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[German Version] (1513, Meslin l'Evêque – Sep 16, 1589, Louvain) became a priest in 1542, professor of philosophy in 1544, and professor of theology at the University of Louvain, where he had studied, in 1550. He officiated as dean of Saint-Pierre and vice-chancellor of the university from 1575 onward. He was involved in the debates concerning the problems of …

[German Version] (Jan 9, 1626, Paris – Oct 27, 1700, La Trappe), founder of the La Trappe reform (Trappists), son of Maria de’ Medici’s secretary, and godchild of Cardinal Richelieu. He held many benefices. In 1651 he was ordained priest, and in 1654 gained his Dr.theol. He became a rigorous ascetic, renounced his benefices, retired to La Trappe, and from then on subjected this Cistercian abbey to the strictest observance as regular abbot (1664–1695), attracting monks who were willing to reform. H…

[German Version] Sep 3, 1914 – Jan 22, 1922 (Giacomo della Chiesa, born Nov 21, 1854). Of ancient Genovese nobility, he became archbishop of Bologna in 1907 and cardinal in 1914. Following the serious disputes over “modernism”, “Reform Catholicism” and Brazilian Integralism (Integralism) in the pontificate of Pius …

[German Version] (martyr, died c. 304). The earliest witnesses to Afra's veneration are Venantius Fortunatus (c. 560) and the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (Bern Codex, c. 600). The author of an early medieval Afra Passion (7th cent.?) portrayed Afra as a converted prostitute ( meretrix), who, because of her Christian confession, was condemned to be burned at the stake. The extent to which an authentic tradition underlies this Afra Passion is difficult to determine. A Roman …

[German Version] (Jul 5, 1881, Mysłowicach-Brzęczkowicach, Upper Silesia – Oct 22, 1948, Warsaw). Having joined the Salesians (SDB) in 1896, Hlond was ordained priest in 1905 and received his Dr.theol. in Rome in 1910. In 1922 he was appointed apostolic administrator of the portion of the archdiocese of Breslau (Wrocław) in Upper Silesia that had been ceded to Poland (erected in 1925 as the diocese of Katowice). In 1926 he was made archbishop of Gniezno and Poznan and primate of Poland. In 1927 he…

[German Version] (Apr 7, 1655 – May 22, 1667). Born as Fabio Chigi on Feb 13, 1599 in Siena, he was, following philosophical, legal, and theological studies in Siena (1626 Dr. Theol.), in papal service from 1628 onward: 1629–1634, vice-legate in Ferrara; 1635–1639, Inquisitor and Apostolic Legate in Malta (1634, ordination to the priesthood; 1635, bishop of Na…

[German Version] According to the legendary Passio (6th cent.?), Pancras was from a prominent Phrygian family. He came as an orphan to Rome, where he was baptized, and at the age of 14, under Diocletian (or Valerian), he was beheaded on May 12 (304 or 257?) on the Via Aurelia, and buried there in the catacombs named after him. Pope Symmachus had a basilica built over his tomb, and this was given its present form ( San Pancratio fuori le mura) by Pope Honorius I. His cult, first documented in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (mid-6th cent.), spread throughout Europe. As patron saint of a…

[German Version] a family from the Auvergne (?) living in Paris after 1547; originally Huguenot, they converted to the Catholic Church after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572. 1. Antoine “the lawyer” (Aug 6, 1560, Paris – Dec12, 1619, Paris), son of the lawyer and procurator general Antoine Arnauld de la Mothe et de Villeneuve (died 1585). After the abortive attempted assassination of Henry IV, he became a passionate enemy of the Jesuits. He had 20 children by his wife Catherine Marion, some of whom became leaders of the Jansenist cause: 2. Robert (1588, Paris – Sep 17, 1674, Pa…

[German Version] (Dec 27, 1903, Steinheim am Main – Jul 1, 1988, Mainz), cardinal, bishop of Mainz (1962–1982). After studying in Mainz, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1927 and appointed chaplain. He earned his Dr.phil. in Freiburg im Bresgau in 1938 and his Dr.theol. in Münster in 1939. He gained his habilitation in 1943 and was appointed professor of dogmatics in 1946. Familiar with modern Protestant theology through his works on K. Barth and E. Brunner and ecumenically active, in 1945 he became a member of the ¶ Ecumenical Study Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians (…

[German Version] ([v. Hefele]; Mar 15, 1809, Hochmühle near Aalen – Jun 5, 1893, Rottenburg), priest in 1833, associate professor (1835) and professor of church history in Tübingen (1840, succeeding his teacher J.A. Möhler). Hefele, along with J.E. Kuhn, led the ultramontane-young church party (Ultramontanism) in the bishopric of Rottenburg who fiercely opposed the Württemberg state church and the “late Enlightenment” clergy. He turned, however, to moderate ultramontanism after 1848. Hefele was a …

[German Version] (Jun 25, 1881, Rome – Apr 20, 1946, Rome), Italian theologian, was ordained as a priest in 1903 and subsequently taught church history at the Roman Seminary. He was compelled to abandon his teaching by order of Pope Pius X after the publication of his eassay on M. Blondel ( La filosofia dell'azione, 1905). Buonaiuti was repeatedly harshly sanctioned as a “modernist” without being given the opportunity to defend himself before his ecclesial judges (1926 “excommunicatio maior”). In 1915, he was appointed by the state University of Rome as professor for the history of ¶ Christ…

[German Version] (born Thérèse Martin; religious name Thérèse de l’Enfant-Jésus et de la Sainte-Face; Jan 2, 1873, Alençon – Sep 30, 1897, Lisieux). In 1888 Thérèse entered the cloistered Carmelite community at Lisieux; an extremely sensitive person since the death of her mother in 1877, she initially experienced very severe treatment and suffered from the “dryness” of her prayer life. The mental breakdown of her father (who died in 1894) was also a severe burden. In 1896 she contracted tuberculosis, of which she died the next year. In her autobiographical L’histoire d’une âme (ET: Story…

[German Version] (May 27, 1651, Castle Peynière near Aurillac – May 4, 1729, Paris), Dr.theol., Sorbonne (1676); archbishop of Paris (1681); cardinal (1700). Thanks to royal favor, Noailles’s ecclesiastical career rose rapidly (1679, bishop of Cahors; 1681, of Chalons-sur-Marne), yet he proved remarkably ambivalent in the theological controversies of his time (Quietism, Jansenism). He agreed to the destruction of the (former) Jansenist center of Port-Royal Abbey (1711), but opposed the condemnatio…

[German Version] (Dec 26, 1751, Tasswitz [Tasovice], Moravia – Mar 15, 1820, Vienna). Apprenticed as a baker, he studied theology as a “late vocation” in Vienna, joining the Redemptorists in 1784. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1785. In 1788 he became vicar general of his order for northern Europe. From 1808 he served as a pastor in Vienna, with a strong commitment to social and charitable work; not least because of his rustic manner, he was an engaging preacher. His charismatic personality made him the focus of a Romantic circle (including F. Schlegel, Z. ¶ Werner, A. Günther, and Jo…

[German Version] When the Reformation put an end to the Catholic episcopal sees in the northern lands of the Old Empire, the remaining Catholic population (and immigrant Catholic craftsmen, merchants, artists, and soldiers) came initially under the jurisdiction of the Cologne nuncio, then of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, established in 1622, and it pastoral representatives “on the ground,” the nuncios in Cologne, Brussels, and Warsaw. In 1667 the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, wh…

[German Version] (Oct 19, 1625, Chartres – Nov 16, 1695, Paris), Jansenist theologian. Nicole taught at the abbey of Port-Royal (1646), in Flanders and France (1679), and in Paris (from 1683). A close friend of Antoine Arnauld, Nicole wrote several, sometimes pseudonymous, writings defending the orthodoxy of Jansenism, and with regard to the condemnation of the teachings of C. Jansen by Innocent X (1653) he distinguished the quaestio iuris from the quaestio facti ( Innocentii papae brevissima quinque propositionum in varios sensus distinctio, 1653). Nicole was involved in the…

[German Version] (Apr 1, 1800, Strasbourg – Nov 8, 1871, Maria Laach), a catechist, Jesuit (1817), and priest (1828), worked 1830–1841 as professor of rhetoric in Brig and Fribourg, Switzerland, and 1845–1847 as professor of pastoral theology in Lucerne. In his apologetic Katholisches Katechismus oder Lehrbegriff, nebst einem kurzen Abriß der Religionsgeschichte von Anbeginn der Welt bis auf unsere Zeit (1847, anonymous; ET: A Complete Catechism of the Catholic Religion, 1924), he attempted to grasp doctrinal content in rational terms.…

[German Version] I. City and Archbishopric – II. University I. City and Archbishopric Munich is the capital of Bavaria (in 1999, approx. 1.38 million inhabitants, 45.5% Catholic, 16.4% Protestant), with two universities (see II below), seat of the archbishop of Munich and Freising (cardinal) and of the Protestant regional bishop of Bavaria. The first documented reference to Munich appeared in 1158, in connection with the dispute between Bishop Otto of Freising and Duke Henry the Lion about market, bridge t…

[English Version] I. Zum Begriff Als Primat (P.) bez. man die rechtliche Vorrangstellung des Papstes (Papat) als Bischof von Rom in der Gesamtkirche, d.h. seine höchste und unmittelbare Leitungsgewalt in der Gesamtkirche als Haupt des Bischofskollegiums, Hirte der Gesamtkirche und Stellvertreter Christi auf Erden (c.331 CIC/1983: »Der Bischof der Kirche von Rom … ist Haupt des Bischofskollegiums, Stellvertreter Christi und Hirte der Gesamtkirche hier auf Erden; deshalb verfügt er kraft seines Amtes …

[German Version] I. General Church History – II. Europe – III. Latin America I. General Church History Laicism (from Gk λαος/ laós, “people”; Laity) originated in 19th-century France ( laïcisme) as an aggressively anticlerical concept; originally it proposed absolute separation of the state, secular culture, and the church (esp. the Catholic Church; Church and state), opposing all public influence on the part of the church. Its intellectual roots were in the Enlightenment and especially the French Revolution – although it r…