Background
Johann Friedrich was born on the 5th of March, 1836 in Poxdorf, Upper Franconia, Germany.
Johann Friedrich was born on the 5th of March, 1836 in Poxdorf, Upper Franconia, Germany.
Johann Friedrich was prominent as a leader of the Old Catholics. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1859. In 1865, he was appointed extraordinary professor of theology.
In 1867, Johann Friedrich was appointed to the Academy of Sciences. He was a pupil of Ignaz von Döllinger. In 1869 he went to the Vatican Council as secretary to Cardinal Hohenlohe, and took an active part in opposing the dogma of papal infallibility, notably by supplying the opposition bishops with historical and theological material.
Johann Friedrich left Rome before the council closed. The path was fairly open before him to the highest advancement in the Church of Rome, yet he deliberately sacrificed all such hopes and placed himself in the van of a hard and doubtful struggle" (The Guardian, 1872, p 1004). A sentence of excommunication was passed on Friedrich in April 1871, but he refused to acknowledge it and was upheld by the Bavarian government.
Johann Friedrich continued to perform ecclesiastical functions and maintained his academic position, becoming an ordinary professor in 1872. In 1874, he inaugurated the Old Catholic theological faculty at the University of Bern and lectured there for a year. In Bavaria, in 1882, the Minister of Public Worship, yielding to ultramontane pressure, transferred him from his chair in theology to the philosophical faculty as professor of history.