HEFELE, KARL JOSEPH VON. — Bishop and Church historian, born on 15 March 1809 at Unterkochen (Württemberg), died at Rottenburg on 5 June 1893. For 32 years professor of Church history, patrology, and Christian archaeology at the University of Tübingen (the influence of G. A. Möhler on H. is evident), he was summoned to Rome as a consultor to the Preparatory Commission of the First Vatican Council. Bishop of Rottenburg in 1869 (elected on 22 November, consecrated on 29 December), he took part in the same Council and was one of the most eminent representatives of the anti-infallibilist minority (cf. his writing Causa Honorii Papae, Naples and Tübingen 1870); he did not attend the session of 18 July 1870, at which the decree was approved. He was also the last of the German bishops to publish the Vatican decrees (10 April 1871).
As a scholar, he is remembered for a Geschichte der Einführung des Christentums im südwestlichen Deutschland (Tübingen 1837); a work on Cardinal Ximenes: Kard. Ximenes und die kirchlichen Zustände Spaniens am Ende des 15. und am Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts (ibid. 1844); and the fundamental Canciliengeschichte (7 vols., ibid. 1855–74), an unfinished work whose continuation was undertaken by J. Hergenröther (vols. VIII–IX, ibid. 1887–90), and whose French version, extensively annotated by H. Leclercq, has so far reached the Council of Trent.
(from Staatslexikon, vol. II, col. 1280)
HEGEL, GEORG FRIEDRICH WILHELM — Portrait from a painting by Schlesinger taken from the “Corpus imaginum” of the photographic collection of Charlottenburg.
Zur Rechtfertigung des Bischofs H., in Histor. Jahrbuch, 30 (1909), pp. 584–87; S. Lösch, Briefe des jungen J. H. (1834–46), in Theolog. Quartalschrift, 119 (1938), pp. 3–59; A. Hagen, H. und das Vatikanische Konzil. ibid., 123 (1942), pp. 225–32; id., Die Unterwerfung des Bischof H. unter das Vatikanum, ibid., 124 (1943), pp. 1–40. Silvio Furlani