Palatinate church division
In the Palatinate church division , the churches in the Electoral Palatinate were divided between the Reformed and the Catholics . The division key was specified in the Palatinate Declaration of Religion in 1705.
history
In the course of the Reformation , the Electoral Palatinate , apart from brief Lutheran interludes, switched to the Reformed Confession. In 1685 the Reformed Palatinate-Simmern line went out , so that the cure was transferred to the Catholic Wittelsbach branch of the Palatinate-Neuburg district , which resided in Düsseldorf . The war of the Palatinate Succession triggered by this event by the French King Louis XIV led to severe destruction of the Electoral Palatinate and a strong decimation of the population. In addition, France reintroduced the Catholic religion.
The peace of Rijswijk ended the war in 1697. The Rijswijk clause stipulated that the Catholic places should keep their denomination. The new electoral house under Elector Johann Wilhelm (1690–1716) promoted the Counter Reformation , supported the Jesuit order and the settlement of new citizens from neighboring Catholic countries. In 1698 the elector decreed the simultaneous use of the country's Protestant churches for Reformed, Lutherans and Catholics. The Catholic churches built in the meantime, however, were reserved for Catholics.
This policy triggered increasing sectarian tensions. Brandenburg-Prussia , which saw itself as a reformed protecting power, protested sharply. During the War of the Spanish Succession , Johann Wilhelm tried to win back the Upper Palatinate and the noble cure of Bavaria , for which he needed the votes of the Protestant princes and entered into negotiations with Prussia.
Declaration of religion in the Electoral Palatinate
After King Friedrich Wilhelm I in Prussia (1657–1713) had instructed his governments in Halberstadt, Magdeburg and Minden to treat the Catholic goods, inclines and pensions there in the same way as those of the Reformed in the Electoral Palatinate, an agreement was reached on November 21, 1705 the Electoral Palatinate and Brandenburg-Prussia on the Electoral Palatinate Religious Declaration. The key points were the guarantee of freedom of conscience and the abolition of the simultaneous.
The churches in the country, along with parsonages and schools, were divided between the Reformed and the Catholics in a ratio of five to two. There were special regulations for the three capitals Heidelberg , Mannheim and Frankenthal as well as the upper administrative cities of Alzey , Kaiserslautern , Neustadt an der Weinstrasse , Oppenheim , Bacharach and Weinheim . In cities with two churches, one should go to Protestants and the other to Catholics; in the others, where there was only one church, the choir was separated from the nave by a wall, and the one to the Catholics and the other to the Protestants. One of the few churches that is still divided by a wall as a result of the Electoral Palatinate Declaration of Religion is the Stiftskirche (Neustadt an der Weinstrasse) . Here the long controversial partition wall is now understood as a monument and a special feature. The St. Rufus Church in Gau-Odernheim , a pledged property in the Electoral Palatinate , was divided into two halves. The demarcation between the choir and the nave was made by means of a board wall, the current dividing wall was not erected until 1891. The collegiate church of St. Juliana in Mosbach (Neckar-Odenwald district) still has a 300-year-old partition wall, in which a small gate was broken again on the 300th anniversary of the division. This was ceremoniously opened on July 27, 2008 as an ecumenical door by Auxiliary Bishop Bernd Uhl and Senior Church Councilor Gerhard Victor.
The Lutherans were only allowed those churches that they owned in 1624 or had built afterwards.
Church division
A commission was set up for the allocation of the churches, which consisted of two Reformed and two Catholics. It met for the first time in May 1706 and began with the Ladenburg , Wiesloch and Weinheim inspections . The church buildings were divided into four classes:
- Churches in places where Reformed pastors lived
- well-preserved branch churches
- less well-preserved branch churches
- destroyed churches
Groups of seven churches were formed in each class in each district. The Reformed had the right of access to the first and third churches, and the Catholics to the second and fourth. The remaining three eventually fell back to the Reformed.
The first churches were awarded from afar, which quickly led to disputes. Thereupon the commission began to tour the administrative districts. Again and again, however, there was a dispute over individual locations. After sometimes tough negotiations, the division of the church with the conference in Mannheim in November 1706 was essentially over on paper. But the execution still dragged on. Only after the elector had set several deadlines in 1707 were the simultans dissolved. This did not affect the churches, for which the simultaneous use continued to apply for other legal reasons, such as the Bergstrasse recession .
The commission continued. She was responsible for overseeing the division and handling disputes. It did not stop working until 1713.
literature
- Alfred Hans: The Electoral Palatinate Declaration of Religion of 1705: its origin and significance for the coexistence of the three denominations tolerated in the empire . Mainz 1973.
- Meinrad Schaab : History of the Electoral Palatinate. Vol 2. Modern times . Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-17-009877-2 .