IV. J. Döllinger, the most learned Catholic historian of the nineteenth century, in his Lectures
on the Reunion of Christendom (Ueber die Wiedervereinigung der christlichen Kirchen, Nördlingen,
1888, p. 53), makes the following incidental remark on Luther and the Reformation: —
"The force and strength of the Reformation was only in part due to the personality of
the man who was its author and spokesman in Germany. It was indeed Luther’s
overpowering mental greatness and wonderful manysidedness (überwältigende
Geistesgrösse und wunderbare Vielseitigkeit) that made him the man of his age and his
people. Nor was there ever a German who had such an intuitive knowledge of his
countrymen, and was again so completely possessed, not to say absorbed, by the national
sentiment, as the Augustinian monk of Wittenberg. The mind and spirit of the Germans
was in his hand as the lyre is in the hand of a skillful musician. He had given them more
than any man in Christian days ever gave his people,—language, Bible, church hymn. All
his opponents could offer in place of it, and all the reply they could make to him, was
insipid, colorless, and feeble, by the side of his transporting eloquence. They stammered,
he spoke. He alone has impressed the indelible stamp of his mind on the German language
and the German intellect; and even those among us who hold him in religious detestation,
as the great heresiarch and seducer of the nation, are constrained, in spite of themselves,
to speak with his words and think with his thoughts."And yet still more powerful than this Titan of the world of mind was the yearning of
the German people for deliverance from the bonds of a corrupted church system. Had no
Luther arisen, a reformation would still have come, and Germany would not have remained
Catholic."
Dr. Döllinger delivered the lectures from which this extract is taken, after his quarrel with
Vatican Romanism, in the museum at Munich, February, 1872. They were stenographically reported
in the "Köllner-Zeitung," translated into English by Oxenham (London, 1872), and from English
into French by Madame Hyacinthe-Loyson (La réunion des églises, Paris, 1880), and at last published
by the author (1888).
This testimony is of special importance, owing to the acknowledged learning and ability of
Döllinger as a Roman Catholic historian, and author of an elaborate work against the Reformation
(1848, 3 vols.), consisting mostly of contemporaneous testimonies. He is thoroughly at home in
the writings of the Reformers, and prepared a biographical sketch of Luther,^999 in which he severely
criticises him for his opinions and conduct towards the Catholic Church, but does full justice to his
intellectual greatness. He says, p. 51, "If we justly call him a great man, who, endowed with mighty
powers and gifts, accomplishes great things, who, as a bold legislator in the realm of mind, makes
millions subservient to his system, then the peasant’s son of Möhra must be counted among the
great, yea, the greatest men. This also is true, that he was a sympathizing friend, free of avarice
and love of money, and ready to help others."
Döllinger was excommunicated for his opposition to the Vatican decree of infallibility
(1870), but still remains a Catholic, and could not become a Protestant without retracting his work
(^999) Luther, eine Skizze, Freiburg-i.-B., 1851. I have a copy with notes, which the old Catholic Bishop Reinkens, a pupil of Döllinger,
kindly gave me in Bonn, 1886. It appeared in the first edition of Wetzer and Welte’s Kirchen-Lexikon, vol. VI. 651 spp.