ABSTRACT
Around 100 years after the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 concluded 30 years of religious warfare in central Europe and a number of political and legal instruments to regulate and accomodate religious diversity had been agreed upon, two cases of mass expulsions of religious minorities became causes célèbres of their time. In 1732, a large number of Crypto-Protestants were expelled from the Catholic archbishopric of Salzburg and, in 1744, the Jews of Prague, then the largest and most prestigious Jewish community in Central Europe, suffered the same fate. In both cases, the number of exiles was very significant: in the case of the Salzburg Protestants, around 20,000 individuals were directly affected; in the case of the Prague Jewish community, around 15,000 were. Both expulsion decrees indis - criminately banned the entire religious community, but neither was justified on the basis of religious reasons. Rather, these communities were declared a threat to the commonwealth and their removal a necessity to maintain public order and security. In both cases, the expulsion had considerable negative economic consequences, depriving the archbishopric of Salzburg of sought-after craftsmen, especially in the salt mining industry and the imperial city of Prague of an indispensible group of merchants, bankers and entrepreneurs. Contemporary observers saw these harsh measures as a relapse into practices of a bygone era of prejudice and cruelty, not becoming of the age of growing rationalism and enlightenment. The expulsion of Protestants from Salzburg in 1732 and of the Jews from Prague in 1744 was closely linked to the growing executive power of the state in general and the tendency of absolutist rulers to assert themselves, even against reasonable objections.
