# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1857_S344
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

344   The Ecclesiastical Movements in Bavaria.

decidedly declared love of at least the churchgoers for the liturgy that had been introduced, and could have appealed to it and leaned upon it; one would have had to be able to say that only those members of the congregation who seldom or never attend divine service were against the liturgy, whereas the really diligent attendants at the house of God were for it. But such in fact was not the state of the case. The number of the decided friends of the liturgy was a small one in most of the parish districts of Nuremberg. Besides them there were many who would indeed have put up with it, who would certainly also have become friendly with it little by little and grown fond of it, but of whom it was not to be expected that they would espouse it at once with warmth and decision. One may lament this, but one cannot deny it; indeed, when one considers the liturgical past of Nuremberg in the last fifty years, one cannot even wonder at it.

But something else besides comes in here, which made a decided course of action difficult for the Upper Consistory, indeed made it impossible. It is no secret that on the part of the civil authorities the most exaggerated apprehensions were entertained on account of the agitation prevailing in Nuremberg and of a disturbance of the public peace to be feared on that account, and that these were officially reported to the higher and highest authorities of the land. In consequence of this, a special investigation was instituted against two Nuremberg clergymen by order of the Ministry of State for the Interior for Church and School Affairs, because they were said to have again disturbed the ecclesiastical situation, etc., in the sermons they preached on December 7, and because, in the event of a repetition of such conduct on the part of individual clergymen, disturbances of the public peace were to be feared. (Let it be noted at once here, in passing, that the accused clergymen were found not guilty of the charges raised against them.) A further consequence was that, by a resolution of the Upper Consistory of December 13, the discussion of the ecclesiastical questions of the day was most emphatically forbidden to all clergymen. It is understandable that this rescript caused a great sensation among the clergy, and that many were of the opinion that it showed a too far-reaching compliance of the church authority with the demands of the power of the state; it is not to be wondered at that individuals believed the Upper Consistory ought rather to have staked everything upon it and sooner have taken its dismissal than have complied with such a demand. But upon quiet reflection it was after all also to be considered: first, that when ecclesiastical proceedings have entered upon a stage in which measures appear called for on the part of the security police, the church authority has under all circumstances a most difficult position, which may not be left out of account in judging its conduct; further, that Harless is not the Upper Consistory, but the president of the Upper Consistory — or, in other words, that the Upper Consistory is not one man, but a collegium; finally, that according to our