The business to be discussed, as announced in Metternich’s opening address, was twofold: (1) Matters of urgent importance necessitating immediate action; (2) Questions affecting the fundamental constitution of the German Confederation, demanding more careful and prolonged discussion. To the first class belonged (a) the urgent necessity for a uniform system of press regulation in Germany; (b) the most urgent measures in regard to the supervision of universities and schools; (c) measures in view of the already discovered machinations of the political parties. To the second class belonged (a) the more clear definition of article XIII. of the Act of Confederation (i.e. state constitutions); (b) the creation of a permanent federal supreme court; (c) the creation of a federal executive organization (Bundes-Executions Ordnung) armed with power to make the decrees of the diet and the judgments of the high court effective; (d) the facilitation of commercial intercourse within the confederation in accordance with article XIX. of the Act of Confederation (Beilage A. zum ersten Protokoll, Martens, iv. p. 74).
These questions were debated in twenty-three formal conferences. On the issues raised by the first class there was practical unanimity. All were agreed that the state of Germany demanded disciplinary measures, and as the result of the deliberations it was determined to lay before the federal diet definite proposals for (1) a uniform press censorship over all periodical publications; (2) a system of “curators” to supervise the education given in universities and schools, with disciplinary enactments against professors and teachers who should use their position for purposes of political propaganda; (3) the erection of a central commission at Mainz, armed with inquisitorial powers, for the purpose of unmasking the widespread revolutionary conspiracy, the existence of which was assumed.
On the questions raised under the second class there was more fundamental difference of opinion, and by far the greater part of the time of the conference was occupied in discussing the burning question of the due interpretation of article XIII. The controversy raged round the distinction between “assemblies of estates,” as laid down in the article, and “representative assemblies,” such as had been already established in several German states. Gentz, in an elaborate memorandum (Nebenbeilage zum siebenten Protokoll, iv. p. 102), laid down that representation by estates was the only system compatible with the conservative principle, as the “outcome of a well-ordered civil society, in which the relations and rights of the several estates are due to the peculiar position of the classes and corporations on which they are based, which have been from time to time modified by law without detracting from the essentials of the sovereign power”; whereas representative assemblies are based on “the sovereignty of the people.” In answer to this, Count Wintzingerode, on behalf of the king of Württemberg, placed on record (Nebenbeilage 2 zum neunten Protokoll, p. 147) a protest, in which he urged that to insist on the system of estates would be to stereotype caste distinctions foreign to the whole spirit of the age, would alienate public opinion from the governments, and—if enforced by the central power—would violate the sovereign independence of those states which, like Württemberg, had already established representative constitutions.
Though the majority of the ministers present favoured the Austrian interpretation of article XIII. as elaborated by Gentz, they were as little prepared as the representative of Württemberg to agree to any hasty measures for strengthening the federal government at the expense of the jealously guarded prerogatives of the minor sovereignties. The result was that the constitutional questions falling under the second class were reserved for further discussion at a general conference of German ministers to be summoned at Vienna later in the year. The effective Carlsbad resolutions, subsequently issued as laws by the federal diet, were therefore only those dealing with the curbing of the “revolutionary” agitation. For the results of their operation see [Germany]: History.
The acts, protocols and resolutions of the conference of Carlsbad are given in M. de Martens’s Nouveau Recueil général de traités, &c., t. 4, pp. 8-166 (Göttingen, 1846). An interesting criticism of the Carlsbad Decrees is appended (p. 166), addressed by Baron Hans von Gagern, Luxemburg representative in the federal diet, to Baron von Plessen, Mecklenburg plenipotentiary at the conference of Carlsbad.
(W. A. P.)
CARLSTADT, Karlstadt or Karolostadt (1480-1541), German reformer, whose real name was Andreas Rudolf Bodenstein, was born at Carlstadt in Bohemia. He entered the university of Erfurt in the winter term of 1499-1500, and remained there till 1503, when he went to Cologne. In the winter term of 1504-1505 he transferred himself to the newly founded university of Wittenberg, where he soon established his reputation as a teacher of philosophy, and a zealous champion of the scholastic system of Thomas Aquinas, against the revised nominalism associated with the name of Occam. In 1508 he was made canon of the Allerheiligenstift, a collegiate church incorporated in the university; and in 1510 he became doctor of theology and archdeacon, his duties being to preach, to say mass once a week and to lecture before the university; in 1513 he was appointed ordinary professor of theology. In 1515 he went to Rome, where with a view to becoming provost of the Allerheiligenstift he studied law, taking his degree as doctor juris utriusque. His experiences in the papal city produced upon him the same effect as upon Luther, and when in 1516 he returned to Germany it was as an ardent opponent of the Thomist philosophy and as a champion of the Augustinian doctrine of the impotence of the human will and salvation through Divine grace alone. The 151 theses of Carlstadt, dated the 16th of September 1516, discovered by Theodor Kolde (“Wittenberger Disputationsthesen” in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, xi. p. 448, &c.), prove that, so far from owing his change of view to Luther’s influence, he was at this time actually in advance of Luther. The two reformers were, in fact, never friends; though from the end of 1516 onwards the development of each was considerably influenced by the other.
In the spring of 1518, in reply to Eck’s Obelisci, an attack on Luther’s 95 theses, Carlstadt published a series of theses, maintaining the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures (which he regarded as verbally inspired) over ecclesiastical tradition and the authority of the fathers, and asserting the liability of general councils to error. Eck challenged him to a public disputation, in which Luther also took part, and which lasted from the 27th of June to the 15th of July 1519. In this dialectical warfare Carlstadt was no match for Eck; but the dispute only served to confirm him in his revolt from the dominant theology, and in three violent polemical treatises against Eck he proclaimed the doctrine of the exclusive operation of grace in the justification of believers.
This attitude led him in 1520, by a logical development, to an open attack on all those ecclesiastical practices in which the doctrine of justification by works had become crystallized; e.g. indulgences and the abuse of holy water and consecrated salt. At the same time he appeared as the first of modern biblical critics, denying the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and classing the Scriptures into three categories of different value in accordance with the degrees of certainty as to their traditional origin. He still, however, maintained the doctrine of verbal inspiration, and attacked Luther for rejecting the epistle of James. In 1520 Carlstadt’s name was included in the papal bull excommunicating Luther; after a momentary hesitation he decided to remain firm in his protestant attitude, published an appeal from the pope to a general council, and attacked the corruptions of the papacy itself in a treatise on “the holiness of the pope” (Von päpstlicher Heiligkeit, October 17th, 1520).