VUB CASE: Enlightenment and Reform under Joseph II (1780-1790)

Introduction

The purpose of my project was to highlight the enlightenment and reform under Joseph II (1780-1790).

Emperor Joseph II (1780-1790)

Joseph II succeeded his mother, Archduchess, Queen and Empress Maria Theresia, as Duke of Brabant, Count of Flanders, Count of Namur, Count of Hainault, lord of Malines..., conformably to what has been explained by Cheyenne and Dribardh regarding the personal union of the various principalities constituting the Austrian Low Countries. 

His mother -through the intermediary of her governor-general and ministers- respected the enduring adaptation and reinterpretation of medieval constitutions, privileges and customs, symbolising a centuries-old local elite preference for self-government. It is because of this that she paid great care and attention to the constitutional freedoms of the various towns, nobility, and clergy. Maria Theresia negotiated with them and took great care with her reforms. (1)

Maria Theresia's rule, which had started in the turmoil of a big European war (incurring the loss of Silesia), in the end left the image of compromise and stability, coupled with Enlightenment and cameralism-inspired reform. She would reform the country slowly from its society of orders to a more modern one. Throughout the years, she would also take steps reducing the fiscal exemptions of nobility and clergy (2). Her son would however take a far more radical approach.

Joseph began his reign by crossing the Southern Netherlands in order to become personally acquainted with the territory.  While the common people liked him for going out of his way to travel to our nation as the first ruler in centuries to do so, both the clergy and nobility were opposed to him from the get-go. Joseph II regarded the institutions of the Austrian Netherlands as outdated and flawed. His way of dealing with this was according to the doctrine of Enlightened absolutism. The monarch -who had been educated with the writings of Grotius, Pufendorf and Fénelon- saw himself as a servant of the common good and of the people. (3) In practice, this would give monarchs the license to take powers from both nobility and clergy, something which would not be taken lightly in the Southern Netherlands.

The Tolerance Edict

One of the first decisions he took as new ruler was the introduction of the Tolerance Edict on 12 November 1781. (4) This piece of legislation edicted measures supposed to protect Protestants in the Austrian Netherlands, with believers of the Jewish faith sharing the same protection following an expansion of the Edict its intended benificiaries one year later, all the while the Catholic Church viewed these developments with great suspicion. In the Edict were measures put in place where, that it would no longer be required for Protestants to attend any church services or processions if their faith forbid them from doing so. (5) A similar rule would be put in place in regard to the contents of oaths one would need to declare. (6)

 

It should be noted that these reforms were not intended to get other faiths on the same level as Roman-Catholicism remained the state religion.(7) A measure which allowed Catholicism to remain dominant is to exclusively allow places of worship to be made with money from the community in places with ‘a sufficient number of subjects’. This would mean that the countryside, where the clerical influence was the strongest, would therefore remain mostly unchallenged within the Roman Catholic Church's exclusive domain. (8)

Token of Joseph II's tolerance edict with religious freedom for Jews and Protestants (image source: Ghent University Library) (9)

Churches built by Protestants would have to be constructed in government-approved locations. These buildings weren't permitted to have any resemblance to usual church buildings. For example, doors which resembled those used by the Catholics could not be used. A concrete example of this is the former Protestant Chapel on the Mont des Arts which we passed on our walk during the Peak Event. Finally church bells were also prohibited. (10).

Front of Eglise Protestante de Bruxelles : Chapelle Royale. No classic church doors nor church bells, as it was built before the Tolerance Edict.

In article 5 (11), we can see that the Edict was especially influential for the higher-class of society. Protestants were allowed into the Bourgeoisie throughout the Austrian Netherlands, e.g. they were entitled to study at the University of Louvain. Finally, Protestants were admitted being to enter public service, albeit on special permission by the Emperor: asserting their Christian and moral virtues and apt qualification for the work at hand was a necessity.

Further Reforms

Additional steps he took going forward were the continued abolition of the Jesuit order which started under Maria Theresia's reign (12) and the scrapping of a number of contemplative monasteries. (13) Another reform of note in the Southern Netherlands would be the legalization of marriage between Protestants and Catholics in 1782. (14) This wave of secularization in the profoundly Catholic community of the Austrian Netherlands did not go down well.

 

Joseph II would only continue to increase his influence in the following years with the judicial power losing their ability to make decisions autonomously as they were forced to converse first with the government and wait on their advice before giving their judgement, for instance with relation to the usage of torture (which was being rolled back by Enlightened rulers in various European jurisdictions).

tout juge, tant supérieur que subalterne, avant de prononcer ou de faire exécuter un jugement portant condamnation à la torture ou question, devra dorénavant nous soumettre son projet de sentence avec nos avis contenant les circonstances du cas et attendre nos ordres (15)

What would prove to be deciding in inciting the revolution against his regime, were the administrative reforms of 1787 which would nullify the provincial Estates and Councils (16) as covered by Cheyenne and Dribardh elsewhere on this blog. With the ‘Joyeuse Entrée’ no longer being followed by Joseph II in 1789, the country would be set ablaze. (17) With this development was not only the church under threat, but also the nobility who saw its power being diminished daily.

 

Joseph II's policies made two polarizing parties join forces: the conservatives, on the one hand, who were tired of seeing their medieval rights pushed aside by this so-called enlightened despot, and on the other more progressive actors, inspired by moderate Enlightenment and natural law theory (as for instance the writings of Pufendorf and Montesquieu). Even though the latter could agree with some of the Emperor's measures, the way he implemented them, with no regard for the local opinion, led them to rebel. (18) The system of rule in the Southern Netherlands, collapsed in the "Brabant" Revolution in 1789.

The Belgian lion sweeps Imperial troops from the Brussels Grand-Place as revolutionary volunteers look on

The Brabant Revolution 

This revolution was inspired by similar discontent with the fossilised medieval structures of the Ancien Régime, but it should not be completely likened to the French Revolution. While these two would overlap in timing, the reasoning behind them was vastly different; where in France the revolutionaries wanted massive changes in society, the one in the Southern Netherlands was being fought to protect the status quo and to even go back to earlier times, with the Tolerance Edict being one of the documents in question which would be dismissed by the new government. (19) The Estates’ intention was to create a Catholic society. There would be no distinction between Church and state as it would be up to the latter to maintain morality and preserve order. (20)

 

In 1790 the United States of Belgium were established as a confederation of sovereign provinces. This form of state resembled the Confederation in the United States between 1776 and 1787, before the country became a federation. A trait common to cofederations, is that The États Belgiques only shared competence on a select number of subjects. Most would remain within the perimeter of every independent principality or province (Flanders, Brabant, Hainault...). (21)

 

However, the tide of the war shifted with the passing of Joseph II. Without a common enemy, the alliance between conservatives and progressives fell apart. There was also insufficient international support for the United Belgian States and with this the region would be reconquered by the Austrians once more, with Brussels falling at the start of the month of December in 1790. (22)

Aftermath 

Looking back, we can say that the revolution had missed its mark but was not completely futile. After all, all Joseph II's adjustments were reversed, and we can consider this a precursor to the Belgian Revolution. With this revolt, the Belgian state would effectively come into being, both as internally and externally sovereign. The existence of a Belgian national sentiment or nationalism is a topic of debate among historians. (23) In the 1830 wave of European revolutions, the dominance of monarchs or foreign elites (as for instance  for the Italians, Hungarians, Bohemians... in the Austrian Empire) was resented vocally, as formulated here:

Sur la moitié du globe, tous les hommes ne jettent qu'un cri, n'ont qu'un besoin, qu'une action, & l'espèce courbée si longtemps sous la tyrannie, se relève avec la fierté d'une liberté majestueuse & effrayante. (24)

A similar collaboration between local elites against an interventionist enlightened monarch (William I) would lead to Belgium's independence in 1830. (25) Hence, in certain aspects, the Brabant Revolution can be viewed as the first Belgian Revolution as it would prove to be a precursor for what was yet to come. (26)

By Maxime Gabriel Philippe Desmet, VUB

Introspection on joining EUTopia CoLeco Legal History

I joined this project with clear goals in the back of my mind. When looking towards my academic future I was determined to take on a new challenge. Once I learned about EUTopia CoLeCo it was at both the right place and right time for me. As I was the youngest to take on this project, I feel grateful for the amount of support of both Professor Frederik Dhondt and my fellow students Manon, Lentl, Cheyenne, Dribardh and Sultan. When discussing with Professor Dhondt about my subject I took the decision to examine Joseph II his reign in the Southern Netherlands. With my passion for human rights, it seemed extraordinarily interesting to research my own country in the years leading up to the Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen in order to find out how our society was in the years leading up to this important document.

 Footnotes

(1)J. VAN DEN BROECK, Promenade in de pruikentijd: de Zuidelijke Nederlanden met een maat Madrid, een wasem Wenen en een part Parijs 1700-1795, Icarus,  Antwerpen, België, 1995, p. 115.

(2)Ibid., p. 37.

(3)"Enlightened Despotism", Encyclopedia Brittanica (here). 

(4) Décret des gouverneurs généraux adressé aux conseils de justice, touchant la tolérance civile, à l'égard des protestants, Bruxelles, le 12 novembre 1781, published in VERHAEGEN, P., GACHARD,  L.P., DE LE COURT, J. (eds.) Recueil des ordonnances des Pays-bas autrichiens. Troisième Série: 1700-1794,  Goemaere, Brussel, België, 1860, t. XII, pp. 89-90 (https://bib.kuleuven.be/rbib/collectie/archieven/kcowv/ord-pb-s3-autriche-vol12-1910.pdf).

(5)Artikel 7 Tolerance Edict.

(6)Artikel 6 Tolerance Edict.

(7)Artikel 1 Tolerance Edict. 

(8)Artikel 2 Tolerance Edict. 

(9)J. REICH, CHRISTIAN, & J. JOZEF, Penning op het tolerantie edict van Joseph II met godsdienstvrijheid voor de Joden en Protestanten. .: s.n., 1782 p., gevonden op https://lib.ugent.be/nl/catalog/rug01:001407928. 

(10)Artikel 3 Tolerance Edict.

(11)Artikel 5 Tolerance Edict.

(12) VAN DEN BROECK, Promenade, pp. 157-161.

(13) Ibid., pp.. 242-246.

(14)M. PAUL VERHAEGEN, L. PROSPER GACHARD, J. DE LE COURT, Receuil des ordonnances des Pays-bas austriches. Troisième Série: 1700-1794, Goemaere, Brussel, België, 186p.

(15)M.S. DUPONT-BOUCHAT, “La réforme du droit pénal dans les Pays-Bas autrichiens à la fin de l’Ancien Régime (1765-1787)”, in MACOURS, G. (ed.), Cornua legum, Antwerpen, Kluwer, 1987, 80, see here.

(16) L. JENSEN (ed.), The Roots of Nationalism: National Identity Formation in Early Modern Europe, 1600-1815, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2016 (open acces).

(17) VAN DEN BROECK, Promenade, pp. 286-290.

(18)B. VERHEIJEN, The United States of Belgium, the Story of the Revolution that shaped Belgianness (here).

(19)J. POLASKY, Revolution in Brussels 1787-1793, Brussel, Palais des Académies, 1985, p. 138.

(20) Ibid., p. 136.

(21) VAN DEN BROECK, Promenade, p. 290.                                                                                                                                                                                             

(22)J. JUDGE, The United States of Belgium, The Story of the First Belgian Revolution, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2018, pp. 255-262.

(23)Charles LAMBERT d'OUTREPONT, "Considérations sur la Constitution des Duchés de Brabant et Limbourg", May 23, 1787, Révolution belge, vol. 35, Royal Library, Brussels.  p.449 (here).

(24)JUDGE, The United States of Belgium, pp. 255-262.

(25) ibid.

Bibliography and further reading

Published normative sources

DE LE COURT, J.,GACHARD,  L.P., VERHAEGEN, P. (eds.) Recueil des ordonnances des Pays-bas autrichiens. Troisième Série: 1700-1794, Goemaere, Brussel, België, 1901-1914, vol. XI-XIII (here).

Published pamphlets

LAMBERT d'OUTREPONT, C. "Considérations sur la Constitution des Duchés de Brabant et Limbourg", May 23, 1787, Révolution belge, vol.35, Royal Library, Brussels (here) .

Books and Chapters

Historical Literature

DHONDT L., Ancien Régime, Verlichte Monarchie en Revolutie. Een institutionele en historische procesanalyse van politiek, instellingen en ideologie in de Habsburgse, de Nederlandse en Vlaamse Politieke ruimte, Brussel, Algemeen Rijksarchief, 2002-2007, 7 vol. (open access)  

HASQUIN H (ed.), Oostenrijks België, 1713-1794 : de Zuidelijke Nederlanden onder de Oostenrijkse Habsburgers, Brussel, Gemeentekrediet van België, 1987

JENSEN, L. (ed.), The Roots of Nationalism: National Identity Formation in Early Modern Europe, 1600-1815, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2016 (open access).

JUDGE J., The United States of Belgium, The Story of the First Belgian Revolution, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2018

POLASKY J., Revolution in Brussels 1787-1793, Brussels, Palais des Académies, 1985

TASSIER S., Les démocrates belges de 1789. Etude sur le Vonckisme et la Révolution brabançonne, Bruxelles, Lamertin/Hayez, 1930

VAN DEN BROECK J., Promenade in de pruikentijd: de Zuidelijke Nederlanden met een maat Madrid, een wasem Wenen en een part Parijs 1700-1795, Antwerpen, Icarus, 1995

Reference works

"Enlightened Despotism", Encyclopedia Brittanica (here). 

Numismatic and Iconographic Sources

REICH, J. C., Medal on the tolerance edict of Joseph II with religious freedom for Jews and Protestants, 1782, Ghent University Library (here).

Vulgarising sources

VERHEIJEN, B., The United States of Belgium, the Story of the Revolution that shaped Belgianness  (here).