1782 Edict of Tolerance - 1781 Patent of Toleration

1781 Patent of Toleration

The 1781 Patent of Toleration allowed certain rights and recognized the existence of non-Catholic religions in Austria. The Edict of Toleration allowed Protestants from other countries where religious tolerance was not enforced to immigrate to Austria and hold jobs such as pharmacists, carpenters and blacksmiths. The tolerated religions, however, were allowed to have congregations no larger than 100 people in a private home. If a certain sect had more than 100 families living in an area, they were allowed to build a church only if the church did not have a direct entrance from the street and had no visible appearance of being a church. When it came to the case of mixed marriages, there were also laws that had to be followed: if a Catholic man had children with a non-Catholic woman, all the children would be raised Catholic. In the case of a Catholic woman with a non-Catholic man, the girls would be raised Catholic while the boys would be raised non-Catholic.

Scrutiny from Catholic officials occurred in places, like Bohemia, where the officials attempted to preserve religious unity. In order to do this they had printed out all the pamphlets that described this edict in German. The population whom this would affect, however, generally couldn't speak or read German.

Serbian Metropolitan Mojsije Putnik translated and published the tolerance patent in Serbian which meant for the equal rights for both members of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church in Sremski Karlovci.