page_title: Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg
section_title: Vicar general
hierarchical_section_title: Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg / Vicar general
context_page_description: Ignaz Heinrich Karl von Wessenberg was a German writer and scholar, and liberal Catholic churchman as well as Vicar general and administrator of the Diocese of Constance. Imbued from his early youth with Josephinistic and Febronian principles, he advocated a German National Church, somewhat loosely connected with Rome, supported by the State and protected by it against papal interference. He encouraged the use of the vernacular in liturgical texts, the hymn book and the regular Sunday sermon.
context_section_description: A progressive churchman, he set about to abolish everything he considered superfluous or superstitious about religious customs. He did away with various holy days of obligation in the cantons of Aargau and St. Gallen in 1806, and cooperated with the Napoleonic Swiss government at Lucerne in the suppression of monasteries. He gained the support of the clergy, but in the Swiss portion of the Diocese of Constance, Wessenberg's innovations aroused great dissatisfaction.
  His orders in case of mixed marriages (1808) to permit the male offspring to be brought up in the religion of the father, the female in the religion of the mother; and especially his many matrimonial and other dispensations that exceeded his competence induced Fabrizio Sceberras Testaferrata, the papal nuncio at Lucerne, to call him to account, but Wessenberg insisted that nothing had been done which exceeded the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Constance, giving Testaferrata at the same time to understand that he did not recognize the Apostolic Nunciature.
  Wessenberg attended the Congress of Vienna Congress (1814/15) as the authorized representative of Prince Primate Dalberg, to press for a reorganization of the German church under the leadership of a primate and for the conclusion of a concordat with the Holy See covering all German states. His efforts failed due to the particular interests of both the sovereigns and the Roman Curia. The sovereigns sought state bishops, each subject to their respective rulers, while the Curia was not inclined to see a unified German church with a primitive leadership, like the previous of imperial church structure.
  During his administration he was especially noteworthy his deep solicitude for a better training and stricter discipline of the clergy and his insistence on regular Sunday sermons in parish churches and semi-weekly religious instructions in the state schools. He established regularly scheduled pastoral conferences for the continuing education of the clergy. He published a number of prayer books and hymn books for use in his diocese. While he did not reject the traditional forms of Baroque popular piety, as his focus was on strengthening the parishes, he did particularly encourage pilgrimages, festivals, brotherhoods, or people attending monastery churches instead people.
  After various requests from the Catholics of Switzerland, Pope Pius VII put an end to Wessenberg's reformist plans in that part of the diocese by severing the Swiss cantons from the Diocese of Constance, in a Brief of 21 October 1814. On 2 November of the same year the Pope ordered Bishop Dalberg to depose Wessenberg without delay from the office of vicar-general. Dalberg kept the Pope's order secret, though in the beginning of 1815 he temporarily replaced Wessenberg as Vicar general by Canon von Roll for private reasons. In the summer of 1815 he requested the government of Baden to confirm the appointment of Wessenberg as his coadjutor bishop with the right of succession. The government acceded to Dalberg's wish, but Rome refused to recognize the coadjutorship.
  In the same year Wessenberg published anonymously a notorious anti-papal treatise entitled Die deutsche Kirche, Ein Vorschlag zu ihrer neuen Begründung und Einrichtung. It is a plea for his scheme of a German National Church, and suggests detailed plans as to its organization. On 17 Feb., 1817, seven days after the death of Dalberg, the chapter of Constance elected Wessenberg as Vicar capitular and Diocesan administrator, but his election was invalidated by Pius VII in a Brief of 15 March 1817.
  In July Wessenberg went to Rome, hoping to gain the pope to his side and return as primate of his projected German Church or, at least, as Bishop of Constance. He was kindly received by Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, the secretary of state, but was told that, before the pope would enter into any negotiations with him, he would have to resign as administrator and, like François Fénelon, make a declaration to the effect that he disapproved all that the pope disapproves. Refusing to submit to these conditions
caption: Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg on his deathbed, painted by Gebhard Gagg, 1860
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