A priest and a devout Catholic, it would be impossible for him to be indifferent to religious truth, as set forth by the Church of Rome; but his conclusions are for the most part those of a philosopher rather than a theologian. He makes a saving clause for theology, but his conclusions show that the bent of his intellect is scientific, whatever his religious creed may be. And in this he differs from Newman. It was his fate to come into antagonism with the ruling powers of the Church to which he owed (and never refused) obedience. He was opposed to the monarchical and centralizing tendencies of Rome. He will be remembered with the champions of liberty in earlier ages, the objects of his admiration whether Catholic or heretical, Grosseteste, Gerson, Sarpi, Bossuet, all those who had maintained the rights of national churches; for Döllinger was, as he called himself, Germanissimus Germanorum,' and it was as a supposed advocate of the national rights of the Church in Germany that he was first looked coldly upon by the Roman Curia. He comes before us as the latest instance to show the world how unchangeable is the principle of the Roman Church, to allow no learning and no government beyond her pale, unless under protest. That so orthodox and pious a divine should have died under ecclesiastical censure is a fresh proof that Rome has abandoned none of her pretensions, and that, if she ever regains her old authority, princes may again have to go to Canossa and enquirers to the stake. A short notice of his life may throw some light upon the character and the studies which are incompatible with the Roman rule of faith, and may be not without instruction in showing the modern tendencies of Catholicism. Joseph Ignatius Döllinger, the son of a well-known physician at Bamberg, entered the priesthood at an early age, and was already at the age of twenty-seven known as a learned theologian. The year 1826 saw his first important work, a dissertation on the Eucharistic doctrine of the first three centuries; and for nearly forty years after this date he was looked upon as the champion of Catholicism in Germany, entering the lists with such antagonists as Ranke himself; but always earning the reputation of a fair-minded disputant, one whose love of truth was as great as his erudition, and who was never led into dishonesty by the exigencies of controversy or the desire to make out a case for the Church. This polemical attitude was forced upon him by his position as a sincere Catholic and a learned man. His natural bent was that of an enquirer, not an apologist; D 2 and and in the course of enquiry he arrived at results which were not in agreement with his earlier works. Thus when he was asked not many years ago to re-edit his book on Church History, published in 1838, he replied that he had learnt so much in the interval that the whole work would have to be rewritten. A progressive character of mind is looked upon with suspicion by ecclesiastics, and accounts for the growing dislike in which he was held at Rome. We cannot regard it as altogether a subject of regret that Döllinger began life in harmony with the Ultramontane party. It is a gain, not a loss, to a historian to be religious; and it may well be that the defensive habit of mind secured him from the extreme views so common in Germany. In the book before us there is little to distinguish the writer from the spirit in which Ranke writes; and there is little doubt that the hostility, which he incurred in connection with the Vatican Council, freed his hands, and showed him that his way of thinking had been throughout his life liberal rather than orthodox, though piety and humility and loyalty to his Church had kept him within the bounds of obedience. This is not the occasion for a review of the whole compass of Dr. von Döllinger's work-we will only say in passing, that his writings, besides their principal function of elucidating history, had from the Catholic point of view a polemical, and from the liberal side a political, bearing. Thus he dealt with the question of mixed marriages, the emancipation of the Jews, the Tractarian movement, the separation of Church and State, as well as the history of the primitive and medieval Church and the Reformation. The volume of Lectures before us, translated from the original (no unworthy tribute to the great scholar's memory) by Miss Margaret Warre, touches on several sides of German history, on some aspects of the medieval Church, and on the influence exercised by Madame de Maintenon upon the Gallican Church. It is the work of a Churchman; but a Churchman who held that the Church has to take as well as to give, and must be willing to learn from philosophers and statesmen. The book is interesting also, as containing Döllinger's latest thoughts on many subjects of importance. We have spoken of the Revolution of 1848 as characteristic of the second age of Döllinger's life. In the term 1848 we include the action of Lamennais, twenty years earlier, as well as that of Montalembert, when the two friends parted company. Döllinger tried to combine the two. In loyalty to the Roman Church he thought with Montalembert; in his desire to free the Church from State interference he agreed with Lamennais, who had had endeavoured in 1830 to gain the assent of Rome to his schemes for Church reform. But he did not yet perceive that Lamennais' action as well as his own was incompatible with the policy of the Curia. Döllinger had no great personal sympathy with Lamennais, whom he distrusted as a fanatic, and possibly disliked as a Frenchman. But he approved Lamennais' principles, the freedom of the Press, of association, and of education, and the doctrine that State and Church ought to be separate and independent, with its corollary, that the Church had suffered in liberty and spirituality whenever (as in France) it had enjoyed State patronage, and that the temporal sovereignty of the Popes was an excrescence and a burden on the Papacy. The twenty years which followed were occupied partly with political life, but much more in that unceasing literary labour to which were devoted nearly twelve hours of every day. Döllinger never professed to be, like his father, a great teacher; but his lectures on Church History were greatly valued by students, and his fame as a historian and his reputation as an ecclesiastical leader increased year by year. Like Ranke, he was well acquainted with the general literature and politics of his time, as is shown, for instance, by his book on The Church and the Churches'; like him, too, he was consulted by sovereigns and statesmen, and regarded as a man of the world as well as a scholar. The breadth and soundness of his culture are borne witness to by his numerous English friends, and especially in some interesting papers by Dr. Plummer of Durham, lately contributed to the Expositor.' Nothing was too minute, nothing too remote for him; and to every subject he brought the same temperate judgment and the same kindly and impartial temper. The years between 1830 and 1860 were among the happiest and most prosperous of Dr. Döllinger's life. His reputation as a scholar was spreading over Europe as well as in Germany. He was the counsellor of princes, and exercised an influence in the affairs of his country. He enjoyed great honour there and held high official positions. He was even dignified at Rome with the title of Monsignore.' A wide correspondence brought him into contact and familiar intercourse with learned men of all countries, among the chief of whom may be mentioned Lord Acton, Dr. Liddon, Bishop Forbes, Dr. Pusey, and Mr. Gladstone. His learning was of that fruitful sort which brings the resources of the whole mind to bear on each point, and which is continually enriching itself from its own stores. * Nos. III., IV., VI., VIII., March, April, June, August, 1890. He He was in harmony with the spirit of the age; and as yet he had no quarrel with the religion in which he had been brought up, and with the Church in which he served as a priest. Meanwhile he was advancing to the conclusions to which the work before us shows that he finally arrived. That the fabric of Papal rule rested in great measure upon legends and forgeries, was shown in the work on 'Papal Fables' published in 1862. Other studies led him to the expression of the belief that the promise of Christ rested with the Church, not with the Papacy; that Popes had erred in matters of faith, had contradicted and anathematized each other; that they had interfered unjustly with the rights of sovereigns and nations; that Councils had been browbeaten and coerced, among them the Council of Trent; that the Papal Curia and the Popes themselves had been corrupted by the possession of temporal power; that the Italianizing of the Church had done mischief; but, above all, that the personal infallibility of the Pope was a dangerous doctrine.* He was coming by degrees to a belief that the Church had something to learn from the Churches, and that unity was to be sought in reunion rather than in the reduction of all dissentients to the Roman obedience. Italian affairs caused him to break silence. He visited Rome in 1857, and saw with his own eyes the Pope's subjection to foreign authority, and the threatened downfall of the temporal power. It was in the ruins of the Colosseum' (says a writer of the Saturday Review' of January 18, 1890), one beautiful moonlight night, that he stated to an intimate friend his settled conviction that great changes were impending, that the days of the temporal power were numbered, and that the Papacy itself would have to undergo very considerable transformation. Not long after, the cannon of Magenta and Solferino proclaimed the downfall of the Austrian domination in Italy, and the removal of the chief hindrance to the political unity of a country in which there could be no room for a body politic constituted like the Papal State.' These views were propounded in a series of Lectures delivered in the Odeon at Munich in 1861. Döllinger was then at the height of his reputation, as the acknowledged leader of Catholicism in Germany; and the Papal Nuncio attended one of the lectures as a compliment to the lecturer. But he did not sit till the end; and from that day Döllinger must have known pretty well what the result of his action was likely to be. When Dr. von Döllinger undertook, in 1863, without license 6 *See Janus, The Pope and the Council,' passim. from from Rome, to call together a Congress of German Catholic divines to consider the affairs of the Church as they affected his country, he must have known that he was taking the bull by the horns; and in such a contest the bull usually has the advantage. So it was in this instance. Pius IX., who had succeeded in destroying the last vestiges of national rituals, and had established Concordats in all Catholic countries, and hierarchies in England, Holland, and America, was not likely to look kindly on a movement which pointed towards the reconstruction of a German national Church. For the present he made no sign; and the Congress on breaking up received the Apostolic blessing. But a few months later* Pius IX. addressed a Brief to the Archbishop of Munich, discouraging the re-assembling of the Congress, and formally pronouncing against the subjection of Church authority to the claims of modern science. In the words of Lord Acton, the Brief affirms that the common opinions and explanations of Catholic divines ought not to yield to the progress of secular science, and that the course of theological knowledge ought to be controlled by the decrees of the Index.' † Direct opposition was as distasteful to Döllinger as to his English friend. But his future course was henceforward marked out. As a writer ‡ in the Allgemeine Zeitung' remarked a year ago, with these lectures began the TeρITÉTELα of Döllinger's life; and we may date from this point of time the commencement of the third or Vatican period of his life, during which his conscience impelled him to stand forth as an opponent of Papal authority in the interests of Church authority. 'From this time' (says the writer already quoted) Döllinger's action belongs to the history of the times.' He did not protest publicly against the Syllabus, but waited till further action should come; though in the meantime he made no secret of his feelings. In the words of Newman in 1837, when treating of the fall of Lamennais, he belonged to a party within the Church at variance with the policy of its present rulers, living upon historical recollections and ancient principles, and rife for insurrection,' § or at least determined to question that policy. His principle, however, was to speak the truth, but not to rebel against lawful authority: and to the end of his life he never questioned the Pope's authority to command. Like Lamennais, he drew a distinction between obedience December 21, 1863. + Home and Foreign Review,' vol. iv. p. 683. Herr E. Kupffer, Zu Döllinger's 90stem Geburtstag. Allgem. Zeitung, February 28, 1889. § Essays Critical and Historical,' Essay III. vol. i. p. 133. and |