Electric light and the visualization of Catholic power in Spain during the Restoration Era (1874–1931)

This article analyses the contested adoption of electric lights by the Spanish Catholic church during the Bourbon Restoration era (1874–1931). Through a careful reading of primary sources, namely Catholic popular magazines, and official documents, it will show how Catholic authorities and practitioners resisted, negotiated and, ultimately, engaged with electricity in religious spaces. The article argues that electric light contributed to wider exchanges in a non-monolithic Spanish Catholicism on the observance of traditional values or the possibilities of the church’s modernization. However, amid a particularly tense moment regarding the secular–clerical relations, the systematic use of electric lights in churches at the turn of the twentieth century—but also in other public ceremonies—contributed to the making of religious sensations aimed at attracting new believers and reasserting the presence of the institution in a disputed public space.

Introduction

The history of Gluck’s music in Paris during its first hundred years is thought to be well understood: a successful series of productions and revivals from the 1770s to around 1800, followed by a series of more fitful revivals from 1811 until the end of the Bourbon Restoration in 1830. At that point, so the story goes, Gluck effectively disappears until the revival of ...

«We don’t believe you, Nicolas»: royalist publicism as a source of French anti-Napoleonic caricature

The article refers to the connection between royalist publicism and anti-Napoleonic caricature through the example of two etchings from the Khanenko Museum collection. The task of royalist propaganda was to undermine the authority of Napoleon Bonaparte and, at the same time, to set society in favor of the Bourbon restoration. This causes the specifics of the anti-Napoleonic pamphlets and caricatures, which were usually focused on creating of the repulsive images of the emperor. At the same time, it is easy to notice that the authors of texts and images operated with a common set of motifs, images, as well as they used similar techniques. Therefore, the analysis of pamphlets provides better understanding of the subject of studied etchings and helps to clarify the meaning of certain details. Furthermore, taking into account that caricature was often secondary to the texts, author strived to find the literary sources of the studied caricatures and came to the conclusion that Charon’s famous engraving “The Height of Cannibalism” was strongly influenced by the François-René Chateaubriand’s “Report on the State of France” (1815). The matching texts, as well as the general consonance of the caricature “Arrival of Nicolas Buonaparte in Tuileries on January 20, 1815” with Rougemaitre’s popular anti-Napoleonic pamphlet “Life of Nicolas” (1815) suggests that the latter was among the caricaturist’s sources of inspiration at least.

Una polémica olvidada: el debate político en torno al “Edicto de Milán” en España durante el año 1913 = A forgotten controversy: The political discussion on the so-called ‘Edict of Milan’ in 1913 in Spain

Resumen: La conmemoración del 1600 aniversario de los acuerdos de Milán en 1913 dio lugar en España a una encendida controversia entre los partidarios de las políticas laicistas y los defensores de la confesionalidad católica del Estado español de la Restauración, comprendida en la Constitución de 1876. Esta polémica estuvo alimentada por las políticas favorables al laicismo al igual que por la jerarquía eclesiástica, que trataba de conservar sus privilegios jurídicos.Palabras clave: Cuestión constantiniana, Historiografía, España, Restauración.Abstract: The commemoration of the 1600th anniversary of the Milan agreements in 1913 caused a heated discussion between the supporters of laicism and the defenders of the Catholic confession of the Spanish State under the Bourbon Restoration, as enshrined in the 1876 Constitution. The controversy was fostered both by secular politics and by the Church, which aimed to preserve its judicial privileges.Key words: The Constantinian question, historiography, Spain, Restoration.

Remembrance

This chapter examines the commemoration of victims of the Terror. It focuses on the transformation of mass graves into expiatory monuments. This process began in the immediate aftermath of the Terror and continued into the Bourbon Restoration. The chapter shows how the struggle of the families to get closure by providing proper burial to their loved ones clashed with the desire of post-revolutionary regimes to keep at bay memories that threatened to reignite civil discord.

The Revolution That Stopped Too Soon

Neither Marx nor Lenin wrote much about the Revolution of 1830. This was largely because the revolution stopped too soon, thereby merely ratifying changes within the bourgeoisie instead of replacing the capitalist system (that existed to benefit the bourgeoisie) with a proletarian one. In the way the Bolsheviks explained it, the bourgeoisie split in the 1820s into more prosperous elements favouring the continuation of the Bourbon Restoration and less affluent ones that in 1830 were able to install the so-called Orléanists in power. This split, which continued, ensured the latter’s quick demise. But the proletariat was still too small and too weak and insufficiently radical politically to succeed it. However, despite its limited consequences, the Revolution of 1830 served the enormously important purpose of showing that the French Revolution, while sui generis in many ways, was also the first in a series of revolutions in the history of France that together constituted a genuine tradition of revolution.

Revisiting French Foundational Republicanism from a Non-teleological Approach

French republicanism is traditionally considered not only the logical outcome of the principles of 1789 but also their main political goal in the long term. Since the revolutionary outbreak, France would have been destined to become a republic, and the consecutive republican regimes that shaped its history seem to support that interpretation. However, considering the formidable weight of the centuries-old French royalist tradition, it is difficult to believe that the French gave up kingship once and for all in the span of the first three revolutionary years and that the First Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, the July Monarchy, and the Second Empire were political regimes imposed only by force, against the will of the French, who only wanted a republican form of government. Driven by these reflections, this article attempts to propose a different interpretation of French republicanism.

Maistre, Joseph de (1753–1821)

Count Joseph de Maistre was a major theorist of the Counter-Enlightenment, whose writings inspired generations of French Catholic royalists and stimulated thinkers diverse as Saint- Simon, Auguste Comte and Charles Maurras. He is known especially for his providential interpretation of the French Revolution, his support for a Bourbon Restoration in France, his opposition to all contractual theories of government, his arguments in favour of papal infallibility, his philosophical speculations on violence and bloodshed, his critique of John Locke’s epistemology and his attack on Francis Bacon’s ‘scientism’.

Novelar contra la miseria. Corrupción y literatura durante la Restauración borbónica (1875-1923)

Resumen: Los distintos tipos de corrupción en los que se basaba el sistema de la Restauración borbónica en España (1875-1923) no eran, en absoluto, desconocidos por sus habitantes. La corrupción electoral era la primera pieza de un complejo engranaje que afectaba a todos los niveles de la Administración y la sociedad españolas de la época: en un país todavía mayoritariamente rural, el atraso sociológico y la desmovilización política permitían el tráfico de favores desde las posiciones de poder. Durante el periodo, distintos intelectuales retrataron el sistema en novelas con vocación (y éxito) comercial, pero también escritas con voluntad de concienciación política del lector. Dentro de sus tramas se describen el ambiente necesario para que se pueda ejercer la dominación social que caracterizaba el sistema, así como las malas prácticas de sus gobernantes, ya fuera en el campo como en las grandes ciudades. Este artículo analiza cinco de ellas, reivindicando el gran valor de la literatura como fuente histórica.Palabras clave: corrupción, literatura, Restauración borbónica, Santiago Rusiñol, Felipe Trigo, Carles Bosch de la Trinxeria, José López Pinillos.Abstract: The Spanish Bourbon Restoration’s system (1875-1923) was completely based on corruption. A heterogeneous but restricted oligarchy ruled the country thanks to the remarkably miserable conditions that the vast majority of the Spanish society had to live in. Fraudulent elections were one of the most obvious kinds of corruption developed then, when the whole functioning of the State was lubricated by the favours trade. This underdeveloped society was portrayed by some Spanish intellectuals describing in their novels this tainted atmosphere and the necessary conditions to maintain it. Written with a political intention but with a commercial finality, these works are excellent historical sources. This article analyses five of these novels, which are excellent pictures of a crippled society, either in the countryside or the city.Keywords: corruption, literature, Spanish Bourbon Restoration, Santiago Rusiñol, Felipe Trigo, Carles Bosch de la Trinxeria, José López Pinillos.