REUSCH, FRANZ HEINRICH. – Catholic exegete who passed over to the sect of the “Old Catholics,” born at Brilon in Westphalia on 4 December 1825, died at Bonn on 3 March 1900. He became a priest in 1849, a privatdozent in 1854, and in 1861 was appointed professor of exegesis at the University of Bonn.
He took part in the discussions concerning papal infallibility, and after the decision of the First Vatican Council refused to submit; he was suspended (1871) and then excommunicated (1872). He played an active role in the establishment of the sect of the “Old Catholics” and from 1872 served as vicar general to the schismatic bishop Reinkens, until in 1878, dissatisfied with the abolition of clerical celibacy, he separated from them as well. His scholarly production after the First Vatican Council differed from his earlier work also in subject matter, since he devoted himself entirely to the ecclesiastical history of the centuries after the Reformation, with the aim of showing the progressive “Romanization” of the Catholic Church. In these works the old master Döllinger was often his inspiration; Reusch also published various writings by him.
As a Catholic, before the First Vatican Council, he wrote: Erklärung des Buches Baruch (Freiburg im Breisgau 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., Nordlingen 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); in addition, very numerous articles, especially in the weekly publication of the “Old Catholics,” Deutscher Merkur.