dissatisfaction caused among the Württemberg Pietists by the introduction of liturgical innovations led to several migrations in the beginning of the century. Geo. Rapp, a simple peasant from the village of Iptingen, went to America in 1803 or 1804 with about six hundred adherents, and settled in the valley of Connoquenessing, near Pittsburg in Pennsylvania. As a fundamental principle of this “Harmony Association,” which honoured father Rapp as autocratic patriarch, prophet and high priest, and with him believed in the near approach of the second advent, the community of goods holds a prominent place. By diligence and industry in agriculture, labour and manufactures, they reached great prosperity under the able leadership of their patriarch. In 1807 the community, by a resolution of its own to which Rapp agreed, resolved to abstain from marriage, so that henceforth no children were born nor marriages performed. A falling off in numbers was made up in 1817 by new arrivals from Württemberg and afterwards by the adoption of children. Industrial reasons led the community in 1814 to colonize Wabashthal in Indiana, where they built the town of Harmony, which, however, in 1823, on account of its unhealthy situation, they sold to the Scotchman Robert Owen (§ 212, 3), and then founded for themselves the town of Economy, not far from Pittsburg, where they still reside. In 1831 an adventurer, Bernard Müller, appeared among them, who, at Offenbach, had, for a long time, under the name of Proli, played a brilliant part as a prophet called to establish universal spiritual monarchy, and then, when in danger from the courts of law, had fled to America. In Economy, where he passed himself off as Count Maximilian von Leon, persecuted on account of his belief in the second coming, he found as such a hearty welcome, and within a year, by his agitation for the reintroduction of marriage and worldly enjoyments, drew away a third part of the community, embracing 250 souls. The dissentients with 105,000 dollars from the common purse withdrew and settled under the leadership of the pseudo-count as a New Jerusalem society in the neighbouring village of Philippsburg. But the new patriarch conducted himself so riotously that he was obliged in 1833 to flee to Louisiana, where in the same year he died of cholera. His people now in deep distress turned to Dr. Keil, a mystic come from Prussia, who reorganised them after the pattern of Rapp’s communistic society, but with liberty to marry, and brought them to a prosperous condition in two colonies mainly founded by him at Bethel in Missouri and Aurora in Oregon. Economy, too, flourished in spite of the heavy losses it sustained, so that now the common property of the populace, which through celibacy had been reduced to about eighty persons, amounts to eight million dollars. Father Rapp died in 1847, in his ninetieth year, confident to the end that he would guide his church unto the hourly expected advent of Christ.

2. When in 1831 a wave of revival passed over North America, J. H. Noyes, an advocate’s assistant, applied himself to the study of the Bible and became the founder of a new sect, the =Bible Communists= or =Perfectionists= of the Oneida Society. He taught that the promised advent of Christ took place spiritually soon after the destruction of Jerusalem; by it the kingdom of Adam was ended and the kingdom of God in the heart of those who knew and received him was established. The official churches were only state churches, but the true church was scattered in the hearts of individual saints, until Noyes collected and organized it into a Bible family. For them there is no more law, for laws are for sinners and the saints no longer sin. Each saint can do and suffer whatever the Spirit of God moves him to. All the members of the congregation constitute one family, live, eat, and work together. Goods, wives and children are in common. It lies with the wife to accept or refuse the approaches of a man. But soon this proclaimed freedom from law sent everything into confusion and disunion; schism―apostasy prevailed. But Father Noyes now saved his church from destruction by introducing a correction to this freedom from law in Sympathy, i.e. in the agreement of all members of the family. The odium which fell upon the community from without on account of its “complex marriages,” induced him at last in August, 1879, although he still always maintained the soundness of his principle of free love and its final victory over prejudice, to ordain the introduction of monogamic marriages, and the community acquiesced. With regard to community of goods, meals and children, however, they kept to the old lines. The parent community has its seat at Lenox in Oneidabach in New York State. Alongside of it are three daughter communities. They have their prophets and prophetesses, but no ritual service and no Sunday. Their employment (they number about 300 souls) is mainly fruit culture and the manufacture of snares of every kind for wild and other animals.[569]

§ 211.7. =Millenarian Exodus Communities.=

1. The =Georgian Separatists=. The stream of Württemberg emigrants above referred to turned also toward Southern Russia. The settlers in Transcaucasian Georgia in the long absence of regular pastors fell into fanatical separation, which the clergy who followed in 1820 could not overcome. Under the direction of three elders (one of them an old woman) as representing the Holy Trinity, they lived quietly, refused to baptize their children, to give their dead burial according to the rites of the church, to call in physicians in sickness, and at last rejected the marriage relation. In 1842 their female elder, Barbara Spohn, wife of a cartwright, appeared in the rôle of a prophet, proclaiming the near approach of the end of the world and calling upon her followers to pass through the wilderness to the promised land, there to enter into the millenial kingdom. They were to take with them no money, no bread, etc., but only a staff; their clothes and shoes would not wear old in the desert, they could eat manna and quails, and in the holy land Christ would dress them in the bridal robe. The government sought in vain to bring them to reason and to obstruct their way, when about three hundred of them wished at Pentecost, 1843, to start on their journey. They were allowed to send three men to Constantinople and Palestine to seek permission from the Turkish government to settle in a spot near Jerusalem. But these returned before the close of the year with the news, that Palestine is not the land that would suit them. This brought the majority to their senses and they rejoined the church.

2. Equally unfortunate was the attempt at colonization made in 1878 by some =Bavarian Chiliasts=. The pastor Clöter in Illenschwang had for a long time in the “Brüderbote,” edited by him, urged the emigration of believers to South Russia, where, according to his exposition of the apocalyptic prophecy, a secure place of refuge had been provided by God for believers of the last times during the near approaching persecutions of antichrist. In June, 1878, the tailor Minderlein with his family and nineteen other persons started to go thither. Minderlein died by the way, and his companions after enduring great hardships were obliged to return, and reached Nuremberg again in October, absolutely destitute. Clöter, however, was not discouraged by this misfortune. In December he called his adherents from Bavaria, Württemberg and Switzerland, together to a conference at Stuttgart, where they formed themselves into the “=German Exodus Church=.” In the summer, 1880, Clöter himself travelled to South Russia and thought that he found in the Crimea the fittest place of refuge. On his return he was banished, but after some days liberated, though deprived of his clerical office. A final stop was then put to the exodus movement.

§ 211.8.

3. The =Amen Community= owed its feeble existence to a Christian Jew, Israel Pick of Bohemia. Believing that he was not required in baptism to renounce his Judaism, but that rather thereby he first became a true Jew, through a onesided interpretation of Old Testament promises to his nation, he wished to found a colony of the people of God in the Holy Land on Jewish-Christian principles. The whole Mosaic law, excluding the observance of the Sabbath and circumcision, was to be the basis, together with baptism and the Lord’s Supper, of ecclesiastical and civil organization. He succeeded in winning a few converts here and there, to whom he gave the name of the Amen Community, because in Christ (the אֱלֹהֵי אָמֵן Isa. lxv. 16) all the prophecies of the old covenant are Yea and Amen. Its chief seat was at Munich-Gladbach. In 1859 Pick travelled to Palestine in order to choose a spot for the settlement of his followers and there all trace of him was lost.

4. The founder of the =German Temple Communities= in Palestine was Chr. Hoffmann, brother of General Superintendent Hoffmann of Berlin, and son of the founder of the Kornthal Community (§ 196, 5), in connection with Chr. Paulus, nephew of the well known Heidelberg professor Paulus (§ 182, 2). In 1854 they issued an invitation to a conference at Ludwigsburg, for consultation about the means for gathering the people of God in Palestine. A great crowd of believers from all parts, numbering some 10,000 families, was to embark for the holy land to form there a new people of God which, on the foundation of prophets and apostles, should strictly practise the public law of the old covenant in all points of civil administration, including the laws of the sabbath and the jubilee. The conference besought of the German League that it would use its influence with the Sultan to secure permission for colonization with self-government and religious freedom. As the German League simply declined the request, the committee bought the estate of Kirschenhardthof near Marbach, in order there temporarily and in a small way to form a social commonwealth observing the Mosaic law. In 1858 Hoffmann went with two of his followers to Jerusalem in order to look out a place there suitable for their purpose. The result was unsatisfactory. Therefore he issued in 1861 a summons to take part in a German Temple. Consequently a number of men from Württemberg, Bavaria, and Baden, Protestants and Catholics, forsook their churches, ordained priests and elders, and appointed Hoffmann their bishop and held regular synods. The final aim of this procedure, however, was always still to find a settlement in Palestine and erect a temple in Jerusalem which, according to prophecy, is to form the central sanctuary for the whole world. Colonization in the East was tried as a means to this end. Since 1869 there have been five organized colonies, with a Temple Chief and a congregational school, embracing about 1,000 souls, established in Palestine, viz. at Jaffa, Haifa, Sarona, Beyrout, and in 1878 even in Jerusalem, whither the original colony at Jaffa was transferred. The German Imperial Government refused indeed in 1879 to give the recognition sought for to the civil and political organization of the Palestinian colonies, as in a foreign country beyond its jurisdiction, but granted to its Lyceum at Jerusalem a yearly contribution of 1,500 marks and to the schools of Jaffa, Haifa and Sarona from 650 to 1,000. In 1875 Hoffmann published at Stuttgart a large apologetical and polemical work, “Occident und Orient,” which contained many thoughtful remarks. But since then, in the central organ of all the Temple Communities inspired by him, the “Süddeutsche Warte,” he has openly and distinctly attached himself to Ebionitic rationalism, by denying and opposing the fundamental evangelical doctrine of the trinity, redemption, and the sacraments. These theological views, however, were by no means shared in by all the Templars, and caused a split in the community, one section at Haifa with the chief templar there, Hardegg, at its head, separating from the central body as an independent “Imperial Brotherhood.” The seceders, joined by many German and American templar friends, again drew nearer to the Evangelical church and ultimately became reconciled with it. But Hoffmann has, in his last work, Bibelforschungen i. ii.: Röm.- u. Kol. br., Jerus. 1882, 1884, carried his polemic against the church doctrine to the utmost extreme of cynical abuse. He died in December, 1885. At the head of the denomination now stands his fellow-worker Paulus. From year to year several drop back into the Evangelical church so that the community is evidently approaching extinction.

§ 211.9. =The Community of “the New Israel.”=--The Jewish advocate Jos. Rabinowitsch at Kishenev in Bessarabia, who had long occupied himself with plans for the improvement of the spiritual and material circumstances of his fellow-countrymen, at the outbreak of the persecution of the Jews in 1882 in South Russia eagerly urged their return to the holy land of their fathers and himself undertook a journey of inspection. There definite shape seems to have been given to the long cherished thought of seeking the salvation of his people in an independent national attachment to their old sacred historical development, broken off 1850 years before, by acknowledging the Messiahship of Jesus. At least after his return he gave expression to the sentiment, based on Romans xi.: “The keys of the holy land are in the hands of our brother Jesus,” which, in consequence of the high esteem in which he was held by his countrymen, was soon re-echoed by some 200 Jewish families. His main endeavour now was the formation of independent national Jewish-Christian communities, after the pattern of the primitive church of Jerusalem, as “New Israelites,” observing all the old Jewish rites and ordinances compatible with New Testament apostolic preaching and reconcilable with modern civil and social conditions. The Torah, the prophets of the Old Testament and the New Testament writings, are held as absolutely binding, whereas the Talmud and the post-apostolic Gentile Christian additions to doctrine, worship, and constitution are not so regarded. Jesus, Rabinowitsch teaches, is the true Messiah who, as Moses and prophets foretold, was born as Son of David by the Spirit of God and in the power of that Spirit lived and taught in Israel, then for our salvation suffered, was crucified and died, rose from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven. The trinity of persons in God as well as the two natures in Christ he rejects, as not taught in the New Testament and originating in Gentile Christian speculation. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper (and that “according to the example of Christians of the pure Evangelical confession in England and Germany”) are recognised as necessary means of grace; but the Lord’s Supper is to be, according to its institution, a real meal with the old Jewish prayers. As to the doctrine of the Supper, Rabinowitsch agrees with the views of the Lutheran church. Circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath and the feasts (especially the Passover), are retained, not indeed as necessary to salvation, therefore not binding on Gentile Christians, but patriotically observed by Jewish-Christians as signs of their election from and before all nations as the people of God. In January, 1885, with consent of the Russian Government, the newly-erected synagogue of “the holy Messiah Jesus Christ” for the small congregation of Rabinowitsch’s followers at Kishenev was solemnly opened, the Russian church authorities, the Lutheran pastor Fultin and many young Jews taking part in the service. Soon afterwards Rabinowitsch received Christian baptism in the chapel of the Bohemian church at Berlin at the hands of Prof. Mead of Andover, probably in recognition of the aid sent from America.--A Jewish-Christian religious communion with similar tendencies has been formed in the South Russian town of Jellisawetgrad under the designation of a “Biblical Spiritual Brotherhood.”

§ 211.10. =The Catholic Apostolic Church of the Irvingites.=--Edward Irving, 1792-1834, a powerful and popular preacher of the Scotch-Presbyterian church in London, maintained the doctrine that the human nature of Christ like our own was affected by original sin, which was overcome and atoned for by the power of the divine nature. At the same time he became convinced that the spiritual gifts of the apostolic church could and should still be obtained by prayer and faith. A party of his followers soon began to exercise the gift of tongues by uttering unintelligible sounds, loud cries, and prophecies. His presbytery suspended him in 1832 and the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland excommunicated him. Rich and distinguished friends from the Episcopal church, among them the wealthy banker, Drummond, afterwards prominent as an apostle (died 1859), rallied round the man thus expelled from his church, and gave him the means to found a new church, but, in spite of Irving’s protests, brought with them high church puseyite tendencies, which soon drove out the heretical as well as the puritanic tendencies, and modified the fanatical element into a hierarchical and liturgical formalism. The restoration of the office of apostle was the characteristic feature of the movement. After many unsuccessful attempts they succeeded by the divine illumination of the prophets in calling twelve apostles, first and chief of whom was the lawyer Cardale (died 1877). By the apostles, as chief rulers and stewards of the church, evangelists and pastors (or angels, Rev. ii. 1, 8, etc.) were ordained in accordance with Eph. iv. 11; and subordinate to the pastors, there were appointed six elders and as many deacons, so that the office bearers of each congregation embraced thirteen persons, after the example of Christ and His twelve disciples. In London seven congregations were formed after the pattern of the seven apocalyptic churches (Rev. i. 20). Prominent among their new revelations was the promise of the immediately approaching advent of the Lord. The Lord, who was to have come in the lifetime of the first disciples and so was looked for confidently by them, delayed indefinitely His return on account of abounding iniquity and prevented the full development of the second apostolate designed for the Gentiles and meanwhile represented only by Paul, because the church was no longer worthy of it. Now at last, after eighteen centuries of degradation, in which the church came to be the apocalyptic Babylon and ripened for judgment, the time has come when the suspended apostolate has been restored to prepare the way for the last things. Very confidently was it at first maintained that none of their members should die, but should live to see the final consummation. But after death had removed so many from among them, and even the apostles one after another, it was merely said that those are already born who should see the last day. It may come any day, any hour. It begins with the first resurrection (Rev. xx. 5) and the “changing” of the saints that are alive (the wise virgins, i.e. the Irvingites), who will be caught up to the Lord in the clouds and in a higher sphere be joined with the Lord in the marriage supper of the Lamb. They are safely hidden while antichrist persecutes the other Christians, the foolish virgins, who only can be saved by means of painful suffering, and executes judgment on Babylon. This marks the end of the Gentile church; but then begins the conversion of the Jews, who, driven by necessity and the persecution of sinful men, have sought and found a refuge in Palestine. After a short victory of antichrist the Lord visibly appears among the risen and removed. The kingdom of antichrist is destroyed, Satan is bound, the saints live and reign with Christ a thousand years on the earth freed from the curse. Thereafter Satan is again let loose for a short time and works great havoc. Then comes Satan’s final overthrow, the second resurrection and last judgment. Their liturgy, composed by the apostles, is a compilation from the Anglican and Catholic sources. Sacerdotalism and sacrifice are prominent and showy priestly garments are regarded as requisite. Yet they repudiate the Romish doctrine of the bloodless repetition of the bleeding sacrifice, as well as the doctrine of transubstantiation. But they strictly maintain the contribution of the tenth as a duty laid upon Christians by Heb. vii. 4. Their typical view of the Old Testament history and legislation, especially of the tabernacle, is most arbitrary and baseless. Their first published statement appeared in 1836 in an apostolic “Letter to the Patriarchs, Bishops, and Presidents of the Church of Christ in all Lands, and to emperors, kings, and princes of all baptized nations,” which was sent to the most prominent among those addressed, even to the pope, but produced no result. After this they began to prosecute their missionary work openly. But they gave their attention mainly to those already believers, and took no part in missions to the heathen, as they were sent neither to the heathen nor to unbelievers, but only to gather and save believers. In their native land of England, where at first they had great success, their day seems already past. In North America they succeeded in founding only two congregations. They prospered better in Germany and Switzerland, where they secured several able theologians, chief of all Thiersch, the professor of Theology in Marburg, the Tertullian of this modern Montanism (died 1885), and founded about eighty small congregations with some 5,000 members, chief of which are those of Berlin, Stettin, Königsberg, Leipzig, Marburg, Cassel, Basel, Augsburg, etc. Even among the Catholic clergy of Bavaria this movement found response; but that was checked by a series of depositions and excommunications during 1857.--In 1882 the Lutheran pastor Alpers of Gehrden in Hanover was summoned to appear before the consistory to answer for his Irvingite views. He denied the charge and referred to his good Lutheran preaching. As, however, he had taken the sacramental “sealing” from Irvingite apostles, the court regarded this as proof of his having joined the party and so deposed him.[570]

§ 211.11. =The Darbyites and Adventists.=--Related on the one hand to Irvingism by their expectation of the immediately approaching advent and by their regarding themselves as the saints of the last time who would alone be saved, the =Darbyites=, on the other hand, by their absolute independentism form a complete contrast to the Irvingite hierarchism. John Darby, 1800-1882, first an advocate, then a clergyman of the Anglican church, breaking away from Anglicanism, founded between 1820 and 1830 a sectarian, apocalyptic, independent community at Plymouth (whence the name =Plymouth Brethren=), but in 1838 settled in Geneva, and in 1840 went to Canton Vaud, where Lausanne and Vevey have become the headquarters of the sect. All clerical offices, all ecclesiastical forms are of the evil one, and are evidence of the corruption of the church. There is only one office, the spiritual priesthood of all believers, and every believer has the right to preach and dispense the sacraments. Not only the Catholic, but also the Protestant church is a “Balaam Church,” and since the departure of the apostles no true church has existed. In doctrine they are strictly Calvinistic.[571]--The =Adventists=. Regarding the 2,300 days of Dan. viii. 14 as so many years, W. Miller of New York and Boston proclaimed in 1833 that the second advent would take place on the night of October 23rd, 1847, and convinced many thousands of the correctness of his calculations. When at last the night referred to arrived the believers continued assembled in their tabernacles waiting, but in vain, for the promise (Matt. xxiv. 30, 31; 1 Cor. xv. 52; 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17), at “the voice of the archangel and the trump of God to be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” This miscalculation, however, did not shake the Adventists’ belief in the near approach of the Lord, but their number rather increased from year to year. Most zealous in propagating their views by journals and tracts, evangelists and missionaries, is a branch of the sect founded by James White of Michigan, whose adherents, because they keep the Sabbath in place of the Lord’s Day, are called Seventh Day Adventists.

§ 211.12. =The Mormons or Latter Day Saints.=--Jos. Smith, a broken down farmer of Vermont, who took to knavish digging for hid treasures, affirmed in 1825, that under direction of divine revelations and visions, he had excavated on Comora hill in New York State, golden tablets in a stone kist on which sacred writings were engraved. A prophet’s spectacles, i.e., two pierced stones which as a Mormon Urim and Thummim lay beside them, enabled him to understand and translate them. He published the translation in “the Book of Mormon.” According to this book, the Israelites of the ten tribes had migrated under their leader, Lehi, to America. There they divided into two peoples; the ungodly Lamanites, answering to the modern Redskins, and the pious Nephites. The latter preserved among them the old Israelitish histories and prophecies, and through miraculous signs in heaven and earth obtained knowledge of the birth of Christ that had meanwhile taken place. Toward the end of the fourth century after Christ, however, the Lamanites began a terrible war of extermination against the Nephites, in consequence of which the latter were rooted out with the exception of the prophet Mormon and his son Moroni. Mormon recorded his revelations on the golden tablets referred to, and concealed them as the future witness for the saints of the last days on the earth. Smith proclaimed himself now called on of God, on the basis of these documents and the revelations made to him, to found the church of The Latter Day Saints. The widow of a preacher in New York proved indeed that the Book of Mormon was almost literally a plagiarism from a historico-didactic romance written by her deceased husband, Sal. Spaulding. The MS. had passed into the hands of Sidney Rigdon, formerly a Baptist minister and then a bookseller’s assistant, subsequently Smith’s right-hand man. But even this did not disturb the believers. In 1831 Smith with his followers settled at Kirtland in Ohio. To avoid the daily increasing popular odium, he removed to Missouri, and thence to Illinois, and founded there, in 1840, the important town of Nauvoo with a beautiful temple. By diligence, industry and good discipline, the wealth, power and influence of their commonwealth increased, but in the same proportion the envy, hatred and prejudices of the people, which charged them with the most atrocious crimes. In 1844, to save bloodshed the governor ordered the two chiefs, Jos. and Hiram Smith, to surrender to voluntary imprisonment awaiting a regular trial. But furious armed mobs attacked the prison and shot down both. The roughs of the whole district then gathered in one great troop, destroyed the town of Nauvoo, burned the temple and drove out the inhabitants. These, now numbering 15,000 men, in several successive expeditions amid indescribable hardships pressed on “through the wilderness” over the Rocky Mountains, in order to erect for themselves a Zion on the other side. Smith’s successor was the carpenter, Brigham Young. The journey occupied two full years, 1845-1847. In the great Salt Lake basin of Utah they founded Salt Lake City, or the New Jerusalem, as the capital of their wilderness state Deseret. The gold digging of the neighbouring state of California did not allure them, for their prophet told them that to pave streets, build houses and sow fields was better employment than seeking for gold. So here again they soon became a flourishing commonwealth.

§ 211.13. In common with the Irvingites, who recognised in them their own diabolic caricature, the Mormons restored the apostolic and prophetic office, insisted upon the continuance of the gift of tongues and miracles, expected the speedy advent of the Lord, reintroduced the payment of tithes, etc. But what distinguished them from all Christian sects was the proclamation of polygamy as a religious duty, on the plea that only those women who had been “sealed” to a Latter-day Saint would share in the blessedness of life eternal. This was probably first introduced by Young in consequence of a new “divine revelation,” but down to 1852 kept secret and denied before “the Gentiles.” The ambiguous book of Mormon was set meanwhile more and more in the background, and the teachings and prophecies of their prophet brought more and more to the front. “The Voice of Warning to all Nations” of the zealous proselyte Parly Pratt, formerly a Campbellite preacher, exercised a great influence in spreading the sect. But the most gifted of them all was Orson Pratt, Rigdon’s successor in the apostolate. To him mainly is ascribed the construction of its later, highly fantastic religious system which, consisting of elements gathered from Neo-platonism, gnosticism, and other forms of theosophical mysticism, embraces all the mysteries of time and eternity. Its fundamental ideas are these: There are gods without number; all are polygamists and their wives are sharers of their glory and bliss. They are the fathers of human souls who here on earth ripen for their heavenly destiny. Jesus is the first born son of the highest god by his first wife; he was married on earth to Mary Magdalene, the sisters Martha and Mary and other women. Those saints who here fulfil their destiny become after death gods, while they are arranged according to their merit in various ranks and with prospect of promotion to higher places. At the end of this world’s course, Jesus will come again, and, enthroned in the temple of Salt Lake City, exercise judgment against all “Gentiles” and apostates, etc.--The constitution of the Mormon State is essentially theocratic. At the head stood the president, Brigham Young, as prophet, patriarch, and priest-king, in whose hands are all the threads of the spiritual as well as secular administration. A high council alongside of him, consisting of seventy members, as also the prophets and apostles, bishops and elders, and generally the whole richly organized hierarchy, are only the pliable instruments of his all-commanding will. Every one on entering the society surrenders his whole property, and after that contributes a tenth of his yearly income and personal labour to the common purse of the community. Soon numerous missionaries were sent forth who crossed the Atlantic, and attained great success, especially in Scotland, England and Scandinavia, but also in North-West Germany and in Switzerland. On removing the misunderstanding that prevailed about their social and political condition, and supplying the penniless out of the rich immigration fund with the means to make the journey, they persuaded great crowds of their new converts to accompany them to Utah.

§ 211.14. In 1849 the Mormons had asked Congress for the apportioning of the district colonized by them as an independent and autonomous “State” in the union, but were granted, in 1850, only the constitution of a “territory” under the central government at Washington, and the appointment of their patriarch, Young, as its governor. Accustomed to absolute rule, in two years he drove out all the other officers appointed by the union. He was then deprived of office, but the new governor, Col. Sefton, appointed in 1854, with the small armament supplied him could not maintain his position and voluntarily retired. When afterwards in 1858 Governor Cumming, appointed by president Buchanan, entered Utah with a strong military force, Young armed for a decisive struggle. A compromise, however, was effected. A complete amnesty was granted to the saints, the soldiers of the union entered peacefully into the Salt-Lake City, and Young assumed tolerably friendly relations with the governor, who, nevertheless, by the erection of a fort commanding the city made the position safe for himself and his troops. On the outbreak of the war of Secession in 1861 the troops of the union were for the most part withdrawn. But all the more energetically did the central government at the close of the war in 1865 resolve upon the complete subjugation of the rebel saints, having learnt that since 1852 numerous murders had taken place in the territory, and that the disappearance of whole caravans of colonists was not due to attacks of Indians, who would have scalped their victims, but to a secret Mormon fraternity called Danites (Judges xviii.), brothers of Gideon (Judges vi. ff.) or Angels of Destruction, which, obedient to the slightest hint from the prophet, had undertaken to avenge by bloody terrorism any sign of resistance to his authority, to arrest any tendency to apostasy, and to guard against the introduction of any foreign element. The Union Pacific Railway opened in 1869 deprived the “Kingdom of God” of its most powerful protection, its geographical isolation, while the rich silver mines discovered at the same time in Utah, peopled city and country with immense flocks of “Gentiles.” The nemesis, which brought the Mormon bishop Lee, twenty years after the deed, under the lash of the high court of justiciary as involved in the horrible massacre of a large party of emigrants at Mountain Meadows in 1857, would probably have also befallen the prophet himself as the main instigator of this and many other crimes had he not by a sudden death two months later, in his seventy-fifth year, escaped the jurisdiction of any earthly tribunal (died 1877). A successor was not chosen, but supreme authority is in the hands of the college of twelve apostles with the elder John Taylor at their head.--Repeated attempts made since 1874 by the United States authorities by penal enactments to root out polygamy among the Mormons have always failed, because its actual existence could never be legally proved. The witness called could or would say nothing, since the “sealing” was always secretly performed, and the women concerned denied that a marriage had been entered into with the accused, or if one confessed herself his married wife she refused to give any evidence about his domestic relations.--Recently a split has occurred among the Mormons. By far the larger party is that of the “Salt Lake Mormons,” which holds firmly by polygamy and all the other institutions introduced by Young and since his time. The other party is that of the Kirtland, or Old Mormons, headed by the son of their founder, Jos. Smith, who had been passed over on account of his youth, which repudiates all these as unsupported novelties and restores the true Mormonism of the founder. The Old Mormons not only oppose polygamy, but also all more recently introduced doctrines. They are called Kirtland Mormons from the first temple built by their founder at Kirtland in 1814, which having fallen into ruins, was restored by Geo. Smith, jun., and became the centre of the Old Mormon denomination. In April 1885 they held there their first synod, attended by 200 deputies.[572]

§ 211.15. =The Taepings in China.=--Hung-sen-tsenen, born in 1813 in the province of Shan-Tung, was destined for the learned profession but failed in his examination at Canton. There he first, in 1833, came into contact with Protestant missionaries, whose misunderstood words awakened in him the belief that he was called to perform great things. At the same time he there got possession of some Christian Chinese tracts. Failing in his examination a second time in 1837, he fell into a dangerous illness and had a series of visions in which an old man with a golden beard appeared, handing to him the insignia of imperial rank, and commanding him to root out the demons. After his recovery he became an elementary teacher. A relative called Li visited him in 1843. The Christian tracts were again sought out and carefully studied. Sen now recognised in the old man of his visions the God of the Christians and in himself the younger brother of Jesus. The two baptized one another and won over two young relatives to their views. Expelled from their offices, they went in 1844 to the province of Kiang Se as pencil and ink sellers, preached diligently the new doctrine and founded numerous small congregations of their sect. The American missionaries at Canton heard of the success of their preaching, and Sen accepted an invitation to join them in 1847. The missionary Roberts had a great esteem for him and intended to baptize him, when in consequence of stories spread about him their relations became strained. Sen now returned in 1848 to his companions in Kiang Se, who had diligently and successfully continued their preaching. In 1850 they began to attract attention by the violent destruction of idols. When now all the remnants of a pirate band joined them as converts, they were in common with these persecuted by the government and proclaimed rebels. The expulsion of the hated Mantshu dynasty, which two hundred years before had displaced the Ming dynasty, and the overthrow of idolatry were now their main endeavour, and in 1857 they organized under Sen a regular rebellion for the setting up of a Taeping dynasty, i.e., of universal peace. The Taeping army advanced unhindered, all Mantschu soldiers who fell into its hands were massacred, and of the inhabitants of the provinces conquered, only those were spared who joined their ranks. In March, 1853, they stormed the second capital of the empire, Nankin, the old residence of the Ming dynasty. There Sen fixed his residence and styled himself Tien-Wang, the Divine Prince. He assigned to ten subordinate princes the government of the conquered provinces, almost the half of the immense empire. Thousands of bibles were circulated; the ten commandments proclaimed as the foundation of law, many writings, prayers and poems composed for the instruction of the people, and these with the bible made subjects of examination for entrance to the learned order. An Arian theory of the trinity was set forth; the Father is the one personal God, whose likeness in bodily human form Sen strictly forbade, destroying the Catholic images as well as the Chinese idols. Jesus is the first-born son of God, yet not himself God, sent by the Father into the world in order to enlighten it by his doctrine and to redeem it by his atoning sufferings. Sen, the younger brother of Jesus, was sent into the world to spread the doctrine of Jesus and to expel the demons, the Mantschu dynasty. Reception takes place through baptism. The Lord’s Supper was unknown to them. Bloody and bloodless offerings were still tolerated. The use of wine and tobacco was forbidden; the use of opium and trafficking in it were punished with death. But polygamy was sanctioned. Saturday, according to the Old Testament, was their holy day. Their service consisted only of prayer, singing and religious instruction; but also written prayers were presented to God by burning.

§ 211.16. Sen himself had no more visions after 1837. But other ecstatic prophets arose, the eastern prince Yang and the western prince Siao. The revelations of the latter were comparatively sober, but those of the former were in the highest degree blasphemously fanatical. He declared himself the Paraclete promised by Jesus, and taught that God himself, as well as Jesus, had a wife with sons and daughters. He was at the same time a brave and successful general, and the mass of the Taepings were enthusiastically attached to him. Sen humbly yielded to the extravagances of this fanatic, even when Yang sentenced him to receive forty lashes. Sen’s overthrow was already resolved upon in Yang’s secret council, when Sen took courage and gave the northern prince secret orders to murder Yang and his followers in one night. This was done, and Sen was weak enough to allow the executioner of his secret order to be publicly put to death so as to appease the excited populace. But he thus again in 1856 became master of the situation.--One of the oldest apostles of Sen, his near relative Hung Yin, had been turned off at Hong Kong. He there attached himself to the Basel missionary, Hamberg, who in 1852 baptized him and made him his native helper. In hope of winning his cousin to the true Christian faith, he travelled in 1854 to Nankin, which however he did not reach till January, 1859. Sen received him gladly and made him his war minister. But his efforts to introduce a purer Christianity among the Taepings were unsuccessful, for he tried the slippery way of accommodation, and under pressure from Sen set up for himself a harem. In October, 1860, on Sen’s repeated invitation, his former teacher, the missionary Roberts of Nankin, arrived and was immediately made minister for foreign affairs. The Shanghai missionaries, several of whom visited Nankin, had interesting interviews with Yin in 1860, but not with the emperor, as they refused to go on their knees before him. They were encouraged by Yin to hope for a future much needed purifying of Taeping Christianity. Yang’s revelations, however, held their ground after as well as before, and were increased by further absurdities. To such crass fanaticism was now added the inhuman cruelty with which they massacred the vanquished and wasted the conquered cities and districts. Had the European powers ranged themselves in a friendly and peaceful attitude alongside of the Taepings, China might now have been a Christian empire. Instead of this the English, on account of the extreme opposition of the Taepings to the opium traffic, took up a hostile position toward them, while they were also in disfavour with the French, who had been denounced by them as idolaters on account of their Romish image worship. Down to the beginning of 1862, however, Yin’s influence had prevented any hostile proceedings against the Europeans in spite of many provocations given. But after that the Taepings refused them any quarter. Roberts fled by night to save his life. Against disciplined European troops the rebels could not hold their ground. One city after another was taken from them, and at last, in July 1864, their capital Nankin. Sen was found poisoned in his burning palace.[573]

§ 211.17. =The Spiritualists.=--The shoemaker’s apprentice, Andrew Jackson Davis of Poughkeepsie on the Hudson, in his nineteenth year fell into a magnetic sleep and composed his first work, “The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind,” in 1845. He declared its utterances to be spiritual revelations from the other world. But his later writings composed in working hours made the same claim, especially the five volume work, “Great Harmonia, being a Philosophical Revelation of the Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial Universe,” 1850 ff. Both went through numerous editions and were translated into German. The great spiritual manifestation promised in the first work was not long delayed. In a house bought by the family of Fox in Hydesville in New York State a spectral knocking was often heard. Through the intercourse which the two youngest daughters, aged nine and twelve years, had with the ghosts, the skeleton of a murdered five years’ old child of a pedlar was discovered buried in the cellar, and when the family soon thereafter left the house, the ghosts went with them and continued their communications by table turning, table rapping, table writing, etc. The thing now became epidemic. Hundreds and thousands of male and female mediums arose and held an extremely lively and varied intercourse with innumerable departed ones of earlier and later times. The believers soon numbered millions, including highly educated persons of all ranks, even such exact chemists as Mapes and Hare. An abundant literature in books and journals, as well as Sunday services, frequent camp-meetings and annual congresses formed a propaganda for the alleged spiritualism, which soon found its way across the ocean and won enthusiastic adherents for all confessions in all European countries, especially in London, Paris, Brussels, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Dresden, Leipzig, etc. They now broke up into two parties called respectively Spiritualists and Spiritists. The former put in the foreground physical experiments with astonishing results and miraculous effects; the latter, with the Frenchman Allan Kardec (Rivail) as their leader, give prominence to the teaching of spirits by direct communication. The former in reference to the origin of the human soul held by the theory of traducianism; the latter to that of pre-existence in connection with a doctrine of re-incarnation of spirits by reason of growing purity and perfection. The latter see in Christ the incarnation of a spirit of the highest order; the former merely the purest and most perfect type of human nature. But neither admit the real central truth of Christianity, the reconciliation of sinful humanity with God in Christ. Both evaporate the resurrection into a mere spectral spirit manifestation; and the disclosures and utterances of the spirits with both are equally trivial, silly, and vain.--In England the famous palæontologist and collaborateur of Darwin, Alfr. Russel Wallace, and the no less celebrated physicist Wm. Crookes, are apologists of spiritualism. The latter declared in 1879 that to the three well-known conditions of matter, solid, fluid and gaseous, should be added a fourth, “radiant,” and that there is the borderland where force and matter meet. And in Germany the acute Leipzig astrophysicist Fr. Zöllner, after a whole series of spiritualistic séances conducted by the American medium Slade in 1877 and 1878 had been carefully scrutinized and tested by himself and several of his most accomplished scientific colleagues, was convinced of the existence and reality of higher “four dimension” space in the spirit world, to which by reason of its fourth dimension the power belonged of passing through earthly bodily matter. The philosophers I. H. Fichte of Stuttgart and Ulrici of Halle have admitted the reality of spiritualistic communications and allege them as proofs of immortality. Among German theologians Luthardt of Leipzig regards it all as the work of demons who take advantage for their own ends of the moral-religious dissolution of the modern world and its consequent nerve shaking that prevails, just as in the ancient world in the beginnings of Christianity. Zöckler of Greifswald finds an analogy between it and the demoniacal possession of New Testament times; so too Martensen in his “Jacob Boehme,” and on the Catholic side W. Schneider; while Splittgerber refers most of the manifestations in question to a merely subjective origin in “the right side of the human soul life,” but puts the materialization of spirits in the category of delusive jugglery. Spiritualism has scarcely rallied from the obloquy cast upon it by the unmasking of the tricks of the famous medium Miss Florence Cook in London in 1880 and of the distinguished spirit materialiser Bastian by the Grand-duke John of Austria in 1884.[574]

§ 211.18. To the domain of unquestionable illusion belongs also the spiritualistic movement of Indian =Theosophism= or =Occultism=. The American Col. Olcott of New York had already moved for twenty-two years in spiritualist circles when in 1874 he met with Madame Blavatsky, widow of a Russian general who had been governor of Erivan in Armenia. She professed to have been from her eighth year in communication with spirits, then to have had secret intercourse with the Mahatmas, i.e. spirits of old Indian penitents, during a seven years’ residence on the Himalayas. She now promised to introduce the colonel to them. Olcott and Blavatsky founded at New York in 1875 a society for research in the department of the mystic sciences, travelled in 1878 to Further India and Ceylon, and settled finally in Madras, whence by word and writing they proclaimed through the whole land theosophism or occultism as the religion of the future, which, consisting in a medley of Hinduism and Buddhism, enriched by spiritualistic revelations of Mahatmas, vouched for by spiritualistic signs and miracles and conformed to the most recent philosophical and scientific researches in America and Europe, aimed at heaping contempt upon Christianity and finally driving it from the field. As fanatical opponents of Christian missions in India they were strongly supported by the Brahman and Buddhist hierarchy, and soon obtained for the theosophical society founded by them not only numerous adherents from among the natives, but also many Englishman befooled by their spiritualistic swindle. As apostle and literary pioneer of the new religion appeared an Anglo-Indian called Sinnett. In spring, 1884, Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott went on a propagandist tour to Europe, where, in England, France, Austria, and Hungary, they won many converts, while Col. Olcott at Elberfeld and Madame Blavatsky at Odessa founded branches of their theosophical society.--But meanwhile in India affairs assumed a threatening aspect. Blavatsky on her departure had entrusted the keys of her dwelling and her mysterious cabinet with its various panels, falling doors, etc., to Mr. and Mrs. Coulomb, who had been hitherto her assistants in all her juggleries. Madame Coulomb, however, quarrelled with the board of theosophists at Madras, and revenged herself by placing in the hands of the Scottish mission letters addressed by Blavatsky to herself and her husband which supplied evidence that all her spiritualistic manifestations were only common tricks. In addition she gave public exhibitions in which she demonstrated to the spectators ad oculos the spiritual manifestations of the Mahatmas, and subsequently published an “Account of My Acquaintanceship with Madame Blavatsky, 1872-1884,” with discoveries of her earlier rogueries. Meanwhile the swindler had herself in December, 1884, returned to Madras in company with several believers gathered up in England, among others a young English clergyman, Leadbeater, who some days previously in Ceylon had formally adopted Buddhism. The theosophists now demanded that the reputed cheat and deceiver should be brought before a civil court. The president, however, declared that the investigations and judgment of a profane court of law could not be accepted to the mysteries of occultism, but promised a careful examination by a commission appointed by himself, and Blavatsky thought it advisable “for the restoration of her health in a cooler climate” to make off from the scene of conflict.[575]

§ 212. ANTICHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM.

While the antichristian spirit of the age breaks out in various theoretical forms in our literature, there also abound social and communistic movements of a practical kind. Socialism and communism both aim at a thorough-going reform of the rights of property and possession in strict proportion to the labour spent thereon. They are, however, distinguished in this, that while communism declares war against all private property and demands absolute community of goods, socialism, at least in its older and nobler forms, proceeding from the idea of precise correspondence between capital and labour, seeks to have expression given to this in fact. From the older socialism, which endeavoured to reach its end in a peaceful way within the existing lines of civil order, a later social democracy is to be distinguished by its decidedly politico-revolutionary character and tendency to attach itself more to communism. This modern socialism thinks to open the way to the realization of its hare-brained ideas by the confusion and overthrow of existing law and order.

§ 212.1. =The Beginnings of Modern Communism.=--As early as 1796 Babeuf published in Paris a communistic manifesto which maintained the thesis that natural law gives all men an equal right to the enjoyment of all goods. His ideas were subsequently systematized and developed by Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet, and Louis Blanc in France, and by Weibling and Stirner in Germany. In a treatise of 1840 Proudhon answered the question, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? in words which afterwards became proverbial, and formed the motto of communism: La propriété c’est le vol. But the mere negation of property affords no permanent standing ground. All altars must be thrown down; all religion rooted out as the plague of humanity; the family and marriage, as the fountain of all selfishness, must be abolished; all existing governments must be overthrown; all Europe must be turned into one great social democracy. A secret communistic propaganda spread over all western Europe, had its head centres in Belgium and Switzerland, crossed the Alps and the Pyrenees, as well as the Channel, and found a congenial soil even in Russia.

§ 212.2. =St. Simonism.=--The Count St. Simon of Paris, reduced to poverty by speculation, proposed by means of a thorough organization of industry to found a new and happy state of things in which there would be pure enjoyment without poverty and care. An attempted suicide, which led however to his death in 1825, made him in the eyes of his disciples a saviour of the world. The July revolution of 1830 gave to the new universal religion, which reinstated the flesh in its long lost rights and sought to assign to each individual the place in the commonwealth for which he was fitted, some advantage. “Father” Enfantin, whom his followers honoured as the highest revelation of deity, contended with pompous phrases and in fantastic style for the emancipation of woman and against the unnatural institution of marriage. But St. Simonism soon excited public ridicule, was pronounced immoral by the courts of justice, and the remnants of its votaries fled from the scorn of the people and the vengeance of the law to Egypt, where they soon disappeared.

§ 212.3. =Owenists and Icarians.=--The Scotch mill-owner =Rob. Owen= went in 1829 to America, in order there, unhindered by religious prejudices, clerical opposition, and police interference, to work out on a large scale his socialistic schemes for improving the world, which in a small way he believed he had proved already among his Scotch mill-operatives. He bought for this purpose from the Württemberger Rapp the colony of Harmony (§ 211, 6); but wanting the necessary capital for the socialistic commonwealth there established, and failing to realize his expectations, discontent, disorder, and opposition got the upper hand, and in 1826 Owen was obliged to abandon all his property. He now returned to England, and addressed himself in treatises, tracts, and lectures to the working classes of the whole land, in order to win them over to his ideas. A vast brotherhood for mutual benefit and for the enjoyment of their joint earnings was to put an end to earth’s misery, which the positive religions had not lessened but only increased. In 1836, in the great industrial cities socialist unions with nearly half a million members were formed, with their head centre and annual congress at Birmingham. The practical schemes of Owen, however, had no success in England, and his societies no permanency. He died in 1858.--Still more disastrous was the fate of the Icarian Colony, founded in Texas in 1848 by the Frenchman =Stephen Cabet=, author of “Voyage en Icarie, Roman philos. et social,” 1840, as an attempt to realize his communistic-philanthropic ideas on the other side of the Atlantic. The colonists soon found their sanguine hopes bitterly disappointed, and hurled against their leader reproaches and threats. Some ex-Icarians accused him in 1849 before the Paris police-court as a swindler, and he was condemned to two years’ imprisonment and five years’ loss of civil privileges. Cabet now hastened to France, and on appeal obtained reversion of his sentence in 1851. Returning to America, he founded a new Icarian colony at Nauvoo in Illinois. But there, too, everything went wrong, and a revolt of the colonists obliged him to flee. He died in 1856.[576]

§ 212.4. =The International Working-Men’s Association.=--Local and national working-men’s unions with a socialistic organization had for a long time existed in England, France, and Germany. The idea of a union embracing the whole world was first broached at the great London Exhibition in 1862, and at a conference in London on September 28th, 1864, at which all industrial countries of Europe were represented, it assumed a practical shape by the founding of a universal international working-men’s association. Its constitution was strictly centralistic. A directing committee in London, Carl Marx of Treves, formerly Privatdocent of philosophy at Bonn, standing at its head as dictator, represented the supreme legislative and governing authority, while alongside of it a general standing council held the administrative and executive power. The latter was divided into eight sections, English, American, French, German, Belgian, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish, and annual international congresses at Geneva, Lausanne, Brussels, Basel, and the Hague gave opportunity for general consultation on matters of common interest. Reception as members was granted by the giving of a diploma after six months’ trial, and involved unconditional obedience to the statutes and ordinances of the central authorities and the payment of an annual fee. The number of members, not, however, exclusively drawn from the working classes, is said to have reached two and a half millions. The society adopted the current socialistic and communistic ideas and tendencies. The religious principle of the association was therefore: atheism and materialism; the political: absolute democracy; the social: equal rights of labour and profit, with abolition of private property, hereditary rights, marriage, and family; and as means for realizing this programme, unaccomplishable by peaceable methods, revolution and rebellion, fire and sword, poison, petroleum and dynamite. Such means have been used already in various ways by the international throughout the Romance countries; but specially in the brief Reign of Terror of the Paris Commune, March and April, 1871, in the relatively no less violent attempted revolt at Alcoy in Southern Spain in July, 1873. But meanwhile differences appeared within the society, which were formulated at the Hague Congress in 1872, and led to splits, which greatly lessened its unity, influence, and power to do mischief, so that this congress may perhaps be regarded as the first beginning of its end.[577]

§ 212.5. =German Social Democracy.=--=Ferd. Lassalle=, son of a rich Jewish merchant of Breslau, after a full course of study in philosophy and law, began in 1848 to take a lively part in the advanced movements of the age, and when he found among the liberal citizens no favour for his socialistic ideas turned exclusively to the working classes. In answer to the question as to what was to be done, by the central committee of a working-men’s congress at Leipzig, he wrought out in 1863 with great subtlety in an open letter the fundamental idea of his universal redemption. All plans of self-help to relieve the distress of working men hitherto proposed (specially that of Schulze-Delitzsch) break down over the “iron economic law of wages,” in consequence of which under the dominion of capital and the large employers of labour wages are always with fatalistic necessity reduced to the point indispensable for supplying a working man’s family with the absolute necessaries of life. The working classes, however, have the right according to the law of nature to a full equivalent for their labour, but in order to reach this they must be their own undertakers, and where self-help is only a vain illusion, state help must afford the means. By insisting on the right to universal suffrage the working classes have obtained a decided majority in the legislative assemblies, and there secured a government of the future in accordance with their needs. On these principles the Universal German Society of Working Men was constituted, with Lassalle as its president, which position he held till his death in a duel in 1864. Long internal disputes and personal recriminations led to a split at the Eisenach Congress in 1869. The malcontents founded an independent “Social Democratic Working-Men’s Union,” under the leadership of Bebel and Liebknecht, which, particularly successful in Saxony, Brunswick, and South Germany, represents itself as the German branch of the “International Working-Men’s Association.” It adhered indeed generally to Lassalle’s programme, but objected to the extravagant adulation claimed for Lassalle by their opponents, the proper disciples of Lassalle, who had Hasenclaver as their leader and Berlin as their headquarters, substituted a federal for a centralistic organization, and instead of a great centralised government in the future desired rather a federal republic embracing all Europe. But both declared equally in favour of revolution; they vied with one another in bitter hatred of everything bearing the name of religion; and wrought out with equal enthusiasm their communistic schemes for the future. At the Gotha Congress of 1875 a reconciliation of parties was effected. The social-democratic agitation thus received a new impulse and assumed threatening proportions. Yet it required such extraordinary occurrences as the twice attempted assassination of the aged emperor, by Hodel on May 11th, and Nobiling on June 2nd, 1878, to rouse the government to legislative action. On the basis of a law passed in October, 1878, for two and a half years (but in May, 1880, continued for other three and a half years, and in May, 1884, and again in April, 1886, on each occasion extended to other two years), 200 socialist societies throughout the German empire were suppressed, sixty-four revolutionary journals, circulated in hundreds of thousands and with millions of readers, and about 800 other seditious writings, were forbidden. But that the social- democratic organization and agitation was not thereby destroyed is proved by the fact that in August, 1880, in an uninhabited Swiss castle lent for the purpose, in Canton Zürich, a congress was held, attended by fifty-six German socialists, with greetings by letter from sympathisers in all European countries, which among other things passed the resolution unanimously, no longer as had been agreed upon at Gotha, to seek their ends by lawful methods, as by the law of the socialists impossible, but by the way of revolution.--On the other hand, the German Imperial Chancellor Prince Bismarck in the Reichstag, 1884, fully admitted the “right of the worker to work,” as well as the duty of the state to ameliorate the condition of working men as far as possible, and in three propositions: “Work for the healthy workman, hospital attendance to the sick, and maintenance to the invalided,” granted all that is asked for by a healthy social policy.

§ 212.6. =Russian Nihilism.=--In Russia, too, notwithstanding a strictly exercised censorship, the philosophico-scientific gospel of materialism and atheism found entrance through the writings of Moleschott, Feuerbach, Büchner, Darwin, etc. (§ 174, 3), especially among the students. In 1860, Nihilism, springing from this seed, first assumed the character of a philosophical and literary movement. It sought the overthrow of all religious institutions. Then came the women’s question, claiming emancipation for the wife. The example of the Paris Commune of 1871 contributed largely to the development of Nihilistic idealism, its political revolutionary socialism. The Nihilist propaganda, like an epidemic, now seized upon the academic youth, male and female, was spread in aristocratic families by tutors and governesses, won secret disciples among civil servants as well as officers of the army and navy, and was enthusiastically supported by ladies in the most cultured and exalted ranks. In order to spread its views among the people, young men and women disguised in peasant’s dress went out among the peasants and artisans, lived and wrought like them, and preached their gospel to them in their hours of rest. But their efforts failed through the antipathy and apathy of the lower orders, and the energetic interference of the government by imprisonment and banishment thinned the ranks of the propagandists. But all the more closely did those left bind themselves together under their central leaders as the “Society for Country and Freedom,” and strove with redoubled eagerness to spread revolutionary principles by secretly printing their proclamations and other incendiary productions, and scattering them in the streets and houses. On January 24th, 1878, the female Nihilist Vera Sassulitsch from personal revenge dangerously wounded with a revolver General Trepoff, the dreaded head of the St. Petersburg police. Although she openly avowed the deed before the court and gloried in it, she was amid the acclamations of the public acquitted. This was the hour when Nihilism exercised its fellest terrorism. The fair, peaceful phrase, “To work, fight, suffer, and die for the people,” was silenced; it was now, sword and fire, dagger and revolver, dynamite and mines for all oppressors of the people, but above all for the agents of the police, for their spies, for all informers and apostates. An “executive committee,” unknown to most of the conspirators themselves, issued the death sentence; the lot determined the executioner, who himself suffered death if he failed to accomplish it. What was now aimed at was the assassination of higher state officials; then the sacred person of the emperor. Three bold attempts at assassination miscarried; the revolver shot of Solowjews on April 14th, 1879; the mine on the railway near Moscow that exploded too late on November 30th, 1879; the horrible attempt to blow up the Winter Palace with the emperor and his family on February 17th, 1880; but the fourth, a dynamite bomb thrown between the feet of the emperor on March 13th, 1881, destroyed the life of this noble and humane monarch, who in 1861-1863 had freed his people from the yoke of serfdom. As for years nothing more had been heard of Nihilist attempts, it was hoped that the government had succeeded in putting down this diabolical rebellion, but in 1887 the news spread that an equally horrible attempt had been planned for the sixth anniversary of the assassination of Alexander II., but fortunately timely precautions were taken against it.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES.

FIRST CENTURY.

A.D. 14-37. The Emperor Tiberius, § 22, 1. 41-54. The Emperor Claudius, § 22, 1. 44. Execution of James the Elder, § 16. 51. The Council at Jerusalem, § 18, 1. 54-68. The Emperor Nero, § 23, 1. 61. Paul’s Arrival at Rome, § 15. 63. Stoning of James the Just, § 16, 3. 64. Persecution of Christians in Rome, § 22, 1. 66-70. Jewish War, § 16. 81-96. The Emperor Domitian, § 22, 1.

SECOND CENTURY.

98-117. The Emperor Trajan, § 22, 2. 115. (?) Ignatius of Antioch, Martyr, § 22, 2. 117-138. The Emperor Hadrian, § 22, 2. Basilides, Valentinus, § 22, 2, 4. 132-135. Revolt of Barcochba [Bar-Cochba], § 25. Abt. 150. Celsus, § 23, 3. Marcion, § 27, 11. 138-161. The Emperor Antoninus Pius, § 22, 2. 155. Paschal Controversy between Polycarp and Amicetus [Anicetus], § 37, 2. 161-180. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, § 22, 3. 165. Justin Martyr, § 30, 9. 166. (155?) Martyrdom of Polycarp, § 22, 3. 172. (156?) Montanus appears as a Prophet, § 40, 1. 177. Persecution of Christians at Lyons and Vienne, § 22, 3. 178. Irenæus made Bishop of Lyons, § 31, 2. 180-192. The Emperor Commodus, § 22, 3. 196. Paschal Controversy between Victor and Polycrates, § 37, 2.

THIRD CENTURY.

202. Tertullian becomes Montanist, § 40, 2. Pantænus dies, § 31, 4. 220. Clement of Alexandria dies, § 31, 4. 235. Settlement of the Schism of Hippolytus, § 41, 1. 235-238. The Emperor Maximinus Thrax, § 22, 4. 243. Ammonius Saccus [Saccas] dies, § 25, 2. 244. Arabian Synod against Beryllus, § 33, 7. 249-251. The Emperor Decius, § 22, 5. 250. The Schism of Felicissimus, § 41, 2. 251. The Novatian Schism, § 41, 3. 253-260. The Emperor Valerian, § 22, 5. 254. Origen dies, § 31, 5. 255-256. Controversy about Heretics’ Baptism, § 35, 5. 258. Cyprian dies, § 31, 11. 260-268. The Emperor Gallienus. The Toleration Edict, § 22, 5. 262. Synod at Rome against Sabellius and Dionysius of Alexandria, § 33, 7. 269. Third Synod of Antioch against Paul of Samosata, § 33, 8. 276. Mani dies, § 29, 1. 284-305. The Emperor Diocletian, § 22, 6.

FOURTH CENTURY.

303. Beginning of Diocletian Persecution, § 22, 6. 306. Synod of Elvira, § 38, 3; 45, 2. Meletian Schism in Egypt, § 41, 4. Constantius Chlorus dies, § 22, 7. 311. Galerius dies, § 22, 6. 312. Constantine’s Expedition against Maxentius, § 22, 7. Donatist Schism in Africa, § 63, 1. 313. Edict of Milan, § 22, 7. 318. Arius is Accused, § 50, 1. 323-337. Constantine the Great, Sole Ruler, § 42, 2. 325. First Œcumenical Council at Nicæa, § 50, 1. 330-415. Meletian Schism at Antioch, § 50, 8. 335. Synod at Tyre, § 50, 2. 336. Athanasius Exiled. Arius dies, § 50, 2. 341. Council at Antioch, § 50, 2. 343. Persecution of Christians under Shapur [Sapor] II., § 64, 2. 344. Synod at Sardica, § 46, 3; 50, 2. 346. Council at Milan against Photinus, § 50, 2. 348. Ulfilas, Bishop of the Goths, § 76, 1. 350-361. Constantius, Sole Ruler, § 42, 2. 351. First Council at Sirmium against Marcellus, § 50, 2. 357. Second Council at Sirmium, Homoians, § 50, 3. 358. Third Council at Sirmium, § 50, 3. 359. Synods at Seleucia and Rimini, § 50, 3. 361-363. Emperor Julian the Apostate, § 42, 3. 362. Synod at Alexandria against Athanasius, § 50, 4. 366-384. Damasus I., Bishop of Rome, § 46, 4. 368. Hilary of Poitiers dies, § 47, 14. 373. Athanasius dies, § 47, 3. 379. Basil the Great dies, § 47, 4. 379-395. Theodosius the Great, Emperor, § 42, 4. 380. Synod at Saragossa, § 54, 2. 381. Second Œcumenical Council at Constantinople, § 50, 4. Ulfilas dies, § 76, 1. 384-398. Siricius, Bishop of Rome, § 46, 4. 385. Priscillian beheaded at Treves, § 54, 2. 390. Gregory Nazianzen dies, § 47, 4. 391. Destruction of the Serapeion at Alexandria, § 42, 6. 393. Council at Hippo Rhegius, § 59, 1. 397. Ambrose dies, § 47, 15. 399. Rufinus Condemned at Rome as an Origenist, § 51, 2. 400. Martin of Tours dies, § 47, 15.

FIFTH CENTURY.

402-417. Innocent I. of Rome, § 46, 5. 403. Synodus ad Quercum, § 51, 3. Epiphanius dies, § 47, 10. 407. Chrysostom dies, § 47, 8. 408-450. Theodosius II. in the East, § 52, 3. 411. Collatio cum Donatistis, § 63, 1. 412. Synod at Carthage against Cœlestius, § 53, 4. 415. Synods at Jerusalem and Diospolis against Pelagius, § 53, 4. 416. Synods at Mileve and Carthage against Pelagius, § 53, 4. 418. General Assembly at Carthage, § 53, 4. Roman Schism of Eulalius and Bonifacius, § 46, 6. 420. Jerome dies, § 47, 16. Persecution of Christians under Behram [Bahram] V., § 64, 2. 422-432. Cœlestine I., Bishop of Rome, § 46, 6. 428. Nestorius is made Patriarch of Constantinople, § 52, 3. 429. Theodore of Mopsuestia dies, § 47, 9. The Vandals in North Africa, § 76, 3. 430. Cyril’s Anathemas, § 52, 3. Augustine dies, § 47, 18. 431. Third Œcumenical Council at Ephesus, § 52, 3. 432. St. Patrick in Ireland, § 77, 1. John Cassianus dies, § 47, 21. 440-461. Leo I., the Great, § 46, 7; 47, 22. 444. Cyril of Alexandria dies, § 47, 6. Dioscurus succeeds Cyril, § 52, 4. 445. Rescript of Valentinian III., § 46, 7. 448. Eutyches excommunicated at Constantinople, § 52, 4. 449. Robber Synod at Ephesus, § 52, 4. Attack of Angles and Saxons upon Britain, § 77, 4. 451. Fourth Œcumenical Synod at Chalcedon, § 52, 4. 457. Theodoret dies, § 47, 9. 475. Semipelagian Synods at Arles and Lyons, § 53, 5. 476. Overthrow of the West Roman Empire, § 46, 8; 76, 6. Monophysite Encyclical of Basiliscus, § 52, 5. 482. Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno, § 52, 5. Severinus dies, § 76, 6. 484-519. The Thirty-five Years’ Schism between the East and West, § 52, 5. 492-496. Gelasius I., Bishop of Rome, § 46, 8; 47, 22. 496. Battle of Zülpich. Clovis baptized, § 76, 9.

SIXTH CENTURY.

502. Synodus Palmaris, § 46, 8. 517. Council at Epaon, § 76, 5. 527-565. Justinian I., Emperor, § 46, 9; 52, 6. 529. Synods at Oranges and Valence, § 53, 5. Monastic Rule of Benedict of Nursia, § 85. Suppression of the University of Athens, § 42, 4. 533. The Theopaschite Controversy, § 52, 6. Overthrow of the Vandal Empire, § 76, 3. 544. Condemnation of the “Three Chapters,” § 52, 6. 553. Fifth Œcumenical Council at Constantinople, § 52, 6. 554. Overthrow of the Ostrogoth Empire in Italy, § 76, 7. 563. Council at Braga, § 54, 2. St. Columba among the Picts and Scots. § 77, 2. 567. Founding of the Exarchate of Ravenna, § 46, 9. 568. The Longobards under Alboin in Italy, § 76, 8. 589. Council at Toledo under Reccared, § 76, 2. Columbanus and Gallus in the Vosges Country, § 77, 7. 590-604. Gregory I., the Great, § 46, 10; 47, 22. 595. Gregory of Tours dies, § 90, 2. 596. Augustine goes as Missionary to the Anglo-Saxons, § 77, 4. 597. St. Columba dies, § 77, 2. Ethelbert baptized, § 77, 4.

SEVENTH CENTURY.

606. Emperor Phocas recognises the Roman Primacy, § 46, 10. 611-641. Heraclius, Emperor, § 52, 8. 615. Columbanus dies, § 77, 7. 622. Hejira, § 65. 625-638. Honorius I., Pope, § 46, 11. 636. Isidore of Seville dies, § 90, 2. 637. Omar conquers Jerusalem, § 65. 638. Monothelite Ecthesis of Heraclius, § 52, 8. 640. Omar conquers Egypt, § 65. 642-668. Constans II., Emperor, § 52, 8. 646. St. Gallus dies, § 78, 1. 648. The Typus of Constans II., § 52, 8. 649-653. Martin I., Pope, § 46, 11. 649. First Lateran Council under Martin I., § 52, 8. 652. Emmeran at Regensburg, § 78, 2. 657. Constantine of Mananalis, § 71, 1. 662. Maximus Confessor, dies, § 47, 13. 664. Synod at Streoneshalch (Syn. Pharensis), § 77, 6. 668-685. Constantinus Pogonnatus, § 52, 8; 71, 1. 677. Wilfrid among the Frisians, § 78, 3. 678-682. Agatho, Pope, § 46, 11. 680. Sixth Œcumenical Council at Constantinople (Trullanum I.), § 52, 8. 690. Wilibrord among the Frisians, § 78, 3. 692. Concilium Quinisextum (Trullanum II.), § 63, 2. 696. Rupert in Bavaria (Salzburg), § 78, 2.

EIGHTH CENTURY.

711. The Saracens conquer Spain, § 81. 715-731. Pope Gregory II., § 66, 1; 78, 4. 716. Winifrid goes to the Frisians, § 78, 4. 717-741. Leo III., the Isaurian, Emperor, § 66, 1. 718. Winifrid in Rome, § 78, 4. 722. Winifrid in Thuringia and Hesse, § 78, 4. 723. Winifrid a second time at Rome, consecrated Bishop, etc., § 78, 4. 724. Destruction of the Wonder-working Oak at Geismar, § 78, 4. 726. Leo’s First Edict against Image Worship, § 66, 1. 730. Leo’s Second Edict against Image Worship, § 66, 1. 731. Gregory III., Pope, § 66, 1; 78, 4; 82, 1. 732. Boniface, Archbishop and Apostolic Vicar, § 78, 4. Battle at Poitiers, § 81. Separation of Illyria from the Roman See by Leo the Isaurian, § 66, 1. 735. The Venerable Bede dies, § 90, 2. 739. Wilibrord dies, § 78, 3. 741. Charles Martel dies, § 78, 5. Gregory III. dies. Leo the Isaurian dies. 741-752. Pope Zacharias, § 78, 5, 7; 82, 1. 741-775. Constantinus Copronymus, Emperor, § 66, 2. 742. Concilium Germanicum, § 78, 5. 743. Synod at Liptinä, § 78, 5; 86, 2. 744. Synod at Soissons, § 78, 5. 745. Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz, § 78, 5. 752. Childeric III. deposed, Pepin the Short, King, § 78, 5; 82, 1. 754. Iconoclastic Council at Constantinople, § 66, 2. Pepin’s donation to the Chair of St. Peter, § 82, 1. 755. Boniface dies, § 78, 7. Abt. 760. Rule of St. Chrodegang of Metz, § 84, 4. 767. Synod at Gentilliacum, § 91, 2; 92, 1. 768-814. Charlemagne, § 82, 2, 4; 90, 1, etc. 772-795. Pope Hadrian I., § 82, 2. 772. Destruction of Eresburg, § 78, 9. 774. Charlemagne’s donation to the Chair of St. Peter, § 82, 2. 785. Wittekind and Alboin are baptized, § 78, 9. 787. Seventh Œcumenical Council at Nicæa, § 66, 3. Founding of Cloister and Cathedral Schools, § 90, 1. 790. Libri Carolini, § 92, 1. 792. Synod at Regensburg, § 91, 1. 794. General Synod at Frankfort, § 91, 1; 92, 1. 795-816. Leo III., Pope, § 82, 3. 799. Alcuin’s disputation with Felix at Aachen, § 91, 1. 800. Leo III. crowns Charlemagne, § 82, 3.

NINTH CENTURY.

804. End of the Saxon War, § 78, 9. Alcuin dies, § 90, 3. 809. Council at Aachen, on the Filioque, § 91, 2. 813-820. Leo the Armenian, Emperor, § 66, 4. 814-840. Louis the Pious, § 82, 4. 817. Reformation of Monasticism by Benedict of Aniane, § 85, 2. 820-829. Michael Balbus, Emperor, § 66, 4. 825. Synod at Paris against Image Worship, § 92, 1. 826. Theodorus Studita dies, § 66, 4. Ansgar in Denmark, § 80, 1. 827. Establishment of Saracen Sovereignty in Sicily, § 81. 829-842. Theophilus, Emperor, § 66, 4. 833. Founding of the Archbishopric of Hamburg, § 80, 1. 835. Synod at Didenhofen, § 82, 4. 839. Claudius of Turin dies. Agobard of Lyons dies, § 90, 4. 840-877. Charles the Bald, § 90, 1. 842. Feast of Orthodoxy, § 66, 4. Theodora recommends the out-rooting of the Paulicians, § 71, 1. 843. Compact of Verdun, § 82, 5. 844. Eucharist Controversy of Paschasius Radbertus, § 91, 3. 845-882. Hincmar of Rheims, § 83, 2; 90, 5. 847. Archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen, § 80, 1. 848. Synod of Mainz against Gottschalk, § 91, 5. 850-859. Persecution of Christians in Spain, § 81, 1. 851-852. The Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore, § 87, 2, 3. 853. Synod of Quiersy. Capitula Carisiaca, § 91, 5. 855. Synod at Valence in favour of Gottschalk, § 91, 5. 856. Rabanus Maurus dies, § 90, 4. 858-867. Pope Nicholas I., § 82, 7. 858. Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, § 67, 1. 859. Synod of Savonnières, § 91, 5. 861. Methodius goes to the Bulgarians, § 73, 3. 863. Cyril and Methodius go to Moravia, § 79, 2. 865. Ansgar dies, § 80, 1. 866. Encyclical of Photius, § 67, 1. 867-886. Basil the Macedonian, Emperor, § 67, 1. 867-872. Hadrian II., Pope, § 82, 7. 869. Eighth Œcumenical Council of the Latins at Constantinople § 67, 1. 870. Treaty of Mersen, § 82, 5. 871. Basil the Macedonian puts down the Paulicians, § 71, 1. Borziwoi and Ludmilla baptized, § 79, 3. 871-901. Alfred the Great, § 90, 9. 875. John VIII. crowns Charles the Bald Emperor, § 82, 8. 879. Eighth Œcumenical Council of the Greeks at Constantinople, § 67, 1. 886-911. Leo the Philosopher, Emperor, § 67, 2. 891. Photius dies, § 67, 1.

TENTH CENTURY.

910. Abbot Berno founds Clugny, § 98, 1. 911. The German Carolingians die out, § 82, 8. 911-918. Conrad I., King of the Germans. § 96, 1. 914-928. Pope John X., § 96, 1. 919-936. Henry I., King of the Germans, § 96, 1. 934. Henry I. enforced toleration of Christianity in Denmark, § 93, 2. 936-973. Otto I., Emperor, § 96, 1. 942. Odo of Clugny founds the Clugniac Congregation, § 98, 1. 950. Gylas of Hungary baptized, § 93, 8. 955. Olga baptized in Constantinople, § 73, 4. 960. Atto of Vercelli dies, § 100, 2. 962. Founding of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, § 96, 1. 963. Synod at Rome deposes John XII., § 96, 1. 966. Miecislaw of Poland baptized, § 93, 7. 968. Founding of Archbishopric of Magdeburg, § 93, 9. 970. Migration of Paulicians to Thrace, § 71, 1. 973-983. Otto II., Emperor, § 96, 2. 974. Ratherius of Verona dies, § 100, 2. 983-1002. Otto III., Emperor, § 96, 2, 3. 983. Mistewoi destroys all Christian establishments among the Wends, § 93, 9. 987. Hugh Capet is made King of France, § 96, 2. 988. Wladimir Christianizes Russia, § 73, 4. 992-1025. Boleslaw Chrobry of Poland, § 93, 7. 996-999. Pope Gregory V., § 96, 2. 997-1038. Stephen the Saint, § 93, 8. 997. Adalbert of Prague, Apostle of Prussia, dies, § 93, 13. 999-1003. Pope Sylvester II., § 96, 3. 1000. Olaf Tryggvason dies, § 93, 4. Christianity introduced into Iceland and Greenland, § 93, 5. Stephen of Hungary secures the throne, § 93, 8.

ELEVENTH CENTURY.

1002-1024. Henry II., Emperor, § 96, 4. 1008. Olaf Skautkoning of Sweden baptized, § 93, 3. 1009. Bruno martyred, § 93, 13. 1012-1024. Pope Benedict VIII., § 96, 4. 1014-1036. Canute the Great, § 93, 2. 1018. Romuald founds the Camaldulensian Congregation, § 98, 1. 1024-1039. Conrad II., Emperor, § 96, 4. 1030. Olaf the Thick of Norway dies, § 93, 4. 1031. Overthrow of the Ommaides in Spain, § 95, 2. 1039-1056. Henry II., Emperor, § 96, 4, 5. 1041. Treuga Dei, § 105, 1. 1046. Synod at Sutri, § 96, 4. 1049-1054. Pope Leo IX., § 96, 5. 1050. Synods at Rome and Vercelli against Berengar, § 101, 2. 1053. Epistle of Michael Cærularius, § 67, 3. 1054. Excommunication of Greek Church by Papal Legates, § 67, 3. 1056-1106. Henry IV., Emperor, § 96, 6-11. 1059. Pope Nicholas II. assigns the choice of Pope to the College of Cardinals, § 96, 6. 1060. Robert Guiscard founds the Norman Sovereignty in Italy, § 95, 1. 1066. Murder of Gottschalk, King of the Wends, § 93, 9. 1073-1085. Pope Gregory VII., § 96, 7-9. 1075. Gregory’s third Investiture Enactment, § 96, 7. 1077. Henry IV. as a Penitent at Canossa, § 96, 8. 1079. Berengar subscribes at Rome the doctrine of Transubstantiation, § 101, 2. 1086. Bruno of Cologne founds the Carthusian Order, § 98, 2. 1088-1099. Pope Urban II., § 96, 10. 1095. Synod at Clermont, § 94. 1096. First Crusade. Godfrey of Boulogne, § 94, 1. 1098. Synod at Bari. Anselm of Canterbury, § 67, 4. Robert of Citeaux founds the Cistercian Order, § 98, 1. 1099. Conquest of Jerusalem, § 94, 1. 1099-1118. Pope Paschalis II., § 96, 11.

TWELFTH CENTURY.

1106-1125. Henry V., Emperor, § 96, 11. 1106. Michael Psellus dies, § 68, 5. 1109. Anselm of Canterbury dies, § 101, 1, 3. 1113. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, § 98, 1; 102, 3. 1118. Founding of the Order of Knights Templar. Knights of St. John, § 98, 7. Basil, head of Bogomili, sent to the stake, § 71, 4. 1119-1124. Calixtus II., Pope, § 96, 11. 1121. Norbert founds the Præmonstratensian Order, § 98, 2. 1122. Concordat of Worms, § 96, 11. 1123. Ninth Œcumenical Council (First Lateran), § 96, 11. 1124. First Missionary Journey of Otto of Bamberg, § 93, 10. 1126. Peter of Bruys burnt, § 108, 7. 1128. Second Missionary Journey of Otto of Bamberg, § 93, 10. 1130-1143. Pope Innocent II., § 96, 13. 1135. Rupert of Deutz dies, § 102, 8. 1139. Tenth Œcumenical Council (Second Lateran), § 96, 13. 1141. Synod at Sens condemns Abælard’s writings, § 102, 2. Hugo St. Victor dies, § 102, 4. 1142. Abælard dies, § 102, 2. 1143. Founding of the Roman Commune, § 96, 13. 1145-1153. Pope Eugenius III., § 96, 13. 1146. Fall of Edessa, § 94, 2. 1147. Second Crusade. Conrad III. Louis VII., § 94, 2. 1149. Henry of Lausanne dies, § 108, 7. 1150. Decretum Gratiani, § 99, 5. 1152-1190. Frederick I., Barbarossa, § 96, 14. 1153. Bernard of Clairvaux dies, § 102, 3. 1154. Vicelin [Vicelinus] dies, § 93, 9. 1154-1159. Hadrian IV., Pope, § 96, 14. 1155. Arnold of Brescia put to death, § 96, 14. 1156. Peter the Venerable dies, § 98, 1. Founding of Carmelite Order, § 98, 3. 1157. Introduction of Christianity into Finland, § 93, 11. 1159-1181. Pope Alexander III., § 96, 15, 16. 1164. Peter the Lombard dies, § 102, 5. Council of Clarendon, § 96, 16. 1167. Council at Toulouse (Cathari), § 108, 2. 1168. Christianity of the Island of Rügen, § 93, 10. 1169. Gerhoch of Reichersberg dies, § 102, 6, 7. 1170. Thomas Becket murdered, § 96, 16. Founding of the Waldensian sect, § 108, 10. 1176. Battle of Legnano, § 96, 15. 1179. Eleventh Œcumenical Council (Third Lateran), § 96, 15. 1180. John of Salisbury dies, § 102, 9. 1182. Maronites are attached to Rome, § 73, 3. 1184. Meinhart in Livonia, § 93, 12. 1187. Saladin conquers Jerusalem, § 94, 3. 1189. Third Crusade. Frederick Barbarossa, § 94, 3. 1190-1197. Henry VI., Emperor, § 96, 16. 1190. Founding of Order of Teutonic Knights, § 98, 8. 1194. Eustathius of Thessalonica dies, § 68, 5. 1198-1216. Pope Innocent III., § 96, 17, 18.

THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

1202. Joachim of Floris dies, § 108, 5. Founding of Order of the Brothers of the Sword, § 93, 12. Genghis Khan destroys Kingdom of Prester John, § 72, 1. 1204-1261. Latin Empire in Constantinople, § 94, 4. 1207. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, § 96, 18. 1208. Peter of Castelnau slain, § 109, 1. 1209-1229. Albigensian Crusade, § 109, 1. 1209. Council of Paris against Sect of Amalrich of Bena, § 108, 4. 1212. Battle at Tolosa, § 95, 2. 1213. John Lackland receives England as a Papal Fief, § 96, 18. 1215-1250. Frederick II., Emperor, § 96, 17, 19, 20. 1215. Twelfth Œcumenical Council (Fourth Lateran), § 96, 18. 1216. Confirmation of the Dominican Order, § 98, 5. 1216-1227. Pope Honorius III., § 96, 19. 1217. Fourth Crusade. Andrew II. of Hungary, § 94, 4. 1223. Confirmation of Franciscan Order, § 98, 3. 1226. Francis of Assisi dies, § 98, 3. 1226-1270. Louis IX., the Saint, § 94, 6; 93, 15. 1227-1241. Pope Gregory IX., § 96, 19. 1228. Fifth Crusade. Frederick II., § 94, 5. Settlement of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, § 93, 13. 1229. Synod at Toulouse, § 109, 2. 1231. St. Elizabeth dies, § 105, 3. 1232. Inquisition Tribunal set up, § 109, 2. 1233. Conrad of Marburg slain, § 109, 3. 1234. Crusade against Stedingers, § 109, 3. 1237. Union of the Order of Sword with that of Teutonic Knights, § 98, 8. 1243-1254. Pope Innocent IV., § 96, 20. 1245. Thirteenth Œcumenical Council (first of Lyons), § 96, 20. Alexander of Hales died, § 103, 4. 1248. Foundation stone of Cathedral of Cologne laid, § 104, 13. Sixth Crusade, Louis IX., § 94, 6. 1253. Robert Grosseteste dies, § 103, 1. 1254. Condemnation of the “_Introductorius in evangelium æternum_,” § 108, 5. 1260. First Flagellant Campaign in Perugia, § 107, 1. 1260-1282. Michael Paläologus, Emperor, § 67, 4. 1261-1264. Urban IV., Pope, § 96, 20. 1262. Arsenian Schism, § 70, 1. 1268. Conradin on the Scaffold. § 96, 20. 1269. Pragmatic Sanction of Louis IX., § 96, 21. 1270. Seventh Crusade, Louis IX., § 94, 6. 1271-1276. Pope Gregory X., § 96, 21. 1272. Italian Mission to the Mongols. Marco Polo, § 93, 15. David of Augsburg dies, § 103, 10. Bertholdt [Berthold] of Regensburg dies, § 104, 1. 1273-1291. Rudolph of Hapsburg, Emperor, § 96, 21, 22. 1274. Fourteenth Œcumenical Council (second of Lyons), § 96, 21. Thomas Aquinas dies, § 103, 6. Bonaventura dies, § 103, 4. 1275. Strassburg Minster, § 104, 13. 1280. Albert the Great dies, § 103, 5. 1282. Sicilian Vespers, § 96, 22. 1283. Prussia subdued, § 93, 13. 1286. Barhabraeus [Barhebræus] dies, § 72, 2. 1291. Fall of Acre, § 94, 6. John of Montecorvino among the Mongols, § 93, 16. 1294. Roger Bacon dies, § 103, 8. 1294-1303. Boniface VIII., Pope, § 110, 1. 1296. Bull Clericis laicos, § 110, 1. 1300. First Roman Jubilee, § 117. Lollards at Antwerp, § 116, 2. Gerhard Segarelli burnt, § 108, 8.

FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

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