LAMORMAINI, WILHELM

LAMORMAINI, WILHELM. – Jesuit, confessor to Emperor Ferdinando II, born at La Moire Mannie in Luxembourg (hence his surname, which properly was Germay or Germeau) on 29 December 1570, died in Vienna on 22 February 1648. He was a highly esteemed professor of philosophy (1598–1604) and theology (1606–12) at Graz; rector at Graz (1613–21) and Vienna (1622–24); thereafter confessor to Ferdinando II (1624–37); then once again rector at Vienna (1639–43) and provincial of Austria (1643–45).

In his office as confessor he was not only the Emperor’s beloved and effective adviser, but also contributed greatly to the restoration of the Catholic religion in Austria. He favored the edict of 1629, by which the Protestants were required to return to the Catholics the ecclesiastical property they had usurped; he openly defended religious toleration toward heretics, advised the establishment of various houses of his Order in the Empire, and played a principal part in the Catholic reform in Austria, Styria, Bohemia, and Moravia. On the other hand, his position, so influential and so well regarded, inevitably created fierce adversaries for him, who accused him of having accepted money in exchange for maintaining silence, of having urged his confrères to deceit and falsehood or to respond with violence against heretics; they went so far as to falsify letters and documents of his and of others, and even made him the hero of disreputable novels. All these accusations were unfounded, and he knew how to defend himself against them; they left intact his reputation as a learned, pious, upright, and unassuming person (“verus et omnibus numeris absolutus Jesu Socius,” Urban VIII said of him).

He wrote: Ferdinandi II, Romanorum imperatoris virtutes (Vienna 1638), in which some flattery of the Emperor and some unfavorable and unjust judgment concerning the memory of Wallenstein are apparent.