The State of Religion in the Prehistory of Vienna
Dana Harrison 3/12/04
BOME H Band

As a meeting place that formed the crossroads between the influences of Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands and with an unsurpassed dynastic grace, the church of the Hapsburg Empire exerted a reflective power of pervasiveness and glory. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, when Hapsburg prominence was at it peak, the dynasty was of the mindset that their empire was the basket of the newly revived Roman Empire. By forming the Holy Roman Empire and spiritually infusing the empire with Catholicism, the very tone of the Viennese character was set. The fervor of Catholicism in politics, which lay at the root of the reformation and the Thirty Years War between Roman Catholics and Protestants, only further consummated the power held by Catholicism over the Hapsburg empire. Catholicism expressed itself through major elements of culture. The surge of monastic architecture during the 18th century was a nod to imperial grandeur and wealth and the quality of music felt the brunt of reform just as the church did under Joseph II. The state of the church and Catholicism was synonymous with the corresponding state of Viennese power over the populace and culture as a whole. In its prehistory, Vienna stood less as a political entity, rather pathing the state of religion as the very seat on which power of the early Hapsburg dynasty was born and maintained.
The religious movements of the reformation and counter reformation during the mid 17th century sent Vienna through a battle over religious and spiritual allegiance, and gave the city its opportunity to firmly set down its Catholic footing. The structure of the Viennese social landscape becalmed transformed as it got wound up with wars between the Protestant majority, and the Catholics, under Ferdinand I who took over succession in the late 17th century. The presence of the middle class was lost to the clergy and the aristocracy, as were modest homes grand palaces, and churches.¹ Rebellion stirred from the Lutheran gentry and Lower Austrian Estates who felt the encroachment of the aristocracy on their state of self- government. An edict passed which was passed in 1527 by Ferdinand quelled Protestant heretics by rendering it illegal for them, as citizens of Vienna, to be witnesses in court or establish a business. It was at this point that religious battles took off in Vienna and that the notion laid down was that “those who refused to give up their faith were not allowed to stay on in Vienna to embody heroic loyalty in the face of ruin.” ²
The period of reformation began as a Protestant mass movement was laced with goals of libertarian and egalitarian freedoms among the lower ranks, characteristic of the early stages of most Protestant movements. Waves of persecution, including the burning of heretics, were launched in its wake, and ultimately, the movement as a whole was suppressed. It was a sort of cleansing, or purifying process in which evidence of a Lutheran Vienna became evasive, and Catholics were painted in a triumphant and pious lighting. In one attempt to suffocate the Protestant majority, a decree was passed by the government, in 1579, which stated that Lutheran city councilors had to recant or be dismissed. Citizenship, which included the right to own property, required an oath be taken on the orthodox articles of faith, and academic degrees could no longer be obtained by Lutherans.
Catholic fervor mounted as Ferdinand II stepped into power, intending to restore Catholicism into his Holy Roman Empire. This happened with such a force that it birthed the Thirty Years War, a series of religious spews which began in 1618. Protestantism was equated with disloyalty. Ferdinand continued to aggravate the situation by imposing religious restrictions throughout the empire; protestant churches were destroyed, and restrictions were placed on the rights of Protestant worship and education. The Bohemian period of the war removed Ferdinand from the throne, and replaced him with the Protestant Frederick. However, the Battle of the White Mountain stamped out the Protestant rebellion and resulted in the triumph of Catholicism as the empire’s state religion.
By the mid 18th century, the political and religious goals of the counter-reformat ion had been accomplished, yet the status of power in Austria required mass internal reform and a restructuring of the nobility and monarchy. During the 1780s, Joseph II promoted reforms, known as Josephinism, which edged on utilitarian Enlightenment theories and philosophies. While he wished to subordinate the church to the state and diminish the power of the Catholic church, the church was not exempt from reforms designed to strengthen state authority and power. Prince Kaunitz, the chancellor of state, who directed Austrian politics for forty years from 1753, stated "the supremacy of the State over the Church extends to all ecclesiastical laws and practices devised and established solely by man... Consequently, the State must always have the power to limit, alter, or annul its former concessions, whenever reasons of state, abuses, or altered circumstances demand it."³ As Joseph's policies placed the Hapsburg empire under one umbrella of political and ecclesiastical affairs, his ideas served to further capture the union between the high aristocratic society and church that was so prominent in Vienna.
Joseph had changed the direction of the Hapsburg dominion with his ideological reforms, and so equally changed the direction of Catholicism’s dominion. He promoted greater religious toleration, and deemed religious suppression contrary to utilitarianism. In response to his belief that inferiority should not be a measure of one’s religious principles, the Edict of Tolerance was issued in 1781, raising Protestants, as well as Jews, to nearly equal status as Catholics, and providing them access to otherwise barred communities, trades, and education.
The wealth of Churches created a cultural and political background for music to flourish. The connection between the church and music was specifically reflected in the fact that reform measures taken by Joseph II during the late 18th century also reformed the era’s church music and ceremony. Joseph took measures which he believed were in accordance with the intellectual and artistic trends of the Classic era and which agreed with the notion that religious services purposed the “bettering of humanity”⁴
This resulted in a liturgy newly defined by its simplification, edification, and communal worship. In a decree to the bishops of Lombardy, Joseph wrote “It is proper that the people not only are present at the celebration of the divine rites but also take part...[They should] accompany the celebration of Mass with hymns in the vernacular...the singing of such hymns being a more forceful means of elevating the mind...” ⁵ Simplicity within church services was enforced by decrees which limited excessive reverence of the Virgin, saints, and relics. Joseph also introduced the vernacular into certain hymns and substituted German for Latin in the Mass in an attempt to increase understanding and participation in the service.
Like music, architecture was also a representation of the fusion of church affairs and political power and the infusion of both into external cultural symbols. Ecclesiastical buildings and monasteries sprung up during the 16th and 17th centuries as claim to the Hapsburgs power status, as the heads of Austria, and of the Holy Roman Empire as well. Large ecclesiastical structures, such as the Karlskirche made Vienna a capital worthy of its emperor and its empire. During the 17th century, noble families and abbeys built on a large scale level. This was in response to the need to physically solidify an expression of their power after the Counter-Reformation had reempowered the landed nobility and the Catholic church.
The fervor with which Catholicism consumed the realm of Hapsburg politics and culture in the early centuries of its history contributed greatly to shaping the Viennese character. Vienna’s status as the heart of a major European power started, flourished, and struggled with its religious founding which worked its way into all realms, cultural and political, of the empire. Starting with the liberalism which surfaced in the late 19th century, Vienna took a more political path, deviating from religiously centered values. However, Vienna very much lives in its past, and whether or not its current concern is religion, the city itself stands as a constant reminder of its holy origins.






















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^{1 2} Barea, Ilsa. Vienna: The legend and reality of an urban civilization, from its beggings as a frontier fortress to the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966.) p. 43

³ Ibid, p. 45

⁴ Klaar, Karl. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI: Ferdinand II., 15 Sept. 2003
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06040a.htm>

⁵ Pauly, Reinhard G. “The reforms of Church Music under Joseph II.” The Musical Quarterly, (Jul., 1957), p. 374 <www.jstor.org>

⁶ Ibid, p. 376