The danger practically and in point of fact began when he became entangled in Bavarian politics, especially in what concerns the question of the relations of science to ecclesiastical authority. “German science” now became the focus in which the more or less conscious tendencies of Döllinger were concentrated. It is in 1865 that we must place the real turning-point in Döllinger’s career.
About the end of the year 1861, the writer of these lines went to Frankfort-on-the-Main. He visited Böhmer, and will never forget a scene he witnessed on the occasion of that visit. The great historian was sick at the time, fresh in mind, it is true, but in a repining condition, and almost bitter. Our conversation turned on the condition of the University of Munich under the régime of the so-called “Bernjungen.” Böhmer expressed great regret at what was going on in Munich, but reserved the vials of his wrath for the celebrities of the month of March previous. Especially, he made Döllinger responsible for it that so favorable a time had not been used for the founding of a historical school in the interests of the church. It was well known that Dr. Döllinger had had many scholars during his long career as a professor; but he had founded no school. It might be said, even, that
he did not leave a disciple after him. Whilst he expatiated in the endless world of book in a manner hitherto unparalleled, perhaps it became impossible for him to prepare the living materials which young men needed, and lost the gift of sociability.
Böhmer became more and more aggravated as he proceeded, till, finally, his anger culminated in the following anecdote: He said that, when Döllinger visited Frankfort last, he had had a walk with him through the city, and Döllinger had spoken to him about his literary plans. He, Böhmer, remonstrated with him, and inquired why he did not fulfil his older promises; why he did not continue his unfinished church history. Whereupon Döllinger, stopping and swinging his cane, said with a smile: “You see, I can’t do that; for now my researches have brought me to such a pass that I cannot make the end of my history tally with the beginning; the continuation of my church history would be entirely Protestant.” I see Böhmer this moment before me with the same grim visage which he wore as he closed this story with the words: “He—he said that!”
Still, in 1860, Döllinger’s great work, Christianity and the Church in the time of their Foundation, appeared. Embracing the results of the latest research, and written in the most charming manner, this book touched and strengthened many a Catholic heart, as it did my own. But Döllinger has made that same beautiful book a sad memorial of his fall. He had written the book when he was sixty years of age, but when, in 1868, the second edition of it appeared, it was discovered that he had omitted some of the principal passages of the first edition, bearing upon the promises to and the establishment of
the primacy; and what he had not omitted, he had changed in the interests of liberalism, and all without giving any ground for the alterations, without a single note even.
Döllinger has a wonderful memory for everything in the world of print, but very little for what concerns his own person or his own acts. When he wrote his declaration to the Archbishop of Munich, he seems to have quite forgotten the intentional “corrections” of his celebrated work. Otherwise, he would not have referred to the approval which it met with from the whole of Catholic Germany, and raised the question, Which text he meant—the true one of 1860, or the altered, not to say the falsified, one of 1868? Moreover, he, as the inspirer of Janus, recalled, in that last-named book, the little he had left in the edition of 1868 favorable to the primacy, for the reason that it “contradicted all opinions of the fathers, and the principles of exegetical theology.” In other words, Janus has completely and flatly denied the primacy.
It is hard to calculate what a blessing Döllinger might have been the means of to his contemporaries and to posterity, had he continued to make the rich treasures of his knowledge accessible to Christendom as he had done in his work of 1860. The Almighty, who had preserved him upright during the wars and passions of these later years, would have decreed him doubtless a rare old age had he remained true to his resolution not to divide his powers, to live an unprejudiced votary of science. It was to be otherwise. That book was the last fruit of the professional activity of the historian. The historian was now to become the bitter party-man, not to say the future Bavarian senator, and, as a writer, a mere political pamphleteer.
Here his career as a man of science closes.
Late in the fall of 1861 appeared his work, The Church and the Churches, etc. It was a kind of colossal apology for the two well-known Odeon Lectures of the fifth and ninth of April of the same year, on the temporal power of the popes. In these lectures Döllinger has come forward in the rôle of the politician—a rôle which he was never intended to play on account of his too great credulity. Expressions had crept into these lectures so little savoring of piety, so painful to Catholic hearts, that the worst was feared for Döllinger in ecclesiastical circles. We also feared the consequences. Döllinger himself was evidently staggered at the unexpected impression of his, to say the least, unexplained appearance in such a character. The book which followed, in other respects a wonder of historical information, was nothing but a powerful effort to shield himself from the consequences of this step.