Klosteraufhebungen und Klosterpolitik in Bayern unter Kurfürst Karl Theodor, 1778-1784 by Cornelia Jahn (review)

256 BOOK REVIEWS of the book, which is very regrettable. The bulk of the work is dedicated to Garampi's diplomatic missions north of the Alps, in the Austrian Netherlands and the ecclesiastical Electorates on the Rhine in 1761-1763 and 1764, and his tenure as nuncio in Warsaw (1772-1776) andVienna (1776-1785). ThereVanysacker traces in some detail Garampi's evolution until he became the very heart and soul of the ultramontane opposition to any challenge to papal supremacy from whatever direction it came,be it Gallicanism, the Jansenism ofthe Utrecht churchj. N. Hontheim's De Statu Ecclesiae, or the Austrian state church principle that emerged subtly under Maria Theresa and more crassly underJoseph II. In following the author's account of this transformation, the reader finds it difficult to detect the enlightened cleric. Admittedly Garampi's major weapons were those books and pamphlets which defended papal primacy, such as Jean Pey's De l'autorité des deux Puissances, the circulation of which he subsidized , rather than physical force or spiritual sanctions. To that degree he can still be situated within the Muratorian cosmos, albeit along the periphery. But his diplomatic intrigues hardly measure up to those standards. We are left to wonder whether the label "enlightened" is appropriate. Garampi's last years confirm the view that the papacy was so preoccupied with the threat from the Catholic monarchs, be it in the form of Gallicanism or Josephism, that it grossly underestimated the impact of the French Revolution. Hanns Gross Loyola University Chicago Klosterauftyebungen und Klosterpolitik in Bayern unter Kurfürst Karl Theodor, 1778-1784. By Cornelia Jahn. [Schriftenreihe zur Bayerischen Landesgeschichte. Herausgegeben von der Kommission für bayerische Landesgeschichte bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Band 104.] (Munich: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. 1994. Pp. xxxii, 213. Paperbound.) For a century following the Peace ofWestphalia, the ecclesiastical principalities and ecclesiastical revenues of Catholic Germany enjoyed a period of relative security. However, during the second half of the eighteenth century there was an increasingly insistent call for secularization as the influence of the Enlightenment spread across the Empire, a call which culminated in the Reichsdeputationshauptschlu ß of 1803. Along the way, there were a number of suppressions of religious houses which seem to point toward this culmination, such as the suppression ofthe venerable Überwasserkloster in Münster in order to finance the new university there, and the much more thoroughgoing activities of the Austrian government which go by the perhaps misleading name of Josephinism. In the years between his accession on the last day of 1777 and the erection of the Bavarian nunciature in 1784, Elector Karl Theodor of Bavaria carried out BOOK REVIEWS 257 the suppression of several important religious houses. These were the house of Franciscan sisters in Munich known as the Ridlerkloster, the house ofAugustinian canons at Indersdorf, and the Premonstratensian house at Osterhofen, as well as an unsuccessful attempt at the Premonstratensian house of Steingaden and the transfer of the Salesian sisters from Munich to Landshut. These efforts would appear to be part of the same phenomenon witnessed in Münster and Austria. CorneliaJahn presents us with a solid introduction to the circumstances surrounding these suppressions. There was considerable background established during the reign of Karl Theodor's predecessor, Maximilian Joseph, as well as great continuity in personnel. Moreover, this is the high point ofthe activities of the Bavarian Illuminati, a local expression of enlightened influence. Karl Theodor brought with him from the supposedly more enlightened Rhineland attitudes and advisors which also seemed to fit well into an emerging pattern of enlightened policy. One of his first moves after settling in Munich was to issue an ordinance prohibiting begging and restricting the activities ofthe mendicant orders. He immediately set in place efforts to restrict the authority ofthe diocesan bishops, all of whom were prince-bishops with sees outside his territories, and to make ecclesiastical jurisdictions correspond to political frontiers. All this would seem to clearly point toward the eventual secularizations carried out in 1802-03. Not so, says Dr.Jahn. After tracing in some detail the cases ofthe Ridlerkloster and Kloster Indershof, and at lesser length the other cases, along with the individuals , the institutions, and...