Joseph Feßler

Bishop Joseph Fessler (photo from a picture collection of the Council Fathers 1870)

Bishop Joseph Feßler, lithograph by Adolf Dauthage , 1869

Joseph Feßler (born December 2, 1813 in Lochau , Vorarlberg , † April 25, 1872 in St. Pölten ) was a Roman Catholic theologian and bishop of St. Pölten and secretary of the 1st Vatican Council in 1869/70.

Life

Joseph Feßler studied in Feldkirch , Innsbruck , Brixen and at the Pazmaneum in Vienna , became a lecturer in church history and canon law in Brixen in 1841, and later became a full professor in these subjects.

From May 19 to October 2, 1848, he represented the 1st Vorarlberg constituency in Bregenz as a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly .

In 1852 he was appointed professor of church history in Vienna, in 1856 he became professor of canon law. He was commissioned to do the preparatory work for the Concordat, which was signed in 1855. He responded to the attacks directed against the Concordat in pamphlets and comments on individual parts of the Concordat, particularly in detail on marriage law.

In 1862 he was appointed auxiliary bishop and vicar general of Vorarlberg . In 1864 he was a negotiator for the Austrian government in Rome to negotiate changes to the Concordat. In 1865 he was appointed bishop of St. Pölten. At the Vatican Council in 1870 he acted as Secretary General and later defended it in the text The True and False Infallibility of the Popes (Vienna 1871), directed against Professor Johann Friedrich von Schulte .

Works

• Institutiones patrologicae . Innsbruck 1850–52, 2 vols.
• Collection of mixed fonts . Freiburg 1869

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Feßler, Joseph . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 28th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1874, p. 332 ( digitized version ).
• Werner:  Feßler, Josef . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 726 f.
• Biographical data from Joseph Feßler in the Biographical Manual of the Lower Austrian Parliament 1861–1921
• Fessler Josef. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1957, p. 305.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Joseph Feßler. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 23-24.
• Heinrich Best , Wilhelm Weege: Biographical manual of the members of the Frankfurt National Assembly 1848/49. Droste, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-0919-3 , pp. 213-214.

Web links

• Literature by and about Joseph Feßler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Joseph Feßler in the database of the state's memory for the history of the state of Lower Austria ( Museum Niederösterreich )

predecessor	Office	successor
Ignaz Feigerle	Bishop of St. Pölten 1865–1872	Matthäus Josef Binder
Georg Prünster	Vicar General of Feldkirch 1862–1865	Johann Nepomuk Amberg