resses delivered in the Catholic congress at Malines were a
declaration in the direction of a Liberal solution of the problem of the
relations of Church and State. The pope for a moment seemed to hesitate,
but there could be little doubt what course he would ultimately pursue,
and after four days' debate the assembly was closed at his command. On
the 8th of December 1864 Pius IX. issued the famous _Syllabus_, in
which he declared war against modern science and progress (see
SYLLABUS). It was in connexion with this question that Dollinger
published his _Past and Present of Catholic Theology_ (1863) and his
_Universities Past and Present_ (Munich, 1867).

We now approach the critical period of Dollinger's life. It was about
this time that some of the leading theologians of the Roman Catholic
Church, conceiving that the best way of meeting present perils was to
emphasize, as well as to define more clearly, the authority of the pope,
advised him to make his personal infallibility a dogma of the Church,
and urged strenuously on him the necessity of calling a council for that
purpose. There was considerable opposition in various quarters. Many
bishops and divines considered the proposed definition a false one.
Others, though accepting it as the truth, declared its promulgation to
be inopportune. But the headquarters of the opposition was Germany, and
its leader was Dollinger, whose high reputation and vast stores of
learning placed him far above any other member of the band of the
theological experts who now gathered around him. Among them were his
intimate friends Johann Friedrich (q.v.) and J. N. Huber, in Bavaria. In
the rest of Germany he found many supporters, chiefly professors in the
Catholic faculty of theology at Bonn: among these were the famous
canonist von Schulte, Franz Heinrich Reusch, the ecclesiastical
historian Joseph Langen, as well as J. H. Reinkens, afterwards bishop of
the Old Catholic Church in Germany, Knoodt, and other distinguished
scholars. In Switzerland, Professor Edward Herzog, who became Old (or,
as it is sometimes called, Christ-) Catholic bishop in Switzerland, and
other learned men supported the movement. Early in 1869 the famous
_Letters of Janus_ (which were at once translated into English; 2nd ed.
_Das Papsttum_, 1891) began to appear. They were written by Dollinger in
conjunction with Huber and Friedrich, afterwards professor at Munich. In
these the tendency of the _Syllabus_ towards obscur