Pietas Austriaca

Notes to the Text

NOTES TO THE TEXT by William D. Bowman A few notes on the translation will help the reader. Pietas Austriaca is really three books in one. There is the basic text, which should be accessible to a general audience, whether it be college undergraduates or those interested in the history of religion or ideas. Additionally, there is a second book in Coreth’s footnotes. Much of this text is in early modern German or Latin and appears in translation in the body of the text. For those interested, however, in the more scholarly aspects of Pietas Austriaca, there is a wealth of material in the footnotes. Of course, it does not follow a continuous narrative, but it provides important passages for understanding the form and content of Coreth’s leading ideas. Finally, there is a third, unwritten, text which we have been unable to bring fully to the reader in this translation. Coreth herself lived so deeply in the world of pietas austriaca as she researched, wrote, and revised this book that some of her statements and claims are reflections of its attitudes and perspectives . Thus, she is sometimes so well-versed in the material that she leaves the reader with short, intuitive passages which could be developed at much greater length. I have indicated, in my introduction to the translation, some of the issues for which she provides intriguing insights and trenchant commentary , but for which she leaves fuller development of these points to the reader’s imagination or perhaps to younger scholars who might want to follow up her leads. In short, as a cautionary statement to the reader: Coreth says a lot in a short amount of space and one must consider her arguments deeply to grasp their full import. At the same time, one must sometimes supply one’s own general context to her specific points. It is what is left out, but understood , that I refer to as Coreth’s third, unwritten, text. Coreth’s style and choice of language will sometimes be difficult for the modern reader, especially for the modern secular reader. Clearly, she is extremely sympathetic to the world of pietas austriaca and to the Habsburgs who lived it. This sympathy allowed her to write a book which actually presents this world from the inside out; by believing in its claims she has been able to xix understand their meanings in the baroque period. Her ability to adopt this mentality has given us a book with a more direct sense of this time and place than most scholarly works—which approach their subject from a critical distance —have been capable of doing. The trade-off is that her language will sometimes seem surprising to the modern reader and that many scholars might want to analyze the concept of pietas austriaca further and present it from other, less sympathetic, perspectives. Hopefully, the English translation of this book will contribute to more curiosity on the part of the general reader and the scholar to pursue this world further and to understand and critique the attitudes of those who believed so firmly in it. In order to help the reader with the historical context of Pietas Austriaca, we have supplied several aids to the book which did not appear in the original German editions. Readers can find in the table of contents references to maps and a family tree of the Habsburgs. We have also supplied a list of Habsburg rulers and their dates of rule along with a timeline of important Central European events. In the body of the text, the reader will find notes at the bottom of certain pages to help explain some technical and historical points. Hopefully, such aids will help the reader as Coreth moves quickly but steadily through many centuries and several European countries. Pietas Austriaca was originally published in a shortened form as an essay in 1954 and later as a book in 1959 which was revised and appeared as a new edition in 1982. This translation is based on the last, 1982, edition. The German editions of Pietas Austriaca had no bibliography. A bibliography of the most important primary and secondary literature she used has been added as an aid to both the general reader and the scholar. Finally, an extensive bibliography of other relevant literature, most of which was not available to Coreth, has been prepared and added at the end of this text. Important studies on individual Habsburgs, popular religiosity, and Austrian...