Preachers or Teachers? Parish Priests and their Sermons in the Late Enlightenment Habsburg Empire

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
Alena A. Fidlerová
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Pastoral Theology ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
University Curricula ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
Parish Priests ◽  
Theology Faculty

This article explores the role parish priests were expected to play in educating the populace of the Habsburg empire at the end of the eighteenth century, and especially how this was manifested in the form and content of their sermons. Emperor Joseph II took a keen interest in the education of future priests and expected them to be good shepherds (pastores boni) and educators to their parishioners. To this end, together with his mother, he carried out several reforms in their education (such as changing theology faculty curricula, introducing pastoral theology as a new subject and establishing general seminaries) and even issued a special decree on 4 February 1783, providing detailed instructions for preachers. The article outlines how future priests were taught to educate their parishioners through their sermons, concentrating on how they followed these instructions in their homiletic practice, which changed the form and content of sermons radically. It is based on archival material concerning the education of future priests (such as court decrees, governmental orders and university curricula), pastoral theology textbooks used at the Prague faculty of theology, and selected printed sermons.

The Eighteenth-Century Social Order in Surat: A Reply and an Excursus on the Riots of 1788 and 1795

1991 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lakshmi Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Social

The Banias of eighteenth-century Surat, whom Michelguglielmo Torri earlier treated with indifference if not innocence, have invited his wrath since they were brought into focus by the publication of my essay on the Banias and the Surat riot of 1795. In his ‘rejoinder’ to my article, he seeks to wish away their existence altogether (to him there was no specific Bania community, the term merely signifying traders of all communities engaged in the profession of brokerage), and seeks to provide what he regards as an ‘alternative’ explanation of the Muslim–Bania riot of 1795. the Muslim-Bania riot of 1795. It shall be my purpose in this reply to show that his alternative explanation is neither an alternative nor even an explanation, and is based on a basic confusion in his mind about the Banias as well as the principal sources of tension in the social structure of Surat. I shall treat two main subjects in this reply to his misdirected criticisms. First, I shall present some original indigenous material as well as European documentation to further clarify the identity, position and role of the Banias, whom Irfan Habib in a recent article has identified as the most important trading group in the trading world of seventeenth and eighteenth-century India. It is also my purpose to show how the social order of Surat operated under stress by presenting some archival material, the existence of which Torri seems to be completely unaware of, on the Parsi-Muslim riot of 1788.

Cameralism, Josephinism, and Enlightenment: The Dynamic of Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1740–92

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franz A. J. Szabo
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
Franz Grillparzer ◽  
Do So

In his great 1848 historical drama,Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg, the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer has Emperor Matthias utter the words that have often been applied to understanding the whole history of the Habsburg monarchy:Das ist der Fluch von unserm edeln Haus:Auf halben Wegen und zu halber TatMit halben Mitteln zauderhaft zu streben.[That is the curse of our noble house:Striving hesitatingly on half waysto half action with half means.]True as those sentiments may be of many periods in the history of the monarchy, the one period of which it cannotbe said is the second half of eighteenth century. The age of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II was perhaps the greatest era of consistent and committed reform in the four-hundred-year history of the monarchy. What I want to address in this article are some aspects of the dynamic of this reform era, and this falls into two categories. On the one hand, there is the broad energizing or motive force behind the larger development, and on the other, there are the ideas or assumptions that lay behind the policies adopted. As might be evident from the subtitle of my article, I propose to look primarily at the second of these categories. I do so because I think while Habsburg historiography has reached considerable consensus on the first, it has not looked enough on the second as an explanatory hermeneutic.

Building the Frontier of the Habsburg Empire:

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dragan Damjanović
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
Administrative Organization ◽  
New Public ◽  
Administrative Unit ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
The Military

The Military Frontier, an administrative unit within the Habsburg Empire, was established during the sixteenth century to consolidate the border with the Ottoman Empire. In Building the Frontier of the Habsburg Empire: Viennese Authorities and the Architecture of Croatian-Slavonian Military Frontier Towns, 1780–1881, Dragan Damjanović considers architecture and urban planning there from the time Emperor Joseph II assumed the throne until the Frontier was abolished in 1881. Beginning with an overview of the region's architecture, urban design, and administrative organization, Damjanović proceeds to an examination of how modernization processes and the gradual demilitarization of the Frontier affected architecture and planning there. As they did for other provinces, Viennese authorities commissioned numerous new public and church buildings for the region—part of a larger effort toward modernization. Showing the influence of a variety of styles then fashionable elsewhere in Central Europe, these buildings were nonetheless well adapted to their local circumstances.

The Root of all Evil? Money and the Scottish Catholic Mission in the Eighteenth Century

1987 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. McMillan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Finance ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
The Church

We are all familiar with the idea that the Church is in the world but not of it, and that too great a preoccupation with earthly things may compromise the Church’s other-worldly objectives. One thinks of the extravagance of a Renaissance pope such as Leo X, reputed to have said, ‘Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us’: or of an ancien régime prelate like the Archbishop of Mainz, who arrived for the coronation of the Emperor Joseph II with a retinue of fourteen sumptuous carriages: or, in our own time, the Vatican’s reported links with some of the shadier elements in the world of international finance. Yet, it is equally obvious that lack of adequate material resources can act as a serious impediment to the Church’s mission to go forth and teach all nations. Excessive poverty, like excessive wealth, brings its own problems. As the adage has it, not money itself but the desire for money is the root of all evil. Excessive poverty and the desire for money are the themes which I wish to pursue in this paper, in the context of the Scottish Catholic Mission in the eighteenth century, and more specifically as they relate to the so-called Jansenist quarrels which divided the Mission in the 1730s and 1740s.

Further Additions to Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland by Patricia Carson

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 81-89
Author(s):  
H. M. Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
West African ◽  
African History ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
The West ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Hague ◽  
State Archives

This article is a supplement to a previous article on the same subject published in the African Studies Bulletin. Before I list further citations omitted from Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland, I will discuss, in some detail, the nature of the archival material deposited in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. I will attempt to enhance the brief discussions of Miss Carson while avoiding repetition of statements which seem clear and/or are adequately discussed in her book. The General State Archives, The Hague, includes two major collections of interest to the West African historian: the Archives of the West India Companies and the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast. Initially, one must realize that most of the seventeenth-century papers of both collections have been lost or destroyed, and that as a consequence there are many gaps among the existing manuscripts. For example, volume 81 (1658-1709) of the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast includes only manuscripts for the following times: December 25, 1658-June 12, 1660; August, 1693; and October 12-December 31, 1709. Also, most of the seventeenth-century material is written in script, whereas the eighteenth-century manuscripts, with some exceptions, are in more conventional hand-writings.

Enlightened Despotism and State Building: The Case of Austrian Lombardy

1984 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-72
Author(s):  
Alexander Grab
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
State Building ◽  
Rich Source ◽  
Reform Policy ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Reform Program ◽  
Joseph Ii

It was said that Count Kaunitz, the Austrian chancellor under the enlightened despots Maria Theresa and Joseph II, settled Belgian and Italian affairs every morning while putting on his stockings. The thick volume of correspondence between Vienna and Milan in the second half of the eighteenth century and the wide reform program which the Austrian rulers launched in Lombardy during those years demonstrate, however, that this Italian dominion was much more important to the Habsburgs than the ironic anecdote implied. Indeed, research over the last fifteen years on the reform policy of the enlightened despots in Lombardy has shown that this province was highly significant for the Viennese rulers, who made considerable efforts to integrate it into their empire. Lombardy had both strategic and economic value for the Viennese authorities; strategically, it served as the northern gateway to Italy, thus helping the Habsburgs to maintain their influence in the Italian peninsula. Economically, Lombardy possessed a highly developed agriculture, which provided Vienna with a rich source of revenues.

The National and Social Origins of Parish Priests in the Archdiocese of Vienna, 1800–1870

1993 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 17-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
William D. Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Austrian Society ◽  
Religious Denomination ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Administrative Control ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Parish Priests ◽  
The Catholic Church

Under The Influence of Enlightenment ideals of rational administration and cameralist notions of increasing the productivity and welfare of the populace, Joseph II and his ministers embarked on an aggressive program of reform for the Habsburg monarchy in the late eighteenth century. Their view as to what needed change was wide-ranging, but among their chief concerns was the desire to restructure the relationship between the Catholic church and Austrian society. As the largest and most powerful religious denomination in the Habsburg monarchy, the Catholic church possessed immense human and material resources, which could possibly be exploited to benefit the Austrian people and state. For Joseph II, the process whereby Catholicism could best be put to use in Austrian society necessarily involved seizing partial administrative control over the Catholic church. The Catholic church, he believed, did not distribute material and moral benefit to the Austrian people evenly, and changing this situation required the active intervention of the Austrian government.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document