Princes, Jesuits and the Origins of Counter-Reformation in the Habsburg Lands

Abstract

Even in the era of Francis Joseph the traditionally close ties between the House of Habsburg and the Catholic Church would strike an observer of the great annual Corpus Christi procession in Vienna. He could watch the closeness of the Emperor to the Sacrament and the ostentatious demonstrations of devotion. Church and State came together in this ceremonial display of piety and splendour,¹ each legitimising the other. That alliance between Church and State had been established in its specific features by the efforts of the Habsburg dynasty and of those whom it had summoned to assist in the task, especially newer orders like the Jesuits, Capuchins, reformed Carmelites, and Piarists, during the process often known as Counter-Reformation, but which Catholic historians, employing the language of contemporary Catholic sources, have termed the ‘re-Catholicisation’ of Austria.²