Gunpowder and Incense: The Catholic Church and the Spanish Civil War (review)

2009 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 625-627
Author(s):  
Raymond McCluskey
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
The Catholic Church

Revolutionary Exhumations in Spain, July 1936

1985 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Lincoln
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

In the first weeks of the Spanish civil war, there occurred massive popular assaults against the Catholic Church in those cities which did not fall to the Nationalists rising, the Church having been widely (and correctly) perceived as hostile to the Republic and sympathetic to the generals who sought its overthrow. As rumors of priests firing on the populace from church towers circulated wildly, churches and convents were rapidly sacked and burnt. Supporters of the Republic killed religious personnel in large numbers—certainly well into the thousands—while desecrating and destroying church paraphernalia and cultic objects en masse.

scholarly journals THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CATALONIA. FROM CATACLYSM IN THE CIVIL WAR TO THE “EUPHORIA” OF THE 1950S

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Andrew Dowling
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
National Catholicism ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

In the summer of 1936, with the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the Catalan Church underwent a ferocious assault, without precedent in modern European history. Catalan society in the early decades of the twentieth century had been divided over its relationship to the Catholic Church, with some sectors being profoundly anti-clerical. Yet by the early 1960s, attitudes towards the Catholic Church had changed. This article is concerned with reconstructing Catalan and Catalanist Catholicism from one of profound crisis during the Civil War to its re-emergence from the confines of Spanish National Catholicism. Francoist victory in the Spanish Civil War meant the ending of indigenous Catholic traditions. However, from the mid-1940s we can trace the slow reconstruction of Catalan traditions, language and culture. All of the major expressions of Catalan identity until the 1960s were enabled due to this Catholic patronage. Whilst the Church was unable to reverse secularization trends, this involvement in cultural activity would transform its place within wider Catalan society. By the end of the period examined in this article, historic and deep rooted anti-clericalism in Catalonia was ending.

Before the Altar of the Fatherland: Catholicism, the Politics of Modernization, and Nationalization during the Spanish Civil War

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-255
Author(s):  
Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Religious Services ◽  
Franco Dictatorship ◽  
The Catholic Church

Catholicism has occupied a central place in debates concerning the nature of Francoism. Conventionally, scholars have suggested that the traditional, archaic elements of the Franco Dictatorship made it markedly different from other fascist regimes. This article explores the crucial role that Catholicism played in the popular mobilization, unification, and nationalization of rebel supporters during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Instead of focusing on an analysis of the discourse of the Catholic Church and its interactions with the politics and institutions of the ‘New State’, this study concentrates on Catholicism's role in generating social support for the regime. First, it examines the religious services and practices that occurred on the battlefronts. It then deals with events on the rebel home front. It argues that during the Spanish Civil War, Catholicism became a force that united, mobilized, and forged both individual and national Francoist identities.

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