In the 1780s, Emperor Joseph II implemented reforms of the Catholic Church in Austria. By the time of his death in 1790, Joseph had cut off the Austrian Church from Rome, dissolved one-third of the monasteries in the Habsburg Empire, made marriage a state matter, granted toleration to Protestants, controlled clerical education, and restricted many religious activities. After the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815), Europe retreated toward conservatism, and reform in Austria ended. Yet most of the religious changes in the 1780s, aptly labeled Josephinism, remained in the Austrian Church.
This thesis will examine the persistence of Josephinism in the Austrian Church. Austria continued to restrict communication between the Church and the papacy, used books banned by Rome in its clerical educational system, tolerated Protestants, retained control of marriage laws, and regulated overall religious activity. Josephinism was a compromise between anticlerical liberalism and the Catholic reaction that characterized several other European nations after 1815. Austria censored egregiously anticlerical literature and tolerated religious minorities in a manner that did not offend ordinary Catholics. Bureaucrats cultivated the support of the growing liberal middle classes, who supported a reduction in the Churchs temporal power, by attempting to restrain zealotry. This religious settlement helped ensure political and religious stability in the Restoration (1815-1848).
Through the lens of Church policy, one can see Austrias response to the challenges of modernization. Austrian officials remained committed to the ideals of Josephinism, and religious policy in the Habsburg Empire was surprisingly progressive and peaceful until the Revolutions of 1848. For the Restoration era, Josephinism worked well as a balance between Catholic reaction and the secularism of the modern world. But in the 1850s, Emperor Francis Joseph dismantled the Josephinist Church and concluded a concordat with Rome that favored the papacy. When international events forced the emperor to share power in the 1860s, the concordat and other conservative Church policies of the 1850s became an easy target for anticlerical liberals. This religious turmoil in the 1850s and 1860s confirms that the moderate Church policy pursued before 1848 had, indeed, been the proper course of action for Austria.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-07092010-111611 |
| Date | 13 July 2010 |
| Creators | Berg, Scott M |
| Contributors | Lindenfeld, David, Marchand, Suzanne, Martin, Benjamin |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-07092010-111611/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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