REUSCH, FRANZ HEINRICH. - Catholic exegete, who went over to the sect of the "Old Catholics", b. at Brilon in Westphalia on 4 Dec. 1825, d. at Bonn on 3 March 1900. In 1849 a priest, in 1854 a private lecturer, in 1861 he became ordinary professor of exegesis at the University of Bonn.
He took part in the discussions concerning pontifical infallibility, and after the decision of the Vatican Council he refused to submit and was suspended (1871) and then excommunicated (1872). He took an active part in the establishment of the sect of the "Old Catholics" and from 1872 served as vicar general of the systematic bishop Reinkens, until in 1878, discontented with the abolition of ecclesiastical celibacy, he broke away from them as well. His scholarly output after the Vatican Council differs from the earlier one also in subject matter, because he occupied himself entirely with the ecclesiastical history of the centuries after the Reformation, with the aim of showing the progressive "Romanization" of the Catholic Church. In these works his old teacher Döllinger was often his inspiration, various writings of whom R. also published.
He wrote as a Catholic, before the Vatican Council: Erklärung des Buches Baruch (Freiburg im Br. 1853); Das Buch Tobia (ibid. 1857); Lehrbuch der Einleitung in das Alte Testament (ibid. 1859); Bibel und Natur (ibid. 1862); as an "Old Catholic", after the Council: Index der Verbotenen Bücher (2 vols., Bonn 1883-85); Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeiten seit dem 16. Jahrhundert (2 vols., Nördlingen 1889); Bellarmus Selbstbiographie (Bonn 1887); Der Prozeß Galileis und die Jesuiten (ibid. 1879); Döllinger Kleinere Schriften (Stuttgart 1890); Briefe an Bunsen von römischen Cardinälen und Prälaten (s. l. 1897); moreover very many articles, especially in the weekly of the "Old Catholics", the Deutscher Merkur.
Bibliography3 works
Igino Rogger