The Church was speedily offended, for in November, 1782, the Emperor issued an edict granting civil liberty to the Protestants, and allowing them to build churches, to enjoy the privileges of citizenship, to take University degrees, and hold public offices. The Bishops protested against all this, but they were not listened to; and another edict allowed Protestants to open schools in any place where there were a hundred families of their religion, and to bury their dead according to their own rites. These measures of toleration were followed by a decree compelling the religious associations to register all their property in a new office, called the Caisse de Religion. The appeal to the Pope was abolished; and the settlement of disputes connected with marriages was taken from the Bishops, who saw their judgments submitted to the approval or disapproval of the civil powers. Convents were suppressed and turned into barracks or hospitals. The Emperor did his best to alter the Catholic liturgy. He drew up a philosophical catechism of his own invention. He ordered the use of new vestments. Marriage was to be regarded as a civil contract, and divorce was to be allowed. The most fervent adherents of the Church acknowledged that new schools for the training of young priests were needed; but the Emperor tried to set up a system of his own in defiance of the views of the clergy. The chief bone of contention on this point was the establishment of the Séminaire Générale for the education of youths who were intended for the priesthood. The University of Louvain, the old capital of Brabant, had been one of the most celebrated seats of learning in Europe; and there the new seminary was planted by an edict of October, 1786, which declared that the existing episcopal schools were to be abolished, and the clergy of the future to be educated at the seminary of Louvain. The purpose of the Emperor, it was announced in an official proclamation, was to bring back the clergy of the Netherlands to 'primitive Christianity,' and to substitute for the monkish system of education 'enthusiasm for their native land and attachment to the Austrian Monarchy,' to destroy the 'Ultramontane Hydra,' to teach them science and philosophy, art and letters, and reveal to them the lessons and the benefits of modern thought and progress; in a word, to make them useful citizens and give them a liberal education. But the Church would have none of these things, and in the Catholic Netherlands the influence of the Church was overwhelming.