MICROCOSM: Portrait of a European City by Norman Davies (Pp

communicated his desire to the Bishop, in inimitable fashion: MICROCOSM: Portrait of a European City by Norman Davies (pp. 224-266) The Holy Ghost and I are agreed that Prelate Schaffgotsch should be coadjutor of [Bresslau] and that those of your canons who resist him shall be regarded as persons who have surrendered to the Court in Vienna and to the Devil, and, having resisted the Holy Prussia annexed Silesia in the early phase of the Enlightenment. Europe was Ghost, deserve the highest degree of damnation. turning its back on the religious bigotry of the preceding period and was entering the so-called 'Age of Reason'. What is more, Prussia was one of the The Bishop replied in kind: more tolerant of the German states. It did not permit the same degree of religious liberty that had been practised in neighbouring Poland until the late The great understanding between the Holy Ghost and Your Majesty is news to me; I was seventeenth century, but equally it did not profess the same sort of religious unaware that the acquaintance had been made. I hope that He will send the Pope and the partisanship that surrounded the Habsburgs. The Hohenzollerns of Berlin had canons the inspiration appropriate to our wishes. welcomed Huguenot refugees from France and had found a modus vivendi between Lutherans and Calvinists. In this case, the King was unsuccessful. A compromise solution had to be Yet religious life in Prussian Silesia would not lack controversy. The found whereby the papal nuncio in Warsaw was charged with Silesian affairs. annexation of a predominantly Catholic province by a predominantly But, in 1747, the King tried again and Schaffgotsch, aged only thirty-one, was Protestant kingdom was to bring special problems. On entering Bresslau in duly appointed Bishop of Bresslau. The demarche was to be short-lived. With January 1741, Frederick II ordered thirty Prussian cavalrymen to guard the the outbreak of war in 1756, Schaffgotsch defected again and went off to serve Jesuit College from the wrath of the Protestant mob. It was said that the Maria Theresa. When he returned to Silesia in 1763, he was forbidden to enter Prussian soldiers, when approaching a quiet corner outside the Jesuit College, Bresslau and was exiled to the episcopal residence of Johannisberg at Jauernig had heard the sound of moaning and, after fruitless investigations, had decided in Austrian Silesia. The affairs of the bishopric were managed by two suffragan to knock the wall down. Inside they discovered an old grey-haired man, living bishops, notably by Johann Moritz von Strachwitz (1721-81). in his own filth, with a piece of bread and a jug of water that had evidently In the late eighteenth century, Catholicism in Prussia entered a period of been passed to him through a hole in the wall. When asked who he was, he intellectual crisis. The dissolution of the Society of Jesus in 1774, the replied that his name was Jakob Sturm, a preacher from Liegnitz, and that he humiliating partitions of Catholic Poland and the vibrancy of Protestant had written a number of tracts against the Jesuits. He had counted twenty-six universities such as Halle all combined to magnify Protestant prestige. No one winters since his arrest, and he died ten days after his release. This, of course, better personified this pre-eminence than the most important theologian of the was a Prussian tale. But it says something about the reigning tensions. age, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Born and educated in Bresslau, Though a religious sceptic himself, Frederick recognised the social Schleiermacher became Dean of the Theological Faculty of Berlin University. importance of religion. Initially, he maintained a distance from both Through his efforts to win over the educated classes and his emphasis on confessions in Silesia. The restrictions on Protestant worship in some Catholic feeling as the basis of faith, he was to have a profound influence on Protestant districts were lifted and the rights of Catholics were respected in Protestant thought. As a proponent of the Union of Protestant Churches in Prussia, he ones. In 1742, he allowed the Bishop of Bresslau, Cardinal von Sinzendorf, to also wielded political influence. His principal works were Über die Religion ('On return to his post, on condition that the Vatican be kept at arm's length and Religion', 1799) Die Weihnachtsfeier ('Christmas Celebration', 1806) and Der that he become a 'Prussian Pope'. Yet, mindful of the divided loyalties of christliche Glaube ('The Christian Faith', 1821-2). On his death, it was said that Silesian Catholics, the King could not resist interfering. His tool was to be 30,000 people joined the funeral procession through the streets of Berlin. Philipp Graf von Schaffgotsch (1716-95), a Jesuit-educated Silesian who had The Union of Prussian Protestant Churches, effected in 1817, joined the been accepted into the priesthood in Vienna. In 1740 he had defected to serve Lutherans and Calvinists of Prussia into one 'Evangelical State Church'. The Prussia and had been rewarded with rapid promotion. Three years later, he use of the word 'Protestant' was forbidden. In 1822, a new common liturgy was became Frederick's favoured candidate for the post of coadjutor in Bresslau in introduced. Dissenters could be labelled as heretical. For Bresslau's Lutherans, a blatant contravention of the Church's own right of appointment. The King the reorganisation was not insignificant. For nearly three centuries they had been a self-governing community. Unlike most Lutherans in Germany, they the educational, medical and pastoral services of the Orders, but also, perhaps had not been subject under Habsburg rule to the state authorities or to the more fundamentally, of the irreplaceable devotional flavour that only dedicated religious inclinations of the ruling dynasty. But now they were obliged to monks and nuns could contribute. Admirers of Prussian state power called it relinquish all aspects of their autonomy. The King of Prussia was summus modernisation. Many believers thought it retrograde, not to say heartless. The episcopus of the state Church, just as Henry VIII had made himself 'Supreme only exceptions to be made were for religious institutions caring for the Governor' of the Church of England. His Protestant subjects, who could no incurably sick or the mentally ill. Apart from that, everything had to go. The St longer call themselves Protestant and who were no longer straightforward Matthias Hospital became a secular school. The Dominicans' Library became a Lutherans but hybrid Luthero-Calvinists, were simply expected to obey. They state library. The ancient Abbey of Trebnitz was turned into a factory. were asked to adapt to a major confessional and liturgical shift. Some would Another important reorientation took place as a result of the Concordat of say that they had suffered a major defeat. 1821, when the Catholic Diocese of Bresslau was detached from its historical Not surprisingly, a prominent group of dissenters, that of the 'Old links with the See of Gniezno (Gnesen). To a large extent, the step was a Lutherans' emerged in Bresslau. Its leader, Johann Scheibel (1783-1843), : natural consequence of the partitions of Poland. Gniezno itself lay inside the another Vratislavian born and bred and a Professor of Theology at the territory taken by Prussia, while most of its ecclesiastical province had fallen university, had headed the protests against the Union. Having petitioned both under Russian or Austrian control. The Polish Primate at Gniezno was unable the City Council and the King, he managed to delay its official recognition in to exercise his duties. The solution in Prussia was to create a new archbishopric Bresslau, thereby creating a 5,000-strong congregation. In the following years, of Posen-Gnesen to administer the former Polish provinces, and to raise the the movement suffered persistent persecution. Many of its members emigrated, princely bishopric of Bresslau into an independent see directly subordinated to establishing communities as far afield as Adelaide in South Australia. The Old Rome. The status of the Vratislavian diocese was undoubtedly enhanced, not Lutherans of Silesia were only granted recognition as a tolerated non- least because its authority now ran from the Baltic to Bohemia, and included conformist Church in 1845. Berlin. For the first time in 800 years, it was also fully drawn into the German Catholicism, too, had its dissenters. The German Catholic Movement, which sphere. All its Prince-Bishops in the subsequent era were Germans: emerged in the 1840s, was protesting against its perception of the Roman Church as superstitious and fanatical. It was founded in Bresslau in 1845, by, 1747-95 Philipp Graf von Schaffgotsch among others, Johannes Ronge (1813-87), a former chaplain in Grottkau 1795-1817 Joh. Christian, Prince of Hohenlohe-Bartenstein (Grodkow). Having publicly polemicised against the cult of 'Christ's Coat' in 1824-32 Emanuel Schimonski Trier, Ronge was excommunicated. But, freed from Church control, he only 1836-40 Leopold Sedlnitzky widened his attacks. In an open letter to the Bishop of Trier, he wrote, 'Already 1843-4 Josef Knauer the historians are taking up their pens and are covering your name with all the 1845-53 Melchior Baron von Diepenbrock contempt of this world and the next; they describe you as the Tetzel of the 1853-81 Heinrich Forster. 19th century.' Ronge's followers were no less trenchant. They rejected the primacy of the Papacy, confession, celibacy, indulgences, fasting, pilgrimage The incidence of Polish names on the episcopal list is misleading. The only and the cults of saints and relics. Welcomed by the Prussian authorities, their prelate with any Polish sympathies was Bernhard Bogedein, a suffragan bishop numbers grew rapidly, reaching some 259 communities and 100,000 members in Bresslau in 1858-60, who supported the preservation of Polish primary by 1848.

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