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Bartholomew Holzhauser (Laugna, 24 August, 1613 - Bingen, 20 May, 1658) was a German priest, founder of a religious community and visionary and writer of prophecies.
Holzhauser was born into the family of Leonard and Catherine Holzhauser, who were poor, pious, and honest people. There were eleven children. Leonard Holzhauser practised as a shoemaker. Young Holzhauser developed a great love for books and an earnest desire to enter the sacred ministry.
At Augsburg he was admitted to a free school for poor boys, earning his living by singing at the doors and begging. He fell sick of an epidemic then raging, and after his recovery went home and for a time helped his father at work.
Then, with the aid of kind friends and especially of the Jesuits, he continued his studies at Neuburg and Ingolstadt. His teachers were unanimous in praising his talents, his piety, and modesty, and entertained great hopes of his usefulness for the Church.
On 9 July, 1636, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, then studied theology, in which he merited the baccalaureate on 11 May, 1639. He was ordained priest by the Bishop of Eichstätt, and said his first Holy Mass on Pentecost Sunday, 12 June, 1639 in the church of Our Lady of Victory at Ingolstadt.
He exercised his priestly functions at this place for some time, and was soon much sought after as a confessor. In the meantime he attended the lectures at the university and was declared licentiate of theology on 14 June, 1640. On 1 August of the same year he came into the Archdiocese of Salzburg, and was made dean and pastor of Tittmoning.
On 2 February, 1642, the Bishop of Chiemsee called him as pastor to St. John's at Leukenthal, then Leoggenthal, in the Tyrol.
In the spring of 1655, on the invitation of Archbishop Johann Philipp von Schönborn, he went to Mainz and was soon appointed pastor at Bingen on the Rhine, and in 1657 dean of the district of Algesheim.
Here he died at the age of only forty-five. Many wonderful things are related of him, extraordinary cures and the like. On the occasion of the second centenary of his death a great celebration was held at Bingen in the presence of te Bishop of Mainz. His remains were again found, and in 1880 a new monument was erected over his grave at the parish church. He was declared venerable by the Roman Catholic Church.
Holzhauser founded the Bartholomites, also called United Brethren, or, as they are officially called, the Institutum clericorum sæcularium in communi viventium, which also called Communists, in the aftermath of the Thirty Years War in Europe. Because Faith had become lukewarm among the faithful and morals and discipline had relaxed not only in the laity but also in the clergy, he decided to establish a new religious society as remedy.
This would become a congregation of secular priests, who would lead an apostolic life in community and become models of priestly perfection and zealous leaders of the people. Their principle tast was to educate in the seminaries. The members of the secular congregation were expected to live in the seminaries, or in twos or threes in the parishes, and to follow out a set routine of daily prayers and exercises. Funds were to be in common, and all female servants were to be discarded. No vows were to be taken, but a simple promise of obedience to the superior was to be made, confirmed by an oath.
Holzhauser first tried to establish such a community in the diocese of Eichstätt, but did not succeed. At Tittmoning, encouraged by John Christopher von Lichtenstein, Bishop of Chiemsee, suffragan and principal adviser of the Archbishop of Salzburg, he made a good beginning. Priests joined from the diocese of Chiemsee and from other dioceses.
Holzhauser was a visionary, and made his vision public by presenting them in 1646 to Emperor Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor and to Duke Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria. These visions, with a commentary showing their partial fulfilment, were published in German in 1849 by Ludwig Clarus.
One of the prophetic visions is about England. Holzhauser foresees the execution of Charles I of England and the complete ruin of the Church in that kingdom, but also that, after the Holy Sacrifice has ceased for 120 years, England would be converted and do more for religion than it had done after its first conversion. This seems to have been fulfilled, for prohibition of Mass under penalty of capital punishment was enacted in 1658, and partially recalled in 1778.
He also wrote a remarkable work on the last book of the New Testament, the Revelation or the Apocalypse, which today still is held in high regard by roman-catholics. He interprets the book of the Apocalypse as folows. The seven stars and the seven candlesticks seen by St. John signify seven periods of the history of the Church from its foundation to its consummation at the final judgement. To these periods correspond the seven churches of Asia Minor, the seven days of the Mosaic record of creation, the seven ages before Christ, and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. Since, he says, all life is developed in seven stages, so God has fixed seven periods for regeneration.
The central features of this Apocalyptic commentary, the strong ruler or Grand Monarch and the Holy Pope, a favourite subject of medieval prophecy, as well as the division of church history into seven periods.
At the death of Holzhauser the community had members at Chiemsee, Salzburg, Freising, Eichstätt, Würzburg, and Mainz.
The institute had many enemies and did not meet with the appreciation it deserved, so that at the end of the eighteenth century it became extinct, after having had 1595 members.
Holzhauser wrote the following religious works: