Reading Enlightenment in Melk

Abstract

Before the French Revolution led to their downfall, monasteries experienced another heyday in the 18th century Around 1750, one-in-three-hundred Europeans was a monk or a nun, and the sumptuous Baroque buildings of the time to this very day testify to the enormous economic and cultural significance of monasteries in the Age of Enlightenment Nonetheless, most of the contemporary historians of the period were either not aware of this significance or denied it Till today, denominational polemics and the aftermath of anti-monastic stereotypes voiced by so many philosophers of the Enlightenment do not allow for an objective treatment of the topic The monasteries, however, did open up to moderate Enlightenment and to new criticism regarding even religious and secular literature Melk Abbey, which is, according to Derek Beales, „perhaps the grandest of all Benedictine abbeys“1 is used to demonstrate how literary reception changed in and due to the Enlightenment In the aftermath of the Council of Trent with its reorganisation of clerical life, Melk developed its largely self-contained monastic culture The media and artistic activity were oriented towards the requirements of monastic life with its pastoral and scholarly tasks Constituting a representative public image proved an important factor: The standing of Melk Abbey as a clerical institution was demonstratively put on display Sacerdotal and church jubilees, eminent visitors, and religious holidays were celebrated with solemn masses and musical dramas, with the given sermons and the libretti being frequently published in print The monks were writing these texts on behalf of the monasteries The requirements of monastic life provided the conditions of authorship which was supposed to serve the promotion of faith and of the abbey’s glory Not only did the monastery finance the prints by itself under a patronage system, the monks were also regulated by strict internal censorship As Austrian censorship in the 18th century was still very decentralised, the abbot took absolute priority in the assessment of texts produced in Melk He alone decided which works were to be printed and also approved the prints There were binding rules for reading, as well as for communication among the monks Monasteries like Melk were provided with clerical reading texts by their own distribution network: From Augsburg there were not supplied by stationary book sellers but directly by travelling salesmen who went to the local markets Moreover, this personal contact which the bookshop