Editae saepe

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Editae saepe is an encyclical of Pope Pius X , which is also called the " Borromeo Encyclical " . It dates from May 26, 1910 and is dedicated to the memory of St. Charles Borromeo .

A controversial encyclical

This encyclical, since it also deals with “false reformers ”, is in part interpreted as directed against modernism . It caused a stir in Germany, not so much because of its overall content, but because of some passages that could be understood as an insult to Protestants. Quickly known in a distorted and aggravated translation, it sparked a storm of indignation and led to parliamentary interpellations , rallies by the Protestant church authorities and diplomatic actions. Concerned about denominational peace, the Pope was so accommodating to the German government that he instructed the German bishops to read this Apostolic Circular , which was published on May 29, 1910 in the Osservatore Romano and in the official Latin version a little later in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis appeared not to publish in Germany. However, this could not stop the campaigns of the Evangelical Union against ultramontanism .

In memory of Saint Borromeo

Charles Borromeo - painting by Giovanni Ambrogio Figino (1548-1608).

The encyclical is dedicated to the memory of St. Dedicated to Charles Borromeo on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of his canonization . In the Pope's sense, Karl Borromeo is considered to be the tireless champion and advisor of true reform. In describing the difference between true and false reformers, the Pope particularly points out the concern for keeping the faith pure and the importance of Christian formation. He rejects the so-called neutral lay schools, he demands the conscientious administration of the preaching office and points out the Catholic action, which includes all works of Christian mercy. All of this is in the spirit of St. Charles Borromeo and linked to his life.

Against the Reformation

Different variants of the encyclical, originally written in Latin, were circulating at that time. Since the encyclical caused a sensation almost only in Germany (French historians do not even know the encyclical), the translations of the time are decisive. The following version can be found with the Catholic center politician and historiographer of the center party Karl Bachem . Although he was clearly in favor of Catholicism , the translation he used does not lack sharpness:

“At that time the passions raged; knowledge of the truth was confused and obscured; there was a constant struggle with the heresies; human society rushed to face all calamities and seemed to be abandoned to ruin. In the midst of such circumstances, haughty and rebellious [unruly] men appeared, 'enemies of the cross of Christ', people of 'earthly disposition, whose God is the belly' (Phil. III., 18, 19). These did not direct their attention to the improvement of morals, but to the denial of dogmas; they increased disorder and indulgence for their own benefit and that of others; or at least, by rejecting the authoritative leadership of the church, they undermined the teaching, constitution and discipline of the church at the discretion of the most depraved princes or peoples as if under a yoke. They then imitated the wicked who threatened, 'Woe to you who call evil good and good evil' (Js. V, 20), and called this seditious uprising and the corruption of faith and morals reform and yourself even reformers. In truth alone they were seducers, and by exhausting the strength of Europe through strife and wars, they prepared the revolutions and the apostasy of the modern age, in which the three kinds of struggle which were earlier separated and from which the Church had always emerged victorious, united in a single attack: namely, the bloody persecutions of the first centuries, then the inner plague of heresies, and finally, under the pretext of evangelical freedom, a corruption of morals and a perversity of discipline, which the Middle Ages perhaps to this extent has not even reached. "

- Karl Bachem

Bachem himself judged in 1930:

“In the rest of the wording of the encyclical, too, we encountered judgments about the Protestant Reformation which, according to the state of historical research, had to be generally recognized as one-sided. The text was evidently based on models from the polemics of earlier centuries, which loved a stronger language than what is acceptable to the ears of our time. "

Therefore, the pacifying or aggravating translations are central to understanding the debate at that time : “Men of earthly disposition” ( qui terrena sapiunt ) became “men of cattle disposition”; the fact that this characterization was a quotation from the Bible was omitted, so that everything could be passed off as papal semantics . There was embarrassing trepidation even among Catholics. The Catholic newspapers Germania and the Augsburger Postzeitung published the text, but many Catholic newspapers did not print the encyclical. Nevertheless, they fueled the so characteristic of the "second-denominational era" (1830-1970) confessionalism .

Numerous Catholic justification pamphlets were devoted to the anti-clerical campaign, especially by the Evangelical Union , but also by liberal newspapers.

The Chronicler of the Center Party, Karl Bachem, still speculated in 1930 that the Pope had probably not carefully studied the text before signing it. Despite such weakening, Bachem took the opportunity again 20 years after this event to present Protestantism as in decline, because this was the reason why the Protestants reacted so irritably at the time and the papacy's "lust for power" in the "most burning colors" would have described. The Borromeo encyclical remained suitable for decades to stir up the mood in the neo-denominational age against the respective "anti-faith".

literature

  • Karl Bachem : Prehistory, history and politics of the German Center Party . Vol. 7, Cologne 1930 (ND Aalen 1968), pp. 329-77.
  • Olaf Blaschke : Denominations in Conflict. Germany between 1800 and 1970: a second denominational age . Göttingen 2002.
  • Olaf Blaschke: The 19th Century: A Second Confessional Age? In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2000), pp. 38–75.
  • Johannes Kalwoda: The anti-modernist Borromeo encyclical "Editae saepe" from 1910 and the Austrian government under Prime Minister Richard Freiherr von Bienerth . In: Austrian Archives for Law & Religion 52, 1/2005, pp. 53–62.
  • Armin Müller-Dreier: Denomination and Politics, Society and Culture of the Empire. The Evangelical Covenant 1886–1914 . Gütersloh 1998.
  • Mariano Delgado: The Borromeo encyclical "Editae saepe" Pius X. of May 26, 1910 and the consequences . In: Mariano Delgado, Markus Ries (eds.): Karl Borromäus and the Catholic Reform: Files of the Freiburg Symposium for the 400th return of the canonization of the patron saint of Catholic Switzerland (2010), pp. 340–364.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Bachem : Prehistory, history and politics of the German Center Party . Vol. 7, p. 332.
  2. ↑ cf. B. Mock: The agitation against the Brorromäus encyclical . Paderborn 1910; J. Diefenbach: Justification of the Borromäus encyclical Pius' X. by Protestant preachers and scholars . Mainz 1910; A. Albring: We Catholics and the - others. Apologetic marginal glosses on Borromeo encyclical indignation . Freiburg 1910.