DOLLINGER, JOHANN JOSEPH IGNAZ VON (1799-189o), German theologian and church historian, was born at Bamberg, Bavaria, on Feb. 28, 1799, and was educated at the Wiirzburg gymnasium and at Bamberg. On April 5, 1822 he was ordained priest. In 1823 he became professor of ecclesiastical history and canon law in the lyceum at Aschaffenburg, and in 1826 professor of theology at Munich, where he spent the rest of his life. He entered into relations with the well-known French Liberal Catholic, Lamennais, whose views on the reconciliation of the Roman Catholic Church with the principles of modern society had aroused much suspicion in ultramontane circles. In 1832 Lamennais, with his friends Lacordaire and Monta lembert, visited Germany, with a view to bringing about a modification of the Roman Catholic attitude to modern problems. In 1838 he published a treatise against mixed marriages, and in his works on The Reformation (3 vols. Regensburg, 1846-48) and on Luther (185 i, Eng. tr., 1853) he is very severe on the Protestant leaders. In 1842 he entered into correspondence with the leaders of the Tractarian movement in England, notably with Pusey, Gladstone and Hope Scott ; and two years later was made representative of his university in the second chamber of the Bavarian legislature. In 1847, in consequence of the fall from power of the Abel ministry in Bavaria, with which he had been in close relations, he was removed from his professorship at Munich, but in 1849 was invited to occupy the chair of ecclesiastical history. He was a delegate to the national German assembly at Frankfort in 1848.
It has been said that his change of relations to the Papacy dated from the Italian war in 1859, but no sufficient reason has been given for this statement. He was unfavourably impressed by the promulgation (1854) of the dogma of the Immaculate Con ception of the Blessed Virgin, and he disliked the attitude of the zealots for the restoration of the temporal sovereignty of the pope. In 1863 he invited zoo theologians to discuss at Malines the question which Lamennais and Lacordaire had already raised in France, namely, the attitude that should be assumed by the Roman Catholic Church towards modern problems and modern science. His strong liberalism and the anti-ultramontane and anti Jesuit attitude which he displayed at this conference led the pope to suppress it after four days session. On Dec. 8, 1864 Pius IX. issued the Syllabus (q.v.), in the 13th thesis of which he con demned certain of Dollinger's views. It was in connection with the problems raised at the conference that Dellinger published his Past and Present of Catholic Theology (1863) and his Universities Past and Present (Munich, 1867).
We now approach the critical period of Dollinger's life. The headquarters of the opposition to the movement for the declara tion of papal infallibility which was now mooted in many quar ters was Germany, and its leader was Dellinger. Among the group were his intimate friends Johann Friedrich (q.v.) and J. N. Hu ber, in Bavaria. In the rest of Germany he found many sup porters, chiefly professors in the Catholic faculty of theology at Bonn, among whom were the famous canonist von Schulte, Franz Heinrich Reusch, the ecclesiastical historian Joseph Langen, as well as J. H. Reinkens, afterwards bishop of the Old Catholic Church in Germany, Knoodt, and other distinguished scholars; and, in Switzerland, Prof. Edward Herzog, who became Old (or, as it is sometimes called, Christ-) Catholic bishop in Switzerland Early in 1869 the famous Letters of Janus, written by Dollinger in conjunction with Huber and Friedrich (which were at once translated into English; end ed. Das Papsttum, 1891), began to appear. The Letters pointed out the tendency of the Syllabus towards obscurantism and papal despotism, and marshalled the evidence against papal infallibility, a subject which had been placed on the agenda of the Vatican Council fixed for Dec. 8, 1869. During its session the world was kept informed of what was going on in the Letters of Quirinus, by Dellinger and Huber, who were supplied with information by Augustin Theiner, the librarian at the Vatican, then in disgrace with the pope for his outspoken Liberalism. The dogma was carried by an overwhelm ing majority, and the dissentient bishops, one by one submitted (see VATICAN COUNCIL). Dollinger, understanding infallibility to apply to all official exercise of the supreme magisterium, including encyclicals, headed a protest by 44 Munich professors, and con vened a congress at Nuremberg, which met in Aug. 187o and is sued a declaration adverse to the Vatican decrees. The archbishop of Munich called upon Dellinger to submit. Dollinger answered (Nov. 28, 1871) that the decrees were opposed to Holy Scrip ture, to the traditions of the Church for the first i,000 years, to historical evidence, to the decrees of the general councils, and to the existing relations of the Roman Catholic Church to the state in every country in the world. "As a Christian, as a theologian, as an historian, and as a citizen," he added, "I cannot accept this doctrine." The archbishop replied (April, 1871) by excommunicating Del linger (see VATICAN COUNCIL and INFALLIBILITY), who was there upon almost unanimously elected rector-magnificus of the univer sity of Munich while Oxford, Edinburgh and Marburg universities conferred upon him the honorary degree of doctor of laws and Vienna that of philosophy. The Bavarian clergy invited Bishop Loos of the Jansenist Church in Holland, which for more than I5o years had existed independent of the Papacy and had adopted the name of "Old Catholic," to hold confirmations in Bavaria. The offer was accepted, and the three Dutch Old Catholic bishops declared themselves ready to consecrate a bishop, if it were de sired. The momentous question was discussed at a meeting of the opponents of the Vatican decrees, when Dellinger voted against the proposition, and withdrew from any further steps towards the promotion of the movement. He declined to initiate a schism (see OLD CATHOLICS).
Dollinger's attitude to the new community was not very clearly defined. His addresses on the reunion of the Churches, delivered at the Bonn Conference of 1872, show that he was not hostile to the newly formed communion, in whose interest the conference was held; in 1874 and again in 1875, he presided over the Re union Conferences held there and attended by leading ecclesiastics from the British Isles and from the Orthodox Church. At the latter of these two conferences, when Dellinger was seventy-six years of age, he delivered a series of addresses in German and English, in which he discussed the state of theology on the con tinent, the reunion question, and the religious condition of the various countries of Europe in which the Roman Catholic Church held sway, and he succeeded in inducing the Orientals, Anglicans and Old Catholics present to accept a formula of concord, drawn from the writings of the leading theologians of the Greek Church, on the question of the Procession of the Holy Spirit. During his last years of retirement he wrote, in conjunction with his friend Reusch, Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeiten in der romisch-katho lischen Kirche seit dem sechzehnten Jahrhundert mit Beitriigen zur Geschichte und Charakteristik des Jesuitenordens (Nordlin gen, 1889). Dollinger died in Munich on Jan. 14, 189o, at nearly ninety-one. He declined to receive the sacraments from the parish priest at the cost of submission, but the last offices were performed by his friend Professor Friedrich.
In addition to the works referred to in the foregoing sketch, we may mention The Eucharist in the First Three Centuries (Mainz, 1826) ; a Church History (1836, Eng. trans., 184o) ; HiPpolytus and Callistus (1854, Eng. trans., 1876) ; First Age of Christianity (186o); The Church and the Churches (Munich, 1861) ; Lectures on the Reunion of the Churches; The Vatican Decrees; Studies in European History (tr. M. Warre, 189o) ; Miscellaneous Addresses (tr. M. Warre, 1894)• See L. von Kobell, Conversations of Dr. Dollinger (tr. by K. Gould, 1892) ; and J. Friedrich, Ignaz von Dollinger (Munich, 1899-1901).