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The View from the Province. A Dilemma for Protestants in Germany, 1648–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Nicholas Hope
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Uber dem Berg gibst auch Leute. This ultramontane remark made in 1742 by Christoph Matthäus Pfaff, professor of theology and chancellor of Tübingen University between 1720 and 1756, was intended to shake students out of their cosy, provincial and exclusive Lutheran theology. It was time, so Pfaff argued, they opened windows, put aside their arrogant hair-splitting about correct Lutheran doctrine, and looked at the wider Protestant world beyond Württemberg. Knowledge of the sources of the Christian Church, and of the customs and legal shape of Protestantism in Germany as it had developed since the Reformation, provided the only sure defence of the Protestant Church in an age when autocratic behaviour was fashionable with princes, and the temporal authority of Popes Clement xi and Clement XII was still an inescapable fact.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , October 1990 , pp. 606 - 621
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 Pfaff, C. M., Academische Reden über das so wohl allgemeine als auch Teutsche Protestantische Kirchen-Recht, Tübingen 1742, 34.Google Scholar

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25 Herder, J. G., Werke, Müller, J. G. et al. (eds), Stuttgart-Tübingen 1827-1830, xxii. 204–5.Google Scholar Also ibid. xxi. 232.

26 Müller, J. G., Aus dem Herder'sehen Hause, Aufzeichnungen (1780–1782), Berlin 1881, 31–2.Google Scholar

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32 Zeeden, E. W., ‘Die katholische Kirche in der Sicht des deutschen Protestantismus im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Spörl, J. (ed.), Zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik, Festschrift für Georg Schreiber, Munich-Freiburg 1953, 433–56.Google Scholar

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37 ‘It is obvious that the text-books of the Seventeenth century can no longer serve the same purpose as they did then, but now in large measure belong merely to the realm of historical presentation’: The Christian Faith, Mackintosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S. (eds), Edinburgh 1928, 89Google Scholar, para. 19. 2. Also cited by Senft, C., Wahrhaftigkeit und Wahrheit. Die Theologie des ig. Jahrhunderts zwischen Orthodoxie und Aufklärung, Tübingen 1956, 3, 40.Google ScholarValjavec, F., ‘Des Woellnersche Religionsedikt und seine geschichtliche Bedeutung’, in Festschrift Schreiber, 386–400.Google Scholar

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39 Stäudlin, , Kirchliche Geographie und Statistik, i. 32, 112.Google Scholar

40 Rieker, , Rechtliche Stellung, 248Google Scholar, cites in particular Eichhorn, , Grundsätze des Kirchenrechts (1831), i. 455Google Scholar (see n. 45). Continuity can be seen in Richter's edition of Böhmer's, J. H. two-volume Corpus juris canonici (1747).Google Scholar He published this in two volumes between 1836 and 1839. Schrader, , Universität zu Halle, i. 147.Google ScholarDove, R. W., ‘Aemilius Ludwig Richter und seine Zeit’, ZfK vii (1867), 274Google Scholar, 27g.

41 Dove's comment in ibid. 277.

42 On the development of these ideas before 1918 see Smend, R., ‘Evangelische Kirchenrechtswissenschaft’, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd edn, Tübingen 1959, iii. 1515–19Google Scholar; NDB ix. 190–1, ‘Hinschius’.

43 NDB v. 443–4. Friedberg was also influential as co-editor with Dove, R. W. of the Zeitschrift βir Kirchenrecht, 1st ser. 1861-1889Google Scholar (22 vols), and 2nd ser. with E. Sehling, 1891–1916 (25 vols).

44 NDB xi. 21–2, ‘Kahl’. Kahl's views in 1918 are analysed by Vermeil, , Weimar, 186Google Scholar, 317.

45 Eichhorn, K. F., Grundsätze des Kirchenrechls der katholischen und evangelischen Religionsparlei in Deutschland, 2 vols, Tübingen 1831Google Scholar; Richter, A. L., Lehrbuch des katholischen und evangelischen Kirchenrechts, Leipzig 1842Google Scholar; idem, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, Urkunden und Register zur Geschichte des Rechts und der Verfassung der evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland, 2 vols, Weimar 1846. Critical commentary by Rieker, Rechtliche Stellung, preface, and Sehling, Kirchenordnungen i. xii. Protestant ecclesiastical law as such came into its own with Eichhorn and Richter. But the comparison of this law with Catholic canon law only began to work in the 1880s. This is apparent in the 4th edn of von Schulte's, J. F.Lehrbuch des katholischen und evangelischen Kirchenrechts nach dem gemeinen Rechte der deutschen Länder und Österreichs, Giessen 1886.Google Scholar

46 Dove, , ‘Richter’, viii. 363Google Scholar, 365.

47 Ibid. 303, 336, 356–7.

48 Ramm, T., Familienrecht: Recht der Ehe, Munich 1984, i. 68.Google Scholar See also Conrad, H., ‘Der parliamentarische Kampf um die Zivilehe bei Einführung des Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuches für das Deutsche Reich’, in Festschrift Schreiber, 474–93.Google Scholar

49 Lowrie, W., The Church and its Organization in Primitive and Catholic Times, London 1904, 156.Google Scholar For criticism of Kahl's views on Christian religious custom, ibid. 171.

50 von Böhmer, Erich, Genealogie der von Justus Henning Böhmer abstammenden Familien Böhmer und von Böhmer, Munich 1892.Google ScholarADB liii. 340–3, ‘Richter’.

51 Ibid. 342.