§ 165.10. =Anti-hierarchical Movements in Germany and Italy.=--Even before Joseph II. could carry out his reforms in ecclesiastical polity, the noble elector =Maximilian Joseph III.=, A.D. 1745-1777, with greater moderation but complete success, effected a similar reform in the Jesuit-overrun Bavaria. Himself a strict Catholic, he asserted the supremacy of the state over a foreign hierarchy, and by reforming the churches, cloisters, and schools of his country he sought to improve their position. But under his successor, Charles Theodore, A.D. 1777-1799, everything was restored to its old condition.--Meanwhile a powerful voice was raised from the midst of the German prelates that aimed a direct blow at the hierarchical papal system. =Nicholas von Hontheim=, the suffragan Bishop of Treves, had under the name _Justinus Febronius_ published, in A.D. 1763, a treatise _De Statu Ecclesiæ_, in which he maintained the supreme authority of general councils and the independence of bishops in opposition to the hierarchical pretensions of the popes. It was soon translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. The book made a great impression, and Clement XIII. could do nothing against the bold defender of the liberties of the church. In A.D. 1778, indeed, Pius VI. had the poor satisfaction of extorting a recantation from the old man of seventy-seven years, but he lived to see yet more deadly storms burst upon the church. Urged by Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, the pope, in A.D. 1785, had made Munich the residence of a nuncio. The episcopal electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, and the Archbishop of Salzburg, seeing their archiepiscopal rights in danger, met in congress at Ems in A.D. 1786, and there, on the basis of the Febronian proofs, claimed, in the so called =Punctation of Ems=, practical independence of the pope and the restoration of an independent German national Catholic church. But the German bishops found it easier to obey the distant pope than the near archbishops. So they united their opposition with that of the pope, and the undertaking of the archbishops came to nothing.--More threatening still for the existence of the hierarchy was the reign of =Joseph II.= in Austria. German emperor from A.D. 1765, and co-regent with his mother Maria Theresa, he began, immediately on his succession to sole rule in A.D. 1780, a radical reform of the whole ecclesiastical institutions throughout his hereditary possessions. In A.D. 1781 he issued his =Edict of Toleration=, by which, under various restrictions, the Protestants obtained civil rights and liberty of worship. Protestant places of worship were to have no bells or towers, were to pay stole dues to the Catholic priests, in mixed marriages the Catholic father had the right of educating all his children and the Catholic mother could claim the education at least of her daughters. By stopping all episcopal communications with the papal curia, and putting all papal bulls and ecclesiastical edicts under strict civil control, the Catholic church was emancipated from Roman influences, set under a native clergy, and made serviceable in the moral and religious training of the people, and all her institutions that did not serve this end were abolished. Of the 2,000 cloisters, 606 succumbed before this decree, and those that remained were completely sundered from all connexion with Rome. In vain the bishops and Pius VI. protested. The pope even went to Vienna in A.D. 1782; but though received with great respect, he could make nothing of the emperor. Joseph’s procedure had been somewhat hasty and inconsiderate, and a reaction set in, led by interested parties, on the emperor’s early death in A.D. 1790.--The Grand-duke =Leopold of Tuscany=, Joseph’s brother, with the aid of the pious Bishop Scipio von Ricci, inclined to Jansenism, sought also in a similar way to reform the church of his land at the Synod of Pistoia, in A.D. 1786. But here too at last the hierarchy prevailed.