On April 2nd, 1781, he issued his edict against the religious orders; it was at this point, in accordance with the ideas of Frederic II. and the Encyclopaedists, that his subversive work ought to begin, a process indeed, which has been imitated in our own days by Jules Ferry, and by Combes. Eight days later, another edict exacted the imperial _placet_ for all bulls or other documents emanating from Rome. The canonical oath of the Austrian bishops at their consecration, was modified to restrict all loyalty to the Holy See; the Papal nuncio, Mgr. Varampi, was made the object of vexatious measures, and all recourse to Rome, even for marriage dispensations was interdicted. Still more, the Emperor suppressed all sodalities and confraternities, abolished processions, restricted the number of the holy days, and even went so far in his meddlesome measures as to regulate the number of candles to be lighted at the various devotions, and forbade the use of coffins for burial, making it obligatory to bury the dead in shrouds of cloth. At the same time, however, while interfering with and persecuting his Catholic subjects, his mind assumed a spasm of broadness to such an extent as to induce him to offer freely to Jews and Protestants, what he denied to his co-religionists. At the same time it must be acknowledged that the headstrong attitude of the Emperor owed much of its obstinacy to the influence of counsellors in whom the spirit of flattery was more pronounced than any care for the welfare either of the Church or the people. Foremost among these was that Prince Kaunitz, who after serving through many successive reigns had acquired an ascendancy in the imperial household which would require strength of character in the sovereign to destroy. The mind and policy of Joseph II. were almost entirely in the hands of this politician, who had imbibed every rampant theory that the times could offer. Influenced by Voltaire and the encyclopaedists his reverence for religion was dictated only by the demands of expediency. Throughout his whole reign the Emperor listened to the counsels of this statesman in every matter of State or religion. Nevertheless, in order that his reforms might appear to have the sanction of ecclesiastical law, the Emperor gathered around him canonists and professors only too willing to prostitute their casuistry to the imperial will. Riegger, a disciple of the Jesuits in his youth, and later a Freemason, compiled in his _Outlines of Ecclesiastical Law_ a new digest out of all sympathy with the laws that bore the Papal approval. Eybel published an _Introduction to the Ecclesiastical Law of the Catholics_, and by his teachings in regard to the laws of marriage, created such scandal as to require his resignation from the professor's chair which he held; this fact, however, in no way diminished his credit at court. Pehem, another professor of the same kindred, diffused his untenable theories among the priests of the Empire.