Clement Mary Hofbauer (Czech: Klement Maria Hofbauer; German: Klemens Maria Hofbauer) (26 December 1751 – 15 March 1820) was a Moravian hermit and later a priest of the Redemptorist congregation. He established his congregation, founded in Italy, north of the Alps. For this, he is considered a co-founder of the congregation. He was widely known for his lifelong dedication to care of the poor during a tumultuous period in Europe, that had left thousands destitute. He laboured in the care of the Polish people until expelled, when he moved to Austria.
Clement Mary Hofbauer is remembered as a saint in the Catholic Church where his feast day is 15 March, and listed on the Franciscan Saint of the Day calendar as 16 March, the day after the anniversary of his death. He is called the Apostle of Vienna, where he is a co-patron saint, along with St Colmán, St Leopold, and St Peter Canisius.
He was born Johannes ("Hansl") Hofbauer on the feast of Saint Stephen (December 26) 1751, in Tasovice), in the Znojmo District of the Moravian region of what is now the Czech Republic. In English, his first name is John. He was the ninth of twelve children born to Maria Steer and Paul Hofbauer (Pavel Dvořák had changed the family name from the Czech "Dvořák" to the German "Hofbauer"). His father was a grazier and butcher.
Clement Mary Hofbauer's father died when he was six years old. In those days the ninth of a dozen children of a poor widow in a small village could have had little hope of getting into a seminary, nor of joining a religious order. Latin studies nevertheless started with the local parish priest, apparently signalling already a call to the priesthood, though a long and tortuous path lay ahead. When Hofbauer was just fourteen, extra studies ended abruptly with the death of the pastor. His replacement did not put aside time to continue the tuition.
No longer studying, Hofbauer had to learn a trade. He was sent to become an apprentice in a bakery 8 km away in the local capital of Znojmo (in German called Znaim) in 1767. In 1770, he went to work 9 km from Tasovice, in the bakery of the priory in Louka of the Premonstratensian canons regular, also known as the White Canons. At that time, war and famine had left many dependent on this priory for help. Hofbauer slaved around the clock to feed those at the priory door.
He remained a servant at the priory until 1775, when he embarked on the life of a hermit. That, however, was aborted after eight years; the Emperor Joseph II, a proponent of enlightened absolutism, abolished all hermitages in the Habsburg Empire. Hofbauer moved to Vienna, once more to earn his keep as a baker.
In 1782, after a pilgrimage to Rome, Clement-Mary Hofbauer found his way to Tivoli, in Italy. He resumed the life of a hermit, at the nearby shrine of Our Lady of Quintiliolo. This was under the patronage of the local bishop, Barnabas Chiaramonte (later Pope Pius VII), who clothed him in the religious habit of a hermit. This was when Hofbauer took the name of Clement Mary: Clement, most likely after St. Clement of Rome, and Mary in honour of the Virgin Mary. As a hermit, Hofbauer focused on oversight in prayer, appealing for himself and anyone who might neglect to pray. He made himself useful at the shrine, assisting pilgrims arriving there. After less than six months, however, he left Quintiliolo; while the force of praying for mankind could not be gainsaid, persistent was a call to the priesthood.
Hofbauer returned to the priory at Louka; to make himself useful baking bread again, and to resume studying Latin. At age 29, sponsored by two ladies he met while serving at Mass in the priory's basilica (dedicated to the Assumption and St. Wenceslas), Clement-Mary Hofbauer enrolled at the University of Vienna. Emperor Joseph's government had closed all seminaries. Students for the priesthood had to study at government-controlled universities. Theology courses permeated by Josephinism, rationalism etc. were frustrating. He was taught much that he found questionable. This notwithstanding, he had completed his philosophy studies by 1784. But he could proceed no further toward ordination: the emperor had forbidden religious communities from accepting new candidates.
On the feast of Saint Joseph, 19 March 1785, Hofbauer and Hübl were clothed in the Redemptorist habit, publicly professing vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Ten days later, at the Cathedral of Alatri, they were ordained to the priesthood.
A few months after their ordination the first two Germanic Redemptorists were summoned by their Superior General, Fr. Francesco Antonio De Paola. They were to return and establish a Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer north of the Alps. But in Clement-Mary Hofbauer's homeland this was out of the question, given Emperor Joseph II's autocracy. He was not about to countenance an evangelical religious institute, founded barely a generation earlier in Scala, to spawn within his own realm. Aware of this, the two Redemptorists moved on to the part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that is now Poland. On their journey, the two were joined by Peter Kunzmann, another trained baker. Hofbauer and he had pilgrimaged together. He was to become the first non-Italian Redemptorist lay brother.
For more than two centuries the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had been a large and unwieldy polity. After years of economic and military decline, vis-à-vis Russia in particular, there was turmoil when Hofbauer arrived in 1787. Under Catherine II's thumb, King Stanislaus II was virtually a puppet. Fifteen years earlier, a partition had been forced on the country, land being distributed between Austria, Russia, and Prussia.
In 1791, a parliamentary constitution was promulgated; historically the second written constitution after that of the United States in 1787. The constitution “assumed a symbolic importance… It was the Bill of Rights of the Polish tradition, the embodiment of all that was enlightened and progressive in Poland’s past, a permanent reproach to the tyranny of the partitioning powers.” It “sought to create a modern, centralized republic.”. It was too late, however, to withstand the encircling hostile forces of autocracy. Such fears were voiced by the Prussian statesman Ewald von Hertzberg: "The Poles have given the coup de grâce to the Prussian monarchy by voting a constitution". Were the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to grow in resilience, pressure would come to return what Prussia had recently purloined. The new constitution infuriated Empress Catherine. Poland's king was her former lover; she considered Poland a de facto protectorate. A chief author of Russian foreign policy, Alexander Bezborodko wrote "The worst possible news has arrived from Warsaw: the Polish king has become almost sovereign".
For Poland's neighbours, the links of Polish reformers with the French National Assembly reeked of revolution; throwing down the gauntlet before the absolute monarchies. Catherine intervened. By chance, Russia had just extricated herself from separate entanglements with Turkey and Sweden. Support was lent to a Polish anti-reform group, the Targowica Confederation. After barely a year, the machinery of the new constitution had been wrecked by Russian armies allied with conservative Polish nobility. In the War in Defence of the Constitution Polish loyalist forces were routed.
Another partition, as unsettling as the first, was to occur six years after Hofbauer arrived. This left 10 million (i.e. 71%) of the original population of 14 million disenfranchised; no longer under Polish rule. At yet another partition two years later (see Partitions of Poland), Poland ceased to exist.
Clement Mary Hofbauer and his team had been in Warsaw twelve years when, on 19 November 1799, Napoleon led a coup d'état in faraway Paris. Within a few years he announced he was an emperor, planning to claim an empire. From 1803 the armies of France under his command fought almost every European power, and acquired control of most of continental Europe, whether by conquest or alliance. In 1806 the Grande Armée took over the city where Hofbauer and his team were working. The Duchy of Warsaw was established as a client state. The impact of King Frederick Augustus' rule was subordinated to French requirements. What little remained in the Warsaw Duchy was now to resource military ambitions elsewhere.