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Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > W > Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg


IGNAZ HEINRICH VON WESSENBERG

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Vicar-General and Administrator of the Diocese of Constance, born at Dresden, 4
November, 1774; died at Constance, 9 August, 1860. He studied at Augsburg,
Dillingen, Wurzburg, and Vienna. At the age of eighteen he was already canon at
Constance, Augsburg, and Basle, and in 1802, when still a subdeacon, he became
Vicar-General of Prince-Primate Dalberg for the Diocese of Constance. Not until
1812, when he was thirty-eight years old, did he accept priest's orders.
Wessenberg was entirely unfit for the position. Though a man of extensive
knowledge, he was not a profound scholar and his theological training was very
deficient. Imbued from his early youth with Josephinistic and Febronian
principles, he advocated a German National Church, somewhat loosely connected
with Rome, supported by the State and protected by it against papal
interference.



Before he became vicar-general he had ventilated his liberalistic views of
religion and the Church in a work entitled "Der Geist des Zeitalters" (Zurich,
1801). In 1802 he founded the monthly review "Geistliche Monatsschrift", which
he edited and used as a medium to spread his ideas of false religious
enlightenment. The protests against this review were such that Dalberg ordered
its suspension on 25 May, 1804. It was replaced by the "Konstanzer
Pastoralarchiv", which was less offensive and continued to be published annually
in two volumes till 1827. For the realization of his pet plans of a National
German Church Wessenberg made futile efforts at the council which Napoleon
convened in Paris in 1811 and at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

In the Swiss portion of the Diocese of Constance Wessenberg's innovations
aroused great dissatisfaction. His abolition of various holy days of obligation
in the cantons of Aargau and St. Gall in 1806; his cooperation with the
Government of Lucerne in the suppression of monasteries; his orders in case of
mixed marriages (1808) to permit the male offspring to be brought up in the
religion of the father, the female in the religion of the mother; and especially
his many matrimonial and other dispensations that exceeded his competence
induced Testiferrata, the papal nuncio at Lucerne, to call him to account, but
Wessenberg insisted that nothing had been done which exceeded the jurisdiction
of the Bishop of Constance, giving Testiferrata at the same time to understand
that he did not recognize the papal nunciature of Lucerne. After various
requests from the Catholics of Switzerland, Pius VII put an end to Wessenberg's
reformatory plans in that part of the diocese by severing the Swiss cantons from
the Diocese of Constance, in a Brief of 21 October, 1814. On 2 November of the
same year the pope ordered Dalberg to depose Wessenberg without delay from the
office of vicar-general. Dalberg kept the pope's order secret, though in the
beginning of 1815 he temporarily replaced Wessenberg as vicar-general by Canon
von Roll for private reasons. In the summer of 1815 he requested the Government
of Baden to appoint Wessenberg his coadjutor with the right of succession. The
government acceded to Dalberg's wish, but Rome refused to recognize the
coadjutorship. In the same year Wessenberg published anonymously a notorious
anti-papal treatise entitled "Die deutsche Kirche, Ein Vorschlag zu ihrer neuen
Begrundung und Einrichtung". It is a plea for his scheme of a German National
Church, and suggests detailed plans as to its organization. On 17 Feb., 1817,
seven days after the death of Dalberg, the Chapter of Constance elected
Wessenberg as vicar of the chapter and administrator of the diocese, but his
election was invalidated by Pius VII in a Brief of 15 March, 1817. In July
Wessenberg went to Rome, hoping to gain the pope to his side and return as
primate of his projected German Church or, at least, as Bishop of Constance. He
was kindly received by Consalvi, the secretary of state, but was told that,
before the pope would enter into any negotiations with him, he would have to
resign as administrator and, like Fénelon, make a declaration to the effect that
he disapproved all that the pope disapproves. Refusing to submit to these
conditions, he left Rome and with the approval of the Government of Baden
continued to act as administrator of Constance until 1827, in open disobedience
to the pope. Pius VII suppressed the Diocese of Constance in his Bull, "Provida
sollersque", of 16 Aug., 1821, incorporating it in the newly erected Archdiocese
of Freiburg, whose first archbishop, Bernard Boll, was appointed in 1827. It
must be said to the credit of Wessenberg that during his administration he
rendered some services to the Church. Among these are especially noteworthy his
deep solicitude for a better training and stricter discipline of the clergy and
his insistence on regular Sunday sermons in parish churches and semi-weekly
religious instructions in the state schools. After his retirement in 1827 he
gave vent to his anti- papal sentiments and spread his rationalistic views on
religion and the Church by various treatises and by frequent contributions to
the anti-religious review, "Die freimüthigen Blätter" (Constance, 1830-44). His
chief literary productions are: "Die grossen Kirchenversammlungen des 15. und
16. Jahrhunderts in Beziehung auf Kirchenverbesserung" (4 vols., Constance,
1840, 2nd ed., 1845), extremely anti-papal (cf. Hefele, in "Tübinger
Quartalschrift", 1841, 616 sq.); "Die Stellung des römischen Stuhles gegenuber
dem Geiste des 19. Jahrhunderts" (Zürich, 1833); "Die Bisthumssynode und die
Erfordernisse und Bedingungen einer heilsamen Herstellung derselben" (Freiburg,
1849). The last-named two works were placed on the Index. He is also the author
of a collection of poems (7 vols., Stuttgart, 1843-54).




SOURCES

BECK, Freiherr Ign. Heinrich v. Wessenberg. Sein Leben u. Wirken (Freiburg,
1862; 2nd ed., 1874), panegyrical, was placed on the Index; WEECH, Badische
Biographien, II (Heidelberg, 1878), 452 sq.; LAUER, Gesch. der katholischen
Kirche in Baden (Freiburg, 1908), passim, especially 51-71; BRUCK, Gesch. der
katholischen Kirche in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert, I (Mains, 1902), 150-60;
VON SCHULTE in Allg. Deutsche Biographie, XLII; (Leipzig, 1897), 147-57; ROSCH,
Das religiose Leben im Hohenzollern unter dem Einflusse des Wessenbergianismus
1800-1850 (Cologne, 1908).


ABOUT THIS PAGE

APA citation. Ott, M. (1912). Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg. In The Catholic
Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15590b.htm

MLA citation. Ott, Michael. "Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg." The Catholic
Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15590b.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Thomas M. Barrett.
Dedicated to the Christian community of Constance.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D.,
Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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