The best compendious histories from the pens of German Romanists are produced by Jos.
Ign. Ritter, Professor in Bonn and afterward in Breslau (d. 1857);^19 Joh. Adam Möhler, formerly
Professor in Tübingen, and then in Munich, the author of the famous Symbolik(d. 1838);^20 Joh.
Alzog (d. 1878);^21 H. Brück(Mayence, 2d ed., 1877);F. X. Kraus(Treves, 1873; 3d ed., 1882);
Card. Hergenröther(Freiburg, 3d ed., 1886, 3 vols.);F. X. Funk (Tübingen, 1886; 2d ed., 1890).
A. F. Gfrörer (d. 1861) began his learned General Church History as a Protestant, or rather
as a Rationalist (1841–’46, 4 vols., till a.d. 1056), and continued it from Gregory VII. on as a
Romanist (1859–’61).
Dr. John Joseph Ignatius Döllinger (Professor in Munich, born 1799), the most learned
historian of the Roman Church in the nineteenth century, represents the opposite course from popery
to anti-popery. He began, but never finished, a Handbook of Christian Church History(Landshut,
1833, 2 vols.) till a.d. 680, and a Manual of Church History(1836, 2d ed., 1843, 2 vols.) to the
fifteenth century, and in part to 1517.^22 He wrote also learned works against the Reformation (Die
Reformation, 1846–’48, in 3 vols.), on Hippolytus and Callistus (1853), on the preparation for
Christianity (Heidenthum u Judenthum, 1857), Christianity and the Church in the time of its
Founding(1860),The Church and the Churches(1862),Papal Fables of the Middle Age(1865),
The Pope and the Council (under the assumed name of "Janus," 1869), etc.
During the Vatican Council in 1870 Döllinger broke with Rome, became the theological
leader of the Old Catholic recession, and was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Munich (his
former pupil), April 17, 1871, as being guilty of "the crime of open and formal heresy." He knows
too much of church history to believe in the infallibility of the pope. He solemnly declared (March
28, 1871) that "as a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, and as a citizen," he could not accept
the Vatican decrees, because they contradict the spirit of the gospel and the genuine tradition of
the church, and, if carried out, must involve church and state, the clergy and the laity, in irreconcilable
conflict.^23
V. The Protestant Church historians.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century is the mother church history as a science and art
in the proper sense of term. It seemed at first to break off from the past and to depreciate church
history, by going back directly to the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice, and especially to
look most unfavorably on the Catholic middle age, as a progressive corruption of the apostolic
doctrine and discipline. But, on the other hand, it exalted primitive Christianity, and awakened a
new and enthusiastic interest in all the documents of the apostolic church, with an energetic effort
to reproduce its spirit and institutions. It really repudiated only the later tradition in favor of the(^19) Handbuch der K G. Bonn, 3d ed., 1846; 6th ed., 1862, 2 vols.
(^20) His Kirchengeschichte was published from his lectures by Pius Boniface Gams. Regensburg, 1867-’68, in 3 vols. It is very
unequal and lacks the author’s own finish. We have from Möhler also a monograph on Athanius (1827), and a Patrologie
(covering the first three centuries, and published after his death, 1840).
(^21) Handbuch der Universal-Kirchengeschichte. 9th ed., Mainz, 1872, 2 vols.; 10th ed., 1882. Alzog aims to be the Roman
Catholic Hase as to brevity and condensation. A French translation from the 5th ed. was prepared by Goeschler and Audley,
1849 (4th ed. by Abbé Sabatier, 1874); an English translation by F. J. Pabisch and Thos. Byrne, Cincinnati, O., 1874 sqq., in 3
vols. The Am. translators censure the French translators for the liberties they have taken with Alzog, but they have taken similar
liberties, and, by sundry additions, made the author more Romish than he was.
(^22) English translation by Dr. Edw. Cox, Lond. 1840-’42, in 4 vols. This combines Döllinger’s Handbuch and Lehrbuch as far
as they supplement each other.
(^23) See Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I., 195 sq.; Von Schulte: Der Altkatholicismus (Giessen, 1887), 109 sqq.
A.D. 1-100.