Three hundred years ago, Vienna became an archdiocese
The interior of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
VIENNA, 01 June 2022 / 10:00 (ACI Print) .-
It was the capital of an empire, but it became an archdiocese rather late. To be precise, three hundred years ago. The archdiocese of Vienna celebrates the anniversary without special celebrations, planning a symposium for January 2023 that will tell the story, the modalities and the particularities of the archdiocese of the city of the Habsburg empire.
It was June 1, 1722, with the papal bull Supreme Arrangementthat Pope Innocent III conferred on Vienna the status of metropolitan diocese of canon law.
But why did Vienna become an archdiocese so late? Because the ecclesiastical structures that were constituted in the Eastern Franconia was particularly long-lived since the Middle Ages.
The bishopric of Vienna was established in 1469, but it was only a mini-diocese, cut off from the Passau area, which included the city area and some villages. In the 18th century, Austria became a great power, conquering several areas of the Balkans, and the city of Vienna became a capital with over 80,000 inhabitants.
There was therefore a need for a larger ecclesiastical administrative district, but the idea met with strong opposition from the bishop Raymund Rebate of Passau and Archbishop Franc Anton Harrach of Salzburg. In 1719, Emperor Charles VI wrote directly to Clement XI, asking to elevate Vienna to an archdiocese. In 1721, Innocent III succeeded Clement XIand he replied to the emperor that he would give Vienna a broader administrative structure if the emperor returned Comacchio to the papal state.
In 1722, Innocent XIII erected the archdiocese of Vienna. Bishop Sigismund von Kollonitsch (1716 – 1751) he became its first archbishop. However, it was still a very artificial product.
Emperor Joseph II (1780 – 1790), after a coup d’état, he also made drastic interventions in the ecclesiastical administrations, and thus the archbishops of Vienna, St. Pölten and Linz arose.
Vienna was initially the least important of the archdioceses, but grew in prestige and importance to become the first point of contact for the rulers of Austria. After 1918, with the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the bond of the Archdiocese of Vienna with power was even stronger. A duration until today