Church History Part 14

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 mediaeval mystics, the latter also on the universities of the Middle Ages. _Hergenrother_ of Wurzburg, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sistant 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 doc.u.ments 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 t.i.tle 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, Ma.s.sarelli, was printed by the help of Bishop Strossmayer in an elegant style but abbreviated, and therefore unsatisfactory. Cardinal Angelo _Mai_, as princ.i.p.al Vatican librarian, distinguished himself by his palimpsest studies in old cla.s.sical 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 archaeology, 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.

8. _The Chief Representatives of Exegetical Theology._-_Hug_ of Freiburg, in his "Introduction," occupies the biblical but ecclesiastically lat.i.tudinarian att.i.tude of Jahn. Leaving dogma unattacked and so himself unattacked, _Movers_ of Breslau, best known by his work on the Phnicians, 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 Gorres. 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.

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, Bossuet, and Mohler. In his "_Praelectiones Theologicae_," 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 Germanic.u.m_ 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 s.e.xes. Among theologians of this tendency in German universities we mention next _Denzinger_ of Wurzburg, 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 Guntherism did much to secure its emphatic condemnation.

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, Dollinger and his colleague Haneberg summoned a congress at Munich, which was attended by about a hundred Catholic scholars, mostly theologians. After high ma.s.s, accompanied with the recitation of the Tridentine creed, the four days' conference began with a brilliant presidential address by Dollinger "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 Dollinger 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 a.s.semblies 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 Wurzburg in 1864, but the whole scheme was thus brought to an end.

11. _Theological Journals._-The most severely scientific journal of this century is the Tubingen _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 started in 1877 their _Zeitschrift fur 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.

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 ecclesiae_. _Leo XIII._, on the other hand, in 1879 recommended in the encyclical _aeterni 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, Stockl, 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 circ.u.mstances submitted himself "humbly," being praised for this by the pope as a saint. But a much greater, indeed a really great, service to the doc.u.mentary examination of the history of the Christian church and state has been rendered by the same pope, undoubtedly at the instigation of Cardinal Hergenrother, 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. historiae __ 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 Hergenrother, 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. Lutheranae ex tabulariis S.

Sedis_," Ratisbon, 1883, published by the a.s.sistant 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 Hergenrother 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 princ.i.p.alities, inst.i.tutions, 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 const.i.tution 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, Wurttemberg, 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 va.s.sals of France under the protectorate of Napoleon.

Francis II., who already in 1804 had a.s.sumed the t.i.tle 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.

1. _The Imperial Commission's Decree, 1803._-The significance of this for church history consists not merely in the secularization of the ecclesiastical princ.i.p.alities and corporations, but even still more in the alteration caused thereby in the ecclesiastical polity of the territorial governments. With the ecclesiastical princ.i.p.alities 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. .h.i.therto almost exclusively Protestant, _e.g._ Wurttemberg, 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 una.s.suming and tolerant than ever it has been before or since.

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 chancellors.h.i.+p 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.

3. _The Vienna Congress and the Concordat._-The Vienna Congress of 1814, 1815, had a.s.signed 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 const.i.tution 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 h.o.m.ogeneity 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 const.i.tution 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 princ.i.p.alities 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 mediaeval 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 const.i.tution 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 Wurttemberg in 1857 (-- 196, 6), and with Baden in 1859 (-- 196, 2), as well as for the episcopal convention with Na.s.sau 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.

4. _The Frankfort Parliament and the Wurzburg 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 Wurzburg under the presidency of Archbishop Geissel of Cologne with nineteen episcopal a.s.sistants 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 inst.i.tutions of their own of every kind, etc., and to forward a copy of these decisions to all German governments. The main object of the Wurzburg a.s.sembly 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 G.o.d'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 const.i.tution, 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 a.s.surance 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.

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 circ.u.mscription. The first Prussian amba.s.sador 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, Munster, 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 pa.s.sive a.s.sistance 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 amba.s.sador 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 pa.s.sive a.s.sistance. 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 _a.s.sistentia pa.s.siva_ 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 pa.s.sed 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. Gorres 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 pa.s.s 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 manuvring, going on from victory to victory, raised ultramontanism in Prussia to the very summit of its influence and glory.

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 const.i.tution 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 doc.u.ments"; in Article xviii.: "The right of nomination, proposal, election, and inst.i.tution 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, emanc.i.p.ated itself wholly from the laws of the state, and, on the plea that G.o.d 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.sembling, 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 const.i.tution 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 Wors.h.i.+p, 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 Muhler's ministry, 1862-1872, it obtained absolute authority which it seems to have exercised in removing unfavourable acts and doc.u.ments 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 Na.s.sau in 1866, four new bishoprics, those of Hildesheim, Osnabruck, Fulda and Limburg were added to the previous eight.-Continuation -- 197.

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 h.e.l.l 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 _Nicaenum_ 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 a.s.sured 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.

4. _The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia, 1848-1872._-When the storms of revolution broke out in 1848, the new minister of wors.h.i.+p, _Count Schwerin_, willingly aided in reorganizing the church according to the mind of the ma.s.ses of the people by a const.i.tutional synod. But before it had met the reaction had already set in. The transition ministry of _Ladenberg_ was a.s.sured 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 a.s.sembled at Berlin in 1850, which, independent of the ministry, and only under the king as _praecipuum membrum ecclesiae_, 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 pet.i.tion 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 ent.i.tled. After this the separate Lutheran interest so long highly favoured fell into manifest and growing disfavour. Still the ministerial department of wors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 Muhler_, 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 const.i.tution for the six East Provinces which were still without this inst.i.tution, 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.

5. _The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia, 1872-1880._-After the removal of Von Muhler, the minister of wors.h.i.+p, 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 const.i.tution 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 const.i.tution modified in various important points. Of the three demands of the liberal party now violently insisted upon-(1) Subst.i.tution 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 wors.h.i.+p.

After nearly four weeks' discussion the bill without any serious amendments was pa.s.sed by the a.s.sembly, and on January 20th, 1876, received the royal a.s.sent 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 const.i.tution was submitted to it, in order to advance the movement, approved only the congregational const.i.tution with provisional refusal of everything going beyond that. In May, 1876, the bill already raised by the king into an ecclesiastical law, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed are these: The general synod, whose members undertake to fulfil their duties agreeably to the word of G.o.d 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 a.s.sent, but any measure agreed upon by it cannot be laid before the king for his sanction without the approval of the minister of public wors.h.i.+p. 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 wors.h.i.+p; 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 a.s.sent of the minister of state, and must, if it exceeds four per cent. of the cla.s.s and income tax, be agreed to by the Lower House, which also annually has to determine the expenditure on ecclesiastical administration.

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 wors.h.i.+p 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, Kogel 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 wors.h.i.+p, _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 formulae, 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.(105)

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 a.s.surance in Ca.s.sal, 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 const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution, 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 const.i.tution was introduced in 1869 by the minister Von Muhler, as the basis of a future synodal const.i.tution, 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 inst.i.tution of district or provosts.h.i.+p 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 wors.h.i.+p.

8. _In Hanover_, where especially Lichtenberg, president of the upper consistory, and Uhlhorn, member of the upper consistory (since 1878 abbot of Locc.u.m), 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 const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution. 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. .h.i.therto made throughout the churches at Epiphany for Hermannsburg, and so completely broke off the connection between the state church and the inst.i.tution 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 a.s.surance 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.

9. _In Hesse_ the ministry of Von Muhler sought to bring about a combination of the three consistories of Hanau, Ca.s.sel, and Marburg, as a necessary vehicle for the introduction of a new synodal const.i.tution. In the province itself an agitation was persistently carried on for and against the const.i.tutional 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 pa.s.sed 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 Muhler's overthrow were granted, his successor, Dr. Falk, immediately proceeded in 1873 to set up in Ca.s.sel the court that had been objected to so long. It was const.i.tuted 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 const.i.tution of the Hessian evangelical church, which had been delayed for fourteen years, was resumed. A sketch of a const.i.tution, 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 a.s.sent 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 const.i.tution, 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.

1. _The Kingdom of Saxony._-The present kingdom of Saxony, formerly an electoral princ.i.p.ality, 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 wors.h.i.+p, he fell more and more deeply into hierarchical a.s.sumption and neglect of self-vigilance. When the police in 1837 restricted his nightly a.s.semblies, 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 a.s.sumptions here reached their fullest height; he also gave his l.u.s.ts 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 ecclesias