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.
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:
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:
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.
§ 197.15.