chapter 6 Renewal of Religious Leadership According to an Ancient Model: and Bishop

Angela Berlis

Introduction

In the past few decades, many new sources on Joseph Hubert Reinkens have been made accessible: letters and other documents from his youth and letters to his elder brother Wilhelm from the years 1840–1873.1 These sources have given rise to several publications about this professor of ancient church his- tory, his relation to the Prince-Bishop of Breslau and his rejection of the (1869–1870).2 Although this means that Reinkens can be regarded as one of the important champions of the Old Catholic movement in , oddly enough no modern biography considers his life and work in the period from 1873,3 when Reinkens was elected bishop for the Old Catholics in Germany and consecrated in Rotterdam by a bishop of the Old Catholic

1 Joseph Hubert Reinkens, Briefe an seinen Bruder Wilhelm (1840–1873), ed. Hermann Josef Sieben, 3 vols. [Bonner Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte 10/i-iii] (-Vienna, 1979); Herbert Lepper, ‘Unbekannte “Familienbriefe” der Brüder Joseph und Wilhelm Reinkens,’ Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsvereins 90/91 (1983/84), 165–219, there 170–197 and 213–219; Bernhard Poll, ‘Joseph Reinkens. Ein Jugendbild in Briefen,’ Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 155/156 (1954), pp. 392–410. See also: Heinrich Bacht, ‘Dr. Wilhelm Reinkens (1811–1889). Ungedruckte Briefe aus seiner Studien- und Kaplanszeit,’ Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 179 (1977), pp. 158–220. – Translation of the original lecture: Huub Stegeman, Tilburg. With thanks to Dr Charlotte Methuen, Glasgow, and Martin della Valle, , for their corrections of the expanded version of the lecture as an article. Unless otherwise specified, the translation of German quotations is by the author. 2 Heinrich Bacht, Die Tragödie einer Freundschaft. Fürstbischof Heinrich Förster und Professor Joseph Hubert Reinkens [Forschungen und Quellen zur Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichte Ostdeutschlands 20] (Cologne-Vienna, 1985); Heinrich Bacht, ‘Das Konzil war ihr Schicksal. Die Brüder Wilhelm und Joseph Hubert Reinkens und das Erste Vatikanische Konzil,’ Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 183 (1980), pp. 102–200. 3 The only full biography dates from ten years after Reinkens’s death and was written by his nephew: Joseph Martin Reinkens, Joseph Hubert Reinkens. Ein Lebensbild (Gotha, 1906). More recent articles which concentrate on the period between 1873 and 1896 focus on certain aspects of his life. For an overview of the literature, see Angela Berlis, ‘Brüder im Bischofsamt – Freunde

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60 Berlis

Church in the . Little in-depth work has been published on Reinkens as a bishop, let alone on his views on episcopacy. This latter question is the subject of this article. How did Reinkens regard religious leadership, especially episcopacy? In what way was his view influ- enced by his historical research and his experiences with contemporary bish- ops? This article draws on Reinkens’s works on Martin of Tours (1866) and (1864) and his first pastoral letter (1873) and also touches on his correspondence.

Biographical Sketch of Joseph Hubert Reinkens

Joseph Hubert Reinkens was born on 1 March 1821 in Burtscheid near . Whereas his elder brother, Wilhelm (1811–1889), received a fancy education, the family became impoverished in the 1830s and Joseph and his brothers had to work in order to help their father support the family after their mother’s death in 1836. Consequently, Joseph Reinkens was 23 by the time he passed his final school examination.4 He went on to study philosophy, theology, and clas- sical philology at the University of . During this period, he lived in the house of his elder brother Wilhelm, who was the parish priest at St Remigius in Bonn. Wilhelm Reinkens was the spiritual centre of a group of men and women inspired by the philosophy of Anton Günther (1783–1863),5 which was engaged in a careful study of the Church Fathers. Anton Günther, who lived in Vienna as a private scholar, aimed to overcome the rift between Christianity and sci- ence, faith and knowledge through a philosophical justification of positive Christianity. He inspired an influential philosophical school of the nineteenth century.6 A number of the men in the “Bonn circle of Güntherians” subse- quently left the Archbishopric of Cologne because the archbishop was ill-­

fürs Leben. Joseph Hubert Reinkens (1821–1896) und (1841–1924),’ Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift 101 (2011), 176–200, there 178–179, notes 9–12. 4 Reinkens, Lebensbild (see above, n. 3), pp. 4–6. 5 See Paul Wenzel, Der Freundeskreis um Anton Günther und die Gründung Beurons. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Katholizismus im 19. Jahrhundert (Essen, 1965); Angela Berlis, Frauen im Prozess der Kirchwerdung. Eine historisch-theologische Studie zur Anfangsphase des deutschen Altkatholizismus (1850–1890) (Frankfurt a.M., 1998), pp. 384–474. 6 See Wolfgang Klaghofer, Kritische Differenz. Biographisch-theologische Studien zur Wiener Theologischen Schule des 19. Jahrhunderts [Salzburger Theologische Studien 14] (Innsbruck, 2000).