The last article in this series (see link here) described political events that prevented Amicizie’s full development in Italy. However, these setbacks did not dampen Father Nicholas Diessbach’s spirits. With the assistance of Baron Joseph von Penckler (1751-1830) and other Austrian members, he continued his illustrious apostolate and prevented the sodality from disappearing. Despite the difficulties, the work continued unabated. Father Diessbach strove continually to attend to everything concerning the greater glory of God.
In Vienna, the priests who supported him preached missions and served in the Minoritenkirchen. Baron von Penckler, who served as its provost, owned this church. This magnificent late medieval church building catered to Vienna’s dislocated Italians and became known among the Viennese as the Italians’ chapel. Amicizia’s lay members helped these priests keep the association functioning in these troubled times and maintain contact with members who had dispersed.
Amicizia’s association with Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer (1751-1820) is a typical example of its expanded sphere of activities. Clement Hofbauer and his close friend, Thaddäus Hübl, were lay Amicizia members who were later ordained as Redemptorist priests. They became friends of Father Diessbach, whom Father Hofbauer considered his master. While there, both men studied and applied Father Diessbach’s new apostolic methods.
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After their ordination, their superiors sent them to Poland. They founded a Redemptorist house in Warsaw. Despite the opposition of revolutionaries, this house soon became the center of intense Catholic life. In Poland, Father Hofbauer founded associations similar to the one he belonged to in Vienna. From Warsaw, he kept in touch with Amicizia leaders, who advised and encouraged them to remain faithful in the storm.
Father Diessbach often called himself “God’s indefatigable ambassador.” His stays in Vienna during the last decade of the eighteenth century were brief. He traveled continually, visiting Amicizia associations in various cities as well as assessing and recruiting people to start new sodalities. In places where he found no likely candidates, he strove to create an environment that would favor the appearance of someone capable of initiating this apostolate. His own humility and the persecution of the revolutionaries prevented many vital facts about his existence from reaching us. Such defamations continued even after his death.
In 1797, Father Diessbach went to Freiburg and stayed at Canon Claude Gendre’s home. Fortunately, Canon Gendre wrote a summary of his stay in Freiburg, which Father Candido Bona published in his book about Amicizia.1 This account allows us to unveil a little of the life of the Counter-Revolution’s indefatigable apostle.
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The visit to Freiburg was intended to be short, but events intervened. In the end, Father Diessbach spent a year and a half at Canon Gendre’s house. On March 28, 1798, French troops invaded Switzerland, and the cantons organized armies to resist the occupation. These small army corps bravely faced the French revolutionaries but were soon defeated. Swiss by birth and a former officer, Father Diessbach joined the troops in Freiburg as chaplain. When forced to retreat, he accompanied them back to Freiburg, where he worked in the hospital. He counseled and assisted the wounded soldiers until his strength failed him. Canon Gendre tells us that his guest once spent two consecutive days and nights working nonstop. When he returned home exhausted the third night, he still said his breviary, not believing he had earned his rest.
He also helped distressed civilians. Napoleon’s soldiers often roamed the countryside, pillaging farms and committing all kinds of mischief. At the risk of his life, Father Diessbach sought out peasants, attempting to repair their suffering and console them in their misfortune. One of Father Diessbach’s legs had been wounded in his youth. This made him suffer a lot, but it never interfered with his heroic assistance. Nor was he spared the revolutionary soldiers’ brutality. Canon Gendre reports one such incident.
“[French soldiers] surprised him outside the gate of Bern and treated him in a most undignified manner. They stripped him of his money and numerous crucial documents, and he returned home without a hat, his cassock soiled and torn. He was barely able to stand. Dismayed at seeing him in this state, I asked what had happened: ‘I’ve been a bit mistreated,’ he answered, ‘but it’s nothing; let’s not talk about it.’ That was his only answer.”
When Freibourg no longer needed his services, Father Diessbach went to Prague, where he stayed for two months. In the middle of winter, he returned to Vienna and died there on December 23, 1798.
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Officially, the cause of his death was a lung fever. His illness quickly grew worse as overwork, and the rough winter journey from Prague to Vienna weakened him. Furthermore, Amicizia and circles associated with Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer always claimed that their founder’s enemies had mistreated him during that trip. He had, they believed, died a martyr to this fierce and life-long persecution.
He was buried in the cemetery of Maria Enzersdorf, a parish dependent on the Castle of Liechtenstein, owned by Baron von Penckler. Many of his disciples and several great names of Vienna’s Catholic pre-Romanticism efforts were later buried in the same cemetery.
Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer’s body rested next to Father Diessbach’s tomb for a long time. Saint Clement always credited Father Deissbach as the inspirer of the great work he accomplished in Vienna after being expelled from Poland. Father Diessbach’s saintly protégé had asked to be buried near his former master. That work earned Saint Clement the title of co-patron of Vienna and apostle of Warsaw. Later, Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer’s body was moved to the Redemptorist Church in Vienna, where it rests today.
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