SCHULTE, JOHANN FRIBDRICH von. — Canonist and legal historian, born on 23 April 1827 at Winterberg (Westphalia), died at Merano on 19 December 1914. Having graduated in utroque iure in Berlin in 1851, he became a Privatdozent at Bonn in 1853, associate professor of canon law at Prague in 1854, and, in 1855, full professor of canon law and of the history of German law at the same University; in 1871 he moved to Bonn, where he taught the same subjects until 1906, when he retired to Merano.
Counsel to the ecclesiastical matrimonial tribunal of Prague (1856–71) and a deputy to the German Reichstag (1874–79), he was awarded the hereditary noble title of knight by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1869. He was an extraordinarily prolific author. His most important works are System des allgemeinen katholischen Kirchenrechts (Giessen 1856), Die Lehre von den Quellen des katholischen Kirchenrechts (there 1860), Lehrbuch des katholischen Kirchenrechts (there 1863 ff.), and the edition, together with Richter, of Canones et decreta Concilii Tridentini (Berlin 1851); his fundamental work is Die Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des kanonischen Rechts (3 vols., Stuttgart 1875–80), which undoubtedly constitutes the most important fruit of his life as a scholar.
S. was a man of great intellect and great capacity for work: he had a proud, independent character, sincerely seeking the truth, but capable of being harsh and biased. Devoted to the Catholic Church until 1870, after the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility he joined Old Catholicism, of which, in Germany, he was the driving force and undisputed leader. This movement owed its organization to him: the election of bishops, statutory recognition, the drafting of the trade-union statute, disciplinary law for the clergy, and the abolition of celibacy.
With regard to his work as a scholar, it must be stated that the Geschichte der Quellen (together with the related preliminary studies published in article form) merits for him the title of father of the study of classical canon law, since he was the first to study the vast manuscript material scattered throughout Europe, to enumerate and assess writers and writings on canon law up to his own time, and thus to establish the foundation for the broader studies undertaken in this field. He nevertheless often errs through superficiality and a lack of scientific precision. The works written after 1870, even when they are not polemical writings, reveal his open and bitter hostility toward the Catholic Church and, in particular, toward the Roman papacy.
Alfonso M. Stickler