To the emperor of Austria there was left, after the re-organization of affairs by the Vienna Congress, of the Roman empire, only the name of defender of the papal see, and the Catholic church, and the presidency of the German Federal Council. The remnants of the Josephine ecclesiastical constitution were gradually set aside and Catholicism firmly established as the state religion; yet the government asserted its independence against all hierarchical claims, and granted, though only in a very limited degree, toleration to Protestantism. The revolution year 1848 removed indeed some of these limits, but the period of reaction that followed gave, by means of a concordat concluded with the curia in 1855, to the ultramontane hierarchy of the country an unprecedented power in almost all departments of civil life, and prejudicial also to the interests of the Protestant church. After the disastrous issue of the Italian war in 1859, and still more that of the German war in 1866, the government was obliged to make an honest effort to introduce and develop liberal institutions. And after an imperial patent of 1861 had secured religious liberty, self-administration, and equal rights to the Protestant church, the constitutional legislation of 1868 freed Catholic as well as Protestant civil, educational, and ecclesiastical matters from the provisions of the concordat that most seriously threatened them, and by the declaration of papal infallibility in 1870 the government felt justified in regarding the entire concordat as antiquated and declaring it abolished. In its place a Catholic church act was passed by the state in 1874. But the Kulturkampf struggle which was thus made imminent also for Austria was avoided by pliancy on both sides.

§ 198.1. The Zillerthal Emigration.—In the Tyrolese Zillerthal the knowledge of evangelical truth had spread among several families by means of Protestant books and Bibles. When the Catholic clergy from 1826 had pushed to its utmost the clerical guardianship by means of auricular confession, an opposition arose which soon from the refusal to confess passed on to the rejection of saint worship, masses for the dead, purgatory, indulgences, etc., and ended in the formal secession of many to the evangelical church in 1830, with a reference to the Josephine edict of toleration. The emperor Francis I., to whom on the occasion of his visit to Innsbrück in 1832 they presented their petition, promised them toleration. But the Tyrolese nobles protested, and the official decision, given at last in 1834, ordered removal to Transylvania or return to the Catholic church. The petitioners now applied, as those of Salzburg had previously done (§ [165, 4]), by a deputation to the king of Prussia, who, after by diplomatic communications securing the emperor’s consent to emigration, assigned them his estate of Erdmannsdorf in Silesia for colonization. There now the exiles, 399 in number, settled in 1837, and, largely aided by the royal munificence, founded a new Zillerthal.

§ 198.2. The Concordat.—After the revolution year 1848, the government were far more yielding toward the claims of the hierarchy than under the old Metternich régime. In April, 1850, an imperial patent relieved the papal and episcopal decrees of the necessity of imperial approval, and on August 18th, 1855, a concordat with the pope was agreed to, by which unprecedented power and independence was granted to the hierarchy in Austria for all time to come. The first article secured to the Roman Catholic religion throughout the empire all rights and privileges which they claimed by divine institution and the canon law. The others gave to the bishops the right of unrestricted correspondence with Rome, declared that no papal ordinance required any longer the royal placet, that prelates are unfettered in the discharge of their hierarchical obligations, that religious instruction in all schools is under their supervision, that no one can teach religion or theology without their approval, that in catholic schools there can be only catholic teachers, that they have the right of forbidding all books which may be injurious to the faithful, that all cases of ecclesiastical law, especially marriage matters, belong to their jurisdiction, yet the apostolic see grants that purely secular law matters of the clergy are to be decided before a civil tribunal, and the emperor’s right of nomination to vacant episcopal sees is to continue, etc. The inferior clergy, who were now without legal protection against the prelates, only reluctantly bowed their necks to this hard yoke; the liberal Catholic laity murmured, sneered, and raged, and the native press incessantly urged a revision of the concordat, the necessity of which became ever more apparent from concessions made meanwhile willingly or grudgingly to the “Non-Catholics.” But only after Austria, by the issue of the German war of 1866, was restricted to her own domain, and finally freed from the drag of its ultramontane Italian interests, found herself obliged to make every effort to reconcile the opposing parties within her own territories, could these views prove successful. But since the government nevertheless held firmly by the principle that the concordat, as a state contract regularly concluded between two sovereigns, could be changed only by mutual consent, the liberal majority of the house of deputies resolved to make it as harmless as possible by means of domestic legislation, and on June 11th, 1867, the deputy Herbst moved the appointment of a committee for drawing up three bills for restoring civil marriage, emancipation of schools from the church, and equality of all confessions in the eye of the law. The motion was carried by a hundred and thirty-four votes against twenty-two. The Cisleithan (i.e. Austrian excluding Hungary) episcopate, with Cardinal Rauscher of Vienna at their head, presented an address to his apostolic majesty demanding the most rigid preservation of the concordat, denouncing civil marriage as concubinage, and the emancipation of schools as their dechristianizing. An imperial autograph letter to Rauscher rebuked with earnest words the inflammatory proceedings of the bishops, and at the same time the ultramontane ambassador to Rome, Baron Hübner, was recalled. After the arrangement with Hungary was completed, the first Cisleithan, the so-called Burger, ministry was constituted under the presidency of Prince Auersperg, composed of the most distinguished leaders of the parliamentary majority. All the three bills were passed by a large majority, and obtained imperial sanction on May 25th, 1868. The papal nuncio of Vienna protested, the pope in an allocution denounced the new Austrian constitution as nefanda sane and the three confessional laws as abominabiles leges. “We repudiate and condemn these laws,” he says, “by apostolic authority, as well as everything done by the Austrian government in matters of church policy, and determine in the exercise of the same authority that these decrees with all their consequences are and shall be null and void.” But all Vienna, all Austria held jubilee, and the Chancellor von Beust rejected with energy the assumptions of the curia over the civil domain. The bishops indeed issued protests and inflammatory pastorals, and forbad the publication of the marriage act, but submitted to the threats of compulsion by the supreme court, and Bishop Rudigier of Linz, who went furthest in inciting to opposition, was in 1869 taken into court by the police, and sentenced to twelve days’ imprisonment, but pardoned by the emperor. Toward the Vatican Council Austria assumed at first a waiting policy, then in vain remonstrated, warned, threatened, and finally, on July 30th, 1870, after the proclamation of infallibility, declared that the concordat was antiquated and abolished, because by this dogma the position of one of the contracting parties had undergone a complete change.

§ 198.3. The Protestant Church in Cisleithan Austria.—Down to 1848 Protestantism of both confessions in Austria enjoyed only a very limited toleration. The storms of this year first set aside the hated official name of “Non-Catholics,” and won permission for Protestant places of worship to have bells and towers. But the repeated petitions for permission to found branches of the Gustavus Adolphus Union, the persistently maintained law that Catholic clergymen, even after they had formally become Protestants, could not marry, because the character indelibilis of priestly consecration attached itself even to apostates, and many such facts, prove that the government was far from intending to grant to the Protestants civil equality with the Catholics. But the unfortunate result of the Sardinian-French war of 1859, and the fear thereby increased of the falling asunder of the whole Austrian federation, induced the government to address itself earnestly to the introduction of liberal institutions, and also to do justice to the Protestant church. The presidency of the two Protestant consistories in Vienna, hitherto given to a Catholic, was now assigned to a Protestant; meetings of the Gustavus Adolphus Union were now allowed, and a share was given to the Protestant party in the ministry of public worship by the appointment of three evangelical councillors. After the entrance on office of the liberal minister Von Schmerling, an imperial patent was issued on April 8th, 1864, by which unrestricted liberty of faith, independent administration of all ecclesiastical, educational, and charitable matters, free election of pastors, even from abroad, full exercise of civil and political rights, and complete equality with Catholics was given to the Protestants of the German and Slavonian crown territories. Also in 1868, under the reactionary ministry of Belcredi, on the expiry of the legal term of the Evangelical Supreme Church Council, it was reorganized, two evangelical school councillorships were created, and the pecuniary position of the evangelical clergy considerably improved. But in spite of all privileges legally granted to the evangelical church, it continued in many cases, in presence of the concordat, which down to 1870 still remained in force, exposed to the whims and caprice, sometimes of the imperial courts, sometimes of the Catholic clergy.

§ 198.4. The Clerical Landtag Opposition in the Tyrol.—In the Tyrol, after the publication of the imperial patent of April, 1861, a violent movement was set on foot by clerical agitation. The Landtag, by a great majority, pronounced the issuing of it the most serious calamity which the country, hitherto honest, true, and happy in its undivided attachment to the Catholic faith, could have suffered, and concluded that Non-Catholics in the Tyrol should only by way of dispensation be allowed, but that publicity of Protestant worship and formation of Protestant congregations should be still forbidden. The Schmerling ministry, indeed, refused to confirm these resolutions. The agitation of the clergy, however, which fanned in all possible ways the fanaticism of the people, grew from year to year, until at last the Belcredi ministry of 1866 came to an agreement with the Landtag, sanctioned by the emperor, according to which the creation of an evangelical landed proprietary in the Tyrol was not indeed formally forbidden, but permission for an evangelical to possess land had in each case to be obtained from the Landtag. The ecclesiastical laws of 1868 next called forth new conflicts. Twice was the Landtag closed because of the opposition thus awakened, until finally in September, 1870, the estates took the oath to the new constitution with reservation of conscience. But now, when in December, 1875, the ministry of worship gave approval to the formal constituting of two evangelical congregations in the Tyrol, at Innsbrück and Meran, the clerical press was filled with burning denunciations, and the majority of the Landtag meeting in the following March thought to give emphasis to their protest by leaving the chamber, and so bringing the assembly to a sudden close. In June, 1880, the three bishops of the Tyrol uttered in the Landtag a fanatical protest against the continuance of the meanwhile established congregations, which the Landtag majority renewed in July, 1883.

§ 198.5. The Austrian Universities.—Stremayr, minister of public worship, introduced in 1872 a scheme of university reorganization, by which the exclusively Catholic character which had hitherto belonged to the Austrian universities, especially those of Vienna and Prague, should be removed. Up to this time a Non-Catholic could there obtain no sort of academical degree, but this was now to be obtainable apart from any question of confession. The office of chancellor, held by the archbishops of Prague and Vienna, was restricted to the theological faculty, to the state was assigned the right of nominating all professors, even in the theological faculty, and the German language was recommended as the medium of instruction. Candidates of theology have to pass through a full and comprehensive course of theological science in a three years’ university curriculum, before they can be admitted into an episcopal seminary for practical training. In spite of the opposition of the superior clergy, the bill passed even in the House of Peers, and became law in 1873.—In Innsbrück, where according to ancient custom the rector was chosen from the four faculties in succession, the other faculties protested against the election when, in 1872, the turn came to the theological (Jesuit) faculty, and they carried their point. The new organization law gave the choice of rector to the whole professoriate, and a subsequent imperial order withdrew from the general of the Jesuits the right of nominating all theological professors.—Much was done, too, for the elevation of the evangelical theological faculty in Vienna by bringing able scholars from Germany, by giving a right to the promotion to the degree of doctor of theology, etc. But its incorporation in the university, though often moved for, was hindered by the continued opposition of the Catholic theologians as well as philosophers, and in 1873 it did not meet with sufficient support in the House of Peers. Even the use of certain halls in the university buildings, promised by the minister, could not yet be obtained.

§ 198.6. The Austrian Ecclesiastical Laws, 1874-1876.—At last the government in January, 1874, introduced the long-promised Catholic church legislation into the Reichstag, intended to supply blanks occasioned by the setting aside of the concordat. Its main contents are these:

  1. The concordat, hitherto only diplomatically dealt with, is now legislatively annulled; the bishops have to present all their manifestoes not before but upon publication to the state government for its cognisance; every vacancy of an ecclesiastical office, as well as every new appointment to such, is to be notified to the civil court, which can raise objections against such appointment within thirty days; the minister of worship then decides on the admissibility or inadmissibility of the candidate; legal deposition of a church officer involves withdrawal of the emoluments; the performance of unusual practices in public worship of a demonstrative character can be prohibited by the civil court; any misuse of ecclesiastical authority in restraining any one from obeying the laws of the land or from exercising his civil rights is strictly interdicted.
  2. The ecclesiastical revenues and the income of the cloisters are subjected to a progressive taxation on behalf of a religious fund, mainly for improving the condition of the lower clergy, for which the episcopate hitherto, in spite of all entreaties, had done practically nothing.
  3. Newly formed religious societies received state recognition if their denomination and principles contain nothing contrary to law and morality or offensive to those of another faith.
  4. The state grants or refuses its approval of the establishment of spiritual orders, congregations, and ecclesiastical societies; institutions and legacies for them amounting to over three thousand gulden require state sanction; any member is free to quit any order; all orders must report annually on the personal changes and disciplinary punishments that have taken place; at any time when occasion calls for it they may be subjected to a visitation by the civil court.[551]

In vain did the pope by an encyclical seek to rouse the episcopate to violent opposition, in vain did he adjure the emperor in a letter in his own hand not to suffer the church to be put into such disgraceful bondage; the House of Deputies approved the four bills, and the emperor in May, 1874, confirmed at least the first three, while the fourth was being debated in the House of Peers. The bishops now issued a joint declaration that they could obey these laws only in so far as they “were in harmony with the demands of justice as stated in the concordat.” But it did not go to the length of actual conflict. Neither to the pope and episcopate, nor to the government was such a thing convenient at the time. Hence the attitude of reserve on both sides, which kept everything as it had been. And when notwithstanding Bishop Rudigier of Linz, threatened with fines on account of his refusal to notify the newly appointed priests, appealed to the pope, he obtained through the Vienna nuncio permission to yield on this point, “non dissentit tolerari posse.” But all the more urgently did the nuncio strive to prevent the passing of the sweeping cloister law. In January, 1876, it was passed in the House of Peers with modifications, to which, however, the emperor refused his assent. Also the revised marriage law of the same date, which removed the hindrances to marriage incorporated even in the book of civil law, and no longer recognised differences of religion, Christians and non-Christians, the remarriage of separated parties of whom at the time of the first marriage only one party belonged to the Catholic church, higher consecration and the vows of orders, did not pass the House of Peers.

§ 198.7. The Protestant Church in the Transleithan Provinces.—In Hungary since 1833 the Reichstag had by bold action won for the Protestants full equality with the Catholics, but in consequence of the revolution, the military lordship of the Protestant Haynau in 1850 again put in fetters all independent life in both Protestant churches. The Haynau decree was, indeed, again abrogated in 1854, but full return to the earlier autonomy of the church, in spite of all petitions and deputations, could never be regained, all the less as Hungary in all too decided a manner rejected the constitutional proposals submitted by the Government in 1856. The liberal imperial patent of September 1st, 1859, which secured independent administration and development to the Protestant church in the crown possessions of Hungary, got no better reception. In the German-Slavonian districts of North Hungary, as well as in Croatia, Slavonia, and Austrian Servia, it was greeted with jubilation and gratitude, but the Magyar Hungarians declined on many, for the most part frivolous, grounds, mainly because it emanated from the emperor, and did not originate in an autonomous synod. When the government showed its intention of going forward with it, the opposition was carried to the utmost extreme, so that the emperor was obliged temporarily to suspend proceedings in May, 1860. Still the ecclesiastical joined with the political movement continued to increase until in 1867 the imperial chancellor, Von Beust, succeeded in quieting both for a time by the Hungarian Agreement. On June 8th of that year, the emperor, Francis Joseph, on ratifying the agreement, was solemnly crowned King of Hungary. The hated patent had been shortly before revoked by an imperial edict, with the direction to order church matters in a constitutional way. After a complete reconciliation, at a General Protestant Convention in December, 1867, with the Patent congregations, hitherto denounced as unpatriotic, it was concluded that to the state belonged only a right of protection and oversight of the church, which is autonomous in all its internal affairs, but to all confessions perfect freedom in law, and that there should be not a separate religious legislation for each, but a common one for all confessions. A committee first appointed in 1873 for this purpose, with the motto, “A Free Church in a Free State,” constituted, and then adjourned ad kalendas Græcas.