We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
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.
- Authors
Dittrich, Lisa
- Abstract
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.
- Subjects
GERMANY; SPAIN; FRANCE; FREETHINKERS; ANTI-Catholicism; 19TH century Catholic Church history; NINETEENTH century; CATHOLIC Church; HISTORY
- Publication
Journal of Religious History, 2015, Vol 39, Issue 2, p261
- ISSN
0022-4227
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-9809.12186