BUNSEN, CHRISTIAN KARL JOSIAS. - Lutheran diplomat and scholar, b. at Korbach in the principality of Waldeck on 25 Aug. 1791, d. at Bonn on 28 Nov. 1860. After theological, philosophical, philological and juridical studies at Marburg, Göttingen and Berlin, he devoted himself to a diplomatic career: in Rome, first as secretary of legation, then as successor to Niebuhr at the embassy of the kings of Prussia to the Supreme Pontiff (1816–37), then at Bern (1839–41) and at London (1841–54). He always cultivated studies and wrote many works of a political, historical, philosophical, religious and liturgical character. In 1854 he retired to private life at Heidelberg and Bonn, devoting himself zealously to biblical science.
In the political-religious sphere, regarding the thorny question of mixed marriages, he committed the grave error of concluding with the Archbishop of Cologne, Ferdinand August Spiegel, a secret convention that was intended to paralyze, for Prussia, the brief of Pius VIII, which required a guarantee for the Catholic education of children (1834). He was subsequently obliged to leave his post in Rome, and from then on his attitude toward the Catholic Church became increasingly hostile. He is credited with the merit of having secured the establishment of an Anglo-Prussian Protestant diocese at Jerusalem (1841). Also well known are his letters Die Zeichen der Zeit (1855) against the danger of the “reaction” of ecclesiastical Protestants.
Among his productions of a rather philosophical and historical character, the following are noteworthy: Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, 5 vols., Gotha 1845–57; Gott in der Geschichte oder der Fortschritt des Glaubens an eine sittliche Weltordnung, 3 vols., Leipzig 1857 ff.; Aphorismen aus der Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit und der Religionsgeschichte insbesondere, in vol. I of his Hypolytus.
Noteworthy, especially during his Roman period, was his interest in Christian antiquity (e.g., Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, 3 vols., Stuttgart 1830–43; Die Basiliken des christlichen Roms, Munich 1843; Ignatius und seine Zeit, Hamburg 1847; Hypolytus und seine Zeit, 2 vols., Leipzig 1852 ff.). The English edition of Hypolytus and his age (London 1852) was placed on the Index (decr. 1853). Together with Niebuhr he founded the Prussian Archaeological Institute in Rome (1828) and established on the Capitoline Hill the Casa Tarpea for German artists and scholars (1835). For the communities of German Protestants in Rome and London he drew up a special liturgy and a book of religious hymns (1827). In vol. II of his Hypolytus, pp. 441–618, i.e., in the Reliquiae liturgicae, he attempted to reconstruct the liturgies of the ancient Church, eliminating “ecclesiastical falsifications and interpolations.” In 1841 he published Die hl. Leidensgeschichte und die stille Woche and in 1855 Analecta Ante-Nicaena.
In biblical matters, noteworthy is his Vollständiges Bibelwerk für die Gemeinde, which comprises translation, commentary, criticism, history, etc., of the sacred books, an edition revised and completed by A. Kamphausen and H. J. Holtzmann (9 vols., Leipzig 1858–70). With this he intended to revise Luther’s Bible according to the original texts and, in opposition to “orthodox” Protestants, to set forth the true historical meaning.
Also of interest is Bunsen’s correspondence with King Frederick William IV (ed. L. von Ranke, Leipzig 1873), with cardinals, bishops and other Catholic figures (ed. F. H. Reusch, Leipzig 1897).