Salt, Sword, and Crozier
By Felice Lifshitz and Joseph F. Patrouch
Top Photo: Title page and frontispiece from a 1743 biography of Empress Maria Theresia (1717-1780). Bruce Peel Special Collections, University of Alberta
Like the popes in Rome, the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg also ruled over substantial territories as secular princes. A recent exhibition at the University of Alberta in Edmonton highlighted their dual authority, represented by the princely sword and the bishop’s staff (aka crozier), as well as their economic power, which arose from their control of natural resources, such as salt.
The exhibition Salt, Sword, and Crozier showcased books of the Archbishop of Salzburg’s Seminary Library that were printed between the 15th and 19th century, as well as coins minted between the 12th century and 1786. The exhibition, which provided an insight into the history of Salzburg before it was annexed by Austria in 1816, was hosted in the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library.
The Salzburg Collection of the University of Alberta, also known as Archbishop of Salzburg’s Library, is one of the most important collections for Central European law studies in Canada. It consists of 3,500 volumes (published 1488-1960s) drawn mostly from the original law collection of the Archbishop of Salzburg’s Seminary Library, founded in 1572. It was purchased by the University of Alberta Library in 1965 upon the advice of history professor Helen Liebel-Weckowicz. Half of the books in the Salzburg Collection (generally items published prior to 1800) are housed in Bruce Peel Special Collections, while the other half are dispersed, by subject, among other libraries of the university.
The frontispiece from a doctoral dissertation by Franz Zech (1690) features a portrait of Emperor Leopold I.
Photo: Bruce Peel Special Collections, University of Alberta
Besides canon law, it covers all aspects of law and the different fields of jurisprudence: civil, canon, Church, Roman, criminal, commercial, and constitutional law, as well as history and philosophy of law. The collection contains important source materials and a wealth of secondary literature on law. Also included are books documenting the history, politics, and culture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation, and other European countries, regions and societies over several centuries.
The historians Felice Lifshitz and Joseph F. Patrouch, who curated the exhibition Salt, Sword, and Crozier, had a mission: To virtually reunite the Canadian part of the Seminary Library with the remainder of the collection in Austria, which consists of 63,000 volumes. As a whole, the Archbishops of Salzburg’s Seminary Library reflects broader trends in the intellectual history, while the Legal Collection reveals multiple aspects of canon, civil, and customary law.
Considering the amount of books and their illustrious pictures, the exhibition also provided a comprehensive overview of illustration practices at that time. The Seminary of the Archbishop in Salzburg and its library, both founded in 1572, were established following the decrees of the Council of Trent. With seminaries established throughout the Catholic countries of Europe, the council intended to support clergy training programs and defend attacks by the Protestant Reformation, a movement which had gained many followers in the territories ruled by the Archbishops of Salzburg.
The Prince-Archbishops, whose territories included the current state of Salzburg as well as regions located south of the Alps reaching present-day Slovenia, played a powerful role in the Holy Roman Empire, as they often represented the emperors in meetings and served as co-chairs of the Princes’ Chamber of the Imperial Diet. This explains why the Seminary Library’s Legal Collection, now in Edmonton, contains so many works not only dealing with canon, criminal, or customary law, but also imperial law, particularly in the 17th and 18th century.
Nevertheless, the education of the seminary priests in Salzburg was far from legal, as is clearly reflected in their library’s holdings and the books that were on display in Salt, Sword, and Crozier. The seminary owned copies of many classic works of political and social thought, such as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim's 1529 pro-feminist tractate Declamatio de nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus (which was on display in an edition from 1622), Jean Bodin's 1576 De Republica (a 1586 edition was on display), and Hugo Grotius' 1625 De jure belli ac pacis libri tres (a 1707 German edition was on display). Intriguingly, these three works, along with many more, appeared on the Papal Index of Prohibited Books (a 1758 edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Benedicti XIV showcased in the exhibition, too).
The two volumes on the left are constitutional law bound in medieval musical scores. On the right is a religious philippic from 1560 bound in a manuscript page from Richard of Saint Victor’s De Emmanuele written before 1150.
Photo: Bruce Peel Special Collections, University of Alberta
With salt mining being an essential industry and eponymous activity in and around the city of Salzburg, the exhibition closely examined the right to mine and to mint in addition to the ever-growing power of the Prince-Archbishop. In the 10th century, the archbishops of Salzburg were granted rights to mint coins by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III. The power and authority inherent in this right and other privileges related to the market and tolls, helped the archbishops to extend their power beyond the religious sphere into the secular one. This mixing of spheres of authority was characteristic of the Holy Roman Empire and not only limited to Salzburg. Many bishops and other religious leaders, such as abbots and abbesses, similarly exercised secular and religious rights at the same time.
The coins displayed in the Edmonton exhibition illustrated this overlapping and competing claims of authority between the “Prince-Archbishops” in Salzburg in the Middle Ages and early modern period. The Prince-Archbishopric was secularized in 1803 along with other similar politico-religious units active during the Napoleonic Wars. The long-term peace plan as a direct result of the Congress of Vienna eventually led to the incorporation of Salzburg into the Austrian Habsburg Empire.
Some of the older coins displayed in the exhibition showed the long history of minting and secularization in Salzburg. The first coins could be traced back to the reign of Prince-Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach, who ruled from 1495 to 1519, while the latest objects dated back to the reign of Elector and Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg-Lorraine in the new Electorate of Salzburg from 1803 to 1805. By that time, secularization had been completed, and even though the secular rule of Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo had been ended, he remained—though in exile—the ecclesiastical head of the archdiocese until his death in 1812.
Besides the many medieval books and coins, many of the antiquated books displayed in the exhibition witnessed the tumultuous times in Salzburg’s history between 1806 and 1816, when Austrian, French, and Bavarian forces competed for power and hence significantly influenced the development of the entire region.
Joseph F. Patrouch is a historian of Early Modern Europe, Director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies and Professor for History and Classics at the University of Alberta.
Felice Lifshitz has taught a wide variety of European and comparative history courses and is Professor for Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Alberta.