Of the numerous anniversaries, tributes, and other historical markers that Germans commemorate, few are more important than the Reformation. Most surveys in European and German history begin with the Reformation and the resulting confessional divide, which left a deep impression on German identity. The memory of this event has rightfully assumed a prominent place in the collective memory of Central Europe, among Protestants and non-Protestants alike. As a result, preparations for the upcoming five-hundredth anniversary in 2017 of Martin Luther's hanging of the Ninety-Five theses have been ongoing for years and festivities will span the globe. Protestants will hold numerous festivals and pilgrimages at various historical landmarks, and the German government might even declare October 31, 2017, a one-time national holiday.Footnote 1 The Catholic Church will even cautiously take part in these celebrations—though, as one bishop recently noted, Catholics prefer to call it a “commemoration” (Reformationsgedenken) instead of a celebration (Reformationsjubiläum).Footnote 2
Despite such quibbles, an ecumenical spirit has characterized the preparations for the upcoming anniversary—a latitudinarian attitude absent from the observations of the Reformation during the first few hundred years after 1517. The Reformation celebrations of 1817—when features of the Enlightenment first manifested themselves in these centennial celebrations—arguably anticipated the inclusive attitude now present in the period leading up to 2017. This development was particularly striking in the Habsburg lands, where the 1817 events also celebrated the end of the Counter-Reformation. The Habsburgs had—until the reign of Emperor Joseph II (1780–1790)—operated one of the most repressive regimes in Central Europe in terms of efforts to reverse the effects of the Reformation. Protestants gained civil rights thanks to the reforms Joseph introduced, and though his reign ultimately ended in failure, his conservative successor, Francis II/I (r. 1792–1835), solidified and even expanded the boundaries of religious toleration. The latter's regime imposed restrictions on Catholic activists, in fact, and even abjured Catholicism as a pillar of the Habsburg state. Lutherans and Calvinists enjoyed Habsburg patronage by the 1790s, as the state enforced laws that were fair (or even favorable) to Protestantism, provided assistance to build Protestant churches, and standardized the organization of Protestant communities. These developments normalized the position of Protestants in the Habsburg Empire and significantly reduced confessional strife in the monarchy. The three-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation in 1817 provided an opportunity to celebrate the Protestants' newfound freedoms and offered the government a chance to display—to Protestants in and outside of the Habsburg Empire—how much the Habsburg state had fundamentally changed since 1780.Footnote 3
Joseph II and the Counter-Reformation
Joseph's policies of toleration broke sharply with a two-hundred-year history of repressive policies against Protestants. From the end of Emperor Maximillian II's reign in 1576 until Maria Theresa's death in 1780, the Habsburgs imposed Counter-Reformation measures designed to drive Protestants back into the arms of the Catholic Church.Footnote 4 These policies were largely effective in the German hereditary lands and in Bohemia, though less so in the Kingdom of Hungary and Transylvania. From the sixteenth until the late eighteenth centuries, the House of Habsburg was ideologically and politically Catholic, and considered itself to be a Catholic dynasty par excellence, ruling according to the principles of what Anna Coreth has labeled Pietas Austriaca.Footnote 5
The Counter-Reformation succeeded in rolling back Protestantism in Austria and Bohemia. The Reformation had initially found fertile ground in Austria, where, by 1580, 90 percent of the nobility in Lower Austria had adopted the Protestant faith.Footnote 6 But by 1650, Austria had mostly returned to Catholicism as commissions of clergy, soldiers, and governmental officials went from town to town ensuring that their subjects were following the “true” faith.Footnote 7 In addition, the Habsburgs copied the Bavarian model of Counter-Reformation and exclusively employed Catholics in public office.Footnote 8 In Bohemia, Emperor Ferdinand II (r. 1619–1635) drove out Protestantism with bayonets after the Battle of White Mountain, sparking the Thirty Years' War. The subsequent Renewed Land Ordinance of 1627 officially outlawed Protestantism there. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 later granted limited toleration in Germany, but these provisions did not apply to the German hereditary lands of the Habsburg monarchy, where Protestant worship remained illegal.Footnote 9 Despite these restrictions, Protestants maintained sizeable communities in Upper Austria and other German lands.
The Habsburgs had less success in other areas. In the Kingdom of Hungary, for example, the majority of inhabitants were non-Catholics in the late seventeenth century, and the Ottomans, for their part, allowed the Reformation to spread unfettered. Despite promises in 1606 and 1647 to respect Protestant rights to worship, the Habsburgs implemented the Counter-Reformation after the conquest of Hungary from the Ottomans in the 1680s and 1690s. The Explanatio leopoldina (1691) and Carolina resolutio (1731) required office holders to take oaths to the Virgin Mary and to Catholic saints, effectively barring Protestants from government.Footnote 10 Vienna also prescribed punishment for apostasy from Catholicism, implemented constraints on Protestant schools, forced guilds to celebrate Catholic holidays, and introduced a variety of other restrictions. In addition, Protestants could not perform public baptisms or employ workers. These measures provoked several rebellions, and Hungarian Protestants commonly appealed to Protestant powers (such as Prussia) for protection, further solidifying the suspicion that Protestants were disloyal to the Habsburgs.Footnote 11
The Habsburgs inherited a different set of regulations in Galicia, where they followed the Warsaw Tractate. This treaty, imposed by Russia on the Polish Commonwealth in 1768 and backed by England, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia, abolished all anti-heresy laws enacted since the Reformation, granted non-Catholics independence from Catholic clergy, and allowed Protestant churches to have bells and towers. The Tractate still maintained Catholicism as the state religion of Poland.Footnote 12 After Austria annexed Galicia in the 1772 partition of Poland, Maria Theresa—though reluctant to absorb large numbers of non-Catholics into the monarchy—promised vaguely in 1773, under pressure from enlightened ministers, as well as from Russia and Prussia, to allow existing religious practices to continue.Footnote 13
Joseph's rule marked a watershed for Protestant communities across the monarchy. Upon ascending the throne, the emperor dismantled the Counter-Reformation in Austria, rescinding his mother's Religionspatent of 1778, which had excluded non-Catholics from owning land or settling in Austria or Bohemia, denied Protestants the right to educate their children, and prescribed flogging for apostasy.Footnote 14 Joseph's crowning achievement was the Edict of Toleration in 1781, which legalized Lutheranism and Calvinism and permitted the establishment of a formal Protestant episcopacy. Protestant communities with more than one hundred families could obtain permission to build a house of worship. Joseph ended Catholic missions in the empire, and, to the chagrin of many Catholics, opened up state offices to Protestants and abolished the Marian oath.Footnote 15 In 1781, he ordered local authorities and clergy to cease searching for heterodox literature, removed offensive comments from school textbooks, and punished officials who used force against non-Catholics.Footnote 16 Joseph also opened up Habsburg borderlands to Protestant settlers.
The emperor did not intend to establish freedom of religion, but sought to come to terms with the Reformation. He wanted to bring Protestants out of the shadows and make them useful to the state. Joseph's reign granted Protestants equality with Catholics in terms of state citizenship, but Catholicism remained the dominant religion in legal terms. Whereas Maria Theresa had considered toleration dangerous, believing that it would lead to “pernicious indifference” (verderbliche Gleichgültigkeit), Joseph and enlightened administrators came to the conclusion that matters of the conscience could not be altered through force.Footnote 17
The emperor's reforms came at a steep price, however, because they provoked various forms of resistance. Joseph had to sack officials in Bohemia who tried to evade enforcing the Toleration Patent, while Tyrolean officials, nobles, and clergy formed an alliance to prevent its implementation.Footnote 18 Hungarian clergymen opposed the granting of offices to Protestants, and Joseph constantly had to intervene to approve the building of Protestant Churches. In addition, Austria could no longer look to Catholic German states in the Holy Roman Empire for support because its popularity among Catholics had consequently plummeted in the Imperial Diet.Footnote 19 In 1788 riots broke out in the Austrian Netherlands over the reopening of a General Seminary, one of Joseph's state-run seminaries for training Catholic priests. The emperor's highhanded absolutism in Hungary similarly sparked a revolt among the Hungarian nobility, who sought to restore constitutional rule.Footnote 20 Joseph eventually began retracting his reforms, and, by the time of his death in 1790, toleration seemed to have been a political failure in the Habsburg lands.Footnote 21
The Integration of Protestants into the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790–1817
Other crises erupted as the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars plunged the Habsburg Empire into a twenty-five-year struggle with the forces of revolution, which ultimately forced rulers to redraw the map of Central Europe. By 1803 German princes had secularized most Church property with the blessing of Austria and Prussia, and the former subsequently scuttled attempts to revive the Reichskirche in 1806.Footnote 22 That same year, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist, but not before Emperor Francis had transferred his imperial title to the Habsburg realms. In the German states, Napoleonic reforms resulted in a slew of toleration decrees, but also eliminated the checks and balances that the Westphalian system had created between Catholics and Protestants.Footnote 23 The German Confederation, which was created in 1815, retained these changes.
The prerevolutionary system remained intact at this time in the Habsburg lands, where the police state meshed well with religious toleration. The suppression of free speech begun by Joseph at the end of his reign continued under Francis, later developing into a notorious censorship regime. But in religious matters, Vienna expanded Joseph's religious reforms.Footnote 24 In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Habsburg officials feared even favorable public opinion because they viewed the politicization of religion, including Catholicism, as dangerous and unpredictable. The state sought instead to depoliticize confessional conflict and institutionalize religious toleration. Such a stance transformed officials into supposedly neutral arbiters while reinforcing police power and the legitimacy of the government. In addition, Francis and other Habsburg officials who had received Enlightenment educations sought to make Protestants and other religious minorities useful to the state.Footnote 25 Francis had spent much of the 1780s with Joseph in Vienna, where he had continued his studies and come to admire his uncle, calling him a “second father.”Footnote 26 Josephist attitudes thus continued with Francis through the revolutionary years. In addition, unlike many other parts of Europe, where the revolution destroyed the mainstream Enlightenment, the Habsburg lands avoided a prolonged French occupation.Footnote 27
As a result, Joseph's successors salvaged religious toleration while retaining the administrative diversity of the monarchy. The Habsburgs worked with established historical institutions, such as the Hungarian Diet, and used these administrative frameworks to promote religious toleration. Such an approach generated an aura of legitimacy in an era of revolutionary instability. In the Diet of 1790–1791, Leopold II (r. 1790–1792) gave up absolutist pretensions in Hungary but pushed through Art. XXVI, which surpassed Joseph's Edict of Toleration by allowing the unrestricted use of towers and bells for Protestant churches. The Catholic clergy, led by Cardinal Joseph Batthyány, registered an official complaint against these laws, arguing that they infringed upon the rights of the Church—but Vienna prevailed and top administrators, such as the Habsburg Palatine of Hungary, Archduke Joseph (r. 1796–1847), prominently defended the rights of Protestants.Footnote 28 Francis also rejected requests to overturn the Warsaw Tractate, even though Austria had never signed it (Prussia and Russia had simply forgotten about it, and Poland had abrogated the treaty in 1775).Footnote 29 The government also provided free materials for use in building Protestant churches and granted subsidies to Protestant communities. Overall, the government chose accommodating arrangements when possible, and most Protestants lived in areas of the monarchy that had toleration laws more liberal than the Edict of Toleration.Footnote 30
By the early nineteenth century, then, Protestants were well integrated into the Habsburg state. They played a prominent role in banking and manufacturing and were thus of value to the state apparatus.Footnote 31 Protestants were allowed to form an official community if at least one hundred families or five hundred individuals adhered to the Lutheran and Reformed faith in a certain area.Footnote 32 Lutherans and Reformed Christians each had a separate consistory that governed their respective communities, and its job was to mediate conflict, set the liturgy, create examinations for prospective pastors, and supervise the superintendents.Footnote 33 (Hungarian Lutherans answered to a consistory in Pest, whereas the Reformed church had no central consistory.Footnote 34) The state appointed the superintendents, whose job was to administer examinations to clergymen, perform the investiture, and undertake visitations, similar to Catholic bishops. In addition, the law charged the superintendents with ensuring that their communities were orderly, that students attended school, and that parishioners were moral citizens.Footnote 35 Below the superintendent was the so-called senior, who assisted the superintendent but was responsible for only a few communities; at the local level was the pastor.Footnote 36 The state also appointed the head of the consistories, using measures such as length of service and morality as the main criteria for selection.Footnote 37 Censors approved songs and sermons, and the Austrian government pressured Protestants to use enlightened liturgy purged of mysticism.Footnote 38 Various rules determined the length of sermons, which had to be from forty-five to sixty minutes in length in Vienna.Footnote 39 All of this stabilized the formerly precarious position of Protestants in the empire, while granting the state the power it desired over religious authorities.
In many ways, Protestants had more freedoms than Catholics did. Protestant schools obtained exemptions from inspection by Catholic clergy, for example.Footnote 40 The law also permitted Protestants to operate their own schools if thirty or more children resided in a local district.Footnote 41 If no Protestant school existed, a Protestant child had to attend the nearest Catholic school: to prevent tension between Protestant and Catholic children at these schools, catechism and religious instruction took place at either the start of the day or during the last hour, allowing the Protestant child to arrive at school an hour late or leave an hour early in order to skip Catholic instruction.Footnote 42 Protestant theologians could study in German universities, whereas laws from the 1780s remained in force banning Catholics from studying in Rome or from contacting the pope.Footnote 43 All communication had to go through a state official, and correspondence between Rome and the Austrian episcopacy rarely occurred.Footnote 44
Joseph's laws, incorporated in the Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (ABGB) of 1811, confirmed state citizenship for Protestants, who could now buy property, enter the civil service, take oaths with simply a vague reference to “God,” and enjoy other rights of citizenship.Footnote 45 Protestants usually sent to the government minor and pecuniary petitions that dealt with issues concerning pay, inflation, pensions, and other financial problems that all officials, Catholic or not, struggled with because of the government's chronic lack of funds.
The government also established rules for controversial acts such as apostasy and mixed marriages. To begin the process of conversion, Catholics had to report to the local imperial official, who then sent a commissar to ask them briefly—and, by law, politely—about their beliefs.Footnote 46 If the potential convert met the legal requirements (e.g., being of age [eighteen]), he or she then took a six-week course with a priest on proper Catholic doctrine to ensure that the apostate was leaving Catholicism with full knowledge of the faith and not because of some misunderstanding. Courses also applied when converting from Lutheranism to Reformed and vice versa.Footnote 47 Even leaving Protestantism for Catholicism required state approval and minimum requirements such as being of majority age (sui juris).Footnote 48 Officials in Vienna left such requirements intentionally vague because they feared any changes in the confessional makeup of the empire and wanted to avoid a public debate on this issue. Although rules governing conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism were less stringent, state officials generally viewed all apostasy with suspicion, for such an act indicated a potentially dangerous degree of free thought.
A similar legal situation applied to mixed marriages. Catholics possessed a slight legal advantage over Protestants, but the state's ultimate aim was to prevent disorder. Marriage was governed in German-Austria and Bohemia by civil law, most notably the 1781 Edict of Toleration and the 1783 Marriage Patent. Art. VI of the Toleration Patent required Catholic fathers to raise all the children in a mixed marriage in the Catholic faith. When the father was Protestant, as was usually the case, the sons adhered to the religion of the father, while the mother raised the daughters Catholic. In Austria, the ABGB ordered priests to perform mixed marriages before two witnesses and allowed non-Catholic clergy to attend, and in cases where a Protestant pastor performed a mixed marriage, Vienna often confirmed its legality.Footnote 49 The law banned the parents from taking an oath, called the reverse, to raise their children Catholic.Footnote 50 In Hungary and Transylvania, the son followed the father and the daughter followed the mother in religious matters, but Catholic priests performed the weddings.Footnote 51 The Warsaw Tractate's provision that, in a mixed marriage, girls follow the mother and boys follow the father governed such relations in Galicia. The government distrusted apostates and couples with mixed unions as freethinkers or potential troublemakers, and thus discouraged such acts. Yet, realizing that they were sometimes necessary, officials tried instead to regulate it with the goal of preventing public controversy.
In a further move, the regime sidelined zealous Catholics and kept public spaces clear of polemics. Catholic activists such as Clement Hofbauer were engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the police and did not dare attack Protestants publicly.Footnote 52 Top ecclesiastical clergy also adhered to these standards, knowing full well that it was the emperors themselves who often selected the bishops and archbishops of the monarchy. Although Leopold had abolished Joseph's General Seminaries, Francis appointed moderate bishops, and graduates of these state schools soon occupied prominent ecclesiastical posts in the Habsburg Empire, such as spiritual advisor to the emperor.”Footnote 53 In many cases, Vienna refused to fill Catholic bishoprics to save money, and, by 1800, half of all Hungarian Catholics did not have a bishop.Footnote 54 The sermon law of 1783 ordered that preachers provide practical and simple instruction and refrain from controversial sermons.Footnote 55 In addition, the government rejected in 1799 numerous requests by the Jesuit father Nicolaus Pacanari to reestablish the order in the hereditary lands—despite his assurances that the Society of Jesus would serve as a barrier against the “enemies of the Christian faith, civil order, and good morals.”Footnote 56 Despite legalization of the order in 1814 by Pope Pius VII, the Jesuits were still illegal in the Habsburg lands in 1817. Works by enlightened thinkers, such as Baron Joseph von Sonnenfels's Grundsätze der Polizey, Handlung und Finanz, remained in use at Austrian universities until 1848. Sonnenfels's work taught that the government should monitor the morality of the citizenry and hinder religious quarrels, inflammatory speeches, excessive pageantry, and superstition—aims that aligned with those of the Josephist state.Footnote 57 These aims aligned with those of the Josephist state.
Despite the political upheaval of the early nineteenth century, this period was one of normalcy for most Protestants. Most of their petitions dealt with minor issues and the quotidian. As a Protestant newspaper reported in 1794: “our situation with regard to religion and freedom of conscience is unchanged since the death of Joseph. We know of no suppression and burdensome restriction. We enjoy the protection of the government to the fullest extent.”Footnote 58 The state ensured these benefits by guaranteeing rights to Protestants, by restraining Catholic activists, and by keeping the public space clear of polemics—important policies that Vienna wished to display on the tricentennial of the Reformation.
The Reformation Celebrations in the Habsburg Monarchy
For Habsburg officials, participation in the three-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation offered an opportunity to exhibit the greatly improved conditions of Protestants since the days of Joseph II. The government sought to stress these attributes during the jubilee through sermons and imagery. Under the conservative regime in Austria, such festivals constituted less threatening forms of assembly and were thus an appropriate forum for celebrating religious difference.Footnote 59 According to Daniel Unowsky, monarchical celebrations under Emperor Francis Joseph (r. 1848–1916) presented “the emperor as a binding force in this multinational state” and “defined national identity as a constituent element of a broader identification with the emperor-father and, through him, with ‘Austria.’”Footnote 60 Similarly, the Habsburgs utilized the jubilee in 1817 to present an image of a benevolent emperor and to reinforce the loyalty of his Protestant subjects.Footnote 61 As a result, the Reformation jubilee—banned in 1617 and restricted to the walls of the Danish embassy in 1717—was a public, empire-wide event in 1817.
The Reformation celebrations were the brainchild of Jacob Glatz, the head of the Lutheran consistory in Vienna. Glatz, a Hungarian who had studied with the rationalist theologian Heinrich Paulus at the University of Jena, had created a prayer book for families resulting from mixed marriages.Footnote 62 He argued that such a centennial event would remind Protestants of the blessings they now enjoyed, whereas a silent celebration would, by contrast, create a bad impression among Protestants in the German Confederation.Footnote 63 The Reformed consistory in Vienna agreed to this plan, and both consistories submitted this proposal to the government in the summer of 1817.Footnote 64
The Court Chancellery, an advisory body to the emperor usually prone to numerous bureaucratic delays, promptly recommended the Reformation celebrations on July 17. Archduke Rainer, acting in the place of Francis, gave his consent in August.Footnote 65 The Court Chancellery feared that Protestants would paint Austria as intolerant if it did not approve a jubilee, noting that “if nothing is explicitly ordered from the consistories, other communities might celebrate it, and not with the right intentions,” and that the lack of an officially sanctioned celebration “could easily give cause for misunderstanding.” In addition, the Court Chancellery worried that the lack of a celebration might cause foreign Protestants to get “the wrong ideas” (irrige Vorstellungen) about the political conditions of Protestants in Austria.Footnote 66 To avoid losing a workday on October 31, they recommended moving the tricentennial to the following Sunday, November 2, and merging it with Toleration day, an annual holiday on October 13, the anniversary of Joseph's Edict of Toleration. This rearrangement combined the Reformation jubilee with key pillars of the Josephist state, namely toleration and confessional harmony.
Officials hoped to showcase the newfound toleration of the Habsburgs, and, as a result, issued a series of regulations to control exactly how Protestants marked the Reformation. In September Vienna sent orders to the consistories and local governments across Cisleithanian Austria informing them of the upcoming celebrations and granting permission to print publications about it.Footnote 67 On October 26, preachers received orders to announce the tricentennial events and to mention explicitly that this jubilee had the approval of the monarch.Footnote 68 Governmental guidelines ordered communities to hold communion with and teach catechism to the children the day before the festivities; after the initial Sunday prayer, the congregation was to say, “we all believe in one God.” The consistory ordered a prayer that included the following lines:
Dear Almighty… it was you who steered the heart of that memorable monarch whose name we say with reverence and thanks, the heart of Joseph II, which broke the chains of religious coercion (Religionszwanges)… It was you, Lord, who has upheld on the throne unbroken (unversehrt) this important, sacred right under his lofty successors, and the spirit of Christian tolerance and love has, in general, procured ever more sway. You, oh Lord, it is you whom we have to thank that we continue to live and practice our faith in peace and unharmed (ungekränkt) under the gentle rule (milden Zepter) of our revered (allverehrten) sovereign, Francis I…Footnote 69
The consistory ordered the preachers to hold a sermon on Psalm 126:3: “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy” (Der Herr hat grosses an uns gethan; des sind wir fröhlich). This verse was to serve ideally as a segue for pastors to stress to their parishioners how much conditions had improved for Protestants since the reign of Joseph II. Finally, the instructions reminded pastors not to break the sermon laws. Austrian officials hoped, above all, to stress to Protestants the blessings of toleration that the Habsburgs had granted.
In Vienna, the ceremonies occurred with pomp and along the guidelines established by the government. Packed churches collected alms for the poor and no disturbances took place. Services began at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, November 2, and crowds trying to enter the Lutheran City Church overflowed onto the street. Police showed up, but only to ensure safety. Many dignitaries appeared, such as the head of the government of Lower Austria, advisors to Francis, Viennese officials, as well as ambassadors from many German Protestant states. The service went as planned, and the congregants sang “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” extolled recent Habsburg monarchs, and celebrated the life of Martin Luther.Footnote 70 The Reformed community in Vienna also celebrated at the same time, and received dignitaries such as Henrietta of Nassau, a Calvinist and the wife of Archduke Charles, the brother of Francis and a hero of the Napoleonic Wars. In Vienna, a metal worker created a coin with a picture of Martin Luther and a Latin inscription that read: “In Memory of the Third Jubilee of the Reformation by the Protestant Community of the Collective Austrian Imperial States. October 31, 1817. Celebrated with a Grateful Heart (Jubilaei Reformationis, Tertium Recurrentis, A Coetibus Evangelicorum, per Univ Imp Austriacum MDCCCXVII XXXI. Oct Grata Mente Celebrati).”Footnote 71 Noting these events, observers praised the “spirit of wisdom and liberality” displayed by the Austrian government.Footnote 72 Furthermore, Glatz's optimistic account of the jubilee reached readers in the German lands.Footnote 73 Even the weather cooperated!Footnote 74
The events in the rest of German-Austria involved less pomp but promoted the same message as the one in Vienna. Many small Protestant communities did not have the means to offer much more than a single sermon. The senior, or Protestant district supervisor, in Arriach (Styria) was ill and thus unable to plan a big ceremony, while in several other villages, the local church simply burned a few candles, decorated the church, and held a sermon.Footnote 75 Places such as Gnesau (Carinthia) in the mountains could not receive news because of its geographic isolation. Protestants held celebrations with more alacrity in other parts of Carinthia. In Watschig, for example, the altar had two banners of Francis and Joseph on the right, Leopold II on the left, and the number 1781 in the middle, along with ten burning candles. Beneath the altar were the words “Martin Luther” and “1517.”Footnote 76 A portrait of Francis, with the inscription “praise and blessings to our beloved sovereign and protector of our church, Francis I,” greeted parishioners in the Upper Austrian town of Scharten as they entered the church.Footnote 77 A sign on the main door of one church read “Never going back” (Nie wieder rückwärts). Parishioners decorated the altars in most churches, and images of Francis and Joseph appeared in some way or other.Footnote 78
The celebrations in the rest of Cisleithanian Austria mirrored those in German-Austria. In Prague, the celebrations followed the model in Vienna. The Reformed community in the Bohemian town of Wtelno held the jubilee on November 1, welcoming as well that day three converts from Catholicism into their congregation. The next day the community held a celebration that featured a banner with a half moon on one side, the phrases “Francis the Tolerant” and “Joseph the Gracious” on the other.Footnote 79 The Moravian celebrations, attended by several Catholics and state officials, were similar to those in Austria, with decorated altars and church doors.Footnote 80 At the church in Brünn (Brno), both sides of the pulpit displayed giant pictures of Joseph and Francis.Footnote 81 Galician Protestant settlements conducted similar jubilees, and towns such as Biala celebrated the broad autonomy they enjoyed and the gifts they had received from Francis earlier that year.Footnote 82
The persistence of absolutism in Cisleithanian Austria facilitated celebrations that closely matched the intentions of the government. But in other parts of the empire, where Vienna had less control, the celebrations strayed from the rules established by the consistory. In Triest, for instance, the Lutheran church purchased for the tricentennial events twenty new bells, which they decorated with flowers, and began the festivities on October 30. Here the churches overflowed, according to Glatz, like never before.Footnote 83 Trent celebrated on November 1, and an inscription on the main door thanked Francis for the celebration.Footnote 84
Lutheran and Reformed communities in Hungary, which Vienna did not rule directly, had autonomous hierarchies and more discretion to hold a jubilee. The Lutheran church in Hungary was 54 percent Slovak, 24 percent German, and 21 percent Magyar, whereas the Reformed church was mostly Magyar and less inclined to celebrate Luther.Footnote 85 Art. XXVI of the 1790–1791 Diet promised broad autonomy and numerous privileges to Lutherans and Reformed Christians, but Protestants often remained at the mercy of Catholic prelates, who had retained many of the entitlements their counterparts had lost in Cisleithanian Austria. With the failure of absolutism in Hungary, Catholic prelates often exercised their offices with extensive autonomy, and, in 1817, several archbishops blocked publications related to the jubilees.Footnote 86 In addition, the demands of work in the grape-picking season prompted many Protestants to attempt to delay the celebrations.Footnote 87 As a result, the jubilees often took disparate forms and occurred at different times in Hungary.
The Lutheran jubilees in Hungary often resembled their counterparts in Cisleithanian Austria. In Pest the general convent endorsed the consistory's orders in Vienna, but added the following Sunday, November 9, as another day of commemoration.Footnote 88 Pastors read Psalm 126:3 in numerous communities, but in other areas, they read from Psalm 33:1: “sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him” (New International Version [NIV]).Footnote 89 Several communities, especially the ones that had first accepted the Reformation in the sixteenth century, displayed large portraits of Luther on church doors, while others dedicated several Sunday sermons to the Reformation.Footnote 90 Communities only established in 1791 and allowed to grow under Francis, such as Neu Pasua (Nova Pazova/Нова Пазова) in the Military Border (the centuries-old barrier set up by the Habsburgs in the Balkans as a tripwire against Ottoman invasions), participated in the Reformation jubilee in newly constructed churches.Footnote 91
It is not surprising that the Reformed community in Hungary had more reservations than Lutherans did about celebrating the tricentennial. Many did not commemorate the anniversary, in fact, and the ones that did hold festivities did so on various dates, usually in later November or December 1817 and even into 1818. Such delays were common in Transylvania.Footnote 92 Similar rules nonetheless applied there, and the consistory warned preachers not to attack other faiths in their sermons. The jubilee began on December 21 in Kronstadt (Brașov), and, in other towns in Transylvania, pastors held special services in January 1818.Footnote 93 Reformed Christians took communion with Lutherans in the royal free city of Leutschau (Levoča), and the communities subsequently decided to mark the Reformation every year on the first Sunday of advent.Footnote 94 Many Reformed Hungarian theologians, who had had to study in Germany (until the creation of a Protestant Theological Institute in Vienna in 1821), celebrated the jubilee at the University of Jena. For Reformed Christians in the district beyond the Tisza, the jubilees occurred on December 7. The celebration took place on January 11, 1818 in Clausenberg (Cluj Napoca), where Psalm 126:3 was not read, but rather the innocuous Psalm 105:1–5: “Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done …” (NIV).Footnote 95 As the foregoing suggests, the Reformed church in Hungary ultimately had authority to celebrate as it saw fit.
Most preachers generally followed the spirit intended by the government, extolling the rights they enjoyed under the Habsburgs. And most sermons affirmed the idea that the state headed the Protestant churches and that the teachings of Luther mandated loyalty to the government. Every speech, in some form or other, thanked Joseph for granting religious freedom and Francis for maintaining and supporting Protestantism. In Prague, for instance, Michael Gottlieb praised Joseph for breaking “the chains of religious coercion” and applauded Francis for upholding religious freedom and protecting Protestants.Footnote 96 Preachers often linked this theme to Psalm 126:3, e.g., Samuel Wölfel urged his congregants to “raise your eyes my brothers and gaze upon the splendid (schönen) progress of our fatherland … on the spirit of toleration and brotherly love, which … through the high example of the magnificent (erhabene) imperial house is encouraged.”Footnote 97 Wölfel then transitioned into the prescribed verse, “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy,” finishing with the following: “Francis did not merely uphold our freedom. His fine appreciation of art and scholarship has not escaped (entgehen) our schools and educational institutions… and his generosity (Milde) toward the widows and orphans of deceased officials knows no difference of faith.”Footnote 98 Johann Wächtel, a preacher in Vienna, praised the “tolerant attitude of a wise, enlightened government,” and expressed thanks for citizenship in the Austrian monarchy.Footnote 99 Johann Georg Schmitz, the superintendent in Bielitz (Bielsko), even inserted Francis into the Bible verse, praising him for allowing the jubilee and then preaching that “we must see and never forget what Francis the good has done for us so far.”Footnote 100 In Wallern the preacher noted that “our ancestors… would have judged themselves lucky if they had had only half of what we enjoy”Footnote 101 All in all, then, sermons stressed the benevolent nature of the Habsburg regime and provided Protestants with an opportunity to prove their loyalty by expressing gratitude for such conditions.
In accordance with the wishes of Vienna, Protestants also stressed and proclaimed thanks for the values of religious toleration. In order to promote these virtues in conjunction with the Reformation celebrations, the government moved the celebration of Toleration Day, usually marked each year on October 13, to November 2. Preachers did not neglect this theme, offering sermons that stressed “Christian love.” Wölfel's sermon, for example, argued that the Reformation had “awakened the sprit of toleration and charity (Menschenliebe) toward parishioners of other faiths (Andersdenkende),” and laid the groundwork for religious and civil freedoms.Footnote 102 In the district of Iglau in Moravia, the preacher asked rhetorically, “how should we celebrate the third Reformation anniversary?” and promptly provided an answer: “we should think as Christians… and love one another.”Footnote 103 The preacher in Wallern urged his parishioners, “as Jesus demanded of us, to show Christian love to everyone, especially those who are of another faith.”Footnote 104 Glatz wrote at the time that Luther had rejected violence and that he had, near the end of his life, tried to reconcile the Catholic-Protestant divide.Footnote 105 Wächter, for his part, preached that they were fortunate to “live in times in which intolerance and religious hatred are ever more seldom,” and urged his parishioners to reject intolerance toward “those who do not think and believe like we do.”Footnote 106 In Carinthia, Joseph Jarius celebrated the events around Luther, Joseph, and Francis by connecting them with toleration, truth, and freedom.Footnote 107 Many sermons expressed similar gratitude, noting that Austrian Protestants had only enjoyed religious freedom for thirty-six years. In Brünn, the preacher Christian Hochstetter noted that “fifty years ago a Protestant service would have been unthinkable”—much less a government-sanctioned celebration of the Reformation—and he praised the spirit of mutual toleration that prevailed in Austria.Footnote 108
Preachers also stressed the global importance of the Reformation, with one preacher in Carinthia averring that “God spoke for a third time after the church of Jesus had declined.”Footnote 109 Or, as August Heinrich Medicus said in Trieste, the Reformation was a “world event” that had “brought light to millions” and changed Christendom on a global scale.Footnote 110 The quincentennial in 2017 will, no doubt, be the most global celebration yet. But even in 1817, the jubilee was not limited to Central Europe; events occurred in Scandinavia, St. Petersburg, several places in the United States, and South America as well. A memorial also took place in Switzerland in 1819. Protestant missionaries passed out Bibles and established congregations in south Asia and Africa, too.Footnote 111
Not every sermon followed the spirit of the law, however, and that was especially true in Hungary and Transylvania. The long dissatisfied preacher Johann Georg Overbeck complained in Carinthia about the Counter-Reformation and lingering injustices.Footnote 112 In Moravia, Christian Friedrich Hochstetter misleadingly complained about the lack of pomp and “our small celebration.”Footnote 113 Sermons in Hungary often came from Psalm 105:1–5, which lacked a convenient segue to praise the Habsburg state. Wölfel, speaking in Hungarian Modern (Modor), argued that the Reformation gave people the freedom to think, which was potentially dangerous because it could justify revolt against authority.Footnote 114 In Clausenburg in Transylvania, where Protestants had not only possessed religious freedom since the sixteenth century but actually dominated the territory, the preacher Martin Liedermann was less effusive in his praise of Habsburg rule, arguing that tension and animosity among the confessions persisted despite all the talk of reconciliation and harmony.Footnote 115 He also addressed the issue of the split in Christianity, claiming that the Church had set this process in motion centuries before Luther. Yet, he urged his parishioners that reunification could occur—“when you cease (aufhöret) to plant in your children and grandchildren those prejudices that exist against other believers, when you refrain from all expressions (Ausdrücke) against all other believers that exhibit hate, mistrust, and irreconciliation (Unversöhnlichkeit).”Footnote 116 Johann Berheft of Gross Schlagendorf (Vel'ký Slavkov) attacked Catholicism during the age of Martin Luther, preaching—without using the word Catholic—that its practitioners had
believed, with self-selected (selbsterwählte), ill understood (übelverstandene) religiosity, that they had achieved a special holiness through strict penance, through abstaining from permissible behavior, through onerous oaths, through certain clothing, through trips to supposedly holy places, through the renunciation of worldly and civil affairs, through celibacy and similar practices.Footnote 117
He also noted that they had “nourished a dangerous spiritual pride… [B]elief in Jesus and his service… became a secondary matter”; at the same time, he praised Protestants for choosing faith over good works.Footnote 118 Although Berheft's sermons reached the limits of what would have been acceptable in Cisleithanian Austria, they all nevertheless praised Joseph and the contemporary regime in some manner or other.
The words preachers chose or omitted often revealed the aims of the censors. Many sermons repeated the narrative of Luther familiar to many students today, with Johann Tetzel, Church corruption, Charles V, and the Diet of Worms all making appearances. Preachers mentioned the wars of religion, noting how terrible they had been, and gave thanks for the confessional harmony that currently existed in Austria. Yet, these references were usually vague and words such as Habsburg, Catholic, pope, or the imperial house rarely appeared. Sermons instead noted that Luther “faced dangers,” that the Thirty Years' War had been bloody, that Protestants had to fight off “foreign attacks”—while leaving out the Battle of White Mountain of 1620, and the Habsburgs' role in the whole affair.Footnote 119 The disgruntled pastor Hochstetter praised Gustavus Adolphus, however, the “pious king of Sweden who… gave help in our most dire hour… [T]hrough him Protestants obtained freedom”—but omitted the Edict of Restitution or the fact that Gustavus Adolphus had rescued Protestants from the Habsburg emperor.Footnote 120 These events were often mentioned before the reading of Psalm 126:3, after which the preachers then mentioned the imperial house in connection with Joseph II, Leopold II, and Francis, who were praised for granting and preserving religious freedom. In Carinthia, Joseph Jarius spoke of the persecution of Protestants but only referred to the Habsburgs once Joseph appeared: “God finally… awakened a man from the magnificent ruling house of Austria, who… freed the suppressed from their chains and granted freedom of faith and conscience. Hail to the immortal Joseph!”Footnote 121
Little public opposition to these celebrations emerged among Catholics in Austria. Many attended these ceremonies, especially in Vienna and Bohemia. Rumors that swirled about a “pious” party at the imperial court were associated with Francis's fourth wife, Caroline Augusta of Bavaria, whom the emperor had married in 1816. Yet, the empress, while pious, adhered to a bourgeois set of values when it came to religious affairs: she viewed Church politics as a public matter and thus only suitable for men.Footnote 122 The empress restricted herself to running and endowing charitable organizations, including non-Catholic ones, and applicants flooded her with petitions requesting money for various projects.Footnote 123 She also brought her confessor, Sebastian Francis Job, to court in 1817. Job accused Protestants of taking their “error” beyond the bounds of moderation and urged Catholics in Germany, such as Maximilian Prechtl, to write pieces critical of Luther.Footnote 124 But Job also turned down requests to exercise influence in political affairs, and the police would have anyway discouraged him from mixing politics with religion.Footnote 125 Another Catholic critic with ties to the Austrian government, Adam Müller, a political theorist and Romantic, wrote Etwas, das Goethe gesagt hat (Something that Goethe Said), which equated the Reformation with revolution, called Protestantism a “labyrinth of contradictions,” and mocked the upcoming union of the Reformed and Lutheran churches in Prussia.Footnote 126 But, as a Habsburg employee, he could not publish such a work.Footnote 127 Instead he circulated it privately among friends, a circle that included Prince Clemens von Metternich.
Austrian officials adhered to the Josephist paradigm governing Habsburg religious affairs. Although groups of German, Hungarian, and Italian Catholic revivalists with connections to the court resided in Vienna during the 1810s, their influence on Habsburg policy was negligible. Connections between these revivalists and the papal nuncio, Antonio Gabrielle Severoli, aroused suspicion because of Vienna's distrust of the papacy.Footnote 128 Furthermore, Francis distrusted Romantics as foreigners from northern Germany. Metternich shared these views in 1817, and, that very year, he passed over Friedrich Schlegel to serve as editor of the Jahrbücher der Literatur: he considered the editing of a journal by a known Catholic to be unacceptable, especially because Schlegel was also an Austrian official.Footnote 129 Schlegel's career in the Austrian government coincided with his proclamations praising toleration. The poet-philosopher consistently urged civil rights for Protestants and Jews, advocated Catholic-Protestant harmony, and opposed exploiting religion for political capital.Footnote 130 In fact, when Schlegel later founded a religious journal, he quit his post in the Austrian government. Other prominent Catholics harbored vague suspicions of Protestantism as well, but kept them private.Footnote 131 For all these reasons, opposition to the jubilee from Catholics occupying positions of power in the state and the Church remained muted.
One may rightfully regard the effusive praise for the Habsburgs in the Reformation ceremonies as choreographed, but it nevertheless reflected the real degree of toleration that had taken hold in the Habsburg Empire since 1780. The same censors that crafted sermon guidelines for Protestants also restrained Catholic zealots and allowed the tricentennial celebrations to take place publicly in peace. In fact, in no other country did more Catholics take part in the jubilees than in Austria.Footnote 132 The Reformation tricentennial offered an opportunity to display these newfound aspects of the Habsburg state not only to Protestants in Austria, but also to ones living in the German states.
An Ecumenical Moment?
One recent work has called the Congress of Vienna an “ecumenical moment that has been in danger of being forgotten.”Footnote 133 The 1817 Reformation jubilees in Central Europe did indeed follow an ecumenical path, were mostly enlightened and apolitical, and stressed toleration toward other faiths. But monarchs and princes also used these events to promote the unification of the Lutheran and Reformed churches and to establish themselves as the heads of Protestantism. In the following decades in the German states, rulers often forgot this ecumenical spirit in the process, especially as the age-old problem of confessionalism reemerged, and the Second Confessional Age (zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter), the controversial term used by Olaf Blaschke, began in the 1830s.Footnote 134 Yet, in the Habsburg lands, Vienna continued to reject confessionalism as a political tool until 1848.
Toleration and confessional harmony dominated the jubilees in the German lands. Sermons typically taught that Luther had awakened enlightened thought.Footnote 135 In contrast to the 1617 and 1717 celebrations, which only Lutherans had commemorated, Protestants of both rites participated in the 1817 events.Footnote 136 The jubilees of 1617 and 1717 also stressed confessional conformity.Footnote 137 But by 1817, fear of Catholicism had decreased significantly with the reorganization of the map of Germany and the secularization of Church property. Only three of the thirty-three small states in the German Confederation were Catholic, and Protestants had little to fear from Josephist Austria or from a Bavaria under the rule of Maximilian Joseph (r. 1799–1825), who, until 1817, had allowed the enlightened statesman Maximilian von Montgelas to play a substantial role in Bavarian policy.Footnote 138 Of the four states that remained majority Catholic, three of them had no jubilee.Footnote 139 Still, Catholics also occasionally took part in the jubilees, even ringing church bells in solidarity, while in Thuringia, even Jews participated.Footnote 140
The jubilees in the German states were, in most respects, similar to the Austrian ones, with celebrations revolving around the churches and involving various decorations.Footnote 141 A royal ordinance in Bavaria allowed a Friday celebration on October 31; as in Austria, it also permitted public worship in schools on November 1 and church services on November 2. The main sermons came from Psalm 118:22–27, however (“the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone… The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad” [NIV]), and from John 8:31–32 (“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘if you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples’” [NIV]), instead of from Psalm 126:3. The government reminded Protestants to preach the spirit of peace and love toward non-Protestants.Footnote 142 As in Austria, the churches filled up during the celebrations and contained pictures of Luther, though they obviously did not display images of Joseph and Francis.Footnote 143 Other territories such as Bremen celebrated the jubilee for the first time and pastors there preached from John 8:31–32; in Dresden, the prescribed text was Psalm 126:3.Footnote 144 Claiming that Luther opposed partisanship, Frederick William III of Prussia warned his clergy that “attacks on other believers would be against the will of his majesty.”Footnote 145 Sermons often urged interconfessional unity and, by law, both confessions had to pray for the monarch.Footnote 146
The organizers of several celebrations had ulterior motives. The first jubilee, which occurred at Wartburg on October 18 and 19, 1817, merged with the fourth commemoration of the Battle of Leipzig. Catholics took part, and the festival portrayed Luther as a German hero who had fought against superstition and foreign slavery, a convenient theme common to the struggle against Rome in 1517 and Napoleon in 1813. Yet, students also burned books supporting absolutism in protest against conservative regimes that had failed to deliver promised constitutions.Footnote 147 This sign of disobedience alarmed Habsburg officials, German princes, and the Russian Tsar, leading to a crackdown on student fraternities in the Confederation.Footnote 148 For King Frederick William III of Prussia, the 1817 tricentennial offered the opportunity to merge the Lutheran and Reformed faiths under his leadership. The Berlin synod rubberstamped this move, arguing that the union “corresponds to the intentions of the Reformation. It lies in the spirit of Protestantism.”Footnote 149 Frederick William ordered the clergy to use the general term Evangelical and not Lutheran for the jubilee itself.Footnote 150
Although confessional harmony dominated these celebrations, polemics did surface in the German states. A contemporary survey of the literature on the 1817 jubilees counted over thirty works in a variety of editions that explicitly attacked the celebrations or the Reformation itself, leading to numerous exchanges and response pieces between Catholic and Protestant critics.Footnote 151 Many works listed in this compilation contained polemics in other sections as well.
A number of Protestant authors addressed the jubilee in a manner that would have been unacceptable in Austria. Supposedly neutral works on the jubilee frequently called the Reformation an event that had “saved us from the yoke of slavery,” and contained references to clericalism and to the Jesuits, a boogeyman meant to bring out fears of conspiracies.Footnote 152 Sermons also explicitly detailed the corruption of the Church, attacked Pope Leo X, described the Jan Hus burning of 1415, and addressed contentious issues that the Habsburg government would have considered an unnecessary stirring up of the general population.Footnote 153 Other preachers reminded their parishioners about the Inquisition, the burning of heretics, and the “error” (Irrthum) of papal supremacy.Footnote 154 Hermann Gottfried Demme preached that the papacy had achieved power through “lies and deceit” (Lüge und Trug) and stated that the “Roman, papal church—which we know is different from the Christian Catholic—is still intolerant, eager to persecute (verfolgungsüchtig), and thus of an unchristian spirit.”Footnote 155 Other works appeared, such as Luther's 1545 Wider das Babstum [sic] zu Rom vom Teufel gestifft (Against the Papacy in Rome, Founded by the Devil), leading to confrontations between Catholic and Protestant activists.
Prominent Catholic voices also used the jubilee to criticize the Reformation or to voice concerns about the Protestant domination of Germany. Clemens August von Droste zu Vischering, the future archbishop of Cologne, complained about Protestant rule over Catholic territories in Germany and agitated for greater Church autonomy. He also noted proudly that, “at this festival [Fest], we Catholics thank God that we, in 1817, still believe that which we insisted upon in Year 33.”Footnote 156 As another Catholic wrote, “it is laughable that, in our enlightened age… so many Protestants… still make Martin Luther a prophet (Wahrheitsfreunde).”Footnote 157 Even the Seitenstück zur Weisheit Dr. Martin Luthers zum Jubeljahre der Lutherischen Reformation (A Side Piece on the Wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther in the Jubilee Year of the Lutheran Reformation), a work published by a Benedictine priest, Maximilian Prechtl, in 1817 and cited by one scholar as an example of ecumenism, included numerous attacks on Luther.Footnote 158 Although the preface contained conciliatory phrases—e.g., “I speak in peace”—and referred to Protestants as “separated brothers,” the entirety of this piece analyzed Luther's “Against the Papacy in Rome” with the goal of depicting him as irrational, impulsive, and reckless—which did little, of course, to ease the confessional divide in Germany.Footnote 159 The work went through three editions, and the author published other pieces in response to the Protestant reaction against it.Footnote 160 Although the Enlightenment spirit characterized the general tenor of the jubilees, conflict between Protestants and Catholics continued to exist, in short, and such confessional diatribes, thinly concealed as neutral and “impartial” (unparteiisch), existed in various German lands—unlike in Austria, where censorship usually prevented such expressions.
Dogmatic sentiments like these, in the minority in 1817, had, by the 1830s, transformed into a substantial force in the German states, where individual rulers pandered to the majority religion despite the vague promise of Christian equality set forth in the German Confederation's constitution.Footnote 161 Catholic ultramontanism underwent a revival across the West, also in the German lands; quarrels over contentious issues such as mixed marriages reached a fever pitch; and the age-old confessional divide in Germany deepened. An ultramontanist press emerged and dominated the market by the 1830s, while cooperation between conservative Catholic and Protestant writers frayed.Footnote 162 Frederick William III used the new Union Church to promote Protestantism, while in Bavaria, King Ludwig I (r. 1825–1848) assumed the role of head of the Catholic world in Central Europe.Footnote 163
The Habsburg Empire rejected such confessionalism and remained isolated in the Catholic world until 1848, when the revolutions finally dismantled the Josephist system.Footnote 164 Despite a deathbed confession by Francis in 1835 to overturn Joseph's religious reforms, and subsequent efforts by Metternich to loosen restrictions on the Church, the state continued to restrain confessionalism until 1848. Confessional strife peaked in the early 1840s in Hungary and ended with Vienna making a deal with Protestants that sidelined Catholic prelates.Footnote 165 The state's fear of public opinion included a fear of Catholic activism, which reflected a belief that a Catholic revival would inevitably invoke popular politics, potentially leading to disorder. In the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, Vienna viewed Catholicism as a political burden, not an advantage. The regime instead relied on dynastic loyalty among religious minorities to create political stability, and offered a nonconfessional, vaguely neutral state as one of the benefits of living in the Habsburg Empire. Ironically, the famed toleration of the Habsburgs only took root under the rigidly conservative regime that ruled the Habsburg lands from 1792 to 1848.
The 1817 Reformation jubilees were the first ecumenical ones. They occurred without the exigencies of war and outside enemies serving to bridge the confessional divide, as they would in 1917.Footnote 166 The celebrations also happened before the benefits of mass secularization, something that overshadows the upcoming quincentennial; but even in this era of unprecedented ecumenical dialogue, the five-hundredth anniversary is not without tension.Footnote 167 The 1817 jubilee occurred at a moment in which states, influenced by enlightened absolutism, could enforce interfaith harmony, and at a time before rulers, many of whom had grown up in a post-Enlightenment, Napoleonic world, had realized the utility of confessional politics to garner legitimacy from the majority faith.Footnote 168 Christians could celebrate the decline of confessional tensions in this environment: considering the lingering strength of confessional identities, this was a real accomplishment in 1817.
But nowhere did Protestants have as much to celebrate as in the Habsburg lands. Here there were no national motivations; rather, the festivities were celebrations of toleration and the demise of the Counter-Reformation, which had only ended in the 1780s. Habsburg officials viewed the Counter-Reformation as a mistake, and sought to procure the loyalty of the empire's religious minorities. This new policy easily worked in tandem with the infamous censorship regime of the Vormärz period. The state retained the controls on the Church that Joseph had established, and religious functions often remained tightly regulated. State officials used the censors, in effect, to create harmony after centuries of confessional discord. Toleration and censorship went hand-in-hand and were instrumental in maintaining stability; in that regard, the jubilees reflected the new Habsburg ideology.
The tricentennial celebrations thus epitomized these new attributes of the Habsburg regime. Vienna used the jubilees to showcase the toleration and confessional harmony that had become the norm in Habsburg daily life. The events also served as a demonstration of Protestant loyalty to the regime. Finally, censorship played a key role, as state officials influenced and dictated what prayers and verses preachers could use, set the date of the celebrations, ensured that Catholics did not disrupt the ceremonies, and established the general tenor of the jubilee. There were, in point of fact, few polities as committed to ecumenism as the notoriously conservative regime of the Habsburg Empire.
