The chapters in this volume all approach the role of Marian devotions within the processes of the construction of national and political identities which took place within different historical–cultural contexts throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The intention of the editors is to offer the reader a collection of studies with regard to different forms of Marian worship which have been objects of separate enquiry and, for the first time, present such research from a trans-Atlantic perspective. The aim has been to identify significant similarities and particularities; to detect influences; to compare chronologies, ideas, ideological, and political affiliations; and to analyze concepts and practices. With this intention in mind, we have brought together a group of historians specializing in the histories of Argentina, France, Germany, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine, the United States, and Uruguay.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the figure of the Virgin Mary has been a central element in the Catholic Church’s struggle against certain traits of secularization alongside, such as the confrontation between varying concepts of national identity, and between rival Christian confessions. From this dynamic arose the similarities between, and the singularities of, the political and ideological deployment of Marian worship within the differentiation between an increasingly secular society and the traditionalism of—in particular—Catholic societies. The history of Marian cults throughout the past two centuries is crucial to Catholicism: first, with regard to the processes of internationalization, homogenization, bureaucratization, centralization, and clericalization of the Church, and then, with regard to the emergence of an organized laity, alongside the new role played by women and youth.
On the other hand, the Church’s role in political–ideological controversies has been, without doubt, multifaceted and complex. Against the deep-rooted idea that Catholicism represented an obstacle to be overcome in the task of the construction of modernity—if not, indeed, a reactionary force to be defeated—in many cases, the figure of the Virgin Mary played a role of fundamental importance in the symbolic struggle which accompanied the modeling of new national and political identities. 1 Furthermore, Catholics appealed to all the resources offered by new technical developments in order to proffer their devotions to the Virgin Mary, to promote their worship of her, and to underpin at times determined political positionings: by means of the press, the telegraph, the railroad, the radio, television, souvenirs, and tourist trails. 2 Over the two centuries which saw the emergence of mass society, the Marian cult was accompanied by mass national pilgrimages generated, for example, by the coronations of images or the blessing of new, sumptuous, and enormous shrines. Finally, the modernization of Marian worship would in itself constitute evident proof of the strength of worship and, as such, comprise an argument against the thesis of the decline of religious faith.
The Nineteenth Century: Between Secularization and the Flourishing of Piety
The fundamental “Marian moment” which occurred in the nineteenth century, following on from the start of the revolutionary cycle in the previous century, is a central aspect of the chapter in this book. The so-called “long nineteenth century,” which was witness to radical transformations in Western history, presents itself as a great laboratory out of which were borne the great secular ideologies—from nationalism to liberalism, to socialism, anarchism, and communism—and as the stage upon which, both in Europe and America, a “cultural war” was unleashed concerning the definition of the place of religion within the public sphere. 3
In effect, the nineteenth century was an era in which great economic, political, and social transformations sent great numbers of people in different directions. Geographically, there was a generalization of movement from the rurality of the countryside to the urbanizing cities, and from Europe toward areas of the world which found themselves faced with, or fell before, the influence or the dominion of the Old World. Politically, the eighteenth-century concept of popular sovereignty and the idea of the general gave rise to projects of national construction which required mass participation—or at least a growing level of participation—on the part of citizens with regard to electoral contests, military mobilizations, and street protests. Socially, the dissolution of the previous social order opened the path toward a class-based society within which it was possible to alter one’s situation, residence, profession, and activity within the labor market.
In particular, the second half of the nineteenth century saw the birth of a society composed of its masses. The irruption of the “people” during the French Revolution opened the way for new and dynamic forms of collective expression. 4 Within the nationalist and rising socialist movements, the idea of the “general will” was itself elevated to an object of veneration. The rise of a society comprised by its masses is, of course, related to the great transformations which were occurring within transportation and communications. The development of steam power, the advent of electricity, and the internal combustion motor had all served to shorten distances and to greatly reduce the cost of travel, thus becoming available to those with fewer resources. The invention of the telegraph and the steam-driven printer allowed news to travel in record time from one place to another, and, furthermore, that publications could also increase their print runs in response to the increased public readership.
The nineteenth century is often delineated as “a century of secularization,” and there is no lack of reasons in this regard. At the start, the dismantling of the Ancien Régime before the brunt of the revolutions which had broken out on both sides of the Atlantic initiated profound changes concerning the place traditionally occupied by religion within Western societies. During the second half of the nineteenth century, and during the first decades of the twentieth, the problem of laicization came under discussion at the same time as the emergence of nation-states. This was occurring alongside the great social, cultural, scientific, and ideological transformations of the age were confronting the Christian confessions with the greatest challenge they had encountered throughout the long history of the Christian faith. The golden age of anti-clericalism witnessed a bitter confrontation between the Churches—and in particular the Catholic Church—and their various detractors: not only anti-clerical politicians and journalists of national and international renown, but also members of small clubs of free thinkers, societies dedicated to opposing the Church, anarchist circles, and socialists, all came into conflict with the Catholic Church which, in the hands of Pius IX, had in turn advanced a position of greater intransigence with its rejection of the “errors of the modern world.” 5
If the criticisms of Catholicism were mostly directed toward the privileges and prerogatives of the Church and its presence in public life, within this contestatory current were to be found expressions of anti-Catholicism, including manifestations of a radical atheism which pointed to the complete disappearance of religion being considered, within this current of thought, as the greatest obstacle to human liberty and social progress. Catholic discourse tended to identify these two currents of thought within an historical interpretation which revealed a Church besieged by a conspiracy of sorts, hatched by their staunchest enemies: philosophes, liberals, Jansenists, Protestants, Masons, and anti-clericals of various callings, statists, and public writers promoting disentailment (desamortización) and the laicization of the State … 6 The explicit manifestations of such critics of the “true Catholicism” were, from the ecclesiastical view, nothing more than sophistries and pretexts in order to conceal their true and underlying motive: that of destroying the true Church as soon as possible, with a view to erasing the Christian faith from the face of the earth.
Conversely, the nineteenth century was one of intense religiosity, the century of the second and third “Great Awakenings” which contemporaries and historians have identified in the United States: the century which saw the emergence of a new Catholicism, the victory of ultramontane, anti-liberal, and anti-socialist viewpoints, and of the internationalization and Romanization of the Catholic Church. Such far-reaching transformations during the nineteenth century had a great impact on a Catholicism confronted by the challenges brought forth the perception of a world which was distancing itself from Christ. The age old Christian tradition of pilgrimage was revolutionized by the endless increase in the number of printing presses, the building of roads, and above all, that of the railroads, which allowed for the diffusion—at both national and international levels—of local and regional forms of worship, and paved the way for the arrival of increasing numbers of pilgrims, on mass, at shrines. The image of the Pope, previously almost unknown outside of Italy, began to become a familiar one to the faithful corners of the world which lay at a great distance from the Eternal City, especially following the fall of Rome in 1870 and the many and varied mobilizations from within the Catholic world which expressed solidarity with the “imprisoned Pope.” The same occurred with other manifestations of Catholic religiosity: the vigor of the missionary drive during the nineteenth century became a heroic act of a Church which had acquired a universal dimension, and news of such triumph arrived at the homes of the faithful in the pages of an increasingly vibrant Catholic press. Symbols and images crossed the Atlantic in both directions thanks to the new means of communication and the increasing mobility of religious institutions, especially the active congregations, and popularized worships and practices which were, until then, unknown.
If, on the political level, the masses were gaining an unexpected level of protagonism as an expression of the “general will,” within the sphere of religion this presence was no less significant. If the ideas of nation and class in the terrain of politics required the participation and the mobilization of the masses, in the sphere of religion the notion of a “Catholic people” also implied the requirement of a mass attendance at liturgical celebrations, papal addresses, pilgrimages, and shrines. This idea—romantic in its inspiration—proposed that truth and wisdom resided within the “people” at the same time as it despised the exalted rationalism of the century which was interpreted as the exclusive patrimony of the elite. Both phenomena had overlapping political experiences which played with the conceptions of a national Catholic ideology which was, in some cases, decisive in the construction of the Nation, the State, and the contemporary Catholic Church: a Church which was both the result and an agent of secularization as its concurrence [with modernity] was a vital element in the differentiation of public and private spheres. 7 The process of centralization noticeable in the political sphere also affected the institutions and corporations of the Catholic Church which, under aegis of Rome, tended toward uniting themselves with an institution of worldwide dimensions which represented itself as a perfect society and a juridical–political entity on par with the [secular] States. 8 It would be illusory to interpret such symbioses as conservative reactions against the flow of “truly modern” ideas, just as it would be to interpret the assimilation of “modern” ways of communication and action on the part of Catholicism as merely imitative. Many of the contexts of nineteenth ...