Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/784

 750 that he was not alive at the time of the crucifixion. Ecclesiastical tradition, probably influenced by dogmatic prepossessions, has it that when married to Mary he was already eighty years of age and the father of four sons and two daughters, and that his first wife was named Salome, a connexion of the family of John the Baptist. In the Roman Catholic Church the 19th of March has since 1642 been a feast of obligation in his honour. His cult us is on the increase. JOSEPH I. (1678-1711), Holy Roman emperor, was born in Vienna July 26, 1678. In 1689 he received the crown of Hungary, in 1690 that of the king of the Romans ; and in 1705 he succeeded his father, Leopold I., as Holy Roman emperor. The war of the Spanish succession was raging at the time of his accession to the imperial throne ; and it continued during the whole of his reign. Thanks to the genius of Marlborough and Eugene, Joseph was able to maintain in this struggle the greatest military traditions of the empire ; and, the French troops having been gradu ally driven out of Italy and the Netherlands, Louis XIV. was compelled to ask several times for the conclusion of peace. The pope also gave evidence of the emperor s power by recognizing his brother Charles as king of Spain. In 1706 the electors of Cologne and Bavaria, and in 1708 the duke of Mantua, were put to the ban of the empire for supporting the enemy of their sovereign ; and the emperor not only seized Bavaria, but began to partition it. He was successful, too, in Hungary, where he put down a rebellion that had broken out in the time of his father. On the other hand, he found it prudent to manifest a conciliatory spirit in his relations to Charles XII. of Sweden, who in 1706 made his way from Poland to Saxony through Silesia. In 1707 the emperor concluded treaties with him, granting religious liberty to the Silesian Protestants, and restoring to them upwards of two hundred churches which had been seized by the Jesuits. These concessions were not unwill ingly made by the emperor, who, although a sincere Catholic, was of a tolerant disposition. He showed his respect for the constitution and dignity of the empire by supporting the diet in the free exercise of its functions, by promoting the activity of the imperial chamber, and by restoring Donauworth, which had been mediatized by Bavaria, to the position of a free imperial city. He died of small-pox on the 17th of April 1711. JOSEPH II. (1741-1790), Holy Roman emperor, born in Vienna March 13, 1741, was the son of the emperor Francis I. and Maria Theresa, He was made king of the Romans in 1764; and in 1765 he succeeded his father as Holy Roman emperor. Maria Theresa declared him co- regent of her hereditary states, but almost all real power she retained in her own hands. He received full authority only in the regulation of the military system, into which he introduced many changes, following in the main the example of Frederick the Great. Chiefly by his advice Maria Theresa was induced to associate herself with Russia and Prussia in the partition of Poland; and in 1777 he persuaded her to force Turkey to surrender Bukowina. When the younger branch of the house of Wittelsbach died out in 1777, Joseph claimed a large part of its territory ; but Frederick the Great resisted his pretensions, and in 1779, after a nominal war, the emperor accepted the treaty of Teschen, by which he obtained only a small concession. Before this time he had sought to prepare himself for his future duties by extensive travels in his own states and in foreign countries ; and everywhere he had made a favour able impression by his genial courtesy. In 1769 he had visited Frederick the Great, for whom he had at that time a warm admiration ; and in the following year Frederick returned the visit, going back to Prussia with the convic tion that it would be necessary &quot; to keep his eye on that young man.&quot; On the death of Maria Theresa in 1780, Joseph became sole ruler of the Austrian states. He was penetrated by the characteristic ideas of the 18th century as to the duties of an absolute monarch, and began at once to give effect to them in a fearless and almost revolutionary spirit. His first step was to combine the various national ities subject to him into a single state with thirteen administrative districts. He .refused to be crowned king of Hungary, and would not summon the Hungarian diet, insisting that the country should be governed as a province, and causing German to be used as the official language. Among other reforms he proclaimed the abolition of serf dom, substituted various punishments for the capital penalty, established common tribunals, and issued new codes based on the principle that all citizens are equal before the law. He transferred the censorship of books from the clergy to laymen of liberal sympathies, and granted complete freedom to journalism. He instituted public libraries and observatories, founded a medical college in Vienna, a university in Lemberg, and schools for the middle classes in various parts of the monarchy, and encouraged art by offering prizes in con nexion with the academy of the plastic arts. Industry and trade he fostered by destroying many monopolies, by aiding in the establishment of new manufactures, by raising Fiume to the position of a free harbour, and by opening the Danube to his subjects from its source to the Black Sea. His ecclesiastical policy was of so bold a character that Pope Pius VI. went to Vienna for the purpose of expostulating with him, but found that the emperor was beyond the range of his influence. The hierarchy was forbidden to correspond with the Roman see without express permission ; and papal bulls were subjected to the Placetuin Regium. In 1781 he issued an edict of tolera tion, granting freedom of worship to all Protestants and to members of the Greek Church; and between 1782 and 1790 about seven hundred monasteries were closed, the members of religious orders being reduced from 63,000 to 27,000. All these changes were well-meant, but the emperor, in the ardour of his philanthropy, shot too far ahead of the prevailing sentiment of his people. Moreover, his good intentions were often rendered fruitless by unskilful or unsympathetic subordinates. In nearly every part of the monarchy discontent soon manifested itself, and some of the inhabitants of Tyrol broke into open rebellion. The Hungarians bitterly resented the suppression of their ancient privileges, and in 1787 the emperor s new institu tions led in several districts to a furious conflict between the peasantry and the nobles. The estates of the Austrian Netherlands persistently opposed the execution of his schemes, the clergy being especially active in stirring up popular indignation; and when, in 1789, he altogether destroyed their constitution, they rebelled and were able for some months to maintain their independence. In Hungary there was so dangerous an agitation that in January 1790 Joseph had to undo almost everything he had attempted to accomplish in that country during the previous nine years ; he succeeded only in maintaining the decrees by which he had abolished serfdom and established toleration. Thus his last days were rendered miserable by the conviction that his career had been a failure. He was no f more fortunate in his foreign policy than in his home government. Early in his reign, indeed, he gained some advantages over the Dutch, who were obliged to abandon their fortresses on the frontier of the Austrian Netherlands. And when they refused to open the Scheldt, they had to compensate him (in 1785) by a payment of ten million florins. In the same year he renewed his claims on Bavarian territory, but was thwarted by Frederick the Great, who formed his famous league of princes for the