RELIGIONS—ROMAN CATHOLICS—GREEK CHURCH—ARMENIANS—PROTESTANTS—SOCINIANS—JEWS—MAHOMETANS.

All the sects of the Christian religion are to be found in Austria, and the Jews, Armenians, and Greeks, are more or less numerous in the different provinces. Such a diversity of religious opinions cannot fail to have a considerable influence on the minds and manners of the inhabitants.

The Roman Catholic is the religion both of the sovereign and of the state. The great majority of the inhabitants of Austria profess this religion, which was long the only one tolerated in the provinces composing this empire. Joseph II. however, sensible of the injustice of proscribing persons on account of their religious opinions, issued an edict granting toleration to the professors of all creeds. Since that time the different Christian sects, the Jews and even the Mahometans, have enjoyed liberty of conscience in the Austrian dominions.

The archbishop of Vienna is the head of the civil, and the archbishop of St. PÖlten, of the military clergy. The latter alone has a right to recommend to the emperor’s nomination, persons qualified for military ecclesiastical appointments, such as the chaplaincies of regiments and fortresses. The archbishop and bishops are all members of the metropolitan chapter. On the death of one of their number, the chapter has a right to propose a successor for the nomination of the emperor, who approves or rejects as he thinks proper, without allowing any sort of interference on the part of the pope. Hence several of the sees are at present vacant, as the government has found it convenient to appropriate the large revenues attached to many of them to the exigencies of the state.

It would be difficult to state with accuracy the number of Catholics in Austria; but so much is certain, that they compose at least two-thirds of the population of the empire. The Protestants are not numerous, excepting in Bohemia on the frontiers of Saxony.

With the exception of Russia and Turkey, no country in Europe contains so many professors of the Greek faith, as the dominions of Austria. Some of these are termed united, as they acknowledge the pope for their supreme head, while others have refused to become thus united with the Catholics. They are chiefly to be met within Galicia, Hungary, Croatia, and Transylvania.

The Armenian christians have chosen Galicia in preference for their new abode; but there are some also in Hungary and Transylvania. Almost all of them are engaged in commerce. These people are remarkable for their activity and industry, and such of them as do not make a profession of the arts or trade, pursue agriculture with truly laudable perseverance. Almost all those who have settled in Hungary have adopted the latter: and the pains they have bestowed on a soil naturally excellent, have been rewarded with such abundant crops, that almost all of them have acquired in a short time a competence and even wealth.

Since the time of Joseph II. the Protestants, both Lutherans and Calvinists, have enjoyed the free exercise of their religion in the imperial dominions. The number of the former is estimated at about one million and a half, and that of the latter two millions and a half. Bohemia, Hungary, and Moravia are the countries in which they are most numerous. Almost all of them are remarkable for their industry.

There are many other religious sects in Austria. The province of Transylvania alone is computed to contain upwards of forty-five thousand Socinians or Unitarians, who enjoy the same rights and privileges as the Catholics and Protestants. Most of these Socinians are Hungarians or Szeklers, and their number throughout Hungary is so considerable that they have founded one hundred and sixty churches. Hungary has also afforded an asylum to the Mennonites and Anabaptists, but though they are tolerably numerous there, as well as in Transylvania, still they form but a small part of the population of those two countries.

The Jews in the Austrian states are not, as we have seen, so numerous as it might be imagined. They amount to about three hundred thousand. In order to make real citizens of them, the sovereigns conferred on them the same prerogatives with the rest of their subjects. This wise measure, however, has not excited in them any genuine love for their country, or inspired them with the least zeal for the welfare of the state. The Jews, as in the other countries of Europe, live insulated amidst the nation to which they belong; and continue to form a separate people, who never will mingle with any other race. Self is their ruling principle, and private interest their sole study. Without love to their sovereign, without concern for their country, they are indifferent to every thing excepting money, which is the god of their idolatry. Leading, wherever they are found, a wandering life, they consider themselves rather as travellers than as citizens, whose fortunes are dependent on the prosperity of their native land.

The Austrian sovereigns, after conferring upon them the rights of citizens, deemed it but fair that the Jews should, like all the other classes of society, furnish soldiers for the public defence. This just requisition they resisted, and it was necessary to employ force to compel submission to this general measure. It was not without great difficulty that fifteen hundred were levied in Galicia: some of them served in the ranks, and others in the artillery and wagon-train.

The active commerce subsisting between Austria and Turkey, brings a great number of Turks into the former empire. All or nearly all of them are merchants. The advantages which they enjoy gradually induce them to settle in the country; but they are not yet sufficiently numerous to have mosques. These Turks therefore are content to practise their religion within their own houses; and when they do meet, it is not so much to worship God as to smoke and chat together. The coffee-houses of the Prater, and of Leopoldstadt, at Vienna, are commonly full of these foreigners, who carelessly seated on handsome divans, surrounded by sherbet and other liquors, and smoking long cigars, exhibit a picture of oriental manners amidst a European population. The stranger is equally struck by the splendour of their dress, the fashion of which is so different from that of the close garments of Europe.