Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (28 February
1799 – 14 January 1890), also Doellinger
in English, was a German theologian, Catholic
priest and church historian who rejected the
dogma of papal infallibility. He is considered
an important contributor to the doctrine,
growth and development of the Old Catholic
Church, though he himself never joined that
denomination.
== Early life ==
Born at Bamberg, Bavaria, Döllinger came
from an intellectual family, his grandfather
and father having both been eminent physicians
and professors of medical science; his mother's
family were equally accomplished. Young Döllinger
was first educated in the gymnasium at Würzburg,
and then began to study natural philosophy
at the University of Würzburg, where his
father now held a professorship. In 1817 he
began the study of mental philosophy and philology,
and in 1818 turned to the study of theology,
which he believed to lie beneath every other
science. He particularly devoted himself to
an independent study of ecclesiastical history,
a subject very indifferently taught in Roman
Catholic Germany at that time.
In 1820 he became acquainted with Victor Aimé
Huber (1800–1869), a fact which largely
influenced his life. On April 5, 1822 he was
ordained a Roman Catholic priest for the Diocese
of Bamberg, after studying at Bamberg, and
in 1823 he became professor of ecclesiastical
history and canon law in the lyceum at Aschaffenburg.
He then took his doctoral degree, and in 1826
became professor of theology at the University
of Munich, where he spent the rest of his
life. About this time he brought upon himself
the criticism of Heinrich Heine, who was then
editor of a Munich paper. The unsparing satirist
described the professor's face as the "gloomiest"
in the whole procession of ecclesiastics which
took place on Good Friday.
== Liberal views ==
It has been stated that in his earlier years
Döllinger was a pronounced Ultramontane.
This does not appear to have been altogether
the case; for, very early in his professorial
career at Munich, the Jesuits attacked his
teaching of ecclesiastical history. The celebrated
Adam Möhler pronounced in Döllinger's favour,
after which they became friends. Döllinger
also entered into relations with the well-known
French Liberal Catholic Lamennais, whose views
on the reconciliation of the Roman Catholic
Church with the principles of modern society
(liberalism) and the French Revolution had
aroused much suspicion in Ultramontane, mainly
Jesuit-dominated, circles. In 1832 Lammenais
and his friends Lacordaire and Montalembert,
visited Germany, obtaining considerable sympathy
in their attempts to bring about a modification
of the Roman Catholic attitude to modern problems
and politico-liberal principles.Döllinger
also seems to have regarded favourably the
removal, by the Bavarian government, in 1841,
of Professor Kaiser from his chair, because
he had taught the infallibility of the pope.
Döllinger also saw it as troubling that the
Pope was the head of state of the Papal States.
== Opposition to Protestantism ==
On the other hand, Döllinger published a
treatise in 1838 against mixed marriages,
and in 1843 wrote strongly in favour of requiring
Protestant soldiers to kneel at the consecration
of the Host when compelled officially to be
present at Mass. Moreover, in his works on
The Reformation (3 vols. Regensburg, 1846–1848)
and on Luther (1851, Eng, tr., 1853) he is
very severe on the Protestant leaders, and
he also accepts, in his earlier works, the
Ultramontane view then current on the practical
condition of the Church of England, a view
he later changed. Meanwhile, he had been well
received in England; and he afterwards travelled
in the Netherlands, Belgium and France, acquainting
himself with the condition and prospects of
the Roman Catholic Church. In 1842 he entered
into correspondence with the leaders of the
Tractarian movement in England, and some interesting
letters have been preserved which were exchanged
between him and Edward Pusey, William Ewart
Gladstone and James Hope-Scott. When the last-named
joined the Church of Rome he was warmly congratulated
by Döllinger on the step he had taken.
He regretted the gradual and very natural
trend of his new English allies towards extreme
Ultramontane views, of which Archdeacon, afterwards
Cardinal, Manning ultimately became an enthusiastic
advocate. In 1845, Döllinger was made representative
of his university in the second chamber of
the Bavarian legislature. In 1847, in consequence
of the fall from power of the Abel ministry
in Bavaria, with which he had been in close
relations, he was removed from his professorship
at Munich, but in 1849 he was invited to occupy
the chair of ecclesiastical history. In 1848,
when nearly every throne in Europe was shaken
by the spread of revolutionary sentiments,
he was elected delegate to the national German
assembly at Frankfurt – a sufficient proof
that at this time he was regarded as no mere
narrow and technical theologian, but as a
man of wide and independent views.
== Reference to Judaism ==
"The Jewish people moved in a circle of religious
ideas only part of which were expressed in
its sacred literature," wrote Döllinger.
"Far from being a dead letter in the hands
of a people living in spiritual stagnation,
[the Jews] were instinctually endowed with
the power and the impulse to develop organically
and steadily. Tradition, on the one hand,
and the religious condition of the whole nation,
its whole history, on the other hand, acted
and re-acted vigorously upon each other."
This favorable reference to the vigorous 'spirit'
of Judaism runs counter to more common critiques
of the religion expressed by 19th century
theologians and counter-enlightenment thinkers.
== Views on Papal authority ==
It has been said that Döllinger's change
of attitude to the Papacy dated from the Italian
war in 1859. It is more probable that, like
Robert Grosseteste, he had been attached to
the Papacy as the only centre of authority,
and the only guarantee for public order in
the Church, but that his experience of the
actual working of the papal system (and especially
a visit to Rome in 1857) had to a certain
extent convinced him how his ideal diverged
from the reality. He may also have been unfavourably
impressed with the promulgation by Pope Pius
IX in 1854 of the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception.
Whatever his reasons, he ultimately became
the leader of those who were energetically
opposed to any addition to, or more stringent
definition of, the powers which the Papacy
had possessed for centuries. In some speeches
at Munich in 1861 he outspokenly declared
his view that the maintenance of the Roman
Catholic Church did not depend on the temporal
sovereignty of the pope. His book on The Church
and the Churches (Munich, 1861) dealt to a
certain extent with the same question. In
1863 he invited 100 theologians to meet at
Mechelen and discuss the question which the
liberals Lamennais and Lacordaire had raised
in France, namely, the attitude that should
be assumed by the Roman Catholic Church towards
modern ideas. His address to the assembled
divines was "practically a declaration of
war against the Ultramontane party."
He had spoken boldly in favour of freedom
for the Church in the Frankfurt national assembly
in 1848, but he had found the authorities
of his Church claiming a freedom of a very
different kind from that for which he had
contended. The freedom he claimed for the
Church was freedom to manage her affairs without
the interference of the state; the champions
of the papal monarchy, and notably the Jesuits,
desired freedom in order to put a stop to
the dissemination of liberal ideas and modern
errors. The addresses delivered in the Catholic
congress at Mechelen were a declaration in
the direction of a Liberal solution of the
problem of the relations of Church and State.
Pius IX seemed to hesitate, but there could
be little doubt what course he would pursue,
and after four days' debate the assembly was
closed at his command. On 8 December 1864
Pius IX issued the famous Syllabus Errorum,
in which he declared war against liberalism
and unbridled scientism. It was in connection
with this question that Döllinger published
his Past and Present of Catholic Theology
(1863) and his Universities Past and Present
(Munich, 1867).
== Vatican Council and the Munich conference
==
It was about this time that some of the leading
theologians of the Roman Catholic Church,
wishing to emphasize, as well as to define
more clearly, the authority of the pope, advised
Pius IX to declare papal infallibility a dogma
of the universal Church. Many bishops and
divines considered the proposed definition
a false one. Others, though accepting it as
the truth, declared its promulgation to be
inopportune. The headquarters of the opposition
was Germany, and its leader was Döllinger.
Among his supporters were his intimate friends
Johann Friedrich and J. N. Huber, in Bavaria.
In the rest of Germany, Döllinger was supported
by professors in the Catholic faculty of theology
at Bonn, including the canonist Johann Friedrich
von Schulte, Franz Heinrich Reusch, Joseph
Langen, Joseph Hubert Reinkens, and other
distinguished scholars. In Switzerland, Professor
Eduard Herzog and other learned men supported
the movement.
Early in 1869 the Letters of Janus (which
were at once translated into English; 2nd
ed. Das Papsttum, 1891) began to appear. They
were written by Döllinger in conjunction
with Huber and Friedrich. In these the tendency
of the Syllabus towards obscurantism and papal
despotism, and its incompatibility with modern
thought, were attacked; and the evidence against
papal infallibility, resting, as the Letters
asserted, on the False Decretals, was marshalled
for the Vatican Council (1869–1870).
During the council, which convened on December
8, 1869, the world was informed of proceedings
in the Letters of Quirinus, written by Döllinger
and Huber. Some of these letters appeared
in the German newspapers, and an English translation
was published by Charles Rivington. Augustin
Theiner, the librarian at the Vatican, then
in disgrace with the pope for his outspoken
Liberalism, kept his German friends well informed
of the course of the discussions. The proceedings
of the Council were frequently stormy, and
the opponents of the dogma of infallibility
complained that they were interrupted, and
that endeavours were made to put them down
by clamour. The dogma was at length carried
by an overwhelming majority, and the dissentient
bishops, who – with the exception of two
– had left the council before the final
division, one by one submitted.Döllinger,
however, was not to be silenced. He headed
a protest by forty-four professors in the
University of Munich, and gathered together
a congress at Munich, which met in August
1870 and issued a declaration adverse to the
Vatican decrees. An immense ferment took place.
In Bavaria, where Döllinger's influence was
greatest, the strongest determination to resist
the resolutions of the council prevailed.
But the authority of the council was held
by the archbishop of Munich to be paramount,
and he called upon Döllinger to submit. Instead
of submitting, Döllinger, on March 28, 1871,
addressed a memorable letter to the archbishop,
refusing to subscribe the decrees. They were,
he said, opposed to scripture, to the traditions
of the Church for the first 1000 years, to
historical evidence, to the decrees of the
general councils, and to the existing relations
of the Roman Catholic Church to the state
in every country in the world. "As a Christian,
as a theologian, as an historian, and as a
citizen," he added, "I cannot accept this
doctrine." From the Roman Catholic viewing
point he thereby became an heretic as he clearly
and publicly denied a doctrine proposed by
the Church Magisterium to be divinely revealed
(de fide divina).
== Excommunication and the Old Catholic Church
==
The archbishop replied by excommunicating
the disobedient professor. This aroused fresh
opposition. Döllinger was almost unanimously
elected rector-magnificus of the university
of Munich. Oxford, Edinburgh and Marburg universities
conferred upon him the honorary degree of
doctor of laws and Vienna that of philosophy.
The dissident Bavarian clergy invited Bishop
Loos of the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands,
which for more than 150 years had existed
independent of the Papacy, to administer the
sacrament of Confirmation in Bavaria. The
offer was accepted, and the bishop was received
with triumphal arches and other demonstrations
of joy by a part of the Bavarian Catholics.
The three Dutch Old Catholic bishops declared
themselves ready to consecrate a "non-infallibilist"
bishop for Bavaria, if it were desired. The
momentous question was discussed at a meeting
of the opponents of the Vatican Council's
doctrine, and it was resolved to elect a bishop
and ask the Dutch Old-Order bishops to consecrate
him. Döllinger, however, voted against the
proposition, and withdrew from any further
steps towards the promotion of this movement.
This was the critical moment in the history
of the resistance to the decrees. Had Döllinger,
with his immense reputation as a professor,
as a scholar, as a divine and as a man, allowed
himself to be consecrated bishop of the Old
Catholic Church, it is impossible to say how
wide the schism would have been. But he declined
to initiate a schism. His refusal lost Bavaria
to the movement; and the number of Bavarian
sympathizers was still further reduced when
the seceders, in 1878, allowed their priests
to marry, a decision which Döllinger, as
was known, sincerely regretted. The Old Catholic
Communion, however, was formally constituted,
with Joseph Hubert Reinkens at its head as
bishop, and it still continues to exist in
Germany as a whole and, more marginally, in
Bavaria.
Döllinger's attitude to the new community
was not very clearly defined. It may be difficult
to reconcile the two declarations made by
him at different times: "I do not wish to
join a schismatic society; I am isolated,"
and "As for myself, I consider that I belong
by conviction to the Old Catholic community."
The latter declaration was made some years
after the former, in a letter to Pastor Widmann.
The nearest approach to a reconciliation of
the two statements would appear to be that
while, at his advanced age, he did not wish
to assume the responsibility of being head
of a new denomination, formed in circumstances
of exceptional difficulty, he was unwilling
to condemn those who were ready to hazard
the new departure. "By conviction" he belonged
to the Old Catholics, but he never formally
joined them. Yet at least he was ready to
meet their leaders, to address them, and to
discuss difficult problems with them.
== Reunion conferences ==
His addresses on the reunion of the churches,
delivered at the Bonn Conference of 1872,
show that he was by no means hostile towards
the newly formed Old Catholic communion, in
whose interests these conferences were held.
In 1874 and again in 1875, he presided over
the reunion conferences held at Bonn and attended
by leading ecclesiastics from the British
Isles and from the Oriental non-Roman churches,
among whom were Bishop Christopher Wordsworth
of Lincoln; Bishop Harold Browne of Ely; Lord
Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin; Lycurgus, Greek
Orthodox Archbishop of Syros and Tenos; Canon
Liddon; and the Russian Orthodox professor
Ossmnine of St. Petersburg. At the latter
of these two conferences, when Döllinger
was 76 years of age, he delivered a series
of addresses in German and English in which
he discussed the state of theology on the
continent, the reunion question and the religious
condition of the various countries of Europe
in which the Roman Catholic Church held sway.
Not the least of his achievements on this
occasion was the successful attempt, made
with extraordinary tact, ability, knowledge
and perseverance, to induce the Orientals,
Anglicans and Old Catholics present to accept
a formula of concord drawn from the writings
of the leading theologians of the Greek Church
on the long-vexed question of the procession
of the Holy Spirit.
== Scholarship in retirement ==
This result having been attained, he passed
the rest of his days in retirement, emerging
sometimes from his retreat to give addresses
on theological questions, and also writing,
in conjunction with his friend Reusch, his
last book, Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeiten
in der römisch-katholischen Kirche seit dem
sechszehnten Jahrhundert mit Beiträgen zur
Geschichte und Charakteristik des Jesuitenordens
(Nördlingen, 1889), in which he deals with
the moral theology of St. Alfonso de' Liguori.
He died in Munich at the age of ninety-one.
Even in articulo mortis he refused to receive
the sacraments from the parish priest at the
cost of submission, but the last offices were
performed by his friend Professor Friedrich.
He is buried in the Alter Südfriedhof in
Munich.
In addition to the works referred to in the
foregoing sketch, we may mention:
The Eucharist in the First Three Centuries
(Mainz, 1826)
A Church History (1836, Eng. trans. 1840)
Hippolytus and Callistus (1854, Eng. trans.,
1876)
First Age of Christianity (1860)
Lectures on the Reunion of the Churches
The Vatican Decrees
Studies in European History (tr. M. Warre,
1890)
Miscellaneous Addresses (tr. M. Warre, 1894)
=== Bibliography ===
Georg Denzler / Ernst Ludwig Grasmück (Eds.):
Geschichtlichkeit und Glaube. Zum 100. Todestag
Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllingers (1799–1890).
Munich Erich Wewel Verlag, 1990, ISBN 978-3-87904-173-2
Stefan Leonhardt: "Zwei schlechthin unausgleichbare
Auffassungen des Mittelpunktes der christliche
Religion". Ignaz Döllingers Auseinandersetzung
mit der Reformation, ihrer Lehre und deren
Folgen in seiner ersten Schaffensperiode.
Goettingen Edition Ruprecht, 2nd edition 2008,
ISBN 978-3-7675-7096-2
Life by Johann Friedrich (3 vols. 1899–1901)
Obituary notice in The Times, January 11,
1890
L. von Kobell, Conversations of Dr Döllinger
(tr. by K Gould, 1892)
== Notes ==
== 
References ==
This article incorporates text from a publication
now in the public domain: Lias, John James
(1911). "Döllinger, Johann Joseph Ignaz von".
In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica.
8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
pp. 390–392.
Döllinger, Johann Joseph Ignaz von Heidenthum
und Judentum, Vorhalle zur Geschichte des
Christenthums, page 819 [editor's translation,
for a similar but slightly more archaic translation,
see the Jewish Publication Society of America's
1900 translation of the same passage as quoted
in Moritz Lazarus's Foundations of Jewish
Ethics]
Librett, Jeffrey S. Orientalism and the Figure
of the Jew (Fordham University Press, 2014)
== Further reading ==
Dalberg-Acton, John (1861). "Döllinger's
'History of Christianity'," The Rambler, Vol.
IV, pp. 145–175.
Dalberg-Acton, John (1861). "Döllinger on
the Temporal Power," The Rambler, Vol. VI,
pp. 1–62.
Dalberg-Acton, John (1867). "Döllinger on
Universities," The Chronicle, Vol. XIII, pp.
57–59.
Marshall, Arthur F. (1890). "Dr. Döllinger
and the 'Old Catholics'," The American Catholic
Quarterly Review, Vol. XV, pp. 267–283.
Strauss, Gerald (1975). "Success and Failure
in the German Reformation," Past & Present,
No. 67, pp. 30–63.
Tonsor, S.J. (1959). "Ignaz von Döllinger:
Lord Acton's Mentor," Anglican Theological
Review, Vol. XLI, No. 2, pp. 211–215.
Tonsor, S.J. (1959). "Lord Acton on Döllinger's
Historical Theology," Journal of the History
of Ideas, Vol. XX, pp. 329–352.
== External links ==
Works by Ignaz von Döllinger at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Ignaz von Döllinger at
Internet Archive
Catholic Encyclopedia (partisan but comprehensive)
The Gentile and the Jew in the Courts of the
Temple of Christ by Johann Joseph Ignaz von
Döllinger
Die Papst-Fabeln des Mittelalters by Johann
Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger
