European Connections, Obstacles, and the Search for a New Concept of Religion: The Freethought Movement as an Example of Transnational Anti-Catholicism in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
Freethinkers ranked among the main critics of Catholicism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Whereas the various Western European freethought movements have been relatively well studied on a national level, their cross-border relationships remain substantially unexplored. A study of these...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2015]
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| In: |
Journal of religious history
Year: 2015, Volume: 39, Issue: 2, Pages: 261-279 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Freethinkers ranked among the main critics of Catholicism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Whereas the various Western European freethought movements have been relatively well studied on a national level, their cross-border relationships remain substantially unexplored. A study of these connections can shed new light on transnational anti-Catholicism in general and moreover help us to conceptualise this phenomenon in a European perspective. In this article, I will use the example of freethinkers in order to illustrate the difficult process of establishing transnational anti-Catholic networks. The article begins with an outline of the various forms of connections of European anti-Catholicism, concentrating in the following section on the first major international conference of freethinkers, the so-called anti-Council, which took place as a protest against the first Vatican Council (1869-1870). Attention is brought to the international dimensions of the meeting and to the reasons behind its rapid failure. In the third section, transnational anti-Catholicism is studied in general in France, Spain, and Germany. I will focus especially on one constraint to cross-border relationships. This will allow me to show that anti-Catholicism was not only a secular endeavour, but was also inseparable from the widespread search for a religion more suited to a society undergoing rapid changes. This understanding of anti-Catholicism offers a way of overcoming the still deep gap in historiography between the bi-confessional countries and the Latin mainly mono-confessional countries. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-9809 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of religious history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/1467-9809.12186 |