Page - 318 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 7318 pamphlets”: close to 1,800 opinion pieces and critical essays published within the span of a mere year and a half that, initially as substitutes for a genuine political press, generated eager debate beyond the printed word, in salons, inns, and coffee houses. A prime example of the close intertwining of the po- litical process and the public sphere was the pamphlet Was ist der Pabst? (What is the pope?) by former Jesuit Josef Valentin Eybel (1741–1805). Published on the eve of Pope Pius vi’s (1717–99, r.1775–99) 1782 visit in Vienna aimed at per- suading Joseph ii to revise his ecclesiastical policies, the pamphlet claimed the pope to be merely the first among otherwise equal bishops. Dozens of new journals and newspapers were launched, the volume of the book trade in- creased significantly, and publishers, booksellers, and lending libraries prolif- erated. The topics discussed expanded way beyond the one that triggered the process—church reform—and embraced all the typical subjects of enlight- ened sociability, from virtue and manners, through social orders and emanci- pation, to new developments in the full array of fields of learning. If not over- night, certainly at a very quick pace, a critical public sphere sprouted in Vienna with “almost as extensive” freedom of debate as in England, according to the British ambassador.21 This was as remarkable as it was ephemeral, as the scene began to change in the second half of Joseph ii’s reign. As the momentum of anti-clerical polem- ics boosting the government’s legislative efforts spent itself, writers increas- ingly saw themselves not merely as supporters of these efforts, but as “voices of the nation” whose self-appointed task was to critically assess government poli- cies themselves. This attitude was also fostered by their uneasiness with the emperor’s headstrong centralism and propensity for authoritarian control, not to speak of his unconcealed, patent contempt for the profession of letters. In the subsequent process of alienation, many of them became disaffected, and during the crisis of the final years of the Josephian regime some of them found themselves in the anti-government camp. This precipitated a new, more re- strictive Censorship Patent issued in January 1790, the month before Joseph ii’s death, in tune with the more general tendencies of the surveillance and con- trol of public opinion by Stimmungsberichte (reports on the people’s “mood,” 21 Wangermann, Austrian Achievement, 138. While the commission on censorship— rehashed under the name Studien- und Zensurkommission, initially chaired by von Son- nenfels and then the younger Van Swieten, Gottfried (1733–1803)—certainly kept a close eye on the pamphlets, it is probably an exaggeration that they were effectively commis- sioned by the government, as suggested by Wangermann, Waffen der Publizität, 11 and passim. For a criticism, and the assertion of a much greater integrity of the contributors, see Morrison, “Pursuing Enlightenment,” 44 and passim.