The Wittelsbach Electors in Eighteenth-Century Bavaria

FERDINAND KRAMER Piety at Court: The Wittelsbach Electors in Eighteenth-Century Bavaria in MICHAEL SCHAICH (ed.), Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 283–316 ISBN: 978 0 19 921472 3 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 10 Piety at Court: The Wittelsbach Electors in Eighteenth-Century Bavaria FERDINAND KRAMER The reports of the British envoys at the court of the Bavarian Wittelsbach electors-equally revealing of the personalities of the mostly young Britons, their Anglican background, and the anticipated expectations of the recipients in London-repeatedly mention the intense religious life in Munich with admiration. Thus, for example, the charge d'affaires Robert Liston reported in 1765: On our return to Munich we saw the procession of the Slaves of Virtue. It consists of the Electresses, the dames des Clefs and Dames de Cour, and some of the nobility, followed by a dozen of poor girls, who are educated at the Electress's expense. They visited all the churches and chapels in town, and some on foot from three o'clock till near eight. The dress gives them the look of nuns, but is white and hand- some, and serves rather to set them off than otherwise. 1 Whatever stereotypes and preconceived images may have influenced the British charge d'affaires in Munich when writing his report, in the procession he witnessed one of the commonest forms of public religious observance in Bavaria's capital city and residence in the eighteenth century. Members of the court and the princely house often also took part in processions. This traditional form of ostentatious religious expression was highly devel- oped during the confessional age in particular. However, it still played a large part in public life throughout the eighteenth century, when the court elites in Munich were increasingly This essay is translated into English by Angela Davies, GHIL, and dedicated to Hermann-Joseph Busley. 1 Quoted by Ernst Schutz, 'Bayem aus europaischer Sicht: Die britische Gesandtschaft am Hofe Max III.Josephs (1745-1777) und Karl Theodors (1778-1799) in Miinchen', in Andreas Michler and Waltraud Schreiber (eds.), Blick£ 011/ Europa (Neuried, 2003), 249-88, at 267. FERDINAND KRAMER exposed to the ideas of the Enlightenment, 2 and the territorial ruler and his leading ministers were starting to limit the traditional rights of the church to a great extent.3 Johann Michael Sailer (1751-1832), bishop and renewer of the church in Bavaria after the secularization of 1802-3, put it thus in 1827, making a retrospective comparison in a letter: It was so inexpressibly painful to me, and so many others, that this year, again, the king [Ludwig I] preferred to remain in Colombela rather than to accompany the Corpus Christi procession.-! saw Max III Joseph4taking part with devotion, Carl Theodor5 participating with great seriousness, and Max IV6 accompanying the procession with dignity. King Ludwig has already twice neglected this good opportunity to demonstrate his religiosity to the people. 7 In retrospect, Sailer obviously remembered the three electors of the Enlightenment period as taking part regularly in the Corpus Christi procession in Munich, thus continually perform- ing one of the most symbolically loaded of Catholic religious practices. Ludwig I (1825-48) was the first apparently to take the main religious traditions of the territorial rulers less seriously, although there could be no doubt about his personal piety and feel for the usefulness ofreligion for the state and monarchy, and despite the fact that his church and religious policies to some extent revised the 1802-3 secularization of the monastic houses and ecclesiastical foundations and other consequences of the Enlightenment for the church. 8 This essay will examine the apparent contradiction that while the religious traditions and practices of the princes seemingly continued without profound change throughout the eighteenth ~ Ludwig Hammermayer, 'Das Ende des Alten Bayem: Die Zeit des Kurfursten Max ill.Joseph (1745-1777) und des Kurfursten Karl Theodor (1777-1799)', in Max Spindler and Andreas Kraus (eds.), Handbuch tier bayerischen Geschichte (2nd edn.; Munich, 1g88) ii. 1,133-283. 3 Andreas Kraus, 'Probleme der bayerischen Staatskirchenpolitik 1750-1800', in Harm Klueting (ed.), Katlwlische A~Atifldiirung im katholischen Deu1schland (Hamburg, 1993), u9-41; Alois Schmid, 'Vom Westfalischen Frieden bis zum ReichsdeputationshauptschluB: Altbayem', in Walter Brandmiiller (ed.), Handbuch tier bt9erischen Kirchengeschichte, 3 vols. (St Ottilien, 1991-g), ii. 29g-gs6. 4 Elector Max ill Joseph (1745,7). 5 Elector Carl Theodor of Bavaria and the Palatinate (177J-g9). 6 Elector Max IV Joseph, from 1806 King Max !Joseph (17gg-1825). 7 Brun Apel, '.Johann Michael Sailer undJohann Georg Oettl in ihrem Briefwechsel', Beitriige zur Geschichte des Bistums Regensburg, 16 (1982), 365-428, at 393. 8 Heinz Gollwitzer, Ludwig I. von ~em: Kiinigtum im V01711iirz (Munich, 1986), 513-27. The Wittelsbach Electors in Bavaria century, the Bavarian electors subjected much of the country to a reform process, especially from 1745, which questioned the traditional role of the church in state and society, although it has to be said, until 1799 church policy in Bavaria was nothing like as radical as that in Austria under Joseph II (1780-90).9 It was, however, precisely because the Enlightenment strongly questioned some traditional religious practices that the upholding of tradition in the context of the court had to be more than unre- flected custom or rigid ceremonial. It had to be the expression of religious conviction or a political programme. Thus, going beyond the undisputed personal piety of the Wittelsbach electors, the question arises as to what functions the princes' traditional, public, and ostentatious religious observances may have fulfilled in the changed circumstances of the eighteenth century, especially given an increasingly political public sphere, which did not spare the princes in its criticisms. 10 It has to be pointed out that contemporaries already distin- guished clearly between religiosity in the personal sphere, that is, in the residence, and in public. Thus the writer of the journals recording the travels of the court of the Wittelsbach elector of Cologne, Clemens August (1723-61), always noted precisely when the Elector 'publicly' attended the 'cathedral church in Munster', or went 'to the cathedral publicly'. 11 In 1756 the Bavarian elector, Max IDJoseph, complained that his councillors did not take part 'in the public processions'. 12 Johann Pezzl, formerly a Benedictine novice and later a man of the Enlightenment hostile to the church, wrote about Carl Theodor: 'It is known that the 9 Volker Press, 'Reformabsolutismus in Bayem und in der Pfalz', in Richard Bauer and Hans Schlosser (eds.), WigUliius X(/l}er Aloys Freiherr von Kreittmayr 1705-1790 (Munich, 1991), 239-65; Alois Schmid, 'Der Reformabsolutismus Kurftirst Max III. Joseph von Bayem', <,eitschriftfiir bl!Jerische Landesgeschichte, 54 (1991), 391 6; Ferdinand Kramer, 'Bayem', in Werner Buchholz (ed.), Das Ende der Friihen Neuzeit im 'Dritten Deutsch/and' (Munich, 2003), 5--2{; id., 'Bavaria: Reform and "Staatsintegration" ', German History, 20 (2002), 354,2. 10 Michael Schaich, Staat und Ojfentlichkeit im Kurfiirstentum Bayern der Spiitaujkliirung (Munich, 2001); Michael Schattenhofer, 'Der Kniefall des Miinchner Rats vor dem Bild des Kurftirsten Karl Theodor', in id., Von Kirchen, Kurfiirsten und Kaffiesiedern etcetera: Aus Miinchens Vergangenheit (Munich, 1974), 211-52. 11 Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger (ed.), Das Hefreistjournal des Kurfiirsten Clemens August von Koln 17I!J1745 (Siegburg, 2000), 43, 44, 48, 62, 64 and passim; see also 'Was in der hey!. Chanwoche bey Hoffe zu beobachten isL' 1724, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abt. III: Geheimes Hausarchiv (henceforth cited as BayHStA GHA), Hofhaushaltsai<ten 747. 12 Decree by Max IIIJoseph, 20Jan. 1756, BayHStA GHA Hofhaushaltsai<ten 570. 286 FERDINAND KRAMER elector is a devout and pious ruler. He misses no opportunity to give the people examples of his enthusiasm for religious cere- mony.' 13 In the letter mentioned above,Johann Michael Sailer also made clear that he expected the prince to demonstrate his piety to his people in public. Taking part in religious services at various churches in the city of Munich and the country beyond, in processions, 14 and in pilgrimages were clearly among the prince's most frequent and important public duties. This does not preclude the fact that many church services which the prince attended were held every day in the closed setting of the residence and the palaces. 15 I In answering the questions raised here, we naturally encounter a number of difficulties.

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