Josef Vratislav Monse (June 15, 1733 – February 6, 1793) was a Moravian lawyer and historian.
He was a leading enlightenment figure in the Habsburg monarchy and an early exponent of the Moravian Revival in Moravia. Monse played a key role in the development of modern Moravian historiography. He was a professor of law and, in 1780, the rector at the University of Olomouc.
Biography
Early life, studies in Prague and Vienna
Josef Vít Monse was the eighth of nine children born into the family of a municipal legal official in the Vysočina Region. His parents were Johann Karl Monse and Anna Monse (née Moudrá). The family lived at house number eight on the main square at Nové Město na Moravě (). Josef Monse attended the local school. When Monse was 14, his father died. His uncle, a local priest also named Josef Monse, sent him to study at a Jesuit gymnasium (school) in Telč. He covered the (normally) six year high school curriculum in four years and then, in 1752 he left for Prague, where he studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University, gaining a master's degree.
By this time Monse was becoming interested in the history of his own nation, which, since the Battle of White Mountain back in 1620, had been subjected to Catholicisation and Germanisation, while the Czech language had become no more than a means of communication between the peasants.
Monse left Prague for Vienna, where he attended the Faculty of Law at the University of Vienna and obtained a doctorate "juris utriusque" (of both civil and canon law) in 1762. While still in Vienna, Monse published his dissertation (in Latin), married Marie Anna and mastered Italian.
Professor of law at University of Olomouc
In 1764 Monse moved to Olomouc, where he became an advocate. In 1768 he was appointed a professor of law at the University of Olomouc for which he received 900 florins a year, lecturing on public and natural law. He still also found time to continue with his advocacy work.
After Professor Josef Antonín Sommer, died in 1774, Monse added to his responsibilities Sommer's courses on Roman and Canon law. 1774 was also the year in which he changed his middle name from Vít to Vratislav, a determined reflection of his "motto": "Return the Old Glory to the Homeland!" ().
The lectures on Canon law for theology students were given separately at the Faculty of Theology until 1771, after which they started to be officially taught by the secular professors of law. Classes normally comprised some 50 law students, but for Monse's Canon law classes, some 300 theology students of theology also took to attending. By this time Monse had become a fierce proponent of the newly developing enlightenment ideals. In his lectures he defended the reforms of Joseph II. While the traditional theologians were merely resentful of to his spoken lectures, the publication of his ideas evoked real outrage. The Catholics leadership incited the town's poor against Monse, spreading malicious gossip that the altar-bread fell out of his mouth during Communion, and that the burning of a nearby village represented God's punishment for Monse's teachings.
The theologians' fury peaked when Monse published the work of an anonymous 13th century French author entitled in , a dialogue between a priest and a soldier discussing the relative status of popes and of kings. The treatise was found by one of the Monse's former students in a library at Znojmo monastery. He sent the work to Monse, who translated it, adding an introduction and commentary while preserving the original content, and published it. Well aware that the ideas in the thesis were still controversial even 500 years after they had first been written, he added at the end of the book that it was published with the best of intentions, and "not to irritate". That did not help much. Monse received harsh criticism not only from Olomouc, but also from Prague and Vienna, and came close to being ousted from the University. Monse's advocacy of the suppression of church institutions in favour of the secular state was nevertheless welcomed at the royal court, and he was able to retain the professorship of secular law, but was nonetheless prevented from giving lectures on canon law.