Pietas Austriaca

Preface to the Second Edition

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION by Anna Coreth The author is extremely pleased over the success of this slim and modest study, which, in its first edition, was published in 1959. The term pietas austriaca, Austrian piety, has been adopted by historians and scholars and has had a stimulating effect on research in the history of spirituality. This, in turn, was an incentive for the publisher, as well as the author, to publish a new edition of this small volume. Since the book’s first publication more than twenty years have passed. A shorter version in the form of an essay appeared more than twenty-five years ago. These were important years that brought about significant changes in the church and in the world. Much of the baroque heritage had, in the meantime, been eliminated from ecclesiastical culture, as seemingly no longer in accordance with modern pastoral needs. The baroque world and the baroque church within it became more distant to us. Attention to these topics today requires more imagination and rethinking than before the Second Vatican Council. The baroque period is a new world for one to enter. And yet, modern observers must recognize the grand conceptions of that era, present not only in the arts but also in the entire intellectual realm. These conceptions were based on an all-inclusive worldview, itself dependent on a certain cultural framework, that connected secular and spiritual realms. In examining especially the changing forms of religious and church life, one places great importance on the foundations of Catholic piety and distinguishes between ephemeral ideas and practices which vary with time and place and essential elements that must remain unchanged. The core elements of baroque Austrian piety discussed in this book belong basically to those permanent elements of Catholic faith. There were, however, different accents, especially evident in the veneration of the eucharist: today’s emphasis lies on the liturgy of the mass, which has been changed to promote the active participaxxi tion of the people in the sense of the “the general priesthood”; of much greater importance in the baroque era, however, was the veneration of the sacrament of the altar, i.e., the eucharist. Against a trend away from Marian devotion, the Second Vatican Council [1962–1965] and recent popes, basing themselves on the church fathers, have promoted Mary as a participant in the work of salvation and as mother of the church. As astonishing as it may seem, however, this conception of Mary and the church can be seen at the same time as a continuation of the baroque view of Mary’s queenship. The expression pietas austriaca, chosen as the title of this book, surfaced in baroque literature and was understood by contemporaries primarily in dynastic terms. Pietas austriaca was the piety—understood as a virtue of rulers— of the house of Austria’s sovereigns of both the German and Spanish lines. The special meaning of this term was based on the conviction that God had given the house of Austria a certain mission for the empire and the church, because of the religious merits of its ancestors, or, more particularly, of the great ancestor Rudolph of Habsburg. The same piety became a holy, binding heritage, which had to be faithfully followed and constantly renewed as the destiny of the house depended upon it. This book will show how such a spiritual base for Habsburg power in the seventeenth century was established in a promulgated and politically powerful manner in close contact with the grand Catholic reforms of the time. It is important to note that we are dealing here not only with the piety (pietas) of an individual ruler or with her or his Catholic devotion in a more general sense, but with the realization of a specifically Habsburg Catholicism that touched and included every member of the family. This form of pietas austriaca developed gradually and was at its height during both the baroque period and the victorious Counter Reformation of the seventeenth century. Even as the pietas austriaca was consciously promoted at this time, it was also supported and fortified by projecting it back upon the dynasty’s own past. The typical elements of Habsburg piety can be found in both lines of the house [German and Spanish]. The connection was maintained by religious orders and by marriages between the lines, making the influence of women very important. It is not the purpose of this book to show the personal religious character...