Josephism is the policy by which Joseph II of Habsburg-Lorraine, emperor from 1765 to 1790 and sole master of his dominions after the death of Maria Theresa on 29 November 1780, tried to turn the Catholic Church of Austria into a department of the State: bishops as sworn civil servants, decrees from Rome subject to the imperial visa, contemplative orders suppressed and their property merged into a State fund, seminaries confiscated, the liturgy regulated down to the number of candles[1]. Ten years of a deluge of decrees — then collapse: at his death on 20 February 1790, "fully aware of his failure", Joseph left "even the monarchy itself in peril", Hungary in ferment and Belgium lost[2].
From the Catholic standpoint, Josephism is not a mere failed administrative reform: it is a doctrinal error about the freedom of the Church — the idea that the State, in the name of its subjects' happiness, is the born administrator of the spiritual. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it bluntly as "nothing else than the highest development of the craving common among secular princes after an episcopal and territorial church"[3]. Its sister theses — primacy reduced to a primacy of honour, the Church governed by the body of the faithful — were condemned proposition by proposition by Pius VI in Auctorem fidei (28 August 1794)[4], and the First Vatican Council defined in 1870 exactly the opposite of what the system assumed: a Church governed by the pope and the bishops in communion with him, not by an emperor[5].
This article treats the practice of power: what Joseph II did, with which men, which figures and which results. The theory that armed him — the Febronian reduction of the primacy — belongs to the article Febronianism; the French version of the system belongs to Doctrinal Gallicanism and Gallicanism (15th-19th Century); the Jansenist ally and the Synod of Pistoia belong to Jansenism. The reader is referred there instead of duplicating the material.
What is Josephism?
The word itself says everything: as Gallicanism comes from Gaul and Febronianism from Febronius, Josephism comes from Joseph — not from a theologian, but from an emperor. It is not first a faculty thesis; it is a regime applied to the Church for ten years, from 1780 to 1790, across the whole Habsburg space: Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Hungary, Belgium, the Milanese[6].
Its formula holds in one sentence, borrowed from the aulic councillor Joseph von Sonnenfels: "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"[7]. In other words: religion is useful — it educates consciences where the policeman cannot reach — so the State manages it as it manages bridges and schools. The canonist Paul-Joseph Riegger supplies the legal basis: the supremacy of the State over the Church derives from an original contract (pactum unionis), by which the government exercises in the name of all individuals "a certain ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Jura circa sacra"[8]. His colleague Gmeiner adds the lock: any canonical legislation conflicting with the interests of the State would oppose natural law, and therefore the will of Christ — the Church would have no right to enact it, nor the State to accept it[9].
The chancellor who turned theory into decrees
The man who "reduced these principles to practice" is called Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz, chancellor of State for forty years from 1753, "a personal friend of Voltaire, and thus a zealous champion of Gallicanism"[10]. His maxim of government sums up the programme:
"The supremacy of the State over the Church extends to all ecclesiastical laws and practices devised and established solely by man, and to all that the Church owes to the consent and sanction of the secular power. The State must therefore always have the power to limit, alter, or annul its former concessions, whenever reasons of state, abuses, or altered circumstances demand it." — Kaunitz, maxim as reported by the Catholic Encyclopedia[11]
Joseph "raised these propositions to principles of government, and treated ecclesiastical institutions as public departments of the State"[12]. Note this from the outset, for the mistake is common: Maria Theresa was not a Josephist. Pious and exact in her religious duties, she had taken severe measures against certain disorders, but "most of the measures that presaged Josephism in the latter part of her reign had not her approval" — Joseph saw in his mother's work only "half measures and inconsistencies" to bring to maturity "by hot-house methods"[13].
Why a "modern heresy"?
Josephism figures in this encyclopedia among the modern heresies not because a council condemned it under that name — no canon bears the word — but because it denies in act two defined truths: that the Church is a visible society governed by the pope and the bishops by divine right, and not by the prince; and that the power of the keys derives neither from the people nor from the State. When these denials are written out as theses — power comes from the body of the faithful, the pope is only a "ministerial head" — they fall under the censures of Auctorem fidei as heretical or schismatical[14][15]. Josephism is the secular arm of these theses: it applies them without discussing them.
The roots: Vienna schooled by the Enlightenment
The system was not born in 1780 from an imperial whim. The Catholic Encyclopedia traces its beginnings in Austria to the 13th century for the administration of Church property, "clearly marked in the sixteenth" — then fed, in the second half of the 18th, "by the spread of Febronian and Jansenist ideas, based on Gallican principles", notions "by no means new to large circles of German Catholics nor to the court of Vienna"[16].
| Actor | Role | Contribution to the system |
|---|---|---|
| Kaunitz (1711-1794), chancellor 1753-1792 | Political arm | Translates theory into decrees; State supremacy revocable at will |
| Van Swieten (1700-1772), court physician | Education | Jansenist, president of the imperial commission on education |
| Martini (1726-1800), professor of natural law | Formation of the prince | Steeps Joseph in physiocracy, "rights of man", welfare of the people |
| Sonnenfels (1732-1817), aulic councillor | Doctrine | "The Church is a department of the police" |
| Riegger (1711-1775), canonist | Law | Jura circa sacra derived from the pactum unionis |
| Gmeiner (canonist) | Legal lock | Canon law contrary to the State would be contrary to the will of Christ |
| Rautenstrauch (1734-1785), ex-Benedictine | University | Studienplan of 1776, matrix of the State seminaries |
| Hontheim-Febronius (1701-1790) | Theological matrix | De statu ecclesiae (1763): reduced primacy — see Febronianism |
The young Joseph receives this formation full force: the soldier-tutor, the pedantic Jesuit who "deprived him of all taste for religion and serious study", Martini who fires him with enthusiasm for physiocracy, and above all two models — Voltaire and his "royal adept", Frederick II of Prussia, whose victories and talent for government obsess the prince humiliated by the intellectual superiority of Protestant Germany[17]. Frederick, who knew him well, summed up his admirer's method in a formula that has remained famous:
"He takes the second step before the first." — Frederick II, on Joseph II[18]
The programme: the Church as a department of State
Co-regent bridled by his mother since 1765, Joseph travels — Italy, France, the Crown lands — meets Frederick twice, then Catherine II in 1780, and finally becomes free at Maria Theresa's death[19]. He then throws himself upon the Church with the fixed idea of centralisation: welding Germans, Slavs, Hungarians, Belgians and Italians "into one compact nation", levelling and centralising "great and small things in every direction and in the greatest haste"[20].
Cutting off Rome: the placet and the oath
First series of measures, the most decisive: isolating the Church of Austria from Rome.
- The dioceses are brought back within the Austrian boundary: foreign bishops are excluded, which simplifies the often confused overlapping of diocesan authorities — Salzburg and Passau lose their Austrian territories, "severing the last tie which united Austria with the empire"[21].
- The announcement of pontifical decrees — indeed of all ecclesiastical decrees — is made dependent on imperial approval: this is the placet (placitum regium)[22].
- Decisions on impediments to marriage are referred to the bishops, and marriage itself becomes by the Ehepatent (1783) a civil contract outside the jurisdiction of the Church[23].
- Communication of the bishops with Rome and of the religious orders with their generals abroad is forbidden, partly from considerations of political economy[24].
- All exemptions from episcopal jurisdiction are abolished, and the bishops are brought "into dependence on the State" by a compulsory oath[25].
- The acceptance of pontifical titles and attendance at the German College in Rome are forbidden; a rival German college is founded at Pavia in opposition to the Roman institution[26].
In 1783, in Rome itself, Joseph "personally threatened that he would establish an independent state-church"[27]; schism is no longer a textbook hypothesis but a means of pressure brandished by a Catholic emperor.
The toleration of 1781: what it really was
On 13 October 1781 appears the Edict of Toleration: Protestants of the Augsburg and Helvetic confessions obtain "a limited freedom of worship"[28]; the Orthodox are admitted to the benefit of the text, and the Toleranzpatent of 2 January 1782 progressively opens schools and trades to the Jews (abolition of the poll tax and the Jewish hat as early as 1781)[29]. Joseph also grants freedom of speech and abolishes censorship — which "loosed a flood of pamphlets of the most pernicious kind, especially in ecclesiastical polemics"[30].
Should we rejoice or be indignant? Neither, without nuance: the Church does not demand the persecution of dissenters, and the end of vexations against the Jews is a good. But Josephist toleration is not Dignitatis humanae ahead of its time: it is a utilitarian State toleration, granted by the same power that chains the Catholic Church — the carrot for minorities, the stick for Rome. The prince who frees the cults is the one who pastes paper over the breviary.
The "useless" monks: the great suppression
The financial heart of the system is secularisation. A first edict on "idle institutions" (1780) forbids the contemplative orders: only orders devoted to teaching, nursing and other practical works survive[31]. In 1782, the suppression strikes "at first only the contemplative orders" — then, once the Religionsfonds is created, "the wealthy prelacies" become from 1783 "the chief object of his suppressions"[32].
The figures, without exaggeration
The Catholic Encyclopedia gives the exact figures and warns against common exaggerations: of the 915 monasteries (762 for men, 153 for women) existing in 1780 in German Austria — including Bohemia, Moravia and Galicia — 388 were closed (280 for men, 108 for women)[33]. Across the whole Empire, more than 700 houses end up suppressed and the number of religious falls from 65,000 to 27,000[34]. Joseph called monks "the most dangerous and useless subjects in every state" and, in the words of the edict, "shaven-headed creatures whom the common people worship on bended knees"[35].
| Province / area | Houses before | Houses closed | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| German Austria + Bohemia + Moravia + Galicia (1780) | 915 (762 m, 153 w) | 388 (280 m, 108 w) | 42% |
| Whole Empire (1780-1790) | — | over 700 | about one third |
| Religious of the Empire | 65,000 | 27,000 remaining | −58% |
| Religionsfonds constituted | — | 35,000,000 florins | — |
| Ex-religious to pension | ≤ 10,000 | 150-200 florins/year each | — |
The Religionsfonds: the single fund
The master idea — "The State is the administrator of the temporal property of the Church" — is embodied in a law merging into one great fund for the needs of public worship all the property of churches, religious houses and endowments: the Religionsfonds[36]. Not only the property of suppressed houses nor parish property: all ecclesiastical property — remaining religious houses, chapels, confraternities, benefices, all existing religious endowments whatsoever — is held to be part of it[37].
The fund becomes "the pivot measure around which all other reforms turned"[38]. In practice: monastic property is capitalised at great loss, the capital of every church and foundation publicly described, converted into national bonds and paid into the fund — placing at the same time at the service of the heavily burdened treasury the ecclesiastical savings, of which Joseph was suspicious[39]. Mass endowments, altars, oratories, chapels, confraternities, forbidden processions and pilgrimages are paid into it; the fund undertakes to satisfy the provisions for Masses "wherever the fact of endowment could be proved"[40]. Benefices without cure of souls, prebends beyond a fixed number, capped episcopal endowments, revenues of vacant benefices: everything goes into it[41].
The Catholic Encyclopedia's assessment is severe: the Religionsfonds "was not the magnanimous act in favour of the religious needs of the people that it is held to have been". Formed "by consolidating almost the whole property of the Church", it assumed only "obligations which it was in any case the duty of the State to fulfil" — all the more so as the suppressed institutions already relieved the State of part of these charges. Diverted from the start towards other reforms such as education, bled by war subsidies, it ends up in the 19th century needing the help of the State, the bonds in which it was placed having sunk "to one-fifth of their face value"[42]. Add the invisible social cost: ecclesiastical institutions — confraternities, rural chapels — "had been the only moneylenders"; peasants, artisans and mechanics found themselves "placed at the mercy of usurious Jews and foreigners", many "immediately ruined by the sudden demands"[43]. A crushing tax on revenues strikes from 1788 the remaining orders and the secular clergy besides[44].
Should everything be condemned wholesale? Honesty requires two nuances: countless works of art were destroyed or sold off to second-hand dealers and the mint, countless libraries "pitilessly scattered"[45] — but the fund also financed hundreds of new parishes, the suppressed filial churches and chapels making it possible to create a network in which no parish church would be over an hour's walk from any parishioner, with a church provided for every 700 souls[46]. Pastoral zeal does not excuse spoliation; spoliation does not cancel the parishes. Both are true together.
State-made clergy: the general seminaries
If money is the pivot, the clergy is the goal: "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"[47]. Maria Theresa's academic reforms and Rautenstrauch's Studienplan (1776), with Riegger's manual of canon law, "paved the way for the creation of the general theological seminaries"[48].
In 1783, all monastic schools and diocesan houses of studies are suppressed; Joseph founds twelve general seminaries: Vienna, Graz, Prague, Olmütz, Presburg, Pesth, Innsbruck, Freiburg, Lemberg (two: Greek and Latin Rites), Louvain and Pavia[49]. They are boarding houses (Konvikte) attached to the universities, five years of study followed by one year in a 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"[50]. Novices, educated at the State's expense in these seminaries, "for the most part lost their monastic vocation" — hence the sharp opposition of the foundations (Stifte) and the monasteries[51].
The case of Louvain turns into a political disaster: the general seminary there "was eventually the cause of a civil war and of the revolt of Belgium", after condemnation of its doctrines by Cardinal de Franckenberg[52]. Add the Catholic Encyclopedia's historiographical correction: the tales of appalling depravity peddled by the older Catholic literature (Theiner, Brunner, Brück, Stöckl) "are in part exaggerations of faults and blunders that were real enough", but "to a considerable extent based on forgeries invented for the purpose of stirring up the smouldering flames of the Belgian Revolution" — seminaries denounced as the worst, such as Freiburg and Vienna, proved "among the best", and "the most appalling abuses" were reported of a seminary at Rottenberg in the Tyrol "though there was never a seminary in the place"[53]. Catholic honesty requires not repeating these forgeries: the truth suffices. True or false, these accusations — "but chiefly the exhaustion of the religious fund" — hastened the suppression of the seminaries in 1790[54].
Regulated worship: "Brother Sacristan"
This is where the system becomes almost comic, were it not tragic: the Edict of Toleration of 1781 grants all denominations "the free exercise of their religion and civil rights" — and 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". Superfluous altars, over-sumptuous vestments and images: to be removed. Breviary: "various passages were to have paper pasted over them". Dogmatic questions: excluded from the pulpit — from which, on the other hand, "all government proclamations were to be announced"[55][56].
Frederick the Great, who had the cruel wit, christened his fellow emperor "Our Brother the Sacristan" — and the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that 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"[57]. Retain the lesson: Caesaropapism never contents itself with framing the Church from outside; it always ends up preaching in her place, down to the Sunday sermon.
Pius VI in Vienna (1782): the pope who came for nothing
The alarm is so great in Rome that Pius VI takes an exceptional decision: to go to Vienna in person. Leaving Rome on 27 February 1782, magnificently received by the emperor, he obtains nothing — "the journey of Pius VI to Vienna was fruitless" and "the suppression of the wealthy prelacies" continues unabated[58]. Joseph "received the pope politely, and showed himself a good Catholic, but refused to be influenced"[59]. The episode counts in the history of the pontificate: never had a pope gone thus to meet a sovereign to beg him to spare the Church — see the article Pius VI. And the following year, it is Joseph who, in Rome, threatens schism: the pope's humility did not disarm the emperor; it only measured his obstinacy.
The children of Josephism: Pistoia and Ems (1786)
Josephism swarms beyond Austria, in the same year 1786, on two fronts. They are only placed here: the detail belongs to the neighbouring articles.
- Pistoia: Leopold of Tuscany, Joseph's brother and grand duke since 1765, "pursued the ecclesiastical policy of his brother" — "practically arrogating to himself supreme authority over all ecclesiastical matters within his dominions"[60]. His circular of 26 January 1786 in 57 articles submits his reform plan to the bishops; Bishop Scipione de' Ricci convenes the Synod of Pistoia (1786), whose decrees, "at once the quintessence of Gallicanism and of the heresy of Jansenism", are reprobated by the bull Auctorem fidei (1794)[61]. See Jansenism.
- Ems: on 25 August 1786, the representatives of the three ecclesiastical electors (Mainz, Cologne, Trier) and of the prince-bishop of Salzburg sign the Punctuation of Ems in 23 articles, which aimed at making the German archbishops "practically independent of Rome"[62]. See Febronianism.
Add the Roman link: as early as 28 November 1786, Pius VI condemns by the brief Super soliditate Eybel's Febronian manual, the Austrian relay of the doctrine[63]. The doctrinal vice tightens; the secular arm does not loosen.
Collapse (1790) and long survival
In 1790, everything cracks together: Hungary ferments, Belgium is lost, the other provinces are "in a state of violent discontent"[64]. Joseph, "after a reign of ten years and fully aware of his failure, ended his unhappy and lonely existence" on 20 February 1790[65]. His brother Leopold II, ascending the throne, revokes the essentials — including the general seminaries — while keeping what can be kept; the Tuscan concordat of 1851 then settles the case of Tuscany[66].
But "though in general the Josephinist system collapsed, its essential principles remain": the effort for union among all the lands of Austria is one fruit of it, and "the attitude of the nineteenth-century State towards the Church" is another[67]. Concretely, Josephist legislation survives in shreds until the Concordat of 18 August 1855, which "did away with the whole Josephine legislation", recognising in its very first article "all the rights and prerogatives which the Catholic Church derived from the canon law"[68]. Sixty-five years after the emperor's death: measure the tenacity of a system that believed itself provisional.
- 1763Febronius publishesthe theoretical matrix
Hontheim, under the pseudonym of Febronius, brings out the De statu ecclesiae: reduced primacy, council and princes promoted. See Febronianism.
- 29 November 1780Joseph sole masterdeath of Maria Theresa
Co-regent bridled since 1765, Joseph becomes free to apply his programme of centralisation and "hot-house" methods[69].
- 13 October 1781Edict of TolerationLutherans, Calvinists, Orthodox
Limited freedom of worship for the two Protestant confessions recognised at Westphalia and for the Orthodox[70]; Jewish Toleranzpatent on 2 January 1782[71].
- 1782Pius VI in Viennathe fruitless journey
The pope travels in person; suppressions and State seminaries continue. See Pius VI.
- 1783The year of the steamrollerseminaries, confraternities, Ehepatent
- 1786Pistoia, Ems, Super soliditatethe swarm and the riposte
- 20 February 1790Death of Joseph IIthe admission of failure
- 28 August 1794Pius VI: Auctorem fidei85 condemned propositions
The sister theses of the system — power from the body, pope a "ministerial head" — censured one by one[79].
- 18 August 1855Austrian Concordatrepeal of Josephist legislation
The Church's judgment: why it is an error
Josephism is refuted first not by its results — the ruins, the revolts, the forged seminaries — but by its principle: the State would be, by virtue of an original contract, the born guardian of religion. Yet the Church holds from her Founder, and not from a concession of the prince, the right to govern herself: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church" (Mt 16:18). Vatican I defined it against all variants of the system: the pope possesses a primacy of jurisdiction that is "ordinary, supreme, full, immediate and universal", and his definitions ex cathedra are irreformable "of themselves, and not by virtue of the consent of the Church"[81]. Vatican II adds the collegial lock: the college of bishops has authority only "together with its head, the Roman Pontiff, and never without this head"[82]. The law in force draws the consequences: can. 331 (the pope's supreme power), cann. 336-341 (the college and its head), can. 751 (schism is "the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff"), can. 752 (religious submission owed even to the non-definitive magisterium)[83].
| Josephist thesis | What it denies | The Magisterium's answer |
|---|---|---|
| The State administers the property and laws of the Church (pactum unionis, Jura circa sacra) | The visible society governed by divine right by its own pastors | Pastor aeternus (1870): the pope's immediate universal jurisdiction; Concordat of 1855, art. 1: rights held from canon law[84][85] |
| Decrees from Rome subject to the placet; bishops under oath; communications forbidden | Hierarchical communion with Peter and among pastors | Lumen Gentium 22: never without the head; CIC can. 751: refusal of submission is schism[86][87] |
| Seminaries and worship manufactured by the State; dogma excluded from the pulpit | The mission of teaching received from Christ, not delegated by the emperor | CIC can. 752: religious submission to the authentic magisterium; Auctorem fidei props. II-III: power not derived from the body[88][89] |
| "Useless" monks suppressed by decree of utility | The evangelical counsel as the Church's own good | The State judges public utility, not supernatural fruitfulness; spoliation "reprehensible" even when "less offensive" than others[90] |
Discerning the residues today
The system is dead; its reflexes survive in diffuse forms:
- Ecclesial statism: expecting the State — subsidies, statutes, labels — to organise the life of the Church, then being surprised when it attaches its conditions. Just cooperation (concordats, Gaudium et Spes 76) becomes Josephist when public money buys doctrinal silence[91].
- The mood-placet: sorting Roman decisions by their supposed conformity with the spirit of the age, as Joseph sorted pontifical decrees by reason of State. The criterion settles every case: does the appeal to Rome remain open, and does the Roman decision settle the matter?
- Utilitarian pastoralism: judging contemplative orders, vocations and works by their "measurable social utility" — exactly the criterion of the edict on "idle institutions". The Church measures differently: "Mary has chosen the best part" (Lk 10:42).
Conversely, everything that is not the system is not the system: creating parishes where they are lacking, serious formation of the clergy, the end of vexations against minorities and a healthy autonomy of the temporal belong to the normal life of the Church and even to her duty. Josephism did not consist in administering well — it consisted in administering in the Church's place, against her when she resisted, without her when she kept silent.
To go further
- The theoretical matrix: Febronianism
- The French version of the system: Doctrinal Gallicanism, Gallicanism (15th-19th Century)
- The Jansenist ally and Pistoia: Jansenism
- The pope who went to Vienna: Pius VI
- The 19th-century heirs: Condemned Catholic Liberalism, Modernism
Notes and References
Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", New York, Robert Appleton, 1910, via newadvent.org/cathen/08508b.htm, section "Ecclesiastical policy: Its development": Joseph "treated ecclesiastical institutions as public departments of the State".
1Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited, section "Historical importance": "After a reign of ten years and fully aware of his failure, he ended his unhappy and lonely existence (20 February, 1790), leaving even the monarchy itself in peril. Hungary was in a ferment; Belgium had just been lost".
2 65 77Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: Josephism "is nothing else than the highest development of the craving common among secular princes after an episcopal and territorial church".
3"Auctorem Fidei", The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1, New York, Robert Appleton, 1907, via newadvent: bull of 28 August 1794, "85 articles taken from the Synod of Pistoia catalogued and condemned" (Ignispedia translation).
4 79First Vatican Council, dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus, 18 July 1870 (DH 3050-3075): primacy of ordinary, supreme, full, immediate and universal jurisdiction (chs. 1-3); definitions ex sese, non autem ex consensu Ecclesiae, irreformabiles (ch. 4, DH 3074).
5 81 84Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: focus of the enterprise — Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Hungary, Belgium, Italy (the Milanese, Pavia, the Tuscany of his brother Leopold) (Ignispedia translation).
6Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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).
7Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: Riegger "derived the supremacy of the State over the Church from the theory of an original contract (pactum unionis), by which the Government exercises in the name of all individuals a certain ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Jura circa sacra" (Ignispedia translation).
8Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: Gmeiner's theory — "all canonical legislation conflicting with the interests of the State opposes natural law, and therefore the will of Christ" (Ignispedia translation).
9Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
10Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "The supremacy of the State over the Church extends to all ecclesiastical laws and practices devised and established solely by man [...] 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".
11Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "Joseph raised these propositions to principles of government, and treated ecclesiastical institutions as public departments of the State".
12Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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"; and Joseph saw in her reforms only "half measures and inconsistencies" to bring to maturity "by hot-house methods".
13Pius VI, Auctorem fidei, prop. II, 28 August 1794: the power given by God to the Church to be communicated to pastors, "in the sense that from the community of the faithful power of ministry is derived into the pastors" — heretical (Ignispedia translation from the verified text).
14 89Pius VI, Auctorem fidei, prop. III, 28 August 1794: the Roman pontiff a "ministerial head", receiving his power not from Christ in Peter but from the Church — heretical (Ignispedia translation from the verified text).
15Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: beginnings traceable to the 13th century, "clearly marked in the sixteenth, especially so far as the administration of church property was concerned", then "fostered in the second half of the eighteenth century by the spread of Febronian and Jansenist ideas, based on Gallican principles".
16Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited, section "Development of character": Martini "found in him an eager student of physiocracy", enthusiasm for "the rights of man"; influence of the French Enlightenment, "especially in the persons of Voltaire and his royal adept, Frederick the Great".
17Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: 'Frederick II said of Joseph: "He takes the second step before the first"'.
18Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: after 1765 Joseph administers only "the business routine and the military affairs"; travels in Italy, France, the Crown lands; two meetings with Frederick, Catherine II in 1780; at his mother's death, "Joseph was free".
19 69Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: welding the peoples into "one compact nation", to "level and centralize great and small things in every direction and in the greatest haste".
20Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "Bishoprics, religious orders, and benefices were limited by the Austrian boundary. Non-Austrian bishops were excluded"; by cutting the Austrian territories from Salzburg and Passau, "he severed the last tie which united Austria with the empire".
21Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "The announcement of papal, in fact of all ecclesiastical, decrees, was made dependent on imperial approval (see PLACET)".
22Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "decisions on impediments to marriage were referred to the bishops"; "Church courts were abolished and marriage was defined as a civil contract outside the jurisdiction of the Church"; "In his Ehepatent Joseph created the Austrian marriage law".
23 74Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
24Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "he abolished all exemptions from episcopal authority and by an obligatory oath brought the bishops into dependence on the State".
25Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
26Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "In 1783, while at Rome, Joseph personally threatened that he would establish an independent state-church".
27German History in Documents and Images: Edict of Toleration of 13 October 1781 extended to Lutherans and Calvinists (the two confessions recognised at Westphalia) and to the Orthodox; Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "The Edict of Toleration of 1781 granted to all denominations the free exercise of their religion and civil rights".
28 70Jewish Encyclopedia (1901), art. "Toleranzpatent": Toleranzpatent of 2 January 1782 — progressive removal of restrictions, schools opened to Jews; poll tax and Jewish badge abolished as early as 1781.
29 71Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "he abolished the censorship and permitted freedom of speech, a measure which loosed a flood of pamphlets of the most pernicious kind, especially in ecclesiastical polemics".
30"Edict on Idle Institutions", Wikipedia: edict promulgated in 1780 proscribing the contemplative orders; only orders devoted to teaching, nursing and practical works survive (Ignispedia translation).
31Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "The suppression of the religious houses in 1782 affected at first only the contemplative orders"; "In the foreground stood 'the wealthy prelacies', which from 1783 were the chief object of his suppressions".
32Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
33Citizendium, art. "Joseph II": "he suppressed a third of the monasteries (over 700 were closed) and reduced the number of monks and nuns from 65,000 to 27,000"; same order of magnitude in Hungarian Conservative ("Understanding the Religious Reforms of Joseph II").
34"Edict on Idle Institutions", Wikipedia: Joseph called monks "the most dangerous and useless subjects in every state" and "shaven-headed creatures whom the common people worship on bended knees" (Ignispedia translation).
35Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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 [...] called the Religionsfonds".
36Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
37Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "This fund was the pivot measure around which all other reforms turned".
38Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "The capital of every church and foundation had to be described publicly, converted into national bonds, and invested in the 'religious fund'".
39Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: the endowments of Masses, altars, oratories, chapels, confraternities, processions, pilgrimages and forbidden devotions go to the fund, "which undertook to satisfy the provisions for Masses, wherever the fact of endowment could be proved".
40Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "Benefices without cure of souls, prebends in the larger churches, and all canonries above a fixed number [...] were forfeited to the 'religious fund'"; "A maximum was fixed for the endowment of bishoprics, the surplus being turned over"; revenues of vacant benefices paid over.
41Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "The Religionsfonds was not the magnanimous act in favour of the religious needs of the people that it is held to have been"; "the national bonds, in which the 'religious fund' had been chiefly invested, had sunk to one-fifth of their face value".
42Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "the ecclesiastical institutions (e.g. the confraternities, chapels and churches in the country districts) had been the only moneylenders. Peasants, mechanics, and artisans were now placed at the mercy of usurious Jews and foreigners".
43Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "From 1788 it [a tax] was imposed on the still existing religious orders and on the secular clergy" — a tax "meant to divert into the coffers of the 'religious fund' all revenues [...] not absolutely necessary for the support of life".
44Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "Countless works of art were destroyed or found their way to second-hand dealers or the mint, numberless libraries were pitilessly scattered".
45Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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 remaining monasteries "bore the main burden of the parochial organization".
46Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
47Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
48Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
49 72Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "The principles of the seminary directors were Liberal, in keeping with the rationalistic theology of the State"; "Five years of study in the seminary were followed by one in the bishop's training-house (Priesterhaus) or in a monastery".
50Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
51Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "at Louvain the general seminary was eventually the cause of a civil war and of the revolt of Belgium"; doctrines of the seminary condemned by Cardinal de Franckenberg (cf. Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Mechlin": Joseph II "created the General Seminary of Louvain (1786), the doctrines of which were condemned by Cardinal de Frankenberg").
52Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: the tales of depravity (Theiner, Brunner, Brück, Stöckl) "are in part exaggerations of faults and blunders that were real enough; to a considerable extent, however, they are based on forgeries invented for the purpose of stirring up the smouldering flames of the Belgian Revolution"; "Seminaries like those of Freiburg and Vienna [...] it has been since proved that they were among the best"; "The most appalling abuses were reported of a seminary at Rottenburg in the Tyrol, though there was never a seminary in the place".
53Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "These accusations, true or false, but chiefly the exhaustion of the 'religious fund', hastened their suppression in 1790".
54 78Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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".
55Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "dogmatic questions were excluded from the pulpit, from which, on the other hand, all government proclamations were to be announced".
56Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: '"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'.
57Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "The journey of Pius VI to Vienna was fruitless"; McClintock-Strong Cyclopedia, art. "Josephinism": "in January 1782, pope Pius VI went in person to Vienna"; left Rome on 27 February 1782, received with magnificence, with no result on the reforms.
58"Pope Pius VI: Reign and Legacy" (summary of the Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Pius VI"): Joseph "received the pope politely, and showed himself a good Catholic, but refused to be influenced". See the article Pius VI.
59Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Auctorem Fidei", vol. 1, 1907, cited: "Leopold II, Grand duke of Tuscany (1765-90), pursued the ecclesiastical policy of his brother, Joseph II of Austria; i.e. he practically arrogated to himself supreme authority over all ecclesiastical matters within his dominions".
60"Jansenism", The Catholic Encyclopedia (via TraditionalCatholic.net): the Synod of Pistoia (1786), whose decrees are "at once the quintessence of Gallicanism and of the heresy of Jansenism", reprobated by Auctorem fidei (1794); McClintock-Strong, art. "Pistoja, Synod of": Leopold's circular of 26 January 1786 in 57 articles. See Jansenism.
61Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Congress of Ems", cited: on 25 August 1786, the representatives sign the "Punctation of Ems", "consisting of twenty-three articles which aimed at making the German archbishops practically independent of Rome". See Febronianism.
62 75Pius VI, brief Super soliditate, 28 November 1786: condemnation of Eybel's Febronian manual (Introductio in jus ecclesiasticum). Cf. article Doctrinal Gallicanism.
63 76Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "Hungary was in a ferment; Belgium had just been lost; other provinces were in a state of violent discontent".
64"Concordat", Wikipedia (after the Catholic Encyclopedia): the Tuscan concordat of 1851 abolished the ecclesiastical legislation of Leopold II, "nearly the same as that of Joseph II in Austria" (Ignispedia translation).
66Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "But though in general the Josephinist system collapsed, its essential principles remain: the efforts for union among all the lands of Austria are one result of the system; another is the attitude of the nineteenth-century State towards the Church".
67"Concordat" / "Austria", Wikipedia (after the Catholic Encyclopedia): Concordat signed 18 August 1855 — "did away with the whole Josephine legislation, and recognized, in its first article, all the rights and prerogatives which the R. C. Church derived from the canon law" (Ignispedia translation).
68 80 85Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "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 [...] to a new 'Single Charitable Association'".
73Second Vatican Council, dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium, § 22, 21 November 1964: the episcopal college has authority only "simul cum capite suo Romano Pontifice et numquam sine hoc capite" (together with its head, the Roman Pontiff, and never without this head) (Ignispedia translation).
82 86CIC 1983, cann. 331, 333, 336-341 (vatican.va): the pope head of the College, supreme and universal power; the college acts only with its head and never without him. Cf. article Doctrinal Gallicanism.
83CIC 1983, can. 751 (vatican.va): "schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him" (Ignispedia translation).
87CIC 1983, can. 752 (vatican.va): religious submission of intellect and will owed to the doctrines of the Supreme Pontiff or the College, even without a proclamation by a decisive act (Ignispedia translation).
88Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Joseph II", cited: "The secularization under Joseph, if less offensive than other well-known secularizations, is nevertheless reprehensible".
90Second Vatican Council, pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, § 76, 7 December 1965: just autonomy of earthly realities; refusal of an autonomy that would make the political community the arbiter of religious questions (Ignispedia translation).
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