Prussia

Prussia (Ger. Preussen) is a kingdom of the new German Empire, virtually embracing within its own history the story of the whole empire, in which it is the guiding and ruling power. Before its recent aggrandizement, it consisted of two large tracts of land extending from Russia on the east to Holland and Belgium on the west, south of the Baltic and north of Saxony, Thuringia, Bavaria, etc., but separated from each other by the kingdom of Hanover, the duchies of Mecklenburg and Oldenburg, the electorate of Hesse-Cassel, duchy of Nassau, and some minor states. In 1866, Prussia received large accessions of territory, having annexed the kingdom of Hanover, the duchies of Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and Sleswig and Holstein, the free city of Frankfort, and some districts of Bavaria and Hesse-

Darmstadt. The area of Prussia was thus increased from 108,212 Eng. sq. miles to 137,066, and the population from 19,304,843 to 24,106,847, of whom 23,746,790 formed the civil population, and 310,055 the military, the average density of the population being 176 per Eng. sq. mile. The variation in density is considerable, the greatest being in the manufacturing district of Dusseldorf, in the Rhine province, where it is four times the average, and smallest in the district of Kislin, Pomerania, where it amounts to three fifths of the average. Prussia is now divided into eleven provinces and three annexes, with a population, according to the official census for 1885, as follows:

Eng. sq. m. Pop. Dec. 1185.

1. Prussia 24,880 3,367,704 2. Posen 11,330 1,715,618 3. Pomerania 12,130 1,505,575 4. Silesia 15,666 4,112,219 5. Brandenburg 15,505 2,342,411 6. Saxony 9,729 2,428,367 7. Westphalia 7,771 2,204,580 8. Rhine province 10,289 4,344,527 9. Hesse-Nassau 5,943 1,592,454 10. Hanover 14,846 2,172,702 11. Sleswig-Holstein 6,959 995,873 12. Principlity of Hohenzollern 453 66,720 13. City of Berlin 5 1,315,287

About 88 per cent. of the population are Germans. Of the Slavonic tribes, the most numerous are Poles, numbering two and a quarter millions. In Brandenburg and Silesia there are about 85,000 Wends, and in East Prussia upwards of 147,000 Lithuanians; while Western Prussia has rather more than 10,000 Walloons using the French language, intermixed in its generally German population, and Silesia has nearly 59,000 Bohemians or Moravians-making in all two and a half millions who do not use the German language, or who employ it only as secondary to their native tongues. Three distinct classes are recognised in Prussia — namely, nobles, burghers, and peasants. To the first belong about 177.000 persons, including the high officials of the state, although that number does not comprise the various mediatized houses, of which sixteen are Prussian, and others belonging to different states, but connected with Prussia by still existing or former territorial possessions. The burgher class includes, in its higher branches, all public-office holders, professional men, artists, and merchants; while the peasantry — to which belong all persons engaged in agricultural pursuitsare divided into classes, depending on the number of horses employed on the land, etc.

I. History and Religion. — The lands bounded by the Baltic and now constituting East Prussia, and the adjoining territory on that side of the Oder, form the original home of the Prussians within the vast territory they now occupy. These lands were early occupied by Slavonic tribes, nearly allied to the Lithuanians (q.v.) and the Letts. It is conjectured that they were visited by Phoenician navigators in the 4th century B.C.; but beyond the fact of their having come into temporary conflict with the Goths and other Teutonic hordes prior to the great exodus of the latter from their northern homes, little is known of the people till the 10th century, when they first appear in history under the name of Borussi, or Prussians. They were then a small but vigorous people, and had made themselves a terror to their neighbors by bold inroads, when the race of the heroes and sea- kings arrived from Norway and Sweden. Scandinavian Goths settled in the country, and the southern shores of the Baltic sounded with the praise of the exploits of Starkodder and Ragnar Lodbrog.

1. Mythological Period. — In the oldest historic times, doubtless, the primitive inhabitants — Prussians, Lithuanians, Ulmarugians, Curlanders, Livonians, etc. — worshipped the sun, the moon, the stars, and the powers of nature generally. The Scandinavians, who were further advanced in the arts of war and of peace, better armed, and skilled in agriculture, then brought in new gods, among them the three supreme rulers, Perkunos, Potrimpos, Pikollos, and most probably all their other deities. Much has been written and argued on the question whether the three mentioned names, or the gods to whom they are said to have belonged, really existed, or whether they were mere inventions of some imaginative chroniclers. There are even writers who have discovered in them the three persons of the Holy Trinity. We shall not dwell on these speculations, but briefly state iwhat we positively know of the ancient mythology of a people which occupies such a high rank among the nations of Europe. Besides the three mentioned, there was another important deity, called Curcho, the giver of food. His image stood at the foot of many a holy oak. There was one at the place where the city of Heiligenbeil was afterwards built. The apostle of the Prussians cut the venerable tree with a hatchet, and this circumstance gave the town its present name. There were spread over the whole country sacrificial stones, or altars, on which milk, mead, honey, beer, flour, meat, fish, etc., were offered to the god. Every year his image was made anew, out of wood, on the consecrated spots; it was clothed in goat-skins and crowned with herbs and ears. Then it was carried about amid the shouts of the populace; dances and sacrifices ensued. The inferior gods, in large number, have been divided, not, perhaps, very properly, into gods of the heavens, of earth, of the water, of men, of the cattle, of the lower world, into gods of labor, gods of trade, into good and bad gods. This was, no doubt, a kind of worship of nature, similar to that which we find among all half-civilized nations. The holiest place in the land was Romowe. Only a priest was allowed to approach it. There were but few exceptions. Thus, by special favor, a powerful ruler was permitted to come near the consecrated spot, and to speak to the Griwe, or high-priest. But not even those great personages were suffered to come near the sanctuary, the ever-verdant oak, and the gods that stood below it; for it was surrounded with a fence formed by long pieces of white linen, something like a most primitive tabernacle. To a great distance the land around the sanctuary, and the wood which encircled, it was consecrated. No one could enter this forest, which occupied many square miles; and if, unwittingly, some wretch put his foot into it, his life was forfeited to the offended deities. No tree was felled there, no wild animal chased. Besides this celebrated Romowe, there were other places of the same kind spread all over the country, and whose names, commencing with Ronzas, and partly preserved to our days, are expressive of calm and holiness. We find quite a number of such names in Lithuania. In Prussia the trees were held holy, as among the ancient Germans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Rugians, Holsteinians, and kindred peoples. There existed also single oaks and linden-trees which were held in particular veneration as being the seats of some divinity; they were approached with pious horror and deep reverence. The oak of Heiligenbeil, with a circumference of forty feet and a diameter of nineteen, was the most celebrated. Some mountains enjoyed the same honors. The best-known of them was near Brandenburg, at a short distance from the Frische Haff: Near the holy woods and trees there were, as a rule, holy fields, which never were touched by the plough. We also find holy springs, from which no one could take water unless he previously offered a sacrifice: their water was believed to be a sure medicine against certain diseases. There were also holy lakes, either in a separate place or connected with the sanctuaries and forests: no one was allowed to fish in their waters.

The gods adored in those consecrated places were, besides those already named: Okopirn, the god of the air and of tempests; Swaixtix, the god of the starsa most important god in the North, with its long winter nights; Bankputtis, the god of the sea; Antrimpos, the angry god, who excites the waves; Wurskeite and Szwambxaite, the protectors of cattle and poultry, worshipped extensively in the whole country; Gardebis and Janztiubobis, the protectors of oxen and sheep; Perdoitos, the god of trade, who made the sea propitious to the mariner, and was specially honored on the sea- coast; Puskaitis, the god of woods and trees, who lived under the foliage, and whose dwelling-places mwere held particularly holy. This god had, throughout the country, a number of sanctuaries, where he was attendmed by a multitude of strange, dwarf-like beings, which the imagination of the people had fitted out and ornamented in the most fantastical manner. Perqubrius gave fertility to the fields; Zemlberis strewed the earth with seeds, and covered it with flowers and herbs; Pelwitte filled with riches the houses and the barns; Ausweikis was the god of health, resorted to by the sick and invalid. To these must be added quite a number of female deities. Jawvinna watched over the germination and growth of corn; Melletele covered the meadows and gardens with herbs and grass; Strutis was the goddess of the flowers; Gobjlaja was the goddess of riches and opulence; Guze led the wanderers through deserts and gloomy forests; Swaigsdunoka, the bride of the stargod, directed the heavenly bodies on their path; Laima was the obstetric goddess, and fixed the destinies of the new-born. The bad goddesses were, the sanguinary Gittine, who brought painful death; Magila, the wrathfiul deity, who visited cruel misfortunes upon those she disliked; Launle, who intervened in human affairs — now sportively, now malignantly, leading the wanderer astray by will-o'-the- wisps, seizing upon helpless children, etc. Besides these gods and goddesses, there were tutelary spirits — spirits of the woods, of the waters, of the earth, most of them servants of the god Puskaitis — men of the woods, dwarfs, elfs, called barstucs, or perstiks. Similar to these were the nightly spectres, who at twilight left their dark recesses to seek food. They were appeased by putting sacrificial meat in lonesome spots; thus they became guardians of house and barn, and the childish fancy shaped and ornamented them in the quaintest manner. The animal kiingdom, also, held many objects for worship. The snake was the object of particular veneration, being the favorite of Potrimpos. Snakes were believed to be a blessing for the house and household, to be immortal, and to gain renewed youth with each change of skin. They were dutifully fed in the holes of old oak-trees, and gladly admitted into buildings and chambers. Barren women fed them with milk, imploring at the same time the blessings of Laima. Carelessness towards them was attendled with misfortunes of all kinds. This regard for the snake continued in Prussia and in the neighboring countries till long after the introduction of Christianity. The horse, especially the white horse, was in great honor among all Northern peoples, as mwell as among the Germans, as a spirit of prophecy was said to dwell in him. All white horses were consecrated to the gods, and no one would have dared to mount a steed of that color. To beat or damage it was a capital crime. Among the birds, the owl enjoyed special regard, because it was believed that she predicted to her friends the coming mishaps.

The gods being so numerous, it was but natural that the priests should form a very large body. At their head stood the Griwe, almost a god himself, so great was the veneration in which he was held among all the nations of the North. The waidlotes, griwaites, siggones, wurskaiti, pustones, saitones, burtones, and swakones were the members of a powerful hierarchy, and exercised an unlimited influence upon those superstitious tribes. There was no lack of female priests either; and it would seiem that female deities were attended exclusively by female priests, as male gods were worshipped only by male priests. Yet it is not likely that sacerdotal women were admitted into the Romowe, as the Griwe, as well as all other priests, had to remain in single blessedness. A transgression of this law was visited with capital punishment, the culprit, being dragged away from the holy ground and burned alive. 'There is some contradiction between this stern enforcement of the law of virginity and the way in which the body of female waidlotes was recruited. If a woman had been sterile in marriage, and became, after the death of her husband, the mother of a son or of a daughter by an unmarried man, she was considered as holy, and was admitted to the number of the female priests. As far as the institutions of the ancient Prussians are known, they exacted from their priests a pure, pious, and holy life. Those only could be admitted among the superior priests, the grivites, who, during many years, had shone by an exemplary life; and even the relations whom the Griwe wished to be received into the sacerdotal body had to prove that their conduct had been unblemished, or they were rejected. The priests were supported entirely by the people, for we do not find any mention of their being addicted to agriculture or any art or trade. The sacrifices and offerings were their principal income. They received beer, milk, fruits, animals, tissues for sacerdoral garments, etc. Libations were offered to the gods, and the liquid offering was drunk by the priest. Sometimes this sacrifice was attended with quaint ceremonies. At the great springfestival, the priest filled a cup with beer, took it between his teeth without touching it with his hands, drained it, and then threw it over his head. Those behind him caught it, filled it with beer, and brought it back to him a second and a third time. The act of emptying three times the cup was intended in honor of the three great gods; the throwing of the cup mwas the sacrifice brought to them, which human handus durst not touch. After this ceremony the cup circulated from mouth to mouth. Each worshipper took it between his teeth, emptied it, and with his teeth the neighbor took it from him. Finally, the benedicticio was given to the people; a banquet ensued, in which intoxicating, beverages were so plentifully tasted that the solemnity generally ended in bloody work, as is the case, even in our days, with Poles, Lithuanians, and other nations.

2. Introduction of Christianity. — We here substantially give the account found in Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchen-Lexikon, s.v.

"Several attempts to introduce the Christian religion into Prussia had been fruitless. St. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, died April 23, 997, a martyr to his faith, while endeavoring to convert the people to Christianity. Bruno, of the falmily of the Barons von Querfirt, who, after renonncing his canoiuny and entering the Benedictine congretgainmi of Camaldoli, had repaired to Prussia in 1008, to preach there the Gospel and convert those pagan tribes, also suffered martyrdom (Feb. 11, 1008). The endeavors of the Polish princes to Christianize the Prussians by force were still most unsuccessful. As the acceptance of the Christian eligion had been made a condition of peace by Boleslas, duke of Poland, about 1018, they consideied the Christian communion as an obnoxious consequence of unhappy warfare, as a yoke imposed by the foe, and they shook it off every time when they felt strong enough to do so. Thus the disinclination to the new worship increased continually, until it reached the very pitch of hatred and disgust. Meanwhile Otto, bishop of Bamberg (1124), preached with success in Pomerania, and Christianity by degrees reached the banks of the Vistula. The first Christian ruler in Pomerania, Subislas I, founded in 1170 near Dantzic, the monastery of Oliva, which became a seminary whence the seed of the Christian faith was in time to spread over Prussia's soil.

"Previous to the establishment of Oliva's monastery the Prussians, however, had succeeded (in 1161) in making a stand against Boleslas IV of Poland, and for a time maintained a rude and savage kind of independence, which the disturbed condition of Poland prevented its rulers from breaking down. The fear of losing their freedom if they adopted Christianity made the Prussians obstinately resist every effort for their conversion; and it was not till the middle of the 13th century, when the knights of the Teutonic Order entered upon their famous crusade against them, that the Christian faith was foreally established among them. The aggressive inroads of the pagan Prussians on the territories of their Christian neighbors, and their advance into Pomerania, were the exciting causes of this important movement. Christianity was by the reverses of the Polish plinces thrown so vastly upon the defensive that the Pomeranian duke Grimislas, of Stargald and Schurtz, called in 1198 some knights of St John into his dominions, and delivered into their hands his castle of Stargard and some adjoining territories for operations against the Prussians. The intimate commercial relations between Brunen and Livonia facilitated the woik of the missionaries, and gave easy access to the latter country. After the Christian religion had been introduced into Pomerania and Livonia, and an order of Christian knighthood had been founded for its aid and maintenance, the prospects in Prussia also seemed to brighten. Although the exertions of Gottfried, abbot of the monastery of Cistercians of Lukina (1207), in Poland, and of his fellow-monk Philip, who suffered martyrdom, were not attended with any enduring success, yet were two of the native princes converted. A few years afterwards appeared the man to whom was reserved the glorious achievement of introducing Christianity into Prussia. It was the Cistercian monk Christian, of the monastery of Oliva, a man distinguished by every virtue, and speaking fluently the German, Latin, Polish, and Prussian languages. In 1210 he obtained permission from pope Innocent III to go to Prussia with somne chosen companions, and his efforts were crowned with such brilliant success that in the fall of 1214, or at the beginning of 1215, he wnas appointed bishop of Prussia, the new converts having hitherto been committed to the pastoral care of the archbishop of Guesen. The number of the converted Prussians was considerable, and two of their princes, Warpodo, the ruler of the land of Lansania, and Suavobuno, who reigned in the land of Lubau, had made provisions for the maintenance of the bishop.

"This partial triumph of Christianity excited the inner of the heathenish Prussians, who were, besides, maddened by the expeditions of Conrad, duke of Masovia. Help from abroad was sorely needed. Crusades, however, could not afford any lasting protection. The Order of the Knights of Christ, called also Brother-knights of Dobrin, founded in Livonia in 1225 by bishop Christian, on the pattern of the Knights of the Sword, was no match for the savage fury of the Prussians: at the very beginningr of the war all the knights, save five, were killed in lattle near the spot where Strasburgh was afterwards built. By bishop Christian's advice, the Teutonic Order was applied to for assistance (1226). The grand-master, Hermann von Salza, asked consent of Fiederick II, who not only granted the request, but also promised his help, and confirmed the donations of land formally made to the order by duke Conrad of Masovia. After four years of negotiations, duke Conrad made a solemn grant to the order of the whole land of Culm, between the Vistula, Drewenz, and Ossa, with all the conquests they should add to it; while at the same time bishop Christian, and Gunther, bishop of Plock, renounced in their favor all their possessions, revenues, and patronal rights in those countries, reserving only their episcopal jurisdiction and their pontificalia. At the same time the popes, Gregory IX, in 1234, and Innocent IV, in 1244, declared the present and future conquests of the order feuds of the papal see ('in jus et proprietatem B. Petri suscipimus et eam stub epeciali Sedis Apostolicct protectione et defensione perpetuo tempore permanere sancimus.... Te Conrade magister ejus domus annulo, nostro de terra-investimus, ita quod ipsa... . ullius unquam slubjiciatur dominiio potestatis; quae vero in fnturnm... de terra pagailornm in eadem provincia vos contigerit adipisci, firma et illibata vobis vestrisque successoribus soub jure et proprietae Sedis Apostolicoe eo modo statuimus permanenda'). An annual tribute was promised to the Roman court. At the same time the pope stipulated that in the newly acquired territories churches should be built, bishops and prelates appointed at his will, that a portion of the land should be granted to the latter dignitaries, etc. The grand-master selected Hermann Balk to be the leader of the knights he intended to send to Prussia, and the administrator of the land given to the order by duke Conrad; Hermann, probably of Westphalian birth, was not only a distinguished warrior, but a man full of wisdom and experience in all worldly matters; a pious knight, too, who, during a space of ten years had administered the possessions of the order in Germany, and gainied by his remarkable aptitude the full confidence of the grand-master. All other high functions were intrusted to equally distinguished persons, who, with a few knights and a considerable body of cavalry, set out on their way to Prussia. They arrived in 1228 in the dominions of Conrad of Masovia. Numerous as was their host, yet the Prussians counted a thousand warriors where they counted one. Conrad could assist them, but hardly make them formidable, by the addition of his forces, his weakness being the very cause which had made their expedition desirable. His land was torn by its unceasing troubles, and, besides, engaged in perpetual warfare with her neighblors. Pomerania, itself offered no prospect of help, as duke Swantepolk entertained but hostile relations with Conrad, and with Poland in general. It was a heroic daring in the Teutomnic Order to engage in their expedition undier such unfavorable circumstances. They began the war wiithout delay, assisted by bands of crusaders (1232), Gregory IX preaching the crusade against Prussia with unabating zeal. The land of Culm was occupied, with the help of Swantepolk of Pomeraneia, in spite of the desperate resistance of the Prussians. The order, at the same time that it constructed forts to insure the new conquests, helped German colonists in building cities in well-protected and fertile places. Thorn was reared first, soon afterwards Culm, both in 1232, and Marienwerder in 1233. The Prussians, disnmayed by the large body of troops arrayed on their frontier, and knowing perhaps that the crusades were engaged for the space of a year only, pretended to be unwilling to fight and inclined to receive baptism. Bishop Christian forthwith repaired to the district of Pomerania, in order to preach and to baptize. But a few days afterwards he was attacked by the pagans, his companions all killed, and the bishop himself led into captivity. The pope now recommended caution to the Dominicans in Prussia, and bade them beware of the wily stratagems of the heathens. A spell of cold weather having made the moorlands of Pomesania easy of access, the whole Christian army invaded that country at the beginning of 1234. The Pomeranians were defeated near the Sirgune River, in the neighborhood of a consecrated wood, after victory had been passing for several hours from host to host The battle was a most bloody one, and the spot where it had raged was, long after the event, called 'The Field of the Dead.' As its final gain by the Christians was due to Swantepolk, an army of Pomesanians crossed the Vistula and laid waste the whole land of Pomerania. The monastery of Oliva, which had been recently put under papal protection was stormed and reduced to ashes. To protect the land of Culnm against the vengeance of the infuriated invaders, Hermann Balk erected the fort of Rheden in 1234, which was the origin of the city of Rheden. This kind of precaution was indispensable, as the crusaders dispersed after a year's service, and the knights had to hold the country with their sole resources. There came other difficulties: the order and bishop Christian could not agree; there were grievous dissensions between the order and duke Conrad; a contest arose between Swantepolk of Pomerania and Henry of Breslau, and cut off, for the knights, all prospect of help from those quarters. The pope, informed of this state of affairs, sent his legate, bishop William of Modena, with most extensive powers, especially for the constitution to be given to the churches and for the distribution of bishoprics in the northern countries; and he announced the arrival of his legate and the object of his mission to the Christians in Livonia, Prussia, Gothland, Finland, Esthonia, Semgallen, and Courland. The legate arrived in Prussia at the beginning of summer in 1234, and exerted himself at once in compounding the dispute between bishop Christian and the order. The bishop had made a division of the land, taking two thirds as his share, and left only one third to the order; he had further exlpressed the opinion that the countries recently conquered for the Church were lawfully his. The legate did not approve of these views: he decided, in conformity with his instructions, that of all territories occupied and still to be occupied, two thirds should go to the order, with all revenues connected with them — the dime, for instance; that tihe bishop should have olllv onne third for his share, but with this additional stipulation, that in the two thirds which went to the order, such advantages as could be enjoyed only by a bishop should also accrue to the latter. The bishop was obliged to submit to the legate's decision. The difficulties between the order and dnke Conrad could not be so easily removed. The Knights of Dobrin had joined the Teutonic Order, and the latter had taken possession of the fort of Dobrii, with all its dependencies, in spite of the protest of the duke. The pope, in a bull of April 19, 1235, approved the fusion of the Brothers of Doblrin with the Teutonic Order, mainly at the request of the bishop of Plock. The latter and the plnpal legate, after negotiating through the summer moiuths, succeeded in October in restoringg concord. The knights delivered to Conrad the castle of Dobrin, with its dependencies, and received in exclange other territories, of which the most important was Slonzk, with its salt-mines. Gregory IX, in spite of his manifold Italian cares and troubles, endeavored with all his might to promote the enterprise of the order. The preaching of the crusade was not interrupted in Germany, and measures were taken to increaise the number of the knights. Fresh troops of crusaders having arrived from Germany, the war was resumed. Pomesania and Pogesania were conquered: with the former of these provinces the whole eastern shore of the Vistula was in the power of the order. Those of the enemy who surrendered were spared, experienced mild treatment, and were immediately christened by the priests who followed the army. Herman Balk and his knights endeavored to subdue by the influence of Christian meeknsess these savage spirits, whose faith in their gods was shaken by so great misfortunes. A chronicler says: 'Not like lords, but as fathers and brothers, they rode about the land, visited both the rich and the poor, invited the new Christians to their meals, took care of and nursed in their hospitals poor, sick Prussians, provided for widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers had perished in the war, and sent clever young men to Germany, especially to Magdeburg, to get well instructed in Christianity and in the German language, and to become afterwards teachers, in Prussia.' It was at this time that Henry Monte, who became so distinguished afterwards, was brought up in the celebrated monastery school of Magdeburg. The expenses of these young men were paid with these alms gathered in Germany. The landmaster's humane measures did not fail to make their impression even on the unconverted part of the nalion. All measures of coercion had been prohibited. Wherever the order established its authority churches were built: Thorn, Culm, Rheden, Marienwerder, had their churches. The city of Elbing built a church and a monastery in the first year of its existence. Even the open country had not been left without churches: we find in 1236 a mention of the parish of Postelin, in Pomerania. Some pious men exerted themselves in order to instruct the people in the Christian faith. The papal legate, William of Modena, preached with great success; he was powerfully assisted by the Domininicans, several of whom were masters of the Prussian language. The most distinguished among these monks was St. Hyacinth, who belonged to the house of the counts of Odrovanz, one of the oldest and most celebated of the families of Silesia. His father was count of Kliiski, and his uncle chancellor of Poland and bishop of Cracow. Hyacinth was born in 1185 in the castle of Gross-Stein, district of Gross-Strelitz, in Upper Silesia, and studied at Cracow, Prague, and Bologna. In the latter city he received the title of doctor of laws and theology. On his return home he was promoted to a canonry at the cathedral of Cracow, and assisted the bishop in the administration of his diocese. When his uncle Ivo of Kolski became bishop of Cracow, he went to Rome, and took along with him Hyacinth and his brother Ceslaus. In the year 1218, when St. Dominic was in Rome, both brothers entered the Dominican Order, and Hyacinth became one of the most active northern missionaries. Another powerful missionary was bishop Christian, but his dissensions with the order could only be detrimental to the cause of Christianity. In 1237 a pest- like disease spread over the dominions of the order, and caused many of the neophytes to waver in their new faith. On May 9, 1238, a treaty was concluded with Waldemar, king of Denmark, through the exertions of the papal legate: the king received the fort of Reval and the territories of Harrien and Wirland, while the order received the district of Ierwen; only no forts were to be built in the latter without the king's consent. The king promised not to put any obstacle in the way of the order in their work of conversion, but to help them where he could: two thirds of the conquests were to go to the king, one third was the order's share. Hermann Balk, thus assisted by the Danes, undertook an expedition against the Russians, who had invaded the diocese of Dorpat; but soon important events recalled him to Prussia. The knight Hermann von Altenburg, a pious man, but rigid and austere, whom the grand-master had intrusted with the administration of the dominions of the order during his absence, had not imitated the wise moderation and patient meekness of his superior. On hearing that a Prussian village had gone over to paganism again, he set fire to it, and priests and villagers perished in the flames. This created in the country bitter dissatisfaction, and the fruit of the restless labors and struggles of ten years seemed to be lost by one reckless act. Other misfortunes had come upon the order. Their old friend Swantepolk of Pomerania had become their foe: it was fortunate that the duke was threatened by other enemies, and found it prudent to make peace. Then Hermann Balk was recalled by the grand-master in 1238, and took his departure after providing for the good administration of the country; but he never saw it again. He died March 5 1239. On March 20 the noble grand-master, Hermann von Salza, died also, and was succeeded by Conrad, landgrave of Thuringia. Henry of Wida was appointed grand-master in Prussia. After protracted hostilities with the Prussians and duke Swantepolk of Pomerania, a treaty was concluded on Feb. 7, 1249, by which the provinces of Pomesania, Pogesania, Ermland, and Nataugen submitted to the order and promised conversion. The neophytes obtained all civil rights, were allowed to enter the ecclesiastical state, and to become members of regular congregations. These civil and other rights were forfeited by their eventual apostasy. The legate having put the question as to what worldly laws the neophytes wished to have introduced, and what tribunals they would most willingly recognise, they declared for the legislation of the Poles: this they were granted by the order. On being taught by the legate that all men were equal, they promised to give up their heathenist customs as to the burial of the dead, and those various ceremonies in which the distinctions of rank were preserved even after death, and to bury their dead in Christian cemeteries. They also promised to renounce polygamy; that no one should in future sell his daughlter to another man in mnatrimonly, nor buy at wife for himself or his son: that nobody should henceforward marry his mother- in-law, or the widow of his brotther, nor any person standing to him in a degree of relationship prohibited by the canon, without a license from the pope. No child should be admitted to inherit his or her parents' estate if the matrimony of the latter had not been of such a description as to satisfy the exigencies of the Church. The killing or exposing of children was prohibited; the baptism of the new-born, within a short period, was made obligatory. As it was a consequence of the want of ecclesiastics and of churches that many children had remained unchristened, the parents promised to present them all for baptism in the course of a month. Such as should infringe upon the proscriptions, or who refused baptism for thenmselves, were to have theit goods confiscated, to be themselves covered with a slight garment, and expelled from the territory of the Christians. The Pomesanians promised to build thirteen churches from that time to the next Whitsuntide, the Warmians promised six, the Natangians three; each church to be properly fitted out with its ornaments, chalices, books, and other implements. It was agreed upon that if the neophytes failed to construct the churches promised by them, the knights should be empowered to levy a tax on their estates and build the churches themselves, even if it should be necessary to recur to violent means. They promised to attend worship, at least on Sundays and holydays. The order, in their turn, promised to furnish the churches with priests and estate in the course of a year. Most minute and careful provisions were made for the maintenance of the ecclesiastics. The neophytes further promised to keep the fasts prescribed by the Church, not to do any hard work on Sundays and holy-days, to confess their sins at least once a year, to partake of the Lord's Supper at Easter, and, in general, to submit their conduct to the directions and teachings of the clergy. They pledged themselves to bring every year the dime into the granaries of the order; to defend the persons, honor, and rights of the order; to keep aloof from any treasonable practices against it, and to denounce such plots if they were known to them. The order had always, even during the excitement of the war, borne in mind the highest aim of their labors, the establishment and expansion of Christianity. Honorius III had committed to bishop Christian the care of establishing bishoprics, but he did not even succeed in fully organizing the bishopric of Culm. In 1236 Gregory II had enjoined on his legate to divide the new countries into dioceses, and to establish three bishops in them. In a bull of Oct. 1, 1243, the pope informed Christian that he had divided Prussia into four bishoprics, Culm being one of them. Christian was invited to make choice of one of these bishoprics, but to content himiself, according to the treaty concluded with the order, with one third of the land. Bishop Christian died in 1243 or 1244. His death greatly facilitated the legate's discharge of his duties, who now had full powers to do as he deemed fit. The first diocese was to include the land of Culm, as far as it is bounded by the rivers Vistula, Drewenz, and Ossa, with the addition of the distrlict of Lobau; the so-called Sassenlalnd and the territory of Gilgenburg belonged also to the first diocese. The second diocese was bounded by the rivers Ossa and Vistula and the lake of Drausen, and reached upwards to the banks of the Passaluc or Passarge River; it comprised Quidin and Zanthis, and was called the diocese of Pomesania. The third diocese was bounded west by the Frische-Haff, north by the Pregel River, or the Lipza, south by the Dransen Lake and Passaluc River, and extended east to the boundaries of Lithuania. This was the diocese of Ermland. A fourth diocese was to comprise the yet independent countries bounded west by the Baltic Sea, north by the Memel, south by the Pregel, and east by Lithuania. This was subsequently called the diocese of Samlaud. The letgate, on April 10, 1244, assembled at Thorn the most distinguished clergymen of the neighboring countries — the archbishop of Gnesen, the bishops of Breslau, Leszlau, and Plock, a number (of Polish abbots, the most considerable of the Teutonic Knights, and other men of high standing — to take their advice on the constitution to be introduced into the new bishoprics. The Dominican Heidenreich (the faithful assistant of bishop Christian), who had been over ten years busy in the work of confession, was selected for the diocese of Culm. The Dominican Ernest, from Torgau, friend and companion of Heidenleich, who had, like him, worked many years for the expansion of Chrisitianity, was selected to be the first bishop of Pomesania. A brother-priest of the Teutounic Order, Henry of Strateich, was appointed bishop of Ermland. The diocese of Samlaud received in 1255 its first bishop in the person of Henry of Strittberg, a brother-priest of the Teutonic Order. His successor, Christian von Muhlhausen, a man distinguished by his piety as well as by his knowledge, and who was also a priest of the order, did not arrive in Prussia unitil 1276. The chapter was established first at Schonewik, near Fischauseu, then (in 1285) at Konigsberg. The bishops, owing to various impedmnents, did not occupy their sees at once. Bishop Heidenreich of Culm (whether the two others did the same cannot be ascertained) repaired to the papal court, and was consecrated by the pope himself at Lyons, probably in the course of the year 1245. By this time the legate, William of Modena, had airrived also at the court of Rome, anld was soon promoted to the bishopric of Sabina. It wasn't an easy matter to find a successor to a man who had played such a prominent part in the religious organization of the north — Prussia, Livonia, Courland, and Estonia, and displayed so much zeal, intelligence, and energy in most intricate affairs. The bishops of Prussia needed, above all, a man who had insight and influence enough to draw positive limits between the dioceses, and render the decisions in a number of concerns where no rules had as yet been agreed upon. In the year 1244, pope Innocent IV thought he had found such a man in the person of the administrator of the diocese of Linbeck, Ekbert — formerly archbishop of Armagh, in Ireland. The legate was at the same time appointed archbishop of Prussia, Livonia, and Esthonia. That the new archbishop might have an income proportioned to his dignity, the pope committed to him the bishophric of Chiemsee, which had just becomme vacant, and enjoined the archbishop of Saltzburgh to deliver into the hands of the archbishop of Prussia the administration of said diocese. Towards the end of April, 1246, the pope sent him the archiepiscopal pallium, and allowed him, at his request, to make use of it during his sojourn in Russia and in the church of Lubeck; but this right, was not to be extended to his successors. At the same time Ekbert went to Russia, to promote the fusion of the Russian and the Roman Catholic Church; and pope Innocent IV recommentded him to reward the zeal of the knights by appointing one of the priests of their order to one of the Prussian Bishoprics. Bishop Heidenreich of Culm first took in hand the administration of his diocese. The country had been devastated and neglected, was scantily populated, and churches were rare and separated by large intervals. The bishop had to induce colonists to settle in his diocese, and he succeeded so well that after five or six years he could think of the establishment of a cathedral church The cathedral was consecrated in Culm in 1251, and received the name of the Holy Trinity; at the same time a chapter was founded, under the rule of St. Augustine, and so richly endowed that, as soon as the revenue of the lands could be collected, forty canons might be held. Besides the churches, the number of which was continually increasing in cities and villages, the land of Culm had already several monasteries; for instance, a Dominictan monastery at Culm, and a Franciscan monoastery at Thorn.

"The history of the bishopric of Pomesania is little known in the first years of its existence: we only know that bishop Ernest had taken possession of his see in 1247. In 1255 he chose for his residence Marienwerder, and there the cathedral was erected. The first bishop of Erlnland, Henry of Strateich, died in 1249 or 1250. His successor was another priest of the Teutonic Order, Anselm, who had had a considerable share in the work of conversion and in the victories of the order. The division of the land was made in 1255: the bishop chose the middle part, in which the city of Braunsberg was situated. Bishop Anselm displayed indefatigable activity in the discharge of his duties; took wise measures for the education of youth, for the erection of new churches, etc. The bishops of Prussia lived for a long time in very distressing circumstances, owing to the frequent wars and to the disinclination of the neophytes to pay the dime. Not being able to live on the produce of their own lands, they had to live abroad. The archbishop of Prussia consulted the pope in regard to these inconveniences, and the pope agreed that each of the three bishops of Prussia could accept, for his subsistence and ecclesiastical feud, if it were transferred to him in a legal way; but he was to keep it, only as long as the situation of the Prussian Church made it desireable. The popes displayed indefatiguable vigor in assisting by all means in forming the Church. Their voice was continually heard exhorting priests and monks to repair to the new provinces and share in the work. In 1240 pope Innocent IV addressed a bull to the superiors of all monastic orders, in which he urged them to help the sister churches of Prussia, Livonia, and Esthonia, where books were wanted, with their superabundant wealth in this respect, or to have copies made for them. Honorius III and Innocent III had done much for the inmprovement of the schools. Honorius, in a special bull, had invited Christian contributions for the purpose of establishing boys' schools, in order to promote the work of conversion. The former legate, William of Modena, had greatly distinguished himself in these efforts: he had even learned the Prussian language, and translated Donatus for the Prussian schools. The bishops also exerted themselves strenuously for the estlablishlment of public instruction. We find traces of country schools in Ermland as early as 1251. By an agreement between bishop Anselm and the order, the knights, in their own domains, were empowered to engage and to dismiss schoolmasters. We infer that schools for the education of the young must also have existed in the most important cities, as Thorn, Culm, Marienwerder, Elbing, Braunsberg, and Konigsberg. But we have no historical datal on this point, and we may well admit that the protracted and savage warfare which made everything unustable in those countries during so many years did not allow any irregular development of public instruction. The work done in other countries by monastery schools was at that time of little importance in Prussia, the order not being favorable to the establishment of monasteries. Much was done by monasteries in cities, but their influence was shut up in the town halls, and, besides, their number and their means of influence were insufficient. Yet in the second half of the 13th century the necessity of providing the people with a Christian education was deeply felt. Not only were numerous churches built in the country, and priests called, but the cathedral chapters, as may be seen by the deed of fonundation of the Pomesanian chapter, were established for the express purpose that the Catholic faith should be more thoroughly taught. In consequence, only men of education and abilities were received into the chapters. Libraries were founded for the use of the ecclesiastics in the chapters; bishops endeavored to increase by donations the number of books; the pope himself came to the rescue, as we have seen above. The archbishop of Prussia was, as we know, at the same time papal legate: in this capacity he had many a contest with the Teutonic Order, and in such cases both parties are apt to exceed the limits of their rights. While the archbishop violated acknowledged rights of the order, the order made violent inroads upon the privileges of the archbishop. The sad consequences of these hostile relations appeared in 1248, when the establishment of a solid ecclesiastical constitution in the recuperated countries made an active interference of the archbishop necessary. The three bishops of Prussia — Heidenreich of Culm, Ernest of Pomesania, and Henry of England — together with the margrave Otto von Brandenburg, interposed their mediation in 1249, and promoted between the order and the legate mutual forgiveness for past wrongs and reconciliation for the future. The archbishop promised to assist the order by his preaching, and by every other means, as best he could, and to make no complaint, either at the papal court or before any other judge, as to the rights and privileges in dispute; while the knights, in their turn, promised to molest him no more, and pay him all due respect and veneration. At the same time the order pledged itself to pay 300 marks in silver at fixed times to the archbishop, while the latter engaged never to establish his residence in Prussia unless he had the express authorization therefor from the superior of the order. This convention was concluded Jan. 10, 1249. Yet the trouble was only temporarily improved. A complete reconciliation could only be brought about by the interference of papal authority; and the popes were just then otherwise engaged. The schism in the German empire was, as it were, repeated in the Teutonic Order: there was a double election. In such a time of discord, obligations and promises are easily forgotten, or at least neglected; and it sometimes becomes impossible, or at least difficult, to live up to one's engagements. The dispute began again between the order and archbishop Allbert. But, as the inner dissensions of the order gave additional gravity to exterior troubles, the land-master, Dietrich von Gruningen, repaired to the papal court, and there represented the great disadvantages with which the missionary work would be attended if a good understanding could not be restored. Innocent summoned the land-master and the archbishop for the ensuing Easter. The archbishop anppeared at the appointed tine at Lyons, and the pope satisfied himself that he had exceeded his powers as a legate. In consequence, in September, 1250, the archbishop was forbidden to make any further use of his powers as legate, or to make any episcopal appointments in the future, either in Prussia, Livonia, or Estonia. But his archiepiscopal relations to the order needed also positive revaulation: the decision about these matters was given in 1251. The bishops Peter of Albano and William of Sabina (the former legate) and cardinal Giovaniii di San Lorenzo were commissioned by the pope to make arrangements. They negotiated on the ground of the reconciliation prepared in 1249 by the bishops and margrave Otto. Thus the dispute was allayed, Feb. 24, 1251, and bishop Bruno of Olmutz was requested by the pope to see to the faithful obhservance of the articles agreed upon. But at the same time the seeds of new dissension had been scattered. To give to the archiepiscopal dignity in the countries of the Baltic a firmer support, bishop Willian of Salbina directed, in the pope's name, that the seat of the archbishop should be Riga, which was in many respects the most important and fittest city in those parts. After the decease of the actual bishop of Riga, or if his see should become vacant in any other way, the Church of Riga should become achiepiscopal, and be transfered to archbishop Albert. Meanwhile nothing should be altered in the situation of the bishop of Riga, and the archbishop should exercise in his diocese only his archiepiscopal jurisdiction. Nicolaus, bishop of Riga, died at the close of 1253, and Allert, in 1254, established himnself in Livonia. He had already been empowered to exercise again the power of a legate in Prussia, Livonia, and Esthonia. But in Prussia, his ordinances in ecclesiastical matters, and the exercise of his power as a legate, met with some obstacles: there were the liberties and privileges granted to the order by the popes: there were the peculiar relations existing between the bishops and the order, for under Heidenzieich's successor the chapter of Culm had adopted the rule of the Teutonic Order, and the chapters of Samland and Pomesania had in their origin been filled with brothers of the order. The archbishop submitted these difficulties to the pope, and expressed a wish to be relieved of his duties as a legate so far as Prussia was concerned, discharging the same only in Livonia, Esthonia, and Russia. The pope complied with this wish, reiterating the old injunctions not to do anything in the lands of the order against the will of the same. Albert assumed in 1254 the dignity of archbishop of Riga, and found himself, as such, in quite new relations with the order in Livonia. The troubles which arose out of them were again disposed of at the papal court, whither both parties had again betaken themselves, Dec. 12, 1254. In the ensuing year pope Alexander IV, by a bull, received the Church of Riga, with all its enumerated possessions, into the protection of the apostle Peter; subordinated to it the bishoprics of Oesel, Dorpat, Wierland, Courland, Culm, Ermland, Pomesania, Samland, and Russia; defined with accuracy the rights and liberties of the archbishop, and delineated in all its bearings his situation in regard to the clergy of those countries and to the Teutonic Order. Thus the hierarchical affairs were settled. The order enjoyed in their lands the patronal rights; the bishops and chapters enjoyed them in their own territories. In the lands of the older the bishop could pretend only to what must needs be done by a bishop ("salvis tamen episcopo in duabus fratrum partibus illis omnibus quae non possunt nisi per episcopum exerceri"). Nothing now prevented the blessings of Christianity being poured over Prussia. But there were other obstacles in the way. The people had been converted under compulsion, and the the spirit of Christianity had poorly prospered in such a soil. The knights, to promote the knowledge of the German language, and bring about a gradual fusion of the Prussian and the German element, used to appoint German priests exclusively; the consequence was that the pastor could speak to his flock only through the ministry of an interpreter. With the exception of Ermland, all episcopal chapters were filled by brothers of the order, and thus the grand-master's will was decisive in all episcopal elections. This was afterwards felt, when the order had hated much of its strictly clerical spirit, to be at some disadvantage. The order was often engaged in disputes with the bishlps; and the metropolitan land by their refusal to heed the papal interdict which such conduct brought upon them they set a bad example. In a moral point of view also the knights were not always shining lights; and it is a sorrowful truth that a number of members of the higher and lower clergy were not their superiors in this respect. Even the most zealous of the archbishops could not change this unfortunate state of things, the metropolitan tie of Ermland, Samland, and Pomesania with Riga, and of Culm with Guesen, being a very loose one. In the dominions of the order few monasteries were established, and not one could acquire might and influence by its wealth: the acquisition of real estate by ecclesiastical corporations, or even by individual priests, was subject to the agreement of the order, and this was usually withheld. The two Cistercian monasteries of Oliva and Pelplin were the (only exceptions: under the protection and by the liberality of the old dukes of Pomerania they had acquired such extensive possessions that they were surpassed by no other monastery, either in Pomerania or in Prussia.

"The unhappy wars between the knights and the Poles and Lithuanians, together with the moral degeneracy of the order, led, in the 14th and 15th centuries, to the gradual decline of their supremacy. In 1454 the municipal and noble classes, with the co-operation of Poland, rose in open rebellion against the knights, who were finally compelled to seek peace at any rate, and obliged in 1466 to acccept the terms offered to them by the treaty of Horn, by which West Prussia and Ermland were ceded by them unconditionally to Poland, and the remainder of their territories declared to be fiefs of that kingdom. In 1511 the knights elected as their grand-master the mangrave Albert of Anspach and Baireuth, a kinsman of the king of Poland, and a scion of the Frankish line of the Hohenzollern family. Although his election did not inmmediately result, as the knights had hoped, in securing them allies powerful enough to aid them in emancipatitng themselves from Polish domination, it was fraught with important consequences to Germany at large, no less than to the order itself." The state founded by the order had, through the peculiar relations in which it stood to the papal see, through its great privileges, and through the weakness of the German emporers, secured a most independent situation, which was still strengthened by the circumstance that the bishops, being members of the order which ruled the land, had more interest with this worldly power than with the papal see. The monasteries could put no check on the omnipotence of the order, for, as a consequence of the nature of things, they were few in number. This, and the political situation of the time, facilitated the entrance of the Reformation into Prussia. The grand-master of the Teutonic Order, margrave Albert Von Brandenburg, endeavored in 1519 to shake off the feudal supremacy of the pope. The wish of suppressing, according to Luther's advice, "the foolish, nonsensical rule of the order," of taking a wife, and making of Prussia a worldly principality, induced him, afer the peace of Cracow, in 1525, to accept Prussia from the crown of Poland as a secular, hereditary feud.

Foreseeing that an example so momentous to the ecclesiastical dignitaries of Germany could not but arraign many adversaries against him, duke Albert looked about for allies, married the daughter of the king of Denmark in 1526, and, by renouncing Roman Catholicism, entered into the closest relations with the Protestants of Germany. Under the protection of king Sigismund of Poland he could stand his ground, and the protestation of the pope and of the members of the orders spoiled of their rights was just as ineffectual as the "Acht" pronounced against him by the emperor. Charles V had been powerless against him; and Maximilian, who would have been powerfully supported by the German nobility, did not care to declare war against the house of Brandenburg or to break the good understanding existing between himself and his brother-in-law, the king of Poland, especially as he lived in the hope that one of his sons would in time ascend the Polish throne. The duke's example of adopting the new faith was followed by many of the knights of Prussia, and Lutheranism, especially through many considerate as well as coercive measures, made rapid progress. Indeed, the whole country now began to improve and thrive. "Albert improved the mode of administering the laws, restored some order to the finances of the state, established schools, founded the University of Konigsberg (1544), and caused the Bible to be translated into Polish, and several books of instruction to be printed in German, Polish, and Lithuanian. Upon his death, in 1568, Protestantism had so strengthened in Prussia that there remainled not the least prospect of the Catholic Church getting the supremacy again. His son and successor, Albert Frederick, having become insane, a regency was appointed. Several of his kinsmen, in turn, enjoyed the dignity of regent, and finally his son-in- law, Johann Sigismund, elector of Brandenburg, after having held the admlinistration of affairs in his hands for some years, was, on the death of the duke in 1618, recognised as his successor, both by the people and by the king of Poland, from whom he received the investiture of the duchy of Prussia, which, since that period, has been governed by the Hohenzollern- Brandenburg house.

"Here it will be necessmary to retrace our steps in order briefly to consider the political and dynastic relations of the other parts of the Prussian state. In the 12th century the northern Mark, comprising probably the territory between the Elbe and the Oder as far as its confluence with the Spree, was held by the immediate descendants of Albert, the Bear of Luxemburg, its first hereditary margrave, who, during the next two or three centuries, extended their dominions eastward beyond the Oder into Farther Pomerania. On the extinction of this line, known as the Ascanian house, a remote kinsman, Frederick VI, count of Hohenzollern, and margrave of Nurnberg, became possessed — partly by purchase and partly by investiture from the enmperor — of the Brandenburg lands, which, in his favor, were constituted into an electorate. This prince, known as the elector Frederick I, received his investiture in 1417. He united under his rule, in addition to his hereditary Franconian lands of Anspach and Bairenth, a territory of more than 11,000 square miiles. His reign was disturbed by the insubordination of the nobles and the constant incursions of his Prussian and Polish neighbors, but by his firmness and resolution he restored order at home and enlarged his boundary. It is said that he gained possession of the castles of his refractory nobles by the aid of a 24- pounder, known as the 'Faule Grete;' but even this unwonted auxiliary was of no avail in a long war which he waged against the Hussites, who devastated the land and razed many of his cities in revenge for the part which Frederick had taken in acting as commander-in-chief of the imperial army that had been sent aganst them.

"Under Frederick's successors the Brandenburg territory was augmented by the addition of many new acquisitions, although the system of granting appanages to the younger members of the reigning house, common at that time, deprived the electorate of some of its original domains — as, for instance, the Margravate of Anspach, which passed, on the death of the elector Albert Achilles, in 1486, as an independent state to his younger sons and their descendants. The most considerable addition to the electorate was the one to which reference has already been made, and which fell to the elector John Sigismund through his marriage (in 1609) with Anne, daughter and heiress of Albert Frederick, the Insane, duke of Prussia. In consequence of this alliance, the duchy of Cleves, the countships of Ravensberg, the Mark, and Limburg, and the extensive duchy of Prussia, now known as East Prussia, became incorporated with the Brandenburg territories, which were thus more than doubled in area.

"The reign of John Sigismund's successor, Georg Wilhelm (1619-40), was distracted by the miseries of the Thirty Years' War, and the country was alternately the prey of Swedish and imperial armies; and on the accession of Georg Wilhelm's son, the great elector Frederick William, in 1640, the electorate was sunk in the lowest depths of social misery and financial embarrassment. But so wise, prudent, and vigorous was the government of this prince that at his death, in 1688, he left a well-filled exchequer and a fairly equipped army of 38,000 men; while the electorate, which now possessed a population of one and a half million, and an area of 42,000 square miles, had been raised by his genius to the rank of a great European power" (Chambers). His successors, Frederick III (1688-1713) and Frederick William I (1713-40), each in his own way increased the power and credit of Prussia, which had been in 1701 raised to the rank of a kingdom — a most sirgnificant change not only in the secular, but also in the ecclesiastical history of that country. Sweden had sunk down from the eminence which it had held for a time as the leading Protestant power in the North; Prussia now rose to take the place from which Sweden was receding, and the apparently insignificant event of 1701 at Konigsberg was followed by very grave consequences, both for Germany and Europe.

3. Reformation Period. — The religious history of this early period of Prussia's aggrandizement is as full of interest as the secular. Its people, among whom, even in the 16th century, heathenish customs maintained their place side by side with Christian usages, were among the first to look favorably upon the new Gospel movement. The German order they had learned to despise, and, looking upon Christianity and knighthood as synonymous, they had steadfastly opposed conversion. But now, when a gospel was preached discarding and opposing the papacy and all its agencies, the people became ready converts; and the princes, accepting this great popular movement as insurmountable, suffered themselves to be borne along with the tide. In Prussia the priests even favored the new departure. "From the success of the Reformation the princes expected the forfeited property of the Church, the priests expected wives, and the people freedom." So says Marx (Urachen der schnellen Verbreitung d. Ref. [Mayence, 1834]). In Prussia, even the bishop of Samland, George of Polentz (q.v.), and soon afterwards Queis, bishop of Pomerania, favored the movement; and the former finally placed himself at the head of it. and proclaimed on Christmas-day, 1523, in the cathedral of Konigsberg, with great joy, that the Saviour had been born once more for his people. In 1525 the progress of the new opinions was so great that when the country was converted into a secular dukedom the entire populace signified their cordial acquiescence, and rejoiced to rank themselves among the followers of Luther. A German liturgy was soon afterwards introduced, adhering as closely as might be to the ancient forms; the convents were changed into hospitals; and by the help of postils (q.v.), or expository discourses on the epistles and gospels, regularly sent from Wittenberg, the doctrines of the clergy were kept in general harmony with each other, and also with the tenets advocated in the Lutheran metropolis. The two bishops, together with three evangelical preachers Luther had sent — Briesmann, Sperat, and Poliander — had prepared a Church discipline (Agenda), and caused its adoption, under the title "Artikel der Ceremonien u. anderer Kirchenordnung," by Parliament (Landtag) in December, 1525. In 1540 the discipline was enlarged, and in 1544 still further augmented. In 1530 a confession of faith, consisting of eleven articles, was promulgated, under the title "Articuli Ceremoniarum e Germanico in Latinum Versi et nonnihil Locupletati," by a general synod at Konigsberg. This was the first compus doctrinae. When the Augsburg Confession was published (1530-31), Albert sent for a copy and caused it to be introduced into the Prussian Church by episcopal decree. But in 1544 Albert determined upon the future independence of the Prussian Church from Wittenberg, and to this end endowed the University of Konigsberg — a high school which was destined not only to play a great part in the history of Prussia and of Germany, but of Poland also; for from this university much Scriptural knowledge spread to Poland, and gave rise to a strong reformatory movement there (comp. Krasinski, Hist. of the Ref. in Poland, 1, 158). But this university also became the source of a very serious theological controversy, m hich came very near destroying the Protestant Church of Prussia and seriously damaging the evangelical cause in all Germany. We refer to the Osiander (q.v.) controversy. It began in 1549. Osiander was that year lecturing at Konigsberg de lege et evangelio, and next year de justificatione. He died in 1552, but his son-in-law, Funk, continued to espouse Osiander's views, and in the controversy which ensued so much bad blood was raised that in 1553 the leaders of opposition were obliged to quit the country; and when, later, the tide turned against the Osiandrians, Funk himself and two other leaders paid for their distinction with their lives, in 1566. SEE FUNK, JOHANN; SEE MORLIN, JOACHIM. Duke Albert then set about restoring the peace of the Church. He was not himself able to grapple with the far-reaching theological, anthropological, and soteriological questions which the Osiandrian controversy had raised. He had as suddenly turned from one side to the other as the prosperity of the Church seemed to demand. He had unsettled all and settled none, but he had, at least, the satisfaction of seeing one good result from the agitation. It made evident the need of a generally accepted "Confession," and he intrusted its preparation to Morlin and Chemnitz, and in 1567 they brought out the Corpus Doctriince Prutenicum, also called Repetitio Corporis Doctrinoe Christianoe, which became the symbolical text-book of Prussia. Although it had been intended to abide, so far as the cultus was concerned, by the regulations of 1544, a revision was called for after the publication of the Repetitio, and in 1568 was brought out another Kirchenordung u. Ceremonien wie es in Uebung Gottes Worts v. Reichung der hochwurdigen Sakramente in den Kirchen des Herzogthunes Preussen gehalten werden soll. This finally established the evangelical cultus.

In 1548 the reforming party in Prussia was greatly strengthened by the arrival of multitudes of Bohemian brethren, who were ordered, under most severe penalties, to leave their country within forty-two days (May 4, 1548). Duke Albert offered them an asylum in his states, whither they migrated under the guidance of Mathias Sionius, the chief of the whole community.

Polish or West Prussia, together with the minor states of Courland and Livonia, gradually underwent a similar transformation, owing to many favorable influences. Luther's pamphlets, exposing the weaknesses of the papacy and of Romanism, had free entrance in these countries. The bishop of Ermland, Fabian, not only raised no opposition himself, but, as the Romanists claim, was even anxious that the reform movement should succeed. Then the government of the Polish sovereign, Sigismund Augustus, by granting plenary freedom of religion to the towns of Dantzic, Thorn, and Elbing, greatly facilitated the triumph of the Protestant opinions, which was effected about the year 1560. Germany, at last, had conquered for herself by the Reformation the valiant Prussians, and in the borders of Slavic and Roman influence had firmly planted the seed of German culture and German Protestantism, which was to germinate and spread so marvellously. The evangelical Church of Prussia, which was always after in closest intimacy and most active co-operation with German Protestantism, to which it owed its origin, had nevertheless its own peculiar formation, and took for its development its own peculiar way. Most remarkable is the fact that the prince under whom the Prussian evangelical Church first established itself lived to see it rooted and grounded in doctrine, cultus, and discipline. Duke Albert died March 20, 1568.

4. Modern Period. — Frederick I was distinguished for his rigid economy of the public money and an extraordinary penchant for tall soldiers, and left to his son, the great Frederick II, a compact and prosperous state, a well- disciplined army, and a sum of nearly nine million thalers in his treasury. Frederick II (1740-86) dexterously availed himself of the extraordinary advantages of his position to raise Prussia to the rank of one of the great political powers of Europe. In the intervals between his great wars, he devoted all his energies to internal improvement, by encouraging agriculture, trade, and commerce, and reorganizing the military, financial, and judicial departments of the State. By his liberal views in regard to religion, science, and government, he inaugurated a system whose results reacted on the whole of Europe; and in Germany, more especially, he gave a new stimulus to thought, and roused the dormant patriotism of the people. Frederick was not over-scrupulous in his means of enlarging his dominions, as he proved by sharing in the first partition of Poland in 1772, when he obtained as his portion nearly all West Prussia and several other districts in East Prussia. His nephew and successor, Frederick William II (1786-97), aggrandized his kingdom by the second and third partitions of Poland in 1793 and 1795. Frederick William III (1797-1840), who had been educated under the direction of his grand-uncle Frederick the Great, succeeded his father in 1797, at a time of extreme difficulty, when Continental rulers had no choice beyond being the opponents, the tools, or the victims of French republican ambition. By endeavoring to maintain a neutral attitude, Prussia lost her political importance, and gained no real friends, but many covert enemies. But the calamities which this line of policy brought upon Prussia roused Frederick William from his apathy, and, with an energy, perseverance, and self-denial worthy of all praise, he devoted himself, with his minister, count Hardenberg, to the reorganization of the State. In the ten years which succeeded the battle of Waterloo, Prussia underwent a complete reorganization. Trade received a new impulse through the various commercial treaties made with the maritime nations of the world, the formation of excellent roads, the establishment of steam and sailing packets on the great rivers, and, at a later period, the organization of the customs treaty, known as the Zollverein, between Prussia and the other states of Northern Germany, and through the formation of an extended net-work of railways. The most ample and liberal provision was made for the diffusion. of educatioun over every part of the kingdom and to every class.

In like manner, the established Protestant Church was enriched by the newly inaugurated system of government supervention, churches were built, the emoluments of the clergy were raised, and their dwellings improved; but, not content with that, the king wished to legislate for the Church in accordance with a set plan, and determined to force a union of the Lutherans andl the Reformed, whose unhappy separation was painful to the devoted king. This union scheme was not new. A union tendency had shown itself early in the German Church, and attempts were made to bridge over the gulf which began to deepen between the Lutherans and the Reformed in consequence of the differences on the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. The so-called Concordia of Wittenberg in 1536 and the Augustana Variata of 1540, with which also the Reformed Synod agreed, are prominent proofs of this. For nearly half a century, John Duraeus (died 1680), an Anglican clergyman and an apostle of union, travelled about for the accomplishment of his great object; but each of the three great Protestant churches — Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican — contended not only for a faith in the Christ revealed in the Scriptures, which was the only basis of iunion insisted upon by him, but for all those peculiarities which separated it from the others. An agreement for mutual ecclesiastical recognition (tolerantia ecclesiastica) was formed on the principles of Calixtus at the religious conference at Cassel in 1661, and resulted in the transfer of the University of Rintein to the Reformed Church. But notwithstanding these conlcessions, which gave the appearance of a unionistic and tolerating tendency, the Lutheran divines, according to Tholuck, declared that they would rather hold communion with the papists, and regarded the hope that even Calvinists might be saved as a temptation of the devil (Geist d. luth. Theol. Wittenbergs, p. 115, 169, 211). Yet, after the Peace of Ryswick, when it became urgently important to have fraternal connections between the Protestant nations as a security against the dangerous exaltation of the Catholic powers, the house of Prussia took upon itself the task of adjusting the dissensions which prevailed, principally among the Lutherans, by a union of the two Protestant churches. The elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg, while accepting the Reformed creed in 1614, did nevertheless adhere to the Augsburg Confession — like the Brandenburg and Hessian theologians at the Leipsic colloquiium in 16331 — and his successors, the princes of Brandenburg and Prussia, who remained in the Reformed communion, always cherished a desire to bring their evangelical people to a better understanding, and, if possible, a union in the government and worship of the churches. The appointment of a few bishops constituted a part of the ceremonial at the coronation of the first king of Prussia (1700), but this suggested the idea of a union by the introduction of the form of government which prevailed in the Anglican Church. Temples of peace and union churches were, however, consecrated in vain. Leibnitz succeeded in breaking off the negotiations. There was, none the less, full confidence that the object would one day be brought of itself to a successful conclusion.

When the wars with France ended so favorably, the king thought the day auspicious for the consummation of the dream of his reigning ancestry, and by royal decree of Sept. 27, 1817 (the Jubilee of the Reformation), king Frederick William III declared the union effected. But the various Protestant churches refused to be joined in the Utopian union prescribed for them. New difficulties arose. The tendency to over-legislation was long the predominating evil feature of Prussian administration. The State, without regard to the incongruous elements of which it was composed, was divided and subdivided into governmental departments, which in their turn, under some head or other, brought every individual act under governmental supervision, to the utter annihilation of political or mental independence. The people, when they gradually began to comprehend the nature of this administrative machinery, saw that it made no provision for political and civil liberty, and demanded of the king the fulfilment of the promise he had given in 1815 of establishing a representative constitution for the whole kingdom. This demand was evasively met by the king, who professed to take high religious views of his duty as a sovereign, and its immediate fruits were strenuous efforts on his part to check the spirit of liberalism. Every measure taken by other sovereigns to put down political movements was vigorously abetted by him. Siding with the pietists of Germany, he introduced a sort of Jesuitical despotism. The Landstande, or provincial estates, organized in accordance with the system of the Middle Ages, were the sole and inadequate mode of representation granted to Prussia in that reign, notwithstanding the pledge made to the nation for a full and general representative government. A further attempt made forcibly to unite Lutheran and Reformed churches by royal decree of Feb. 28, 1834, excited universal indignation, while the imprisonment, at a later period, of the archbishops of Cologne and Gnesen for their conduct in regard to the vexed question of mixed marriages involved the king in a long and fruitless dispute with the pope. In his ecclesiastical regulations, the king was generally assisted by the gentle Altenstein, his minister for public worship, with whose preferences for the Hegelian philosophy in the Church and in the schools he was often displeased, but whom he never would quite abandon. When the civil power had absorbed all authorities peculiarly ecclesiastical, the king established (1817) provincial consistories, whose duties were confined to matters exclusively spiritual, and did not include the location of clergymen; district and provincial synods, comnposed only of clergymen, and restricted within a narrow circle of duties, but intended to be an introduction to an imperial synod; and a ministry for public worship, which was to be the organ through which the ro al authority was exercised over the Church. The oath which the clergymen were to take bound them to be the servants of the State as well as of the Church. The development which had taken place in the principles of Protestantism, and the modes of speech occasioned by the new scientific and literary education of the people, next rendered some alteration of the language of the Church indispensable. New liturgies were therefore introduced into some established churches without attracting much attention. A common form of worship seemed to become necessary by the union which bv the year 1821 had been outwardly effected. The theological commission appointed for composing such an instrument in Prussia accomplished nothing. The king then published an Agenda which had been adopted by his cabinet (1822) for the use of the court church, gave orders that it should be introduced into the garrison churches of his kingdom, and recommended it to all the congregations of the realm, instead of the conflicting and arbitrary forms which had previously been used in the different provinces. But it met with much opposition. The Reformed complained that it savored too much of the old ecclesiastical formula. They objected, too, to the burning of candles in broad daylight, and the kneeling and singing of the preacher before the altar, and the like, which seemed to them to betray a Roman Catholic spirit. The rigid Lutherans complained that it was not sufficiently orthodox, and was too much reformed. On the other hand, the adherents of the early theology of illuminism found it too orthodox, too much in sympathy with the old ecclesiasticism. They did not perceive in it their own theological opinions, but just the reverse; and it was from their standpoint that they very properly hesitated to make use of expressions and ceremonies with which thev could connect no other sense than one contradictory to their convictions. Some, also, were displeased with a heterogeneous political element which they discovered in it. But no general opposition to it was apparent until the government took some steps to draw over the churches by various temptations or by coercion, and some authors colltended that a strict conformity to the liturgy should be required by a law on the territorial system. In the midst of this confusion, no synodal constitution was carried into effect; for even the victorious political party took no pleasure in a measure which so forcibly reminded them of the promised representative system. It was only in Westphalia and the Rhenish provinces that a synodal form on the basis of ancient usages was introduced (1835), but even there the system left as much to be desired as it actually fulfilled. The appointment of general superintendents (1829), with means at command for a very extensive sphere of personal influence, was looked upon as a restoration of the titular bishops to their former prelatical position, and hence as the commencement of a Protestant episcopacy The controversy now became legal, and the jurists and theologians pronounced their different opinions in answering the question as to how far the king, as the prince of the country, was authorized in prescribing his ecclesiastical usages to the people and in foisting a particular service upon them. It was only after inew negotiations and revisions, in which all possible consideration was shown for personal wishes and the traditions of the country, that the liturgy entered into full force (1830) as that of the United Evangelical State Church. By the union it was opposed even after this; and, as we have already seen, a second decree was necessary (1834) to give the stamp of the government anew to the effort. The result was a public outbreak. In Silesia, especially, there was much trouble, and the refractory spirit assumed an alarming form. Removals, military force, and emigration were the sad results; and finally there occurred a disunion among the Lutherans themselves — some yielding to the force of circumstances, others pushing their cause to the utmost, and still others going to ruin in sectarianism. SEE LUTHERANISM.

The accession of Frederick William IV, in 1840, seemed to open a better prospect to the friends of constitutional freedom, but the reality was scarcely equal to the expectations which had been warranted by the professions of the government. Still, new hopes and requirements had been excited, and a new life was infused into every department of the State. Every branch of science. art, and literature was understood to receive the attentive consideration of the sovereign, who professed to be actuated by a love of universal progress. He made similar professions in regard to religious toleration, but the pietistic tendencies of his government exerted a forced and prejudicial influence in public administration everywhere.

At an early period of his reign, the king had expressed his determination to allow the Church, over which the crown had acquired supreme power during the Reformation, freely to form for itself its own external organization. The transfer of a part of the ecclesiastic administration from the provincial governments to the consistories in 1845 might be construed as an expedient to get an easier control of the Church by the appointment of persons of a particular party. But when the provincial synods had assembled in 1844, composed of the superintendents of each of the six eastern provinces, and a clergyman chosen from each diocese, the king called a General Synod at Berlin — not of representatives, but of distinguished persons in the Church, thirty-seven of whom were clergymen and thirty-eight were laymen. Under the presidency of the minister for public worship, during a session continued from June 2 to Aug. 30, 1846, "this body," says Hase, "which made no pretensions to a legal authority, but had no restraint on the expression of its opinions, and acted on conclusions drawn frot; the proceedings of the provincial synods, presented its views of the existing wants of the Church. Its plan for a future ecclesiastical consitution combined the consistorial administration proceeding directly from the crown with the synods proceeding directly from the congregations in regularly ascending circles. The assembly had not been convened without some reference to its nature, and only a single voice was raised in it in behalf of undisguised rationalism. But as the great majority there, as well as in the previous provincial synods, declared itself against not only unconditional freedom of instruction, but the compulsory obligation of creeds, the party led by the Evangelical Church Journal found itself in a decided minority. The moral impossibility of compelling men to adhere to the old creeds was conceded; and yet it was thought indispensable to the completion of the union that a confession of faith should be formed, to serve as a formula for ordination. But the confession then composed expressed only those sentiments which are essential to Protestant Christianity in Scriptural language, and without the precision of theological science. The orthodox minority (fourteen to forty-eight), therefore, had reason to complain, notwithstanding all that was said for their satisfaction, that the adoption of the new confession was a virtual abrogation of the old." The only concession to those congregations and patrons who were especially attached to the Lutheran or the Reformed type of doctrine or worship was the assurance given them that they should have full liberty, without endangering the development and existence of the union, to use their respective confessions, if they wished, in a regular manner, to bring those clergymen whom they called under obligation to some creed. But the orthodox opposition from without, in whose eyes such a body seemed a robber-synod, in which Christ was denied, was powerful enough, at least, to postpone the execution of these enactmlenits, although the ecclesiastical authorities had given them a unanimous concurrence, and had pronounced them of urgent importance. The superior Consistory was the only court finally formed under them (January, 1848), but as this was not sustained by any contemporary synodal regulations, it was looked upon as a mere party authority.

While the government and the Church gained so little, the people became more and more restless. There was a general displeasure against the bureaucratic spirit of over-governing which characterized the administration and became daily more irksome to the nation. In the Church it resulted in the successful formation of free churches or Protestant communities espousing the interests of a rational Christianity. A contemporaneous excitement which had arisen in the Roman Catholic Church, as the result of the schismatic movement due to the stand taken by the chaplain Ronge on the exhibition of the so-called holy coat (q.v.) of Treves, further complicated the ecclesiastical relations. In the State, revolution ensued. The king and his advisers, underrating the importance of the movement of 1848 in Germany, thought they had satisfied the requirements of the hour by granting, a few unimportant reforms and making equivocal promises of further concessions. When at length, however, the citizens and troops came into collision, and blood was shed, Frederick William came forward as the proposed regenerator of his country, offering to lay down his royal title and merge his kingdom in the common fatherland, for the salvation of which he recommended a cordial union of all German princes and people in one bond, and proposing himself as the leader and guide of this new Germany. His own subjects, and at first many Germans in other states, were carried away by these Utopian schemes. The publication of a political amnesty, the nomination of a liberal ministry, the recognition of a civic guard, the retirement of the prince of Prussia, the heir presumptive — with whom every arbitrary measure of government was believed to originate — and the summoning of a representative chanmber to discuss the proposed constitution — all tended to allay the general discontent. But when the National Assembly at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in 1851, in disregard of the wishes othehe Prussian king, declined to accept his proffered services, and elected the archduke of Austria as lieutenant-general of Germany, his ardor in the cause of the fatherland cooled, his pledges to his own subjects were evaded as long and as completely as the occasion permitted, and his policy became more strongly tinged than before with the jealousy of Austria. His powerful co- operation in putting down the insurrection in Poland and the democratic party in Baden gave, however, ample proof of his determined opposition to every popular demonstration against absolutism. The only exception during his reign is the action of the Prussians in the war of the Sleswig-Holstein duchies, when the Prussians, acting in concert with the disaffected against their sovereign, the king of Denmark, occupied the ducal provinces in the name and on behalf of the diet. But this was the work rather of him who is now emperor of Germany, and is capable of explanation even trom an ultra-royalistic standpoint. The latter years of the reign of king Frederick William IV were characterized by great advance in the material prosperity and internal improvement of the country. Extensive lines of railway and post-roads were opened, the river navigation was greatly facilitated, treaties of commerce were formed with foreign countries, great expansion was given to the Prussian and North German Zollverein, the army was put upon a footing of hitherto unprecedented efficiency of arms and artillery, and the educational system of the country was still further developed. The political freedom of Prussia cannot, however, be said to have made equal advance. The Chambers which met for the discussion and framing of a constitutional mode of government were constantly interrupted and obstructed in the prosecution of their task; and the constitution, which is now established by law, was modified every year between 1850 and 1857, until it may be said to retain few of its original features.

In the Church also the great storm of 1848 wrought destructively. An ecclesiastical administration became odious, and count Schwerin, the minister for public worship, saw himself obliged to keep watch over the actions of the consistories, which finally so displeased him that he dissolved the superior consistory. He then appointed a committee to devise a synodal constitution, to be submitted to an imperial synod which should soon after be convened, that thus the Church might construct her future organization for herself. The outline of the electoral law for the appointment, of synods was published, and defended by counsellors of the crown versed in ecclesiastical law. It proposed that the deputies should be elected by the congregations, but that the existing synods should be made use of in the western provinces, and that district and provincial synods should be arranged so as to serve for electoral bodies in the eastern. Before the appointed synod could have its meeting, the revolution was throttled, and the government again abandoned all these liberal measures. It even denounced the clamor for a synodal constitution as an ill-concealed enmity to Christ (!), and the whole scheme of an election by the people as a denial of God (!). The constitution of Jan. 31, 1850, retained, with respect to religion, the whole essential spirit of the German fundamental laws. A collegiate supreme ecclesiastical council to decide internal affairs of the Church was formed by order of the king from the evangelical portion of the ministry of public worship, and a system of rules for the regulation of congregational affairs was bestowed upon the six eastern provinces. The supreme ecclesiastical council from that period governed the Church in the king's name; and Von Raumer, the minister for public worship, in the presence of the Chambers, declared that the new doctrine was that the Evangelical Church exercises het constitutional right independently to regulate and administer her affairs, by entire separation from and consequent independence of the State, and by government according to her ancient constitution by the soverelgn as her most prominent member. By this happy thought anxiety for the independence of the Church was tranquilized, and the Chambers succeeded in repelling all complaints about violations of those articles of the fundamental law of the State which relate to the independence of the Evangelical Church. The plan for congregational government, which was looked upon as the basis of true ecclesiastical freedom, contained a suspicious limitation of the power of choosing the vestries and an extraordinary requisition that the private members should be bound by the three principal creeds, the confessions of the Reformation, and certain general laws for the Church which were yet unknown. In some of the eastern provinces this plan was protested against by parties opposed to each other, but it was at last gradually admitted into most of the congregations. The free congregations (numbering about forty in Prussia and the contiguous countries), which had in 1848, like almost all associations, taken some part in politics, and whose leaders had to some extent been involved in the movements of the day, had nearly all their houses of worship closed by the police under the new law against political societies. These proceedings were partially confirmed by the judicial courts; but some measures of the police seemed so inconsistent with the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the fundamental laws that inquiries were instituted respecting them even in the Chambers (1852), where the government had avowed its determination to exterminate by every legal means the whole system of dissent. The supreme ecclesiastical council excommunicated all the free congregations, without reference to the various tendencies among them, and pronounced their baptisms invalid, w.hile the civil courts punished every official act of their ministers as an invasion of the clerical office. Still there was conflict between civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and the crown saw itself perplexed daily with the disadvantages of dissent. By royal edicts of March 6, 1852, and July 12, 1853, the union movement was again given a new lease of life, the king having determined to do away with religious differences among all Protestants. The result was far from gratifying. In the verv next fall (October, 1853) Dr. Rupp started a new congregation, in which the Bible was accepted as the original source of truth, and the imitation of Christ was made the supreme end of life. All ecclesiasticism was ignored. In 1856 (Nov. 4-Dec. 5) a general conference assembled to remedy these dissensions, but it failed to accomplish anything. The king remained summus episcopus, but the Protestants retained by the constitution of Jan. 31, 1850, tit. ii, art. 12, liberty of conscience, and the more recent immigrations from foreign lands have made Prussia the home of Protestants of all shades of religious opinion.

The obvious benefits of the presbyterial and synodal constitution in the Rhenish and Westphalian churches, the fuller co-operation there of ministers and elders, the greater activity of the laity, the room afforded for the exercise of discipline, the variety of home mission work, and the facility for checking rationalistic tendencies, which had given the Rhenish and Westphalian branch of the Prussian Church so great a power and influence, were so apparent that it would have been impossible for the leading authorities of the Prussian Church not to desire to extend this form of government, modified by the consistorial constitution, over all her old provinces. Conseqttently a royal order of June 29, 1850, introduced the institution of the general Church courts, and by another of Sept. 10, 1873, it became definitively the platform for the congregations and synods there, while an extraordinary general synod for these provinces was announced. This synod was appointed by royal decree, to consist of the eleven general superintendents, of twelve deputies of the theological and the juridical faculties, of thirty members to be elected by the king, and of 150 members of the eight provincial synods, who were to be composed of not less than one third laymen and one third ministers. This general synod met for the first time from Nov. 24 to Dec. 18, 1875. The new ecclesiastical constitution of Prussia provides for a regular meeting of this general body at the call of the king every six years. The king is represented in it by the president of the Oberkirchenrath, the highest Church tribunal in the state. The jurisdiction and competency of the general synod, as summarized by a correspondent of The Central Christian Advocate, are shown by the following, which indicates also the nature of the connection between Church and State:

"1. The General synod co-operates with the king's functionaries for promoting the interests of the State Church on the basis of the evangelical confessions of faith.

2. Laws enacted by the king, as head of the Church, must have its assent. It may also propose new measures, but these cannot be laid before the king for sanction until the cultus minister has examined them and found nothing incompatible with the interests of the State in them.

3. It legislates exclusively on the amount of liberty of teaching within the Church; religious qualifications and ordination vows of the candidates of ministry: liturgies, hymnals, and catechisms: holy days to be introduced or abolished; and the form of discipline for refractory Chnrch members and ministers.

4. It controls the funds which the Oberkirchenrath had, and also the expenditure of the appropriations for the Church from the national treasury, which was in the hands of the cultus minister heretofore.

5. Regular and periodical taxes upon the congregations for Church purposes can only be levied by its consent.

6. It can incite the king's functionaries (Oberkirchenrath and consistories) to greater activity by taking the initiative in proposing such new measures as are conducive to the Church's welare. The Oberkirchenrath cannot reject them without giving its motives.

7. It preserves the union of the State Church interest by revoking any such resolutions of a prominent synod as may be incompatible with the Church at large."

The Advocate then continues as follows:

"The king, as summus episcopus, governs the Church indirectly through its consistories — one in each province — composed entirely of theologians, except the president who must be a jurist, and directly through the Oberkirchenrath — the highest Church tribunal in the state — to whom the consistories are responsible." Between the sessions of the general synod a cabinet, composed of seven members, carries out the measures of the general synod, and confers with the Oberkirchenrath respecting new measures.

It is not difficult for the members of the Lutheran and the comparatively few Reformed churches in Prussia to meet in the same synods, because the union movement has not only given rise to a common legislative and administrative basis. but prepared the members and congregations, notwithstanding all the value they assign to their particular creeds, to lay greater stress upon that which they have in common than upon that on which they differ. The Lutheran churches have the Confessio Augustana Invariata from June 25, 1530 (or the Augustana Variata from 1540), the Apologia Confessionis Augustanoe, the Articuli Smalcalderi, the Catechismus Minor and Major Lutheri, and the Formula Concordioe (1577). The Reformed Church has the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), which it highly values. The authority of these creeds — the Minor Catechism and the Confessio Augustana perhaps excepted — is not binding in all the details; and in the ordination vow no declaration of allegiance to the symbols is expected from the young minister, so that some of the creeds have nearly disappeared. So thoroughly has the old spirit of division died out that there is no longer any opposition to communion of the two bodies in the same church. Nor is this practice confined to the United Church of Prussia; it is equally prevalent in the other union churches of Germany, in the former duchy of Nassau, in Anhalt-Bernburg, Dessau, Birkenfeld, Baden, in the former electorate of Hesse, in Saxe-Weinar, in Hildburghausen, Waldeck, Wurtemberg, and in one part of the grand-

duchy of Hesse. In East Friesland the union has extended only to the government, and not to worship or doctrine, in Rhenish Bavaria, in the union deed, stress is laid on the common scriptural ground of the churches.

With the accession of king William I, Prussia's most brilliant page of history opens. The civil and ecclesiastical affairs of that country now became the history of a united, prosperous, and powerful people. Though Bismarck, as premier, himself controls pretty much all the measures civil and ecclesiastical; though he at first indicated by his lines of action a policy of absolutism and bureaucracy, time has unfolded a liberal and practical tendency in the government, and the only severe opposition now encountered is from the low social democracy — in this country known as Communism — and from the ultra-Romish subjects, who wage war against the repressive measures adopted by the government against Ultramontanism and Jesuitism, because of the dangers they brood against the State. SEE ULTRAMONTANISM. The war of 1866 with Austria established the superiority of Prussia in Germany; the war with France in 1870 solidified the work of the intervening years, and gave to the little kingdom the imperial power on the 170th anniversary of the day when the elector of Brandenburg assumed the crown of Prussia.

II. Religious Statistics. —

1. General. — According to the census of 1885, of the 28,318,470 inhabitants of Prussia, 18,244,405 returned themselves as belonging to the Evangelical National Church; of these, 13,266,620 are of the United Church, 2,905,250 Lutherans, and 465,120 of the Reformed Church. Of those who are not of the National Church, there are 40,630 Lutherans, 35,080 Reformed, 4711 Moravians, 13,023 Irvingites and Baptists, 36,668 Mennonites, 4693 Anglicans, Methodists, etc., 9,620,326 Catholics, 1437 Greek Church, 10.360 German Catholics, 21,823 Freethinkers, etc., 366,575 Jews, and 2594 of various other beliefs. The Old Catholics are mentioned below. The Roman Catholic population of Prussia decreased so rapidly after the introduction of Protestantism that at the accession of Frederick II in 1740 there were only 50,000 Catholics in a population of 2,150,000 souls; the proportion of the Catholics to the Protestants was, in other words, one to forty-three. The kings did not recur to coercive measures, but the majority of the inhabitants of Prussia hated Romanism, and caused it to undergo heavy trials. When Prussia acquired Silesia, and after the division of Poland, it was less of a Protestant power. The number of the Catholics was so considerably increased, especially after the treaty of Luneville (1801), that both communions were represented by nearly equal numbers. This was again changed by the treaty of Tilsit, the two treaties of Paris, and the congress of Vienna. At present the Evangelical Church constitutes a majority in the provinces of Schleswig-Holstein (99 per cent.), Pomerania (97), Brandenburg (95), Saxony (93), Hanover (87), Hesse-Nassau (70), and Prussia (70); the Roman Catholic Church in Hohenzollern (93 per cent.), the Rhine provinces (73), Posen (64), Westphalia (53), and Silesia (51). Of the Jews, fully one half live in the eastern (formnerly Polish) provinces. The members of all churches recognised by the government enjoy equal civil rights. The Old Catholics (q.v.) have been recognised as a part of the Roman Catholic Church, and the bishop elected by them as a bishop of the Catholic Church. Other denominations (Baptists, Methodists, German Catholics, and Free Congregationalists) are barely tolerated, though the constitution guarantees full religious liberty. The Greek Church is also represented in Prussia. One of the Greek communities belongs to the Philippins (q.v.), a branch of the Greek Raskolniks, who seceded in the 17th century from the Orthodox Greek Church. Like the Mennonites, they refuse the military service. Their principal colony is at Alt-Ukta, in the kiingdom of Poland. The Mennonites are tolerated, with some restrictions: they cannot increase their real estate, because the military service is in contradiction with their religious opinions. They are in consequence in a state of emigration, and their number decreases. Since 1830 they enjoy the same civil rights as all other Christian subjects. The Roman Catholic Church is directed by the two archbishops of Posen and Gnesen, and Cologne, under whom stand the four bishoprics of Culm, Munster, Paderborn, and Treves. The two episcopal sees of Breslau and Ermland are directly under the jurisdiction of the pope; while the district of Glatz, in Silesia, belongs to the archbishopric of Prague, and Katscher, in Upper Silesia, to that of Olmutz. In 1864 the Protestants had rather more than 9000 licensed places of worship, with 6500 ordained clergymen; and the Roman Catholic Church nearly 8000 churches and chapels, with upwards of 6000 priests. In 1867 there were 24,382 churches of all denominations. and 224 monastic or conventual establishments, with 5613 inmates, mostly devoted to purposes of education, or nursing the sick.

2. Edcation. — Education is compulsory in Prussia, and its management and direction are under the control of the State. In no country are better or ampler means supplied for the diffusion ot knowledge among all classes of the community. Prussia has nine universities, viz. Konigberg, Berlin, Greifswald, Breslau, Halle, Bonn, Kiel, Gottingen, and Marburg, with 12,823 students, and two Catholic colleges at Braunsberg and Munster. At the close of 1889 there were in Prussia 37,000 schools and educational establishments of every kind, exclusive of the universities; and of these 787 were colleges or gymnasia, about 1000 classical private schools, 58 normal, about 700 art, trade, and industrial schools, and about 30,000 public elementary schools, with 45.000 teachers and about 4,000,000 scholars. (See below.) The management of the elementary national schools is in the hands of the local communities; but the State appoints the teachers, and in part pays their salaries, the remainder being supplied by the public. In addition to the libraries of the several universities, there is the Royal Library of Berlin, with 750,000 volumes and about 16,000 MSS. Among the numerous scientific, artistic, andt literary schools and societies of Prussia, the following are some of the more distinguished: the Academy of Arts, founded in 1699; the Royal Museum of Arts; the Academy of Sciences; the Natural History, Geographical, and polytechnic societies of Berlin; the Antiquarian Society of Stettin; the Breslau Natural History and Historical societies, etc.

3. Charities. — Prussia has a large number of benevolent institutions, towards thle maintenance of which the State gives annually albout £16,000 sterling. In 1861 there were about 1000 public civil and military infirmaries, in which upwards of 170,000 patients were under treatment, and between 7000 and 8000 poor- and alms-houses; while 800,000 poor received support through these institutions or by extraneous relief. Prussia is supplied with asylums for thhe deaf and dumb, the blind and the maimed, and has good schools for training midwives, nurses, etc.

4. Churches. — We append a sketch of the principal German churches, because it will in some manner enrich the article, and will, besides, greatly add to what has been said in the article GERMANY SEE GERMANY . The sketch and the statistics are taken from the report of the Pan-Presbyterian Council in Edinburgh in 1877.

"

I. Constitution. — Each German state and each free city has a Church of its own, in which the princes or the magistrates, by whose co- operation the churches were reformed, have to some extent, since the Diet of Speyer in 1526, enjoyed the supreme administrative power.

This power they generally exercise by proxy, i.e. through the minister of worship (Prussia, Baden, Saxe-Altenburg, grand-duchy of Hesse, Mecklenburg, Wurtemberg); in other cases through the Supreme Church Council, or Oberkirchenrath (Prussia, 1849, 1850; Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 1819; Badin); or through the general superintendents, the consistories, and superintendents. To some extent, likewise, for the last twenty-five or thirty years, the governments have shared the administration of the Church with the district, provincial, and general synods (Prussia, Wurtemberg, Baden, Bavaria, Oldenburg. This form of Church govelrnmnent is called the consistorial (Konsistorialverfassung).

"The German churches have derived much benefit from the hands of the princes; but the fact that these exercise the right of control has often hindered the development of the energies, the liberality, and the practical sense of the lay element and the members of the congregations at large, as well as prevented the co-operation of the ministers and the people in Church work. Like the noble king Frederick William IV of Prussia, who longed to resign his episcopal functions into the proper hands, some of the best princes have felt the necessity of giving more self-government and liberty to the churches, and the presbyterial and synodal constitution in the newly developed form in which it has been given in Prussia is an endeavor in this direction.

"In some of the Reformed churches, as in the Palatinate, the mode of government is similar to that of the Lutheran churches; but in others the presbyterial and synodal constitution was developed.

"The presbyterial and synodal constitution was transplanted by fugitives, members of the French and Walloon congregations in London (which John a Lasco had organized according to the fonrm he had set up in East Friesland), to the lower part of the Rhine, to the duchies of Julich, Cleves, Berg, and Mark, which form now the northern half of Rhenish Prussia, and a part of Prussian Westphalia; it was recognised and developed by the Congress of Wesel (1568) and the Synod of Emden (1571), was introduced into the duchy of Nassau (Synod of Herborn, 1586), and with some modifications, at the end of the 17th century, adopted even by the Lutherans in the territories of Cleves and Mark.

"This form of Church government was in 1835 confirmed by the Kirchenordnung for the churches in Rhenish Prussia and Westphalia. These churches, the Lutheran as well as the Reformed, are essentially Presbyterian, i.e., besides the ministers, each congregation has a body of elders and also of deacons. The duty of the elders is, along with the ministers, to take the oversight of the congregations, and further their well-being in all respects, especially by Christian discipline. The deacons serve the Church by works of love for the poor and afflicted. The ministers, elders, and deacons form the presbytery of the congregation (the Scottish Kirk session), the duty of which is to advance the edification of the Church, to promote whatever is good, and to discourage all that is evil. The members of this presbytery are elected for four years. Besides the presbytery there is, in larger congregations, a mnre numerous representative body (die Representation), the number of which varies according to the size of the congregation, and may amount to sixty, seventy, or more members. This body has to consult and decide in matters of greater importance, and especially when ministeres or elders are to be elected. In the Reformed Calvinistic Lippe-Detmold, in 1851, such a representative body was instituted besides the presbytery.

"All the ministers and one deputy from each congregation form the district synod (the Scottish presbytery), which meets yearly under the superintendent, who is elected freely for six years by and from the members of the synod. His most impportant duties are the oversight of the ministers and presbyteries, the administration of the property of the congregations in the district, the exercise of discipline, the information and encouragement of the members as to the home mission work of the district, and the preparation for the next provincial synod. The superintendents, along with deputies from the district synods (each of these sending one minister and one elder), form the provincial synod, the president of which is elected for six years, and which has for its special function to watch over the doctrine and the spiritual affairs of the Church. The proceedings of the synod require, however, to be confirmed by the competent authorities of the State. The provincial synod meets every third year, but on extraordinary occasions it may be convened by the president. The control of the affairs of the Rhenish and Westphalian Church is in the hands of the minister of worship, the Consistory of Rhenish Prussia, and that of Westphalia, and the government of the province. The general suplerintendents of Rhenish Prussia and Westphalia, who are appointed by the king, act along with the consistories, but are independent of them.

"In Baden similar provincial or diocesan and igeneral synods have existed since the union in 1821. The diocesan synods are held every third year, the general every seventh. Two thirds of the body of the diocesan synods are ministers, and only one third laymen, who are not elected by the representatives of the congregations, but by electoral districts. To the general synod two dioceses send one minister, and the ruling elders (Kirchengemneindenrathe) of four dioceses send one layman, who, however, must be a memblr of a representative body of the Church. The grand-duke nominates a president, a theological professor of the University of Heidelberg, and some lay and ministerial members, to the Snpreme Church Council (Oberkirchenrath). The synod has a legislative, disciplinary, and consultative character, and it has the initiative in the grovernment in the Church. Without its concultence no law can be enacted bearing on the governnment, doctrine, and worship of the Church.

"In Wurtenmberg yearly diocesan synods welre instituted by the edict of Nov. 18, 1854, to take care of the moral and spiritual welfare of the congregations and of the poor throughout the diocese, to control the ministers and the elders, and to consult on matters of importance. These are composed of all the ministers, and of as many elders of each congregation as it has ministers. These alre to be elected by the representative body of the congregation, the so-called Church councillors. A select committee has in the interval the direction of the affairs of the dioceses.

"In Bavaria on the other side of the Rhine, according to the union deed of 1818, there are diocesan and general synods. The number of the lay deputies varies with the number of the evangelical inhabitants of the diocese, so that the lay element preponderates. The yearly diocesan synods have partly a function of oversight, and partly of consultation. The general synod meets every fourth year, and has the right of resolution, and expressing its wishes when there is a vacancy in the consistory.

"In Bavaria on this side of the Rhine yearly diocesan synods are held for consultation and for the election to the geeneral synod. The whole of the ministers and an equal body of elders, elected by the officials of the congregation, take part. The general synod is composed of one ministerial deputy from each diocesan district, one elder from every two diocesan districts, and one deputy of the theological faculty of Erlangen. The general synod has only the right of advice, resolution, and protest.

"Similar district and general synods are in Lutheran Oldenburg, Hesse, and Mecklenburg. The Lutheran churches of the province of Hanover and of Nassau, though their territory belongs now to Prussia, have still synods for themselves.

"II. — Statistical Notices. —

(A.) Churches. —

(1.) Evangelical Church. —

(a) Prussia. — On Dec. 1, l885, the German empire had 46,855,704 inhabitants, of whom 29,369,847 were Evangelicals, 16,785,734 Catholics, and 563,172 Jews.

"(b.) Other German States. — Bavaria had, Dec. 1, 1875, 5,024,832 inhabitants, 1,340,218 Evangelicals, 1055 Evangelical parishes, 1584 Evangelical churches, 1332 Evangelical ministers; on the average, belong to each Evangelical parish 1348, to each church 848, to each minister 1102. There are 81 superintendents.

"(2.) Catholic Church. —

(a.) Roman Catholic. — The Roman Catholic Church in Bavaria has 2826 parishes, 1022 benefices, 6157 priests and 3,448,453 members; each parish has 1220, and each priest 560 people. The State paid in 1874-75 to the Catholic Church £59,450, to the Protestant consistories £16,903.

The Catholic Church in Prussia has 3 Church provinces, 9 archdioceses and bishoprics. 2974 parishes and benefices, 6072

priests, 4 seminaries for priests. According to the Budget for 1874, the government paid for the Catholic Church £102,065; in Alsace and Lorraine for the Catholic worship there was paid, for 1876, £128,708.

"In the German empire Bavaria has 25 bishoprics, 10,353 parishes and benefices, 17,898 priests, and 13,903,026 members (in 1871).

"(b.) Old Catholics. — According to the report of the fourth Old- Catholic Synod, given in May, 1877, at Bonn, there are now in Prussia 35 Old-Catholic congregations with 6510 independent members; in Baden, 44 congregations with 5670 independent members; in Bavaria, 34 congregations with 3716 independent members; in Oldenburg, 2 congregations with 104 indepenedent members; in Wurtemberg, 1 congregation with 94 independent members; 56 ministers are connected with the Old Catholics; they have in Germanyy at least 121 congregations, and 16,557 independent members.

"In May, 1876, the same numbers of the congregations were reported, only in Bavaria the number had fallen to 31. Sixty ministers were at that time connected with them, 4 more than now. They numbered in May, 1876, in Prussia, children included, 20,504; in Baden, 17,203; in Bavaria, "(B.) Schools.

(1.) Universities. — In the winter session of 1875-76 there studied theology at Leipsic 337; at Tubingen, 233; at Halle, 187; Berlin, 162; Erlangen, 134; Gottingen, 78; Jena, 64, Bonn, 51; Kiel, 50; Strasburg, 50; Marburg, 45; Konigsberg 44; Breslau, 39; Greifswald, 33; Rostock, 25; Giessen, 23; Heidelberg, 9; together, 1565: in the Summer session of 1875 there were 1637 students of theology.

"(2.) High Schools. — The kingdom of Prussia has, according to Dr.Wiese's historical-statistical work on the higher schools, 221 gymnnasia (155 Evangelical, 50 Catholic, 16 mixed), 32 progymnasia, 92 Realschulen (in which languages, the arts, and sciences are taught — 76 Evangelical, 16 Catholic), 22 higher middle-class schools, 27 provincial trade-schools, 91 seminaries for young teachers (61 Evangelical, 25 Catholic, 4 Jewish, 1 mixed), 267 higher schools for young ladies (the Germans call them schools for daughters), 35 institutions for the deaf and dunmb, 14 for the blind, and 7 higher military schools. The number of scholars in these high schools amounted in 1874 to 128,000, that of the teachers to 6900; the cost was £1,020,750.

"(C.) Christian Associations. —

(1.) Mission to the Heathen. — Germany has eight of the sixty-three Evangelical Mission Societies for the heathen, of which only the Moravian Mission stands in an immediate connection with the Church. Of the 1559 mission stations and 2132 missionaries, Germany supports 274 stations and 470 missionaries; Germany and German Switzerland, 502 missionaries. Germany contributed for mission purposes in one year, £107,000.

"In 1890 the German missions had —

Countries Stations Missionar ies Communi cants Scholars South Afr. 58 180 36,792 6,524 West Afr. 134 202 38,951 8,987 Eng. India 62 176 31,197 11,149 Dutch India 11 11 738 70 China 17 34 2,485 729 Austr. 10 28 305 292 West Indies 48 53 38,216 12,129

Esquimau Lands 19 72 3,073 621 Orient 24 55 3,138 1,746

"This represents about 500 stations, 825 missionaries, 145,000 communicants, 128,600 members, 42,000 scholars, and £107,000 expenses.

"The Basle Mission (established 1815) has 209 missionaries and 45 principal stations in West Africa, East Indian, and China, 9803 Christians and 20,907 natives under its care, and 8513 children in the schools; expenses £36,000.

"'The Rhenish Mission Society (established 1828 in Barmem) has 131 missionaries, 56 principal stations in Africa, China, and East India, and about £19,250 expenses.

"The Hermannsburg Mission (established 1849) has 70 missionaries, 66 stations in America, Africa, East India, Australia, New Zealand, and an income of £14,466

"The Berlin Mission Society (established 1824) has 71 missionaries, 471 stations in Africa (Capeland, Orange, Free State, British Kafirland, Natal, and the Transvaal Republic), with 10,218 baptized people, and an income of about £l5,500.

"(2.) Mission among the Jews. — in Germany there are the Society of Friends of Israel in Basle, besides four Jewish missionary societies.

"The Berlin Society (established 1822) works at Berlin, has two ordained missionaries, one layman, one or two colporteurs, and an income of £800.

"The Rhenish-Westphalian Society for Israel (established 1844) works in Rhineland, Westphalia, Hesse, and the neighborhood; has one ordained missionary, one lay missionary, one colporteur, and an income of £780.

"The Evanngelical Lutheran Central Association for Israel (established 1849) has one missionary, a house for proselytes, and is supported by the Lutheran Church of Saxony, Bavaria, Hesse, etc.

"The Society of Friends of Israel in Strasburg is small.

"(3.) Home (Inner) Missions, etc. — Space fails to name all the smaller or larner Hoime Mission associations which can be found in the different parts of Germany.

"It may only be mentioned that the 2700 deaconesses of the thirty- four German Deaconesses' institutes are not only employed in hospitals, but, at least in part, for the visitation of the sick and the poor, and for instruction in the numerous schools for little children, for which purpose the institutions at Nonneweier, Kaiserswerth, and Hanover train deaconesses; that so many Sunday-schools have sprung up in the last ten or fifteen years in Prussia that a central committee is formed at Berlin; and that the Rhenish and Westphalian Sunday-school Union at Elberfeld and Barmen, the conferences of which are excellently attended, can organize particular district uniions, in order to influence more vigorously the many Sunday-schools.

"We cannot speak of the associations and institutes in the different provinces of Pruussia — viz. Saxe-Weimnar, Wurtemberg, Lippe- Demold, and Alsace-Lorraine — which take care of and educate orphan children; nor can we describe the work of the many refuges for neglected children in all parts of Germany, nor that of the twenty institutions for fallen women, and partly for fallen men, nor that of the thirty-five associatios and institutions for dismissed prisoners.

"Very important for protecting from evil young men who go to the towns are the Christian Homes, upwards of 100 in number, in which the young working-man finds cheap and clean lodgings and meals, a friendly Christian word, and very often the necessary work. The second Christian Home at Berlin (established in 1869), from Oct. 1, 1874, to Jan. 1, 1876, lodged 16,060 young men, on 39,000 nights. In these homes the numerous Young Men's Christian Associations have comfortable quarters. In Germany there are four large unions of Young Men's Christian Associations. The union of the Rhenish-Westphailian Young Men's Associations, which has its headquarters at Elberfeld, comprises about 120 associations; the Eastern Union, which has its centre at Berlin, has about 100 associations, with 3000 members; the union in the kingdom of Saxony has 16 associations, with 300 members; the South German Union has its 25 associations, with 500 members, chiefly in Wurtenmberg and Baden. Besides these, young clerks have formed two separate unions.

"In Germany, besides the Canstein Bible Institution, which does only the printing of the Bible, there are 25 Bible societies, the largest of which is the Prussian Principal Bible Society at Beilin, with 162 branch societies, Since its establishment in 1814 it has spread more than four million copies of the Bible. All the 25 Bible societies in 1875 distributed 186,000, and since their establishment more than 8,000,000 copies. The 35 or 40 small or larger Tract and Colportage societies have done and are doing much to promote the reading and understanding of the Bible.

"Great importance is now attached to the creation of a better popular literature and ot a better daily press, and there are already five daily political papers with an earnest Christian tendency.

"It is encouraging that associations like those at Elbereld and Barmen, for promoting a better Sunday's rest, begin to work, and it is a very hopeful sign that there are such societies as the Central Committee of the Home Mission in Prussia, which has been so long and so ably presided over by Dr. Wichern; the Evangelical Society for Germany, which has its centre at Elberfeld and Barmen; the Baden Colportage Society; and that the Ranhe Haus, near Hamburg, the John's Institution, near Berlin, the Barmene Mission- house, and the Crischona, near Basle, help to prepare earnest young men for the services of city missionaries, colporteurs, and evangelists: and that such societies as the Evangelical Society send out men who visit the people from house to house, go to the poor and the sick, help the ministers in large parishes, hold Bible classes, and conduct Sunday-schools and Young Men's Associations, aind other meetings. The Evangelical Society has now 22 colporteurs and city imissionaries, and some travelling preachers and evangelists. It has in the last year begun popular apologetical lectures in large towns with nmuch success, and it is quite certain that much more can and must be done by it for Germany.

"It is encouraging to think that about 45 ordained ministers are at work in the German home-mission field; yet manuy more are wanted; many doors are open for a larger and freer distribution and proclamation of the Word of God.

"'There is, besides, to be noticed the Reformed Church in Bentheim and East Friesland, consisting of 9 congregations, with 6 ministers. Its standard is the Heidelberg Catechism. The body was formed about thirty years ago, after failing to induce the Church authorities to make certain reforms which it earnestly desired. It has no connection with the State. It is understood to be in correspondence with the German Reformed Church in North America, with a special view to the formation of a college for training ministers.

"Another noteworthy movement to be mentioned here is the Free Evangelical Church of Germany. In June, 1860, a number of Christians in Breslau, capital of Silesia, in Prussia, formed themselves into a Church, Calvinistic in doctrine and Presbyterian in government, under the conviction that the National Protestant Church in that province was in many ways corrupt and unfaithful. They objected particularly to the Lutheran view of the sacraments, and to the altars, images, and candles which the Lutherani retain; to the prevalent neglect of the doctrines of grace, and to the recognition of the king as 'first bishop' of the Church. Not being prepared to join the Reformed Church of East Friesland, in consequence of their observing festivals, and for other points of difference, they formed themselves into the Free Evangelical Church of Germany. There are three ministers of this Church, who have just formed themselves into a presbytery. There are deacons and elders in the congregatiouns, and an annual conference of elders. The conference has adopted the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The members of this Church aim at the conversion both of Jews and Gentiles. The Church has been fostered by one, himself a convert of the Jewish mission at Breslau, who takes a deep interest in Jewish missions."

III. Literature. — See Kux, Organismus u. Statistik des preuss. Staates (Leips. 1842, 2d ed.); Frantz, Handb. des preuss. Staates (Quedl. and Leips. 1854-55); Hase, Church Hist. § 288, 374, 453, 456; Hagenbach, Church Hist. 18th and 19th Cent. (see Index); Alzog, Universal Kirchengesch. (see Index in vol. ii); Scriptures Rerum Prussicarum (Lips. 1863 sq.); Voigt, Gesch. Preussens, vol. i, iv; Bender, De Veterum Prutenorum Diis (Braunsb. 1865); Beitriage z. Kirchenyesch. des 19ten Jahrhunderts (Augsb. 1835); Ellendorf, Die kathol. Kirche Preussens (Rudolfst. 1837); Ranke, Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg and Hist. of Prussia (Loui. 1849, 3 vols. 8vo); Krabbe, Die evangel. Landeskirche Preussens (Berl. 1849); Kurtz, Church Hist. ii, 56, 327, 401; Baur, Religious Life in Germany (Lond. 1870, 2 vols. 8vo); Brit. and For. Ev. Rev. Oct. 1875, art. iv; Dorner, Hist. of Prot. Theol. ii, 400 sq.; Edinb. Rev. April, 1874, art. iii; Lend. Qu. Rev. April, 1874, art. i; Chambers's Cyclop. s.v., which we have used in the treatment of secular history, though without accepting its extreme anti-Prussian expressions.