THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
CULDEES. See Celtic Church in Britain AND Ireland, III., 2, § 4.
CULM, BISHOPRIC OF: A bishopric in West Prussia, originally the southernmost in the territory of the Teutonic Order. It was constituted in 1243 by the legate of Innocent IV., Bishop William of Modena, and included the lands between the rivers Weichsel, Ossa, and Drewenz. The bishop's seat was originally Culmsee (85 m. s. of Danzig) and is now Pelplin (50 m. farther north). The first bishop was the Dominican Heidenreich (1245- 1263), who encouraged colonization and, strongly supported by the Teutonic Order, built many churches. The bishop was the temporal as well as the spiritual ruler, but excercised his judicial and legislative rights through an appointed sheriff, who was also the military leader in case of need. As in the three other Prussian bishoprics founded during the supremacy of the Teutonic Order, the bishops recognized a certain not strictly feudal suzerainty in its heads, whose decisions were either taken in consultation with them or accepted by them on promulgation. Aimual visitations (known as synodi laicales) were held by the bishop or his deputies; diocesan synods are known to have been held in 1438 and 1481; and provincial synods met in 1427 at Elbing and 1428 at Riga, under the metropolitan jurisdiction of which latter see Culm was placed by Alexander IV in 1255. By the Peace of Thorn in 1466 Culm, with a part of Prussia, came under Polish rule, and the bishopric, henceforth a secular one, was to be subjected to the archbishop of Gnesen — though the last provision was not confirmed by the pope, and it was only after the see of Riga had perished in the Reformation that Bishop Peter Kostka (1577) sought union with Gnesen. The Reformation had been presaged in the fifteenth century by considerable Hussite and Wyclifite activity; and in the sixteenth, in spite of secular repressive measures, the Protestants rapidly increased in numbers, and won religious liberty in Thorn from King Sigismund in 1558. Most of the diocese came under Prussian rule at the first partition of Poland in 1772 (Thorn not untU the second in 1793), and the estates of the bishop, chapter, and monasteries were confiscated by the State, which undertook to pay over half the net annual revenues. The Protestant faith, which had been kept down under the Polish government, now spread once more under the Prussian crown, which has had possession of the district except when (1807-15) it formed a part of the duchy of Warsaw.
Bibliography: Urkundenbuch des Bistums Culm, ed. C. P. Woelky, Danzig, 1884-87; F. Schulz, Geschichte der Stadt und des Kreisea Kulm, Danzig, 1876-77.
CULVERWEL, NATHANAEL : An EngHsh philosophical writer, belonging to the school known as the " Cambridge Platonists " (q.v.); b. about 1615; d. not later than 1651. He became a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1633, B.A., 1636, and M.A., 1640, and was elected to a fellowship in 1642. His chief work, the Discourse of the Light of Nature, was published with several smaller treatises in 1652 (newed., Edinburgh, 1857). It seems to have been suggested by the De veritute of his contempo-
rary Lord Herbert of Cherbury (see Deism, I., § 1), with whose views on epistemology he coincides to a remarkable degree, though controverting his attack upon Christianity from the side of reason. For grandeur and harmony of conception, as well as for rare insight and the spiritual rapture which is almost the only trace of the Calvinism in which he was apparently brought up, the book is one of the most striking productions of the Cambridge school. Its main theme is the use of reason and the special nobility of its function in the search after truth; a second part was projected, to deal with the conciliation of faith and reason, against the Socinians and other opponents of the Gospel of Christ.
Bibliography: E. T. Campagnac, The Cambridge Platonists, Selections from the Writings of N. Culverwel, Oxford, 1901; J. Tulloch, Rational Theology ... in England in 17th Cent., ii. 410-426, Edinburgh, 1872; DNB, xii. 288-289.