LAMBERT LE BèAGUE; Belgian ecclesiastic; b. in the first quarter of the twelfth century of a

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13, 1901. He studied in Bonn, and was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood in 1859. After being curate in Wervelinghoven, near Neuss, for a year, he was chaplain and lecturer at the Roman Catholic theological institute at Bonn until 1861, when he became privet-docent for New-Testament exegesis in the university. He was appointed professor extraordinary in 1864, and full professor in 1867. Before his break with Roman Catholicism in 1870, he published Die deuterokanonischen Stucke des Buches Esther (Freiburg, 1862); Die letzten Lebenstage Jesu (1864); Das Judentum in Palastina zur Zeit Christi (1866); and Grundriss der Einleitung in das Neue Testament (1868). In the latter work the author's divergence from the rising ultramontane school became manifest, and the second edition, though essentially identical with the first, could no longer appear at Freiburg, but was published at Bonn in 1873. It was natural that Langen should join the protest against Ultramontanism (q.v.), and with his colleagues at Bonn he was suspended and excommunicated by the archbishop of Cologne in 1872. He took an active part in the organization of the Old Catholic Church, drew up the Old Catholic catechism and the Leitfaden fur den Religionsunterricht an den hoheren Schulen, and was president of the committee appointed for the theological interpretation of the question of union with the Greek Church. When the fifth Old Catholic synod in 1878 annulled the obligation of celibacy, he retired from pastoral activity and thenceforth took part in Old Catholic church-life only on special occasions.

Becoming, through stress of circumstances, a historian instead of an exegete, Langen now wrote the book which was to be at once the scientific basis of Old Catholicism and the justification of opposition to Vaticanism, Das vatikanische Dogma von dem Universal-Episkopat und der Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes in seinem Verhaltnis zum Neuen Testament und zur kirchlichen Ueberlieferung (3 parts, Bonn, 1871-73). To this same period belongs Die Kirchenvater und das Neue Testament (1874); but the chief work of his later life was his Geschichte der romischen Kirche, quellenmassig dargestellt (4 vols., 1881-93), which extends to the death of Innocent III. (1216) and forms the historic counterpart of his more theoretical Vatikanisches Dogma. He promised also a supplementary volume which should contain a resume of the history of the papal power from the death of Innocent to modern times, but this, though it probably exists in manuscript, has never appeared. In his studies on the development of the papacy Langen wrote also Die Klemensromane (Gotha, 1890), while as an advocate of union between the Old Catholics and the Greek Church he wrote Die trinitarische Lehrdiferenz zwischen der abendlandischen und morgenlandischen Kirche (Bonn, 1876) and Johannes von Damaskus (Gotha, 1879).

Although opinions upon Langen's scholarship differ, in great part because of the fundamental divergence of the points of view of Evangelical and Old Catholic thought, he was, at all events, an inspiring teacher, despite the fact that personally he was solitary, strongly pessimistic, and frequently over-severe in his judgment of men and conditions.

(L. K. GOETZ.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Consult the literature under OLD CATHOLICS.