Baron Friedrich von Hgel

Born 5 May 1852, the elder son of the then Austrian minister to Tuscany, Friedrich Maria Aloys Franz Karl Freiherr von Hgel came to England when his father retired in 1867. His mother, Elizabeth Farquharson, was a convert to Roman Catholicism and he was brought up in this faith, marrying Mary Catherine Herbert and settling first in Hampstead and then in Kensington. A frequent visitor to Rome, a self taught biblical scholar, with a fluency in French, German and Italian as well as his adopted English, his willingness to consider the possible advantages of new approaches in biblical criticism, allied to a sharp rejection of much of the immanentism in contemporary theology, brought him into contact with a wide group of Catholic scholars who wished to see the Vatican permit a greater degree of freedom of exploration in subjects thus far seen as the exclusive preserve of the dogmatic theologians.

As the influence of historical and scientific methods grew in the academic world and the implications of the new social and psychological sciences impinged on traditional academic disciplines, Roman Catholic scholars in the last years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the new century began, hesitantly, to propose that their own communion should adopt what was best in the new disciplines to enhance the presentation of their faith to the contemporary world. In this they enjoyed the sympathy of many fellow Christians, not of their communion, who nonetheless sought to sustain them by example, by encouragement and by mutual support. Von Hgel played a central role in this Roman Catholic Modernist movement.

...