to the European-wide revolutions of 1848/9; from then until the First Vatican
Council (1869–70); and,finally, the post-conciliar period.
In his early career, Döllinger leaned in a decidedly reactionary, ultramon-
tane direction. In the 1820s and 1830s he became a regular in the so-called
‘circle’of Joseph Görres, a group of intellectuals in Munich publishing in the
short-lived journalEos, who have been described as‘the living center of
Restoration Catholicism’in central Europe.^5 In 1838 he published a treatise
against mixed (Protestant–Catholic) marriages and, in one of the tell-tale
brouhahas of his time, he came out strongly in favour of requiring Protestant
soldiers to kneel at the consecration of the Host when present at a Mass or
procession. He wrote two noteworthy works on Protestantism—The Reformation
(3 vols, 1846–8) andLuther(1851)—in which he expressed highly critical
views, especially of the Protestant doctrine of justification.^6
But Döllinger reached out beyond the insular restoration-era Catholicism of
Munich. He established contact with Johann Adam Möhler and others on the
Catholic theological faculty at Tübingen, where pioneering ideas about church
unity and the‘development of doctrine’were being hatched.^7 Döllinger also
made connections with leading French Catholic liberals such as Félicité de
Lamennais and Charles de Montalembert, intrigued by their desire to bring
about a modification in the church’s teachings on religious liberty and demo-
cratic government.^8 In 1836 he made hisfirst visit to England, developing a
first-hand appreciation of Anglicanism—a relative rarity for a Continental
Catholic divine. While there and shortly thereafter, he came into contact with
leading English intellectuals and statesmen—E. B. Pusey, Newman, William
E. Gladstone, Henry Parry Liddon, among others—with whom he maintained
life-long contact, especially with Gladstone.^9 For many years in Munich, a
colony of young Englishmen boarded with him and received direction in their
studies. One of these was Lord Acton, perhaps Döllinger’s most renowned and
accomplished pupil, and Döllinger’s closest friend.^10
(^5) Thomas Nipperdey,Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800– 1866 , trans. Daniel Nolan
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 361.
(^6) On Döllinger’s early career, see Georg Schwaiger,‘Ignaz von Döllinger (1799–1890)’,in
Heinrich Fries and Georg Schwaiger (eds),Katholische Theologen Deutschlands im 19. Jahrhundert
(Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1975), 9ff.
(^7) James Tunstead Burtchaell,‘Drey, Möhler, and the Catholic School of Tübingen’,inNinian
Smart et al. (eds),Nineteenth-Century Religious Thought in the West, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985), 119–20. Möhler actuallyfinished his career with Döllinger at Munich, and
after his death Döllinger edited and published some of his shorter writings. See Döllinger (ed.),
J. A. Möhlers gesammelte Schriften und Aufsätze, 2 vols (Regensburg, 1839–40).
(^8) On Döllinger’s relations to French scholars and divines, see Stephan Lösch,Döllinger und
Frankreich: Eine geistige Allianz, 1823– 1871 (Munich: Beck, 1955).
(^9) See Michael Chandler,‘The Significance of the Friendship between William E. Gladstone
and Ignaz von Döllinger’,Internationale kirchliche Zeitschrift90 (2000), 153–67.
(^10) On Acton’s studies under Döllinger, see Roland Hill,Lord Acton(New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2000), 27ff.
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