§ 192. THE GERMAN CONFEDERATION.
The Peace of Luneville of 1801 gave the deathblow to the old German
empire, by the formal cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France,
indemnifying the secular princes who were losers by this arrangement
with estates and possessions on the right of the Rhine, taken from the
neutral free cities of the empire and the secularized ecclesiastical
principalities, institutions, monasteries, and orders. An imperial
commission sitting at Regensburg arranged the details of these
indemnifications. They were given expression to by means of the
imperial commission’s decree or recess of 1803. The dissolution of
the constitution of the German empire thus effected was still further
carried out by the Peace of Presburg of 1805, which conferred upon the
princes of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, in league with Napoleon,
full sovereignty, and to the two first named the rank of kings, and was
completed by the founding of the Confederation of the Rhine of 1806,
in which sixteen German princes formally severed themselves from the
emperor and empire and ranked themselves as vassals of France under the
protectorate of Napoleon. Francis II., who already in 1804 had assumed
the title of Emperor of Austria as Francis I., now that the German
empire had actually ceased to exist, renounced also the name of
German emperor. The unhappy proceedings of the Vienna Congress of the
German Confederation and its permanent representation in the Frankfort
parliament during 1814 and 1815, after Napoleon’s twice repeated defeat,
led finally to the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.
§ 192.1. =The Imperial Commission’s Decree, 1803.=--The
significance of this for church history consists not merely
in the secularization of the ecclesiastical principalities
and corporations, but even still more in the alteration
caused thereby in the ecclesiastical polity of the territorial
governments. With the ecclesiastical principalities the most
powerful props of the Catholic church in Germany were lost,
and Protestantism obtained a decided ascendency in the council
of the German princes. The Catholic prelates were now simply
paid servants of the state, and thus their double connexion with
the curia and the state brought with it in later times endless
entanglements and complications. On the other hand, in states
hitherto almost exclusively Protestant, _e.g._ Württemberg, Baden,
Hesse, there was a great increase of Catholic subjects, which
attracted but little serious attention when the confessional
particularism in the consciousness of the age was more unassuming
and tolerant than ever it has been before or since.
§ 192.2. =The Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the
Rhine.=--Baron Carl Theod. von Dalberg, distinguished for his
literary culture and his liberal patronage of art and science,
was made in 1802 Elector of Mainz and Lord High Chancellor of the
German empire. When by the recess of 1803 the territories of the
electorate on the left of the Rhine were given over to France and
those on the right secularized, the electoral rank was abolished.
The same happened with respect to the lord high chancellorship
through the creation of the Rhenish Confederation. Dalberg was
indemnified for the former by the favour of Napoleon by the
gift of a small territory on the right of the Rhine, and for the
latter by the renewal of the prince-primacy of the Confederation
of the Rhine with a seat in the Federal council. He still
retained his episcopal office and fixed its seat at Regensburg.
The founding of a metropolitan chapter at Regensburg embracing
the whole domain of the Rhenish Confederation he did not succeed
in carrying out, and in 1813 he felt compelled to surrender also
his territorial possessions. His spiritual functions, however,
as Archbishop of Regensburg, he continued to discharge until his
death in 1817.
§ 192.3. =The Vienna Congress and the Concordat.=--The Vienna
Congress of 1814, 1815, had assigned it the difficult task of
righting the sorely disturbed political affairs of Europe and
giving a new shape to the territorial and dynastic relations. But
never had an indispensably necessary redistribution of territory
been made more difficult or more complicated by diplomatic
intrigues than in Germany. Instead of the earlier federation of
states, the restoration of which proved impossible, the federal
constitution of June 8th, 1815, created under the name of the
German Confederation a union of states in which all members
of the confederation as such exercised equal sovereign rights.
Their number then amounted to thirty-eight, but in the course
of time by death or withdrawal were reduced to thirty-four. The
new distribution of territory, just as little as the Luneville
Peace, took into account confessional homogeneity of princes and
territories, so that the combination of Catholic and Protestant
districts with the above referred to consequences, occurred in
a yet larger measure. But the federal constitution secured in
Article XVI. full toleration for all Christian confessions in
the countries of the confederation. The claims of the Romish
curia, which advanced from the demand for the restoration of all
ecclesiastical principalities and the return of all impropriated
churches and monasteries to their original purposes, to the
demand for the restoration of the holy Roman-German empire in the
mediæval and hierarchical sense, as well as the solemn protest
against its conclusions laid upon the table of the congress by
the papal legate Consalvi, were left quite unheeded. But also
a proposal urgently pressed by the vicar-general of the diocese
of Constance, Baron von Wessenberg (§ 187, 3), to found a German
Catholic national church under a German primate found no favour
with the congress; and an article recommended by Austria and
Prussia to be incorporated in the acts of the confederation by
which the Catholic church in Germany endeavoured to secure a
common constitution under guarantee of the confederation, was
rejected through the opposition of Bavaria. And since in the
Frankfort parliament neither Wessenberg with his primacy and
national church idea nor Consalvi with a comprehensive concordat
answering to the wishes of the curia, was able to carry through
a measure, it was left to the separate states interested to make
separate concordats with the pope. Bavaria concluded a concordat
in 1817 (§ 195, 1); Prussia in 1821 (§ 193, 1). Negotiations with
the other German states fell through owing to the excessiveness
of the demands of the hierarchy, or led to very unsatisfactory
results, as in Hanover in 1824 (§ 194, 1) and the states
belonging to the ecclesiastical province of the Upper Rhine
in 1837 (§ 196, 1). In the time of reaction against the
revolutionary excesses of 1848 the curia first secured any real
advance. Hesse-Darmstadt opened the list in 1854 with a secret
convention (§ 196, 4); then Austria followed in 1855 with a
model concordat (§ 198, 2) which served as the pattern for the
concordats with Württemberg in 1857 (§ 196, 6), and with Baden
in 1859 (§ 196, 2), as well as for the episcopal convention with
Nassau in 1861 (§ 196, 4). But the revived liberal current of
1860 swept away the South German concordats; the Vatican Council
by its infallibility dogma gave the deathblow to that of Austria,
and the German “_Kulturkampf_” sent the Prussian concordat to the
winds, and only that of Bavaria remained in full force.
§ 192.4. =The Frankfort Parliament and the Würzburg Bishops’
Congress of 1848.=--As in the March diets of 1848 the magic
word “freedom” roused through Germany a feverish excitement,
it found a ready response among the Catholics, whose church
was favoured in the highest degree by the movement. In the
Frankfort parliament the ablest leaders of Catholic Germany
had seats. Among the Catholic population there were numerous
religio-political societies formed (§ 186, 3), and the German
bishops, avowedly for the celebration of the 600th anniversary of
the building of Cologne cathedral, set alongside of the Frankfort
people’s parliament a German bishops’ council. After they had at
Frankfort declared themselves in favour of unconditional liberty
of faith, conscience, and worship, the complete independence
of all religious societies in the ordering and administering
of their affairs, but also of freeing the schools from all
ecclesiastical control and oversight, as well as of the
introduction of obligatory civil marriage, the bishops’ council
met in October at Würzburg under the presidency of Archbishop
Geissel of Cologne with nineteen episcopal assistants and several
able theological advisers. In thirty-six sessions they reached
the conclusion that complete separation between church and state
is not to be desired so long as the state does not refuse to
the church the place of authority belonging to it. On the other
hand, by all means in their power they are to seek the abrogation
of the _placet_ of the sovereign, the full independence of
ecclesiastical legislation, administration and jurisdiction, with
the abolition of the _appellatio tanquam ab abusu_, the direction
and oversight of the public schools as well as the control of
religious instruction in higher schools to be given only by
teachers licensed for the purpose by the bishops, and finally to
demand permission to erect educational institutions of their own
of every kind, etc., and to forward a copy of these decisions
to all German governments. The main object of the Würzburg
assembly to secure currency for their resolutions in the new
Germany sketched out at the Frankfort parliament, was indeed
frustrated by that parliament’s speedy overthrow. Nevertheless
in the several states concerned it proved of great and lasting
importance in determining the subsequent unanimous proceedings
of the bishops.
§ 193. PRUSSIA.
To the pious king Frederick William III. (1797-1840) it was a matter
of heart and conscience to turn to account the religious consciousness
of his people, re-awakened by God’s gracious help during the war of
independence, for the healing of the three hundred years’ rent in the
evangelical church by a union of the two evangelical confessions. The
jubilee festival of the Reformation in 1817 seemed to him to offer the
most favourable occasion. The king also desired to see the Catholic
church in his dominions restored to an orderly and thriving condition,
and for this end concluded a concordat with Rome in 1821. But it was
broken up in 1836 over a strife between canon and civil law in reference
to mixed marriages. Frederick William IV. was dominated by romantic
ideas, and his reign (1840-1858), notwithstanding all his evangelical
Christian decidedness, was wanting in the necessary firmness and
energetic consistency. In the Catholic church the Jesuits were allowed
unhindered to foster ultramontane hierarchical principles, and in
the evangelical church the troubles about constitution, union, and
confession could not be surmounted either by its own proper guardian,
the episcopate, or by the superior church councils created in 1850.
And although the notifications of William I. on his entrance upon the
sole government in 1858 were hailed by the liberals as giving assurance
that a new era had dawned in the development of the evangelical national
church, this hope proved to be premature. With the exaltation of the
victory-crowned royal house of Prussia to the throne of the newly
erected German Empire on January 18th, 1871, a new era was actually
opened for ecclesiastical developments and modifications throughout
the land.
§ 193.1. =The Catholic Church to the Close of the Cologne
Conflict.=--The government of =Frederick William III.= entered
into negotiations with the papal curia, not so much for the old
provinces in which everything was going well, but rather in the
interests of the Rhine provinces annexed in 1814, whose bishops’
sees were vacant or in need of circumscription. The first
Prussian ambassador to the Roman curia (1816-1823) was the famous
historian Niebuhr. Although a true Protestant and keen critic
and restorer of the history of old pagan Rome he was no match
for the subtle and skilful diplomacy of Consalvi. In presence
of the claims of the curia he manifested to an almost incredible
extent trustful sympathy and acquiescence, even taking to do with
matters that lay outside of Prussian affairs, eagerly silencing
and opposing any considerations suggested from the other side. A
complete concordat, however, defining in detail all the relations
between church and state was not secured, but in 1821 an
agreement was come to, with thankful acknowledgment of the “great
magnanimity and goodness” shown by the king, by the bull _De
salute animarum_, sanctioned by the king through a cabinet order
(“in the exercise of his royal prerogative and without detriment
to these rights”), according to which two archbishoprics, Cologne
and Posen, and six bishoprics, Treves, Münster, Paderborn,
Breslau, Kulm, and Ermeland, with a clerical seminary, were
erected in Prussia and furnished with rich endowments. The
cathedral chapter was to have the free choice of the bishop; but
by an annexed note it was recommended to make sure in every such
election that the one so chosen would be a _grata persona_ to the
king. The union thus effected between church and state was of but
short duration. The decree of Trent forbade Catholics to enter
into mixed marriages with non-Catholics. A later papal bull
of 1741, however, permitted it on condition of an only passive
assistance of the clergy at the wedding and an engagement by the
parents to train up the children as Catholics. The law of Prussia,
on the other hand, in contested cases made all the children
follow the religion of their fathers. As this was held in 1825
to apply to the Rhine provinces, and as the bishops there had, in
1828, appealed to the pope, Pius VIII. when negotiations with the
Prussian ambassador Bunsen (1824-1838) proved fruitless, issued
in 1830 a brief which permitted Catholic priests to give the
ecclesiastical sanction to mixed marriages only when a promise
was given that the children should be educated as Catholics, but
otherwise to give only passive assistance. When all remonstrances
failed to overcome the obstinacy of the curia, the government
turned to the Archbishop of Cologne, Count =Spiegel=, a zealous
friend and promoter of the Hermesian theology (§ 191, 1), and
arranged in 1834 a secret convention with him, which by his
influence all his suffragans joined. In it they promised to give
such an interpretation to the brief that its observance would be
limited to teaching and exhortation, but would by no means extend
to the obligation of submitting the children to Catholic baptism,
and that the mere _assistentia passiva_ would be resorted to as
rarely as possible, and only in cases where absolutely required.
Spiegel died in November, 1835. In 1836 the Westphalian Baron
=Clement Droste von Vischering= was chosen as his successor.
Although before his elevation he had unhesitatingly agreed to
the convention, soon after his enthronization he strictly forbad
all the clergy celebrating any marriage except in accordance with
the brief, and blamed himself for having believed the agreement
between convention and brief affirmed by the government, and
having only subsequently on closer examination discovered the
disagreement between the two. At the same time, in order to give
effect to the condemnation that had been meanwhile passed on
the Hermesian theology, he gave orders that at the confessional
the Bonn students should be forbidden to attend the lectures
of Hermesians. When the archbishop could not be prevailed on
to yield, he was condemned in 1837 as having broken his word
and having incited to rebellion, and sent to the fortress of
Minden. =Gregory XIV.= addressed to the consistory a fulminating
allocution, and a flood of controversial tracts on either
side swept over Germany. Görres designated the archbishop “the
Athanasius of the nineteenth century.” The government issued
a state paper justifying its procedure, and the courts of
law sentenced certain refractory priests to several years’
confinement in fortresses or prisons. The moderate peaceful
tone of the cathedral chapter did much to quell the disturbance,
supporting as it did the state rather than the archbishop. The
example of Cologne encouraged also =Dunin=, Archbishop of Gnesen
and Posen, to issue in 1838 a pastoral in which he threatened
with suspension any priest in his diocese who would not yield
unconditional obedience to the papal brief. For this he was
deposed by the civil courts and sentenced to half a year’s
imprisonment in a fortress, but the king prevented the execution
of the sentence. But Dunin fled from Berlin, whither he had
been ordered by the king, to Posen, and was then brought in 1839
to the fortress of Kolberg. While matters were in this state
Frederick William IV. came to the throne in 1840. Dunin was
immediately restored, after promising to maintain the peace.
Droste also was released from his confinement with public marks
of respect, but received in 1841, with his own and the pope’s
approval, in the former Bishop of Spires, Geissel, a coadjutor,
who in his name and with the right of succession administered the
diocese. The government gave no aid to the Hermesians. The law
in regard to mixed marriages continued indeed in force, but
was exercised so as to put no constraint of conscience upon
the Catholic clergy. Of his own accord the king declined
further exercise of the royal prerogative, allowing the bishops
direct intercourse with the papal see, whereas previously all
correspondence had to pass through royal committees, with this
proviso by the minister Eichhorn, “that this display of generous
confidence be not abused,” and with the expectation that the
bishops would not only communicate to the government the contents
of their correspondence with the pope, but also the papal replies
which did not deal exclusively with doctrine, and would not speak
and act against the wish and will of the government. But Geissel,
recommended by Louis of Bavaria to his son-in-law Frederick
William IV. instead of Baron von Diepenbrock (§ 187, 1) who was
first thought of, by his skilful and energetic manœuvring, going
on from victory to victory, raised ultramontanism in Prussia to
the very summit of its influence and glory.
§ 193.2. =The Golden Age of Prussian Ultramontanism,
1841-1871.=--In the Cologne-Posen conflict Rome had won an almost
complete victory, and with all its satellites now thought only
of how it might in the best possible manner turn this victory to
account, in which the all too trustful government sought to aid
it to the utmost. This movement received a further impulse in
the revolution of 1848 (§ 192, 4). In Prussia as well as in other
German lands, and there in a special degree, the Catholic church
managed to derive from the revolutionary movements of those times,
and from the subsequent reaction, substantial advantage. The
constitution of 1850 declared in Article xv.: “The evangelical
and the Roman Catholic Church as well as every other religious
society regulates and administers its affairs independently;”
in Article xvi.: “The correspondence of religious societies
with their superiors is unrestricted, the publication of
ecclesiastical ordinances is subject only to those limitations
which apply to all other documents;” in Article xviii.:
“The right of nomination, proposal, election, and institution
to spiritual office, so far as it belongs to the state, is
abolished;” and in Article xxiv.: “The respective religious
societies direct religious instruction in the public schools.”
Under the screen of these fundamental privileges the Catholic
episcopate now claimed one civil prerogative after another,
emancipated itself wholly from the laws of the state, and, on
the plea that God must be obeyed rather than man, made the canon
law, not only in purely ecclesiastical but also in mixed matters,
the only standard, and the decision of the pope the final appeal.
At last nothing was left to the state but the obligation of
conferring splendid endowments upon the bishops, cathedral
chapters, and seminaries for priests, and the honour of being at
home the executioner of episcopal tyranny, and abroad the avenger
of every utterance unfavourable in the doctrine and worship,
customs and enactments of the Catholic church. With almost
incredible infatuation the Catholic hierarchy was now regarded
as a main support of the throne against the revolutionary
tendencies of the age and as the surest guarantee for the loyalty
of subjects in provinces predominantly Catholic. Under protection
of the law allowing the formation of societies and the right
of assembling, the order of Jesuits set up one establishment
after another, and made up for defects or insufficient energy
of ultramontane pastoral work, agitation and endeavour at
conversion on the part of other peaceably disposed parish
priests, by numerous missions conducted in the most ostentatious
manner (§ 186, 6). Although according to Article xiii. of the
constitution religious societies could obtain corporative rights
only by special enactments, the bishops, on their own authority,
without regarding this provision, established religious orders
and congregations wherever they chose. As these were generally
placed under foreign superiors male or female, to whom in Jesuit
fashion unconditional obedience was rendered, each member being
“like a corpse,” without any individual will, they spread without
hindrance, so that continually new cloisters and houses of the
orders sprang up like mushrooms over the Protestant metropolis
(§ 186, 2). Education in Catholic districts fell more and more
into the hands of religious corporations, and even the higher
state educational institutions, so far as they dealt with the
training of the Catholic youth (theological faculties, gymnasia,
and Training schools), were wholly under the control of the
bishops. From the boys’ convents and priests’ seminaries,
erected at all episcopal residences, went forth a new generation
of clergy reared in the severest school of intolerance, who,
first of all acting as chaplains, by espionage, the arousing
of suspicion and talebearing, were the dread of the old parish
priests, and, as “chaplains at large,” stirred up fanaticism
among the people, and secured the Catholic press to themselves
as a monopoly. For the purposes of Catholic worship and education
the government had placed state aid most liberally at their
disposal, without requiring any account from the bishops as to
their disposal of the money. Although the number of Catholics
in the whole country was only about half that of the Protestants,
the endowment of the Catholic was almost double that of the
evangelical church. The civil authority readily helped the
bishops to enforce any spiritual penalties, and thus the inferior
clergy were brought into absolute dependence upon their spiritual
superiors. In the government department of Public Worship, from
1840 to 1848 under the direction of Eichhorn, there was since
1841 a subsection for dealing with the affairs of the Catholic
church which, although restricted to the guarding of the rights
of the king over against the curia and that of the state over
against the hierarchy, came to be in an entirely opposite
sense “the civil department of the pope in Prussia.” Under Von
Mühler’s ministry, 1862-1872, it obtained absolute authority
which it seems to have exercised in removing unfavourable acts
and documents from the imperial archives. And thus the Catholic
church, or rather the ultramontane party dominant in it since
1848, grew up into a power that threatened the whole commonwealth
in its very foundations.--By the annexation of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau in 1866, four new bishoprics, those of Hildesheim,
Osnabrück, Fulda and Limburg were added to the previous
eight.--Continuation § 197.
§ 193.3. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia down to
1848.=--On the accomplishment of the union by Frederick
William III. and the confusions arising therefrom, see § 177.
=Frederick William IV.= on his accession declared his wish in
reference to the national evangelical church, that the supreme
control of the church should be exercised only in order to secure
for it in an orderly and legal way the independent administration
of its own affairs. The realization of this idea, after a church
conference of the ordinary clergy from almost all German states
had been held in Berlin without result, was attempted at Berlin
by a general synod, opened on Whitsunday, 1846. The synod at
its eighteenth session entered upon the consideration of the
difficult question of doctrine and the confession. The result
of this was the approval of an ordination formula drawn up by
Dr. Nitzsch (§ 182, 10), according to which the candidate for
ordination was to make profession of the great fundamental
and saving truths instead of the church confession hitherto
enforced. And since among these fundamental truths the doctrines
of creation, original sin, the supernatural conception, the
descent into hell and the ascension of Christ, the resurrection
of the body, the last judgment, everlasting life and everlasting
punishment were not included, and therefore were not to be
enforced, since further by this ordination formula the special
confessions of Lutheran and Reformed were really set aside,
and therewith the existence of a Lutheran as well as a Reformed
church within the union seemed to be abolished, a small number
of decided Lutherans in the synod protested; still more decided
and vigorous protests arose from outside the synod, to which
the _Evang. Kirchenzeitung_ opened its columns. The government
gave no further countenance to the decisions of the synod, and
opponents exercised their wit upon the unfortunate _Nicænum_ of
the nineteenth century, which as a _Nitzschenum_ had fallen into
the water. In March, 1847, the king issued a patent of toleration,
by which protection was assured anew to existing churches, but
the formation of new religious societies was allowed to all who
found not in these the expression of their belief.
§ 193.4. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia,
1848-1872.=--When the storms of revolution broke out in 1848,
the new minister of worship, =Count Schwerin=, willingly aided
in reorganizing the church according to the mind of the masses
of the people by a constitutional synod. But before it had met
the reaction had already set in. The transition ministry of
=Ladenberg= was assured by consistories and faculties of the
danger of convoking such a synod of representatives of the people.
Instead of the synod therefore a =Supreme Church Council= was
assembled at Berlin in 1850, which, independent of the ministry,
and only under the king as _præcipuum membrum ecclesiæ_, should
represent the freedom of the church from the state as something
already realized. On March 6th, 1852, the king issued a cabinet
order, in consequence of which the Supreme Church Council
administered not only the affairs of the evangelical national
church as a whole, but also was charged with the interests of the
Lutheran as well as the Reformed church in particular, and was
to be composed of members from both of those confessions, who
should alone have to decide on questions referring to their own
confession. On the _Itio in partes_ thus required in this board,
only Dr. Nitzsch remained over, as he declared that he could find
expression for his religious convictions in neither of the two
confessions, but only in a consensus of both. The difficulty
was overcome by reckoning him a representative equally of both
denominations. Encouraged by such connivance in high places to
entertain still bolder hopes, the Lutheran societies in 1853
presented to the king a petition signed by one hundred and sixty
one clergymen, for restoring Lutheran faculties and the Lutheran
church property. But this called forth a rather unfavourable
cabinet order, in which the king expressed his disapproval of
such a misconception of the ordinances of the former year, and
made the express declaration that it never was his intention to
break up or weaken the union effected by his father, that he only
wished to give the confession within the union the protection
to which it was undoubtedly entitled. After this the separate
Lutheran interest so long highly favoured fell into manifest and
growing disfavour. Still the ministerial department of worship
under =Von Raumer=, 1850-1858, continued to conduct the affairs
of schools and universities in the spirit of the ecclesiastical
orthodox reaction, and issued the endless school regulations
conceived in this spirit of the privy councillor Stiehl. The
Supreme Church Council also exhibited a rare activity and passed
many wholesome ordinances. The evangelical church won great
credit by the care it took of its members scattered over distant
lands, in supplying them with clergy and teachers. The evident
favour with which Frederick William IV. furthered the efforts of
the Evangelical Alliance of 1857 (§ 178, 3) was the last proof
of decided aversion from the confessional movement which he was
to be allowed to give. A long and hopeless illness, of which he
died in 1861, obliged him to resign the government to his brother
=William I.= When this monarch in October, 1855, began to rule
in his own name, he declared to his newly appointed ministers
that it was his firm resolve that the evangelical union, whose
beneficent development had been obstructive to an orthodoxy
incompatible with the character of the evangelical church, and
which had thus almost caused its ruin, should be maintained
and further advanced. But in order that the task might be
accomplished, the organs for its administration must be carefully
chosen and to some extent changed. All hypocrisy and formalism,
which that orthodoxy had fostered, is wherever possible to be
removed. The “new era,” however, marked by the appearance of
liberal journals, by no means answered to the expectations which
those words excited. The ministry of =Von Bethmann-Hollweg=,
1858-1862, filled some theological and spiritual offices in this
liberal spirit; Stahl withdrew from the Supreme Church Council;
the proceedings against the free churches, as well as the severe
measures against the re-marriage of divorced parties, were
relaxed. But the marriage law laid down by the ministry with
permission of civil marriage was rejected by the House of Peers,
and the hated school regulations had to be undertaken by the
minister himself. The ecclesiastically conservative ministry of
=Von Mühler=, 1862-1872, which, however, wanted a fixed principle
as well as self-determined energy of will, and was therefore
often vacillating and losing the respect of all parties, was
utterly unfit to realize these expectations. The Supreme Church
Council published in 1867 the outlines of a provincial synodal
constitution for the six East Provinces which were still without
this institution, which the Rhine Provinces and Westphalia had
enjoyed since 1835. For this purpose he convened in autumn, 1869,
an extraordinary provincial synod, which essentially approved
the sketch submitted, whereupon it was provisionally enacted.
§ 193.5. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia,
1872-1880.=--After the removal of Von Mühler, the minister of
worship, in January, 1872, his place was taken by =Dr. Falk=,
1872-1879. The hated school regulations were now at last set
aside and replaced by new moderate prescriptions, conceived in
an almost unexpectedly temperate spirit. On September 10th, 1873,
the king issued a congregational and synodal constitution
for the eastern provinces, with the express statement that the
position of the confession and the union should thereby be in no
way affected. It prescribed that in every congregation presided
over by a pastor, elected by the ecclesiastically qualified
church members, _i.e._ those of honourable life who had taken
part in public worship and received the sacraments, there should
be a church council of from four to twelve persons, and for
more important matters, _e.g._ the election of a pastor, a
congregational committee of three times the size, half of which
should be reappointed every third year. To the district synod,
presided over by the superintendent, each congregation sends as
delegates besides the pastor a lay representative chosen by the
church council from among its members or from the congregational
committee. According to the same principle the District Synods
choose from their members a clerical and a lay representative to
the provincial synod, to which also the evangelical theological
faculty of the university within the bounds sends a deputy, and
the territorial lord nominates a number of members not exceeding
a sixth part of the whole. The general synod, in which also the
two western provinces, the Rhenish and Westphalian, take part,
consists of one hundred and fifty delegates from the provincial
synods, and thirty nominated by the territorial lords, to which
the faculties of theology and law of the six universities within
the bounds send each one of their members. Although this royal
decree had proclaimed itself final, and only remitted to an
=Extraordinary General Synod= to be called forthwith the task of
arranging for future ordinary general synods, yet at the meeting
of this extraordinary synod in Berlin, on November 24th, 1875,
a draft was submitted of a constitution modified in various
important points. Of the three demands of the liberal party
now violently insisted upon--
1. Substitution of the “filter” system in the election of
provincial and general synod members for that of the
community electorate.