FRIEDRICH, JOHANN

Ecclesiastical historian; b. Poxdorf, Upper Franconia, Germany, June 5, 1836; d. Munich, Aug. 19, 1917. After his education at Bamberg and Munich, and his ordination, he taught on the theological faculty at Munich as Privatdocent from 1862, as professor of ecclesiastical history from 1872, and as a member of the philosophy faculty from 1882 until his retirement in 1905. At Vatican Council I he was theologian to Cardinal Gustav von Hohenlohe, and he used this opportunity to try to prevent the definition of papal infallibility, a doctrine that he considered historically indefensible, both by his own writings and by secretly supplying his former teacher and intimate friend dÖllinger with much of the material published in the Letters from Rome (1869–70) under the pseudonym Quirinus. After he refused to accept the conciliar definitions, he was excommunicated (1872), but he continued to exercise priestly functions as a member of the old catholics, a sect whose formation he influenced profoundly; he later withdrew from it when it ceased to insist on clerical celibacy. His historical writings concerning this period are highly subjective and tendentious. They include Tagebuch während des Vatikanischen Konzils (1871, 2d ed. 1873) and Geschichte des Vatikanischen Konzils (3 v. 1877–87), both on the Index, along with other of his works. His Ignaz von Döllinger (3 v. 1899–1901) is very well informed but one-sided and often indiscreet. Among his other works, the most important are an ecclesiastical history of Germany, completed only to the Merovingian period, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands (2 v. 1867–69), and Johann Adam Möhler, Der Symboliker (1894).

Bibliography: t. granderath, Geschichte des Vatikanischen Konzils, 3 v. (Freiburg 1903–06). f. hacker, "J. Friedrich als Führer der altkatholischen Bewegung," Internationale kirchliche Zeitschrift 8 (1918): 252–274. c. b. moss, The Old Catholic Movement (2d ed. London 1964). s. lÖsch, Döllinger und Frankreich (Munich 1955). w. kÜppers, Neue deutsche Biographie 5 (Berlin 1953–) 601.

[s. j. tonsor]