Abstract
The main components of the Habsburgs’ dynastical piety—worship of the Crucified, of the Eucharist, of the Blessed Mary and her spouse St. Joseph—are already well-known. They were common to both branches of the House of Austria, the Spanish as well as the Austrian one. However, they are far from exhausting the variety of manifestations with which they fostered the cult of the saints. More than other sovereigns, Austrian Habsburgs intervened on behalf of patron saints with the popes and the Roman Congregation of Sacred Rites. During the seventeenth century and still in the eighteenth century, they promulgated public feasts in the Austrian hereditary lands as well as in the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia. This paper focuses mainly on the veneration they addressed to the Jesuit saints: Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Luigi Gonzaga, Stanisław Kostka, and Peter Canisius using archive and printed materials from Rome, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest.
In 1727, Kilian Reinhardt (1653–1729), concertmaster of the Hofkapelle (the music chapel of the Viennese court), recorded all the year’s monthly liturgical feast days when his musicians were scheduled to perform for Emperor Charles vi (1685–1740; r.1711–40) and his court. Reinhardt registered forty-four feast days, without counting the days dedicated to Christ and the Virgin, and the feasts of the temporale cycle. The list included the feast days of Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556), July 31, Francis Xavier (1506–52), December 3, and those of the Apostles. To honor Saints Ignatius and Francis Xavier, the emperor, his family, and court attended Mass “with the Jesuits.”1 These two occasions did not attain the highest level on the solemnity scale of imperial liturgical events, such as the Toisonfeste (feasts of the fleece).2 But the presence of the emperors’ instrumentalists and singers added an exceptional degree of ceremony to the celebrations and gives an indication of the special relationship between the Habsburg rulers and the selected saints. The fact that these occasions centered on St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier served as a public display of the House of Habsburg’s respect for and attachment to the earliest saints of the Society of Jesus. As its dedication to Emperor Charles vi revealed, the concertmaster’s memoir reported a practice already long in existence, which he had experienced during fifty years of service to the emperor and his predecessors, Leopold i (1640–1705; r.1657–1705) and Joseph i (1678–1711; r.1705–11).3 In reality, however, a number of changes had been made to the calendar of liturgical feast days honored by the emperors since Leopold i, changes that began under Leopold’s predecessors, Ferdinand iii (1608–57; r.1637–57) and Ferdinand ii (1578–1637; r.1619–37). Still, they had not modified the places held by St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier. The veneration of these saints by the Habsburgs of Central Europe, as well as of the Jesuit Saints Luigi Gonzaga (1568–91) and Stanisław Kostka (1550–68), was, in fact, long-standing. It did not emerge in the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, but much earlier, immediately following the saints’ deaths. The exterior forms of liturgical worship of the first two Jesuit saints and their inclusion in the religious ceremonies of the imperial court were undoubtedly established at the time of their canonization in 1622.4 Even prior to 1622, however, there were indications that members of the Habsburg family were interested in Ignatius and other Jesuit saints, particularly the women of the Tyrolean and Styrian branches. Habsburg reverence for St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier reached its pinnacle with Ferdinand ii. At that point, the institutional support emperors had long granted the Society of Jesus led the ruler to adopt the form of spirituality promoted by St. Ignatius. This is not to suggest that Ferdinand ii’s successors maintained seamlessly cordial relations with the Society of Jesus, but the complexities of that particular aspect reach far beyond the scope of the present study.
Devotion to Jesuit saints was expressed through specific acts, including postulatory letters (formal applications) sent to the popes by the Habsburgs of Vienna, Prague, and Graz, as well as by other leaders, asking for the canonization processes of the blessed to begin, requesting their addition in the Roman calendar or seeking approval for their veneration. The Habsburgs participated in the celebrations and liturgical feast days of these saints to honor them in the Jesuit colleges of the cities they visited. In Vienna, they frequently attended theater productions staged by the Jesuits, which featured Ignatius, Francis Xavier, and other saints and blessed of the Society of Jesus.5 The respect and worship shown for these Jesuit figures also reflected a symbolic family policy, based on a celestial network of kinship and spiritual patronage. The Jesuit saints thus infiltrated a complex system of private, public, and dynastic piety, through which the Vienna Habsburgs represented their domination over their lands and territories. The system held sway from Ferdinand ii until approximately 1740, and is generally known as “confessional absolutism.”6 Anna Coreth (1915–2008) synthesized the distinctive traits of this “Piety of the House of Austria” or Pietas Austriaca.7 Other scholars have taken her lead, adding detail and contextualizing the specific religious practices of the Habsburgs.8 This piety was abundantly expressed in images, chants, emblems, and in a rich panegyric literature produced in the Spanish Netherlands and every country under imperial rule. Venerating the saints—and particularly those saints whose patronage the dynasty appropriated by claiming direct spiritual and sometimes lineal ties—became an integral element of their worship practices, second only to their devotion to the Eucharist, the cross, and the Virgin Mary. Like other attributes that defined “Habsburg piety,” this characteristic helped create and maintain their image as sovereign rulers elected by God and incarnating his majesty and his power on earth through publicly staged practices of self-representation. Yet, scholarship has predominantly focused on Habsburg veneration of Christ, the Virgin, and the Holy Sacrament, paying less attention to their devotion to saints, with the exception of the cases of St. Joseph and St. Leopold (1073–1136).9 Since the publication of Coreth’s book, the privileged status of saints belonging to the Society of Jesus has regularly been mentioned by scholars. Nevertheless, this subject does not appear to have been the focus of a specific body of historical research, a gap in our knowledge that the present article attempts to address. It first considers the Habsburg relationship with the Jesuits, before arguing that the worship of the first Jesuit saints should be understood within a broader dynastic system of the veneration of saints. Next, the article describes the Habsburg role in the canonization processes of Ignatius, Xavier, Gonzaga, Kostka, and Peter Canisius (1521–97). Finally, it concludes by examining the adoption of Jesuit pious practices by several members of the Habsburg family, who thereby became spiritual clients of the saints whom they had made their earthly patrons.
The Central European Branch of the Habsburgs and the Society of Jesus
It is important to define two central aspects of the attitudes of the Vienna Habsburgs toward the Jesuits and the Catholic faith, although these attitudes often intersected with their public relations strategies. First, their veneration of Jesuit saints and, in some instances, their adoption of Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and practices, were intimately connected to their view of the Jesuits. The emperors and princes of the dynasty credited the order with restoring Catholicism in the territories under their rule. This reflects the dynasty’s long-standing support for the order since Ferdinand i (1503–64), who reigned as emperor from 1556 to 1567.10
In the mid-sixteenth century, the younger, Central European branch of the Habsburgs relied heavily on the Jesuits to restore the Catholic faith in countries that it had dominated in the past. In 1521, while still archduke, the future Emperor Ferdinand i, Emperor Charles v’s younger brother, inherited the Austrian hereditary lands from his grandfather, Emperor Maximilian i (1459–1519, r.1508–19). In 1526, he was elected to ascend to the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia, vacated after the death of Louis i Jagellon (1506–26; r.1515–26) at the Battle of Mohács (1526), the first Ottoman incursion into Hungary. As the Protestant Reformation spread through the countries and kingdoms that comprised the Habsburg monarchy, Catholicism found itself in a minority position, especially in Bohemia, where the spread of Hussitism relegated it to a secondary position from the fifteenth century on. In 1542, Nicolás Bobadilla (1511–90) traveled to Vienna, and then on to Prague in 1544, in response to a summons from Archduke Ferdinand.11 Ferdinand wrote to Loyola in 1550 to request that his Jesuit brethren be dispatched to Vienna. He summoned Claude Le Jay (c.1504–52) and, later, Canisius. Le Jay established a college in Vienna (1551), the first institutional presence of the Society of Jesus in the Holy Roman Empire, while Canisius founded colleges in Prague (1556) and Innsbruck (1562).12 Ferdinand’s eldest son, Emperor Maximilian ii (1527–76; r.1564–76), who was known to have a personal preference for Lutheranism, was the only Habsburg to adopt religious policies that were less favorable to the Jesuits. This was not the case for his wife, Empress Maria (1528–1603), who was born Infanta of Spain, or for Ferdinand’s brothers or other sons. One of his younger sons, the Archduke Albert (1559–1621), as well as Albert’s wife, Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566–1633), consistently supported the Jesuits in the Spanish Netherlands, where they governed.13 Two of Albert’s uncles, Ferdinand I’s sons, the archdukes Ferdinand ii of Tyrol (1529–95) and Charles of Styria (1540–90), founded a college in Hall in 1570 and a college in Graz in 1573. At Hall, their sisters, the archduchesses Magdalena (1532–90), Eleonora (1534–94), and Helena (1543–74), had resolved to live along the lines of Ignatian spirituality. The three sisters established a Damenstift (a convent for noblewomen) next to the Jesuit church. The Jesuit fathers served as confessors and spiritual directors of the princesses and their nieces—two daughters of Archduke Charles of Styria and Emperor Ferdinand’s sisters—and the canonesses.14 In 1597, the eldest son of Archduke Charles, the future Emperor Ferdinand ii, founded a college in Ljubljana in Carniola. Later, Jesuit colleges were established in every Habsburg country at the instigation of the imperial family, prelates, and bishops, as well as important lords who had recently converted to Catholicism. By 1615, approximately thirty colleges, some connected to universities, were scattered across the countries under Habsburg rule—first in the Austrian hereditary lands, including Istria, and then in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and in so-called royal Hungary, including Croatia. Several of the colleges led an often-precarious existence during their early years. At the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, Jesuits were expelled and banished from Bohemia and Hungary, where several were murdered.
Everyone who interacted with Emperor Ferdinand ii attested to his extraordinary private and public devotion. Nuncio Carlo Carafa (1584–1644), reporting the emperor’s displays of piety in 1629, observed his predilection for the Jesuits. He and his family often attended Mass celebrated by the Jesuits before having lunch with them.15 Ferdinand ii’s confessors, like those of his wives and children, were all Jesuits, who served as counsellors at critical junctures during his eventful reign. This tradition started with Bartholomæus Viller (c.1538–1626) and continued with Martin Becan (1563–1624), from 1620 to 1624, and culminated with William Lamormaini (1570–1648), from 1624 to 1635.16 As spiritual directors, they were consulted before important decisions were taken, such as the execution of Bohemian rebels in 1621, the assassination of Generalissimo Albrecht von Wallenstein (b.1583) in 1634, or the trustworthiness of treaties with “heretics”—all matters of concern lest the emperor’s soul or conscience be tainted by accusations of sin.17 Ferdinand ii’s successors, however, made a clear effort to maintain a degree of distance between their Jesuit counsellors and political matters. It would also be wrong to conclude that Ferdinand ii’s policies were overly influenced by his confessors’ politics. Thomas Brockmann has recently provided clear evidence of his real independence from his closest advisers, including Lamormaini, and the respect for the rule of law that defined his approach to governance.18
Still, Lamormaini was closely linked to a vision of Ferdinand ii as a saint prince whose earth-bound actions were miraculously underwritten by God. He was also the source of the perceived symbiotic relationship between the piety of the sovereign ruler and the education provided by the Jesuit colleges in the Austrian and Bohemian provinces, and in the Habsburg portion of Upper Germany (which included Innsbruck, Feldkirch, and Fribourg-en-Brisgau). As Robert Bireley has argued, Lamormaini certainly had a future canonization process in mind when he wrote his posthumous portrait of Ferdinand ii and his many virtues.19 Published in Vienna in 1638 in four languages, the book was subsequently republished in Latin for the monarchy’s Marian sodalities.20 Until approximately 1730, Lamormaini’s hagiographic image of Ferdinand propagated a political and moral model of a Christian prince, whose personal spirituality, deeply influenced by the Jesuits, became part of the apprenticeship of meditation. This second life of the figure of Ferdinand ii in a sense mirrored the ways in which, as emperor, he had drawn upon the protection of St. Ignatius. For example, the codicil to Ferdinand’s political will, which he wrote for his sons in 1621, advanced the argument that God had used him as an instrument to restore the Catholic faith in his lands. Through their zealous efforts to educate the young and convert “heretics,” the Jesuits were clearly the most active participants in this struggle. Ferdinand thus transmitted to his sons an obligation to give precedence to the Jesuits over other orders.21 In 1551, his grandfather, Ferdinand i, had been described by Loyola as the instrument of divine inspiration, made to bring the inhabitants of the “second Indies” back to the church.22 By analogy, this miracle continued under Ferdinand ii, who became the instrument of the perfect realization of this earthly mission. Thus, the founder of the Society of Jesus was always closely allied with Ferdinand in the fight against heresy, a position underscored by the emperor when he placed his decree of July 31, 1627, under Ignatius’s patronage. The decree reiterated the obligation of the nobility and inhabitants of Bohemia to convert to Catholicism. Indeed, the “St. Ignatius decree,” as it was immediately called, was a simple reference to the feast day of the recently canonized saint and not to the calendar date, as was the case for other Catholic reconversion decrees.23 A spiritual and temporal system of interactions thus developed between the Society of Jesus and the reigning emperors and archdukes, at the intersection of a range of attitudes and concepts surrounding religious faith, the Counter-Reformation, self-representation, and political and symbolic reconstruction.
A Dynastic and Political “System of Sanctity”: St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier in the “Liturgical Calendar” of the Court of Vienna
To better understand the significance of the presence of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier in the musical performances in the Hofkapelle on liturgical feast days, and to measure the degree of public display, we return to Concertmaster Reinhardt’s 1727 memoir, a rare extant document of a kind.24 The absence of sources anterior to 1727 makes it difficult to pinpoint the decisions that led to the choice of saints celebrated at the time, but there are key indications. Signs can be found in the dynasty’s Pietas and the self-glorification of its lineage, as well as in its interaction with the policy of Catholic restoration and support for religious orders, especially the newest among them. The fact that the sovereigns, their families, and courts traveled to a Jesuit church in person was, of course, part of a larger spectrum of relationships with congregations and religious orders. The emperor believed in the importance of visiting convent churches accompanied by his musicians, to honor their founders’ feast days, their more eminent members, or, occasionally, their patron saints, such as the patron saint of the Jesuit Viennese novitiate, St. Anne. On the days of St. Fabian (3rd century ce) and St. Sebastian (3rd century ce), ceremonial visits were paid to, for instance, the Scottish-Irish Benedictines, installed in the Schottenstift (Scottish abbey) in 1155. On the feast day of St. Benedict (c.480–547), however, the emperor and his court worshipped with the Spanish Benedictines of Montserrat, who moved to Vienna in 1633 at Ferdinand ii’s invitation. This visit reveals an obvious preference for more recent imperial and dynastic foundations and confirms the Habsburgs’ participation in the Counter-Reformation. The remainder of Reinhardt’s calendar by and large provides additional evidence for the Habsburg predilection for novel orders. The Trinitarians, whom Leopold i brought to Vienna in 1688 and then posted to his other territories,25 were honored by the presence of imperial musicians on the feast day of their founder, John of Matha (1160–1213). To celebrate St. Augustine’s feast day, as well as that of St. Apollonia (3rd century ce), the court traveled to the Discalced Augustinians, another of Emperor Ferdinand ii’s foundations, while the Hermits of St. Augustine, who had been in Vienna since 1256, were paid no such compliment. For the Minims, whom Ferdinand ii had summoned to Vienna in 1626, Mass was sung in honor of their founder, St. Francis of Paola (1416–1507). The Dominicans administered the Mass for St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), and the Franciscans celebrated the feast days of St. Francis of Assisi (c.1181–1226) and St. Peter of Alcantara (1499–1562). To honor St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–82), the emperor attended Mass with the Discalced Carmelites, who had also moved to Vienna at the request of Ferdinand ii in 1622. After 1678, a “Habsburg” feast day, which Pope Innocent xi (1611–89; r.1676–89) conceded to Leopold i—after a long series of petitions by Empress Dowager Eleonora of Mantua-Nevers (1628–86)—was held in the church of the order’s female branch on January 23 for the espousal of the Virgin Mary to St. Joseph.26 Finally, St. Ursula’s (4th or 5th century ce) day was celebrated with the Ursulines, who moved to Vienna in 1660 at the request of Empress Eleonora.27 The Jesuit saints were well integrated in the elaborately orchestrated staging that promoted early modern religious orders.
An additional distinction appears to have been accorded to two of these orders, the Minims and the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, when they became involved in the daily devotions of the dynasty. This has to be explained here in order to better understand the place that was additionally given to the Jesuits in those dynastical devotions. The dynasty, in the seventeenth century, chose the Virgin Mary as its principal patron saint. Ferdinand ii appointed her as the generalissima of his armies and, in 1646, Ferdinand iii pledged all his territories and kingdoms to the immaculate conception. In addition to the Virgin Mary, the Central European Habsburgs selected three other important protectors for themselves and their kingdoms and provinces. In chronological order, these were the Guardian Angels, St. Joseph, and St. Leopold. In 1605, the future Ferdinand ii elected the Guardian Angels as the patron saints of Interior Austria near the Ottoman border.28 In 1608, a pontifical brief issued by Paul v (1550–1621; r.1605–21) authorized the feast day and its liturgical Office in the archduke’s territories—Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola—and in the empire and Spain.29 Later, to better celebrate a holy occasion specific to the emperor’s lands, Leopold i obtained first an indult from Pope Alexander vii (1599–1667; r.1655–67) in 1664, extending the Guardian Angels’ feast day to all other territories and provinces, on a different date than the church’s celebration.30 In 1667, Clement ix (1600–69; r.1667–69) changed the date of the feast day from the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in September in the emperor’s countries and bestowed upon it double second-class ranking ad libitum, and an octave in which every day received its own designated liturgical Office. The court celebrated the Sunday of this octave with the Minims, participating in a sung Mass composed by Leopold i himself, as well as Vespers and Compline.31 The dynastic appropriation of St. Joseph’s feast day and that of St. Leopold followed a similar pattern. Joseph was elected in 1654 as the new patron saint of Bohemia and the House of Austria and, later, in 1675, of every Habsburg state. St. Leopold was appointed patron saint of Austria in 1663.32 The adoption of Margrave Leopold iii of Babenberg (1073–1136) by the Habsburgs as the ancestral saint of their house took place as early as the reign of Emperors Frederic iii (1415–93; r.1452–93) and Maximilian i. Leopold i decided to make St. Leopold—his patron saint and namesake—the patron saint of Austria as well (ratified in a brief by Clement x [1590–1676; r.1670–76]), thus sacralizing the reigning dynasty by claiming a direct consanguine link to St. Leopold. Reinhardt’s list shows that the Jesuits were also associated with the honors paid to St. Leopold. On his feast day, November 15, the court and sovereigns traveled to Klosterneuburg, an abbey of the Augustinian canonry founded in 1114 by St. Leopold. The site was remodeled in the baroque style by the seventeenth-century Habsburgs; Emperor Charles vi wanted to transform it into a second El Escorial after losing the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). On the last day of the octave of St. Leopold, November 21, which coincided with the Presentation of the Virgin, the second Vespers was chanted with the members of the Society of Jesus.33 As a result of these ecclesiastical commitments, the emperor, his court, and the Hofkapelle participated in Masses or Vespers with the Jesuits in Vienna at least five times each year: on the Quinquagesima; on July 26 and 31 for the feast days of St. Anne and St. Ignatius; on November 21 for the Presentation of the Virgin in the octave of St. Leopold, and on December 3 for the feast day of St. Francis Xavier. This level of commitment gave the Jesuits clear precedence over the other religious orders on Reinhardt’s list, except for the Discalced Augustinians, who were the official parish of the imperial court after 1634 and whose church was adjacent to the Hofburg.
It is reasonable to assume that there were other cases of mythical genealogy, such as the belief that St. Benedict of Nursia and St. Thomas Aquinas were related by blood to the Habsburgs by way of an alleged common ancestor belonging to the ancient Roman Anicii family.34 But this was evidently not the case for St. Ignatius or Francis Xavier. As already noted, the Habsburgs were closely affiliated with saints who established religious orders, especially early modern ones. More importantly, however, Ignatius and Francis Xavier belonged to a category of saints whose veneration was recognized or whose canonization was granted after the Habsburgs interceded on their behalf. This included the canonization of Servite Philip Benizzi (1223–85), on whose behalf Emperors Ferdinand iii and Leopold i had both intervened, the latter in 1668 with Pope Clement ix, the former with Clement x on January 10, 1671.35 Leopold i personally intervened in support of St. John of Matha, the founder of the order of Trinitarians, appealing to Pope Innocent xi in 1685. He obtained the authorization to celebrate John’s feast day and recite his Offices in all his countries and hereditary lands under the double rite.36 The next section will consider the specific way in which the actions of the Central European Habsburgs accelerated the Holy See’s canonizations of five Jesuit saints whose causes they championed, and how, for diverse reasons, they purported to choose them as patrons saints and protectors.
“Ad Instantias Imperatoris”: Habsburg Petitions to the Holy See on Behalf of Jesuit Saints
The Habsburgs were not the only rulers to petition popes in support of beatifications and canonizations, or to request the addition of a particular saint’s feast to the church calendar, i.e., the Roman Breviary. Intercession by a prince was indeed an integral part of the Roman canonization procedure and of the local recognition of cults (the equivalent of beatification). Rulers, important princes, and other “authentic” figures addressed “postulatory” letters to the popes in order to initiate canonization or beatification processes. This important step was codified under Urban viii (1568–1644; r.1623–44), particularly in the 1634 bull Caelestis Hierusalem cives, which presented a starting point for what became increasingly complex procedures.37 In reality, petitions by high-ranking figures were part of a long, unbroken tradition. In a thorough review of the canonization process, published in the mid-eighteenth century, the future Pope Benedict xiv (1675–1758; r.1740–58), Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, listed the support of kings and other eminent personages for ecclesiastical postulants as the fourth indispensable prerequisite for initiating a cause for canonization.38 A ruling pope could either accept or decline such instantiae or “pious prayers,” as they were officially known. Cases that were found acceptable were then forwarded to the Holy Congregation of Rites, which reviewed them and determined whether a specific case merited further deliberation. From our contemporary point of view, the involvement of a prince as part of the rule of intervention for canonization candidacy appears suspect, because of its normative compulsory character. Nevertheless, rulers were under no obligation to support the glorification of a saint who was not a native of, or had not been active in, their lands. Personal and familial motives obviously influenced which saints received royal or imperial support. Social questions of prestige influenced their decisions as much as any specific model of sanctity incarnated by a servant of God.39 When a prince interceded on behalf of a previously beatified person or canonized saint, he usually requested an expansion of worship or the augmentation of the saint’s earthly glory with higher-ranked degrees of rites or dedicated Offices. Princes also called for the extension of a local saint’s feast day to the entire Catholic world. A particular saint could thus be the focus of a decades-long campaign. Members of the Habsburg family did not limit their petitions to requesting permission to celebrate lesser-known feast days of the Virgin Mary, but actively postulated in favor of numerous saints, as shown by the records of liturgical decrees issued by the Holy Congregation of Rites. These requests were clearly motivated by either dynastic inclinations or personal policies or provided support to petitions filed by the bishops in their lands. Since Urban viii, the three steps toward canonization were formally required to include a section listing previous requests from princes and high nobility.40 However, the records typically do not record all the names of those who actually petitioned. Other sources provide additional information about petitions, ranging from the lives of saints and stories of their virtues and miracles—published to coincide with canonizations—to correspondence between Rome, the nuncios, and the imperial family, eulogies for emperors and their relatives, and panegyrics in praise of the House of Austria.
The earliest trace of petitions by Central European Habsburgs in favor of the canonization of Ignatius of Loyola dates to 1595. Empress Maria (1528–1603), widow of Emperor Maximilian ii and mother of Emperor Rudolph ii (1552–1612; r.1576–1612) and Archduke Albert, had lived in Madrid since her husband’s death. Maria joined her brother, King Philip ii of Spain (1527–98; r.1556–98), to petition Clement viii (1536–1605; r.1592–1605) to include the founder of the Society of Jesus among the saints. On August 8, 1597, she reiterated her request.41 According to the life of Ignatius—written by the superior general of the Jesuit order, Muzio Vitelleschi (1563–1645; in office 1615–45), and published in Rome and Florence in 1622—Maximilian and Maria’s daughter, Archduchess Margaret (1584–1611), queen of Spain and wife of Philip iii (1578–1621; r.1598–1621), also postulated to accelerate his beatification. The act of beatification ultimately took place in April 1609, six months before that of Francis Xavier.42 In 1622, Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, the spouse of Archduke Albert, also intervened from Brussels.43 The support of the kings of Spain and of two French monarchs—Henry iv (1553–1610; r.1589–1610) and Louis xiii (1601–43; r.1610–43)—for the complex canonization procedure of St. Ignatius has received more scholarly and historical attention than that of the Central European Habsburgs, despite solid evidence for their involvement.44 These include scrupulous records kept by the confessor of Ferdinand ii, Lamormaini, who registered the emperor’s petitions in his Virtutes Ferdinandi. He noted, for example, that Ferdinand ii had interceded numerous times with Gregory xv (1554–1623; r.1621–23) to ask for the acceleration of the canonizations of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier.45 This demand was confirmed in the book written at Vitelleschi’s request. The author begins by listing the emperor’s letter on behalf of Ignatius and Francis Xavier to Pope Gregory xv, following his election on February 9, 1621, among other “calde istanze” (warm entreaties) of European sovereigns such as Louis xiii, king of France, and the duke of Bavaria.46 From this perspective, it is noteworthy that in the last will written by Ferdinand ii on May 10, 1621, he already entreated Blessed Ignatius—“the founder of the Society of Jesus”—to pray for him when he eventually gave up his soul to the Grace of God.47
The collective canonization of Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri (1515–95), Charles Borromeo (1538–84), Teresa of Ávila, and Isidore the Laborer (1080–1130) was celebrated in Rome on March 2, 1622, although Urban viii only officially announced the date in a papal bull on August 6, 1623. Even after their canonizations, however, Ferdinand ii continued to petition the pope on behalf of Ignatius and Francis Xavier. On August 19, 1628, Giovanni Battista Pallotto (1594–1668), the papal nuncio in Vienna, forwarded a list of the emperor’s requests that had remained unmet to Cardinal Antonio Barberini (1608–71). It included a reminder that, as early as 1624, the emperor had requested, through the intermediary of Cardinal of Dietrichstein (1570–1636)—the bishop of Olomouc in Moravia and protector of his lands at the Roman Curia—that St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier be integrated in the Roman calendar, i.e., be granted their own Offices.48 Ferdinand ii appears to have been the first sovereign to file this request, apparently acting even before the Spanish bishops did, whose first supplications are recorded in the Acta Sanctorum as being sent in 1628.49 But the emperor’s request was not accepted, nor was that of his brother, Archduke Leopold v of Tyrol and Further Austria (1586–1632; r.1619–32), who formulated a similar plea in Innsbruck on September 11, 1628, as did his widow, Archduchess Claudia de’ Medici (1604–48), in 1644. The feast days and Offices of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier were only added to the Roman calendar as mandatory with semidouble rite by Innocent x (1574–1655; r.1644–55) on October 29, 1644. 50 A subsequent decree issued by Clement ix on September 27, 1667, confirmed by Clement x in 1670, elevated them to double rite.51
In the cases of Saints Luigi Gonzaga and Stanisław Kostka, the imperial family’s expressions of piety took two different approaches that belonged to a broader system of patronage and played an important role in their ecclesiastical support of the saints. One approach focused on a familial concept of consanguinity. The second involved supporting a saint of foreign origin in a local territory. In both instances, celestial sanctity was shared on earth, extending prestige and protection to the sovereign’s family and his lands and territories. Beatified together in 1605 by Clement viii, the process that culminated in the canonization of the two young Jesuits lasted over 120 years, finally taking effect on December 31, 1726, after their causes had been reopened several times during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Permissions of the cult had already been granted several times during this long waiting period, for example, in the case of Gonzaga, to the duke of Mantua and several of his family members, as well as the Society of Jesus. On March 21, 1671, Leopold i received an indult from Pope Clement x authorizing a proper Mass and Office for Blessed Stanisław Kostka in all his lands and provinces, seven months after granting the same to the Polish monarch and the Society of Jesus. With respect to the veneration of Gonzaga, the conflicts between Urban viii and Emperors Ferdinand ii and Ferdinand iii made matters somewhat more complex.
Luigi Gonzaga died in 1591 at the Roman College at the age of twenty-one. As a child, he had served as a page to the infant Don Diego (1575–82) at the court in Madrid. Diego was the son of Philip ii of Spain and his fourth and last wife, Anna of Austria (1549–80), the daughter of Emperor Maximilian ii. Luigi was a cousin of the two empresses descended from the House of Gonzaga, Anna Eleonora of Mantua and Montferrat (1566–1621), the second wife of Ferdinand ii, and Eleonora Magdalena of Mantua-Nevers, Ferdinand iii’s third wife. The acts of canonization mention them several times among those who postulated on Luigi’s behalf. As early as October 15, 1605, Emperor Rudolph ii petitioned Paul V to initiate the canonization process. He was joined by his sister Margaret, queen of Spain, their brother Archduke Albert, and their cousin and sister-in-law, infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566–1633).52 Paul V favored the petition and forwarded the postulatory letters to the Holy Congregation of Rites. On July 20, 1622, Ferdinand ii and his wife, Eleonora Gonzaga, interceded with Pope Gregory xv from Sopron in Hungary. The affair became more complicated under Urban viii, however, and on January 19, 1630, both rulers asked him to canonize Luigi.53 On March 2, 1630, the pope declined, however, citing a decree of the Holy Congregation of Rites, promulgated on January 14, 1628, that forbade consideration of sainthood within fifty years of the death of the candidate.54 But the acts of canonization point to a political reason for this refusal instead, by reporting that Ferdinand ii had chosen Luigi as his personal patron saint and had proposed him as the patron saint of Italy “to pacify Europe” (ad pacandam Europam). Ferdinand was thus seeking to appoint the blessed as the celestial agent who would resolve the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628–31), coinciding precisely with his own military intervention in the conflict.55 Urban viii supported France, and was unwilling to allow either Spanish or imperial armies to interfere with the mediation he was preparing to conduct. Accepting Ferdinand’s arguments would have meant allowing the emperor to appoint the protector of Italy and gain the upper hand, thus confirming his claims of imperial suzerainty over Mantua. Pallotto passed on Ferdinand ii’s displeasure to Cardinal Barberini on March 9 and April 6, 1630. The emperor expressed surprise that the pope was unable to contravene a decree from the Holy Congregation of Rites and reiterated his request for a rapid canonization.56 He also objected that permission to worship had already been granted to the empress’s niece, Giovanna Gonzaga, countess of Martinitz, and her husband, thus demonstrating Urban viii’s flexibility on the issue when it came to members of Luigi’s family with the exception of Ferdinand. In response, the pope sent a declaration to Vienna on January 23, 1630, announcing that the decree of January 1628 was retroactive. The matter seemed to end there. The acts of canonization later referred to the petitions of Leopold i and his third and last wife, Eleonora Magdalena Theresa of Neuburg (1655–1720). Some fragments remain of three letters sent to Clement ix by the widowed empress Eleonora Magdalena Gonzaga dated June 30, July 7, and August 7, 1666, in which she asked the pope to stop delaying the process.57 In October 1715, Charles vi and his wife Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1691–1750) continued to urge the Holy See to accelerate the canonization of the blessed of the House of Gonzaga. The last in this series of petitions from Vienna appears to have been sent by the widow of Joseph i, Amalia Wilhelmina of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1673–1742) and his mother-in-law Eleonora Magdalena Theresa (1655–1720), on November 6 and December 16, 1716.58
The Polish novice Stanisław Kostka studied with the Jesuits in Vienna from 1564 to 1567, before he left for Rome, where he died in 1568 at the age of seventeen. In Vienna, he decided to enter the Society of Jesus, and his room in the house at “The Golden Snake,” was transformed into a chapel in 1583, ensuring that he could be claimed as a native local saint. A copy of a handwritten petition from the city of Vienna to Pope Clement xi, preserved at the University Library in Budapest, as well as three others written by Emperor Joseph i and in the name of the University of Vienna, confirm that the place where he had lived in Vienna was the source of his calling to religious life. It was in Vienna that he had “received the first foundations of his personal holiness.”59 This undated letter might be part of a group of forty-one other petitions included in the acts of canonization of 1712, dated to December 17, 1710.60 This official list is incomplete, however, and makes no reference to other contemporary letters from the university and the emperor that are in the archives in Budapest.61 In one undated letter, Joseph i referred to the fervent devotion displayed by his father, Leopold i, to Blessed Stanisław, often praying to him for the well-being of his states. He believed that the intercession of the blessed brought extraordinary benefits. In recognition, Leopold had often implored the pope to augment Stanisław’s glory and his worship by canonizing him.62 His son Joseph i took up the cause in turn. He sought the appointment of Stanisław Kostka as a new patron saint to shield his states and kingdoms against the plague and calamitous wars with the Turks, just as Stanisław had protected Poland.63 The emperor alluded to the Battle of Chocim in 1621, in which King Sigismund iii Vasa of Poland (1566–1632, r.1587–1632) defeated the Ottomans after invoking Stanisław Kostka. This affair also appears to echo the more recent election of the blessed as principal patron saint of Poland, which was ratified by decree on December 2 by the Holy Congregation of Rites and confirmed on August 31, 1686.64 Three months before he died on January 14, 1711, Joseph i stated that he would send a second petition that included letters from various personalities in support of the canonization of Blessed Stanisław.65 The acts of the process of canonization indicate the existence of three additional requests from Vienna, two from the widowed empress Eleonora Magdalena Theresa, on November 13, 1710 and June 3, 1711, and a final letter from the consuls and senate of the city of Vienna dated December 17, 1719. However, a life of the saint, printed in Vienna in 1727, refers to a third letter from Eleonora Magdalena Theresa and one from her daughter-in-law, Empress Amalia Wilhelmina (1673–1742), on July 13, 1711.66 Nonetheless, most of the petitions referred to in the records came from Poland-Lithuania. In these postulatory letters, a symbolic competition emerges between Polish petitioners and the Habsburgs, each seeking to appropriate Kostka’s patronage, to protect both themselves and their lands. The concurrent involvement of the municipality of Vienna and the Jesuit university inscribed worship of the saint within the space and social fabric of the residence of the emperor and Lower Austria in general. Following canonization, veneration of the two new saints—who were declared patron saints of young students—spread throughout the Jesuit colleges and Marian congregations in every Habsburg country. A eulogy for Jesuit graduates of philosophy in 1727, Habet & Austria, & Austriae civitatum princeps Vienna protectores novos & quasi-tutelares, demonstrates that they were primarily celebrated in Vienna as new protectors and guardian patrons of Austria.67
Ferdinand iii’s letter to Pope Innocent x in 1648, then Emperor Charles vi’s several postulatory letters asking to open the process for Canisius’s canonization, sent to Pope Clement xii in 1730, express a similar engagement of the House of Austria for saints they considered close to the family and whom they had chosen as protectors, or for those who had worked in their lands and kingdoms.68 In Canisius, they venerated an actor who had carried out their religious policies. Canisius had been the Apostle of the Holy German Empire and founder of many Jesuit colleges. Ferdinand i considered appointing him as bishop of Vienna, and had at least made him the administrator of the diocese. Thus, statements made and stands taken in the Habsburg petitions in support of Jesuit saints also contained their vision of history as modelled and inspired by service to God. Such symbolical and canonical support can thus be included as actions. Obtaining and expanding new liturgical worship had an important effect on the mobilization of their subjects, through veneration and fresh devotions, both public and private, to which the Habsburgs were almost invariably linked and invited.
Imitation of St. Ignatius
By petitioning popes on behalf of several saints, the Habsburgs actively promoted models of sanctity associated with new or reformed religious orders. Yet, evidence of their more private religious practices is scarce. Interpretations must be distilled from various sources: discursive and visual constructions such as panegyrics, emblems, sermons, and religious performances; Habsburg participation in public daily prayers; liturgical ceremonials and rituals; prayers offered in honor of the Virgin and the saints; the construction of columns in honor of the Virgin or the Trinity, as well as pictorial representations and eulogies. These sources primarily provide insight into the representation of the cardinal virtue of a Habsburg prince—pietas, piety—a central component of Habsburg propaganda and political mythology. Within this system, exhibiting respect for God, his mother, and saints fulfilled an obligation to recognize the Almighty for choosing their house among all other houses to accomplish his purposes and re-establish his dominion on earth.69
on Monday to St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier, on Tuesday to Blessed Luigi Gonzaga, on Wednesday to the Holy Ghost, on Thursday to the Holy Sacrament, whose litanies she recited, on Friday the Passion, with another Litany of the Agony of Our Lord, and on Saturday, to the Immaculate Conception, whose service she recited.76
Lamormaini observed the prominence of the Jesuit saints in the daily devotions of Emperor Ferdinand ii, who often prayed to St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier. Ferdinand ii adopted St. Ignatius among his personal patron saints, along with St. John the Baptist, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Theresa of Ávila.77 In his eulogy for Ferdinand ii, Nicolas Vernulæus (1583–1649), Emperor Ferdinand iii’s historiographer and professor of eloquence at the University of Leuven, asserted that, in addition to God, the Virgin, and the Guardian Angels, the emperor fervently expressed gratitude toward St. Ignatius. He thanked the saint for his son’s election as king of the Romans in Regensburg on December 22, 1636, less than two months before his own death.78 The Jesuit Nicola Avancini (1611–86), author of Ferdinand iii’s funeral oration, also wrote a detailed book about the life of his brother, Archduke Leopold Guillaume (1614–62), generalissimo of the imperial armies and governor of the Spanish Netherlands. He underscored Leopold’s profound veneration of the first two Jesuit saints, particularly in recognition of the many heretics they had converted.79 He also noted that, under Ferdinand iii, the feast days of Saints Ignatius and Francis Xavier were celebrated annually at the court.80 Archduke Leopold Guillaume, who had placed himself under the protection of the Jesuit founder, won several battles on St. Ignatius’s feast day. He also made a special vow to St. Francis Xavier, whom he credited with restoring his health after a serious illness; he recited the saint’s oration daily and asked for it to be recited as he lay on his deathbed, urging the saint to intercede on behalf of his soul.81 He also practiced the Spiritual Exercises and had the Life of St. Ignatius, composed by Daniello Bartoli (1608–85), read to him during his last illness.82
These observations and practices may appear conventional and rote to contemporary readers, and they were likely filtered through the perspectives and biases of their authors, predominantly Jesuits. Nevertheless, they represent a rich contribution to our understanding of the relationship between the Central European Habsburgs and the Jesuit saints, as well as the Habsburg attitude to sanctity. They create a model of interaction in which the saints’ intercessions and thaumaturgic powers, conferred by God, constituted a driving force of the Habsburgs, reinforced by the veneration they expressed. The gratitude of the emperors and their families translated into support for religious orders—the Society of Jesus in particular—prompting them to repeatedly attempt to encourage, accelerate or initiate canonization procedures, as well as the expansion of earthly prestige and worship of their candidates. Sincere faith went hand in hand with the inherent piety in their system of symbolic and political communication, in operation from Ferdinand ii until its erosion under Empress Maria Theresa (1717–80; r.1740–80). Increasing the prestige of the servants of God in turn enhanced the spiritual capital of the sovereign rulers who had helped propel them into the ranks of Catholic saints.
Kilian Reinhardt, “Rubriche generali per le funzioni ecclesiastiche musicali di tutto l’anno con un’appendice in fine dell’essenziali ad uso, e servizio dell’augustissima austriaca, ed imperiale capella 1727,” in Ludwig von Köchel, Die kaiserliche Hof-Musikkapelle in Wien von 1543 bis 1867: Nach urkundliche Forschungen (Vienna: Beck’sches Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1869), 135–44, here 141, 143.
Reinhardt does not systematically provide details regarding the musical hierarchy of the liturgical solemnities. The “Toisonfeste” took place on the named saints’ days and on birthdays of the members of the dynasty and certain high-profile feast days. On such occasions, all members of the Order of the Golden Fleece were to attend, and such Masses included more musical performances than other services, played by a larger number of musicians and involved trumpet players in particular. See David Wyn Jones, Music in Eighteenth-Century Austria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 18.
Reinhardt, “Rubriche generali.” On Kilian Reinhardt and his presence as a musician at the Viennese Hofkapelle since 1676–77, see Christian Fastl, “Reinhard (Reinhardt, Reinhart, Reinharth), Familie,” in Österreichisches Musiklexikon Online, at http://www.musiklexikon.ac.at/ml/musik_R/Reinhard_Familie.xml (accessed October 16, 2021).
On Ferdinand ii, sharing the same perspective as my paper, see Robert Bireley, Ferdinand ii, Counter-Reformation Emperor, 1578–1637 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Bireley, Religion and Politics in the Age of the Counter-Reformation: Emperor Ferdinand II, William Lamormaini S.J., and the Formation of the Imperial Policy (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981).
Rouven Pons, “Wo der gekrönte Löw hat seinen Kayser-Sitz”: Herrschaftsrepräsentation am Wiener Kaiserhof zur Zeit Leopolds i. (Egelsbach: Hänsel-Hohenhausen, 2001), 187; Andrew H. Weaver, Sacred Music as Public Image for Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III: Representing the Counter-Reformation Monarch at the End of the Thirty Years’ War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 86–93.
On the concept of “confessional absolutism” and its critics, see Petr Maťa and Thomas Winkelbauer, eds., Die Habsburgermonarchie 1620 bis 1740: Leistungen und Grenzen des Absolutismusparadigmas (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006); Robert J. W. Evans, “Die Grenzen der Konfessionalisierung: Die Folgen der Gegenreformation für die Habsburgerländer,” in Joachim Bahlcke and Arno Strohmeyer, eds., Konfessionalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa: Wirkungen des religiösen Wandels im 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im Staat, Gesellschaft und Kultur (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999), 395–412; Peter H. Wilson, Absolutism in Central Europe (London: Routledge, 2000), 11–15.
Anna Coreth, Pietas Austriaca: Ursprung und Entwicklung Barocker Frömmigkeit in Österreich (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 19591, 19822). English translation: Pietas Austriaca: Austrian Religious Practices in the Baroque Era, trans. William D. Bowman and Anna Maria Leitgeb (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2004).
Franz Matsche, Die Kunst im Dienst der Staatsidee Kaiser Karls VI: Ikonographie, Ikonologie und Programmatik des “Kaiserstils,” 2 vols. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1981); Kerstin Schmal, Die Pietas Maria Theresias im Spannungsfeld von Barock und Aufklärung: Religiöse Praxis und Sendungsbewusstsein gegenüber Familie, Untertanen und Dynastie (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001); Luc Duerloo, Dynasty and Piety: Archduke Albert (1598–1621) and Habsburg Political Culture in an Age of Religious Wars (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012); Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux, “Emperors, Kingdoms, Territories: Multiple Versions of the Pietas Austriaca?,” The Catholic American Review 97, no. 2 (2011): 276–304; Annick Delfosse, La “Protectrice du Païs-Bas”: Stratégies politiques et figures de la Vierge dans les Pays-Bas espagnols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), in particular 111–47.
On the use of St. Joseph and St. Leopold in the service of a political raison d’état, see Stefan Samerski, “Hausheiligen statt Staatspatrone: Der mißlungene Absolutismus in Österreichs Heiligenhimmel,” in Habsburgermonarchie, ed. Mat’a and Winkelbauer, 251–78.
On the relations between the sixteenth-century Habsburgs and the Jesuits, in particular between the Habsburgs and their confessors, see Bernhard Duhr, S.J., Die Jesuiten an den deutschen Fürstenhöfen des 16. Jahrhunderts: Auf Grund ungedruckter Quellen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1901).
Markus Friedrich, Die Jesuiten: Aufstieg, Niedergang, Neubeginn (Munich: Piper, 2016), 38.
Gernot Heiß, “Die Jesuiten und die Anfänge der Katholisierung in den Ländern Ferdinands i. Glaube, Mentalität, Politik” (1986; unpublished “Habilitation” thesis); Kurt Mühlberger, “Universität und Jesuitenkolleg in Wien: Von der Berufung des Ordens bis zum Bau des Akademischen Kollegs,” in Die Jesuiten in Wien: Zur Kunst-und Kulturgeschichte der österreichischen Ordensprovinz der “Gesellschaft Jesu” im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Herbert Kärntner and Werner Telesko (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2003), 21–23.
Duerloo, Dynasty; Delfosse, La “Protectrice du Païs-Bas.”
Anne Conrad, “Stifterinnen und Lehrerinnen: Der Anteil vom Frauen am jesuitischen Bildungswesen,” in Rainer Berndt, S.J., ed., Petrus Canisius SJ (1521–1597): Humanist und Europäer, 205–24, here 216–18, 224.
Friedrich von Hurter, Friedensbestrebungen Kaiser Ferdinands ii, nebst des apostolischen Nuntius Carl Carafa Bericht über Ferdinands Lebensweise, Familie, Hof, Räthe und Politik (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1860), 214. Carafa referred to the Capuchin Friars as well as the Jesuits.
On Becan and Lamormaini, see Robert Bireley, The Jesuits and the Thirty Years’ War: Kings, Court, and Confessors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Bireley, Religion and Politics.
Bireley, Ferdinand ii, 105–20, 132–56, 262–65.
Thomas Brockmann, Dynastie, Kaiseramt und Konfession: Politik und Ordnungsvorstellungen Ferdinands ii. im Dreißigjährigen Krieg (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2011).
Bireley, “The Image of Emperor Ferdinand ii (1619–1637) in William Lamormaini, S.J.’s Ferdinandi Romanorum Imperatoris Virtutes (1638),” ahsi 78 (2009): 121–40, here 134.
William Lamormaini, S.J., Ferdinandi ii. Romanorum Imperatoris Virtutes (Vienna: Gregor Gelbhaar, 1638); Bireley, “The Image”; Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux, “Une pédagogie des vertus?: La Cour Sainte et le ‘Prince chrétien’ dans les pays des Habsbourg,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Historia Universitatis Carolinae; Příspěvky k dějinám Univerzity Karlovy 50 (2010): 1:195–215.
Bireley, Ferdinand ii, 125; “Testament Kaiser Ferdinands ii. Vienna 10 Mai 1621,” in Gustav Tuba, Die Grundlagen der pragmatischen Sanktion, Vol. 2, Die Hausgesetze (Leipzig: F. Deuticke, 1913), §5, 351–55, here 354–55. Also quoted in Bireley, Ferdinand ii, 124–26.
Mühlberger, “Universität und Jesuitenkolleg in Wien,” 23.
Among all the decrees related to the re-Catholicization of Austrian and Czech lands in the 1620s issued by Ferdinand ii, the so-called St. Ignatius Patent is the only one to refer to the saint of the day. Carlo Carafa, Commentaria de Germania Sacra restaurata (Cologne: Cornelius van Egmont, 1639), 301; Decreta, Diplomata, Privilegia aliqua, ex multis, quae in favorem Religionis Catholicae & Catholicorum in Germania emanarunt, ab Anno 1620 usque ad Annum 1629: Ex Cancellaria Aulica Imperii, nec non ex Cancellariis, Regni Ungariae, Regni Bohemiae, Archiducati Austriae, Stiriae, Carinthiae, Carniolae; Et aliarum Provinciae, quae sunt haereditariae Domus Austriacae; Et ex Cancellaria Camerae Aulicae, in Carafa, Commentaria, 96–101, 117.
Jeroen F. J. Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 134–35; Weaver, Sacred Music as Public Image, 103–7, esp. 104–5.
Elisabeth Watzka-Pauli, Triumph der Barmherzigkeit: Die Befreiung christlicher Gefangenen aus muslimisch dominierter Ländern durch den österreichischen Trinitarierorden 1690–1783 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016).
Decree of the Holy Congregation of Rites, January 27, 1678, in Archivio Segreto Vaticano (asv), Archives of the Sacred Congregations of Rites (currently known as Archivio della Congregazione per le Cause dei Santi, accs), Decreta 1677–1678, fols. 21r–22v.
Reinhardt notes that the court and the emperor ceased to celebrate St. Ursula’s feast day with the Ursulines in 1712: Reinhardt, “Rubriche Generali,” 141.
Analecta iuris pontificii [ais], 7e série (Rome: Librairie de la Propagande, 1864), fasc. 57–59, col. 43.
asv, accs, Decreta 1608–1610, fols. 385r–386r; Antoine Mazurek, “L’ange gardien, entre théologie, dévotion et spiritualité (xvie–xviie siècles),” Revue de l’histoire des religions 1 (2016): 21–47.
asv, accs, Decreta 1663–1664, 20. 8. 1664, fol. 63r; Decreta 1665–1667, fol. 39r. On September 13, 1670, Pope Clement x made the Guardian Angels’ feast universal in the Catholic Church on the first Sunday of October. Still, it retained specific characteristics in Habsburg territories. Prospero Lambertini, De Servorum Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione Liber Quartus et Ultimus (Bologna: Longhi, 1738), 297.
Reinhardt, “Rubriche generali,” 141.
Elisabeth Kovács, “Der Heilige Leopold und die Staatsmystik der Habsburger,” in Der Heilige Leopold: Landesfürst und Staatssymbol, ed. Floridus Röhrig and Gottfried Stangler (Vienna: Niederösterreichische Landesregierung, 1985), 68–83; Stefan Samerski, “Hausheilige statt Staatspatrone: Der misslungene Absolutismus in Österreichs Heiligenhimmel,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie, ed. Maťa and Winkelbauer, 254–61.
Reinhardt, “Rubriche generali,” 142.
Wenceslaus Adalbertus Czerwenka, Annales et acta pietatis augustissimae ac serenissimae domus Habspurgo-Austriacae (Prague: J. M. Störitz, 1691), *38; Roberto Bizzocchi, Généalogies fabuleuses: Inventer et faire croire dans l’Europe moderne, trans. Lucie De Los Santos and Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro (Paris: Rue d’Ulm–Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 2010), 182, 230.
Czerwenka, Annales, 110–12; Ignaz Reiffenstuell, S.J., Ephemerides Leopoldinae, id est per totum, f. i, fols. A4, E6v.
asv, accs, Decreta 1685–1686, January 26, 1586, fol. 92r–v; Watzka-Pauli, Triumph, 137–38.
Urbani viii pontificis optimi maximi decreta seruanda de Canonizatione, & Beatificatione Sanctorum (Rome: Typographia Reverendae Camerae Apostolicae 1642), 28–29; Christian Renoux, “Une source de l’histoire de la mystique moderne revisitée: Les procès de canonisation,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée 105, no. 1 (1993): 177–217; Simon Ditchfield, “‘Coping with the Beati Moderni’: Canonization Procedure in the Aftermath of the Council of Trent,” in Thomas M. McCoog, S.J., ed., Ite inflammate omnia: Selected Historical Papers from Conferences Held at Loyola and Rome in 2006 (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu,), 413–39; Ditchfield, “In Search of Local Knowledge: Rewriting Early Modern Italian Religious History,” Cristianesimo nella storia 19 (1998): 255–96, 264.
Lambertini, De Servorum Die Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione, 380.
For a similar view, see Ditchfield, “Coping with the Beati Moderni,” 414–15.
Renoux, “Une source de l’histoire.”
Giovanni Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione nel primo periodo della Congregazione dei Riti (1588–1634) (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 2001), 99n384, 100.
Breve Relazione Della Vita, Miracoli, & Canonizazione di S. Ignazio di Loiola (Florence: Domenico Dolci, 1622); Papa, Cause di canonizzazione, 16–18.
Papa, Cause de canonizzazione, 274.
Papa, Cause di canonizzazione, 22–25; Acta Sanctorum Julii, vol. 34 (AS) (Antwerp: Bernard Albert Van Der Plassche, 1741), 625.
Lamormaini, Virtutes, 61.
Breve Relazione della Vita, 78–79.
Gustav Turba, Die Grundlagen der Pragmatischen Sanktion, 2 vols. (Leipzig: F. Deuticke, 1912), 2:340.
Hans Kiewning, ed., Nuntiarurberichte aus Deutschland nebst ergänzenden Actenstücken. iv. Abteilung, Nuntiatur des Pallotto 1628–1630, 1:196n77.
as Julii Tomus vii (Antwerp: Bernard Albert van der Plassche, 1741), 33:625.
as Julii Tomus vii, 33:625–26.
as Julii Tomus vii, 33:626; asv, accs, Decreta 1669–1670, fol. 15v; Suitbert Bäumer, Histoire du Bréviaire, 2 vols. (Paris: Letouzey & Ainé, 1905), 1:295–96.
Sebastianus Insprugger, S.J., Honores Sacri Divis Aloysio Gonzagae, & Stanislai Kostkae e Societate Jesu, in Sanctorum numerus novissime relatis (Vienna: Wolfgang Schwendimann, 1727), 40; Bibliothèque Nationale de France (bnf), Shelf Mark H 623, fasc. 197, Compendium, 1–2; fasc. 195, Factum concordatum, 2; Informatio super dubio, 13.
Insprugger, Honores, 40.
bnf, Shelf Mark H 623, fasc. 197, Compendium, 1–2; fasc. 195, Factum concordatum, 2; Informatio super dubio, 13.
bnf, Shelf Mark H 623, fasc. 195, Factum concordatum, 3; Informatio super dubio, 13–14; Insprugger, Honores, 42.
Rotraut Becker, ed., Nuntiarurberichte aus Deutschland, Siebzehntes Jahrhundert nebst ergänzenden Aktenstücken, Nuntiaturen des Giovanni Battista Palloto un des Ciriaco Rocci (1630–1631), 4 vols. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2009), 4:99–100.
bnf, Shelf Mark H 623, fasc. 195, Informatio super dubio, 14–16.
Insprugger, Honores, 40; Marie Pötzi-Malikova, “Berichte über die Feierlichkeiten anlässlich der Kanonisation der heiligen Aloysius Gonzaga und Stanislaus Kostka in der österreichischen Ordensprovinz,” in Karner and Telesko, eds., Die Jesuiten in Wien, 157–64, here 158.
Budapest University Library (bul), Collectio Hevenesiana, 20, fol. 336, s.d.
bnf, Shelf Mark H-1363, fasc. 7267: Summarium. Responsiones Facti, et Iuris ad novas Animadversiones R.P.D. Promotoris Fidei, 76–77.
bul, Collectio Hevenesiana, 20, fols. 334–35, and 16, fols. 73–76.
asv, accs, Decreta 1671–1672, fol. 61v.
bul, Collectio Hevenesiana, 16, fol. 73.
asv, accs, Decreta 1685–1686, fol. 163v.
bul, Collectio Hevenesiana, 16, fols. 75–76.
Insprugger, Honores, 41.
Insprugger, Honores, 43.
Ferdinand iii asked for opening the beatification process and wrote that he was reiterating his father’s demand: Österreichische Staatsarchiv, Haus-Hof-und Staatsarchiv, Rom-Hofkorrespondenz, Karton 12, fol. 98, September 18, 1648; Acta Apostolicae Sedis: Commentarium Officiale (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanae, 1925), 17:357.
See Werner Telesko, “The Pietas Austriaca: A Political Myth?: On the Instrumentalisation of Piety towards the Cross at the Viennese Court in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Habsburgs and Their Court in Europe, 1400–1700: Between Cosmopolitanism and Regionalism, ed. Herbert Karner et al., 5 vols. (Leuven: Palatium, 2014), 2:159–80, at www.courtresidences.eu/index.php/publications/e-Publications/#Volume%201 (accessed October 16, 2021).
Franz Wagner, Leben und Tugenden Eleonorae Magdalenae Theresiae, Römischen Kaiserin: Von einem der Gesellschaft Jesu Priestern zusammen getragen (Vienna: Wolfgang Schwendimann, 1721), 233.
Wagner, Leben und Tugenden, 233; Maximilian Dufrène, S.J., Leben und Tugenden Mariae Amaliae Römischen Kaiserin (Munich: Johann Urban Geistl, 1757), 72, 115; Anton Hermann, S.J., Leben und Tugenden der Allerdurchlauchtigsten Frauen Maria Josepha, Königin in Pohlen, Churfürstinn zu Sachsen, geb. Erzherzoginn von Österreich & c. (Leipzig: Christoph Bernhard Breitkopf, 1766), 57–59.
Hermann, Leben und Tugenden, 59–60.
Hermann, Leben und Tugenden, 123.
Dufrène, Leben und Tugenden, 65–66, 69.
Wagner, Leben und Tugenden, 110, 233; Herman Horst, Recueil des vertus de la Sérénissime Princesse Madame Anne Éléonore de Mantoue, très-auguste impératrice et très-digne épouse de Ferdinand ii, empereur des Romains, composé en latin par le R. P. Herman Horst, de la Compagnie de Jésus, et traduit par le R. P. Jean-Baptiste Du Cortas, de la même compagnie (Liège: J. M. Hovius, 2nd ed. 1658), 47.
Horst, Recueil des vertus, 48.
Lamormaini, Ferdinandi ii virtutes, 60–61.
Nicolaus Vernulæus, Laudatio funebris Augustissimi Imperatoris Ferdinandi ii Aeternae memoriae consecrata ad Ferdinandum iii Imperatorem (Leuven: Jodocus Coppen, 1637), 46.
Nicolaus Avancini, Le Prince dévot et guerrier, ou les vertus héroïques de Léopold Guillaume, archiduc d’Autriche, traduit du latin du R.P. Nicolas Avancin, et augmenté de quelques mémoires en français, par le Père Henry Bex, tous deux de la Compagnie de Jésus (Lille: Nicolas de Rache, 1667), 61.
Nicolaus Avancini, Laudatio Funebris Ferdinandi iii Austriaci, Romanorum Imperatoris, Hungariae Bohemiaeque Regis, Archiducis Austriae & c. (Leuven: Frederik Bouttats, 1657), 37.
Avancini, Prince dévot, 61–62, 106, 421.
Avancini, Prince dévot, 277, 406, 421, 423.
