Schaefer. Catholic Wissenschaft (Article)

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Modern Intellectual History,4,3 (2007), pp. 433462 C 2007Cambridge University Press

doi:10.1017/S1479244307001345 Printed in the United Kingdom

program for a new catholic

wissenschaft: devotionalactivism and catholic modernity

in the nineteenth century

richard schaeferDepartment of History, State University of New York, Plattsburgh

This article seeks to establish a new perspective for understanding Catholic intellectual

history in the German territories during the mid-nineteenth century. By analyzing

scholars efforts to revamp Catholic Wissenschaft in the context of a broader revival

movement, it reveals how both liberals and ultramontanes engaged in a form of

devotional activism which made Catholicism the measure of social action and scholarly

practice alike. Important differences notwithstanding, scholars of all stripes saw their

task as transforming Catholicism into a relevant tool for meeting the needs of the age.

Rooting their efforts in the broader Catholic revival movement in this way, the article

proposes Catholic modernity as a salient category for interpreting the significance oftheir work, and for better integrating it into the broader framework of German history.

A welcome trend in historiography has been the growing interest in the

European Catholic revival of the nineteenth century.1 In contrast with an earlier

tradition that saw Catholic resurgence as only ever reactionary, exciting new

research explores how the revival channeled resurgent popular piety into a

new array of organizations and associations in which both clergy and laity

1 For an introduction to the revival see Nicholas and Frank Tellet Atkin, Priests, Prelates

and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750 (Oxford: Oxford University

Press,2003); Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, eds.,Culture Wars: SecularCatholic

Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);

Austin Ivereigh, ed., The Politics of Religion in an Age of Revival: Studies in Nineteenth-

Century Europe and Latin America(London: Institute for Latin American Studies,2000).

Important review essays include Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Piety and Politics: Recent

Work on German Catholicism, Journal of Modern History 63 (1991), 681716; DavidBlackbourn, The Catholic Church in Europe since the French Revolution: A Review

Article,Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 33 (1991); Caroline Ford,

Religion and Popular Culture in Modern Europe, Journal of Modern History65 (1993),

15275.

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434 richard schaefer

worked together to create a society apart. Such organizations included men and

womens devotional societies, workers associations, reading societies, a popular

press, and political organizations. Together with a new wave of pilgrimages

and processions, these offered innovative ways for undertaking action in the

name of the faith that transcends the idea of revival as simply a traditionalist

movement. For in them, as Jonathan Sperber observes, Catholics used their

received cultural heritage, the means they knew of expression and association,

in order to oppose or to adapt to changes in their social environment . . . Their

resulting actions transformed, often without conscious intent, both social and

political structures and the cultural framework used to interpret them.2 Though

undeniably traditionalist in their self-presentation and self-understanding,

Catholics mobilized tradition using techniques of organization that were

themselves modern. This is important, as Thomas Nipperdey put it, for byadopting the most modern methods, the Church used the peoples support,

organized it and created a democratic-plebiscite basis for the new Catholicism,

despite the overall clericalization of the Church and the large role the clergy

played in many organizations.3 I propose that in thus seeking to create a

functioning counterweight to modern secular society, Catholics engaged in

what can productively be referred to as devotional activism. Building on Emmet

Larkins description of the devotional revolution that transformed the great

mass of Irish people into practicing Catholics, I usedevotional activism to referto the particular combination of piety and politics that defined the nineteenth-

century revival.4

I introduce the idea of devotional activism here in the hope that it might

help us better understand how German Catholic scholars sought to revitalize

CatholicWissenschaft in the nineteenth century.5 For this seems a promising

way of capturing the complexity and irony of a Catholic position that was in

2 Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany(Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1984),1.3 Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 18001866 (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1996),365.4 Emmett Larkin, The Devotional Revolution in Ireland,American Historical Review139

(1972). See also David Blackbourn, Progress and Piety: Liberals, Catholics and the State

in Bismarcks Germany, in Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History

(London: Allen and Unwin,1987),14376.5 Wissenschaft is best translated as scholarship rather than science, which in English

usage too narrowly connotes natural science. Since Wissenschaft des Judenthumshasbeen irrevocably translated as science of Judaism and Wissenschaftsystemas scientific

system, however, I have decided to minimize confusion by referring throughout the

article to Catholic Wissenschaft. I will use scholarship when speaking broadly about

academic work and knowledge, and science when speaking about the natural sciences.


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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 435

its own way as innovative and modern as the modern position it so severely

criticized. To capture this dimension of Catholic thought it is not enough to

sketch the different schools of theology or the work of major figures. 6 Instead,

one must look at how efforts to reconstruct CatholicWissenschaft were deeply

rooted in the broader revival movement. Aimed at creating a Catholic subculture

cut off from the mainstream, devotional activism saw in Catholicism a viable

alternative to secular society. Whether aimed at improving the condition of

workers or coordinating the Catholic press, however, devotional activism saw

Catholics pattern their response after secular models. The irony was that by

molding to the circumstances and arguments cast by opponents, even the most

rigid critics were forced into a kind of self-justification that, if it was not exactly

self-critical in the most rigorous sense, entailed wrestling with ones assumptions

in ways that had consequences.With very few exceptions, German Catholic scholars rejected modern ways of

thinkingasdetrimentaltothefaith.Nevertheless,whenwemovefromthecontent

of what they said about Kantian philosophy, historical criticism, or scientific

materialism, to an analysis of their mode of critique seen as a kind of devotional

activism, it is possible to evaluate their work as much more than a negative

gesture. Distinguishing itself from earlier categories ofchristliche Wissenschaften

andkirchliche Wissenschaften, Catholic Wissenschaftserved as a new rubric for

expressing scholars desire to build on the momentum of the revival, influencecurrent events, and become agents of a Catholic public sphere.7 Transcending

the liberal/ultramontane divide, at least in its initial stages, CatholicWissenschaft

was a discourse that enabled scholars of all stripes to make Catholicism relevant

to solving pressing problems. To see how, I will attempt to sketch (in a somewhat

overly schematic fashion) the conditions of articulationor rules immanent to

practicestructuring the phases of its articulation:8 a nascent phase when schol-

ars laid the foundation for a confessional scholarly identity, an emergent phase

during which CatholicWissenschaftwas articulated in tandem with new kinds of

devotional activism, and a final phase during which scholars debated the implic-

ations of CatholicWissenschaftas an agenda in the face of Roman opposition.

6 Ludwig Lenhart,Die erste Mainzer Theologenschule des19. Jahrhunderts18051830(Mainz:

Schmidt, 1956); Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest

for a Unitary Method(New York: Seabury Press, 1977); Thomas F. OMeara, Romantic

Idealism and Roman Catholicism: Schelling and the Theologians(Notre Dame: University

of Notre Dame Press, 1982). Thomas F. OMeara,Church and Culture: German CatholicTheology, 18601914(Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).

7 Jurgen Habermas,The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a

Category of Bourgeois Society(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1989).8 Michel Foucault,The Archaeology of Knowledge(London: Tavistock Publications, 1972).


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Responding to real needs and real circumstances within Catholicism, the

Church and the Germanies, Catholic Wissenschaft can be interpreted as an

instance of what I tentatively dub Catholic modernity. By modernity, I am not

referring to the assumption typically associated with modernization theory

of a steadily and linearly progressing, society-wide march toward ever greater

forms of rationality.9 On the contrary, by modernity I mean a way of living with

the transient, the fleeting, the contingent.10 Characterized by an intensive

reflexivity, what S. N. Eisenstadt describes as living with an awareness of the

possibility of multiple visions that . . . [can] be contested,11 modernity requires

that all assertions of authority and identity supply their own justification.12 It

thus means abiding the fact that life can always be different. At first glance, of

course, Catholics might seem excluded from this kind of intensive self-reflexivity

precisely by their explicit rejection of modern ideas and forms of life. However,when we consider the ways Catholics met the challenges of the ageas devotional

activismit is clear that opposition to modern secular society did not exclude

them from an experience of modernity. For what is clear is that, in responding to

the challenge of mass politics, public education, workers rights, and indeed the

challenge of science and scholarship, Catholics took stock of their faith, applied

it, and transformed Catholicism into a timely and relevant resource for creating

a distinctly modern identity. This played no small part, as Raymond Grew and

Margaret Anderson have both argued, in shaping the history of democraticfreedom by fueling a conflict in which both parties were forced to adapt to

circumstances.13 The fact that Catholics did not see their conflicts as a process of

adaptation should not prevent us from examining how they played a distinctive

part in shaping the modern world.14

9 Jonathan Sperber, Kirchengeschichte or the Social and Cultural History of Religion?,

Neue Politische Literatur43

(1998

),13

35

,15

.10 Originating in Baudelaires essay on painting in modern life, this formulation has entered

historical studies in particular through Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air:

The Experience of Modernity(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982).11 S. N. Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities, in S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., Multiple Modernities

(New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002),129,4.12 Jurgen Habermas,The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures(Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press,1987).13 Margaret Lavinia Anderson, The Divisionsof thePope: The CatholicRevival and Europes

Transition to Democracy, in Austin Ivereigh, ed., The Politics of Religion in an Age of

Revival: Studies in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Latin America(London: Institute forLatin-American Studies,2000),2242.

14 Raymond Grew, Liberty and the Catholic Church in Nineteenth-Century Europe, in

Richard Helmstadter, ed., Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century (Stanford:

Stanford University Press,1997),196232,197.


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the first phase: german scholars and the structural

transformation of the church, 1815--40

CatholicWissenschaftemerged against the background of the transformation

of the Church from an organization based on territorial sovereignty to one basedon popular support.15 This transformation had its roots in the trend of absolutist

states to exert greater control over ecclesiastical affairs, but was precipitated more

directly by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. The dissolution

of the Imperial Church, the secularizations of 1803, and the imprisonment of

Pius VI seriously weakened the Church materially and spiritually, and curbed its

formal influence in politics. Though religion was considered a key part of the

Restoration program concluded at the Congress of Vienna, no serious effort was

made to restore the Church to its previous position or make good its territoriallosses. After 1815 the Pope was forced to accept a diminished role in European

politics and to rely on major powers such as Austria and France for the integrity

of the Papal States. So entwined did the Church seem with its status as a sovereign

power that many observers predicted the dissolution of the Church as inevitable,

should the Pope lose the remaining Papal States. Such predictions proved false,

of course. For in proportion to its political decline, the Church exerted itself

more forcefully in the areas of family, faith, and morals. Its losses were thus offset

by definite gains in the Churchs influence in the lives of Catholics. The direct

result of giving up power to secular states was that the papacy came gradually

to de-emphasize doctrine that had specific, controversial implications for state

policy. Instead, Rome increased emphasis on the faith and morals of Catholic

individuals and families as the basis of its religious authority. This, in turn,

altered the means by which the papacy asserted ideological dominance over

other parts of the Church.16 Such means included mobilizing Catholic popular

opinion against hostile states, fund-raising (Peters pence), and asserting control

over communication as the Vatican learned to take an active interest in public

opinion.17 By filling the void left by the decline in its temporal power, the papacybecame an agent of ideological Catholicism. In so doing, as Marvin OConnell

15 For an excellent treatment of this transformation in conjunction with Belgian Catholicism

see Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX (18311859):

Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in19th-Century Europe(Brussels: Belgian Historical

Institute of Rome,2001).16 Gene Burns, The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World

(Berkeley: University of California Press,1992),17.17 Vincent Viaene, The Roman Question, Catholic Mobilisation and Papal Diplomacy, in

Emiel Lamberts, ed.,The Black International(Brussels: Brepols,2002),13577.


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notes, Pius IX was more a modern leader than he knew or than he has been

given credit for.18

Between roughly1815 and 1869, GermanCatholic scholars rethought thenature

of CatholicWissenschaftin a way that is intelligible, in part, as a response to these

deeper structural changes in the Church. This is reflected above all in the way they

claimed a special role in shaping public opinion. For the Tubingen theologian

Johann Sebastien Drey,

there must be an analogue to what in the state is called public opinion, and since in the

Church this cannot be anything other than the position of the public teacher and writer,

so must an introduction to Church government also give rules on how the Church will

preserve this instrument and what its true position toward it is.19

This view was echoed by Johann Duttlinger, who contrasted those whoseeducation and knowledge challenges and equips them to reflect on Church

matters, with the masses who blindly followed the habit of the faith, and

those who were indifferent to it altogether.20 Of course, such openness to self-

reflection stands in stark contrast to the view of Joseph de Maistre, who held

that the Catholic faith has no need . . . (and this is its principal characteristic,

which has not been sufficiently remarked), to return upon itself, to interrogate

itself with regard to its belief, and to ask itself why it believes . . .21 De Maistres

conviction that the papacy alone could and should command public opinionhelps underscore the different situation of German scholars. Certainly one can

identifyimportantandparalleleffortstobetterintegrateCatholiclifeandlearning

in other areas of Europe, perhaps the most notable being Richard Simpson and

Lord Acton, who, through the The Ramblerand later the Home and Foreign

Review, routinely challenged English Catholics to think about scholarly issues.22

The same, of course, is true of Felicite de Lamennais and his journal LAvenir.

Such parallels notwithstanding, however, German scholars capitalized on the

structural transformation of the Church in a much more comprehensive way,

18 Marvin R. OConnell, Ultramontanism and Dupanloup: The Compromise of 1865,

Church History53(1984),20017,200.19 Johann Sebastian Drey,Kurze Einleitung in das Studium der Theologie, mit Ruecksicht auf

den wissenschaftlichen Standpunct und das katholische System(Tuebingen: Minerva,1819),

239. This and all subsequent translations are my own.20 Johann Georg Duttlinger,Denkschrift fur die Aufhebung des den katholischen Geistlichen

vorgeschriebenen Colibates(Freiburg im Breisgau: Wagner, 1828),3.21

Originally published in 1819 as Du Pape, I citefrom Joseph de Maistre, The Pope, Consideredin his Relations with the Church, Temporal Sovereignties, Separated Churches, and the Cause

of Civilization, trans. Aeneas Dawson (New York: Fertig,1850),5.22 A student of Dollingers in Munich, Acton followed with great interest the situation of

Catholic scholarship in Germany.


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as a new space to imagine different visions of Catholic renewal and to fashion

themselves into leaders of public opinion.23

ThereformofCatholic Wissenschafthadasmuchtodowiththeintellectualand

cultural situation in the Germanies as it did with the structural transformation of

the Church. The university was by its very nature the culture-defining institution

in the Germanies, and the majority of reformers were university men from

centers such as Munich, Mainz, Wurzburg, and Freiburg, though some non-

academics contributed as well, especially as debates over education drew in

teachers, journalists, and politicians.24 Overwhelmingly affiliated with Catholic

institutions, Catholic scholars wrote for Catholic audiences and published in

Catholic journals.25 Highly cognizant of developments outside Catholic circles,

they were fundamentallyambivalent about their status, however, both celebrating

andlamenting their distance from themainstream.This ambivalence is illustratedby the case of Georg Hermes, professor of theology and philosophy at the

University of Bonn. Hermes borrowed liberally from contemporary German

philosophy, including Kant and Fichte, whose method of absolute doubt he

considered indispensable to pursuing the most important questions. Only by

doubting his own Catholicism in a similar way did he feel able to put belief

on an indisputable footing.26 He was not alone in his interest in contemporary

philosophy. Johann Michael Sailer, Anton Gunther, Carl J. H. Windischmann,

and Johann Adam Mohler all borrowed from non-Catholic counterparts, such asKant, Hegel, and, of course, Schleiermacher. What needs to be stressed, however,

is how such borrowing was driven by a desire to defeat modern thought on its

23 Important comparative work on Catholic scholars elsewhere remains to be done.

Stimulating research in English and French Catholicism includes Josef L. Altholz,

The Liberal Catholic Movement in England: The Rambler and its Contributors 1848

1864 (London: Burns and Oates, 1962); Claude Langlois and Francois Laplanche, LaScience catholique: LEncyclopedie theologique de Migne (18441873), entre apologetique

et vulgarisation(Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1992).24 Almost all held the doctors degree and the majority were priests, though this seems

not to have made a discernable difference in their views. Between 1838 and 1923 the

Historisch politische Blatterfur das katholischeDeutschlandpublished 12,256 articles. Where

authorship can be established, it is possible to determine a total of1,090authors, 581 of

whom were clerics, and 454of whom were laypersons. The journal had twenty women

contributors, but only after 1900. Dieter Albrecht and Bernhard Weber,Die Mitarbeiter

der Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische Deutschland18381923. Ein Verzeichnis

(Mainz: Grunewald, 1990).25 For reasons of space, I confine myself to the simplest biographical details when discussing

most scholars. For more details, readers are encouraged to consult the online Biographisch-

Bibliographisches Kirchenlexicon(www.bautz.de) edited by Bautz.26 Georg Hermes,Einleitung in die christkatholische Theologie(Muenster: Minerva, 1819).


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own terms, not by a desire to make common cause against revealed religion.27

Thus Sailer was inspired to offer a critique of reason for people as they really are,

and Windischmann was motivated to attack Hegels philosophy of consciousness

through a critique of the shallowness of contemporary philosophical language.28

A distinct narrowing of the possibilities for such exchanges was signaled by

the condemnation of Hermess works in 1835.29 This had a decisive impact on the

nascent phase of CatholicWissenschaft, as scholars sought to distance themselves

from any perception that they might be directly influenced by secular scholarship.

Nowhere was this more evident than in their rejection of the Enlightenment, a

movement that had afforded rich possibilities for Catholic renewal and even

shaped a distinct Catholic Enlightenment.30 In the wake of the Hermes affair,

Catholic scholarsalmost exclusively rejected Enlightenment thought as thesource

of egotism and revolution.31 All the same, a distinct pattern of differentiatingtrue from falseAufklarungbetrayed a deeper ambivalence. Thus the Gieen

professor of theology Friedrich Hartnagel called true Enlightenment being

free of false cognition, confusion, and error, and false Enlightenment a purely

formaloppositionofthesubjectivemind.32 Similarly, Peter Volkmuth described

Enlightenment, in the real sense of the word, as raising the subjective principle

of clear concepts to the criterion of objective truth. False Enlightenment,

27 Thus I have reservations about OMearas claim that Catholic thinkers were interested

in a transcendental (in the sense of Kant) analysis of subjectivity as . . . their point of

departure. Baader, Gorres, and others never truly embraced the idealist synthesis of

consciousness with reality in the generative act of subjectivity. It was never a serious

alternative to the dominant understanding of the active intellect in Catholic theology.

OMeara,Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism,14.28 Johann Michael Sailer, Vernunftlehre fur Menschen wie sie sind, d.i. Anleitung zur

Erkenntniss und Liebe der Wahrheit, 2nd edn (Munchen: Strobel Verlag, 1795). C. J. H.

Windischmann, Uber Etwas, das der Heilkunst Noth thut. Eine Versuch zur Vereinigungdieser Kunst mit der christlichen Philosophie(Leipzig: Cnobloch Verlag,1824).

29 Christoph Weber, Aufklarung und Orthodoxie im Mittelrhein 18201850, ed. Anton

Rauscher (Munchen: Schoningh,1973).30 T. C. W. Blanning, The Enlightenment in Catholic Germany, in Roy Porter and Mikulas

Teich, eds., The Enlightenment in National Context(Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1981). Sebastian Merkle, Die katholische Beurteilung des Aufklaerungszeitalters,

in Theobald Freudenberger, ed.Ausgewaehlte Reden und Aufsaetze(Wurzburg: Ferdinand

Schoningh Verlag, 1965). Helmut Zander, Katholische Aufklarung Aufklarung im

katholischen Deutschland,Zeitschrift fuer Kirchengeschichte100(1989),2319.31

Franz Anton Staudenmaier, Der Protestantismus in seinemWesen undin seinerEntwicklung(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,1846).

32 Friedrich Hartnagel, Aufklarung, in Heinrich Joseph Wetzer and Benedikt von

Welte, eds., Kirchen-Lexikon, oder Encyklopadie der katholischen Theologie und ihrer

Hilfswissenschaften(Freiburg: Herder, 1857),51011.


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by contrast, was a subjective, one-sided deportment that led to reality-less

generalities.33 Differentiating between true and false Enlightenment in this way

helped scholars disavow secular influence. But it also helped them appropriate

key concepts of modern secular thought by emptying them of their dangerous

content and redeploying them in the name of true progress, true education,

andtrue science.34 Farfrom being ad hoc, this pattern of differentiating between

true and false variants of the chief concepts of secular rationalism was crucial

in shaping the larger discourse of Catholic Wissenschaftas a way for scholars to

vouchsafe their work as both scholarly and Catholic.

Another source of ambivalence affecting efforts to reformulate Catholic

Wissenschaftduring this period was the rising tide of cultural nationalism that

asserted the Protestant character of modern German culture.35 Against the

background of the Wars of Liberation, Fichtes Addresses to the German Nation,and the Wartburgfest, the intersection of Protestant and German helped

define the nation in ways that seemed to exclude Catholics. Karl von Altensteins

famous distinctionThe Prussian state is a Protestant state and has over one

third of Catholic subjectswas an explicit statement on the deep influence

of confession on the political realities of the day.36 Hegels observation that

the the World Spirit . . . is the Principle of the North and, from a religious

perspective, of Protestantism was likewise emblematic of the powerful tendency

towards cultural Protestantism (Kulturprotestantismus) in scholarship.37

Itssecular orientation notwithstanding, much modern philosophy self-consciously

claimed continuity with Protestantism, inspiring and being inspired by changes

in liberal Protestantism, and seeking in itself to be a reinterpretation and

33 Peter Volkmuth, Aufklarung, in Joseph Aschbach, ed.,Allgemeines Kirchen-Lexikon oder

alphabetisch geordnete Darstellung desWissenswuerdigstenaus dergesammten Theologieund

ihren Huelfswissenschaften(Frankfurt a.M.: Andreaeischen Buchhandlung,1846),389.34

Richard Schaefer, Thoughts on the Founding of a Catholic Science: Science, Society andthe Syllabus of Errors in German Catholicism, 18201869, Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell

University,2005.35 Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology,

Politics,18701914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress,1995); David Blackbourn, The

Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany,17801918(New York: Oxford University

Press,1998); Nipperdey,Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck.36 Quoted in Wolfgang Altgeld, German Catholics, in Rainer Liedtke and Stephen

Wendehorst, eds., The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and

the Nation State in Nineteenth-Century Europe(Manchester: Manchester University Press,

1999),10021,105.37 Quoted in Heribert Raab, Katholische Wissenschaft. Ein Postulat und seine Variationen

in der Wissenschafts- und Bildungspolitik deutscher Katholiken waehrend des 19.

Jahrhunderts, in Anton Rauscher, ed., Katholizismus, Bildung und Wissenschaft im 19.

und20. Jahrhundert(Munchen: Ferdinand Schoningh Verlag,1987),6191,64.


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revitalization of the Christian religion.38 Often seen as compensating for the

belatedness of the German nation state, cultural nationalism can be seen as

responding to Romanticisms failure to submerge confessional differences in

a pan-German Christianity and thus ease the confessional tensions impeding

national unity.39 Here it is important to remember that many Romantics, though

keen to embrace the Catholic culture of the Middle Ages, were just as keen to

sublate real confessional differences to some higher, if vague, religiosity. For

Catholics, of course, Romanticism idealized a Catholic past that was out of step

with the Catholicism of the present. While the celebration of national origins

might inspire broad support for completing the Cologne cathedral as a national

landmark,40 Catholics could not easily forget the still recent secularization of

Church land and other property.41 Thus Johann Duttlinger decried those new-

moded, romantic-poetic Catholics and friends of Catholicism who celebrateonly some of the outward forms and poetry of the faith. In this context, a

deeply divisive struggle over culture centered on which older cultural facts and

points of orientation the nation should take up, and which it should exclude.42

The struggle over German culture fostered the desire for a more radically

Catholic Wissenschaft, as Catholic scholarsattemptedto discredit Protestantism

by showing how it was responsible for an array of contemporary problems,

from revolution to moral indifference.43 Constructing a genealogy of Protestant

reason whose prehistory included Greek philosophy, and whose effects includedthe Enlightenment, materialism, and modern liberalism, scholars tended almost

inevitably to focus on a set of alleged problems associated with subjectivism.

Repeatedly, subjectivism was seen as the conduit through which Protestant

theology shaped modern life and thought. For the Munich philosopher Franz

von Baader, Protestant subjectivism was the principle of revolution: because

the reformers thought to settle . . . [quarrels] radically, they

38 Nipperdey,Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck,357.39 Helmuth Plessner, Die verspatete Nation; uber die politische Verfuhrbarkeit burgerlichen

Geistes,2. erweiterte Aufl. (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1959).40 Thomas Nipperdey, Der Kolner Dom als Nationaldenkmal, in Otto Dann, ed.,Religion

Kunst Vaterland: das Kolner Dom im 19. Jahrhundert(Cologne: Bachem,1983).41 Duttlinger,Denkschrift fur die Aufhebung.42 Wolfgang Altgeld, Religion, Denomination and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century

Germany, in Helmut Walser Smith, ed., Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany,1800

1914(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),567. For more on this intra-confessonalconflict see Olaf Blaschke, Das 19. Jahrhundert: Ein zweites Konfessionelles Zeitalter?,

Geschichte und Gesellschaft26(2000).43 The classic text tracing the rise of moral indifference was Felicite de LamennaissEssai sur

lindifference, published in 1817.


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Fathers of the First Three Centuries. An exceptionally gifted young scholar, Mohler

taught church history at Tubingen, where circumstances had brought rival

Catholic and Protestant theological faculties together in one university in 1817.

As part of a historic exchange on the nature of confessional differences, Mohler

contrasted the community of believers united through the Catholic principle

with the subjectivist impulse in Protestantism and modern philosophy.49 He

argued that the Protestant and the modern philosopher failed to grasp the truth

of Christianity precisely because they set out to learn this truth according to

concepts and other instruments of the understanding alone. By setting out to

[g]rasp it in a[n] . . . egoistic manner, they thus behaved as though Christianity

required renewal in every individual in and through a rational act. The Catholic,

by contrast, knows himself to be a part of a community of Spirit, which shapes

life and knowledge in a comprehensive way. Catholics do not feel compelled toreinvent revelation anew, but to testify to it, acknowledging its pre-rational hold

on them through tradition and the life of the community. The Catholic scholar

enters into study with a Christian consciousness, since the Catholic does not wish to cease

to be a Christian during study, nor could a Catholic do so, since the individual Christian

consciousness so grows up with its essence that it would cease to be what it is . . . The true

Christianthe Catholicundertakes study in a way that affirms the prior activity of the

Spirit through the community.50

Seen in terms of the struggle to define German culture and the nation,

the articulation of a Catholic principle was a crucial means of converting

contemporary concerns into a Catholic idiom. It was the nodal point of what,

in Foucaldian terms, might be termed a system of dispersion enabling the

appearance, collation, and correlation of Catholic objects.51 It was thus a crux

for defining Catholic life, Catholic philosophy, and CatholicWissenschaft,

as distinct alternatives to their Protestant and secular counterparts. Mohler

himself used this crux to analyze the symbolic differences between Catholicism

and Protestantism in his next major work,Symbolism.52 Focusing on breviaries,hymnals, popular catechisms, and other works in which the public faith is

expressed, Mohler underscored how such texts were public facts through which

fundamental theology exerted a tremendous influence on German national life.

49 Originally published in 1825, I cite from Johann Adam Mohler and Josef Rupert

Geiselmann, Die Einheit in der Kirche; oder das Prinzip des Katholicismus, dargestellt im

geiste der kirchenvater der drei ersten jahrhunderte(Koln: Hegner,1957),12.50

Ibid.65.51 Foucault,The Archaeology of Knowledge.52 Johann Adam Mohler, Symbolik, oder Darstellung der dogmatischen Gegensatze der

Katholiken und Protestanten, nach ihren oeffentlichen Bekenntnissschriften(Mainz: Kupfer,

1832).


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Similarly, the anonymous Catholic Europe, or Preservation, Progress, Peace and

Freedom offered a comprehensive analysis of the social, cultural, and political

fissures in European society, discriminating between confessional attitudes

towards questions ranging from the press to literature, from the customs union

to railroads. In the same vein, the aging Ignaz Wessenberg also wrote a series

of works on education, the theatre, and modern novels. A determined reformer

who had sought to maximize the position of German Catholics during both

the secularizations of 1803 and the Congress of Vienna, Wessenberg outlined

Catholicisms contribution to cultural progress.53 What these and other works

sought to demonstrate was that Catholicism was not at a loss for how to cope

with modern life, but capable of supplying its own competing programme for

the management of rapid social and political change.54

Catholics were not alone in their desire to use Wissenschaftas a ticket toculture, of course. In his On the Concept of aWissenschaft des Judenthums,

Immanuel Wolf called the basic principle of Judaism the idea of unconditional

unity in the universe.55 Too abstract to have been grasped at the time of

revelation, it could only be retrospectively grasped by its effects. Jewish scholars

should therefore set themselves the task of tracing the influence of this Jewish

principle on such historical phenomena as the Roman Empire and Christianity.

Like Catholic scholars, then, Jewish scholars struggled to use scholarship as a

way of legitimating Jewish culture by showing its formative role in history. Butwhile Catholic Wissenschaft saw in fervent devotion and piety a sure sign of

renewal, the Science of Judaism strove to free itself from the perceived yoke

of ritual and tradition. And while Catholic Wissenschaftdeveloped as a critique

of secular scholarship, the Science of Judaism saw modern scholarly methods

as a way of distilling essentials from the sediment of tradition. Wolf stressed

how the Mosaic theocracy and the rituals governing Jewish life had obscured

Judaisms vital principle under a sleepy lethargy. Only when one applied the

free scholarly sense to the mechanical and thoughtless ceremonials resulting

from thousands of years of habit might it be possible to rehabilitate Judaism

according to its basic principle of unconditional unity.56

the second phase: devotional activism in the 1840s

53 Ignaz Heinrich Karl Wessenberg, Uber die Vorstellungen vom Fortschreiten in der

Kultur, in idem,Betrachtungen uber die wichtigsten Gegenstaende im Bildungsgange der

Menschheit(Aarau: Sauerlaender,1836).54 Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, Introduction, inidem,Culture Wars,12.55 Immanuel Wolf, Uber den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums, Zeitschrift fur

die Wissenschaft des Judenthums1(1823),124,3.56 Ibid.1416.


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The polemic against Protestant subjectivism and the articulation of a Catholic

principle were crucial in powering the drive to revamp Catholic Wissenschaft,

but are best seen as enabling conditions. The immediate impetus for this

campaignwhat has been insufficiently attended to in all intellectual histories

of the periodwas the transformation of German Catholicism into a social

and political force in the 1840s. This transformation began in 1837, when the

Archbishop of Cologne was arrested for opposing the Prussian government

on the issue of mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants. Known

as the Cologne Troubles, the event gave rise to demonstrations and helped

foster a new militant Catholic identity.57 By the 1840s surging popular piety

and a readiness to engage in Catholic activism helped shape this militancy

into a movement.58 With the founding of the Borromaus Vereine (1844), the

Pius Vereine(1848), and theKolping Vereine(1849), Catholics lay the foundationfor an associational infrastructure typically referred to as the Catholic milieu.59

Catholic participation in the Frankfurt Parliament gave voice to an emerging

Catholic politics, and the first Meeting of Catholic Societies (Katholikentag)

provided a forum for discussing issues affecting Catholics across the German

territories.60 Non-Catholic contemporaries were some of the first to take note

of these developments. Wilhelm Riehl, for example, contrasted Protestants who

considered how. . . one could make the least dangerous compromises with the

spirit of the times with Catholics, who asked how the Church might bestcapitalize on the compromises of the age.61 And Johann Neigebaur warned that

Catholicisms drive to self-preservation would lead it to forge new and more

powerful weapons.62

It is woefully inadequate to see in these developments an expression of Catholic

backwardness, as so many did.63 The salient fact is that Catholics saw in

57 Friedrich Keinemann,Das Kolner Ereigniss: sein Wiederhall in der Rheinprovinz und in

Westfalen(Muenster: Schoningh,1974).58 Karl Buchheim,Ultramontanismus und Demokratie; der Weg der deutschen Katholiken im

19. Jahrhundert(Munchen: Kosel-Verlag,1963).59 Olaf Blaschke and Frank-Michael Kuhlemann, Religion im Kaiserreich: Milieus,

Mentalitaten, Krisen(Gutersloh: Kaiser/Gutersloher Verlagshaus,1996).60 For a good account of trends in Catholicism in the Rhineland during the Vormarzsee

Weber,Aufklarung und Orthodoxie.61 Wilhelm Riehl,Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage einer deutschen Social-Politik,

2vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1855),2.62 J. F. Neigebaur, Der Papst und sein Reich, oder die weltliche und geistliche Macht des heiligen

Stuhls,2nd edn (Leipzig: Verlagsbureau, 1848).63 A tendency to paint all Catholics as part of the religious right mars Dagmar Herzogs

otherwise brilliant treatment of Badenese politics in the 1840s. Dagmar Herzog,Intimacy

and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press,1996). The fact that many of the figures she treats, such as Hirscher, were


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Catholicism not just a refuge, but a resource for responding to the challenges of

the day. Blurring the line between religion and politics, such devotional activism

took for granted the legitimacy of acting in the name of ones confession. It also

encouraged differentiations within Catholic society, however, as dissidents took

advantage of the expanded opportunities for defining and redefining Catholic

life. The exhibition of the holy coat of Trier, said to be Jesus own robe, attracted

approximately half a million pilgrims in 1844. Consisting mostly of farmers, some

tradespeople, and members of the aristocracy, it alienated the Catholic middle

class, and helped give rise to the breakaway movement of German Catholics

(Deutschkatholiken) who numbered roughly eighty thousand. In this context,

such a movement marked the limits within which variations would be tolerated,

but their departure from the Roman Catholic fold cannot simply be written

out of Catholic history. For they testify equally to a burgeoning readiness tofoment new perspectives on Catholic life that was the hallmark of the revival.64

Cast in the mode of assertive confrontation, devotional activism had always to

contend with the possibility of a hostile response. Whether one was a Catholic

worker in a Protestant shop deciding to participate in a highly visible pilgrimage,

or a Catholic scholar choosing to debate with secularist colleagues, devotional

activism always entailed a choice about whether or not to risk public action in the

name of the faith. This forced Catholics to clarify their position vis-a-vis other

allegiances, a fact that was aptly summarized by Joseph Gorres in his defense ofthe Archbishop of Cologne. According to Gorres, the Archbishop inhabited three

subject-positions. As Archbishop, he was bound to obey the rules, precepts, and

hierarchy of the Church he represented. As a Prussian subject, he was bound by

the law of the land. As a representative of his confession, however, he was also

bound by conscience, and had a duty to live up to the Catholic faith, publicly and

without regard for persecution.65 This call to publicly affirm ones Catholicism

captures the spirit of devotional activism. For Gorres, being Catholic was not

only on a par with being a citizen and a cleric, but a legitimate position from

which to challenge both rival identities.

Devotional activism was put on a new footing with the upheavals of1848. Faced

withthelossofstatesupport,butanxioustocapitalizeonnewfreedoms,Catholics

of all stripes considered how best to recast the Churchs mission. For some, Christ

liberal Catholics by other standards, testifies to the insufficiency of left and right as

foundational categories.64 Andreas Holzem,Kirchenreform und Sektenstiftung. Deutschkatholiken, Reformkatholiken

und Ultramontane am Oberrhein18441866, ed. Ulrich von Hehl (Paderborn: Schoningh,

1994).65 Joseph von Gorres,Athanasius(Regensburg: Manz,1838),4.


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represented the first and most sublime democrat.66 For others, the revolution

was the apotheosis of an anti-Christian principle.67 For most, however, the

situation was complex, and pushed them further than ever in their search for an

applied faith. In The Present Conditions of the Church, the Freiburg theologian

Johann Baptist Hirscher proposed a democratization of Catholicism through

regular diocesan synods. Though such meetings might produce many contrasting

opinions, Hirscher saw the revival itself as providential and thus reassured readers

that nothing destructive will come out of the movement.68 Others were less

optimistic, like Ignaz Dollinger, professor of theology at Munich and perhaps the

most important figure in German Catholic thought, both for his work in Church

history but also for his outspoken criticism of papal infallibility. A delegate to

the Frankfurt Parliament, Dollinger advocated enshrining religious freedom in

the new constitution. To achieve this otherwise liberal goal, Dollinger wasprepared to use illiberal means, however. In a speech to the first Meeting of

Catholic Societies held at Mainz in 1848, he urged delegates to shape and, if

necessary, curb public opinion in favor of the measure.69 Another member of

the Frankfurt Parliament, Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler, who would soon be

named Bishop of Mainz and lead the campaign to address the social question,

spoke in an advent sermon of the danger of becoming a slaveto daily opinion. To

save themselves from the maelstrom of ideas and dizzying changes in scholarly

systems, Catholics should trust in the infallible authority of the Church.70

Still others saw the basic conception of the liberal state as simply unworkable.

Karl Ernst von Moy called it impossible that an individual entrust himself to a

society with all that he knows and has, when he knows naught of what it holds

to be good and true according to which it will issue its sovereign decisions. 71

The exclusion of religion from the state disregarded the conditions that made

individuals capable of true allegiance, and thus true community.

66 D. Thesmar, Ist Christus nicht der erste und erhabenste Demokrat(Bonn: W. Sulzbach,

1850).67 Franz Anton Staudenmaier, Die Grundfragen der Gegenwart, mit einer Entwicklungs-

geschichte der antichristlichen Principien in intellectueller, religioser, sittlicher und socialer

Hinsicht, von den Zeiten des Gnosticismus bis auf uns herab,3 vols. (Freiburg im Breisgau,

1851),3.68 Johann Baptist Hirscher,Die kirchlichen Zustaende der Gegenwart(Tuebingen: Laupp &

Siebeck, 1849),30.69 Verhandlungen der ersten Versammlung des katholischen Vereines Deutschlands am 3.4.5.

und6. October zu Mainz(Mainz: Kirchheim,1848),48.70 Published as Wilhelm Emmanuel Ketteler, Von der Autoritaet der katholischen Kirche,

inidem,Die grossen sozialen Fragen der Gegenwart(Mainz: Grunewald,1948),117.71 Karl Ernst von Moy, Glaubensfreiheit und Glaubenszwang, Wetzer and Welte, Kirchen-

Lexikon,531.


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Mirroring thedevotional activism takingroot acrossCatholic society, an article

appearedin 1848 urging scholarsto undertakea program forrevitalizing Catholic

Wissenschaft. Published anonymously in theHistorisch-politische Blatter fur das

katholische Deutschland, Thoughts on the Founding of a CatholicWissenschaft

declared that the present age strives to produce something authoritative, and

in so striving is in agreement with the Catholic principle.72 Since, like religion,

scholarship lifts people out of the domain of the senses into the domain of

freedom, it is the cornerstone of a healthy state organism. To heal the current

tear . . . in political life, therefore, it was essential to consider the merits of a

specifically CatholicWissenschaft. The article especially decried the primacy

given to the understanding, which made its appearance during the time of the

development of Protestantism and caused inner restlessness and confusion,

dissatisfaction with the existing and a desire for the new. And it called forscholarship that, instead of making the person in his thinking into the principle

of all reality, nourished that unconditional submission of the individual to the

universal aims of the state and Church. To that end, it urged that the organs

of Catholic Wissenschaft. . . shape themselves out of, and find the condition of

their efficacy in a Catholic folk. Rooted in the community, Catholic Wissenschaft

would thrive in the exchange with life, refining and clarifying it, drawing it unto

itself, and in turn, being inspired and embraced by it.

That this call for a new program of CatholicWissenschaftappeared first in thepages of theHistorisch-politische Blatteris not surprising. Founded in 1838, the

Blatterrode the wave of protest following the Cologne troubles and, along with

other similar journals, helped foster the dynamic sensibility that was devotional

activism. By placing their triumphs and troubles side by side with those of

Catholics around the world, it helped German Catholics appear to themselves

as participants in a world movement; by identifying and claiming to respond to

contemporary problems on a monthly basis, it embodied the claim that there

was a unified Catholic viewpoint for solving such problems.

73 Towards the

end of the 1850s and the early 1860s, a number of journals likewise embraced

Catholic Wissenschaftas an instrument for solving problems that was compatible

with community interests. In 1859 the Mainz journal Der Katholikchanged its

subtitle from a religious journal for instruction and warning to a journal

for CatholicWissenschaftand Church life. And in 1868the Wurzburg journal

Chilianeumrenamed itself a paper for CatholicWissenschaft, art and life. The

meaning of these changes was clear: Catholics were no longer on the defensive

72 Gedankenuber die Begrundung einer katholischen Wissenschaft,Historisch-politische

Blatter fur das katholische Deutschland21(1848),838,1759,86.73 Bernhard Schneider, Katholiken auf die Barrikaden? EuropaischeRevolutionen und deutsche

katholische Presse18151848(Paderborn: F. Schoningh,1998).


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but ready to be intellectual leaders and Wissenschaftler in their own right.

Instead of warning Catholics, and defending rites and rituals seemingly so out

of step in enlightened, secular society, these journals would assert the relevance

of Catholicism to contemporary society.

The vision of a Catholic Wissenschaft rooted in and responsive to the

community animated scholars into the 1860s.74 Paralleling the devotional

activism taking root across Catholic society, Catholic Wissenschaft aimed to

provide timely solutions to contemporary problems and be a relevant tool in

the construction of a stable society in the uncertain atmosphere provoked by

the events of 1848. This faith in scholarship was nowhere more evident than

at the first Meeting of Catholic Societies. There, Joseph Mast summarized the

prevailing mood when he proclaimed, our goal is forwards, and not backwards,

and assured delegates that things will only get better when we get a capable clergymarked by virtue, eagerness, and scholarship.75 Mast was echoed by Hirscher,

who held that the Church itself must embrace modern scholarship, since it now

had responsibility over educating its clergy. Achieving the right balance between

Church teaching and scholarly freedom was not simply the responsibility of

the bishops and the theological faculty, however; it required the kind of solid

norm that only a synod could produce.76 In1848CatholicWissenschaftserved

many as a vehicle for underscoring the formative influence of community against

the Church. But it was just as common for scholars to emphasize conformityand the subordination of the individual to the community, as evidenced in

the following excerpts from contemporary theological encyclopedias. According

to Johann Hausle, as the opposite of the abstract individuality of the single

person, Catholicisms concrete efficacy lay in transforming the individual

in his intellectual and moral needs simultaneously. Catholic consciousness

74

Catholic concern for community both confirms and complicates Ralf Dahrendorf sassessment of the structuring role ofGemeinschaftoverGesellschaftin German ideology.

Indeed, Catholics saw in community a panacea that might save them from the corrosive

forces of society. But to the extent that this appeal to community also helped consolidate

devotional activism along distinctly modern lines, it cannot be seen in any simple way as

hinderingthe advent of modernity in Germany. Ralf Dahrendorf, Societyand Democracy

in Germany(London: Norton,1967),11325. It also complicates Bryan Wilsons definition

of religion as the ideology of community. While Catholics certainly overemphasized

the power of community theirs was not simply a sentimentalized picture of life in

common, but reflected the expanding infrastructure of organizations and associations

where membership carried certain benefits, both emotional and material. Bryan Wilson,Religion in Sociological Perspective(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).

75 Verhandlungen der ersten Versammlung des katholischen Vereines Deutschlands am 3.4.5.

und6. October zu Mainz,24.76 Hirscher,kirchliche Zustaende,35.


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consisted in knowing ones mystic union with all Catholics, past and present.77

Franz Xaver Dieringer similarly stressed the power of Catholicism to grasp the

individual in his totality and forge an organic whole out of its adherents.78 No

other system, political or religious, could yield a community of emancipated

life.79

What did scholars envision as Catholic Wissenschaft? Generally speaking,

CatholicWissenschaftprovided them with a rubric for research into Catholicism

and its traditions, without feeling as though this was a retrograde maneuver. Their

confidence notwithstanding, scholars were not unaware of how incongruent

it was to qualify Wissenschaft as Catholic. Baader, for example, conceded

that the concept of national scholarship (e.g. a Prussian in contrast with a

Bavarian) was as absurd as that of a national religion.80 And Moy held it as

axiomatic that where knowledge begins, faith ends.81 Nevertheless, in view ofthe new gains wrought by devotional activism, and in view of the possibility

of a new separation of Church and state, scholars viewed Catholic Wissenschaft

as a necessary bulwark of Catholic values. For Franz Joseph Bu, professor at

Freiburg and a leading campaigner for the creation of a new Catholic university,

every scholarship leads back to God, to religion, and to theology, because every

humantruthisonlytruebasedondivinetruth.82 Scholarship ultimatelyreflected

the different confessional assumptions one brought to it because it was based on

a theological intuition of the unity underlying existence. As Carl Lorinser putit, religion is the spice that preserves scholarship from going bad.83 To the

degree that Protestantism introduced a sick, dangerous, hyper-critical turn into

scholarship, Catholics were justified in fighting fire with fire and sponsoring

a program of distinct CatholicWissenschaft.84

More specifically, CatholicWissenschaftaddressed topics such as the merits of

Latin versus the vernacular languages, the schools question, how to properly

interpret Aristotle, and how to reconcile research with Church authority.

Throughout the 1850sand 1860s, discussions of specific disciplines tended to focus

on history, political economy, the natural sciences, and, above all, philosophy.

77 Johann Michael Hausle, Katholicismus, in Wetzer and Welte,Kirchen-Lexikon,53.78 Franz Xaver Dieringer, Katholicismus, in Aschbach,Allgemeines Kirchen-Lexikon,761.79 Franz Xaver Dieringer, Kirche, in Aschbach, Allgemeines Kirchen-Lexikon,779.80 Baader, Uber das durch unsere Zeit herbeigefuhrte Bedurfniss.81 Moy, Glaubensfreiheit und Glaubenszwang, 529.82 Franz Joseph Ritter von Bu, Der Unterschied der katholischen und der protestantischen

Universitaeten Deutschlands(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1846),271.83 Carl Ignaz Lorinser, Leben und Schule,Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische

Deutschland9(1842),55880,558.84 Uber eine Grundbedingung unserer Zukunft, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das

katholische Deutschland17 (1846),78599,787.


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Where is the Catholic philosophy for the nineteenth century. . . which can be

recommendedingoodconscienceatCatholicschoolsandmadeintoafoundation

by conscientious teachers without fear over conflicts with the Church?85 Because

philosophy was at the forefront of the attacks against dogmatism, Catholic

scholars felt themselves fundamentally obligated to defend their intellectual

habitus in philosophical terms.86 As early as 1822, Maurus Hagel set the tone

by giving himself the task of showing that it is in nowise unphilosophical

to profess Catholicism. This was echoed by many, like Franz Clemens, who

called it the key question to ask in what degree the free acceptance of Catholic

axioms hindered the development of reason,87 and Peter Staudenmaier, who

sought to expose the great presuppositions of modern philosophizing. 88 For

the author of Thoughts it was a necessary condition of the striving for a

Catholic Wissenschaftthat philosophy stand at the apex of the Catholic worldview in all disciplines.89 That Catholic scholars did not merely condemn

philosophy, but sought a new and more Catholic philosophy as an answer

to contemporary ills, reflected the prevalent belief that meaningful action

required a philosophical foundation.90 But it also reflected the ambivalence of

a position that sought to fight modern society using its instruments. In this

context, CatholicWissenschaftcould frequently lead to a kind of metacritique

regarding the concealed presuppositions undergirding modern philosophy.91

Significantly, Catholic scholars repeatedly argued that philosophy should comeback to earth. Against the trend to purify philosophy of extraneous influences

and make it presuppositionless, they stressed its embeddedness in society. As

Wessenberg put it, philosophers have overlooked or mistaken the relationship

between knowing and living.92 For the Munich historian Constantin Ritter

85 Fragmente uber Glauben und Wissen, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische

Deutschland8(1841),193.86 For a good account of the different Catholic reactions to Kant see Norbert Fischer, ed.,

Kant und der Katholizismus: Stationen einer wechselhaften Geschichte(Freiburg: Herder,

2005).87 Franz Jakob Clemens, Die neuere Philosophie, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das

katholische Deutschland8 (1840),44967,53144,451.88 Franz Anton Staudenmaier, Darstellung und Kritik des hegelschen Systems. Aus dem

Standpunkt der christlichen Philosophie.(Mainz: Minerva,1844).89 Gedanken, 87.90 Andrew Lees,Revolution and Reflection: Intellectual Change in Germany during the1850s

(The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974). Klaus Christian Kohnke, The Rise of Neo-Kantianism: German

Academic Philosophy between Idealism and Positivism(New York: Cambridge UniversityPress,1991).

91 In this it paralleled non-Catholic critics as well. Jean Paul Surber, Metacritique: The

Linguistic Assault on German Idealism(New York: Humanity, 2001).92 Ignaz Heinrich Karl Wessenberg,Die falsche Wissenschaft(Stuttgart: Paul Reff,1844),9.


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von Hofler, the much-praised freedom of philosophy is . . . only pretended. It

cannot hover . . . proudly unbiased above the people and their affairs.93

Only slightly less important than the drive to put Catholic Wissenschafton a

sound philosophical footing was the desire to repudiate historical research that

challenged Catholic beliefs. There was no denying that the rise of history as an

academic field of study had produced stunning results. Catholic historians, such

as Friedrich Hurter and Karl Menzel, had themselves helped shaped knowledge

of the past.94 But two works appeared in the1830s which caused Catholics grave

concern. Leopold von Rankes History of the Popes, which appeared in 1834,

offered a devastating critique of the papacys role in European politics and

predicted that the papacy would not survive the loss of its temporal states. 95

Even more damaging was David Friedrich Strausss The Life of Jesus Critically

Examined, which sought to expose the Gospels as mythical constructions rootedin the Jewish messianic tradition, open to neither rationalist nor supernaturalist

explanations. In combination, these works seemed to illustrate precisely the

dangersofscholarshipshornofitsobligationtothecommunityandreligion.They

confirmed the Protestant subjectivist impulse behind modernQuellenkritik. For

the Munich historian Constantin Ritter von Hofler, the application of philology

and other tools of source criticism was simply Protestant biblical exegetics

by another name. Historicism in this mode reduced everything to subjective

apprehension, and made every individual interpretation as good as the next. Itamounted to nothing more than looking solely for perspectives, and then using

them . . . to support the plus or minus of Christianity as one cared to, according

to those citations that supported ones position or allowed themselves to be

understood as such . . .96

To fight the effects of Protestantism in modern philosophy and history,

Catholic scholars increasingly turned to the Middle Ages for resources to shore

up CatholicWissenschaft. This turn was hardly inevitable, but was fed by a desire

to find a usable past that could overcome the legacy of Protestant reason. As

Matthias Klug has shown, the fact that secularization had literally relegated so

much Catholic infrastructure to history also fostered a strong existential bond

93 Constantin Ritter von Hofler, Uber katholische und protestantische Geschichtss-

chreibung, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische Deutschland16 (1845), 297320,

2989.94

Kevin Charles Cramer, The Lamentations of Germany: The Historiography of the ThirtyYears War,17901890, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1998.

95 Hubert Wolf, Rankes Papste auf dem Index. Dogma und Historie im Widerstreit

(Paderborn: Schoningh,2003).96 Hofler, Geschichtsschreibung,312.


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between Catholicism and the past.97 A key component in the quest for a usable

past was Antoine Ozanams Dante and Catholic Philosophy in the Thirteenth

Century, published in Paris in 1839.98 Professor of literature, republican, and

founder of the St Vincent de Paul society, Ozanam showed how Dantes poetry

employed symbolism to effectively popularize scholastic philosophy. It thus

sought to refute the charge that scholasticism was abstruse and alienated from real

life, and give a concrete example of the reciprocal influence between a distinctly

Catholic philosophy and Catholic life. Translated into German in1844, the work

energized German Catholic scholars by providing an example of a society that

seemed the living incarnation of the Catholic principle.99 It also showed how

rehabilitating scholastic thought might serve the revival in salutary ways.100 A

European movement, neo-scholasticism was the work in Germany of Joseph

Kleutgen and Franz Clemens, among others, and was only one aspect of theattempt to institute a program of Catholic Wissenschaft. Early neo-scholastics

especially did not conceive of themselves as merely turning back the clock, but

sought to defend scholastic thought as a way of solving contemporary problems.

In arguably the most important neo-scholastic journal, Der Katholik, editors

Johann Heinrich and Christoph Moufang pledged allegiance to the Catholic

principle and the spirit of CatholicWissenschaftand her steady tradition. They

assured readers, however, that they would consider only those objects of Church

history [that]. . .

are stimulating and instructive for the life of the present andthat illuminate the most burning questions and most basic needs of the day.101

Similarly, Hermann Plamann defended a return to Aquinas as true progress

inasmuch as it would pick up on lines of thought that had been forgotten after the

rise of Protestantism, and thus remained underdeveloped.102 Growing out of the

larger movement for a Catholic Wissenschaft, neo-scholasticism in this context

did not see itself as restating the medieval position, but bringing new research to

97 Matthias Klug, Ruckwendung zum Mittelalter? Geschichtsbilder und historische

Argumentation im politischen Katholizismus des Vormarz(Paderborn: Schoningh,1995).98 Antoine Frederic Ozanam, Dante et la philosophie Catholique au treizieme siecle (Paris:

Librairie classique,1839).99 See the review by Franz Jakob Clemens, Dante und die katholische Philosophie des

dreizehnten Jahrhunderts,Historisch-politische Blaetter fuer das katholische Deutschland

(1844).100 Suffering devastating critique underthe Enlightenment, even in Catholic circles, scholastic

thought only gradually regained ground against the dominant trends in German

philosophy. Gerald A. McCool,Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism(New York: 1990).101 J. B. Heinrich and Cristoph Moufang, Vorwort,Der Katholik, Zeitschrift fur katholische

Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben (Neue Folge)1(1859),18,7.102 Hermann Ernst Plamann, Die Schule des heiligen Thomas von Aquino (Paderborn:

Minerva,1859).


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bear on problems. Thus it encouraged new work on Aristotle and problems in

modern philosophical terminology as a means of sharpening a distinctly modern

scholastic hermeneutic.103

Compared to the number of works devoted to philosophy and history, Catholic

reactions to the rising natural sciences were slow. Catholics were not unaware of

the tremendous impact the natural sciences were having, of course. For Johann

Nepomuk Rinsgeis, nothing was more important than to defeat the notion

that Christianity, and especially Catholicism, impedes the freedom of research

and the progress of science.104 Nevertheless, Buchner, Vogt, and, of course,

Darwin were all routinely charged with the dogma of materialism, namely of

reducing all phenomena to a material explanation.105 Starting with their critique

of Protestant reason, Catholics typicallyattacked not theresults of natural science,

but its way of thinking as already false in the thinking subject.106 As FriedrichPilgram put it, natural science grew out of the more general tangle of modern

thinking affecting every area of public opinion. Though some, like the editors

ofNatur und Offenbarung, embraced natural science oriented towards the pure

fact, they were careful to do so in the light of eternal truth, and not in the

sense of a materialism that denied a persons higher consciousness.107 Disputing

not the facts, but only the subjective capricious grasping . . . that produces and

supports the apparent contradiction between the real facts of science and faith,

Catholic critics focused their attention on deeper philosophical problems.

the third phase: a hardening of positions, 1850--69

By the early1860s, the drive to revitalize CatholicWissenschafthad to contend

with new realities. Above all, the papacy was emerging as the pre-eminent

instrument for regulating not only the Church and its machinery, but the practice

103 Die Sprache der katholischen Wissenschaft, Der Katholik, Zeitschrift fur katholische

Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben (Neue Folge) 2 (1859), 83955. Aristoteles und die

katholische Wissenschaft, Der Katholik, Zeitschrift fur katholische Wissenschaft und

kirchliches Leben (Neue Folge)6 (1862),25775.104 Johann Nepomuk Ringseis, Uber die naturwissenschaftliche Auffassung des Wunders

und die culturgeschichtliche Bedeutung Roms, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das

katholische Deutschland48(1861),60218,602.105 Ibid. 610. See also Hermann Josef Dorpinghaus, Darwins Theorie und der deutsche

Vulgaermaterialismus im Urteil deutscher katholischer Zeitschriften zwischen1854und1914

(Freiburg: Universitaetsbibliothek Freiburg,1969).106 Friedrich Pilgram, Uber Philosophie, ihr Verhaltniss zur Natur-Wissenschaft,

Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische Deutschland38 (1856),679700,679.107 Friedrich Michelis et al., Vorwort, Natur und Offenbarung. Organ zur Vermittlung

zwischen Naturforschung und Glauben fuer Gebildete aller Staende1(1855),14,3.


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of Catholicism itself. In this context, scholars bid to become shapers of public

opinion was on a collision course with the growing authority of the Pope, who

affirmed his populist anti-intellectualism by promulgating the doctrine of Marys

Immaculate Conceptionin December 1854.108 Thestrugglewith Church authority

only reflected a deeper problem, however, and that was the fact that scholars

had, to some extent, talked themselves into a corner with respect to their own

mandate. By rooting Catholic Wissenschaftin the community, they left themselves

vulnerable to charges of elitism by a community that clearly favored popular

revival. This was true already in nascent form in the controversies surrounding

the exhibition of the Holy Coat of Trier in 1844. But it reached new heights in

the early1860s, as run-ins with the Pope dovetailed with popular attacks against

science and education, and threatened to lump Catholic scholars together with a

whole cadre of liberal evils. A major figure in populist attacks against scholarswas Alban Stolz, a theologian and popular writer who specialized in writing

calendars, and who in hisABCs for Big Peoplederided the learned gentleman

who gives himself airs with cognitions and scholarship. For Stolz, many average

men from the countryside have a healthier understanding in many things than a

paper-pusher or even a Mr Representative.109

The most influential and determined critic of the role of Catholic scholars in

the 1860s was Andreas Niedermayer (183572). Ordained in 1862, Niedermayer

worked for a time at the city library of Frankfurt, before moving across theMain to Sachsenhausen, where he helped administer German missions.110 For

Niedermayer, modern scholarship and its power over public opinion was the

chief source of decay in society. In The Catholic Press in Germanyhe declared,

Modern scholarship, as it formulates its own claims, is not compatible with

anything else on earth.111 In its quest for presuppositionless truth, it had

no room for Catholic truths, which it treated as a Gospel of bigotry and

civilization-stopping superstition. In this context, anyone who defended the

authority of Catholic teaching suffered a kind of intellectual excommunication.

In Science and the German ClericsNiedermayer warned that scholarship offers by

no means a safe defense against characterlessness.112 On the contrary, the more

general education pervades broader circles, the more general characterlessness

108 Viaene, Roman Question.109 Alban Stolz, ABC fur grosse Leute. Kalender fur Zeit und Ewigkeit 1864, inAlban Stolz.

Kompass fur Leben und Sterben, ed. Julius Mayer (Freiburg: Herder, 1911),8.110 Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, ed.,Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon(19902004).111 Andreas Niedermayer,Die katholische Presse Deutschlands(Freiburg: Herder,1861),14.112 AndreasNiedermayer, Der deutscheClerus und dieWissenschaft, 2nd edn (Freiburg: Herder,

1864),4.


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becomes.113 What was especially distressing was when a Catholic put the lectern

before the pulpit and did not commit to true Catholic Wissenschaft.114

Such sallies against the pretensions of education, though aimed at a wider

liberal foe, reminded scholars of their obligation to community standards,

and that authority was not a theoretical question, but a practical matter of

orthodoxy and obedience to the Church. Such a reminder became more urgent

in later years, as even former students demanded that their teachers clarify their

allegiances in light of the new doctrine of infallibility.115 Since many of these

attacks came from within academe, scholars had also to confront the fact that

theirs was not a unified program. An instrument of revival, Catholic Wissenschaft

built on the momentum of devotional activism but lacked specific direction

from the outset. By deploying community as the criterion of true Catholicism,

scholars did their part in organizing Catholics into a community of dissentagainst modern secular society. That was the legacy of the 1840s. By the 1860s,

however, new confrontations were the occasion for a hardening of positions

between reformers and those who stressed submission to Church authority.

When debates about specific practical questions forced scholars to take sides and

be more specific about where they saw Catholic Wissenschaftgoing, it exposed

the flimsiness of the ideology of unity structuring their thinking.

The two items topping the agenda in the early1860s were a desire to coordinate

the Catholic press and plans for a new Catholic university. The lifting of thecensorship laws in 1848led to a dramatic rise in the number of Catholic dailies,

and to a new desire to use the press as a way of shoring up Catholic opinion.116

Calls for a better Catholic press often began by attacking the alleged Jewish

element dominating the newspapers.117 In The Catholic Press in Germany, for

example, Andreas Niedermayer blamed communists, freemasons and Jews for a

pervasive anti-Catholic bias in the press. He insisted that Catholics must control

their own press, since whoever controls the word, controls the high priesthood

of humanity. The press is a language that sounds louder than average speech.

Steam power and electricity stand in her service. With hurricane force and

lightning speed, thereproduction of thoughts moves through the whole world.118

113 Ibid.114 Ibid.16.115 Katholisch, oder nicht? Offenes Sendschreiben an Herrn Dr. Joseph Langen in Bonn. Von

einem fruhern Schuler(Aachen: Albert Jacobi & Co.,1871).116 Die Presse und die oeffentliche Meinung, Der Katholik, einer religioesen Zeitschrift zur

Belehrung und Warnung,91(1844).117 For more on learned Catholic anti-Semitism see Helmut Walser Smith, The Learned

and the Popular Discourse of Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Milieu of the Kaiserreich,

Central European History27(1994),31528.118 Niedermayer,Die katholische Presse Deutschlands,7.


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Interest in a new Catholic university received a similar push that same year

as Heinrich Floss published Essay on Parity at the University of Bonn with a

look at Breslau and the other Prussian Universities. According to Floss, excluding

theological faculties, only fourteen of fifty-seven professors were Catholic at the

University of Bonn, and only six of forty at the University of Breslau. Since both

were located in overwhelmingly Catholic regions and attracted overwhelmingly

Catholic students, Floss concluded that only hiring prejudiced against Catholics

explained the disparity; either that, or the knife of the Catholic surgeon must

be duller than that of the Protestant.119 Flosss views revived calls for a new

Catholic university, which had been discussed on and off for decades but never

seemed to get off the ground. Developing quickly into a cause celebre, the plan

was resoundingly embraced at the Meeting of Catholic Societies in1861, where a

special section for scholarship and press was set up under Johann Schulte andGeorg Phillips.120

Concern over the press and plans for a new university represented a

culmination of the desire to use Catholic Wissenschaft as an instrument for

shaping the Catholic public sphere. That this would ultimately lead scholars

into a conflict with Rome was prefigured by a controversy surrounding the

papal nuncio to Bavaria, Antonio de Luca. De Luca proposed his own plan for

the coordination of scholarly powers in Catholic Germany at a meeting in

Wurzburg in September of 1862.121

The plan proposed expanding the Catholicpress, awarding prizes for outstanding scholarship, and instituting a Catholic

Academy to bring together scholars on a regular basis. However, the plan stressed

submission to Church authority and asserted that CatholicWissenschaftthrives

on the foundation of the Church rather than in the universities. This attempt

to pull Catholic Wissenschaftaway from university scholars reflected growing

concern in Rome over German independence in matters of scholarship. 122 It

also led to controversy, as critics complained of the secretiveness and exclusivity

surrounding the plan.123

Roman unease over Catholic Wissenschaftgrew in direct response to Jakob

Frohschammers On the Freedom of Scholarship, which defended the unmitigated

right to investigate the truth. A philosopher at the University of Munich,

119 Quoted in Hans Jurgen Brandt, Einekatholische Universitat in Deutschland? Das Ringen der

Katholiken in Deutschland um eine Universitatsbildung im19. Jahrhundert(Koln: Bohlau,

1981),223. Floss was of course building on Bu,Der Unterschied.120

Brandt,Universitat.121 Ibid.122 John P. Boyle, Church Teaching Authority: Historical and Theological Studies(Notre Dame:

University of Notre Dame Press,1995).123 Brandt,Universitat.


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Frohschammer held that foreign interests should have no bearing on free

research,anddefendedscholarsrighttochallengeopenlythedogmasofreligion.

He argued that it was in the best interest of religion to open itself to thorough

scrutiny, for only then could it be assured of possessing true authority.124 He

consequentlydecriedallparticularistprojectswhichencourageprejudiceandthe

corruption of thinkingas opposed to theuniversalityof scholarship. Condemned

by Rome for his ideas, Frohschammer gave Catholic scholars occasion to think

harder about their position. His attack against particularist projects effectively

placed him outside any distinctly Catholic Wissenschaft. However, his claim

that scholarship was good for religion was substantially congruent with the

movements impetus. The Frohschammer affair thus caused some profound

soul-searching on the question of free thought versus authority, and the real

implications of what scholars were trying to do in the name of the faith. 125

Unfortunately, this self-reflection only confirmed Romes assessment of the

tendency of many professors in Germany, as the Munich nuncio Gonella put

it, to elevate themselves to the status of judges and custodians of true Catholic

doctrine.126

Roman concern over the German situation was heightened by the Conference

of Catholic Scholars held in late September 1863 in Munich.127 Organized

by Ignaz Dollinger, Daniel Haneberg, and Johann Alzog, the conference was

aimed at resolving disputes and forging a consensus on the future of CatholicWissenschaft. Lasting four days and spanning seven sessions in all, the Conference

brought together the representatives of CatholicWissenschaft to discuss issues

ranging from the rise of the natural sciences to the need for a new catechism,

from the feasibility of a Central Organ for CatholicWissenschaft to prevalent

124 Jakob Frohschammer, Uber die Freiheit der Wissenschaft(Munich: J. J. Lentner, 1861),57.

See also John P. Boyle, The Case of Jakob Frohschammer, in Anthony J. Cernara, ed.,

Continuity and Plurality in Catholic Theology(Fairfield: Sacred Heart University Press,1998).

125 Alois Schmid,Wissenschaftliche Richtungen auf dem Gebiete des Katholizismus in neuster

und in gegenwaertiger Zeit(Muenchen: J. J. Lentner, 1862).126 Quoted in Boyle,Church Teaching Authority,13.127 The proceedings are published inVerhandlungen der Versammlung katholischer Gelehrten

in Munchen vom 28. September bis1. Oktober1863, ed. Pius Bonifacius Gams (Munchen:

Georg Joseph Manz, 1863). By all accounts, however, these are incomplete and omit

the most divisive debates. For critical commentary see Alexander Dru, Lord Acton,

Dollinger und der Muenchener Kongress, Hochland 56 (1963), 4958; Hugo Lang,

Die Versammlung katholischer Gelehrter in Munchen-St. Bonifaz vom 28. IX. bis 1.X. 1863, Historisches Jahrbuch 71 (1952), 24658; Georg Schwaiger, Die Muenchener

Gelehrtenversammlung von1863in den Stroemungen der katholischen Theologie des19.

Jahrhunderts, in Georg Schwaiger, ed.,Kirche und Theologie(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck

& Ruprecht,1975),12534.


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Dollingers bid to solve the national question by means of German theology

found both supporters and detractors.132 Seven delegates asked to have it entered

into the minutes that Dollingers views did not represent them. Others were

sympathetic, but feared his views would anger Rome. These fears proved to be

well-founded, for though Pius IX gave his blessing to the Conference, within

a few months he issued strict new rules forbidding scholars from convening

any such meetings in the future without direct ecclesiastical oversight.133 Romes

assertion of unilateral control over scholarship was, of course, brought home

even more forcefully with the publication of the encyclical Quanta curaand its

appendix, the Syllabus errorum, on 8 December 1864.134 The document left no

doubt about the Churchs position on philosophy, natural reason, or absolute

and moderate rationalismin no way was reason alone sufficient to answer

problems of theology or meet the deepest spiritual needs of Catholics. On thecontrary, as the source of so many errors it was precisely philosophy that

required religion. This blow significantly slowed but did not altogether stop the

campaign for a CatholicWissenschaft, which lived on in muted form to become

the basis of the Gorres Gesellschaft zur Pflege der Wissenschaft im katholischen

Deutschland, founded in 1876. By then there was no mistaking that a shift had

occurred, however. Having suffered the loss of many leading lights, such as

Dollinger, Catholic scholars were no longer in a position to declare themselves

leaders of public opinion. As the mission statement for the Gesellschaft put it,There is, absolutely, such a thing as Catholic Wissenschaft. Its distinguishing

feature is that it accepts as a norm and guiding light the divine truth as infallibly

promulgated and preserved by the Church.135

TheSyllabusaimed at curbing efforts to channel revival Catholicism in any

direction other than in uniform support for the papacy. Though it unleashed a

storm of criticism, at the time and since, one needs to remember that many of the

propositions condemned in the Syllabuswere hardly surprising. It was entirely

132 Die Versammlung katholischer Gelehrten, Der Katholik, Zeitschrift fur katholische

Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben (Neue Folge) 44 (1864), 95111; Die Gelehrten-

Versammlung in Munchen vom 28. September bis zum 1. October 1863, Theologisch-

praktische Quartal-Schrift 17 (1864), 6781; Niedermayer, Der deutsche Clerus und die

Wissenschaft.133 Heinrich Bruck, Von der Bischofsversammlung in Wurzburg 1848 bis zum Anfang des

s.g. Culturkampfes 1870, Vol. 3, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland im

neunzehnten Jahrhundert(Mainz: Kirchheim,1896),409.134

Die Encyclica Seiner Heiligkeit des Papstes Pius IX. von8. Dezember1864und der Syllabus(die Zusammenstellung der 80 hauptsachlichen Irrthumer unserer Zeit), (Koln: Bachem,

1865).135 Gorres-Gesellschaft zur Pflege der

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