Döllinger had been a firm Tridentine Romanist, devoutly bearing the burden of the new dogmas which the Council of Trent bound up and laid upon men's shoulders. But being profoundly versed in antiquity, he was not disposed for more accretions of the same sort, and he had long been detested by the Jesuits, as standing in the old paths and resisting their innovations. Superstitions newly carried over the Alps did not thrive under his eye. As a historian he had not feared to narrate and censure the enormities of Popes.
While these agitations were arising in the provinces, the secret preparations in Rome were being pushed forward. The fact became known that the six Commissions were at work. The names of those serving upon them no sooner transpired than a cry arose that only favourites of the Jesuits were appointed. So few names from Germany appeared that offence was given, even in a national point of view. This feeling increased when it appeared that celebrities of whom the Catholic faculties were proud had been passed over, and that inferior men, known only for devotion to the Curia, had been selected. These feelings were partly theological, partly personal, and yet more strongly patriotic. The Germans knew that a double peril for the Fatherland lurked in the anti-unionist policy of Rome—peril of disruption from within, and of invasion from France.
Dissatisfaction must have run tolerably high when Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg wrote to Cardinal Antonelli, formally remonstrating as to the selection made. The fact, he submitted, that all those selected belonged to one well-defined theological school, was in itself open to objection. As to the reputation of the favourites, he said, "I have had fears lest their qualifications should not prove equal to their weighty responsibilities." He names Munich, Bonn, and Tübingen, as Universities where fit men were to be found as well as at Würzburg, and goes so far as to mention names, among them that of Döllinger.
This letter was politely answered by Antonelli, after a couple of months. He said that Döllinger would have been invited only that his Holiness had learned that he would not accept the duty.[138]
One of the theologians at whom the innuendo of Cardinal Schwarzenberg was aimed was Hergenröther. Yet Archbishop Manning wrote to Macmillan's Magazine, and, after speaking of the men of Munich as if they were of little more account in the esteem of students than in that of ecclesiastical courtiers, told us that if we wanted to learn anything of the true relation of Catholics to national law, we must not go to them, but must study Hergenröther.[139]
FOOTNOTES:
[130] Menzel, Weltbegebenheiten, Band i. p. 123.
[131] Menzel, Jesuitenumtriebe, p. 21.
[132] Quoted by Montalembert, Bibliothèque Universelle 1876, p. 194.
[133] Ibid. p. 195.