Catholic Belief and Survival in Late Sixteenth-Century Vienna: The Case of Georg Eder (1523–87) (review)

In her solid first book, the author investigates the career of Georg Eder, a prominent figure in Vienna and in the imperial government from the early 1550s into the 1580s, and a bulwark of the Catholic Reform there. Such a study is long overdue, as she points out, and for it she has uncovered a number of new sources; indeed, she exhibits familiarity with a wide range of sources in Vienna, Munich, and Rome, and she has worked through Eder's twelve books, most of them catechetical or polemical in nature, as well as his other publications, mostly speeches. She finds in Eder a significant example of a layman who contributed substantially to the Catholic Reform. Her study also reveals, she asserts persuasively, different styles of sixteenth-century Catholicism represented by Austria's moderation, Bavaria's militance, and Rome's papalism.

Fulton proceeds chronologically. Her first chapter describes Vienna when Eder arrived in 1550. The city had suffered severely during the Turkish siege of 1529, and its population of 25,000 had not yet reached pre-siege levels. Its most distinctive feature was the Habsburg court. By 1568 the upper nobility were overwhelmingly Protestant. Emperor Maximilian II (1564–76) remained fundamentally Catholic, according to Fulton, but he was convinced of the need to compromise with Protestants if he was to maintain his authority as well as the peace. Protestants figured prominently at court.

Chapters 2 and 3 describe Eder's life up to the crucial year of 1573. Born in 1523 in Bavaria, Eder studied arts and law at Cologne from 1542 to 1549, where the Jesuits had established their first permanent settlement in Germany. Here he made his first contact with the Society and with the young Peter Canisius; he would remain close to the Jesuits for the rest of his life. Fulton suggests that he may have followed the Jesuits to Vienna, where Canisius opened a house in 1550. There he rose quickly to prominence, serving as a Reichshofratfrom 1563 to 1583 and eleven terms as rector of the University of Vienna, which he revived to the glory of its pre-siege days. During these years he also worked tirelessly on behalf of church reform, an activity that he easily combined at this time with loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty. During the late 1560s and early 1570s he published most of his books, most prominently the Oeconomia Bibliorum(1568), basically an introduction to the bible for Catholic priests, and the Partitiones(1568), based heavily on the decrees of Trent.

The year 1573, discussed in chapter 4, marked a watershed in Eder's life. That year he published his Evangelische Inquisition, in German rather than in Latin, more original than his earlier works and more polemical. The book brought down upon him, unexpectedly, the wrath of Emperor Maximilian, who ordered the book immediately suppressed and each copy located and destroyed. The emperor saw in the volume's attack on court Christians and other moderates in the confessional struggle an assault on himself, his authority, and his attempts to keep the religious peace. Maximilian's measures stirred a strong reaction from the Catholic courts of Europe, Madrid, Munich, and Rome, all of whom came to Eder's defense. He did retain his position at court and maintained it until his death in 1587. Chapters 5 and 6 then describe his activity for the Church in this last period of his life. Increasingly he saw in the Bavarian Wittelsbachs, more militant than the Habsburgs, the chief princely support for the Church in Germany and in these last years he reported regularly and in detail to the Duke of Bavaria on the situation of the Church in Vienna and Austria. He also came to incline more to the defense of papal rights...