Struktura moravského duchovenstva ve světle nejstaršího katalogu kléru olomoucké diecéze z roku 1745/1746

This paper captures the early modern clergy as a compact social unit, concentrating on its most numerous and important group, i.e. priests involved in execution of the ecclesiastic administration (the lower clergy). It introduces the hierarchic structure of the diocesan clergy through a statistical evaluation of data on twelve hundred priests registered in a manuscript catalogue of the clergymen in the Olomouc diocese from 1745/1746 and compares it with information on the priests’ physical and service age and the length of their employment in the ecclesiastic administration. In this way, it reaches the conclusion that there existed a practised career system and that the Moravian diocesan clergy was not merely characterized with formal criteria, but also factual execution of the actual “profession”.