Die Jesuiten in Wien: Zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte der österreichischen Ordensprovinz der "Gesellschaft Jesu" im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (review)

This fascinating volume contains nineteen essays about the activities of the Jesuits in Vienna and in their former Austrian province, which also encompassed the Ukraine, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Siebenbürgen, Transylvania. The talks were delivered originally on 19-21 October 2000 at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Vienna. The symposium's setting was highly appropriate, as the Academy's building was consecrated in 1756 as the great hall of the university. The history of the university and the Society of Jesus were intimately bound from 1623, when Emperor Ferdinand II placed the university under the Jesuits' direction, to the Society's suppression in 1773. The Academy is situated in a square opposite the Jesuit's Universitätskirche and their massive former college building.

Ferdinand I called the Jesuits to Vienna in 1551, just eleven years after the Society's establishment. After an initial article by Jörg Garms on the documentary resources of the Austrian Province in the Jesuit archives in Rome, the first group of essays focuses on the Society's activities in Vienna. Kurt Mühlberger writes about the years from their entry into Vienna until the Pragmatic Sanction of 1623, when the Society, amid considerable protest, took control of most of the university and began building its new college. He includes a brief discussion of the rise of the academic college from 1624 to 1654. From the outset, the Jesuits were associated with the Habsburgs. As discussed by Herbert Karner, the Society first used the Kirche am Hof on the square adjacent to the palace, following the displacement of the Carmelites. Eventually they gained two additional churches — the Universitätskirche and the Annakirche, beside their provincial novitiate, or training house for novices. Manfred Koller analyzes the Universitätskirche as a totally integrated work of art and architecture (a Gesamtkunstwerk), especially in light of the renovations of the building from 1984 to 1998. As Hellmut Lorenz nicely relates, Andrea Pozzo, the virtuoso Italian Jesuit artist, radically transformed the interior of this church soon after his arrival from Rome in 1702. It is interesting to contrast the appearance of the interior recorded in an engraving of 1671 with Pozzo's final conception. Pozzo bound together the high altar, the reconfigured side chapel altars, and the nave vaults by using real architectural modifications and illusionistic ceiling paintings. The relation of this fresco program to Jesuit piety and to Pozzo's earlier painted cycles in Rome is addressed in Werner Telesko's fine essay. Tomá|$$|Ahs Jerábek uses sources in Moravian archives for, among other things, discussing the appearance of the Jesuit college library in Vienna. Luigi A. Ronzoni explores the mid-eighteenth-century Franz Regis-Kapelle, constructed for the Brotherhood of Christian Teaching, in the Kirche am Hof. Géza Galavics considers the elaborate engraved thesis sheets made for Hungarian students in Vienna. These often celebrate military victories, such as the Battle of Vezekény (1652) against the Turks, and powerful rulers like Emperors Leopold I or Joseph I.

The second half of the book offers a glimpse at the Society's activities beyond Vienna as well as a group of more thematic essays. Ana Lavric considers the Jesuit College and church of St. Jakob in Laibach/Ljubljana (Slovenia). Liselotte Popelka looks at ephemeral decorations initiated by the Jesuits. These include the temporary funerary memorials, such as the mausoleum of Leopold I in 1705 in Vienna or the emblematic display in Innsbruck. Maria Pötzl-Malikova examines the festive ceremonies accompanying the canonization of Aloysius Gonzaga and Stanislaus Kostka, the newest Jesuit saints, in 1726 in Buda and throughout the Austrian province. Sandra Krump investigates two Habsburg panegyrics performed at...