‘Praeceptor Germaniae’.^18 In short, this was not an address by an obscure
figure, but a lecture given arguably by the leading German church historian on
one of Europe’s most venerable institutions at a critical moment in the history
of Germany and in the history of the Catholic Church.
1866 represents a critical moment in German history, because in this year
Prussia had triumphed over Austria in the Austro-Prussian war, a major
stepping stone towards Bismarck’s achievement of German unification
under Prussian hegemony completed in 1871 through the Franco-Prussian
War. In 1866, Bavaria felt the strong hand of Protestant Prussia nudging it
towards political unity. Munich had long regarded itself as a Catholic intel-
lectual antipode to Prussia’s Berlin while also claiming the mantle of German
nationalism.^19 We should not be surprised, then, that Döllinger’s address
evinces national(ist) concerns and contains reflections on the contrasts/com-
monalities between Protestant and Catholic approaches to higher learning.
1866 is no less a critical time for the Catholic Church. Arguably, the 1860s
represent the most turbulent and consequential decade in shaping modern
Catholic history. The decade began with Italian unification, which entailed the
occupation and virtual elimination of the Papal States, the Pope’s age-old
temporal holdings in central Italy. The decade’s midpoint witnessed the
‘Syllabus of Errors’(8 December 1864) with its infamous last line that the
Pope need not‘reconcile himself and come to terms with progress, liberalism,
and modern civilization’. And,finally, the decade closed with the still-
controversial Vatican Council (1869–70), with its proclamation of Papal
Infallibility, followed by the occupation of Rome by Italian forces, the making
of Rome into the capital of Italy, and the doubling down of the Pope against
modernity when he declared himself‘Prisoner of the Vatican’. In short, the
1860s were extremely anxious and unsettling times for Catholics in Europe
and the world over.^20 Any Catholic intellectual reckoning with modernity
must take stock of the Vatican’s fears and intransigence at this time.
These were specifically anxious and unsettling times for German Catholic
scholars thinking about higher learning. Prior to the‘Syllabus’of 1864, and in
response to a Congress of Catholic Scholars that Döllinger with others had
convened in Munich in 1863, the Pope sent a letter of reprimand (Tuas
libenter, 21 December 1863) to Archbishop von Scherr of Munich. Rome’s
general concern was the lack of ecclesiastical oversight at the congress. But
three more specific concerns merit underscoring. First, in the letter, Pius was
keen to make the point that over-confidence in human reason and the
(^18) See Victor Conzemius (ed.),Briefwechsel, 1850– 1890 , vol. 1 (Munich, 1963), 377.
(^19) Thomas Nipperdey,Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 361–2.
(^20) See Owen Chadwick,A History of the Popes, 1830– 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998), 161–214. On thefinal years of the Pope’s temporal power, see Renato Mori,Il tramonto
del potere temporale, 1866– 1870 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1967).
226 Thomas Albert Howard