JEDIN, HUBERT

Church historian; b. June 17, 1900, Grossbriesen, near Breslau, Upper-Silesia; d. July 16, 1980, Bonn, West Germany. Jedin was ordained a diocesan priest on March 2, 1924. On Sept. 1, 1933 his academic authorization was removed by the German authorities because of his "non-Aryan" background. In 1936 he was named archivist of the archdiocese of Breslau. Since his mother was of Jewish ancestry, the Gestapo arrested Father Jedin in 1938, but he was released and left Germany on Nov. 1, 1939. He spent 1939 to 1949 in Rome researching the history of the Council of trent concerning which he became the acknowledged expert. In 1951 pius xii had offered him the post of Vice-prefect of the vatican library, but he declined, preferring to succeed Wilhelm Neuss in the chair of Church history in Bonn, where he taught from 1949 to 1965.

After the 1959 announcement by Pope john xxiii that an ecumenical council would be convoked, Jedin quickly published his Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church: An Historical Outline (Eng. trans. 1960) and then in 1964 his Crisis and Closure of the Council of Trent (Eng. trans. 1967). These were prepared for students of ecclesiastical history who needed perspective on the nature of an "ecumenical council" in the Catholic Church. Jedin also served as a peritus at the council. In 1970 Pope paul vi had offered him the position of Prefect of the Vatican Library, but he declined on the grounds of advancing age and infirmity. Poor health during the 1970s slowed his progress, but in the end none of his projected works were left incomplete.

Jedin's study of Trent resulted in the publication of a variety of works: four volumes of The History of the Council of Trent (two of which have appeared in English); Papal Legate at the Council of Trent: Cardinal Seripando (1937; Eng. trans. 1947); monographs on Tommaso Campeggio (1958), Carlo Borromeo (1971), and Cardinal Caesar Baronius (1978); and a longer book dealt with the closing of Trent, Krisis und Abschluss des Trienter Konzils 1562–63 (1964). Jedin was also a generalist. He launched the massive ten-volume series History of the Church (Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte), intended as a text for students. It appeared in seven languages nearly simultaneously with the German. The tenth volume was finally translated into English in 1981, one year after Jedin's death. He also supervised the cartographic church history, Atlas zur Kirchengeschichte. Die christlichen Kirchen in Geschichte und Gegenwart, published in Germany in 1970.

The autobiographical book, Lebensbericht: Mit einem Dokumentenanhang, appeared posthumously in 1984 and was reprinted in 1988. It was not the first effort of this kind since his early youth had already been presented as "Eine Jugend in Schlesien, 1900–1925," and published in 1979 in the Archiv für schlesische Kirchengeschichte. The Lebensbericht outlines his professional career. It included the Memorandum he communicated in 1968 to the West German bishops after the annual "Katholikentag" held at Essen which seemed, to Jedin, to promote opposition to Humanae vitae. He drew upon his knowledge of Trent and the Reformation process to point out to the bishops a similar process underway in the postconciliar church. In a public controversy with Archbishop Annibale Bugnini in 1969 he published a criticism of the reform process in L'Osservatore Romano. However, these were rare interventions from a man who was a retiring and pure scholar.

Bibliography: h. jedin, Kirche des Glaubens, Kirche der Geschichte: Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Vorträge, 2 vols. (Fribourgen-Br.-Bâle-Vienne 1966). Bibliography by r. samulski and g. butterini in Jahrbuch des italienisch-deutschen historischen Instituts in Trient 6 (1980) 287–367. j. kÖhler, "Hubert Jedin, Schlesien und die schlesische Kirchengeschichte," Archiv für schlesische Kirchengeschichte 39 (1981): 12–19; "Geschichte des Konzils von Trient (1950–1975) ein Jahrhundertwerk oder der Abgesang einer kirchenhistorischen Methode," Archiv für schlesische Kirchengeschichte 55 (1997): 93–118.

[b. van hove]