The archbishop who expelled the Protestants. In October 1731, Firmian issued the Emigrationspatent, ordering the roughly 20,000 Protestant inhabitants of the mountainous regions of Salzburg State to convert or leave. In the dead of winter.
The resulting exodus, known as the Salzburger Exulanten, became one of the most significant forced migrations of the early modern era. Thousands of families left for Prussia, the Netherlands, and eventually Georgia in America, where they founded communities that preserved their Salzburg identity for generations.
Firmian was also a patron of the arts and continued the baroque embellishment of the city. But his archiepiscopate (1727-1744) represents the last great exercise of archiepiscopal autocratic power before the Enlightenment reforms of his successors began to change everything.
