This very popular preacher was horn on the 25th October, 1629, at Theising, in Bohemia. He entered the novitiate of the Jesuit order in 1645, at the age of sixteen. He spent his early life in different colleges, but finally he ascertained that his vocation was to be a preacher, and thenceforth he devoted his time and energies to the composition of sermons. He preached most frequently at Sternberg, in Moravia, and at Glogau, in Silesia. He died at Eger on the 9th March, 1682, aged fifty-three. The greater part of his works were published after his decease.
1. R. P. Philippi Hartung, Concio tergemina rustica, civica, aulica, in Dominicas; Colon., 1680, 4to., 2 vols.; Egræ, 1686, fol.; Colon., 1709, 4to.; Norimbergæ, 1718, fol. Conciones tergeminæ in Festa; Norimbergæ, 1711, 4to. Ibid., 1718, fol., 2 vols.
2. Philippicæ sive Invectivæ LX. in Notorios Peccatores. Pro singulis totius anni Dominicis. Ægræ, 1687, fol.; Calissii, 1688, 4to.; Augustæ et Dilingæ, 1695, 4to.
3. Problemata Evangelica; Egræ, 1689, fol.; Augustæ et Dilingæ, 1695, 4to.
4. Heiliger Tag; Prag, 1733, 12mo. Heiliger Tag und gute Nacht; Rauffbeyern, 1745, 12mo.
The sermons of Philip von Hartung are very unequal; some of them are polished gems, others are very rough diamonds; but none are without value. The preacher had his mind stored with matter, but he was wanting in the art of nicely digesting it, and reproducing what fermented in his brain, in a pleasant form. At least, so we must judge of him from his published Latin sermons; but it is quite open to question whether these discourses were delivered as they are written. I am rather inclined to regard them as his schemes from which he preached, the outlines which he developed extempore. And this I think the more probable, as the vast majority are short. It must be remembered that only one edition of the sermons appeared during the author’s lifetime, and that, only two years before his death. In this edition are contained the Sunday sermons, but not those for the festivals.
Hartung gives at least three sermons for each Sunday and festival: one addressed to a rural congregation, the second to a town audience, and the third delivered before Court. As might be expected, the concio aulica is the poorest of the set, the preacher being less at his ease, and more fettered by conventionalities. The rustic sermons are capital. He preaches on broad facts of religion, Sunday after Sunday, with striking vigour, considerable beauty, and no small amount of originality.
During the Sundays in Advent he preaches to the rural congregation on the Last Judgment. The first sermon is on the appearance in Heaven of the cross, the sign of the Son of Man; the second is on the trumpet-call waking the dead; the third on the examination of the risen ones; the fourth on the final dooms of good and bad; each of these is a most striking sermon.