Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/639

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ICAHaAH 500

Mangan fell an easy victim to the cholera which for the forty dajrs ci Lent. They likewise opposed

laged in Dublin in 1849. Before his death he was at- text-books recently brought into the schools, which

tended bv the Rev. C. P. M^han, who appreciated were not Christian in tone, and finally they com-

and loved him, and who, in 1884, edited a collection of bated the vaccination of children, as an offence against

his poems. A shabby stone marks his grave in Glas- faith, and for this additional reason reproached

nevm Cemetery. The chief editions of his poems are the clergy with countenancing and supporting this

MitcheFs (New York, 1859), Miss Guiney's( 1897), and state regulation. A spell of apocalyptic extra va-

the centenary edition (Dublin and London, 1903). gance took hold of the Manharter about this period,

McCaj^U Life of James Clarence Mtrngan (Dublin. 1887); when they united with the so-called "Michael Con-

^%i'^t^n^. ff'JZS'FJ^li^n ?I^bS2; fraternity "or the Order of the Knighta of .Michael.

1897). This was a fanatical secret society founded m Cann-

Blanche M. Kelly. thia by the visionary, Agnes Wirsinger, and by a

mc^.^^.- T^„*r e^ Tr«„»^ ^^rr. kr^TTAT^^^ T^,^ prfcst, Johauu Holzer of GmUnd. Its adherents

J^^ ' Aghadoe, Dio- ^^^^ ^^g impending destruction of the wicked by

CBBE OF. ^ ^ the. Archangel (jiabriel, at which time they, the unde-

Manharter, a politico-religious sect which arose in filed, were to be spared and to receive the earth in Tyrol in the first half of the nineteenth century. Its heri^ge. The heads of the Manharter began their founder was a priest, Kaspar Benedict Hagleitner of relations with this society in the autumn of 1815, and Aschau, who was the only one of the clergymen of in 1817 Hagleitner secured their formal admittance Brixenthal to refuse to take the oath of allegiance into it. One phase of this society's apocalyptic ex- prescribed by Napoleon's edict of 30 May. 1809, for pectations led its members to regard Napoleon as the ecclesiastical and secular authorities of the prov- Antichrist already come upon the earth, ince of Salzburg, of which Brixenthal was then a part. In vain did the new administrator of the Archdio- His notion was that priests who took this oath were cese of Salzburg, Count Leopold von Firmian, exert by that act excommunicated jointly with Napoleon, himself on his pastoral visitations during the summer It was not long before zealous supporters rallied to of 1819 to convince the Manharter of their error, him from among Austrian sympathizers and patriots The latter questioned the genuineness of his episcopal in the Brixenthal villages of Westendorf, Bnxen im character and refused to hear anyone but the pope. Thai, Hopfgarten,Itter, and from Unter-Innthal.prin- The efforts of Bemhard Galura, spiritual counsellor dpally m the villages of W5rgl and Kirchoichl. to the Government, remained equally fruitless. Even There were two laymen also with Hagleitner at the punishments inflicted by the civil authorities for the head of this movement, Thomas Mair, a tanner, and nolding of secret reunions and for continued dis- Ha^eitner's brother-in-law, and Sebastian Manzl, the obedience failed to accomplish any result. The Man- pansh magistrate of Westendorf. The latter was sur- barter persisted in their request that they be permitted named Manhart after his estate, the "Untennan- to sena a deputation to Rome to obtain a decision hartsgut", and it was from him that the sect derived from the pope in person, but this the Government re- its name. Hagleitner himself lost his cure, and in fused to allow. 'The majority of the members of the 1811 went to Vienna, where he was appointed curate sect were at last brought back into the fold of the in Wiener-Neustadt. He kept in touch, however, Church under the distinguished Archbishop of Salz- with his partisans in Brixenthal, and on 'Tyrol being burg, Augustin Gruber. It is true that nis endea- restored to Austrian rule, he was given once more a vours to correct them in the course of a pastoral tour cure in Wdrgl in November, 1814. But new in- made through Brixenthal in 1824, and his appeals to trigues again resulted in his removal the following them in a pastoral letter of 25 May, 1825, bore no di- Bummer. He thenceforth lived a private life in and rect fruit; out he obtained their promise to believe in around Innsbruck until the summer of 1818, when he and to obey him, provided the pope himself should de- was ordered by the Government to repair to Vienna, clare that he was their lawful bishop. Archbishop He was named Kaplan shortly after in Kalksburg Gruber then secured leave from the emperor for near Vienna, and died there as parish-priest in 1836. Manzl, Mair, and Simon Laiminger, to make the jour-

The schism reached its full development at Easter, ney to Rome with an interpreter. They started in 1815, when for the first time Manzl and his househola September, 1825, were received affectionately in the refused to receive the sacraments from the vicar of Eternal City, and, by order of the Holj^ Father, were his home parish of Westendorf. Tlwnoeforth Hag- given a long and exhaustive course of instruction by ileitner was looked upon by the Manharter as the only Sie Camaldolese abbot, Mauro Capellari (afterwards priest of that region who had the power" to confess Gregory XVI). Finally, on 18 December, they were and to administer Holy Communion. As a rule they received in private audience by Leo XII, who con- no longer attended public Catholic worship, but held firmed eve^hing to them and received their sub- independent reunions of their own. They refused mission. The three deputies returned home in Jan- even to receive the Last Sacraments. Thus the Man- uary, 1826, appeared oef ore the archbishop, and barter first of all cut themselves off from their priests, declared to him their allegiance. Two canons, sent because they considered them to have been excom- into Brixenthal as representatives of the archbishop, municated. They went further and proclaimed that received the profession of allegiance of the remaining the majority of French and German bishops and Manharter. However, while this brought back into

Sriests, as supporters of Napoleon in the estaolished the Church the majority of the sect, which disap-

hurch, had severed themselves from the supreme peared entirely from Brixenthal, a certain minority

pontiff, and therefore from the Catholic Church itself, m Iimthal, led by a fanatical woman, Maria Sillober

Consequently, they were now devoid of sacerdotal of Kirchbichl, refused to submit and continued to per-

powersj all of their ecclesiastical functions were null sist in their sectarianism. These fanatics extended

and void; they could neither consecrate nor absolve their opposition even to the pope himself, declaring

validly. The Manharter thus believed themselves to that Leo XII, having set himself in contradiction to

be the only genuine Catholics in the land, and they Pius VTI. was not a lawful pope, and that the Holy

professed to be true adherents of the pope. As See was tor the time vacant. Thus the sect endured

strictly conservative champions of traditional custom, still a few dozen years with a restricted following until

they protested likewise against a series of innovations at last it disappeared completely with the death of its

which had been introduced into the Austrian Church, last adherents.

against the aboHtion of indulgences and pilgrimages, p,^^^ ^>^ Manharter. Bin BeUrag zur Gesch. TiroU im 19.

the abrogation of.feaet-days, the abohticm of the /oAr^ (izuubnick, I8fi2). SBturday fast, and ihe mitigation of that prescribed Friedbich Lauchebt.