https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1049-7703
Abstract
The Brandanus affair rocked the early Church relations between the Austrian Empire and the United States in a period when the Austrian Leopoldine Society sought to fund and develop American Catholicism. Ignited by an irate priest who alleged corruption in the use of these Austrian funds by American bishops, the scandal allows historians to consider not only the vulnerabilities of Austrian-American relations in the early nineteenth-century but also exposes how transcontinental organizations attempted to grapple with corruption allegations. In this case, it reveals the efforts aimed at controlling the flow of information and the inherent problems in establishing trust between international partners, leading us to consider the wider ramifications of the Brandanus affair as an example of corruption, distrust, and information management within missionary societies more generally.
- Award Group:
- Funder(s): Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies
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- Award Group:
- Funder(s): Tiroler Wissenschaftsförderung
- Funder(s):
- Award Group:
- Funder(s): Academy of American Franciscan History
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In the Spring of 1840, accusations made with “satanic fury” erupted into print via a libelous pamphlet that shook the foundations of the Catholic establishment in North America.1 Decrying the supposed visceral inequalities of the Church, its elitist clergy and prejudiced leadership, the anonymous author, who relied upon the pseudonym “Severus Brandanus,” alleged that American bishops had misappropriated foreign donations sent to them for the Church’s benefit. Invoking the original Christ-like compassion of the Church’s teachings, Brandanus ignited a firestorm over the honor of the American bishops as well as their honesty and reputation as spiritual leaders, but his words went far beyond the scope of the American clerical establishment. In Vienna, from where a large proportion of the funds had originated, observers chafed at the uncomfortable and perhaps undeniable news of American indecency and misappropriation at their own expense. For over a decade, Catholic leaders in Vienna had promoted donations toward missions in the United States as part of the Leopoldine Society. Brandanus’s claims struck at the heart of their mission and their public promotion of the perceived plight of American Catholics, especially German-speaking émigrés in the United States. The question Brandanus’s pamphlet now raised in their minds—and the minds of many across Europe—was: Had they been duped?
Dismissed entirely as a “bitter diatribe” by previous historians of the Leopoldine Society, the accusations leveled by Brandanus provoked little debate in the twentieth century, even though its impact within the nineteenth-century Leopoldine Society had been more substantial.2 As a significant moment in the early history of the Leopoldine Society, no professional account of this association could fail to take into account one of the most intriguing and influential moments in its nascent days, especially at a time when the initial bonds of friendship between the Habsburg and American dioceses began to prosper.
At the same time, Brandanus’s accusations came at an important juncture in the emerging diplomatic ties between the United States and the Habsburg monarchy. Although initial diplomatic overtures began already at the end of the eighteenth century, relations between the United States and Habsburg monarchy gathered pace after 1815 when interested Southern planters increasingly viewed central Europe as a potential outlet for their products, primarily tobacco, and wished to alter Austrian importation laws to expand their markets in this region.3 In 1817, the Austrian Emperor Francis I reciprocated the commercial interest by naming a consul in Philadelphia as the start of a renewed diplomatic and economic initiative across the Atlantic.4 The first bilateral agreement came in 1829 followed by the exchange of official representatives in the 1830s.5 These positive developments contrasted the difficult nadir that followed after the revolutions of 1848 when American sympathies with the Hungarian independence movement caused a deep diplomatic fissure between the two powers. American tacit recognition of Hungary in Ambrose Dudley Mann’s mission there in 1849 combined with the grand reception for the tour of Hungarian nobleman and revolutionary Lajos Kossuth through the United States in 1851–1852 disrupted the progress made until then between Austria and the United States.6 The American Civil War presented Austrian officials the needed opportunity to make amends for the nadir of the 1850s by supporting the Union side in line with many European powers. But these gains were somewhat offset by the installation of an Austrian royal as Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico and American fears of a monarchist conspiracy to undermine democracy in the American hemisphere.7 In many ways, the Leopoldine Society precipitated a foreshadowing of the paranoia surrounding Austrian interests in the Americas as its activities prompted a backlash from Protestant fundamentalists who maintained that these actions conformed to a wider attack on the fabric of (Anglo-)American society.8 And the concerns provoked by the Brandanus pamphlet illustrated the continuing turbulence of Austrian-American relations that could be affected by sudden events, scandal, or doubt.
While ostensibly about the use of financial aid sent from Europe to North America, the Brandanus affair reflected wider and more overtly politicized events in the early American Catholic Church. As an enlightened exercise in political formation, republican constitutions in the United States followed the principle of separating church and state issues, which gave some bishops and their allies greater leeway than ever before in ecclesiastical matters. Modernists who sought to capitalize on these opportunities to bring the American Church more into line with the democratic principles of the early republic came into disagreement with traditionalists who with ultramontane inclinations preferred to invest this greater responsibility in the Roman curia.9 The unfolding schism took place across the metropoles of the United States and across several decades, becoming ever more fractured by additional interests and local issues pressed by newcomers to the parishes. Immigrant laity, who held their own intrinsic values, often complicated the picture further thanks to their increasing numbers and the privileged position within the Church’s hierarchy. As a reflection of the attempts to establish a quasi-ecclesiastical democracy in the early American Church, a trustee system empowered lay members (and their clerical champions) of the community with certain rights over the parish including clergy assignments and property management.10 Trusteeism fostered a parallel line of discord in debates over the future of American Catholicism, which had come to a head before the 1830s when the Leopoldine Society began its activities in North America. By this time, trustee revolts had torn at the clerical administration, but control remained largely in the hands of the clergy, and bishops soon absorbed powers over the formation of trusts and their membership.11 When Brandanus’s pamphlet appeared in 1840, the laity in the United States found itself “religiously more oppressed than in any Catholic country in the world” against the backdrop of a resurgent restoration Church shaped by restoration Rome.12
The Brandanus affair—to give a name to this episode in Austrian-American relations—spoke to all the difficulties encountered by early American church leaders. Its contents touched upon the reach of the church, the power of the clergy, the rights of the laity, and (most importantly) the relations between the immigrant groups within the American Church itself. As a pamphlet originally composed in German and aimed externally at a foreign audience, however, the Brandanus case also spoke to an international audience and played on the tensions between clergy in Austria and the United States at a moment when these relationships required levels of trust and security.13 The Brandanus affair, more than anything else, revealed to directors of the Leopoldine Society in Vienna the disparity between their spiritual ambitions and their effective reach in North America. It showed how their initial mission had been reliant upon the American clergy and the potential pitfalls (whether real or not) of relying upon overseas officials to carry out its mission. As a difficult chapter within the Leopoldine Society’s history, the Brandanus affair marked an important milestone in its development.
The Five Theses of Severus Brandanus
The core of Brandanus’s Die katholisch-irisch-bischöfliche Administration in Nord-Amerika focused on five major allegations of corruption within the Catholic Church of the United States. Firstly, Brandanus alleged that American bishops misled their European supporters by sending false or overly glorifying reports of their deeds. Secondly, the same bishops misappropriated the funds sent to them by the European foundations, especially the Leopoldine Society in Vienna, that had express remits for the use of their financial assistance. Thirdly, missionaries, who were supposed to be the benefactors of a portion of these funds, did not receive any real support from their superiors in the American Church. Fourthly, bishops acted along sectarian national lines, giving support to English-speaking Irish Catholics over the German and French-speaking immigrant communities. Finally, the bishops undermined one another’s attempts in a farcical competition for grandeur that weakened the overall facility of the Catholic Church to spread the faith among the inhabitants of North America. In each one of these accusations, Brandanus made reference to specific examples and circumstances, naming particular clergy and instances of hierarchical abuse. His charges amounted to an attack on the Catholic hierarchy so much so that many Catholic observers could scarcely believe that these words had been written by a Catholic and suspected a Protestant plot against the Catholic bishops.
Yet, Brandanus’s claims were not a product of his imagination but rather a litany of misgivings over the structure of the early American Catholic Church and its administration of the vast sums donated by European societies. “There are some facts in this pamphlet,” claimed one Tyrolean missionary in New York in a letter to the Leopoldine Society in Vienna, “that if I had never seen America, I could not possibly believe but now—although I cannot vouch for their accuracy—I dare not deny them all degree of probability.”14 The seriousness of these accusations reflected the enormous amounts of financial aid given to the American dioceses by European organizations established in the belief that American Catholicism faced existential threats in its earliest years. Foremost among these concerns was the belief that the lack of priests to administer to Catholic congregations sparsely strewn across the emerging settlements in the Midwest had led to conversions to Protestantism or apostasy, even among the few priests themselves.15 To remedy the situation, several European organizations gave substantial sums to support the Catholic faith. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, founded in Lyon in 1822, became the first to answer the pleas of American Catholics and their bishops who sent emissaries to Europe.16 The Leopoldine Society in Vienna became the second, established at the direct behest of Frederic Rese, future bishop of Detroit and agent of Bishop John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati. Over the course of its existence between 1829 and 1914, alms raised by the Society’s members totaled 4.2 million Austrian gulden to be used expressly for the betterment of German Catholics with additional sums given to missions among Native American communities.17 Compared with the Ludwigs-Missionsverein, established soon after in Munich to support German-speaking missions in the Americas as well as Asia, the Leopoldine Society’s direct focus on North America meant that the accusations by Brandanus resounded the loudest in Vienna and among the Society’s directory in charge of its overall operations.18
Reinforcing the core critiques of Brandanus’s arguments were several recent events that underlined the growing tensions between the Irish and non-Irish immigrant lobbies in the American Catholic Church. Thanks in part to an influential group of Irish priests in Rome as well as the large Irish-American population in several dioceses, the papacy of Pius VII confirmed five successive bishops in the United States who were all Irish, much to the chagrin of the German and French-speaking Catholics.19 This prevailing sense of bias existed prior to the steady stream of funds, giving credence to Brandanus’s claim that “nationalist” tendencies determined which communities received support over others.20 In the same period, the number of Catholic dioceses doubled from six before 1820 to twelve by the time of Brandanus’s pamphlet. In each new see, new churches and religious institutions required expensive sacramental objects. Aggrandizement through monumental buildings and gilded ornaments proved an easy target for Brandanus’s ire over the perceived deceitful wastefulness of the bishops. “What is the relationship between the conduct of the most reverend bishops,” he asked rhetorically, “and the articles of the Ten Commandments that state: ‘Thou shalt not steal’?”21 In the same vein, Brandanus charged the bishops with siphoning European funds intended for German Catholics as loans of up to $11,000 from Cincinnati merchants as payments for land in Michigan, for extensions to church buildings, and a lavish (mainly Irish) orphanage and seminary building in Philadelphia.22 Again such accusations spoke to concerns over the expansion and spending of the dioceses, especially among the corridors of the European societies responsible for dispensing donations across the Atlantic.23 What marked Brandanus out, however, was the blunt tone and direct allegations leveled at the feet of the American bishops themselves.
Although wide-ranging in his excoriation of the bishops, two individuals found themselves explicitly named within the pamphlet itself: Bishop Francis P. Kenrick of Philadelphia and Bishop John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati. In both cases, these clerics were no strangers to public attacks and slander. Kenrick was committed to the ultramontane ideals of “Roman universalism, institutional authoritarianism, and intense supernaturalism” and had fought a hardened campaign against Protestants in Philadelphia amid an increasingly volatile situation between the Irish and German congregations.24 Meanwhile, Purcell had defended himself before the Leopoldine Society prior to Brandanus’s publication. In 1838, he responded to public letters critical of his conduct in the local presses that he feared had been communicated to the directory in Vienna—at that time the major sponsor of both priests and material for his diocese. Purcell dismissed such criticisms as spiteful deeds by Protestant-induced campaigns to “entrap tender minds with their false doctrines.”25 One year later, the damning accusations published by Brandanus could not so easily be ignored as copies certainly found their way not only among the Catholic hierarchy in the United States but also to the hands of missionaries on remote missions in places like Michigan and, most importantly, to the desks of the papal nuncio in Vienna, the directory of the Leopoldine Society, and even the Austrian emperor’s cabinet.26
The Brandanus pamphlet appeared under a pseudonym, but Kenrick and Purcell held a certain individual to account for its authorship. They both blamed Wilhelm Piesbach, who also became the primary suspect among the European societies affected by the Brandanus affair.27 Piesbach, a priest originally from Koblenz, had studied in Rome at the Collegio Urbano of Propaganda Fide. He initially intended to serve a mission in the diocese of St. Louis, but the terms of his financial support from the Leopoldine Society directed him instead to Philadelphia, where Kenrick, suspecting Piesbach to be a possible informant for either Vienna or Rome, sent him westward.28 Piesbach made his way to St. Louis as he originally intended, but Bishop Giuseppe Rosati declined his services. Rosati revealed his issues with Piesbach in a letter to Purcell, where Rosati claimed Piesbach held an anti-slavery sentiment that would not be suitable in the divided atmosphere of Missouri and, additionally, Rosati needed clergy proficient in English rather than German, a need Purcell had greater among his 30,000 German-speaking parishioners than Rosati.29 Rejected once more, Piesbach reached Cincinnati, where Purcell assigned him to the Holy Trinity congregation.30 In a short time, Piesbach became utterly disenchanted with the power and performance of the American bishops. In a lengthy statement sent to the archbishop of Vienna, he laid out his frustrations. “I did not find it [the American Catholic Church] as I wished; it is different from the way it is thought of in Europe where reports are read that exalt one thing and conceal another,” he began and continued:
America has a reputation for religious growth, but what is written about conversions to Catholicism is exaggerated. . . . Catholic religious growth is based on immigration, especially German immigrants. If one despises and neglects these immigrants out of nationalism, what hopes remain for Catholicism in general? . . . Pennsylvania shows where this leads if it does not become material. Catechizing in German was forbidden in Pennsylvania. The result was that German Catholics became prey to Protestantism. . . . The differences between Bishop Dr. Kenrick and the German Catholic community of the city of Philadelphia are consequences of an analogy of the above. Dr. Kenrick demanded the deed of the German Catholic Church with the intention to Anglicize the church, but the congregation refused. They owe it to themselves and to their descendants, by immigration or birth, the defense of the right of ownership as the last means by which the spiritual pastoral care of all those who understand only German is conditioned and secured. This is the root of the constant strife, and all incidents moved on the same, even when they applied to pastors. That Dr. Kenrick really had the above intention [to Anglicize their church], I know without reflecting on the popular evidence, from the mouths of American priests who lived and still live in close proximity with Dr. Kenrick. . . . The bishops are enemies to each other. The Irish bishops are last in accomplishments. The seminaries are scattered, impecunious, and thus incapable of being scientific institutions and of producing learned men. The plan to establish a central seminary with united forces, which was proposed in the Council, failed because of the blindness and the egoism of the bishops.31
The essence of Piesbach’s letter reflected the core accusations of the Brandanus pamphlet. Yet Piesbach seemed timid in November 1838 when he composed his lamenting discourse on his reality in America. “I write this letter,” he confided, “for your private knowledge; I do not wish to be published in print and I ask that my name be kept secret.”32 By 1840, however, Piesbach may have been compelled to publish his own extended verdict as an act of revenge after Purcell—who in all likelihood found out about Piesbach’s letter of complaint to Vienna—relieved him from his duties in 1839. The open secret that Piesbach was Brandanus found a willing audience amongst the members of Propaganda Fide in Rome, who issued an admonishment to Piesbach, recently returned to Speyer in 1842, calling for him to recant his text.33 Yet the damage had already been done. In Vienna, state censors worked with Church officials in stopping the spread of the Brandanus pamphlet and proscribed it with the severest grade of censorship (“damnatur”) that banned its reproduction and importation.34 In spite of such attempts to curtail Piesbach’s legacy, the pamphlet generated a significant amount of debate and attention over the conduct of the American bishops in the 1840s.
Responses between Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Vienna
Immediate condemnation of the publication of Die katholisch-irisch-bischöfliche Administration in Nord-Amerika in Philadelphia came first from the American bishops themselves followed by a wider but more cautious response from the international Catholic community. In the United States, three high-ranking clergy faced direct accusation in Brandanus’s pamphlet: Archbishop John Carroll of Baltimore, Bishop Francis P. Kenrick of Philadelphia, and Bishop (later Archbishop) John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati. Brandanus charged Carroll for originating many of the problematic issues and instilling the corrupting vice among the American prelates, but his earlier death in 1815 precluded any response from him.
Kenrick’s relationship with the Leopoldine Society began years prior to the Brandanus affair. From his numerous visitations throughout the Philadelphia diocese, Kenrick became aware first-hand about the demands of his German-speaking parishioners to have their own vernacular clergy.35 Such tensions were commonplace throughout the early history of the diocese.36 In 1832, Society funds reached the Diocese of Philadelphia where Kenrick served at that time as the coadjutor bishop—a de facto equal in terms of administration and spiritual matters—to Bishop James Whitfield. Kenrick expressed gratitude to the Viennese directory in a letter, explaining how these funds were necessary for the continued function of his diocese, where thirty-eight priests attended fifty churches for a total congregation of 100,000 Catholics.37 Accordingly, Kenrick’s main preoccupation during these early years was the establishment of a seminary to train domestic clergy to supplement the desperate lack of diocesan priests. His quest resulted in the beginning of the Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary for which purpose Kenrick devoted around $4,800 worth of Society donations, covering around one quarter of the seminary’s total costs.38 The first rector of the seminary came directly from Ireland at the behest of Kenrick.39 In another letter expressing his gratitude to the directory in Vienna, Kenrick noted how seminarians at Saint Charles Borromeo could study German but that he had only ten priests capable of preaching in that language, and his mention of this fact came across as an additional plea for assistance.40 In 1840–1841, around a further 9,500 florins came from Vienna to the Diocese of Philadelphia.41 In these initial relations, Kenrick’s profile and his situation in Philadelphia merited the financial support of the Leopoldine Society.
Kenrick’s actions in handling German matters, however, were not entirely sympathetic. Parishioners viewed him as somewhat loyal to the Irish contingent within the diocese rather than being fair to the German Catholics. The issue of vernacular religious schools proved a litmus test for many when Kenrick channeled funds toward English-language institutions and remained unphased by the lack of German-speaking Catholic schools in his area. In 1836, a group of leading German Catholics in Philadelphia submitted two petitions, one to Pope Gregory XVI and another to Emperor Francis I of Austria, for an intercession in their dire education predicament.42 In these petitions, similar accusations as in Brandanus’s pamphlet appeared about the American clergy’s attitude to German Catholics. “Money lay closer to his heart than our salvation,” retorted one petitioner who had gone to one of Kenrick’s aides for assistance.43 Moreover, the petitions went into detail about the various disputes directly between Kenrick and a series of German priests who had joined the diocese before being “forced out” by Kenrick’s malicious maneuvers against them.44 Rather than appeal to the Leopoldine Society whose funds would only be misappropriated by Kenrick, the German Catholics instead requested that the emperor himself intercede through Kenrick’s superior, Pope Gregory XVI, who would be more responsive to “a nudge from the most powerful of Christian monarchs” to install a German bishop in Kenrick’s place.45 The Philadelphian petitions fell on deaf ears in Europe as the consistory in Rome declined any notion of removing Kenrick in favor of a German-speaking bishop. Furthermore, the Roman curia acted to prevent any such suggestions emanating from the imperial court in Vienna when members of the Propaganda Fide wrote to the Austrian ambassador to the Holy See, Count Rudolf von Lützow, to defend Kenrick’s character and continued suitability for his current position.46
The domestic issues with Germans in the Diocese of Philadelphia somewhat hindered Kenrick’s reaction to the accusations by Brandanus. Already in 1838, he had written to the directory in Vienna to defend himself against the charges of the German petitions. Kenrick referred to the committee behind the petitions as a “few restless people” who were disheartened by the fact that he could not spare them their own priest in the Holy Trinity parish due to his overall limitations.47 Dismissing the episode as trivial, Kenrick sought to clear his own name in Vienna in order to continue the flow of revenue to his diocese. To ensure his success, he informed the directory that he had instructed his own younger brother, Father Peter Richard Kenrick, to travel to Vienna and provide a more accurate impression of the Philadelphian situation.48 The other Kenrick never made his journey to Austria but instead submitted a detailed report on the eastern dioceses to the directory. Addressing the earlier allegations made against his brother, P. R. Kenrick diluted the seriousness of his brother’s possible transgressions by outlining how the Philadelphian Catholic community had been marred for many decades by certain laity who wished to “interfere” in the appointments of parish priests—normally a prerogative of the bishop. Rather than being uncaring or despotic, Bishop Kenrick had merely returned things to their natural order but not without giving those agitated lay people “the opportunity to complain” endlessly about his conduct, and, as he further alluded, purely out of spite toward their bishop.49 Read from a distance in Vienna, the overall impression of Kenrich’s report was that his elder brother was innocent of any wrongdoing and that the commotion was the fault of a few radicals within the diocese.
Time might have diluted further any charges of favoritism for the Irish and negligence toward German Catholics by Bishop Kenrick, but Brandanus’s fresh onslaught brought about renewed concerns in the directory and prompted a further effort by Kenrick to absolve himself in the minds of his Viennese supporters. In September 1840, a few months after the appearance of the pamphlet, he addressed the directory of the Leopoldine Society in another epistle.
At the same time, Your Princely Grace may gather from what has been said, with what care I devote myself to my own, without distinction of nation, fatherland or origin. I seek only the salvation of all, and strive to provide all with the means of assistance so that they may fulfil their duties and through this fulfilment reach the ultimate goal of their destiny. That I do not neglect the Germans in particular is evident from the fact that even in several places German priests are employed, as in Pittsburg, Erie, Buttler, Loretto, Conwago, etc., who exercise the pastoral care of most of the resident Germans and can satisfy their spiritual needs in their native language. Even the Vice-Rector of the Seminary, in which I have again accepted a German from Breslau, is a native of Germany. If there are still Germans in the diocese without the help of such a priest, I ask you to attribute this solely to the lack of German clergy, which I feel just as painfully. As far as the use of the subsidy money already received twice from the Leopoldine Society is concerned, I have, as already reported, put it at the disposal of the alumni in the seminary.50
It is clear from Kenrick’s written statement that he wished to demonstrate his fealty to the spiritual equality between Catholics of all backgrounds in his diocese. His recruitment of German-speaking priests as well as Irish ones counted for merit in his mind as did the number of German priests in the dioceses overall. What is perhaps most striking about Kenrick’s remarks is his emphasis on the necessity of the Society funds for the continued work of the diocese, particularly the seminary as a key aspect of the Society’s mission in North America. In this sense, a line of clear persuasion can be read in Kenrick’s plea that musters his track record as his defense and the aim of his actions as the underpinnings of future financial commitment to his diocese. It is a telling message that reflects not only the humbled position of an Irish-American prelate in his plea for absolution in the eyes of the Society leaders but also demonstrates the importance of the Society’s continued patronage of American dioceses and their common project.
As if to underscore the asymmetry between the diocesan head and the missionary committee, Kenrick appealed twice more to the directory in even more humble letters outlining his commitment to the good of his whole congregation. “We have at heart,” he wrote just a few months later, “the eternal and temporal welfare of all the faithful entrusted to us, regardless of the nation or country from which they come.”51 So great was Kenrick’s compassion for the position of the German Catholic minority in his diocese, that he informed Society members that he had learned the German language himself in order to “make myself understood by the faithful of this tongue and to become more useful to them.”52 Kenrick’s actions again spoke as loudly as his words. Yet Kenrick could not conceal the fact that Society funds had indeed gone to parishioners who were not of German stock. He acknowledged how general needs of the diocese had to be answered and how funds could serve a dual purpose for both nationalities, Irish and German. Acting for the good of both groups entailed his “duty” to utilize funds for all sides in supplying them with church maintenance and equipment.53
Reactions to the Allegations by Leopoldine Society Beneficiaries
A wave of condemnation in response to these allegations came from the missionaries supported by the Society in North America. From these defensive arguments launched in favor of the American clergy, Brandanus’s pamphlet took on a real character of controversy. In their eyes, the alleged corruption of bishops in the United States was false and unjustified. Explanations as to the use of funds, the judgments of episcopal leaders, and the faithfulness of their mission swirled in letter after letter sent to the directory over the years following Brandanus’s publication. Together these letters produced a twofold effect: firstly, they presented a unified sense of Catholic purpose in the United States among missionaries of all backgrounds; and secondly, they again served as a reflection of the Society’s impact and financial clout in North America at that time. A brief survey of these responses demonstrates how foreign members—those not particularly attached to either Kenrick or Purcell, or those who had come from the Austrian Empire—could be co-opted into repudiating the charges of corruption for various motives as their primary motivation stemmed from a willingness to disavow corruptive forces within the sacred mission of the Roman Catholic Church.
As one of the most illustrious missionaries to be active in the United States, the verdict of Franz Xavier Pierz on Brandanus’s pamphlet carried with it a certain amount of sway in Vienna. Pierz, who hailed from the Duchy of Carniola, had crossed the Atlantic with the hopes of following Frederic Baraga as one of the pioneer priests working among Native Americans, particularly the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) nations of the Great Lakes region. As someone who had toiled in the more remote Indigenous territories, far removed from the hubbub of the cities, Pierz commanded respect and attention from his and Baraga’s admirers back in the Habsburg lands that would only increase over time as he remained active in the future Diocese of St. Cloud, Minnesota, well into his eighties.54 It was only in 1873 that Pierz, accepting his fragility, returned to his native homeland. In March 1841, however, Pierz was an attentive young missionary who had learned of the Brandanus affair from his station among the Odaawaa (Odawa) people at L’Arbre Croche / Waganagisi in Michigan. Pierz’s initial reaction to what he called the “scandalous brochure” came with great displeasure. “There may be some truth in it,” he admitted, “but most of it is exaggerated and much of it is a lie.”55 For Pierz, the pamphlet left little doubt as to its origins and intentions: “I believe this to be a product of the cunning Protestants who always watch our bishops and every priest with lynx-eyes in order to undermine their reputation.”56 He referred to how the success of the Leopoldine Society’s donations caused some amount of jealousy and alarm among the Protestants in the United States, perhaps prompting some of them to launch such a ferocious libel accusing corruption within the episcopal sees. “They seek out of envy,” Pierz concluded, “to deprive the poor bishops of this necessary source of aid” through spreading discord and harmful rumors. Interpreted in this way, it became easy to dismiss Brandanus’s words, especially in the United States where, Pierz noted, “one is already accustomed to such commonplace caricatures in print” and where “it serves only as a gardez-vous for caution and a lesson in prudence.”57 By setting the pamphlet within the wider contentions between Protestants and Catholics, Pierz not only downplayed the severity of the charges—as they did not come from within but from outside the community—but also reframed the dispute as part of a motivated anti-Catholic campaign.
Yet on the broader theme of vice within the American Catholic Church, Pierz’s reaction to the Brandanus affair produced a more conciliatory and introspective tone. He agreed that there were indeed cases of wastefulness within the Church and instances where funds sent for a particular purpose may not have reached their intended good, but crucially he still believed that these uses did not constitute anything immoral or corrupt as they still served the overall mission of the Church. In Pierz’s words,
It cannot be denied, however, that a few bishops, whom I will not name out of respect for their venerable character, were more concerned with the construction of costly buildings and their own comfort than with the provisionally necessary support of poor foreign missionaries. But such human infirmities are still forgivable mistakes; for a respectable cathedral or an episcopal palace also contributes something to the prevalence of our church, and even a favorable purchase of land to justify an episcopal endowment for the future has its good side.58
Pierz stopped short of calling these “forgivable mistakes” anything like corruption, but he still pointed out the need for oversight. He certainly thought that the Church could acknowledge these issues, especially as the use of funds from foreign institutions like the Leopoldine Society went toward unintended projects and ran counter to the intentions of the laity who supported such institutions. In this case, rather than punishing those who had committed such transgressions—for they were relatively minor, misguided judgments rather than concerted efforts to allegedly syphon funds—Pierz suggested that new guidelines be enacted that would tell the bishops exactly what funds could be used for which purposes and that the bishops themselves should report more transparently on the process of funding allocations within the dioceses.59 These forms of “reliable control” would serve to allay fears and establish a more accurate system of appropriation for both sides.
Reception of Pierz’s remarks among the directory members in Vienna led to a curious result. As had so commonly occurred, Pierz’s letters from his Indigenous missions found their way into the Society’s published annals, Die Berichte der Leopoldinen-Stiftung im Kaiserthume Österreich, which increased awareness of the Society’s activities in the Austrian Empire and served as a source of connection and propaganda for the Society among its various missions in the United States. Yet Pierz’s latest letter including the comments on the Brandanus affair did not make it into the edition of the Berichte without censorship. His original suggestions about the accuracy of the pamphlet as well as his discussion of possible remedies were omitted by the directory in the 1842 edition. It was an understandable preemptive measure that followed the previous plan of censoring the pamphlet itself for audiences in the Habsburg lands, but these omissions also undermined the very calls for reform and transparency that missionaries like Pierz felt were the future solution.
Pierz reiterated his commitment to such transparency reforms in his next letter to Vienna, sent directly to Prince-Archbishop Vinzenz Eduard Milde. In this letter, Pierz proffered the idea of sending money directly to the missionary priests themselves enabling them to put the funds to immediate good effect and without any risk of interference from the bureaucratic machinery of the Church. In Pierz’s logic, the best way to avoid financial corruption was to divide the funds into small amounts channeled directly through the émigré priests from the Habsburg lands. His verdict appeared as a result of his revelation about the origins of the Brandanus pamphlet; no longer a Protestant conspiracy, but instead, he now knew, written by “a hostile pen” of a fellow Catholic priest.60 Although Pierz did not agree with the intensity of the “diatribe,” he made use of the controversy to issue an appeal for reform and greater autonomy to be entrusted to the missionaries themselves. However, his addressee Prince-Archbishop Milde was not willing to entertain the reform agenda proposed by Pierz—Pierz’s letter went unanswered and was, again, omitted from the official Berichte.
By selecting which responses could be disseminated through the Society’s official organs, the directory also tipped their hand in the Brandanus affair. Silence over the issue prevailed as the solution to the offense of the pamphlet’s contents. Such a resolve often featured in the handling of corruption allegations, but in the case of the Leopoldine Society, the idea of saving face when confronted with the possible misuse of Society funds only half explains the motive behind censoring the Brandanus affair. Greater fears also existed over the sensitive issue of Catholic unity—between different nationalities of immigrant Catholics—in the United States. The wish to present a unified, strong, and universally harmonious Church became evident in the muted response to further missionary reactions sent to Vienna. As one example, one priest argued for Kenrick’s innocence in a June 1841 letter from Indiana despite the “shameful defamations” leveled against him by Brandanus. Taking direct issue with the corruption charges made in the pamphlet, the author of the letter, Father Ferdinand Joseph Oppermann, sought to “lift the suspicion that clings” and to “counteract” the insidious claims, for Kenrick, in his view, was so “universally beloved” among his parishioners.61 Oppermann saw no likelihood of corruptive behavior on Kenrick’s part but understood how such a pamphlet “written by a defamatory pen” could come about, for the “spirit of discord” pervaded “some influential leaders of the German Church” in the United States.62 Much like Kenrick’s own pleas, Oppermann attempted to contextualize these complaints as driven by a few odious radicals rather than being symptomatic of a general problem within the American Catholic clergy. Moreover, Oppermann sought to disprove the siren cries of the German Catholics as they, he claimed, lived in a land where learning the English language formed an “obligation,” even though Kenrick had gone against this natural tendency by allowing vernacular seminary instruction at Saint Charles Borromeo.63 Representative of the deeper schism over issues of assimilation among Catholics at the time, Oppermann’s views chimed more with the assimilation of immigrant Catholics in the United States—a process that ran counter to the fundamentals of the Leopoldine Society in supplying German-language pastoral and spiritual support for emigres in North America. For this reason and for his entangled defense that explained the national differences between Irish and German Catholics in America, Oppermann’s missive went unanswered in Vienna and never appeared in any edition of the Berichte published by the Leopoldine Society.
Reestablishing Transcontinental Trust between America and Austria
At the heart of the Brandanus affair lay the fundamental problem of trust between transcontinental institutions; in this case, between the directory of the Leopoldine Society in Vienna and the American bishops in the United States. Compounding the issue of trust was also the perennial lack of information on the side of those in Vienna. Directory members filtered a great deal of correspondence when compiling the Berichte for publication, but in spite of the deluge of statistical and first-hand accounts sent to them, a general sense of unawareness about the exact situation in American dioceses pervaded Society leadership. When Charleston Bishop John England—who despite the name was Irish by birth—visited Vienna in 1833, he noted the prevailing air of worry over the lack of information.
Upon my arrival in that city [Vienna], I found that the council [of the Leopoldine Society] was altogether uninformed of the actual state of our churches. The active, enlightened, and zealous nuncio, Monsignor Ostini; the apostolic Archbishop of Vienna [Milde], the President of the Association; his meritorious assistant, and several other members of that council, told me how necessary it was that they should have accurate information, and desired me to draw up such a narrative of the state of our churches as would enable them to perform their duty faithfully.64
England’s observations, made in 1833, had surely improved by the time of the Brandanus affair, but doubt still lingered among the Viennese directors that the situation was entirely different in the United States than supposed. As one of the most salient effects of Brandanus’s pamphlet, its contents helped to perpetuate the fear of disillusionment between Vienna and Philadelphia.
To remedy the situation and as an act to prevent corruption, the directory settled on a new tactic with regard to its mission in North America. In late 1841, the canon of Saint Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna, Joseph Salzbacher, received a commission to travel throughout the United States in order to witness and study the actual condition of the American dioceses and to ensure the proper implementation of Society funds. Support for the mission came from the Austrian foreign ministry and Prince Klemens von Metternich himself, who recognized the high profile nature of the Leopoldine Society’s efforts and considerable donations over the years. In addition, the Holy See sanctioned the trip as a means to also gain further insight into the American scene for their own missionary support under Society for the Propagation of Faith of Paris-Lyon.65 All sides found the choice of Joseph Salzbacher reasonable for he was someone well-known to directory members as a trusted individual who had worked on the editing of the Berichte, giving him a grasp on the North American dioceses. Even more compelling was Salzbacher’s previous journey to the Holy Land in 1837, where he had inspected the state of the Franciscan missions.66 His capacities as a seasoned observer and as a Society insider made him qualified for the task of visiting the dioceses in North America.
Beginning in 1842, Salzbacher undertook a tour of the United States on behalf of the Leopoldine Society. His travel itinerary was extensive, as he passed through eleven dioceses in seventeen states and, in total, journeyed over 3,500 miles in three months. Following his arrival in New York on the SS Great Western, Salzbacher visited the cities of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Wilmington, Georgetown, Richmond, Charleston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Vincennes, Detroit, Buffalo, Albany, and Boston before returning and sailing out of New York.67 During his visitation, Salzbacher accompanied various Catholic functionaries on their duties. He traveled with missionaries to their far-flung destinations and interviewed clergy about their expectations and hardships.68 Salzbacher’s diligence led to one of the most detailed descriptions on the Catholic Church in the United States, his Meine Reise nach Nord-Amerika im Jahre 1842 that included a narration of his journey, a compilation of useful statistics on the American Church, and descriptions of the various dioceses and their clergy.69 He also drafted the most detailed map of American dioceses.70 As an information-gathering exercise, Salzbacher’s trip and his resulting book—published with funds from the Society—provided Europeans with the first accurate picture of Catholicism in the United States, a fulfilment of his original brief from the directory.
Despite Salzbacher’s focus on impartial information, certain clergy in the United States interpreted his mission as a question of their honesty. “It is really humiliating to be subjected to such espionage,” complained the Bishop of Nashville, Richard Pius Miles.71 American bishops had become rather attuned to these routine inspections. In 1815, Bishop Joseph-Octave Piessis of Québec visited the sees of New England on behalf of the Pope and visited them again in 1820 from Québec. Another visitation ended just a few months before Salzbacher’s journey when Count Charles de Forbin-Janson—a former state councilor of Napoleon Bonaparte turned priest—toured the United States from 1839 to 1841 as an agent of the French Society for the Propagation of the Faith.72 Salzbacher’s mission, though shorter than Forbin-Janson’s, aimed at solving the crisis of credibility within the American Church as perceived by the Austrian directory. Yet American bishops sought to use his journey to maintain their argument for necessary funds. “It were good if you made him [Salzbacher] take a little of the hard ridings, hard and scanty fares which American bishops are sometimes obliged to submit themselves to,” wrote the American bishops’ representative in Paris to Bishop Purcell, “and his conviction might be that they [the bishops] must be assisted.”73 Moreover, Salzbacher represented a chance to regain leverage in Vienna after the debacle of the Brandanus affair. After Salzbacher had been shown the full range of deprivations by Purcell, the same priest wrote to congratulate him on getting “somebody to remind Prince Metternich” of their plight.74 For their part, the utilization of Salzbacher’s mission worked.
Recommendations from Salzbacher’s tour centered on continuation of Austrian support for the American Catholic Church. He did not mention any evidence of prejudice on the part of the American bishops against German-speaking Catholics, but instead he focused on the earlier disruptions caused by the system of lay trustees who often conflicted with bishops over matters of property and management. Although members of the First Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1829 had curtailed the influence of lay trustees, and bishops exercised greater influence over trustee selection, memories of the convoluted system remained, and Salzbacher reiterated these issues as the true cause of wastefulness in the American Church. “One can say with all justification,” he wrote in his Meine Reise, “that the same trustees are the internal enemy of the Catholic Church in America just as the Protestants are the external enemy.”75 On the central accusations of corruption, Salzbacher found no proof, but when discussing the state of German Catholics, he acknowledged the comparatively worse condition of German-speaking worshippers.76 The solution, in Salzbacher’s mind, lay in establishing a new form of mission among the Germans; a roving ministry of German-speaking priests who would not fall under the purview of any one bishopric but rather would move between the dioceses and attend to the various German communities in succession. “Only a continuous supply of priests,” he wrote, “acquainted with the German tongue offers the real solution to German Catholic needs in America.”77 For such a novel mobile mission, Salzbacher outlined the need for a European seminary to train priests explicitly for missions in North America by instructing them in the subtle ecclesiastical differences, making them proficient in English, and informing them on how to navigate the various American states and modes of travel.
Salzbacher’s American seminary in Europe was by no means a new idea. In fact, Salzbacher had almost certainly read such a proposal of which several had been sent in by priests years earlier to the Leopoldine Society as responses to the charges of Brandanus. In one proposition, the Croatian clergyman Joseph Kundek, who worked in the diocese of Vincennes in southern Indiana, agreed with Brandanus’s accusations against the bishops but acknowledged that their own establishment in the United States was still an “indirect” benefit for German-American Catholics. Although he thought of “burning his letter” before addressing Archbishop Milde, Kundek thought his ideas about support might be of greater service than if he remained silent. He therefore proposed to found a national seminary in Vienna for training priests for the American mission alongside appointing only German-speaking bishops for certain dioceses where Germans constituted considerable portions of the population, and finally to send a deputy of the Leopoldine Society to North America as a representative for the mission as a whole.78 Kundek’s letter, which arrived just as ideas of Salzbacher’s tour emerged, may have carried substantial sway in Vienna. In any case, Kundek’s ideas represented a growing perception among Society-funded missionaries in North America who began to question the wisdom of directing donations through the bishops who all sought to aggrandize their own lot. “One might properly ask,” wrote the Tyrolean missionary Johannes Raffeiner: “Is it necessary or even particularly useful for every bishop to have a seminary of his own?”79 Sentiments like these settled on the notion of a national seminary to resolve the issues of trust between Europe and North America.
The ultimate effect of Salzbacher’s mission of restoring trust was twofold. Firstly, his detailed report on the state of American Catholicism reaffirmed the original intention of the Leopoldine Society for many who felt that there was just cause for supporting the nascent church in the United States. Secondly, Salzbacher’s echo for a national seminary resonated with many of those engaged in spreading the Catholic faith in North America. When his book was published in 1845, readers picked up on this central recommendation. In Augsburg, the theologian Boniface Wimmer followed excerpts of Salzbacher’s Meine Reise in his local Augsburger Postzeitung and, in a response article of his own entitled Über die Missionen, called for a renewed commitment to the American missions along with a new seminary for their support. “Religion,” Wimmer wrote, “as well as patriotism demands that every German Catholic should take a special interest in the missions of America.”80 Wimmer’s enthusiasm led to the first Benedictine seminary—Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania—to be founded in the United States in 1846. Less than a decade later, Kundek succeeded in bringing the Benedictines to southern Indiana by establishing Saint Meinrad Archabbey and Seminary near the town of Ferdinand—a community Kundek founded in 1840 to honor Emperor Ferdinand I. Combined with the 1845 founding of Saint Francis de Sales Seminary in Milwaukee, where a distinctive Austrian presence among the school leadership steered the focus toward training German-speaking priests, these institutions ensured a steady means of providing German-speaking clergy for German Catholics as the primary resolution to the complaints raised in the Brandanus affair.81
In essence the Brandanus affair exposed the difficulties in operating a transatlantic missionary society between two powers with nascent political connections. A core concern of all missionary societies was the quest to obtain accurate information to maximize the efficiency of missions and the control over the flow of information about said missions. As a moment of breakdown in the control of missionary activity, a revolt against the tightly curated Berichte and their reports on the Leopoldine Society’s activities in North America, the Brandanus pamphlet represented not only a challenge to the transatlantic authority of the directory in Vienna but also a symptom of their precariousness in exercising transcontinental power. In the reaction over the pamphlet’s appearance and propensity to cause negative discussion and even alarm among clergy, the temptation to stymy such debate and to keep it relegated from the primary mouthpiece of the Society, the Berichte, became a clear mode of proportional response. Perhaps more symptomatic of the “information panics” (so coined by Christopher A. Bayly) of other nineteenth-century—often imperial—structures, the Brandanus affair exposed the fragility of this emerging dynamic between Vienna and places like Cincinnati and Philadelphia.82 In the early days of the Leopoldine Society, as donations to American bishoprics were at their zenith, such panics affected the potential for the Society’s continued success in North America, but at the same time, they could not be entirely avoided. In this regard, the Brandanus affair relates far more to cultures of information management than merely to a Viennese missionary society.83
While not the only instance of ecclesiastical scandal to occur across the Atlantic world of the early American Church, the Brandanus affair was a notable moment in the history of the Leopoldine Society.84 As a rocky episode in the relations between American-Irish bishops and the Viennese directory, the Brandanus affair produced an unwelcome moment in an otherwise beneficial relationship wherein American bishops received financial aid and the directory extolled the virtues of its mission to Austrian audiences. Seen in a wider context, the Brandanus affair was part of the convergence of interests between the Austrian Empire and the United States wherein both powers sought to influence one another to their own advantage; American tobacco lobbyists active in the former and Austrian missionaries sent to support the German character of Catholics in the latter. Waged in text and fueled by a growing awareness of public relations and clerical unease, the Brandanus affair in the history of the Leopoldine Society reproduced many of the contours of this wider diplomatic relationship, but at the same time it also revealed the distinctive ways in which disturbances of this relationship could occur.
Notes
Support for this article came from the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies, the American Academy of Franciscan Studies, and the Tyrolean Scientific Funds. The authors would like to express their thanks to each of these organizations as well as to His Eminence Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and the archivists of the Archdiocese of Vienna for allowing access to materials. We are equally indebted to colleagues Malika Bahovadinova and Otto Linde for their insightful comments and to the two readers of the JAAH for their feedback. All translations are by the authors.
Severus Brandanus [Wilhelm Piesbach], Die katholisch-irisch-bischöfliche Administration in Nord-Amerika: Eine Stimme der Deutschen und Franzosen daselbst (Philadelphia: Platz, 1840). For the “satanic fury” quotation, see Ferdinand Joseph Oppermann to Leopoldine Society, June 9, 1841, Präsidialia T7, Leopoldinenstiftung Akten [LA], Diözesanarchiv Wien [DZA].
Theodore Roemer, The Ludwigs-Missions-Verein and the Catholic Church in the United States, 1838–1918 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1933), 17–19; Benjamin J. Blied, Austrian Aid to American Catholics, 1830–1860 (Milwaukee: self-pub., 1944), 68. In some ways the paucity of research on Brandanus is unsurprising given the stress laid on the national character of the early American church by late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century historians, see J. Douglas Thomas, “American Catholic Interpretations of Church and State: John Gilmary Shea, Peter Guilday, Thomas T. McAvoy, and John Tracy Ellis,” Journal of Church and State 27, no. 2 (1985): 267–83.
For the trade mission of Baron Frederick Eugene de Beelen-Bertholff in the United States, see Jonathan Singerton, The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2022), 166–82 and 186–89. For Conrad Frederick Wagner’s appointment as US Consul in the Habsburg port of Trieste between 1797 and 1799 and his successors, see Sergio di Giacomo, Dall’Atlantico all’Adriatico: La presenza consolare statunitense nella Trieste preunitaria (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2008), 42–78. For the Southern planter interest in the Habsburg lands, see Mary Anthonita Hess, American Tobacco and Central European Policy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1948); and more broadly, Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
Batholomäus von Stürmer (1787–1863) was the appointed consul but never actually assumed his post, see Rudolf Agstner, Austria(-Hungary) and its Consulates in the United States of America since 1820 (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012), 77–85.
For these relations, see Clarence W. Efroymson, “Die Beziehungen Österreichs zu den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika während des Vormärz” (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 1932), passim; Alfred Loidolt, “Die Beziehungen Österreichs zu den Vereinigten Staaten zur Zeit des Amerikanischen Bürgerkrieges” (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 1949), 1–6; Erwin Matsch, Wien–Washington: Ein Journal diplomatischer Beziehungen, 1838–1917 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1990), 7–9; Renate Goger, “Die Beziehungen der Habsburgermonarchie zu den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika von 1838 bis 1867” (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 2010), 58–68; Nicole M. Phelps, U.S.–Habsburg Relations from 1815 to the Paris Peace Conference: Sovereignty Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 44–51. For the primary Austrian representative throughout the early period, Johann Georg Ritter von Hülsemann specifically, see Clarence W. Efroymson, “An Austrian Diplomat in America, 1840,” The American Historical Review 40 (1936): 503–14.
For the Mann mission, see Phelps, U.S.–Habsburg Relations, 51–68; Merle E. Curti, “Austria and the United States, 1848–1852: A Study in Diplomatic Relations,” Smith College Studies in History 20 (1926): 141–205. For Kossuth and Hungarian interests, see George Barany, “The Interest of the United States in Central Europe: Appointment of the First American Consul to Hungary,” Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 46 (1962): 275–98; Sándor Szilassy, “America and the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–49,” The Slavonic and East European Review 44, no. 102 (1966): 180–96; Donald S. Spencer, Louis Kossuth and Young America: A Study of Sectionalism and Foreign Policy 1848–1852 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977); Csaba Lévai, “Washington sírjánál: Kossuth Lajos az amerikai és a magyar forradalom összehasonlításáról,” in Az eszmetörténettől a nemzetközi kapcsolatokig : Ünnepi kötet Bodnár Erzsébet 70. Születésnapjára, ed. Gábor Demeter and Katalin Schrek (Debrecen: ELKH Centre for Humanities Research Institute of History, 2023), 179–87; Michael L. Miller, “From Central Europe to Central America: Forty-Eighters in the Filibuster Wars of the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in Translatlantic Revolutionary Cultures, 1789–1861, ed. Charlotte A. Lerg and Heléna Tóth (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 193–209.
For the American Civil War, see Loidolt, Die Beziehungen, 11–35; Goger, Die Beziehungen, 337–74; Burton Ira Kaufman, “Austro-American Relations during the Era of the American Civil War,” Austrian History Yearbook 4 (1968): 203–26. For American reactions to Maximilian in Mexico, see Alfred J. Hanna and Kathryn A. Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), passim; Robert H. Duncan, “Political Legitimation and Maximilian’s Second Empire in Mexico, 1864–1867,” Mexican Studies / Estudios Mexicanos 12, no. 1 (1996): 27–66; João Fábio Bertonha, “Representing Austrian, American, and Mexican Interests: Consul Charles Frederick de Loosey in Emperor Maximilian’s Diplomacy, 1864–1867,” Journal of Austrian-American History 4, nos. 1–2 (2020): 73–92.
Blied, Austrian Aid, 40–44; Samuel F. B. Morse, Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States (New York: Leavitt, 1835). For Austrian-American relations around this time, see Curti, “Austria and the United States”; Barany, “Interest of the United States”; Singerton, American Revolution, 224–27.
Dale B. Light, Rome and the New Republic: Conflict and Community in Philadelphia Catholicism between the Revolution and the Civil War (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 3–96.
Patrick W. Carey, People, Priests, and Prelates: Ecclesiastical Democracy and the Tensions of Trusteeism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987). Carey points out how these debates over lay authority ultimately represented differing notions of the laity and clergy as well as civil and canon law. See also his “American Catholics and the First Amendment: 1776–1840,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 113, no. 3 (1989): 323–46.
Light, Rome and the New Republic, 253–58; Jay P. Dolan, In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 36 and 42–48. John England, the bishop of Charleston in South Carolina, was the only bishop who agreed with the trustees on their inherent rights as a way of advancing the American Church. See Harvey Hill, “American Catholicism? John England and ‘The Republic in Danger,’” Catholic Historical Review 89, no. 2 (2003): 240–57.
Carey, People, Priests, and Prelates, 162; see Light, Rome and the New Republic, 333.
For the background of this period in a more international setting, see Luca Codignola, “Roman Catholicism in a New North Atlantic World, 1760–1829,” William and Mary Quarterly 64, no. 4 (2007): 717–56.
Johannes Raffeiner to Prince-Archbishop Milde, July 18, 1841, Präsidialia T7, LA, DZA.
Jon Alexander and David Williams, “Andreas Bernardus Smolnikar: American Catholic Apostate and Millennial Prophet,” American Benedictine Review 35, no. 1 (1984): 50–63.
Theodore Roemer, Ten Decades of Alms (St. Louis: Herder, 1942), 32; Richard Drevet, “Le financement des missions catholiques au XIXème siècle, entre autonomie laïque et centralité romaine: L’œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi (1822–1922),” Chrétiens et Sociétés XVIe–XXIe siècles 9 (2002): 79–114.
Gertrude Kummer, Die Leopoldinen-Stiftung, 1829–1914: Der ӓlteste ӧsterreichische Missions-Verein (Vienna: Wiener Dom-Verlag, 1966), 177.
Willibald Mathäser, Der Ludwig Missionsverein in der Zeit König Ludwigs I. von Bayern: Seine Vor- und Gründungsgeschichte 1828–1838 und seine Entwicklung bis zum Jahre 1868 (Munich: Druck der Salesianischen Offizin, 1939), 72–99. Although never officially called the directory, we use this term for the group of officials who oversaw the operations of the Society.
Garrett Sweeney, “The ‘Wound in the Right Foot’: Unhealed?” in Bishops and Writers: Aspects of the Evolution of Modern English Catholicism, ed. Adrian Hastings and Garrett Sweeney (Wheathampstead: Clarke, 1977), 216; Luca Codignola, “Rome as Part of the Irish North Atlantic Experience, 1770–1830,” in Rome and Irish Catholicism in the Atlantic World, 1622–1908, ed. Matteo Binasco (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 59–60. For the earlier Irish College active in Rome until the beginning of the nineteenth century, see Constantine Curran, “History of the Irish College, Rome,” The New Ireland Review 33 (1910): 65–75; Christopher Korten, “The History of the Suppressed Irish College, Rome, Part I: 1798–1808,” Archivium Hibernicum 67 (2014): 341–61; Paul F. Grendler, Jesuit Schools and Universities in Europe, 1548–1773, Brill’s Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 47–53.
Brandanus, Administration, 4.
Brandanus, Administration, 6.
Brandanus, Administration, 5–6.
Mathäser, Der Ludwig Missionverein, 169–71.
Light, Rome and the New Republic, 224; Jay P. Dolan, “Philadelphia and the German Catholic Community,” in Immigrants and Religion in Urban America, ed. Randall M. Miller and Thomas D. Marzik (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977), 69–83.
John Baptist Purcell to Prince-Archbishop Vinzenz Eduard Milde, September 7, 1838, published in Berichte der Leopoldinen-Stiftung im Kaiserthume Österreich 12 (1839): 63–64.
Robert F. Trisco, The Holy See and the Nascent Church in the Middle Western United States (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1962), 177, citing a letter from the nuncio in Vienna, Lodovico Altieri to Propaganda Fide, November 6, 1840, in Archivio Propaganda Fide, Scritture Riferite nei Congressi America Centrale, vol. 12, fol. 938r-v.
Trisco, Holy See and the Nascent Church, 177n38. In Trisco’s work and all other subsequent works deriving from his identification of Piesbach as the author, the misspelling Pisbach is common. For Piesbach’s proper identification, see Erwin Gatz, ed., Hundert Jahre Deutsches Priesterkolleg beim Campo Santo Teutonico, 1876–1976: Beiträge zu seiner Geschichte, Supplementheft Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte (Rome: Herder, 1977), 124.
Trisco, Holy See and the Nascent Church, 176; Wilhelm Piesbach to Prince-Archbishop Milde, March 15, 1837, Präsidialia T7, LA, DZA.
Giuseppe Rosati to John Baptist Purcell, January 3, 1838, CACI II-4-g, University of Notre Dame Archives. Rosati was away as a delegate to Haiti during the time of Piesbach’s arrival, see Stafford Poole, “The Diplomatic Missions of Bishop Joseph Rosati, C.M.,” The Catholic Historical Review 91, no. 4 (2005): 633–87.
Trisco, Holy See and the Nascent Church, 176; Piesbach to Milde, March 15, 1837, Präsidialia T7, LA, DZA.
Piesbach to Milde, November 26, 1838, K. 13: Korrespondenz mit den nordamerikanischen Diözesen / 1 Albany-Davenport, LA, DZA.
Ibid.
Trisco, Holy See and the Nascent Church,178; Gatz, Hundert Jahre Deutsches Priesterkolleg, 124.
Johannes Thauren, Ein Gnadenstrom zur Neuen Welt und seine Quelle: Die Leopoldinen-Stiftung zur Unterstützung der amerikanischen Missionen, ihr Werden und Wirken auf Grund der Quellen (Vienna: Missiondruckerei St. Gabriel, 1940), 79n21.
See for example his diary entry dated August 30, 1831, in Edward F. Prendergast, ed., Diary and Visitation Record of the Rt. Rev. Francis Patrick Kenrick: Administrator and Bishop of Philadelphia (1830–1851) and Later Archbishop of Baltimore (Philadelphia: Wickersham, 1916), 60 and 85.
Light, Rome and the New Republic, Part I.
Berichte 5 (1831): 38. For an overview of the directory or committee overseeing the Leopoldine Society, see Kummer, Die Leopoldinenstiftung, 44–47.
Hugh J. Nolan, The Most Reverend Francis Patrick Kenrick, Third Bishop of Philadelphia, 1830–1851 (Philadelphia: American Catholic Historical Society, 1948), 153; George E. O’Donnell, “Rev. Francis X. Guth and the Founding of St. Charles Seminary, Philadelphia,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 74, no. 4 (1963): 231.
Colin Barr, Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-Speaking World, 1829–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 53–54.
Francis Patrick Kenrick to the Leopoldine Foundation, August 27, 1838, K. 15: Korrespondenz mit den nordamerikanischen Diözesen / 3 Nesqually–Winona, LA, DZA.
Kummer, Die Leopoldinenstiftung, 55; Berichte 14 (1841), Appendix. In total, 34,500fl would be sent to the Philadelphian diocese, see Kummer, Die Leopoldinenstiftung, 113.
Colman James Barry, The Catholic Church and German Americans (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1953), 15; Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John England 1786–1842 (New York: America Press, 1927), 2:383.
Guilday, Life and Times of John England, 2:383.
These were Guth, Masquelet, Gasser, Stahlschmit, and the latter was someone who Kenrick noted was rather difficult to live with and whom he had removed from one placement already, see Prendergast, Diary and Visitation Record, 118.
Guilday, Life and Times of John England, 2:384.
Trisco, Holy See and the Nascent Church, 177, quoting Propaganda Fide to Count Rudolf von Lützow, October 9, 1837.
Francis Patrick Kenrick to the Leopoldine Foundation, August 27, 1838, K. 15: Korrespondenz mit den nordamerikanischen Diözesen / 3 Nesqually–Winona, LA, DZA.
Ibid. N.B. Peter Richard Kenrick would later become an archbishop of St. Louis.
Report on the condition of the Diocese of Philadelphia in North America by Peter Richard Kenrick, November 22, 1838, K. 15: Korrespondenz mit den nordamerikanischen Diözesen / 3 Nesqually–Winona, LA, DZA.
Kenrick to Milde, September 5, 1840, in Berichte 14 (1841): 10–11. The holdings on the Leopoldine Foundation in the Diocesan Archives of Vienna contain the original French letter from Bishop Kenrick to the Prince-Archbishop dated June 15, 1841.
Emphasis ours. Kenrick to Milde, May 12, 1841, in Berichte 15 (1842): 13.
Kenrick to Milde, June 15, 1841, in Berichte 15 (1842): 9.
Kenrick to Milde, May 12, 1841, in Berichte 15 (1842): 13.
For Pierz (also spelled Pirc or Pirec), see John Seliskar in his “The Reverend Francis Pirec, Indian Missionary,” Acta et Dicta: A Collection of Historical Data Regarding the Origin and Growth of the Catholic Church in the Northwest 3, no. 1 (1911): 66–90; William Furlan, In Charity Unfeigned: The Life of Father Francis X. Pierz (St. Cloud, MN: Diocese of Saint Cloud, 1952).
Report by Franz Pierz, March 16, 1841, K. 14: Korrespondenz mit den nordamerikanischen Diözesen / 2 Detroit–Natchez, LA, DZA.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Statement of Franz Pierz, August 11, 1841, K. 14: Korrespondenz mit den nordamerikanischen Diözesen / 2 Detroit–Natchez, LA, DZA.
Oppermann to Leopoldine Foundation, June 9, 1841, Präsidialia T7, LA, DZA. Oppermann’s identity is not entirely clear. A certain Father Charles Oppermann was active in southern Indiana along with Joseph Kundeck, but no trace of Ferdinand Joseph Oppermann could be found.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Quoted in Sebastian G. Messmer, ed., The Works of the Right Reverend John England, First Bishop of Charleston (Cleveland: Clark, 1908), 7:124.
Joseph Salzbacher, Meine Reise nach Nord-Amerika im Jahre 1842: Mit statistischen Bemerkungen über die Zustände der katholischen Kirche bis auf die neueste Zeit (Vienna: Wimmer, Schmidt & Leo, 1845), iii.
Barabara Haider-Wilson, Österreichs friedlicher Kreuzzug 1839–1917: Das Heilige Land in Außenpolitik, Gesellschaft und Mentalitäten der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna: ÖAW Verlag, 2021), 296–306.
Salzbacher, Meine Reise, v.
Salzbacher traveled with Franz Fusseder and Mathias Gernbauer, who entered the seminary in Milwaukee. See John Martin Henni and Anthony Urbanek, “Letters of the Right Reverend John Martin Henni and the Reverend Anthony Urbanek,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 10, no. 1 (1926): 71n14.
Salzbacher to Präsidium, July 2, 1849, Präsidialia T7, LA, DZA.
Karte der katholischen Diözesen und deren Missionen in Nordamerika (1845). A copy can be found in the New York Public Library, Map. Div. 01-5138.
Barry, Catholic Church and German Americans, 15; Roemer, Ludwig-Missions-Verein, 42–43; Mathäser, Der Ludwig Missionsverein, 162–71; Michael J. Curley, Venerable John Neumann, C.SS.R.: Fourth Bishop of Philadelphia (New York: Crusader Press, 1952), 433. See also Hercule Brassac to Purcell, April 14, 1842, in Sebastian G. Messmer, “Brassac’s Correspondence with the American Bishops (1818–1861),” Catholic Historical Review 3–4 (1918): 464.
Peter Guilday, “Four Early Ecclesiastical Observers in America,” American Ecclesiastical Review 85, no. 3 (1931): 236–55.
Brassac to Purcell, June 30, 1842, in Messmer, “Brassac’s Correspondence,” 465. For Brassac’s role in Paris, see Messmer, “The Rev. Hercule Brassac: European Vicar General of the American Bishops (1839–1861),” Catholic Historical Review 3–4 (1918): 392–416.
Brassac to Purcell, June 30, 1845, in Messmer, “Brassac’s Correspondence,” 465.
Quoted from Guilday, “Four Early Ecclesiastical Observers,” 248.
Salzbacher, Meine Reise, 77.
Dorothy Neuhofer, In the Benedictine Tradition: The Origins and Early Development of Two College Libraries (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999), 78.
Joseph Kundek to Milde, September 22, 1841, Präsidialia T7, LA, DZA.
Johannes Raffeiner to Milde, July 18, 1841, Präsidialia T7, LA, DZA.
Neuhofer, In the Benedictine Tradition, 78–80.
Peter Leo Johnson, Halcyon Days: Story of St. Francis Seminary, Milwaukee, 1856–1956 (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1956), 29–46. For this development in context, see Lloyd Paul McDonald, The Seminary Movement in the United States: Projects, Foundations, and Early Development (1784–1833) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1927), 23; Joseph M. White, The Diocesan Seminary in the United States: A History from the 1780s to the Present, Notre Dame Studies in American Catholicism (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 7.
Christopher A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1:174.
For examples of this managerial aspect in other missionary settings, see Emily J. Manktelow, “Thinking with Gossip: Deviance, Rumour and Reputation in the South Seas Mission of the London Missionary Society,” in Subverting Empire: Deviance and Disorder in the British Colonial World, ed. Will Jackson and Emily J. Manktelow (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 104–25, and in particular in imperial settings, see Anne L. Foster, Projections of Power: The United States and Europe in Colonial Southeast Asia, 1919–1941 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Jessica Wang, “Knowledge, State Power, and the Invention of International Science,” in Knowledge Flows in a Global Age: A Transnational Approach, ed. John Krige (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022), 31–37.
For another example, see the case of Angelo Inglesi described in Codignola, Blurred Nationalities, 191–215, or the Leopoldine beneficiary and later conspiracist Andreas Smolnikar, as examined in Alexander and Williams, “Andreas Bernardus Smolnikar.”
