ABSTRACT
In January 1585, in a letter composed towards the end of his life, Georg Eder went back to one of his favourite subjects: the dangers of lukewarm Catholicism, as embodied by the Hofchristen of the Viennese court. According to Eder, such persons would say that they were Catholic, but ‘not Jesuit Catholic’.1 Eder’s response was simple, unequivocal, and a fitting epitaph to his entire life: ‘I reply, also openly, whoever is not like a Jesuit, is not a Catholic’.2 Eder’s final years in Vienna, after the Evangelische Inquisition crisis of 1573 and before his death on 19 May 1587, were ones in which he was able to recover a great deal of his capacity for service to the Catholic Church both in word and in deed.3 His inspiration for this came almost entirely from his lifelong mentors and supporters: the Society of Jesus. Eder had new secular patrons in the form of the Wittelsbach dynasty, and as the previous chapter demonstrates, he went to great lengths to court that patronage. The older
1 Eder to Duke Wilhelm, 23 January 1585, Bibl, Victor (ed.) (1909), ‘Die Berichte des Reichshofrates Dr Georg Eder an die Herzoge Albrecht und Wilhelm von Bayern über die Religionskrise in Niederösterreich (1579-1587)’, Jb.f.Lk.v.NÖ, Neue Folge 8, 67-154, especially 142-4.
