Franciscans, Premonstratensians, Carmelites, Servites, Capuchins, Ursulines. Anyone visiting Innsbruck will walk past many monasteries, usually without realising it. The Jesuits were probably the most politically and socially influential order in the history of the city from the 16th century onwards. The "Soldaten Christi" were founded by the Spanish nobleman Ignatius of Loyola (1491 - 1556) in 1540. Loyola was a moral reformer and influential church politician who had access to the highest circles of power of his time. He wanted to change the church, but unlike Luther, not without the Pope as head. Dissolution of the monasteries' property was also not on his programme. Renewing the faith from the top down instead of destroying the existing order was the motto of the Societas Jesu.

The order quickly gained influence. The organisation and structure adopted from the military, the combination of humanist teachings and Catholic traditions, a penchant for science and education in combination with a mystical popular piety made them attractive to many people who were disappointed by the clergy's medieval decline in morals. With these characteristics, the Jesuits had their finger on the pulse of a time that was characterised by new political, social and economic structures. Like Protestant reformers, they skilfully used the new medium of book printing to disseminate their writings. You could say that they were the denominational continuation of social penetration by the state, new media and double-entry bookkeeping.

The political situation in the middle of the 16th century was muddled and crisis-ridden. Italy was badly affected by the wars between France and the Habsburgs. Large trading groups such as the Fuggers and the Welsers were gaining more and more influence. The German lands had suffered from the Peasants' Wars. Inflation was a threat and the many technical innovations of the period around 1500 frightened many people. But how could the wrath of God be averted because of the misdemeanours of the Renaissance popes and the impending end of the world if not through moral improvement and moral living according to the teachings of Christ?

A keen supporter of the Jesuits in Tyrol was Prince and later Emperor Ferdinand I. Like Ignatius of Loyola, he had grown up in Spain. He had just as many difficulties with the customs of the Germans and the non-existent Reformation movement in Spain as he did with the language. The Tyrolean population, on the other hand, were alienated from their sovereign, who, with his foreign court, could easily be mistaken for an occupying power. A connecting element between the two worlds was the Roman Church, especially the modern Jesuit order.

Probably the most important Jesuit theologian was Petrus Canisius (1521 - 1597). He grew up as Peter Canis in an upper middle-class household in the Netherlands. His father was the mayor of Nijmegen. From an early age, the future church strategist gained his first experience of high politics and learnt courtly behaviour before going to Cologne to study. Canisius was the first member of the order in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire. The intelligent and educated young man had a stellar career. Ferdinand summoned him to Vienna, where he was appointed episcopal administrator and responsible for maintaining order at the university. One of his main activities at the university, in addition to teaching and research, was to track down and interrogate university members suspected of Protestantism.

Canisius also spent several years in Innsbruck. The Jesuits were actually supposed to move into the completed Hofkirche to take over the choral prayers for Maximilian I at his burial place. As the highest representative of the order north of the Alps, Canisius politely but firmly refused. He wrote a prayer guide for Ferdinand to set the prince on the right path. In 1563, the emperor managed to lure him to the Alps after all. The scholar was to assist him as an advisor and consultant for a dispute with the Pope at the Council of Trent. While the people of Innsbruck were suspicious of many of the other foreign preachers and counsellors who frequented the court, Canisius was an approachable man of the people. In October 1571, the parish of Wilten learnt from him of the victory of the papal-imperial fleet against the Ottomans at Lepanto. From the pulpit, Canisius proclaimed the triumph of the Christian forces against the impending pagan threat in the greatest naval battle in history in the style of a Catholic newsreader.

As a court preacher, Canisius was an advisor to the aristocracy, but his pious enthusiasm also made him a churchman for the masses. On behalf of the Lord, or rather his secular and ecclesiastical masters, he travelled across Europe. Like Martin Luther, he also looked "In the mouth of the people". It should not be forgotten that walking was the primary way of travelling for most people. Canisius is said to have travelled over 100,000 kilometres between the Netherlands, Rome and Poland. He usually stayed in simple inns while travelling. He knew how important it was to get the rural population behind him. While his brothers were proselytising in faraway India, he was proselytising against Protestantism in the German lands. He realised that preaching in Latin was not suitable for immunising peasants, farmhands and maids against the threat posed by Luther's Protestantism to the Roman Church. With his Catechism Petrus Canisius wrote an important German-language collection of ideas in the Catholic struggle against the Reformation, which was quickly translated into all European languages and was long regarded as a guide for the Catholic Church. Between 1555 and 1558, three differently complex versions of the work were created for different audiences. Resourceful editors created a pictorial catechism for illiterate readers in order to spread the ideas of the church to the people. Even in the 20th century, the Kanisi, as the work was affectionately nicknamed, was still the basis of religious education in schools.

Canisius also used the new medium of the pamphlet to reach as many people as possible. His writings, together with those of Luther, were probably the most widely read of the 16th century. Until well into the 19th century, and in some regions even after the Second World War, the Kanisias the catechism was affectionately known, was the most influential religious-philosophical work in Tyrol.

However, the strongest and most enduring pillar in the fight against the reformers was education. Canisius saw many bishops and politicians as corrupt, morally corrupt and sinful. Instead of eradicating them, however, they were to reform under the wing of the soldiers of Jesus. By opening new colleges, the Jesuits aimed to improve the education of civil servants, the nobility and the clergy and to set higher moral standards in everyday church life, orientated towards Christian roots. To this end, they founded colleges throughout the empire. Protestant countries and cities had begun German schoolsacademies and grammar schools. As many subjects as possible should be able to read in order to find piety and salvation in individual and direct Bible reading. The Jesuits, on the other hand, concentrated on educating the elite and thus gained lasting influence in the centres of power of the Catholic states.

The Jesuits founded the Latin school in Innsbruck, from which the university would later emerge. The new educational institute had a major impact on the city's development. The intelligentsia was educated here, enabling Innsbruck's rise as an administrative and economic centre. Its activities were interrupted under Joseph II. He disempowered and expropriated ecclesiastical orders, including the Jesuits, whom he had little love for. Under him, the University of Innsbruck was downgraded to a lyceum in 1781. It was not until 1838 that the Jesuits were reappointed to Innsbruck. In addition to professorships at the university, they had the Theresianuma grammar school for the aristocracy, in a leading role.

Thanks to this network of influential posts and education system, the Order grew rapidly and managed to establish a special relationship with the Habsburgs during the Counter-Reformation. Many members of the dynasty can be recognised in their rule and actions as having been influenced by the order from which they received their education. Jesuits such as Bartholomew Viller or Wilhelm Lamormaini were politically influential as confessors and advisors to the Habsburgs in the early modern period. It is no coincidence that the Jesuits are still the adversaries of the Freemasons in countless conspiracy theories and novels and are regarded by many as the modern-day equivalent of the James Bond villain. They were very open to research, the gathering of knowledge and education and wanted to learn to understand the world in terms of Christian creation. For Catholics, this made them a hip antithesis to both the dusty existing religious orders and the Protestants. Faith and empiricism combined to form a kind of pre-modern science that attempted to explain nature and physics. Ferdinand II's collection at Ambras Castle bears witness to the research drive of the time, as do the seemingly absurd alchemical experiments carried out by Emperor Matthias (1557 - 1619).

For all their love of the rational, mysticism also returned to everyday church life under the Jesuits. Passion plays, Easter sepulchres, processions and feast days were intended to soften the strict principles of the faith with drama and spectacle. Work hard - play hard was the motto. The celebrations during processions often degenerated into lavish festivities, which led to fights, sometimes even tumultuous and bloody scenes, similar to today's tent festivals. The bread and wine of the Lord were celebrated in the style of Panem et Circenses (bread and games) in ancient Rome. Petrus Canisius was commissioned by Ferdinand I to write a book about a miracle in Seefeld with the evocative name "Of the highly publicised miracle that took place with the most sacred sacrament of the altar on the Seefeld in the princely county of Tyrol in 1384 and what else is to be considered Christian and useful in this regard." to fuel the pilgrimage there.

This principle of mass social appropriation has survived to this day. The Marian Congregationknown as MK in Innsbruck, was one of the largest youth centres in Europe. In a modern sense, it can certainly be seen in the tradition of the church's gentle introduction to the faith and the education of young people.

The Jesuit order, fully committed to popular belief, was also highly motivated when it came to persecuting witches and people of other faiths. Peter Canisius was one of the masterminds behind the early modern witch hunts:

"Witches are being punished everywhere, and they are multiplying strangely.... They envy children the grace of baptism and deprive them of it. There are large numbers of child murderers among them... Never before in Germany have you seen people so devoted and dedicated to the devil..."

He also attracted attention as an exorcist, especially among noble ladies infected by the virus of Protestantism. Canisius used the attention that witches and people possessed by the devil attracted to publicise the power of the Catholic Church.

The Jesuits were also eagerly involved in the missionary work of pagans in the then recently discovered New World in America and Asia. St Francis Xavier, one of Ignatius of Loyola's first companions, died on a missionary journey to China. In a side chapel of the Jesuit church in Innsbruck, this Soldaten Christi an altar was consecrated.

The Jesuits still hold sway over Innsbruck today. Peter Canisius' stay made the city one of the theological centres of the German-speaking world in the 16th century. His appearance as a preacher and scholar in the city could be compared to Albert Einstein's lectureship at the university in the 1930s. He himself was also fond of the pious Alpine people.

"The Tyrol deserves our special attention, because it is even more Catholic than any other region of Germany and has not yet allowed itself to be ensnared by the heretics like the other countries. Even if many places have already been corrupted [...]. Innsbruck is ... the heart and life of the whole country."

When Innsbruck became its own diocese in 1964 under the Jesuit Paulus Rusch, St Peter Canisius was chosen as its patron saint. Today, Karl-Rahner-Platz is not only home to the Jesuit Church, but also the Faculty of Theology at the University of Innsbruck. In Saggen, the Collegium Canisianum belongs to the Jesuits. The MK is also still active in youth work.