A European Culture War in the Twentieth Century? Antic-Catholicism and Anti-Bolshevism between Moscow, Berlin, and the Vatican 1922 to 1933

The term “culture war” has become a generic expression for secular-catholic conflicts across nineteenth-century Europe. Yet, if measured by acts of violence, anticlericalism peaked in the years between 1927 and 1939, when thousands of Catholic priests and believers were imprisoned or executed and hundreds of churches razed in Mexico, Spain and Russia. This essay argues that not only in these three countries, but indeed across Europe a culture war raged in the interwar period. It takes, as a case study, the interaction of communist and Catholic actors located in the Vatican, the Soviet Union, and Germany in the period between the beginning of the Pontificate of Pius XI in 1922 and Hitler’s appointment as chancellor of Germany in 1933. Using correspondence and reports from the Vatican archives, this essay shows how Papal officials and communist leaders each sought to mobilize the German populace to achieve their own diplomatic ends. German Catholics and communists gladly responded to the call to arms that sounded from Rome and Moscow in 1930, but they did so also to further their own domestic goals. The case study shows how national contexts inflected the transnational dynamics of radical anti-Catholicism in interwar Europe. In the end, agitation against “godlessness” did not lead to the return of a “Christian State” desired by many conservative Christians. Instead, the culture war further destabilized the republic and added a religious dimension to a landscape well suited to National Socialist efforts to reach a Christian population otherwise mistrustful of its völkisch and anticlerical elements.

L'ascendant du double dans Les Caves du Vatican et dans Les Faux-Monnayeurs d’André Gide : personnages et narration

Ce travail explore la dualité telle qu’elle se présente dans deux ouvrages d’André Gide, Les Caves du Vatican et Les Faux-Monnayeurs. Thème majeur de la littérature, le double ne cesse d’illustrer les différentes tensions qui se créent et se combattent chez une seule et même personne. Souvent représenté physiquement dans la littérature du XIXe siècle à la suite de la figure du Doppelgänger, le double chez Gide se complexifie : plus subtil, il se manifeste de manière psychologique. La dualité se présente de deux manières dans les écrits d’André Gide : chez les personnages et à travers la narration. Par l’étude des contradictions et des inconséquences des personnages, de la représentation de la dualité chez différents personnages, de leur dédoublement et de leurs doubles discours, il sera possible de constater à quel point les personnages structurent la dualité. L’analyse de l’identité des narrateurs, de leurs interventions et des figures de rhétorique qu’ils emploient permettra également de comprendre que plus ils se révèlent, plus ils se complexifient.

Deux élégies du Vatican : extrait [Auszug]

par Arsène Darmesteter

“An Italian of the Vatican type” : The Roman formation of Cardinal Paul Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin

Peer reviewed

The Vatican; its history--its treasures.

A compilation, edited by Ernesto Begni, James C. Grey and Thomas J. Kennedy.

The history of the popes from the close of the Middle Ages. Drawn from the secret archives of the Vatican and other original sources.

Vols.1-6 edited by F. I. Antrobus; Vols. 7-24 edited by R. F. Kerr; Vols.25-34 edited by Ernest Graf; Vols. 35- edited by E. F. Peeler.

Anacreon Teius, poeta lyricus, summa cura & diligentia, ad fidem etiam vet. ms. Vatican.... Item Anacreontis Vita [et]c. Accessere ornamenti tres eleganter-sculptae effiges auctoris, Anacreontis. Patroni, D. Ducis de Marlborough /

Mode of access: Internet.

Histoire du Pontificat de Clément XIV : d'après des documents inédits des archives secrètes du Vatican /

Contiene: T. I (566) -- T. II (539 p.)

Novum Testamentum Domini Nostri Iesu Christi : vulgatae editionis juxta exemplar Vatican. anni 1592.

Mode of access: Internet.