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God and Freedom: Radical Liberalism, Republicanism, and Religion in Spain, 1808–1847*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Genís Barnosell
Genís Barnosell*
Affiliation:
Department of History and History of Art, University of Girona E-mail: genis.barnosell@udg.edu
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Summary

This article analyses the religious aspects of Spanish republicanism of the 1830s and 1840s. From the case of Catalonia, the most industrialized region of Spain, it is concluded that radical liberalism elaborated a synthesis of freedom and religion that was presented as an alternative to traditional religiosity. Re-elaborating old myths popular during the War of Independence of 1808–1814, in addition some liberals and republicans presented their political project in millenarianist terms. This millenarianism was due to the radicalism with which they interpreted the confrontation with political opponents, one of whom was the established Church. It follows that the religiosity and millenarianism exhibited by these republicans also involved a strong anti-clericalism. At the same time, in the political and cultural context of Spain, these proposals were not seen by their followers as a negation of divinity but as its truest expression.

Résumés

Genís Barnosell. Dieu et la liberté. Libéralisme radical, républicanisme et religion en Espagne, 1808–1847.

Dans cet article, l'auteur analyse les aspects religieux du républicanisme espagnol des années 1830 et 1840. À partir du cas de la Catalogne, région la plus industrialisée de l'Espagne, il conclut que le libéralisme radical élaborait, de la liberté et de la religion, une synthèse qui était présentée comme une alternative à la religiosité traditionnelle. Reconsidérant d'anciens mythes populaires pendant la Guerre d'indépendance de 1808–1814, certains libéraux et républicains espagnols présentèrent leurs projets politiques en termes millénaristes. Ce millénarisme était dû au radicalisme avec lequel ils interprétaient la confrontation avec les opposants politiques, dont l'un était l’Église établie. La religiosité et le millénarisme manifestés par ces républicains comportaitdonc également un puissant anticléricalisme. Parallèlement, dans le contexte politique etculturel de l'Espagne, ces propositions n’étaient pas considérées par leurs suiveurs comme une négation de la divinité mais comme la plus véridique expression de celle-ci.

Zusammenfassungen

Genís Barnosell. Gott und Freiheit. Radikaler Liberalismus, Republikanismus und Religion in Spanien, 1808–1847.

Dieser Artikel untersucht die religiösen Aspekte des spanischen Republikanismus der 1830er und 1840er Jahre. Aus dem Fall Kataloniens, der am stärksten industrialisierten Region Spaniens, wird geschlossen, dass der radikale Liberalismus eine Synthese aus Freiheit und Religion entwickelte, die als Alternative zur traditionellen Religiosität dargestellt wurde. Indem sie auf alte, in der Zeit des Unabhängigkeitskrieges von 1808–1814 beliebte Mythen zurückgriffen, stellten zudem einige Liberale und Republikaner ihr politisches Projekt als chiliastisches dar. Dieser Chiliasmus ging auf den Radikalismus zurück, anhand dessen sie ihre Auseinandersetzungen mit politischen Gegnern deuteten. Einer dieser Gegner war die etablierte Kirche. Daher beinhalteten die Religiosität und der Chiliasmus, den diese Republikaner an den Tag legten, auch einen ausgeprägten Antiklerikalismus. Gleichzeitig wurden diese Ansätze im politischen und kulturellen Kontext Spaniens von den Anhängern der Republikaner nicht etwa als Verleugnung des Heiligen, sondern als dessen wahrhaftigster Ausdruck begriffen.

Resúmenes

Genís Barnosell. Dios y Libertad. Liberalismo radical, republicanismo y religión en España, 1808–1847.

Este artículo analiza los aspectos religiosos del republicanismo español de las décadas de 1830 y 1840. En el caso catalán, la región española más industrializada, podemos concluir que el liberalismo radical elaboró una síntesis entre libertad y religión que se presentaba como una alternativa a la religiosidad tradicional. Reelaborando viejos mitos populares durante la Guerra de Independencia de 1808–1814, liberales y republicanos presentaron sus proyectos políticos en términos milenaristas. Este milenarismo arraigaba en el radicalismo con el que interpretaban la confrontación con sus oponentes políticos, uno de los cuales era la Iglesia establecida. Además, la religiosidad y el milenarismo exhibido por estos republicanos también implicaba un fuerte anticlericalismo. Al mismo tiempo, en el contexto político y cultural español, estas propuestas no fueron recibidas por sus seguidores como una negación de la divinidad sino como su verdadera manifestación.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , 02 March 2012 , pp. 37 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 2011

Spanish historiography has placed very little emphasis on the religious content of the republicanism of the decades of the 1830s and 1840s. An analysis of liberal and republican discourse shows, however, that divinity was ultimately considered to be the guarantor of human rights. It is true that some republican groups were linked with ideas that were highly confrontational to the established Church, such as the Supreme Being of the French Revolution. But, in the cultural context in which republicanism existed, these ideas could hardly be interpreted as negations of the Christian God. All radical liberalism, and with it republicanism, started from the premise that the Spanish nation was Roman Catholic. Hence, the tradition of the established Church is of fundamental importance in understanding the scope of the religious criticism developed in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The Beginnings Of Spanish Republicanism

The beginning of the nineteenth century was marked by profound political change in Spain. The old absolutist state gave way to a liberal state and a political system was organized that would be dominated by two elitist parties: progresistas and moderados. The first milestone of this revolution was the proclamation in 1812 of the Constitution of Cadiz in the midst of the War of Independence; nevertheless, absolutism was restored in 1814 in the person of King Ferdinand VII. A new attempt at liberalism would occur in 1820–1823 (Trienio Liberal). But it would not be until 1833, upon the death of Ferdinand VII, that the Spanish royal house and the child-queen Isabel had to put themselves in the hands of the liberals in order to resist the attempt at usurpation by the Infante Charles. Liberalism would eventually prevail after a seven-year Civil War and would convert Spain into a constitutional monarchy.Footnote 1

Although the Constitution of 1812 was again briefly established in 1836, the majority Spanish liberalism would profoundly reform it in 1837, giving rise to a new constitution. Indeed, from 1812 to 1837 a progressive distancing from the thesis of Cadiz occurred among mainstream liberalism. The Constitution of 1812 proclaimed the omnipotence of national sovereignty, a drastic separation of powers, and the hegemony of the legislative power with great distrust of the Crown. In 1837 trust would be placed in the moderating power of the monarchy, also considered the repository of sovereignty.Footnote 2

Republicanism, by contrast, was the channel that reaffirmed the principle of national sovereignty. Its precedents can be traced back to 1793 and are visible in the propagandists of the French Revolution during the War of the Convention, in the newspaper El Robespierre Español (1811–1812), which campaigned to have Ferdinand VII tried and declared insane, or in figures such as Martínez Marina, who considered that being king was a profession like any other. It would be in the decade of the 1830s when this republicanism would organize and become public. The first proposal of a republican constitution, drafted by Ramon Xaudaró, dates from 1832. In 1836–1837 newspapers appeared in the principal Spanish cities defending national sovereignty and fiercely criticizing the monarchy (El Duende Liberal, El Graduador and El Corsario in Madrid, El Satanás in Valencia, El Sancho Gobernador in Barcelona). From 1840–1843 an explicitly republican movement flourished in Valencia, Seville, Teruel, Huelva, Cordoba, Castellon, Alicante, San Sebastian, Cadiz, Barcelona, and Madrid, with a combative and abundant press, led by El Huracán from Madrid.Footnote 3

Alongside institutional transformation, the eruption of liberalism and republicanism signified a profound reflection and debate on the individual, society, and politics with regard to administration of the common interest. In addition, it signified the inevitable clash with the forces that defended the old status quo.Footnote 4 One of the main points of confrontation was the question of religion. On the one hand, liberalism held the view that the religious heritage that had been handed down was inappropriate for the new age. On the other, the powerful Spanish Church immediately revealed itself as one of the principal forces opposed to change.

The Cadiz Cortes and the Liberal Triennium gave continuity to the reformist projects of the Spanish Enlightenment, which criticized papal interference and the excessive power of the Church. Thus, the Church's fiscal privileges were abolished, its lands sold off, and the Inquisition was abolished. Very few liberals professed to be non-believers, but liberalism began a process that was to put religion at the service of the state and of politics, the only spheres that were considered responsible for public welfare. At the same time, however, that it proclaimed that the Catholic religion had to be the only religion of the Spanish nation. Indeed, liberalism started from the conviction that the lower and middle classes of Spanish society were essentially Catholic. And this represented the decisive limit on its criticism of religion. The Church was a problem, divinity was not.

Thus, in 1822–1823 the first cases of assassinations of members of religious orders occurred and several monasteries and convents were attacked. The culminating point of the confrontation came during the Civil War and by 1834–1835 the assassinations and attacks on convents became widespread. In 1840–1843 (the so-called Esparterist Triennium), the regency of General Espartero, supported by the progresistas, attempted to implement a national Church not very different from the Anglican model. Among some of the political forces of the left the confrontation with the Church evolved toward atheism, as was expressed in 1909 in the attack on Churches. By contrast, conservative liberalism was soon to understand religion as a guarantee of social order and in 1851 signed a concordat with the Holy See. A part of the Spanish Church would, during many years, support Carlism, which defended the re-establishment of absolutism.

From this information, one might think that religion remained as the patrimony of the most conservative sectors while anti-clericalism and irreligiosity were the province of leftist political forces.Footnote 5 Although this was true in many cases, we must bear in mind that, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century, the reality was much more complex.

Catalonia: A Laboratory For Studying Spanish Republicanism

The geographic framework selected to analyse the religious aspect of the first Spanish republicanism is Catalonia, an industrialized region in the north-east of Spain, where republicanism took root with special strength.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Catalonia constituted a singular case of industrialization in predominantly agrarian Spain. The most important Catalan industrial sub-sectors were textiles (which represented 61.3 per cent of all Catalan industry) and food processing (21.9 per cent). Barcelona, with 227,991 inhabitants in 1857 (13.8 per cent of the Catalan population) was the indisputable capital of Catalonia.Footnote 6 It was in Barcelona and in other Catalan industrial cities that the first trade unions were created in 1840, thanks to the tolerance of the authorities. In all associated trades, respect for the human dignity of workers was demanded as well as collective bargaining of working conditions and wages, with pressure often brought to bear through strikes. The movement was very active until the repression unleashed by the new government established in 1844, moderado in its tendencies and hostile to any kind of popular organization, drove it underground.Footnote 7

In Barcelona, the republican movement began with great intensity in the decade of the 1830s. In the period 1835–1837 there was already a minority of lawyers, journalists, civil servants, pharmacists, and students who were republicans. They were organized through secret societies (Vengadores de Alibaud and Derechos del Hombre) and between October 1836 and January 1837 they published the newspaper El Sancho Gobernador, which explicitly vindicated the French Revolution. Another Catalan, Ramon Xaudaró, published El Corsario in Madrid between October and December 1836.

This republicanism emphasized the defence of national and popular sovereignty before the excessive power of the Crown, and increasingly evolved toward a more social vision of revolution, concluding that the first concern of all government had to be the “proletarian class”, that is, the social sector that subsisted from its labour and that frequently went hungry. Regarding the territorial organization of the state, El Corsario defended federalism, above all employing rationalist arguments (the enjoyment of freedom was in inverse relation to the size of the nation), and also historical arguments, given the survival in Spain of legislation from some of the old kingdoms. El Sancho Gobernador, on the contrary, was unitary. Thus, the debates that took place in Italy, Belgium, or France were repeated in the republicanism of Catalonia.Footnote 8

The repression in early 1837 put an end to the public propaganda of these groups. But shortly after, during the Esparterist Triennium, progresistas acceded to power. At that time republicanism became completely disillusioned with the ideal of liberal unity and came to explicitly defend the Republic. In Barcelona, the newspaper El Popular was launched on 1 April 1841, and was published until January of the following year. It defended the Constitution of 1812 and the need for a broad liberal alliance, but by the end of 1841 it was advocating a unitary republic. This was a group led by liberal professionals who, in the local elections of December 1841 obtained almost as many votes as the official progresismo, but devoted little attention to workers’ demands.

Much more active to this effect was the group led by Abdó Terradas. Born in 1812 in the city of Figueres in the corregimiento of Girona, he became known during the 1830s and, as of 1841, his ideas were spread by means of pamphlets handed out on the street, in taverns, and in the National Militia. Toward the end of 1842 his group published a popular newspaper, El Republicano (October–November 1842), and in late 1843 another, El Porvenir, while his song, “La Campana”, became a popular revolutionary hymn. Militiamen, middle-class students, young people, barbers, and pharmacists are social types that were connected to their gatherings, which in 1842 and 1843 attained a high degree of social resonance. This group was unable to assert its authority in the Barcelona of that time and could not even achieve a stable alliance with the trade-union movement, something that the official progresismo did achieve. Nevertheless, through a programme that not only placed emphasis on national sovereignty but also on the republic and on specific social measures, it became the true origin of Catalan republicanism and Terradas its “founding father”.Footnote 9

Neither Friars, Nor Convents Nor Pope: The Religion Of The Radical Liberals

In the first third of the nineteenth century, liberal propaganda made a great effort to disseminate the idea that the Constitution was not in opposition to divine will but was, in reality, its finest expression.Footnote 10 By this means, and probably following French models, the expression “God of freedom” was coined, virtually impossible to find in Spanish prior to the War of Independence but quite common by around 1820, both in original works and in more or less adapted translations.Footnote 11

This synthesis between freedom and religion was accepted by the people, as demonstrated in a diary written by a Barcelona militiaman between 1822 and 1835. From the very beginning, belief in a “God of truth” and of “freedom”, who would lend support to liberal projects, was well established in the author's mind. However, the established Church, which supported absolutism, was increasingly seen as the mortal enemy of this project. Hence his criticism of friars and their convents, and also (although to a lesser degree) of clergy and bishops, viewed as Christians “in name only”. The harshness of the war led him, by around 1834, to extend his criticisms to the Pope, and in 1835 to applaud the burning of convents in Barcelona. Religious functions, though traditional (such as Te Deum masses), generally did not receive criticism if they were performed in favour of “freedom”. He only made fun of certain extreme cases (such as a procession of 600 women saying the rosary together) and considered them hypocritical. The dreamed-of political change remotely reflected ideas from ecclesiastical millenarianism since he imagined a day in which, in the midst of a great European convulsion, a liberal regime would finally be established in Spain. On that day all society's problems would be solved.Footnote 12

Figure 1 “Blood, blood, before the people awaken”. El Sancho Gobernador considered that friars, bishops, and the Inquisition were contrary to progress. In view of the fact that a large part of the Church lent support to absolutism, it was blamed for the deaths of the Civil War. El Sancho Gobernador, Colección de caricaturas de El Sancho Gobernador número 9, private collection.

In the mid-1830s, El Sancho Gobernador attained the highest level of criticism of religion. The newspaper employed language that was much more secular in nature and expressed a virulent anti-clericalism. Friars, bishops, and the Pope himself were viewed as defenders of absolutism and enemies of the public good. Jesus, whose divinity was neither affirmed nor denied, was used as an example of a necessary “holy”, “pure”, and “simple” morality, in contrast to the precepts of the Catholic religion, which the newspaper ridiculed directly. Divinity was seldom mentioned and when it did appear it was in the form of a benevolent and just God who could be worshipped by any person in any countryFootnote 13 – a religious tolerance completely contrary to the exclusivism of the established Church. Language impregnated with religiosity that was used only rarely indicates a definite transfer of the sacredness of the divinity toward freedom.Footnote 14

In this context, Protestantism offered a partial model; and some radical liberals, such as Rafael de Degollada (a progresista deputy for Barcelona), converted to it.Footnote 15 What fascinated liberals about Protestantism was what they did not have: a purer and more sincere religion, more open to reason and to the modern world than the Catholic religion, and more tolerant. The work of Felicité de Lamennais also met with great success, in that it gave prestige to the liberal project and contributed to the justification of Church reform.Footnote 16

Felicité de Lamennais had progressed from integrism to an attempt at a synthesis with liberalism, which led to the break with Rome in 1834 as a result of the publication of Paroles d'un croyant, a very successful work, quickly translated into Spanish.Footnote 17 In it, a future of justice and love, without rich or poor, was preached, but with a basic ambiguity due to the coexistence of two lines of argument. One argument understood human misery as the fruit of general sin and presented love for God, charity, and resignation as ways for all people to be redeemed. The other was based on the sin of a few “sovereign” men (kings, princes, the powerful, and superiors in the Church hierarchy) who established servitude in others, upheld the association with the weak in order to combat them, condemned paid work, declared the right of existence, and augured a future without private property.Footnote 18 Although from the third edition onwards the legitimacy of ownership and disapproval of the expropriation of the wealthy were insisted upon, the work seemed to refer more to the Jacobins or to eighteenth-century philosophers, who only accepted the concept of private property within a relative equality, than to the respectable liberalism of the nineteenth century.Footnote 19 Radicalization was increased by Lamennais's choice of the apocalyptic approach, which equated improvement of the present situation with a definitive struggle between Good and Evil at the end of time.

These were not the paths along which the majority of Spanish liberals, who from the mid-1830s had incorporated Lamennais into their ideological heritage, wished to tread. For this reason, Larra, the translator, specified that the only possible equality was equality before the law, and rejected the sudden change implicit in the millenarianism of Paroles d'un croyant. This was how Lamennais was received in the Barcelona of 1835–1836, taking from his work the longing to unite freedom and religion, and in a Saint-Simonian context, the criticism of extreme social inequalities.Footnote 20 As of 1841, Lamennais clearly disassociated himself from communism and defended the concept of private property and a democratic programme: individual liberties, political rights, free education, the possibility of negotiating working conditions, and the right of the people to “association” (defined in an interclassist way) to provide capital. Moreover, the improvement of the people's lot could be explained by a deterministic law that had acted in the past and would continue to do so in the future. This stand by Lamennais was considered by some as a betrayal of communism – for example, by Étienne Cabet – while for others it was a logical, reasonable explanation which in no way contradicted the democratic aspirations of the author. Among those who thought in such a manner were the editors of El Popular.Footnote 21

El Popular defended a society with private property, without poverty, and governed by a political system very close to the Constitution of 1812, or to the so-called “Cadiz system”, which, as well as the Constitution, included the legislative development of the Liberal Triennium: equality of political and civil rights for all men, a unicameral chamber, a monarchy without the right of veto and subject to Parliament, a civil servants’ responsibility law, and a single tax. However, the potential development of participation channels fostered by the Cadiz textFootnote 22 led the newspaper to defend the republic, always in opposition to communism.

The international reference points of El Popular were the French liberal republicanism of Aragó and Le National, and Lamennais. They took from Rousseau their concept of the general will as the origin of every government, and “power” as a collective entity directing the interests of everyone, controlling with universal consent, with the people's obligation to obey authority (in other words, the law) “on pain of rebelling against themselves”, since “by obeying, one's freedom is declared”. The citizens’ motivation would be virtue, work, and love for the homeland, with which human beings would be restored to their “natural dignity” – in other words, the virtues which theorists ascribed to the ancient world. Such would be the harmony, that even free exchange, considered political heresy in the Catalonia of the first half of the nineteenth century, would be possible.Footnote 23 Lamennais justified this criticism of individualism, since he considered that human beings are social by nature and authority can only be established by consensus.Footnote 24

Religion, filtered through the ideas of Lamennais, was considered to be a fundamental pillar and necessary for human life, but it had to have certain characteristics along the lines of those defended in Cadiz, but much more radicalized. It should be twinned with freedom; an end should be put not only to the worldly power of the papacy, but to the the papacy itself – “a brutish, no longer valid power”. The Church should be reformed to be, in accordance with Lamennais’ vision of the primitive Church, virtuous, poor, and maintained by the state, once its goods had been redeemed. Religious freedom should be established (non-existent in the Constitution of 1812), and worship should be simplified, restricting, for example, religious holidays. The model was an interpretation of Protestantism and it was identified, in a similar way to Larra, with freedom and austerity, although the divine nature of Jesus seems to have been questioned at some point.

The language of El Popular was, like that of El Sancho Governador, essentially secular, but even so religion was fundamental. It was the element that allowed criticism of the egotism inherent, according to the newspaper, in liberal society – along the lines of what Edward Berenson pointed out with respect to the French case.Footnote 25 However, the attitude of El Popular toward religion not only originated from the French reading that its cultured editors had certainly engaged in. The admission of divinity in the intellectual and practical fabric of Spanish liberalism had much deeper roots, which had been put to the test in the harsh years of absolutist repression and Civil War. On the one hand, divinity continued to have a key role in the intellectual justification of the liberal project. Insofar as the rights of human beings were justified by natural rights, these ultimately depended on divinity, since it was by virtue of divinity that humans were born free and with equal rights. The rational was natural and was, therefore, of divine will. On the other hand, disaffection regarding the established Church had made considerable progress.Footnote 26 But, as we saw in the case of the militiaman's diary, an increase of anti-clericalism did not involve questioning the existence of divinity. This was firmly established in the popular mind and had become an essential pillar of the political project of radical liberalism.Footnote 27

The Radical Republicans: Terradas And His Group

The project of El Popular was, in essence, one of slow and peaceful transition toward a state and society with greater freedom – a slow progress facilitated by its preference for the unitary state. Only growing dissatisfaction with the constitutional monarchy led it to proclaim itself republican, but this did not make it abandon gradualism. The group led by Terradas, by contrast, reflects a rapid and intransigent path toward a republic.

Drawing inspiration, to a large extent, from the French republicans who, like the democratic Cabet, vindicated the Constitution of 1793, the Terradas group defended the sovereignty of the people (that included all of the “producing classes”), universal male suffrage, and the predominance of legislative power over all other powers of the state. Despite expressing a wish to control the ruling class, their specific proposals did not reflect the Robespierrism of 1789–1792 (and the Constitution of 1793), insofar as they would have been satisfied with a representative system which included a responsibility law of the government and Cortes (parliament) toward the people. This republic would be acceded to, if at all possible, in a peaceful manner. But in the face of the essentially repressive attitude of Spanish governments, Terradism defended the necessity of a revolution that would impose the new institutions through a very brief dictatorship of the masses. In practice though, Terradist ideas were more moderate and reflected, above all, the Spanish liberal juntist tradition. Thus, the republican revolution would be more in the nature of a rebellion of the people and the army than a centralized dictatorship of the type offered by the different French revolutionary models.

Regarding social policy, and in keeping with the model of the Constitution of 1793 (and distancing itself from the proposals of the Robespierrists and Babeuf), Terradism defended state assistance for the destitute and poor workers, and public education open to everyone. The way to finance this activity of the state would be the “single tax”, an old model of taxation that can be traced back to the seventeenth century that was both simple and equitable, and which Cadiz liberalism had made its own. In short, even though at some point Terradism appeared to accept the right to subsistence, it tended to assume that a republican Cortes would legislate in favour of the majority, while at the same time respecting private property, free economic initiative, and a state with few powers. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that despite the fact that Terradism would come into contact with Étienne Cabet, its relations with French politicians also included the liberal republicanism of François Aragó and Le National.Footnote 28

The Terradist project also included defence of freedom of assembly and of the association of workers in trade unions. It echoed, then, both the propaganda of the French democrats as well as the social reform projects elaborated in Barcelona in the 1830s which, in response to the growing social tension, offered workers political and certain social rights. But if Terradist republicanism was the first to offer unconditional universal suffrage to workers, freedom of assembly was also defended by progresismo, with which the trade unions would ally themselves in preference (since in this way they obtained political protection and economic assistance).Footnote 29 None of the ideas of communist Cabet, or of any of the other French communists, can be found in Terradism.

Regarding the territorial organization of the state, the diversity of the Spanish nation, due to its historical evolution, demanded a federal solution. Terradism, though, would never give many details about exactly how to organize a federal state, aside from pointing out that the models were the United States and Switzerland. It is possible that the American model was taken from A. de Tocqueville, whose ideas, as in Europe as a whole, spread widely throughout Spain, with at least six translations into Spanish between 1836 and 1855 of his Democracy in America. And it is also quite possible that the ultimate justification of a federal state lies, above all, in the idea, widespread in Spanish republicanism, that only in this way is freedom guaranteed,Footnote 30 as had already been expressed in Barcelona in the decade of the 1830s.

In relation to French authors, who were an obvious source of inspiration, Terradism only remotely reflected the Constitution of 1793 and differed greatly from both Robespierrism and the social radicalism of Buonarroti and Blanqui or from the communism of Cabet – demonstrating that the liberal rereading of the French Revolution (and in Spain of the experience of Cadiz), was also shared by republicanism. The Spanish liberal tradition itself, and especially the Constitution of 1812, were of fundamental importance in explaining the political perspectives of this republicanism. And in certain aspects (such as in the relations with Catalan trade unions) Barcelona progresismo had taken the initiative in order to guarantee popular support.

Notwithstanding, Terradism was presented as, and was in reality, a radical political and social project. It was so, first, because it considered a republic to be a change that would drastically alter the political, administrative, and fiscal structure of the old Spanish monarchy, granting citizenship rights to all individuals and replacing the centralism of the Bourbons with a federal system. Secondly, it was so because it imagined that this change, initially political, would enable the living conditions of the majority of the population to be changed drastically, since they would not be subjected to an unjust fiscal system and would be freed from the abuses of landowners and the powerful. And thirdly, it was so because the majority of the population (or, at least, a good part of it) was to play a leading role in this change. Moreover, at a time in which the most categorical contempt for the “poor” prevailed among the wealthy upper and middle social classes, socialism was frequently contemplated as an attack on the ownership of the rich – and possibly part of the grassroots thought the same. Thus, these social insights into the Terradist movement place it in line with ideas raised in Barcelona as early as 1835, and which tended to identify political radicalism with greater equality in income distribution.Footnote 31

God And Freedom

Like El Sancho Gobernador, the El Republicano of Terradas was an anti-clerical newspaper. Nevertheless, at the same time, the religious references of its language are indisputable. Terradism adopted the thaumaturgic character of the Constitution of CadizFootnote 32 that had taken root among the popular classes,Footnote 33 and attributed it to the republic. But it also cloaked its ideas in the religious language of divine justice at the end of time as taught by the Church and that, as we shall see, some clerics had adapted to liberalism. Thus, the democrats’ fundamental task would be to spread “our holy doctrines” with “the patience and resignation of the martyr and the apostles”. The system of government defended by them would be equally holy, in the same way as the revolution was “saint and saviour”, and “day” would take place under God's blessing. Soon “the day for amends, the solemn day that, emancipated and free from the tyrants who infest it, [the People] will proclaim in presence of the Omnipotent, the sublime and benevolent Federal Republican system”.

In a similar way, the newspaper was illustrated with a caricature, in which a member of the people, armed with a pike, tramples on the royal symbols, causing the Regent Espartero, his lieutenant (who is carrying a sack of money), and Generals Van Halen and Zurbano, to flee, while Justice raises in one hand some scales, and in the other, a sword. The whole scene is presided over by God, represented as an eye inside an equilateral triangle (that is, by the revolutionary and Masonic symbol of the “Great Architect of the Universe”), while a ray, bursting out of black storm clouds, shoots towards the Regent's group, probably symbolizing God's wrath (or the people's, supposing that they are two different things). On that day, the people will “kill” (literally or metaphorically) their tyrants, in “atonement” for their “heinous crimes” (see Figure 2).

Another caricature shows the people ringing the bell (traditional element of mobilization), and expelling all their exploiters (the Regent – from whom the eagle, symbol of strength associated in the Bible with those who believe in God, snatched the royal crown – and his followers, those made rich by unfair taxes, and the British who wished to ruin industry), while a winged being, blowing a trumpet, blessed them. This being undoubtedly refers to the winged Victory figures so popular in the neoclassical iconography of the French Revolution, but the newspaper commentary situates it in Christian iconography, since the day of triumph of the revolution will also be the day of “tremendous justice”, as in the Book of Revelation, in which all manner of misfortune falls upon the sinners to the sound of the angels’ trumpets, while the moment to reward the “holy people” is come.

Moreover, the image of the angel with the trumpet (although without the laurel crown of the Victory figures), was very frequent in the iconography related to death – found, to take an obvious example, on the tombstones of Philip V and Ferdinand VI – so that it is very likely that the republicans were using a very popularized image of the Last Judgement to refer to the “judgement” of the tyrants. The reference to the “Great Architect” suggests, together with the banquet offered in Toulouse by Gouhenant, which, according to Cabet, would celebrate the festival of St John of Winter, that the Terradas movement had Masonic connections. In Spain, this was a minority tradition but, in any case, it was not opposed to the important role of religion analysed here, but rather reinforced it. Despite being heretical according to the Catholic Church, the freemasonry inherited from the eighteenth century had a firm religious faith and was even mystical.Footnote 34

Figure 2 A caricature from El Republicano illustrated its idea of the “Holy Revolution”: the people would get rid of the tyrants thanks to divinity on the “day” that, at long last, justice would be done. El Republicano, 5, 10 October 1842; Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona, Hemeroteca.

Terradism, in short, not only put forward a political project in religious terms, but also in millenarianist terms. Progresismo associated religion with freedom but rejected the “fanaticism” of the established Church. Terradism, by contrast, did not hesitate to defend an original synthesis between new political freedoms and old religious beliefs. In the context of the Western world, this synthesis was not original. Millenarianism had been a central element of Christian tradition, with the Revelation of St John as its main referent. This justified the idea of the world coming to an end in the near future, determined in Christ's reign during 1,000 years of peace, after which the definitive battle between Good and Evil would take place. Once the latter was conquered, the Last Judgement would take place.

From St Augustine onwards, the Church rejected the idea of Christ's 1,000-year-reign, as well as the return to the original earthly paradise, but the reading of “signs”, which would indicate Christ's second coming, became a central element of Christianity.Footnote 35 Between 1750 and 1850, millenarianism continued to be a basic cultural element, which was associated with political interpretations of all kinds, especially in the United States and Great Britain, where there was a growing fusion of religious elements with strictly secular ones, such as republican freedom, the progress of science, and the wish for greater social equality.Footnote 36

Although there were no great millenarian movements in Mediterranean Europe, while a “pessimistic” millenarian current in Italy (the majority among Catholic opinion and the ecclesiastical hierarchy) saw in the French Revolution the sign of the coming of the Antichrist, an “optimistic” viewpoint (present in the reformist sectors of the Church), saw in it the arrival of a new order, and the imminent return of Jesus, who was to come to establish the millenarian realm of harmony on earth.Footnote 37 In France, the historiography of the 1970s and 1980s placed emphasis on the de-Christianization of Year II and minimized both the religious content of the cult of the Supreme Being and the enormous religious impregnation of Jacobin language – studied by Crane Brinton.Footnote 38 From this perspective, the good tidings of the Revolution would be strictly earthly and the sacralization of the Revolution would be, precisely, the negation of any transcendent referent for humanity. In short, the citations of Jesus as the first sans-culotte would signify the humanization of Jesus and not the deification of the revolutionaries.Footnote 39

Among European revolutionaries of the first half of the nineteenth century, syntheses between secular revolution and religious millenarianism were quite frequent. Owen, Cabet, the Saint-Simonians and the Fourierists, the majority of the French communists, or Mazzini, were also imbued with religious fervour (obviously “heterodox”) and associated divinity with their plans for an earthly paradise. The radical activists themselves and their projects identified with the image of a Christ who was a model of poverty, work, persecution and justice, with that of the apostles (as in the case of Terradism), or with the very Divinity itself, to the degree that this was still synonymous with justice. In short, religion was still inseparable from the majority of projects of political and social transformation, quite different from what would occur in 1860.Footnote 40

With Spain, we find a situation impregnated with millenarianist religiosity. The Roman catechism published at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries insisted on the necessity of the Last Judgement at the end of time to judge appropriately the works of humanity. And it insisted, equally, on the signs that would precede it and that would announce to humanity the second coming of the Messiah.Footnote 41 Notwithstanding the fact that it affirmed that these occurrences would not take place in the immediate future, the idea soon began to circulate that the French Revolution formed part of these signs. The Jesuit Lorenzo Hervás affirmed this directly,Footnote 42 and a more moderate version was quickly disseminated: if the current circumstances were not those of the end of time, they were, in human history, those which most resembled it. War was presented, thereby, as a war between Good and Evil. And in some especially dramatic circumstances, such as the siege of Girona in 1809, as the definitive struggle between Good and Evil at the end of time.

A similar discourse had an obvious continuity in the following years in the absolutism that fought against the liberal regime; and ideas about the end of the world, at times linked to natural phenomena such as eclipses, appear to have enjoyed popular widespread acceptance. No doubt, the Civil War, with its death struggle between liberals and absolutists, stimulated the synthesis between the old millenarianist ideas and the new liberal language. In a discourse that we find among certain clerics, the French were replaced by the absolutists as the incarnation of Evil, the liberal class became the saintly class that incarnated Good, and the idea was repeated that a morality in keeping with divine will was an indispensable premise for victory. The Constitution became a new table of the law. The liberals were the martyrs of the Lord. And the God of the armies that had imagined themselves fighting against the French was now seen as the enemy of the absolutists.Footnote 43

The millenarianism of Terradas, we could state along with Hobsbawm,Footnote 44 was not strictly religious. “Signs”, which were to indicate the intervention of God in creating a “new land”, were no longer expected. This was not only strictly earthly, but would be created anyway by a purely human action, the proclamation of a republican constitution. Nor would a predestined Messiah be found to carry out such a revolution. And given that Terradas was quite familiar with the arguments of the France of 1793, it is quite possible that he drew inspiration from this – as we are led to believe by the use of the symbol of the Great Architect of the Universe or of the revolutionary Supreme Being to refer to divinity. Indeed, perhaps for him or some of his collaborators, the divinity to which they appealed was not much different from these French references. But we can hardly speak of a transfer of sacredness of divinity to the revolution or to country that would negate at the same time all concept of the supernatural.

First, as in radical liberalism as a whole, divinity was a fundamental element in justification of the political project. The theory of natural rights on which liberals upheld their defence of the rights of the individual was justified, ultimately, in divine will. This probably also justified human fraternity beyond selfish individualism – as would also be seen in El Popular. Second, the language and images that the liberals used were continuist in relation to the traditional Church, as is evident in references to divinity such as “the Almighty” or the use of funerary symbolism. In a context in which even millenarianist ideas had already been placed at the service of “freedom” by some clerics, the Terradist discourse should hardly be perceived of as a negation of the Christian God. Rather, it was but a variant within the complex syntheses between religion and freedom that were tested in Spain at the end of the eighteenth century and that in the end, hoped to rescue divinity from the hands of “obscurantism”.

It is possible that Terradism's millenarianist position was in part to do with the public to which it was addressed. Juan Francisco Fuentes pointed out that in El Huracán the section of serials in verse form, more directly addressed to the popular classes than the rest of the newspaper, presented a sacralization of democracy and its symbols and an osmosis between civil liberty and religious redemption that is missing in the prose texts, which were much more secular in nature.Footnote 45 Further, El Republicano is clearly more interclassist than El Popular, which was more patrician. But as has been shown in the case of the United States, millenarianism enjoyed success in the nineteenth century in both the popular sectors and the middle classes. In Barcelona, we can verify for 1835 (and especially for 1839) the creation of a broad interclassist social base with radical ideas. These sectors include diverse elements ranging from liberal professionals, merchants, or small manufacturers to qualified workers and labourers. In rural areas we find, in addition, small farmers and fieldworkers. It was to all of these that the millenarianist message of Terradism and some liberal clerics was addressed. But it was also among these groups that progresismo obtained many followers, and who were also addressed by El Sancho Gobernador for the first time. Further, the first trade unions, made up of qualified workers with increasingly diminishing wages, also vindicated a God of brotherhood without any kind of millenarianist language.Footnote 46 In short, among these popular sectors and the middle classes we find a wide range of ideological perspectives, which run the gamut from progresismo and the Constitution of 1812 to republicanism, with or without millenarianist ideas, and without it being possible to identify these political groups with homogeneous social groups different from one another.Footnote 47

Much more explanatory is the political content of millenarianism. In effect, this appears as a function of the radicalism with which the opposition between the different social or political actors is perceived. El Sancho Gobernador, with its very secular language, evolved towards republicanism but was published at a time in which a broad liberal alliance still seemed possible. In a similar way El Popular, with much more religious language, believed, even though it was published four years later, that liberal unity was still possible and desirable. And the discourse of the trade unions did not consider the conflict between workers and employers a fight to the death (as anarchism would) but as a temporary confrontation to achieve a just distribution of the profits of industry, accepting that both workers and owners were necessary for it to function smoothly. In all three cases, what is being sought is some type of agreement with “the other” and, therefore, millenarianism did not make sense.

Quite different is the perspective of the millenarianist discourse during the Civil War, as much in the radical version of certain sermons as in the more moderate version of the militiaman's diary. With absolutism neither truce nor agreement were possible; it was perceived as a mortal enemy which had to be exterminated – hence the extreme savagery of the struggle. In the case of El Republicano, agreement with the constitutional monarchy was no longer seen to be possible. The rulers were tyrants who had to be driven out of power and, if need be, exterminated. Political change would occur rapidly and, most likely, violently. In one case and the other, therefore, millenarianism expressed the absolute radicalism of the confrontation and the irreconcilable nature of the different political actors, considered enemies rather than rivals.

From 1844 to 1854

The repressive nature of the majority of nineteenth-century Spanish governments conditioned the evolution of republicanism. This was the case of the Moderate Decade (1844–1854) during which repression made all public activity of the opposition impossible, even of the progresistas. Therefore, the republican influence must be sought, not in political activity in a strict sense, but in the social novel or in certain failed uprisings, undertaken in collaboration with progresismo. The only public organization would be the Partido Demócrata, founded in 1849, which, along with certain typically republican demands (such as the single tax and abolition of the military draft system known as the quintes) included others that were typically progresista (such as defence of the constitutional monarchy).

During this Moderate Decade, Terradas was forced into exile and it would be from Paris that, in 1848, he would call for insurrection. In 1847, Terradas defined himself as a “republican”, “democrat”, and “socialist”. His political practice adapted to the first two concepts, but also to the third, if we understand “socialism” (as it was understood at that time), as the defence of human fraternity beyond liberal individualism. It was only in private correspondence dating from 1847 that he considered the spread of communist ideas “very beneficial”, and agreed to a communist trial, if well organized. However, when some of his disciples embraced Icarian ideas in 1847–1848, he refused to collaborate publicly.Footnote 48 The important economic decisions of the France of 1848 (national workshops that go beyond the traditional measures to fight unemployment or a “department of labour”)Footnote 49 are absent from Terradism. The limitation of the work day would be a demand from 1854–1856, and democracy would have to be male, white, and, in the case of El Popular, preferably middle-class.Footnote 50

Certainly, between 1849 and 1854, some of the themes of the new socialism, and especially, of Louis Blanc, would turn up in pamphlets and in the Spanish press. Proposals for a people's bank, the democratization of credit and criticism of private property resulted in prohibitions and governmental penalties, but did not alter the practice of Catalan republicanism that, in 1854–1856, turned its efforts to the legalization of trade unionism.Footnote 51 In effect, in the years 1854–1856 (Bienio Progresista), republicanism would once again be able to act in the public domain and would play a leading role in the division between socialism and individualism. In this discussion, the majority of Catalan republicans took the side of Francisco Pi y Margall and his social postulates – that were put into practice defending public trade-union activity.

But if the social programme of the republicanism of 1854–1856 was essentially a continuation of that of 1840–1843, a great variety of ideas began to appear on the question of religion. Some, such as those of Fernando Garrido (one of the most important Spanish republican publicists, greatly admired in Catalonia) presented in 1862 Jesus Christ as the first communist, reiterating a view that had already arisen in Europe much earlier. Meanwhile, during a large part of the rest of the nineteenth century, republican criticism was aimed more at the Catholic Church as an institution than at religion in the strict sense.Footnote 52 But at the same time, and as would happen with French radicalism in the 1860s, the continued presence of the Church among counter-revolutionary forces would induce the view of religion to turn much more critical. In 1868, Pi y Margall affirmed that the very idea of God was open to criticism, and in 1869 the Catalan republican Francesc Sunyer Capdevila would openly defend atheism, as would the anarchist publication La Solidaridad the following year.Footnote 53 The clericalism–anti-clericalism dynamic worsened and explicitly placed in doubt the very existence of divinity.

Conclusions

Contrary to majority liberalism, Spanish republicanism throughout the first half of the nineteenth century defended the validity of the principle of national sovereignty. As a radical version of liberalism, this republicanism upheld the legacy of the French Revolution but even its most radical group, Terradism, subjected it to a profound revision. Thus, its proposals, only remotely recalled the Constitution of 1793 and in no way reproduced the proposals for radical social transformation of the Robespierrists or the French revolutionaries of the 1830s or 1840s. Spanish historiography has accurately indicated the republican vindication of national sovereignty and has noted the influence received from Jacobins and neo-Jacobins. The religious aspect of these groups, by contrast, has received little attention. A more observant analysis of this question reveals an original model of religiosity, once it was accepted that the Spanish nation was Catholic. This model, centred on a version of religion that strived to be simpler, purer, and closer to the teachings of Jesus, represented a firm challenge to the established Church.

In spite of the extraordinary harshness of the Civil War and the support of the established Church for the absolutists, this anti-clericalism did not question the very existence of divinity, albeit that the degree of secularization of the various republican proposals was diverse – with El Sancho Gobernador's being the proposal that showed the least interest in the subject. In general, though, radical liberalism and republicanism not only accepted the existence of divinity but considered it the ultimate foundation of their political proposals. There is no doubt that French influence was important in the elaboration of this synthesis, but we must also bear in mind the dynamic of the Spanish liberal revolution itself, which drew nourishment from the projects of ecclesiastical reform of eighteenth-century Spain and that had, in its confrontation with the Church, a fundamental catalyst for the creation of critical opinions towards the official religion.

Among the variants of this liberal religiosity we also find the millenarianism of the Civil War and of El Republicano. Here, more than in any other of the aspects under study, we find the profound influence of the cultural context in which the radicals existed. The War of Independence reactivated the classic discourse of the Church concerning the second coming of the Messiah, pointing out that the events they were living through were the signs indicated by the Bible – or, at least, were what most resembled them. In the harshness of the Civil War, this discourse was transformed by some liberal clerics and used as a weapon against the absolutists, an action that represented the apex of liberal appropriation of biblical discourse.

Millenarianist discourse can hardly be linked with one specific social group. Rather, the most operative interpretation is that which links it with the perception of the radicalism of the confrontation with political opponents. Taking on religious language, millenarianism appears when political confrontation is seen as a fight to the death without the possibility of any agreement. It signifies, in essence, the supposition of direct divine intervention – a subject that was enormously popular during the War of Independence – on the side of true Christians. From this perspective, religion did not necessarily uphold established political or social order. At that time, all combinations seemed possible.

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Figure 0

Figure 1 “Blood, blood, before the people awaken”. El Sancho Gobernador considered that friars, bishops, and the Inquisition were contrary to progress. In view of the fact that a large part of the Church lent support to absolutism, it was blamed for the deaths of the Civil War. El Sancho Gobernador, Colección de caricaturas de El Sancho Gobernador número 9, private collection.

Figure 1

Figure 2 A caricature from El Republicano illustrated its idea of the “Holy Revolution”: the people would get rid of the tyrants thanks to divinity on the “day” that, at long last, justice would be done. El Republicano, 5, 10 October 1842; Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona, Hemeroteca.