Trier pilgrimage from 1844

The Trier pilgrimage of 1844 was a major religious event of the 19th century and a Catholic demonstration of faith.

August Gustav Lasinsky 1847: Pilgrimage to the exhibition of the Holy Rock in Trier 1844 . The pilgrims in front of Trier come from the Maifeld and the Lower Moselle, recognizable by the costume of the women, especially here by the virtue arrow in the topknot. It was mainly worn in the Eastern Eifel and in the Koblenz area.

With Friedrich Wilhelm IV's accession to the throne, a change in the course of religious policy took place in Prussia . With the agreements of September 1844, the Catholic Church achieved significant freedoms for which it had fought for years. The newly established "Catholic Department", which was manned by Catholic officials, enabled objective cooperation between church and state . The king's participation in the Cologne Cathedral Building Festival was an outward expression of the changed climate.

Another external evidence of the changed state of consciousness was the great pilgrimage to Trier to the Holy Rock in 1844. It was based on old traditions of pilgrimage, which during the Enlightenment had been restricted by both the state and the church. The event was considered the largest mass movement of the German pre-March . Half a million pilgrims were guided to Trier and past the exhibit with remarkable discipline from August 18 to October 6, 1844. The garment that was raffled off at the crucifixion of Christ according to Mt 27.35 EU and, according to legend, was brought to Trier as a relic by Empress Helena (257–330 AD) was worshiped in the holy skirt .

The Trier bishop Wilhelm Arnoldi (1798–1864) had ordered the pilgrimage against all reservations in order to support the church renewal movement and to work against the spirit of rationalism. For years Arnoldi had argued against the Prussian government for the freedom to elect a bishop; the official approval of the pilgrimage was only possible under the changed circumstances. As early as 1842 he had consulted with the Austrian Chancellor Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich on how to reactivate the cult of relics . For him, the pilgrimage was a means to banish the "horrible specter of the revolution " and to immunize the Catholic Christians "against the hollow phrases of popular happiness and freedom".

The majority of the pilgrims came from the diocese of Trier , many also from the former Electoral Trier areas of the dioceses of Limburg, Luxembourg, Metz and Nancy as well as the neighboring dioceses of Cologne and Speyer. The members of the lower classes, who were still susceptible to belief in miracles and devotional items , made up the bulk of the pilgrims: farmers, in large numbers the Moselle winemakers who were particularly hard hit by the Prussian customs policy , but also craftsmen and small tradesmen. The Catholic bourgeoisie clearly held back.

The pilgrimage caused severe criticism of the Catholic practice of piety. Enlightened Christians of both denominations scoffed at the gullibility of Catholics. The Catholic priest Johannes Ronge was publicly indignant that the pilgrimage was a deliberate deception of uneducated and low-income people, who would be expected to suffer unjustified privations during the journey, and that the sacrifice money they received was a business of superstition . Ronge wrote to Arnoldi's address:

"Because you don't know - as a bishop you have to know - that the founder of the Christian religion did not leave his disciples and successors his coat but his spirit?"

Ronge was excommunicated for these statements . The Trier pilgrimage thus became the crystallization core of German Catholicism , an anti- ultramontanist movement with an affinity for the Enlightenment .

literature

Erich Aretz, Michael Embach, Martin Persch , Franz Ronig (eds.): The Holy Rock in Trier. Studies of the history and worship of the tunic of Christ ; Trier, 1996 ² ; ISBN 3-7902-0173-1 .
Wolfgang Schieder : Religion and Revolution. The Trier pilgrimage of 1844. Vierow: SH-Verlag 1996. ISBN 3-89498-026-5

Individual evidence

↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Deutsche Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 2. From the reform era to the industrial and political German double revolution 1815–1845 / 49. CH Beck, Munich 1987, p. 474.
↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Deutsche Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 2. From the reform era to the industrial and political German double revolution 1815–1845 / 49. CH Beck, Munich 1987, p. 473 f.
↑ Jörg Lauster : The enchantment of the world. A cultural history of Christianity. CH Beck, Munich 2014, p. 509 f.
↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Deutsche Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 2. From the reform era to the industrial and political German double revolution 1815–1845 / 49. CH Beck, Munich 1987, p. 474 f.

[1] Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Deutsche Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 2. From the reform era to the industrial and political German double revolution 1815–1845 / 49. CH Beck, Munich 1987, p. 474.

[2] Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Deutsche Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 2. From the reform era to the industrial and political German double revolution 1815–1845 / 49. CH Beck, Munich 1987, p. 473 f.

[3] Jörg Lauster : The enchantment of the world. A cultural history of Christianity. CH Beck, Munich 2014, p. 509 f.

[4] Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Deutsche Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 2. From the reform era to the industrial and political German double revolution 1815–1845 / 49. CH Beck, Munich 1987, p. 474 f.