BY the 1780s, every Catholic state in Europe wanted to reduce the Pope to a ceremonial figurehead, and most had succeeded. Kings and princes appointed bishops and abbots, dictated which feast days would be observed and which ignored, policed or prevented appeals to Rome, vetted the publication of papal utterances.

This was a theological as well as a political phenomenon. Under the influence of Jansenism and a growing Catholic interest in the early Church many theologians emphasised the supremacy of the bishop in the local church. The Pope was primate, and the final resort in doctrinal disputes, but papal intervention in day-to-day affairs was considered usurpation, and the Christian prince fulfilled the role of Constantine in restricting it.

The powers and actions of papal nuncios focused some of these animosities. Everyone agreed that the Pope should have diplomatic representatives at the courts of Catholic kings. But the nuncios represented the spiritual as well as the temporal authority of the Pope, and had the powers of roving archbishops. They ordained, confirmed, dispensed, they heard appeals in the territories of the local bishops. These activities were resented.When Pope Pius VI (1775-99), at the invitation of the Elector of Bavaria, established a nuncio at Munich in 1785, the heads of the German hierarchy, the archbishops of Trier, Mainz, Cologne and Strasbourg, appealed to the Emperor to curtail the power of nuncios in Germany.

Throughout Catholic Europe in the eighteenth century devout men looked for a reform of religion which would free it from superstition and ignorance, which would make it more useful, moral, rational. [i.e. that would serve the interests of the state in upholding accepted morality]

Many Catholics blamed the popes for upholding "superstition." Men of the Enlightenment disliked relics and indulgences, and Rome was the main source of both. They disapproved of ‘superstitious’ devotions like the Sacred Heart, and the religious orders who propagated them, like the Jesuits; but the papacy was the friend of such devotion. They thought that the parish church and the parish clergy were useful, but that monasteries were a bad thing, refuges for men too lazy to work, or for girls who would be better off running homes and having babies. Yet the popes supported and privileged the monastic orders, and in the process undermined the authority of the local bishops and the parish clergy.

JOSEPH II of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor since 1765 and sole ruler of Austria from the death of his mother Maria Theresa in 1780, was a devout Catholic. He was fascinated by the smallest details of Church life, and he was painstaking and pious in discharging his role as the first Prince of Christendom. Frederick the Great of Prussia sneered at ‘my brother the sacristan’. Joseph was an autocrat, though a benevolent one, who completed the liberation of the serfs begun by his mother, granted freedom of religion within his domains, and filled his kingdom with schools, orphanages, hospitals. He had no imagination, and had trouble grasping the contrariness of human nature. He was genuinely surprised that his edict forbidding the use of coffins and ordering the use of canvas sacks instead (to save on wood and ^[p.196] nails) should produce so much resistance.

The Catholic Church was the special focus of Joseph’s attempts at rationalisation and modernity, and he issued over 6,000 edicts regulating the religious life of his people. He had no doubts about his rights in such matters. Fundamental questions of doctrine fell within the jurisdiction of the Pope. Everything else in the life of the Church was for the Emperor to regulate. He was encouraged in these views by his Chancellor, Prince Kaunitz, a man with no real religious beliefs of his own, who saw the Church as a troublesome but crucial department of state.

Certainly the Church in Austria needed somebody’s attention. In places it was dominated by immensely wealthy monasteries, where a handful of monks attended by liveried servants lived like princes on revenues originally designed to support hundreds.The parochial system was patchy and antiquated, with many communities far from the nearest parish church. Joseph established a central religious fund to provide new parishes, schools and seminaries, and raised the money he needed for these purposes by dissolving monasteries. In 1781 a decree dissolved religious houses devoted exclusively to contemplation and prayer, and preserved those that did ‘useful’ work like running schools or hospitals. More than 400 houses, a third of the total, disappeared. The Pope was not consulted.

Joseph thought that the provision of enlightened parish clergy was the job of the state, and he decreed that all clergy must train in one of six general seminaries established by him. There was more to this than a desire for better theological education. In the struggle to unite a scattered empire of many peoples, centralised training of key men for the localities would help make religion the cement of empire. The syllabus at the general seminaries included Jansenist works, and textbooks minimising papal authority.

Joseph’s Church legislation offered rational solutions to real problems. It also fussed about petty details better left alone, and struck at dearly held beliefs.

Special permission was needed for processions and pilgrimages,

people were forbidden to kiss holy images or relics,

a limit (fourteen) was put on the number of candles which could be burned about an altar,

and Joseph forbade the dressing of statues in precious fabrics.

All these measures were desperately unpopular.

HIDDEN TEXT - FOR POSSIBLE FUTURE EXPANSION OF DISCUSSION of JOSEPHISM

Josephism was a set of policies and reforms enacted by Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, that sought to bring the Catholic Church in the Habsburg lands under state control. This involved reducing the power of the papacy, dissolving monasteries, and controlling clerical education. While aiming for a more efficient and unified church, these reforms were met with resistance and ultimately had limited success.

State Control:

Joseph II believed the Church should serve the state and its interests, leading to increased state oversight of religious affairs.

Reduced Papal Authority:

He restricted communication between the Austrian Church and the Pope, and insisted on royal approval for papal documents.

Dissolution of Monasteries:

Joseph II closed numerous monasteries, particularly those deemed contemplative or not contributing to society, and confiscated their wealth.

Education Reforms:

He established state-controlled seminaries and made elementary education compulsory.

Religious Toleration:

While primarily Catholic, Joseph II also granted religious freedom to Protestants and Jews.

State Matter of Marriage:

Joseph II made marriage a civil matter rather than a purely religious one.

Motivations and Goals:

Modernization:

He sought to modernize the Church, streamlining its administration and making it more accountable to the state.

National Unity:

By centralizing religious authority and education, he aimed to foster a sense of national unity within the Habsburg Empire.

Ecclesiastical policy

Its development

Joseph was the father of Josephinism, which is nothing else than the highest development of the craving common among secular princes after an episcopal and territorial church. Its beginnings can be traced in Austria to the thirteenth century, and it became clearly marked in the sixteenth, especially so far as the administration of church property was concerned. It was fostered in the second half of the eighteenth century by the spread of Febronian and Jansenist ideas, based on Gallican principles. These notions were by no means new to wide circles of German Catholics or at the court of Vienna. Prince Kaunitz, the chancellor of state, who directed Austrian politics for forty years from 1753, was a personal friend of Voltaire, and thus a zealous champion of Gallicanism. The Jansenist, Van Swieten (court-physician to Maria Theresa), was president of the imperial commission on education. At the university, “enlightenment” had powerful advocates in Martini, Sonnenfels, and Riegger, and it was there that Joseph’s idea of a national state church received its legal basis. According to natural law, the chief object of a state ought to be the greatest possible happiness of its subjects. The chief obstacles, neglect of duty and lack of mutual goodwill in individuals, religion alone can remove by its appeals to conscience. Hence the State recognizes religion as the principal factor in education: “The Church is a department of police, which must serve the aims of the State until such time as the enlightenment of the people permit of its relief by the secular police” (Sonnenfels). The canonist Riegger derived the supremacy of the State over the Church from the theory of an original compact (pactum unionis), in virtue of which the Government exercises in the name of all individuals a certain ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Jura circa sacra. Another canonist (Gmeiner) formulated the following theory: Any canonical legislation that conflicts with the interests of the State is opposed to natural law, and therefore to the will of Christ; consequently the Church has no right to enact such laws nor can the State accept them. Kaunitz reduced these principles to practice: “The supremacy of the State over the Church extends to all ecclesiastical laws and practices devised and established solely by man, and whatever else the Church owes to the consent and sanction of the secular power. Consequently, the State must always have the power to limit, alter, or annul its former concessions, whenever reasons of state, abuses, or altered circumstances demand it.” Joseph raised these propositions to principles of government, and treated ecclesiastical institutions as public departments of the State. Maria Theresa has been incorrectly represented as favouring Josephinism. Most of the measures that presaged Josephinism in the latter part of her reign had not her approval. Joseph’s entire policy was the embodiment of his idea of a centralized empire developing from within and in which all public affairs, political and ecelesiastico-political, were treated as an indivisible whole. His reforms, a medley of financial, social reformatory, and ecclesiastico-reformatory ideas, have no solid foundation.

The reforms

Bishoprics, religious orders, and benefices were limited by the Austrian boundary Non-Austrian bishops were excluded, which simplified the often very confused overlapping of diocesan authorities. The announcement of papal, in fact of all ecclesiastical, decrees, was made dependent on imperial approval (see PLACET); decisions on impediments to marriage were referred to the bishops; the communication of the bishops with Rome, and of the religious orders with their generals in foreign countries, was forbidden, partly from considerations of political economy. In 1783, while at Rome, Joseph personally threatened that he would establish an independent state-church; he abolished all exemptions from episcopal authority and by an obligatory oath brought the bishops into dependence on the State. The acceptance of papal titles and attendance at the German College in Rome were forbidden, and a German College was established at Pavia in opposition to the Roman institution.

The Edict of Toleration of 1781 granted to all denominations the free exercise of their religion and civil rights; at the same time a series of petty regulations concerning Divine service prescribed the number of the candles, the length and style of the sermons, the prayers, and hymns. All superfluous altars and all gorgeous vestments and images were to be removed; various passages in the Breviary were to have paper pasted over them; dogmatic questions were excluded from the pulpit, from which, on the other hand, all government proclamations were to be announced.

“Our Brother the Sacristan”, as Frederick the Great named Joseph, sincerely believed that in doing this he was creating a purified Divine service, and never heeded the discontent of his people and the sneers of non-Catholics.

The fundamental idea underlying a state-church is that the State is the administrator of the temporal property of the Church. Joseph embodied this idea in a law merging the funds of all churches, religious houses, and endowments within his territories, into one great fund for the various requirements of public worship, called the Religionsfonds. This fund was the pivot measure around which all other reforms turned. Not only ecclesiastical property hitherto devoted to parochial uses, not only the property which the suppressed religious houses had devoted to parochial works, but all ecclesiastical property--the still remaining religious houses, chapels, confraternities, and benefices, and all existing religious endowments whatsoever-was held to be part of the new fund. The suppression of the religious houses in 1782 affected at first only the contemplative orders. The Religionsfonds, created out of the property of the monasteries, gave a new direction to Joseph’s monastic policy. In the foreground stood” the wealthy prelacies”, which from 1783 were the chief object of his suppressions. The journey of Pius VI to Vienna was fruitless, and the laity reacted but feebly against the suppressions. Of the 915 monasteries (762 for men, and 153 for women) existing in 1780 in German Austria (including Bohemia, Moravia, and Galicia), 388 (280 for men, 108 for women) were closed-figures which are often greatly exaggerated. By these suppressions the “religious fund” reached 35,000,000 gulden ($14,000,000). Countless works of art were destroyed or found their way to second-hand dealers or the mint, numberless libraries were pitilessly scattered.

The suppression of the tertiaries and hermits brought no increase to the fund, and the suppression of the confraternities (1783) was likewise a financial failure. They were looked upon as sources of superstition and religious fanaticism; half their property was allotted to educational purposes, the other half was given over, “with all their ecclesiastical privileges, indulgences, and graces”, to a new “Single Charitable Association”, which possessed the features of both a confraternity and a charitable institution and was intended to end all social distress. But the people had little taste for this “enlightened confraternity”. The suppression of the filial churches and chapels-of-ease permitted the creation of new parishes. In carrying out this measure and in the suppression of the confraternities, Joseph’s reforms met with the first popular resistance. The endowments for Masses and altars, for oratories, chapels-of-ease, and confraternities, for processions and pilgrimages, and for devotions no longer permitted in the new arrangement of Divine service, all went to the Religionsfonds, which undertook to satisfy the provisions for Masses, wherever the fact of endowment could be proved. Joseph assigned a definite number as pensions for dispossessed monks and as the stipends of parochial clergy. Benefices without cure of souls, prebends in the larger churches, and all canonries above a fixed number, belonging to collegiate churches and cathedral chapters, were forfeited to the “religious fund”, and the incumbents transferred to parochial positions. A maximum was fixed for the endowment of bishoprics, the surplus being turned over to the “religious fund, as were also the incomes of livings during their vacancy.

The first duty of the “religious fund” was to provide for the ex-religious. Their number did not exceed ten thousand. They received a yearly salary of 150 to 200 gulden ($60 to $80), and the monks were transferred to parochial and scholastic work. The state-church reached its fullest expression in the parochial organization. The State undertook to train and remunerate the clergy, to present to livings, and to regulate Divine service. No parish church was to be over an hour’s walk from any parishioner; and a church was to be provided for every 700 souls. The monasteries which still remained bore the main burden of the parochial organization, and their inmates, as well as the ex-monks, were required to pass a state concursus for the pastoral positions, while only in cases of extreme necessity did the “religious fund” furnish the means for the building of churches and rectories, for the care of cemeteries and the equipment of churches. Naturally, the “religious fund” had to pay the costs of placing the clergy under state control, of the general seminaries and the support of the young clerics, who thus became wholly dependent on the Government, of the institutes for the practical education of the clergy, which were to be established in every diocese, and of the support of sick and aged priests after the incorporation with the “religious fund” of the funds created for superannuated priests (Emeritenfonds) and to supply needed support (Defizientenfonds).

The academic reforms of Maria Theresa (Studienreform) and of Rautenstrauch (Studienplan) in 1776, and the introduction of Riegger’s “Manual of Canon Law”, paved the way for the creation of the general theological seminaries. Joseph founded twelve: at Vienna, Graz, Prague, Olmütz, Presburg, Pesth, Innsbruck, Freiburg, Lemberg (two for Galicia, Greek and Latin Rites), Louvain, and Pavia. In 1783 all the monastic schools and diocesan houses of studies were suppressed. The “general seminaries” were boarding-houses (Konvikte) connected with the universities; some of them, however, had their own theological courses. Five years of study in the seminary were followed by one in the bishop’s training-house (Priesterhaus) or in a monastery. The principles of the seminary directors were Liberal, in keeping with the rationalistic theology of the State. Sharp opposition arose, especially on the part of the ecclesiastical foundations (Stifte) and the monasteries. The novices, educated at their expense in the general seminaries, for the most part lost their monastic vocation. Some of the general seminaries were badly managed, At Innsbruck, Pavia, and Louvain, unsuitable directors were appointed; at Louvain the general seminary was eventually the cause of a civil war and of the revolt of Belgium. However, other seminaries sent forth efficient pastors and learned theologians (Freiburg). The fermentation within the ranks of the clergy of southwest Germany and Austria until after the middle of the nineteenth century came from the Liberal ideas imbibed at this time.

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