JOHANN

JOSEPH IGNAZ VON

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• JOHANN JOSEPH IGNAZ VON DOLLINGER (1799-1890)

DOLLINGER (1799-1890)  , German theologian and church historian, was born at Bamberg, Bavaria, on the 28th of February 1799 . He came of an intellectual stock, his grandfather and father having both been physicians of eminence and professors of one or other of the branches of medical science; his mother too belonged to a family not undistinguished in intellectual power . Young Doilinger was first educated in the gymnasium at Wurzburg, and then began to study natural philosophy at the university in that city, 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 182o he became acquainted with Victor Aline Huber (1800-1869), a fact which largely influenced his life . On the 5th of April 1822 he was ordained priest, 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 doctor's degree, and in 1826 became professor of theology at Munich, where he spent the rest of his life . About this time Doilinger brought upon himself the animadversion of 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 . It has been stated that in his earlier years Doilinger 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, and the celebrated J .

A .

Mohler (q.v.) who afterwards became his friend, on being appealed to, pronounced on the whole in his favour . He 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 had aroused much suspicion in Ultramontane circles . In 1832 Lamennais, with his friends Lacordaire and Montalembert, visited Germany, and obtained considerable sympathy in their attempts to bring about a modification of the Roman Catholic attitude to modern problems . Doilinger 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 . On the other hand, he published atreatise 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 which in later days he found reason to change, Meanwhile he had visited England, where he was well received; and he afterwards travelled in Holland, 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 Pusey, Gladstone and Hope Scott . When the last-named joined the Church of Rome he was warmly congratulated by Doilinger on the step he had taken . He, however, much 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 Doilinger 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 Frankfort,—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 . It has been said that his change of relations to the Papacy dated from the Italian war in 1859, but no sufficient reason has been given for this statement . It is more probable that, like Grosseteste, he had imbibed in early youth an enthusiastic sentiment of attachment 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 little correspondence there was between his ideal and the reality . He may also have been unfavourably impressed with the promulgation by Pius IX. in 1854 of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin . But what-ever may have been 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 delivered 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 hook on The Church and the Churches (Munich, 1861) dealt to a certain extent with the same question . In 1863 he invited too theologians to meet at Malines and discuss the question which Lamennais and Lacordaire had prematurely 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 Frankfort 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 modern ideas . The addresses delivered in the Catholic congress at Malines were a declaration in the direction of a Liberal solution of the problem of the relations of Church and State .

The pope for a moment seemed to hesitate, but there could be little doubt what course he would ultimately pursue, and after four days' debate the assembly was closed at his command . On the 8th of

December 1864 Pius' IX. issued were rated . In 1787 the dollar was introduced as the unit in the United States, and it has remained as the standard of value either in silver or gold in that country . For the history of the various changes in the weights and value of the coin see NUMISMATICS . The Spanish piece-of-eight was also the ancestor of the Mexican dollar, the Newfoundland dollar, the British dollar circulating in Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements, and the dollar of the South American republics, although many of them are now dollars only in name .