Ignaz von Döllinger

Born at Bamberg, Bavaria, Döllinger came from an intellectual family, his grandfather and father having both been eminent physicians and professors of medical science; his mother's family were equally accomplished. Döllinger was first educated in the gymnasium at Würzburg, where he learned Italian. A Benedictine monk taught him English privately. He began to study philosophy at the University of Würzburg, where his father held a professorship. In 1817, he added philology, and, in 1818, turned to theology. He learned Spanish at the university. He particularly devoted himself to church history. In 1820, he became acquainted with Victor Aimé Huber (1800–1869), who was to influence him greatly.

After studying at the seminary in Bamberg, on 5 April 1822 he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest for the Diocese of Bamberg, and in November, was appointed chaplain at Markscheinfeldt in Middle Franconia. In 1823 he became professor of church history and canon law in the lyceum at Aschaffenburg. He then took his doctoral degree, and in 1826 became professor of theology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), where he spent the rest of his life. About this time he brought upon himself the criticism of Heinrich Heine, who was then editor of a Munich paper. The unsparing satirist described the professor's face as the "gloomiest" in the whole procession of clerics on Good Friday.

In 1836, Döllinger made his first visit to England, and met a number of leading English intellectuals, including John Henry Newman and William Gladstone, with whom he maintained lifelong contact. For many years, a number of young Englishmen boarded with him in Munich; among them was Lord Acton. Acton had been denied entry to the University of Cambridge because he was a Catholic, and subsequently went to Munich where he studied at the LMU. They became lifelong friends. Döllinger inspired in him a deep love of historical research and its function as a critical instrument.

In 1837, he was made member extraordinary of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, in 1843 as a regular member, and, from 1860, he was secretary of its historical section. In 1845, Döllinger was made representative of his university in the second chamber of the Bavarian legislature. In 1839, the king had given him a canonry in the royal chapel of St. Cajetan in Munich. On 1 January 1847, he was made mitred provost of that body of canons. However, that same year he was dismissed from his chair, in punishment of his protest as representative of the university on the Bavarian Landtag, to which he had been appointed in 1844, against the dismissal of several university professors.

In 1849, Döllinger was offered the chair of church history. In 1848, when nearly every throne in Europe was shaken by the spread of revolutionary sentiments, he was elected delegate to the national German assembly at Frankfurt. He spoke boldly in favour of freedom for the church to manage her affairs without state interference. In 1857, Döllinger and Acton traveled to Rome, where they were both disenchanted with Pius IX's papacy. Döllinger was troubled that the Pope was the head of state of the Papal States. In some speeches at Munich in 1861, he declared his view that the Roman Catholic Church did not need a temporal sovereign. His book on The Church and the Churches (Munich, 1861) dealt to a certain extent with the same question. In 1863, he invited 100 theologians to meet at Mechelen and discuss the question which the liberals Lamennais and Lacordaire had raised in France, namely, the attitude that should be assumed by the Roman Catholic Church towards modern ideas. In his address, "On the Past and Future of Catholic Theology," Döllinger advocated for greater academic freedom.