Ignaz von Döllinger

Johann Joseph Ignaz, since 1868 Ritter von, Dollinger ( born February 28, 1799 in Bamberg, † January 10, 1890 in Munich) was a German Catholic theologian and church historian, and one of the spiritual fathers of the Old Catholic Church.

Life and work

Johann Joseph Ignaz Dollinger was born in 1799 as the son of the physician and Professor Ignaz Dollinger. Appointed in 1826 by King Ludwig I of Bavaria to Munich University, he first emerged as a staunch opponent of Protestantism and the Enlightenment. 1837-1847 he worked alongside his professorship of church history and canon law as chief librarian (ie, as a director ) of the Munich University Library. He joined the Gorres - circuit and in 1848 elected to the National Assembly in Frankfurt. He was one of the main opponents of the First Vatican Council. The decisive impetus was the dogma of the infallibility of the papacy, which he refused. He also campaigned for the separation of church and state.

Although Dollinger had with Johann Friedrich von Schulte, Franz Heinrich Reusch and later Bishop Joseph Hubert Reinkens laid the foundation for the Old Catholic Church in Germany, he fought long against the schism with Rome, criticized him for what his contemporary Schulte. On Dollinger's sharp attacks of the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Gregor von Scherr responded with his excommunication in 1871 For the academic career of the 72 -year-olds, however, was by no means over. 1872 he was Rector of the University of Munich, and in 1873 appointed him King Ludwig II of Bavaria on the Bureau of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

In the last years of his life he campaigned for the unification of Christians to that of his church ideal. Dollinger is considered as a pioneer of the idea of ​​ecumenism and is considered by the Old Catholic Church as their spiritual father.

Dollinger was also evident as a church historian a name. The conversion process Dollinger from Catholics to a " Old Catholics " who, however, did not join the Old Catholic Church formally, it can be shown also in his relation to Luther. The radicalism of Luther's rejection, which manifests itself in Dollinger's writings of the 1840s and 1850s, no longer found in the early 1860s so. Rejection of the infallibility of the papacy may perhaps be one of the reasons for this. The Dollinger's writings from the 1840s and 1850s had on the ultramontane historians, for example, its valuation of Luther and the Reformation some influence and showed long-term effects, for example, in John Janssen, Ludwig von Pastor, Hartmann and Heinrich Grisar Denifle.

A decades- long friendship association Ignaz von Dollinger with Lord Acton (1834-1902), the English historian and liberal Catholics. Dollinger's pupils included the Cologne social reformer Adolph Kolping, who after studying in Munich (1840-1842) was the rest of his life in letter contact with Dollinger and later Professor and Honorary Doctor of the Old Catholic Faculty in Bern Franz deer forests.

Dollinger received in 1853 the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art. In 1868 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of Merit of the Bavarian Crown and thus elevated to the personal knighthood.

Award

• Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown ( Ritter)