Joseph II — a reforming emperor, impatient, and convinced that a contemplative order was of no use to the state — dissolved the Paulines by a decree of 7 February 1786; it was read out at Marianka on 20 March. After four hundred years the friars walked out, the estate passed to the royal treasury (the Chamber), and the monastery was later fitted out as a hunting lodge. The pilgrimage did not stop. That is the thing worth noticing here: a state can abolish an order overnight, but it could not stop people walking up a valley to a spring, and they went on coming with no monastery behind them at all.Jozef II. — cisár reformátor, netrpezlivý a presvedčený, že kontemplatívna rehoľa štátu nič nedáva — zrušil pavlínov dekrétom zo 7. februára 1786; v Marianke ho vyhlásili 20. marca. Po štyroch storočiach mnísi odišli, majetok prevzala kráľovská komora a z kláštora neskôr urobili poľovnícky zámoček. Púte sa nezastavili. A práve to je tu podstatné: štát vedel zrušiť rehoľu zo dňa na deň, ale nevedel ľuďom zabrániť chodiť hore dolinou k prameňu — a chodili ďalej aj bez kláštora za chrbtom.
