Gregor von Zirkel

Gregor von Zirkel, contemporary pastel painting, around 1810

Gregor Zirkel , from 1814 Ritter von Zirkel , latinized Gregorius von Zirkel (born August 2, 1762 in Sylbach , today a district of Haßfurt ; † December 18, 1817 in Würzburg ), was the (last) auxiliary bishop in Würzburg from 1802 to 1817 and became on October 25, 1817, a few weeks before his death, appointed the first bishop of the re-established diocese of Speyer . However, he died before his papal confirmation, which is why he does not appear in the official list of bishops.

Life

Gregor Zirkel was born in the Lower Franconian hamlet of Sylbach as the son of a hammer blacksmith. He attended the Augustinian grammar school in Münnerstadt , studied philosophy in Bamberg and obtained a doctorate in this subject in 1780. The following year he entered the theological seminary in Würzburg to become a priest. At the university there he studied theology and graduated in 1786 with a licentiate . On September 23 of the same year he was ordained a priest in Würzburg and went to pastoral care, first to Ebrach , then to Arnstein .

In 1789 the young clergyman was called to the sub-rain of the clerical seminary in Würzburg , in 1791 he acquired the theological doctorate, in 1792 he received a canonical at the Neumünster college chapter. In 1795 he was appointed associate professor, and in 1797 full professor of the theological faculty in the department of "Oriental Languages". In 1799 he advanced to be the governor of the theological seminary and a clerical council . In 1800 a call was made to the University of Königsberg which the Franconian refused to accept.

On April 27, 1802, Prince-Bishop Georg Karl von Fechenbach , recommended by secret trainee Johann Michael von Seuffert (1765–1829), appointed circle to auxiliary bishop in Würzburg and titular bishop of Hippos in Palestine, at the same time he took over the leadership of the “spiritual government” in the prince-bishopric . He received his episcopal ordination on October 28th of that year from the Bishop of Würzburg.

Although Gregor Zirkel leaned towards the current zeitgeist of Enlightenment at a young age, he became Professor of Church History Franz Berg in the Würzburg Court Church at the request of Prince-Bishop Franz Ludwig von Erthal , as was the case in the seminary of 1793 during Holy Week with his teacher held "sermons about the duties of the higher and enlightened classes in the civil unrest of our time", gradually became a dedicated advocate of traditional church teaching and church rights, especially when the diocese fell to the electorate of Bavaria in 1803 and one became the bishop with the loss of secular power also wanted to dispute ecclesiastical jurisdiction. To prevent irreligious ways of thinking, he forbade attending lectures by the theologian Michael Schlosser in 1807. In 1809 the auxiliary bishop pushed through the exclusion of all Protestants from the university.

Under the short-term reign of the Habsburg Ferdinand of Tuscany as Grand Duke of Würzburg (1806–1814), church life there flourished again. The head of the Catholic renewal movement was Gregor Zirkel, who pushed for the establishment of a clerical seminar based on the Mainz Institute under Bishop Joseph Ludwig Colmar and Regens Bruno Franz Leopold Liebermann and also represented church matters there from 1807. During this time, the auxiliary bishop also gathered a group of scholars who aimed at a literary defense of the Catholic Church, for which he published the "literary newspaper for Catholic religious teachers" as a mouthpiece from 1810.

Bishop Fechenbach died in 1808 and Auxiliary Bishop Zirkel has been the sole director of the diocesan area as vicariate since then. It was only after his death in 1818 that the bishop's chair was occupied again and the diocese re-defined territorially. When Würzburg again fell to Bavaria in 1814, Zirkel remained the unwavering defender of ecclesiastical rights against the enlightened Bavarian government under Minister Maximilian von Montgelas . He also vehemently opposed the national church ideas of Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg in word and in writing . In his publication “The German Catholic Church, or Examination of the Proposal for a New Establishment and Establishment of the German Church”. (Frankfurt am Main, 1817), Zirkel did not limit himself to refuting Wessenberg's proposals, but instead consistently defended the positions of the Holy See.

Nevertheless, King Max I Joseph took a liking to the open and straightforward churchman. As early as 1814 he awarded him the Commander's Cross of the highest Bavarian Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown , combined with the personal nobility and the appointment to the Imperial Council of the Crown of Bavaria for life. When the diocese of Speyer was re-established as part of the church reorganization in Bavaria, based on the Concordat of June 5, 1817 negotiated by Cardinal Johann Casimir Häffelin from Palatinate , the king appointed Gregor von Zirkel on October 25, 1817, who had already resigned after the transfer of the Grand Duchy Würzburg an Bayern had used this Concordat in 1814, becoming the first Speyer bishop. Even before the papal confirmation of the appointment arrived - which would undoubtedly have been made - Zirkel died on December 18 of the same year in Würzburg. Instead, on February 5, 1818, Matthäus Georg von Chandelle, who was oriented towards the state church, was appointed Bishop of Speyer and confirmed by the Pope on May 18. Because of the lack of papal confirmation, Gregor von Zirkel is not listed as the first Speyer bishop of the new diocese, although he was already appointed to it.

According to the official website of the Priests' Association of the Diocese of Speyer in the Bavarian Clergy Association , Gregor von Zirkel, along with Bishop Johann Michael Sailer and theology professor Johann Adam Möhler, was one of the three priestly figures who were expressly regarded as their role models when the association was founded in 1919.

Fonts (selection)

• with Franz Berg: Sermons on the duties of the higher and enlightened classes in the face of the civil unrest of our time [...]. Stahel, Würzburg 1793.

literature

• Franz Xaver Remling : "Modern History of the Bishops of Speyer"; Speyer: Ferdinand Kleeberger, 1867.
• Johann Friedrich von Schulte :  Circle, Gregor . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 45, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1900, p. 360 f.
• August Friedrich Ludwig: Auxiliary Bishop Zirkel von Würzburg in his position on theological enlightenment and the church restoration. A contribution to the history of the Catholic Church in Germany at the turn of the 18th century. 2 volumes. Schöningh, Würzburg 1904–1906.
• August Friedrich Ludwig: Gregor von Zirkel, the last auxiliary bishop of Würzburg, a character image from the Enlightenment period. In: Passau theological practical monthly. 9, 1899, pp. 383-405.
• Ludwig Stamer : "Church History of the Palatinate", Volume 4; Speyer: Pilger-Verlag, 1964.
• Gerhard Krause, Gerhard Müller: "Theologische Realenzyklopädie", Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-11-017842-7 .
• Jutta Franke: Circle, Gregor. In: Karl Bosl (ed.): Bosls Bavarian biography. Pustet, Regensburg 1983, ISBN 3-7917-0792-2 , p. 879 ( digitized version ).
• Anton Schindling : The Julius University in the Age of Enlightenment. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 77–127; here: pp. 117–121.
• Wolfgang Weiß : A church man between the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Restoration, Auxiliary Bishop Gregor Zirkel. In: Würzburger Diözesan Geschichtsblätter. Volume 47, 1985, pp. 191-215.
• Hans Ammerich : "The Bavarian Concordat, 1817", Verlag Anton Konrad, Weißenhorn, 2000, ISBN 3-87437-443-2 .

Web links

• Entry on Gregor von Zirkel on catholic-hierarchy.org
• Würzburg diocesan page about Bishop Georg Karl von Fechenbach, with mention of his auxiliary bishop Zirkel ( Memento from February 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
• Website about the Seebachshof Würzburg, I mention that this was Gregor von Zirkel's residence until 1817. ( Memento from December 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Source reference to the ancestors of Bishop Zirkel
2. ^ Anton Schindling: The Julius University in the Age of Enlightenment. 1982, p. 120 f.
3. ↑ See also Johann Martin Gehrig: Gregorius von Zirkel, Bishop of Hippen and Auxiliary Bishop of Würzburg. A contribution to its character portrayal. Goebhardt, Bamberg / Würzburg 1818.
4. ^ Anton Schindling: The Julius University in the Age of Enlightenment. 1982, p. 117 f. and 120 f.
5. ^ Theobald Freudenberger: On the history of the theological faculty in the first decade of the 19th century. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 283-316; here: pp. 300–309.
6. ↑ Werner Engelhorn: The Bavarian State and the University of Würzburg in the early 19th century (1802-1848). In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 129–178; here: p. 147.
7. ↑ Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Krause and Müller, 2004, Volume 36, Page 372
8. ^ Stefan Paulus: University of Würzburg and teacher training. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 539-564; here: p. 544.
9. ↑ Wolfgang Weiss : The Catholic Church in the 19th Century. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 430-449 and 1303, here: pp. 430 f.
10. ↑ Website on the history of the Bavarian Clergy Association ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.