Impensa Romanorum Pontificum
" Impensa Romanorum Pontificum (sollicitudo)" - The Urgent Concern of the Roman Popes - is the beginning and name of a bull of Circumcription Pope Leo XII. of March 26, 1824. As part of the rewrite of the Catholic dioceses in Germany after the Congress of Vienna, it contains the definition of the diocesan borders of the Catholic dioceses of Hildesheim and Osnabrück in line with the borders of the Kingdom of Hanover drawn at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 , as well as a number of Provisions on the occupation and endowment of the episcopal seats and the cathedral chapters . The bull was the legal basis for relations between the Catholic Church and the Kingdom of Hanover and its legal successors up to the Prussian Concordat of 1929. Many of its provisions are still valid today.
prehistory
As a result of the Napoleonic Wars , the old order of the Holy Roman Empire had collapsed. The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss decreed that the principal bishops and imperial abbeys should lose their sovereignty and that their territories should be assigned to other states. This secularization also included the abolition of most of the monasteries and the confiscation of their property. The school system, nursing and welfare should pass into the hands of the state.
In the first decade of the 19th century, territorial authorities, which were still changing, carried out these resolutions and incorporated the won parts of the country into their regional authorities and the won goods into their fiscal administrations . People who had previously lived on church benefices received state pensions as compensation . State payments were set for the most important church institutions. The upheaval was profound and complicated and was made even more difficult by the ongoing political instability. It was not until the Congress of Vienna in 1815, with the political reorganization of Europe, that the prerequisites for rebuilding the church were created. In doing so, the state authorities were careful to maintain the greatest possible influence on church conditions. This was also served by the endeavor to make the church borders congruent with the state territories and thus to minimize external influences. For the German Catholics, on the other hand, institutional support from the papacy became more important than before.
negotiation
A comprehensive concordat was concluded between Bavaria and the Holy See as early as 1817 . For Prussia , only the circumscription bull De salute animarum could be put into effect in 1821 , which left out many controversial questions.
The new Kingdom of Hanover had received extensive territories with a predominantly Catholic population with the Untereichsfeld (formerly Electoral Mainz ), the Emsland ( Niederstift Münster ) and the Hildesheim region ( Hochstift Hildesheim ). Of its approximately 1.5 million inhabitants, around 13% were Catholic.
As the first Protestant state of the German Confederation , Hanover began concordat negotiations with the Curia in the spring of 1817 . The negotiator was Friedrich von Ompteda († 1819), followed by Franz von Reden . In addition, Justus Leist and August Kestner belonged to the Hanoverian legation. On the Roman side they faced Cardinal Secretary of State Ercole Consalvi and Raffaele Mazio .
It soon became apparent that a concordat could not be reached because of profound differences in principle, and the negotiations were directed towards the pragmatic solution of a bull of circumscription based on the Prussian model. Shortly before the death of Pope Pius VII , a satisfactory consensus was reached, so that his successor Leo XII. the bull Impensa Romanorum Pontificum on March 26, 1824 could sign. It was published as a law in Hanover on June 2, 1824.
Provisions
The bull stipulated that in the area of the Kingdom of Hanover - for example, today's state of Lower Saxony without the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg and the Duchy of Braunschweig - there should be the Catholic episcopal seats of Hildesheim and Osnabrück and that the border between the two dioceses should run on the Weser .
It also regulated the endowment of the bishops, the number and salary of the cathedral capitals and the future establishment and maintenance of seminaries . These payments from the state treasury were (and are) made to replace the losses in secularization. The planned equipping of the dioceses with property instead of cash payments was never carried out by the government.
Finally, the bull contained detailed provisions on the election of bishops and cathedral capitals, which gave the government a right of information and veto .
The full restoration of the Osnabrück diocese in accordance with these specifications was postponed until the state had the necessary funds available. Until then, an auxiliary bishop subordinate to the Hildesheim professor should be responsible for Osnabrück. It was not until 1858 that the bull Impensa Romanorum Pontificum also became fully effective for Osnabrück.
effect
The circumscription bull of 1824 was the basis for the reconstitution and self-understanding of North German Catholicism in a non-Catholic state. The state compensation payments made the total loss of the old foundations bearable. The large diaspora areas assigned to the two dioceses required the development of a large-scale parish and deanery system and new ways of pastoral care. The questions left open by v. a. in the school system and in marriage law led to sometimes violent conflicts with the state throughout the 19th century. The full equality of the Catholic population, including access to all state offices, was still decades away. Overall, however, from the 1850s onwards there was an astonishing increase in Catholic life.
Individual evidence
- ↑ see Bischöflich Münstersches Officialat
- ↑ The Catholic parishes of the Duchy of Braunschweig were only removed from the Apostolic Vicariate of the North and incorporated into the Diocese of Hildesheim in 1834 (Thomas Scharf-Wrede: The Diocese of Hildesheim in the 19th Century , p. 11).
literature
- Hans-Georg Aschoff : The Diocese of Hildesheim between secularization and new paraphrase - A contribution to the 175th anniversary of the circumscription bull "Impensa Romanorum Pontificum" , in: The Diocese of Hildesheim in the past and present , 67th year, Hildesheim 1999, pp. 193–246