Jacob Marell

This article is about the Jesuit Jakob Marell. For the painter see Jacob Marrel .

Jakob Marell (born April 1, 1649 in Innsbruck ; † 1727 ; Latinized: Jacobus Marellus ) was a German Jesuit priest who became known through years of sexual abuse of students at the Jesuit college in Augsburg and was known to critics as a prototype of the hypocritical priest and as evidence for the dangerousness of the Jesuit order was valid.

Life

Marell entered the Jesuit Order on September 7, 1668. In the 1690s he was a priest at the Jesuit college in Augsburg.

The abuse scandal

In July 1698, his brother Jakob Banholzer reported to the Provincial of the Upper German Order Province that Marell had been regularly sexually abusing students at the college for several years. He had deliberately got young people to choose him as confessor or, with gifts, lured other confessors away. If he succeeded in this, he took advantage of the confessional situation of trust and dependency for his unchaste actions. He took what had always been forbidden in the Jesuit order, the respective favorite confessor into his monk's cell, where he usually first showed him books with erotic representations. The adolescents reacted differently to the subsequent physical advances. While some indignantly rejected her, others merely asked him to close the curtains in his cell on the ground floor in a busy alley in downtown Augsburg before intimacy and coitus ensued.

With further gifts he got the youngsters to give him their will and to say nothing further. He taught her that sexual intercourse was not a sin as long as one did not approve of lust internally. This and the fact that he had long been known for allowing the youth to get away with more than the other priests earned him the accusation of quietism . According to Banholzer's observations, Marell only selected particularly handsome young men, including sons of the respected noble families of Oettingen and Fugger . He especially seemed to appreciate the sexual act shortly before he celebrated Holy Mass or immediately afterwards.

There were also homosexual contacts among the colleagues , sometimes “several times a week for a long time”, as Banholzer noted. He attributed these sexual relationships among adolescents to the negative influence of Marell, as this had spoiled them.

In order not to damage the reputation of the Society of Jesus, the case was investigated with the utmost discretion . Above all, they did not want to give the Protestants dominant in Augsburg arguments in the denominational controversy and even feared that Marell might convert if he felt cornered. There were no serious doubts about the facts described by Banholzer, as they were confirmed in detail by another brother, Ignaz Erhard, to whom some of the young people involved had revealed themselves. Finally, on December 26, 1698, Marell was dismissed from the Augsburg Jesuit College. There was no charge in a secular court. Same-sex sexual intercourse, even among adults, was then considered a “crime against nature” and, according to Article 116 of the Carolina, would have been punishable by death by fire.

Further life

It is unclear whether Marell left the Jesuit order or just left the Augsburg college. At least he remained closely associated with the order. From Vienna in 1716/17 he regularly sent current reports on the maneuvers of the Habsburg troops in the Turkish War to the Innsbruck College, from where this information was immediately forwarded to the Munich Jesuits . When Marell presented the Prince-Bishop of Passau with a bundle of poems he had composed himself in Steyr in 1725 , he was named the Father of the Jesuit College there in the cover letter. The historian Hormayr concluded that Marell was either never removed from the order or that his dimission was withdrawn.

reception

"Jacobi Marelli SJ Amores"

The Marell case only sparked public discussion after more than a century, when the historian Karl Heinrich von Lang published a narrow volume with relevant excerpts from the order's archives . After the Jesuit order was abolished, these had now been transferred to the Royal Bavarian General Reich Archives , whose director Lang had been since 1810. The publication came at a time when the radical anti-clerical forces in Bavaria were increasingly on the defensive and after the disputed re-admission of the Society of Jesus by Pius VII on August 7, 1814, to the horror of enlightened circles . The aim of the publication was to warn against a resurgence of the clergy and especially the Jesuits. Lang had received the order directly from Minister Maximilian von Montgelas .

In addition to the documentation of the Marell case, Lang's book contained an exemplary list of 33 other fathers who had committed various forms of sexual assault in the Upper German Order Province in the years 1650–1723, mostly over the years. The files also provided material on more than 200 clergymen who had become suspicious. Very few perpetrators were released from the order, many were merely warned or transferred to another branch, where they often relapsed. For the career of Father Dietrich (lat. Theodoricus) Beck, for example, the files successively documented one abuse case in Prague , two in Constance , one in Vienna , five in Heitersheim and one in Freiburg . A Father Victor Wagner, who was transferred from Munich to Lucerne for notorious assaults , took over the post of his brother Mändel, who was expelled for abuse; he relapsed and the files recorded the abuse of eleven boys at his new place of work.

controversy

Lang's publication fueled the controversial debate over the Jesuit order. Its critics drew parallels to the case of the French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Girard (1680–1733) and saw Lang's revelations as further proof of the dangerousness of the Jesuits. They accused the order of protecting the perpetrators, of doing nothing to protect the pupils, and of hiding the truth rather than jeopardizing the reputation of the order.

The followers of the Society of Jesus, on the other hand, emphasized the low number of perpetrators in relation to the total number of members of the order. In a comment in the Felder'schen literary newspaper from Landshut, the 34 cases mentioned only as examples were presented as a total number, which would have to be related to "several thousand members of a few generations". It was further alleged that all of these “bad people” were punished or expelled from the order. This representation angered in turn Jesuit critics such as B. Karl Friedrich Strass (1803–1864), who described it as "unbelievable cheek" and glossing over it "entirely in the Jesuit manner". Another argument of the Jesuit supporters was that the "caution" in dealing with the matter made the order appear in "an honorable light", since "public nuisance" had been avoided. As seduced persons, the abuse victims are also complicit, and the noiseless handling of the work has spared the good reputation of their families. They also invoked the confidentiality of confession.

Finally, as far as Marell is concerned, even the veracity of the allegations as a whole was questioned, as he was almost 50 years too old for the acts. The opinion that only younger men are capable of pedophile acts was also encouraged by the Jesuit critic Lang when he B. wrote in his History of the Jesuits in Baiern that the teachers of the public Jesuit schools are "mostly very young masters in the lower grammatical classes, unfortunately often inflamed by unnatural lusts."

Marell as a Topos of Anti-Jesuit Literature

After the brief and violent controversy of the 1810s, the resurgent Catholic Church succeeded for two decades in largely pushing the case out of public awareness. Later, the “delightful little book with its appalling facts” ( sheets for literary entertainment ), which Lang had published in Latin, became the popular Jesuit-critical Chronique scandaleuse .

A translation into French appeared in 1837 during the controversy over Catholic influence on the public school system. The motto was the refrain of Pierre-Jean de Béranger's mocking poem "Les Révérends Pères" and in the preface the editor did not fail to warn parents not to give their children into the hands of Jesuit educators.

A first German-language edition appeared in Bern in 1842 as a translation from French by the Jesuit critic Franz Sebastian Ammann. Further German editions appeared in Bautzen in 1844, in Jena in 1845, in Sondershausen in 1862 and in Leipzig in 1890.

literature

• Karl Heinrich von Lang: Reverendi in Christo patris Jacobi Marelli SJ amores e scriniis provinciae Superioris Germaniae Monachii nuper apertis brevi libello expositi . Munich 1815 (Latin, digitized version [accessed December 16, 2013]).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Long: Jacobi Marelli amores . Munich 1815, p. 13 f . ( rds.de ).
2. ^ Long: Jacobi Marelli amores . Munich 1815, p. 15 ( rds.de ).
3. ^ Long: Jacobi Marelli amores . Munich 1815, p. 6, 14, 15 ( rds.de , rds.de , rds.de ).
4. ↑ ^{a b} story . In: Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung . Year 1816, first volume, no.  4 . Halle / Leipzig 1816, ISBN 978-3-7954-2747-4 , p. 28 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - review by Langs Jacobi Marelli Amores ).
5. ^ Long: Jacobi Marelli amores . Munich 1815, p. 19 (Latin, rds.de ): “… licere ista omnia, modo absit consensus in voluptatem”
6. ^ Long: Jacobi Marelli amores . Munich 1815, p. 19 ( rds.de ).
7. ^ Long: Jacobi Marelli amores . Munich 1815, p. 6 (Latin, rds.de ): “et non rare cum paulo ante sacra fecisset, vel post facturus esset ad aram”
8. ^ Long: Jacobi Marelli amores . Munich 1815, p. 8 (Latin, rds.de ): “singulis septimanis aliquoties factum a longo jam tempore”
9. ^ Long: Jacobi Marelli amores . Munich 1815, p. 10 (Latin, rds.de ): “… secum abrepta, transfugium ad haereticos moliatur, quibus alias plus quam optemus familiaris est, et ita fieret novissimus error peior prioribus.”
10. ^ Long: Jacobi Marelli amores . Munich 1815, p. 12 ff . ( rds.de ).
11. ↑ Markus Friedrich: The long arm of Rome? Global administration and communication in the Jesuit order 1540–1773 . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-593-39390-2 , p. 277 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
12. ↑ Joseph von Hormayr: Paperback for the patriotic history . Georg Franz, Munich 1834, ISBN 978-3-05-005228-1 , p. 219 f ., doi : 10.1524 / 9783050052533.169 ( limited preview in Google book search).
13. ^ Karl Goedeke: Outline for the history of German poetry from the sources . Academy, Berlin 1910, ISBN 978-3-05-005228-1 , p. 169 , doi : 10.1524 / 9783050052533.169 .
14. ^ Francois-Xavier Schneider: Préface du Traducteur . In: Les amours du révérend père Jacques Marell, de la compagnie de Jésus, extraits des documents trouvés dans les archives de la sustide compagnie a Munich . Delaunay, Paris March 22, 1837. Quoted from Gaston Dubois-Desaulle: Les infames Prêtres et Moines non conformistes en Amour . Éditions de la Raison, Paris 1902, Les Pères Jésuites, p. 175 (French, archive.org [accessed December 16, 2013]).
15. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Friedmann : The Jesuits and their behavior against spiritual and secular rulers . Göschen Beyer, Grimma 1825, p.  318 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
16. ↑ Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung . 1816, p.  29 ( ecb.thulb.uni-jena.de ). ecb.thulb.uni-jena.de ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
17. ^ Franz Karl Felder (ed.): Literature newspaper for Catholic religious teachers . Volume VII, Volume I, No. 4 . Landshut 1816, p. 61-64 . quoted from Felix Joseph Lipowsky : History of the Jesuits in Baiern . tape 2 . Jakob Giel, Munich 1816, p. 255 (footnote) ( limited preview in Google Book search).
18. ^ Karl Friedrich Heinrich Strass: Demagogy of the Jesuits . Verlag der Hofdruckerei, Altenburg 1826, p. 5, 52 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
19. ^ ^{A b} Felix Joseph Lipowsky: History of the Jesuits in Baiern . Munich 1816, p. 254 (footnote) ( limited preview in Google Book search).
20. ^ Felix Joseph Lipowsky: History of the Jesuits in Swabia . tape 2 . Lentner, Munich 1819, p. 175 (footnote) ( limited preview in Google Book search).
21. ^ Karl Heinrich von Lang: History of the Jesuits in Baiern . Riegel and Wießner, Nuremberg 1819, p. 40 ( digitized version [accessed December 16, 2013]).
22. ↑ ^{a b} Notes on the history of the monasteries in Baiern . In: Heinrich Brockhaus (ed.): Leaves for literary entertainment . No.  331 . Leipzig November 27, 1837, p. 1342 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
23. ↑

    Nous rentrons, songez à vous taire!
    Et que vos enfants suivent nos leçons.
    C'est nous qui fessons,
    Et qui refessons
    Les jolis petits, les jolis garçons.

    We'll be back, remember to shut up!
    And that your children attend our classes.
    We spank
    and spank again and again
    the pretty little ones, the pretty boys.

    The full text of Les Révérends Pères on Wikisource
24. ^ Francois-Xavier Schneider: Préface du premiér éditeur . In: Les amours du révérend père Jacques Marell . Paris 1837. Quoted from Dubois-Desaulle: Les infames Prêtres et Moines non conformistes en Amour . Paris 1902, p. 174 .
25. ^ Karl Heinrich von Lang: Adventure of the venerable Father Jacob Marell, member of the Society of Jesus. Borrowed from files found in the archives of the Jesuit Order in Munich . Key, Bautzen 1845.
26. ^ Hugo Hayn: Bibliotheca Germanorum Erotica . List of the entire German erotic literature including the translations, together with details of the foreign originals. 2nd Edition. Unflad, Leipzig 1885 ( digitized [accessed on December 16, 2013]).
27. ^ Karl Heinrich von Lang: Jesuitiana. The boyfriends of the Jesuit Father Marell. From the order archives of Upper Germany . Laudia, Leipzig 1890.