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Policing the Subject: Confessional Absolutism and Communal Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century Austria
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2009
Extract
If proverbial wisdom predicts longevity to the falsely proclaimed dead, then the paradigm of absolutism and its confessional variant must surely be considered a prime example. Having drawn intense fire from scholars of Western Europe over the past two decades, the concept of absolutism has recently been given a fresh lease of life by research, exploring and, to some extent, vindicating its applicability in the context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Central Europe. Given the evolutionary nature of the making of the early modern Austrian-Habsburg monarchy, the complexity of its constitutional, religious, and ethnic makeup, and the waywardness of some of its governing personnel, it seems doubtful if future research will ever be able to satisfactorily clarify the relationship between the political aspirations of individual Austrian rulers, among whom Ferdinand II arguably made the most serious bid for absolute rule, and the practice of negotiated power that characterized the normal state of relations between the Crown and the monarchy's estates.
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- Forum in Honor of R.J.W. Evans
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- Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2009
References
1 For an excellent survey and critical appraisal of the historiography of absolutism and its variants, see the introduction by the editors in Mat'a, Petr and Winkelbauer, Thomas, eds., Die Habsburgermonarchie 1620–1740. Leistungen und Grenzen des Absolutismusparadigmas (Stuttgart, 2006)Google Scholar. The state of the debate among Central European scholars is illustrated by the papers in this volume, which engage critically but by and large sympathetically with the concept.
2 The notion of “Austria” in this period and the complex and elusive nature of early modern Austrian statehood is analysed perceptively in the introduction by Evans, R. J. W. to Ingrao, Charles W., ed., State and Society in Early Modern Austria (West Lafayette, IN, 1994), 1–23Google Scholar.
3 Evans, R. J. W., The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar. The difficulties and—in the case of Bohemia—opportunities of governing compact political entities as part of a composite monarchy are discussed in: Evans, R. J. W., “The Habsburg Monarchy and Bohemia, 1526–1848,” in Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe, Greengrass, Mark, ed. (London, 1991), 134–54Google Scholar; and Evans, R. J. W., Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar. The mental and political worlds of two of the more wayward Austrian Habsburgs are discussed in: Evans, R. J. W., Rudolf II and His World. A Study in Intellectual History 1576–1612 (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar; and Fichtner, Paula Sutter, Emperor Maximilian II (New Haven and London, 2001)Google Scholar.
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5 The concept of communal autonomy as developed by Peter Blickle is applied to a Central European and specifically Austrian context in the contributions by Steinar Imsen and Günter Vogler and the chapter by Sergij Vilfan in Blickle, Peter, ed., Resistance, Representation and Community (Oxford, 1997), 12–18Google Scholar, 27–41, 97–99, 109–12.
6 Details from the London press were reported in the January and May issues of the Scots Magazine in 1745, vol. 7, pp. 44–45, 243. The January issue speaks of 46,000 Jews in Bohemia. Israel, Jonathan, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1985), 239CrossRefGoogle Scholar, supplies figures for the demographic impact of Maria Theresa's edict. Reverse migration occurred to a certain extent after 1748, but in 1754, the Jewish population in Bohemia was an estimated 29,000.
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11 See Bahlcke, Joachim, “Konfessionspolitik und Staatsinteressen – Zur Funktion der brandenburgisch-preußischen Interventionen zugunsten der ungarischen Protestanten nach dem Westfälischen Frieden',” Jahrbuch für Schlesische Kirchengeschichte 76/77 (1997/98): 177–87Google Scholar, here 180.
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18 Charles's instructions are quoted in full in Gindely, Processierung, footnotes to pp. 19–20 and pp. 24–26.
19 Ducreux, “Reading unto death,” 198.
20 This was, for example, the main point of his instructions for the Inner Austrian Aulic Chamber in his Resolution of 29 August 1733, DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1731–1735, XV-b-23.
21 Rounded figures on the basis of: Buchinger, E., Die ‘Landler’ in Siebenbürgen (Munich, 1980), 81–102Google Scholar, 121–25, 144–46.
22 Imperial Decree, copy for the administrator in Donnerspach (Upper Styria), 20 August 1731, Styrian State Archive Graz (=STMLA), Landschaftliches Archiv, “Religion und Kirche,” Schuber 30.
23 Inner Austrian Government to the Commission in Religious Affairs (Hofkommission in Religionssachen), 5 July 1732, STMLA, MS 864, no. 87.
24 Printed copy of the Imperial Patent of 7/12 August 1733, Graz, 24 December 1735, STMLA, Landschaftliches Archiv, “Religion und Kirche,” Schuber 30.
25 Imperial Resolutions of 11 January 1736 and 8/9 February 1737, STMLA, Landschaftliches Archiv, “Religion und Kirche,” Sch. 30 and 31. His decree for the Inner Austrian Privy Council of 31 August and 3 September 1737 ordered suspect settlers from Salzburg to be dispatched to Transylvania without religion being made the official charge (“ohne das der Religions punct dabey den nahmen trage”). Loc. cit., Sch. 30.
26 For the campaigns and diplomacy of the Silesian wars, see Anderson, M. S., The War of the Austrian Succession 1740–1748 (London, 1995)Google Scholar. The diplomatic and military dimension of the Seven Years' War as a sequel to this conflict are discussed from a European perspective in the magisterial account by Szabo, Franz, The Seven Years' War in Europe 1756–1763 (Harlow, 2008)Google Scholar. The argument that Austrian-Prussian antagonism as provoked by the loss of Silesia be taken as the starting point for a thorough reorganization of Austria's system of foreign policy was put forth in a memorandum by state chancellor Wenzel Anton Kaunitz on the situation created by the Peace of Aachen in 1748, Denkschrift of 24 March 1749, ed. by Pommerin, Reiner and Schilling, Lothar, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Beiheft 2 (1986), 165–239Google Scholar.
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28 The Prussian case should be seen as part of a wider contemporary movement that began in the late seventeenth century against the background of French expansionism and fears of popish plots. For a comparative analysis of early modern Protestant rhetoric, see Ihalainen, Pasi, Protestant Nations Redefined. Changing Perceptions of National Identity in the Rhetoric of the English, Dutch and Swedish Public Churches, 1685–1772 (Brill, 2005)Google Scholar.
29 Prussia fell to some extent victim to its own strategy in the case of Silesia. Vienna's scope of direct action on behalf of the Silesian Catholics was in fact very limited after the Peace of Dresden in 1745, but Frederick II was nevertheless appalled by Maria Theresa's intercession in 1746 for the Jesuits of Glogau and her even more ominous insistence on the bishop of Breslau's rights of nomination to vacant sees that Frederick claimed for himself as Landesfürst. The treaty of Dresden had confirmed the terms of the treaties of Breslau and Berlin of 1742 regarding the status of the Catholic Church and population, and Maria Theresa's invocation of these clauses fuelled fears that a permanent inroad to Viennese influence had been created. The king's lasting fears of Viennese subversion exerted a formative influence on Prussian religious policy in Silesia beyond 1748. See Bergerhausen, Hans-Wolfgang, Friedensrecht und Toleranz. Zur Politik des preußischen Staates gegenüber der katholischen Kirche in Schlesien 1740–1806 (Berlin, 1999), 42–123Google Scholar. The apologists of eighteenth-century power politics could, of course, build on a long-standing tradition. In the early modern period, the ancient “just war” argument was revived and refined in support of humanitarian interventionism in Thomas More's Utopia, and the argument was given a distinctly confessional twist in the sixteenth century by authors like Francisco de Vitoria in his writings on the American Indians in 1532; cp. More, Thomas, Utopia, edited by Logan, George M. and Adams, Robert M. (Cambridge, 1988), 87–88Google Scholar: “They [i.e., the Utopians, R. P.] go to war only for good reasons: to protect their own land, to drive armies from the territories of their friends, or to liberate an oppressed people, in the name of humanity, from tyranny and servitude.” For Vitoria on just war for the dissemination of the gospel, protection of converts, and defense of the innocent against tyranny, see de Vitoria, Francisco, On the American Indians, Question 3, Article 2, §12–§15, in Vitoria, Political Writings, edited by Pagden, Anthony and Lawrance, Jeremy (Cambridge, 1999), 285–88Google Scholar.
30 For a detailed analysis of Maria Theresa's subsequent reforms and structural changes in Hungary, see Evans, R. J. W., “Maria Theresa and Hungary,” in: Evans, Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs. Essays on Central Europe, c. 1683–1867 (Oxford, 2006), 17–35Google Scholar.
31 For the Bahil affair and the conflict over the “Enchiridion,” see Bahlcke, “Konfessionspolitik,” 180–86. The Hungarians' petition and the Prussian and British intercession, as well as Maria Theresa's response, are reported in the Scots Magazine, vol. 13 (1751), February and June issues, pp. 101 and 299, and July issue, vol. 14 (1752), p. 359. The July paper also reports in quoted details that a delegation of Carinthian Protestants had made a petition to the Corpus Evangelicorum in Regensburg, p. 359.
32 Letter of 9 June 1741, Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv Vienna, Österreichische Akten: Schlesien, Box 5, “Religions-Gravamina,” Konvolut B, fols. 52–54. For Liberda, see Patzelt, Herbert, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche in Österreichisch-Schlesien (Dülmen 1989), 38Google Scholar. That the king of Prussia may have been perceived as a liberator by larger sections of the Silesian Protestant population seems likely in view of the flood of petitions, which Frederick II received shortly after the annexation, for permission to build Protestant churches. No fewer than 200 parishes submitted requests in the course of 1741 to January 1743. See the list in Schäfer, Reinhold, ed., Bittgesuche evangelischer Schlesier an Friedrich den Großen, Quellen zur schlesischen Kirchengeschichte, vol. 2 (Görlitz 1941): 1–7Google Scholar.
33 The records relating to the rebellion can be found in the Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, Österreichische Akten, Schlesien, Karton 6, “Religions-Gravamina,” Konvolut A, fols. 1–113.
34 Revolt and reform in Teschen after 1742 are discussed by Walter Kuhn and Michael Gerber, Rüdiger, “Geschichte Österreichisch-Schlesiens,” in Menzel, Josef Joachim, ed., Geschichte Schlesiens, vol. 3 (Stuttgart, 1999): 497–503Google Scholar.
35 The relevant documents are kept in STMLA, MS 1302 “Reichstagsakten,” 1752–1756.
36 For an outline of the last phase of persecution, see Pörtner, Regina, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe: Styria 1580–1630 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 250–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. References to further literature on Inner and Upper Austrian crypto-Protestantism can be found in chap. VII and the bibliography of that work.
37 The Theresian decrees for the transmigration in 1752 and related documents are kept in DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1751–1753, XV-b-24 and STMLA, MS 864. For a detailed treatment of the transmigrations, see Buchinger, Landler; and Brandtner, P., “Beitrag zur Geschichte der Transmigration inner- und oberösterreichischer Protestanten nach Ungarn – Iklád und Keresztur,” Deutsche Forschungen in Ungarn IV (1939): 71–84Google Scholar.
38 The circumstances of the public declaration are related in the report of the vicar at St. Nikolai in Sölk, Laurenthius Soboth, for the archbishop of Salzburg's Court Chaplain, 30 January 1752, DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1751–1753, XV-b-24.
39 Report of Joseph Caspar Mayrhofer, parish priest in Haus (Upper Styria) to the Bishop of Seckau, 16 April 1752, DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1751–1753, XV-b-24.
40 Haug-Moritz, Württembergischer Ständekonflikt, 97–98. Carl Eugen's brother Friedrich Eugen married Frederick II's niece, Sophie Dorothea von Brandenburg-Schwedt, op. cit., p. 98.
41 “Neues (v)erschärftes Emigranten=Poenal-Mandat, mit beygesezter Land=Rechts=Procedirung,” 18 August 1752, DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1751–1753, XV-b-24.
42 The correspondence between Maria Theresa and the Corpus Evangelicorum can be found in STMLA, MS 1302, “Reichstagsakten,” 1752–1756. The exchange is also mentioned in Reissenberger, “Corpus evangelicorum,” 217–21, with quotations. Before appealing to Regensburg, a delegation of three Styrian peasants had submitted a petition in Graz on behalf of the Lutheran population, asking for permission to exercise their faith in private or else to emigrate to some place in the empire. This emerges from the empress's instructions for the Styrian government, 29 March 1752 STMLA MS 1302, document no. 33. The empress demanded an inquisition into the background of this affair and instructed her officials to find out if the petitioners had organized conventicles and further spread the heresy among the peasant population. The ringleaders were to be banned from the country on pain of forced labour: STMLA MS 1302, documents no. 33, Imperial decree of 29 March 1752, and no. 35 (no date, April 1752).
43 STMLA, MS 1302, “Reichstagsakten,” 1756–1756, no. 1: intercessory letters of the Corpus Evangelicorum on behalf of the Protestant population of Styria, Carinthia, and Upper Austria, Regensburg, (…) October 1754 and 6 November/20 December 1754, issued by Electoral Saxony. The second letter makes mention of the Corpus's first appeal of 28 February 1753. The imperial reply of 17 September 1753 from which the quotations are taken is included in no.1 of MS 1302, as is the detailed imperial letter of 23 April 1755 quoted in the text.
44 See Burkhardt, Johannes, Abschied vom Religionskrieg. Der Siebenjährige Krieg und die päpstliche Diplomatie (Tübingen, 1985), 42–55Google Scholar. For the confessional motive in Prussian propaganda and diplomacy and its positive reception in England, see op. cit., 52n88. The relevance of confessional considerations to English foreign policy is evaluated by Schlenke, Manfred, England und das friderizianische Preußen 1740–1763 (Freiburg-Munich, 1963), 216–25Google Scholar.
45 (anonymous), Ludovicus Martinus Kahle, “Unbilliges Verfahren des Erz-Hauses Österreich gegen die Evangelische” (sic), Frankfurt 1756. I have used the copy in the Austrian National Library, Vienna, which states Kahle's authorship. For evidence that Frederick commissioned this work and its translations, see Bahlcke, “Konfessionspolitik,” 187n27.
46 The bishop of Seckau communicated the government's report to his subordinate clergy and the abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Admont as clerical landlord (Grundobrigkeit), concept of the letter of 25 October 1756 in DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1754–1770, XV-b-24.
47 All documents relating to this case can be found in DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1771–1773, XV-b-24.
48 DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1775–1778, 1779–1780, XV-c-1. The imperial decree of 4 September 1773 is indicative of this changed perception, which paid more attention to the motives and conduct of the delinquents: the commission for religious affairs was abolished; the payment of rewards for informers, introduced in 1752, was likewise suppressed; and the need for regular elementary schooling was stressed. Given the personal interest Maria Theresa took in matters of religion, there was no possibility that the authorities' more nuanced view of crypto-Protestantism could result in religious toleration. The 1773 decree ordered preparations for imminent transmigrations; and although the decree of 3/7 December 1774 put constraints on the scope of future deportations as the least desirable option, the system remained in force until its official termination by decree of 26 May/2 June 1775. Even then, obstinate heretics were incarcerated and were subjected to forced religious instruction in so-called houses of conversion, and their transmigration was again contemplated in May 1779.
49 Quotation from a report by the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Admont in Styria to the episcopal vicar at Seckau, 6 April 1752, DA “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1751–1753, XV-b-24. This interpretation was adopted by the government, e.g., an imperial decree in 1752 described the “heretics” as people who were “more inclined to a free life and insist on this with great pertinacity” (“zur Lebens=Freyheit mehrers geneigt (…) und mit vieler Halsstärrigkeit darauf beharren”), Imperial Decree of 31 August 1752, DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1751–1753, XV-b-24.
50 The quotation on contraband comes from an interrogation held in the parish of Stadl in Upper Styria and was reported by the local priest Mathias Gletler to the archbishop of Salzburg's court chaplain in a letter of 8 August 1778, DA, “Religionsberichte Protestantismus,” 1775–1778, XV-c-1. For the rest, see Pörtner, Regina, “Migration und Herrschaftsverdichtung: Ökonomische Voraussetzungen konfessionell bedingter Untertanenmobilität in den Ländern der Habsburgermonarchie 1680–1780,” in Bahlcke, Joachim, ed., Glaubensflüchtlinge (Münster, 2008), 347–73Google Scholar, here 365.