time. Joseph was a sincere Catholic, but he was not impervious to the
enlightened ideas of his age; he was an admirer of Frederick, and his
edict was prompted by a genuinely tolerant spirit, such as had not
inspired the English Act of 1689. It extended only to the Lutheran and
Reformed sects and the communities of the Greek Church which had entered
into union with Rome, and it was of a limited kind. Religious liberty
was not established till 1867.

The measure of Joseph applied to the Austrian States in Italy, and
helped to prepare that country for the idea of religious freedom. It is
notable that in Italy in the eighteenth century toleration found its
advocate, not in a rationalist or a philosopher, but in a Catholic
ecclesiastic, Tamburinni, who (under the name of his friend
Trautmansdorf) published a work On Ecclesiastical and Civil Toleration
(1783). A sharp line is drawn between the provinces of the Church and
the State, persecution and the Inquisition are condemned, coercion of
conscience is declared inconsistent with the Christian spirit, and the
principle is laid down that the sovran should only exercise coercion
where

[123] the interests of public safety are concerned. Like Locke, the
author thinks that atheism is a legitimate case for such coercion.

The new States which Napoleon set up in Italy exhibited toleration in
various degrees, but real liberty was first introduced in Piedmont by
Cavour (1848), a measure which prepared the way for the full liberty
which was one of the first-fruits of the foundation of the Italian
kingdom in 1870. The union of Italy, with all that it meant, is the most
signal and dramatic act in the triumph of the ideas of the modern State
over the traditional principles of the Christian Church. Rome, which