EMS, PUNTAZIONE di. — This is the name given to the declaration made by the Rhenish episcopate on the occasion of the establishment of the apostolic nunciature of Munich.
In that city, in fact, at the request of the Elector of Bavaria, Pius VI established an apostolic nunciature in 1785, placing under its jurisdiction certain territories that had until then been subject to the nunciature of Cologne. The Rhenish bishops opposed this measure, supported by the Emperor Joseph II, who backed his brother Maximilian Francis, at that time archbishop of Cologne. The bishops of Cologne, Trier, Mainz, and Salzburg, gathered at Aschaffenburg, decided to send representatives to E.: they accordingly met there (August 1786): Heinrich von Tautphäus on behalf of Maximilian of Habsburg, Giuseppe Luigi Beck on behalf of Clement Wenceslaus, archbishop of Trier, Giovanni Michele Bönicke on behalf of Prince Colloredo, archbishop of Salzburg, and the better-known Giustino Hontein, called Febronius, on behalf of Friedrich Karl von Erthal, archbishop of Mainz.
After a brief series of meetings, the delegates of the four archbishops signed a declaration in twenty-three articles, known precisely as the “p. of E.,” in which the demands of the Rhenish episcopate were set forth: the right to submit pontifical documents for prior approval before promulgating them in their respective dioceses; the abolition of the apostolic nunciatures in Germany; the prohibition of the regular clergy’s electing superiors who were not of German nationality; the prohibition of clergy loyal to them from appealing directly to Rome; the power to confer ecclesiastical benefices of every rank, etc. The p. of E., signed on August 25, was ratified by the archbishops, which naturally provoked protests from the Apostolic See, first in the form of a circular issued by Pacca, the future cardinal, and subsequently through a papal brief: Responzio super Nuntiaturis Apostolicis (14 November 1790). The question had lengthy repercussions and was also brought before the Imperial Diet of Regensburg in 1788, causing the entire German episcopate to be thrown into turmoil: most of the bishops, especially those of the Austrian dioceses, firmly sided with the Roman Church, recognizing the danger of a schism; the archbishop of Mainz eventually recanted, whereas the other Brontani stubbornly persisted in their rebellion until the French occupation of the Rhineland and the secularization of the ecclesiastical electorates brought the affair to an end.