Theiner, Augustin

THEINER, AUGUSTIN. - Priest and historian, b. at Breslau on 11 April 1804, d. at Civitavecchia on 8 Aug. 1874. The son of a German father and a Polish mother, he had as his elder brother Johann Anton T., who convinced him to devote himself to legal and historical studies.

For the part relating to the origin and historical development of ecclesiastical celibacy, he gave his own collaboration to the work published by his brother in 1828, and having then taken his degree in philosophy and in jurisprudence he devoted himself to the study of canon law. For an erudite monograph on the formation of the decretals of Gregory IX (Commentatio de Romanorum Pontificum epistolarum decretalium antiquis collectionibus et de Gregorii IX Pontificis Maximi decretalium codice, Leipzig 1829), he was offered a university chair at Berlin, which T. refused in order to visit libraries, archives and museums throughout Europe in search of subjects for study. In Paris he met Lamennais, and on the advice of the bishop of Orléans, Beauregard, and of Moehler, he came to Rome in 1833 and shut himself up in the Seminary of St. Eusebius. He made an act of submission for the errors propagated in the work on ecclesiastical celibacy and gave an account of his conversion in a work published, also in an Italian version, in 1834, under the title Il Seminario ecclesiastico a gli otto giorni a S. Eusebio in Roma. Ordained a priest, he entered in 1839 the Congregation of the Oratory and in the library of S. Maria Nuova in Vallicella he resumed his historical studies, never abandoned in the preceding years. As early as 1836 he had published the Disquisitiones in praecipuas canonum et decretalium collectiones; and then other writings such as the one on the conditions of Catholicism in Poland and in Russia (Die neuesten Zustände der katholischen Kirche in Polen und Russland, 1841), or on particular vicissitudes of religion and of the Church in the Germanic countries. In 1849 he polemicized with Rosmini and criticized his thesis on the election of bishops upheld in the Cinque Piaghe della Chiesa (Lettera storico-critica intorno alla elezione dei vescovi mediante il clero ed il popolo, Naples 1849). Most welcome to Pope Pius IX, T. received from him the task of composing a history of the pontificate of Clement XIV to be set against the one recently published by Crétineau-Joly. Appointed by the Pope coadjutor of the prefect of the Vatican Archive with the right of succession in March 1851, he was able to gather and study the documents necessary for that work, which was printed in 1853, raising a great stir for its aversion to the Jesuits and prompting numerous writings of confutation more exact and better founded, among them that of G. Boero (v.) and F. X. de Ravignan (v.). Appointed prefect of the Archive in Nov. 1855, T., in continuation of the Annales ecclesiastici of Baronio, published three volumes in 1856, carrying the narrative down to the end of the pontificate of Gregory XIII; he moreover edited a new edition of the same Annales, in 37 vols. (Bar-le-Duc 1864-85). From the papers of the Vatican Archive he drew: Vetera Monumenta Historica Unghariam Sacram Illustrantia (2 vols., 1859); Polonia (4 vols., 1860-64); Southern Slavs (2 vols., 1863); Ireland and Scotland (1864); Monuments historiques relatifs aux règnes d'Alexis Michaëlovitch, Feodor II et Pierre le Grand (1859). New polemics were aroused by the Histoire des deux Concordats de la République française et de la République cisalpine conclus en 1801 et en 1803 (1869). Favorable to the anti-infallibilists, T. communicated during the ecumenical Council the internal regulations of the Council of Trent to Card. Hohenlohe, thereby contravening official secrecy, for which Pius IX dismissed him from the prefectship. At his death the incomplete edition of the Acta genuina Concilii Tridentini (2 vols.) saw the light at Zagreb. The scholarly output of T. is distinguished, more than for sound criticism and historical depth, for the richness of data and information, although not always fully reliable.

Silvio Furlani

His brother JOHANN ANTON, b. at Breslau on 15 Dec. 1799, d. there on 15 May 1860, was likewise a priest and writer. Ordained in 1832, he was appointed two years later extraordinary professor of exegesis and of canon law at the University of Breslau. Having obtained in 1826 the doctorate in theology and in canon law, he conducted an intense reformist activity with the writings: Die katholische Kirche in Schlesien (1826) and Einführung der erzwungenen Ehelosigkeit bei den christlichen Geistlichen und ihre Folgen (1828), and in the latter, drafted in collaboration with his brother Augustine, he violently attacked ecclesiastical celibacy. Both writings were placed on the Index in 1826 and 1829 respectively. Persisting in his activity, he had to leave his chair in 1830 and became parish priest at Polsnitz, then at Grüssau and at Hundsfeld. He then openly adhered to the "German-Catholic" movement of Ronge and was excommunicated in 1845. Reduced to the lay state, he was head of the "German-Catholic" community of Breslau and soon clashed with Ronge, whom he attacked in 1845 with the writing likewise placed on the Index, Reformatorische Bestrebungen in der katholischen Kirche. From 1855 to 1860 he was secretary of the University Library of Breslau. He died without having been reconciled with the Church.

Silvio Furlani