into concordats with Rome, and Febronianism from an aggressive policy subsided into a speculative opinion. As such it survived strongly, especially in the universities (Bonn especially had been, from its foundation in 1774, very Febronian), and it reasserted itself vigorously in the attitude of many of the most learned German prelates and professors towards the question of the definition of the Roman Catholic dogma of Papal infallibility in 1870. It was, in fact, against the Febronian position that the decrees of the First Vatican Council were deliberately directed, and their promulgation marked the triumph of the ultramontane view. In Germany, indeed, the struggle against the papal monarchy was carried on for a while by the governments on the Kulturkampf, the Old Catholics representing militant Febronianism. The latter, however, since Otto von Bismarck "went to Canossa," have sunk into a respectable but comparatively obscure sect, and Febronianism, though it still has some hold on opinion within the Church in the chapters and universities of the Rhine provinces, is practically extinct in Germany. Its revival under the guise of Modernism drew from Pope Pius X in 1908 the scathing condemnation embodied in the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. See also First Vatican Council Gallicanism Jacob Anton Zallinger zum Thurn Josephinism Ultramontanism Old University of Leuven Anticurialism Notes References External links History of Catholicism in Germany