Alois Vock

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Alois Vock (born May 19, 1785 in Sarmenstorf , † November 15, 1857 in Solothurn ) was a Swiss Roman Catholic clergyman, educator and historian .

Life

Alois Vock was the son of Johann Anton Vock († 1794), Müller and grew up, after the death of his father, with his uncle Franz Xaver Vock (1752-1828), professor at the Solothurn grammar school .

He attended the Solothurn high school and the Lyceum there , where he befriended Robert Glutz von Blotzheim .

In addition to his religious motives, the idea of ​​being able to work as a priest the furthest beyond and deepest educationally was probably decisive in his choice of profession; in addition, there was obviously the hope of finding time for scientific work, and so he studied after his school education in autumn 1805 theology at the Lyceum Konstanz , which had emerged from a Jesuit college, and at the University of Landshut ; There he heard lectures from the theologian Johann Michael Sailer , the classical philologist Friedrich Ast , the Protestant historian Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Breyer and Anton Michl ( canon law and church history ).

In Constance he met the vicar general Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg , made friends with him and made his religious and canonical ideas his own.

On November 10, 1807, the nuncio Fabrizio Sceberras Testaferrata consecrated him as a priest in Lucerne and after studying he became a chaplain in Sarmenstorf until he became pastor of the Catholic diaspora community in Bern in 1808 .

In the autumn of 1809, on the recommendation of Johann Michael Sailer and Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg , Karl von Müller-Friedberg , the President of the Government Commission of the Canton of St. Gallen , was appointed rector of the newly established Catholic grammar school in St. Gallen; at the same time he worked as a teacher for religion, philosophy and ancient languages. At that time, one of his students was the later Councilor of the Canton of St. Gallen, Gallus Jakob Baumgartner .

In 1812 he came to the house of the French ambassador , Auguste de Talleyrand (1770–1832) as court master and educator in Bern , to raise his five-year-old son. During this time he took the opportunity to study the oriental languages , especially since there was the prospect that Auguste de Talleyrand could go to Constantinople as Napoleon Bonaparte's envoy and Alois Vock could accompany him as secretary and interpreter . At the same time he used his position and acted as a mediator between Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg and Auguste de Talleyrand, with whose help they hoped to prevent the separation of Switzerland from the diocese of Constance , which the original cantons were striving for, but these hopes were replaced by the fall Napoleon prevented.

At the beginning of 1814 he used the time to get to know the institutes of Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg in Hofwil for three months , who had set up a number of teaching and educational institutions there and with whose students Alois Vock read Greek and Latin authors; There he also met the later rector of the Aarau Cantonal School , Rudolf Rauchstein .

On May 9, 1814, he was elected pastor of the newly created parish of Aarau in 1803, after his predecessor Victor Keller had been promoted to Zurzach as dean . The parish was founded in 1803 in the purely Protestant city by the state for the Catholic officials and civil servants as well as their families and in the first few decades included servants and journeymen in addition to these; the parish was one of the first Catholic diaspora parishes in Switzerland and used the Reformed town church of Aarau for worship . Protestants were also among his listeners , because in his sermons he dealt less with specifically Catholic dogmas than with general Christian truths; A good relationship between the denominations was also very important to him. Alois Vock stayed there until 1830 and during this time became dean of the Mellingen regional chapter in 1826 and tried to establish a cantonal pastoral society in order to encourage the clergy to continue their education.

In 1814 he was appointed by the government to the cantonal school board and in 1815 to the cantonal school administration and also gave religious instruction at the canton school himself and, alternatively, lessons in Latin and Greek . Through him Ernst Münch , Josef Anton Sebastian Federer (1794–1868) and Joseph Eutych Kopp were appointed to teaching positions in the canton of Aargau .

In 1830 he became the first resident canon of the reorganized diocese of Basel in Solothurn and in 1832 he became cathedral dean .

He was buried in his home town of Sarmenstorf on November 19, 1857. His extensive library was donated to the Cantonal Library in Aargau by the heirs .

Pedagogical work

In the almost completely reformed but tolerant canton capital Aarau, he neither sought confrontation with the other denomination, nor did he isolate himself; rather, he was in close contact with the Reformed and with the exponents of political life, in particular with the mayor Johannes Herzog . As a member of the canton school council from 1814 to 1831 and of the canton school administration from 1815, he was concerned with the reorganization of the canton school and the development of the educational system, especially the higher education at the grammar school. He was one of the most influential personalities in these two authorities and champion of the Aargau teachers' college, which opened in 1822 and whose first rector, on his recommendation, was Markus Philipp Jakob Nabholz (1782–1842).

Writing

In his first years in Aarau he was occasionally employed by the Aarauer Zeitung , which was closed in 1821 .

In 1816 he tried, together with Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler and Heinrich Zschokke , to create a historical-political magazine with the Swiss Museum , but it only stayed with the edition of the year 1816. He himself contributed two larger articles anonymously:

  • The struggle between papacy and Catholicism in the 15th century ;
  • On the history of the Swiss national bishopric .

In the first essay, with strong prejudice for the Council movement of the 15th century, he sketched a one-sided negative image of Rome's behavior towards it. The essay was reprinted from a radical side in 1832, including his name, which led to the work being indexed by Rome in 1833 and he issued a public declaration that he was subject to the judgment of Rome and the papal condemnation of certain sentences in his writing recognize myself as justified.

The other essay gives an objective, well-documented account of the history of the separation of the country from the diocese of Constance and the first negotiations on the reorganization of the Swiss diocese from 1813 to the beginning of 1816.

In 1823 the magazine was created in a similar form as Helvetia, Memories for the XXII Free States of the Swiss Confederation , Josef Anton Balthasar was now the editor , but the editorial department , which until 1833 had eight volumes, was temporarily entirely in the hands of Alois Vock.

In 1830, in the 6th volume, he himself published his work The Great People's Uprising in Switzerland or the so-called Peasants' War in 1653 , the second and third editions of which were published again in 1831 and 1837 as an independent book.

In 1820 he met the publicist Joseph Görres , who lived for several months as a political refugee with his family in Aarau in his neighborhood, with whom he initially had a friendship, which however later dissolved again due to the church development of Joseph Görres.

In 1828 he founded the Aargauer Zeitung , which was also published as the Neue Aargauer Zeitung from 1831 to 1847 and was published until 1858 and followed a moderately conservative direction, to which both Reformed and Catholics professed. In the first year he took over the editing of the newspaper, but later passed it on to Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich .

Church political activity

Alois Vock was opposed to the strict ecclesiastical, ultra-montane direction of Catholicism, but remained a sharp opponent of radicalism throughout his life, rather he stuck to the standpoint of the political old liberalism of the time before 1830.

He wanted a free development of national churches that was as uninfluenced by the papacy as possible, because he met the work of Rome and its nuncios with great suspicion and always suspected only selfishness and lust for power; the Pope should only have an honorary rank. Even if he wanted to see the position of the individual bishop raised in relation to Rome, he was on the other hand in favor of the fact that this bishop was surrounded by an educated cathedral chapter , which should not only have the election of bishops but also a say in the management of the diocese ; Regular and frequent diocesan synods should serve to democratize the church.

He represented the ideas of Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg, who was influenced by Gallicanism , Febronianism and Josephinism and promoted these ideas among the politically influential men in the canton of Aargau.

It was with deep regret that he noted the separation of Switzerland from the diocese of Konstanz, and when Aargau submitted its own draft for a diocese in 1816, it was essentially made by Alois Vock. In the draft, the establishment of at least all of the Swiss areas of the previous dioceses of Basel and Constance into a diocese of Windisch or Basel was proposed; the election of the bishop should be left to the canons , but their election to the relevant cantonal governments. The later incorporation into a German archbishopric was also proposed. The negotiations between the cantons interested in reorganizing the diocese and the Roman Curia did not lead to any positive results in the next few years.

When a Catholic Church Council was created in Aargau in 1819, parallel to the Reformed Church Council , Alois Vock was appointed as a member and actuary (legal expert) of this council. This gave him the opportunity to express his views not only through personal relationships but also through his official position, especially since the diocese negotiations in 1820 entered a decisive stage. In numerous church council reports and reports to the government, he commented on pending questions, for example on the most controversial point of the type of election of the Aargau canons, since the curia did not want to grant the right to vote to a parity state like Aargau. Contrary to his views and recommendations, the government accepted the solution proposed by the Curia, but the Aargau Grand Council refused to ratify the Concordat on February 14, 1828 . The subsequent new negotiations with the nunciature ended on June 5, 1829 with the approval of the Grand Council to join the new diocese of Basel. The right to elect the three Aargau canons was granted to the bishop, but the government was only allowed to delete a maximum of three candidates from the list of six drawn up by the cathedral chapter. The Concordat had left the canon positions to be filled for the first time by the Pope.

As a candidate for the office of resident canon, Mayor Johannes Herzog used himself at the nunciature, which had doubts, but Pope Pius VIII appointed him in August 1830 as the first residential canon of the canton of Aargau in Solothurn. On February 29, 1832, he was appointed cathedral dean by Pope Gregory XVI.

In 1835 he edited the statutes of the cathedral chapter, which led to sharp disputes between him and the Solothurn canons, in which the two parties quarreled in extensive printed treatises. He defended his position in two writings:

  • Explanations of canon law on the statutes of the cathedral chapter of Basel . 1837.
  • Against the untruths of the 2nd memorandum. 1842.

Five years later, he anonymously followed up with the documents on the history of the reorganized diocese of Basel , also to justify his views on cathedral chapters and diocese administration, until the conflict of statutes in Rome in 1855, shortly after his death, was decided against him.

In 1854, when Bishop Joseph Anton Salzmann died on April 23, 1854, he was put up for election as a successor candidate. The nominated and elected candidate Karl Arnold-Obrist received 10 votes, Alois Vock 2 votes and Burkard Leu (1808–1865) 1 vote.

All his life he was one of the harshest critics of church politics of radicalism, and even if he harbored an aversion to monasticism, he condemned the abolition of the monastery in Aargau , which was demanded by his sister's nephew, August Keller .

Memberships

  • He gave evening lectures on Swiss history in the civil teaching association founded in Aarau in 1819.
  • He was a member of the library commission and took an active part in the expansion of the cantonal library, with whose head Josef Anton Balthasar (1761–1837) he entered into friendly relations.
  • In 1826 he was elected President of the Helvetic Society and on May 16, 1827, at the annual meeting held in Schinznach , he gave the presidential address to Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi , who had died a few weeks earlier and with whom he had had a personal relationship. Because the political radicalism made itself felt in society, he resigned in 1828.

Fonts (selection)

literature

  • Georg Boner : Alois Vock In: Argovia, annual journal of the Historical Society of the Canton of Aargau. Vol. 65, 1953, pp. 109-124

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monika Fink-Lang: Joseph Görres: The Biography . P. 205 f. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2014, ISBN 978-3-657-77792-1 ( google.de [accessed April 20, 2019]).
  2. ↑ Markus Ries: The new Basel cathedral chapter and its first statutes. Retrieved April 20, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Vock, Alois
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss Roman Catholic clergyman, educator and historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1785
PLACE OF BIRTH Sarmenstorf
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1857
Place of death Solothurn