(S. D. VAN VEEN.)
BrsiioGcRapuHy: The only edition of the Opera was published at Groningen, 1614, reprint, Amsterdam, 1617. The earliest ‘‘ Life’? was by A. Hardenberg (A. Rizzeus) and was prefixed to the Opera, ut sup. Consult further: H. von der Hardt, Memoria Chrysolore, Byzantini, Helmstadt, 1718; J. Wessel, G. H. Goetzi . . . commentationem ...de Joanne Wesselo . . . tuebitur, Liibeck, 1719; J. M. Schroeckh, Christliche Kirchengeschichte, xxxili. 278- 295, 45 vols., Leipsic, 1768-1812; W. Muurling, Commentatio . . . de Wesseli Gansfortii cum vita, Utrecht, 1831; idem, Oratio de Wesseli . . . principiis atque virtutibus, Groningen, 1840; B. Biahring, Leben Johann Wessels, 2d ed., Bielefeld, 1852; O. Jaeger, J. Wycliffe wnd seine Bedeutung fiir die Reformation, Halle, 1854; J. Friedrich, Johann Wessel, Regensburg, 1862; J. J. Doedes, in T'SK, 1870; P. Hoffstede de Groot, Johan Wessel Ganzevoort, Groningen, 1871; C. Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, ii. 263-615 (a critical account of the literature, pp. 610-615, which the earnest student should not overlook), Edinburgh, 1877, cf. his Johann Wessel, ein Vorgénger Luthers, Hamburg, 1834; S. Kettlewell, Thomas & Kempis, and the Brothers of Common Life, 2 vols., London, 1882, 2d ed., abridged, chap. xiv., ib. 1885; Bayle, Dictionary, v. 543-547.
WESSENBERG, ves’sen-barg, IGNAZ HEIN- RICH KARL VON: Liberal Roman Catholic; b. at Dresden Nov. 4, 1774; d. at Constance Aug. 6, 1860. He began his education in the Institut St. Salvator at Augsburg, then changed to Dillingen (where Johann Michael Sailer, q.v., was teaching), and then to the University of Wurzburg, where he became acquainted with Karl Theodor von Dalberg, who was greatly to influence his life; he next attended the University of Vienna, spending the most
It is the purifying pain’
of his energies, however, in the library and in making the acquaintance of a circle of men highly placed in political position. In 1798 he went to Constance, where he had a prebend in the cathedral, pursuing, meanwhile, his studies in history and canon law. Here a pbetical letter, Ueber den Verfall der Sitten in Deutschland (Zurich, 1799), indicated the general bent of his thought. He held a high ecclesiastical positiontnext in Augsburg; by this time Dalberg was bishop of Constance, and he invited Wessenberg to his diocese as vicar-general. In this position he worked so effectively that he soon gained papal approval in a special brief. He sought to make conditions there higher and more ethical, worked for the foundation of seminaries for the priesthood, inaugurated ministerial conferences, attempted to improve the sermon and catechetical exercises, and aroused by these measures great hostility and caused complaint to Rome. On the death of Dalberg he was nominated as administrator of the diocese, but the false assertion that he denied the deity of Christ and other complaints caused the Curia to reject the nomination. At Rome the pope refused him audience, and his general reception was unfavorable. In 1827 he laid down his office and retired to private life at Constance, though he served in the Baden house of representatives and was honored by high and low.
Two leading ideas controlled Wessenberg’s life: he desired to see a national German Catholic Church and the revival of councils, and these purposes gained for him the enmity of the Curia. He regarded the Gallican Church with its four articles of 1682 as an excellent model; and toward a church of this pattern in Germany he labored at the congress at Vienna in 1814, using his influence and his pen— Die deutsche Kirche, ein Vorschlag zu threr neuen Begriindung und Einrichtung (1815)—but in vain. In his ecclesiastical and theological thinking he was midway between Sailer and Benedikt Maria Werkmeister (q.v.), excelling both in political insight and energy. He was especially anxious to see a return to the conditions of primitive Christianity. In his major work, Die grossen Kirchenversammlungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (4 vols., 1840), in spite of the mass of materials which he had read, there fail the notes of solid learning and scientific method. His brochures on practical theology display little depth of acuteness. So his Gott und die Welt, oder das Verhdltnis der Dinge zueinander und zu Gott (2 vols., 1857) does not transcend the limits of a popularly philosophical presentation. He also was known as a poet (Sdmtliche Dichtungen, 7 vols., Stuttgart and Tiibingen, 1834-54). Other works were: Betrachtungen viber die Verhiltnisse der katholischen Kirche in Umfange des deutschen Bundes (1816); Die christlichen Bilder (1826-27); and Ueber Schwérmeret (1832). Where he shines is as a Christian character, to which were added the graces of a noble culture. These worked out into a liberal, patriotic, and broad Catholicism, which was, however, denied its fruition through the entrance into his region of a Jesuitical and Romanizing Catholicism. (K. BENRATH.)
Brsiiocrapuy: Sketches of the life have been issued by J. Beck, Freiburg, 1862; Kreuz, St. Gall, 1863; Friedrich, in F, von Weech, Badische Biographien, vol. ii., Darm-