​HUBER, JOHANN NEPOMUK (1830-1879), German philosophical and theological writer, a leader of the Old Catholics, was born at Munich on the 18th of August 1830. Originally destined for the priesthood, he early began the study of theology. By the writings of Spinoza and Oken, however, he was strongly drawn to philosophical pursuits, and it was in philosophy that he “ habilitated ” (1854) in the university of his native place, where he ultimately became professor (extraordinaries, 1859; ordinaries, 1864. With Dollinger and others he attracted a large amount of public attention in 1869 by the challenge to the Ultramontane promoters of the Vatican council in the treatise Der Papst und das Koneil, which appeared under the pseudonym of “Janus,” and also in 1870 by a series of letters (Romische Briefs, a redaction of secret reports sent from Rome during the sitting of the council), which were published over the pseudonym Quirinus in the Allgemeine Zeitnng. He died suddenly of heart disease at Munich on the 20th of March 1879

Works.—The treatise Uber die Willensfreiheit (1858), followed in 1859 by Die Philosophie der Kirchenvater, which was promptly placed upon the Indev, and led to the prohibition of all Catholic students from attending his lectures; Johannes Seutus Erigena (1861); Die Idea der Unsterblichkeit (1864); Studien (1867), Der Proletarier; zur Orientzrung in der sozialen Frage (1865), Der Jesuitenorden nach seiner Verfassung und Doetrin, Wirksamkeit und Geschichte (1873), also placed upon the Index; Der Pessimismus der Astronomie (1878); Das Gedachtnis (1878). He also published adverse criticisms of Darwin, Strauss, Hartmann and Haekel; pamphlets on Das Papsttum und der Staat (1870), and on Die Freiheiten der franzosischen Kirche (1871); and a volume of Kleine Schrzften (1871).

See E Zirngiebl, Johannes Huber (1881); and M. Carriére in fllégemeine deutsche Btographie, xiii. (1881), and in Nord und Sud 1 79 .