Enlightened Catholicism for children: Teaching religion to children in the Habsburg Empire at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries

During Joseph II’s reign a deep cultural shift took place in a relevant part of the intellectual and religious establishment, with the acceptance of philosophical and pedagogical ideas that bore an Enlightened and a Protestant stamp. So at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries a new way to teach religion was introduced, debated and contested in Habsburg catholic territories. Rousseau and Salzmann’s theories were discussed; rationalism and faith, natural religion and revelation were confronted. In the end more attention was devoted to child psychology and language. The cultural fracture of Josephinism became less severe: orthodoxy was restored, but new pedagogical ideas actually entered the didactics of religion.