'For everything, the local priest is a helper in adversity' : Catholic clergy and the new order in post-Habsburg Tyrol

Abstract

Austrian North Tyrol – the northern part of the former Habsburg Crownland not occupied and annexed by Italy after the Great War – is often presented as a redoubt of tradition and religiosity, in which conservative powerbrokers and the Catholic Church easily wielded rural allegiances to their own ends. Such narratives, however, elide the substantial efforts necessary to maintain this system through periods of crisis. In this article, the author investigates how a key group of actors within the Catholic conservative elite – Roman Catholic parish priests – navigated one of these periods: the post-imperial transition. Identifying the Tyrolean clergy as a sub-elite that mediated between higher political elites and the wider population, the author uncovers how local resistance challenged the influence of the Church in the aftermath of the war. In response, priests led a Catholic offensive aimed at winning back their parishes and reaffirming the hierarchies that underlay conservative rule in Austrian Tyrol. Ultimately, through their multiple functions and role as mediators, Tyrolean parish clergy contributed in often-overlooked ways to shoring up Catholic conservative hegemony and extending it across the interwar period.