Josephism

The concept of Joséphisme (word which comes from the emperor Joseph II) indicates in Austria the systematic subordination of the social affairs to the administration of the State according to the principles of the Reason such as included/understood them the time of the Lumières. One in the broad sense distinguishes Joséphisme, which relate to all the social life, and Joséphisme with the narrower direction which is a way for the State of placing the religion under its control.

Administrative Joséphisme

The watchword of Joseph II was: “Very for the people; nothing by the people”. This is why the reforms which it implemented are to be included/understood like a “revolution by the top”, where it interferes a will progress and an attempt to consolidate monarchy, thanks to measurements which it took under the inspiration of the rationalist philosophers Grotius, Pufendorf or Thomasius. Joseph II can be regarded as the prototype of the enlightened despot.

To make more effective its measurements, it reinforced controls and the bureaucracy. Thus it introduced the declaration of residence or the classification of the houses. It is him which in 1781 removed serfdom, which was worth to him thereafter the nickname of “Liberator of the peasants”. He set up the first monitoring system police with police informers, prohibited the corsets with whales for the young girls, imposed leaves it for the dogs and abolishes the capital punishment for utility considerations, since he saw in the delinquents of labor, for example for the towing of the boats on the Danube. Its utilitarianism determined it to build with Vienna not luxurious castles but of the hospitals like the General hospital with its “Tower of insane”.

Religious Joséphisme

The josephism religious belongs to a vast movement of reform of the Church, born with the Réforme, which has a will of purification, of return to the primitive Church. This current, very widespread in modern Europe, meets in Austria the strong will of the Austrian capacity to counter the temporal power of the Church apart from the Papal States.

They are a will to rationalize the practice of the worship and to leave the clergy (and thus the people) the influence Rome and Jésuites. The ideology which inspires Joséphisme goes up in Austria at the 13th century but especially in XVIe century with regard to the administration of the goods of the Church. She knew her apogee in second half of the XVIIIe century when the ideas fébroniennes and Jansenists are allied with the principles gallicans. The Kaunitz chancellor, who led the Austrian policy as from 1753, was a personal friend of Voltaire and a defender of the Gallicanisme. The Jansenist van Swieten (doctor of court of Marie-Therese) chaired the imperial commission on education. At the University, the Lights had in Martini, Sonnenfels and Riegger of the influential defenders; it is all this medium which gave to the spirit of Joseph II the legal base to create a national Church of State.

The Joséphisme thus combines a anti-curialisme , i.e. an opposition to the any power of the Roman Curie (the Pope and its entourage) to a radical Episcopalisme, which preaches the superiority of the college of the bishop S on the pope. It also shares with jansénisme a strong hostility with the Jésuites, order considering at the time like the Almighty, stateless person and directly submitted to the pope.

Joseph II has a will to secularize the role of the Church. For him and its advisers, according to the “natural right” the first goal of a State is to bring to its nationals all possible happiness. Only the religion which binds the consciences can prevent the individuals neglecting their duties and from missing benevolence the ones towards the others, and this is why the State sees in it the principal factor of education: “ the Church is a section of the police force, it must be used for the intentions of the State until the people are sufficiently enlightened so that a universal police force replaces it. ” (Sonnefels). Riegger, a scholar, drew from the theory of the primitive contract the prevalence of the State on the Church (“ pactum unionis ”) in the sense that the government, in the name of all the individuals, exerts a certain religious jurisdiction, the “ the Jura circa crowned ”. Another scholar (Gmeiner) formulated the theory that any legislation which contradicts the interests of the State contradicted the natural right and consequently the will of Christ; he results from it that the Church does not have the right to prescribe of such laws and that the State could not accept them.

Kaunitz reduced these principles to the following declaration: “ the supremacy of the State on the Church extends to the unit from the legislation and the religious practice. Consequently the State must always have the right to limit, change or cancel the concessions made before each time claim it the reason of State, the correction of abuse or the new circumstances ”. Joseph II made these intentions of the principles of government and regarded the religious institutions as public affairs of the State. Thus it submitted the decisions of the pope for his approval for their application in his empire, which it of his own authority reduced the number of bank holidays, limited the rights of foreign congregations etc

Marie Therese, her mother, near whom Joseph II had been Co-emperor, was extremely reserved with regard to Joséphisme. From the legal point of view for a Church of State, Joséphisme represented an attempt to put the spiritual authority of papacy, incarnation of Catholicism, with the service of monarchy. However a Church of catholic State of inspiration could only fail because of requirement of universal competence of the popes (in the questions of faith and morals), even if it could temporarily be the subject of compromise (with a Concordat for example): this requirement was inseparable from the idea that the Church was done itself.

Reforms

The reforms extended to the Catholic church inside the Austrian territory in the idea to create a national Church. Évêchés, Religious orders and foundations depended until now on a multitude on jurisdictions the various, foreign ones with the others and which overlapped. The action of Joseph II aimed at removing these various jurisdictions for all to gather under the jurisdiction of the State.

All the religious ordinances, as well those of the pope as the others were subordinated to the imperial assent, with the “claim”; the exemptions for the marriage concerned the bishops; it was interdict with the bishops to communicate with Rome and the religious orders with their generals if they resided abroad, partially for reasons of political economy. This last measurement was also a manner disguised to counter the influence of the Jésuites. The Jesuits were prohibited in the Empire in 1768.

In 1783 during a stay in Rome, Joseph threatened to create an independent Church of State. He founded this year of the general seminars which informed the future priests under control of the State. This measurement, adopted in all the Austrian Empire, was however abolished as of the death of Joseph II in 1790.

It abolishes the dependence of the episcopal authority and made lend to the bishops an oath by which they subjected to the State the reception pontifical titles and the studies at the German University of Rome were prohibited; in Pavia was open a German University to make him competition.

The Lombardy, possession Austrian at the XVIIIe century, was a field of experimentation of the Joséphisme. As of the reign of Marie-Therese of Austria (1740 - 1780), one withdrew the right of censure to the Inquisition and one prevented it from renewing his members, which brought its progressive end.

The monastic orders in Lombardy were also aimed. According to a current vision at the Age of Enlightenment, the monks and moniales cloisters are regarded as useless at the company and thus vermin. The actions of Marie Therese as from the years 1770, then from Joseph II, went towards a closing of the contemplative monasteries whose goods were to be given again with the parishes. But the local population rejetta the Joséphisme and remained attached to the old practices and devotions.

The principle of the centralism

These liberal measurements were accompanied by an incredible number of meticulous regulations in the religious field. Thus, on August 23rd, 1784, Joseph II ordered the closing of all the cemeteries will intra muros by measurement of hygiene. In the burials it was necessary from now on to replace the old massive coffin by a light, economic and reusable coffin; measurement was reported immediately in front of the hostility of the population. As the Counter-Reformation had multiplied the ostentatious rites, Joseph II published decrees which went until specifying the number the candles and their length, as well as the way in which it was necessary to preach, request and sing. All the useless furnace bridges like all the liturgical ornaments and all the too luxurious tables were to be isolated; one went until sticking pages in the breviaries. No question of dogma was to be discussed in pulpit; official announcements had rather to be made, to give practical instructions, for tilling for example. “ Our brother, the sexton ” was the nickname given to Joseph by Frederic II, who saw in him the creator of a simplified religious service.

Funds for the Religion

The fundamental idea of a national Church is that the State is the administrator of the temporal goods of the Church. Joseph concretized this design in a law which put all the possessions of the Church in a large common case intended to cover all the expenditure for the exercise of the worship: what one called the Funds for the Religion.

It is that the goods of the Church had increased considerably at the time of the Counter-Reformation. In Vienna, the number of the convents had swollen of 25 in 1660 to 125 in 1700. In 1770, the number of the convents was assembled in the hereditary Austrian territories and to Hungary to 2.163 with 45.000 monks.

The whole of the ecclesiastical, movable and real properties, was transferred to this bottom. In 1782 it is with the contemplative orders that one was caught some. The Funds for the Religion formed starting from the goods of the convents took in the policy of Joseph a new direction. In the foreground were the too rich prelates who were the main target of its measurements of confiscation as from 1783. Magpie VI went to Vienna but did not obtain anything. German-speaking Austria, Bohemia, Moravie and Galicie counted in 1780 915 convents (762 convents of men and 153 convents of women) it remained about it soon only 388. All these measurements increased considerably the Funds for the Religion which reached 35.000.000 gulden.

It is that Joseph II considered that the religious orders were at the origin of the superstition and fanaticism; it devoted half of their goods to teaching goals; as for other half, “with all its religious privileges, incomes and properties”, it transferred the property from it at a charitable institution, which had the character of an religious order and of which the destination was to come to assistance of all those which needed some.

For the not-catholics: the Act of tolerance

The Act of tolerance finally granted (October 13rd, 1781) to the orthodoxe Greeks and to the Protestants the freedom of exercise for their religion and the rights of citizenship. the creation of Protestant places of worship was authorized (without bell-tower nor entered direct on the street); and the children of the Protestants had with also the right to make studies at the University. However the authorization to convert remained limited; as from 1787 if somebody wanted to convert it had, before crossing the step and leaving the Catholic church, to subject itself to a course of religion during six weeks.

November 2nd, 1782 the tolerance extended to the Juifs, particularly with those which lived, of considerable number, in the Eastern possessions of monarchy; it thus gave them new possibilities of developing and had a great repercussion in Haskala, current which at that time corresponded to the Lights at the Jews.

An imperial decree of December 11th, 1785 subjected the maconnic cabins to a control of meticulous State. An Austrian Big room was created, much cabins Vienneses had to amalgamate or to conform to the maconnic ordinance, the number of cabins in the grounds of the Crown was limited to what could depend hierarchically on the Big room. Joseph II saw in the groups which deviated from the official masonry of the enlightened gatherings of , conspirators in power and who could endanger the State; also the Gold Crosses, the Rosicrucian brotherhood, the Brothers of Asia and Klerikat are transfered implicitly prohibited. If this decree on the Freemasons, where masonry is more or less described like a stove setting, disappointed and dismayed those which had been at the partisans beginning of the emperor, it should be included/understood in a context where one saw everywhere conspiracies after the discovery about the Illuminés in Europe (1784).

Conclusion

The Joséphisme was thus a radical attempt at rationalization of the religion and a practical application of all the ideas richerists, gallicanes or fébroniennes which crossed the clerical and laic opinions at the XVIIIe century. If the originality of the josephism is real, that is due especially to the fact that the principles were put into practice. But much of sovereigns of the time these ideas divided more or less, without to go also far. For memory, one can recall the hostility of all the sovereigns of the time for the Jésuites, which were expelled of all the kingdoms in the years 1760 - 1770, before being prohibited by the pope - but against its will in 1773.

The josephism found a posterity in the organization of the constitutional Eglise French, resulting from the civil Constitution of the clergy of 1791, which took again the majority of the principles of it.

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