The martyrs and the saints: Masculinity and the construction of the Francoist crusade

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 47, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 68-98

  Vincent, Mary ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0004213714     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/1999.47.68     Document Type: Article

References (139)

1. Most famous is Ignacio G. Menéndez-Reigada, 'La guerra nacional ante la moral y el derecho', La Ciencia Tomista 56 and 57, 1937,
2. but see also Aniceto Castro Albarrán, El derecho a la rebeldía, Madrid, 1934 (reissued as El derecho al alzamiento, Salamanca, 1941).
3. The theology of the rising is discussed in José M. Sánchez, The Spanish Civil War as a Religious Tragedy, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1987, chap. 11.
4. See also Javier Tusell and Genoveva García Quiepo de Llano, El catolicismo mundial y la guerra de España, Madrid, 1993.
5. See further, Frances Lannon, 'Modern Spain: the Project of a National Catholicism' in Stuart Mews, ed., Religion and National Identity, Oxford, 1982, pp. 567-90
6. and her Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy: The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875-1975, Oxford, 1987, esp. pp. 179-214.
7. While such a process may be paralleled elsewhere in Europe, it was particularly acute in Spain. See Lannon, Privilege, Persecution and Prophecy and Mary Vincent, Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic Religion and Politics in Salamanca, 1930-1936, Oxford, 1996.
8. Natalie Zemon Davis, 'Women's History in Transition: the European Case', Feminist Studies 3, 1975, pp. 83-103;
9. Joan W. Scott, 'Gender: A Useful Category of Hisorical Analysis', American Historical Review 91, 1985, pp. 1,073-5;
10. Gisela Bock, 'Women's History and Gender History: Aspects of an International Debate', Gender and History 1, 1989, pp. 7-30.
11. On masculinity, see Michael Roper and John Tosh, 'Introduction: Historians and the Politics of Masculinity', in Michael Roper and John Tosh, eds., Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800, London, 1991, pp. 1-24,
12. and John Tosh, 'What Should Historians Do with Masculinity?: Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain', History Workshop Journal 38, 1994, pp. 179-202.
13. George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: the Creation of Modern Masculinity, NY and Oxford, 1996, pp. 109-113. Mosse argues that the modern masculine stereotype was already in place by 1914, but certain features were deepened by the experience of World War One.
14. While these codes could coincide with those current in northern or central Europe, the emphasis laid on their specifically Catholic and Spanish nature set them apart. See, for example, the very different example of militarized masculinity discussed in Lutz Niethammer, 'Male Fantasies: an argument for and with an important new study in history and psychoanalysis', History Workshop 7, 1979, pp. 176-86.
15. As Church archives (both in Spain and the Vatican) remain closed for the period of the Second Republic and Civil War and access to private papers is unusual, this is among the most important bodies of material available to the researcher.
16. Enrique Plá y Deniel, 'Las dos cuidades', Boletín Eclesiástico del Obispado de Salamanca, 1936, pp. 262-313 at pp. 270-1, 296;
17. see also Vincent, Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic chap. 11.
18. 'El caso de España', 23 Nov. 1936, reproduced in Isidro Gomá y Tomás, For Dios y por España, Barcelona, 1940.
19. 'Las dos ciudades', pp. 270-1, 295.
20. Almost exactly the same words were used by the fascist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera in his 'Letter to the Soldiers of Spain' written from prison in May 1936: 'have you not heard Spanish girls these days shouting 'Children, yes; husbands, no!'?', José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Selected Writings ed. Hugh Thomas, London, 1972, pp. 238-43 at p. 239). This suggests the story had acquired proverbial status among the right.
21. Outside Spain, clerical writers frequently referred to the unlikely figure of St Thérèse of Lisieux as '"virile" in recognition of her courage and hardiness', Barbara Corrado Pope, 'A Heroine without Heroics: the Little Flower of Jesus and Her Times', Church History 57:1, 1988, pp. 46-60 at p. 57.
22. 'Las dos cuidades', p. 300;
23. the use of such language was well established: much earlier in the life of the Republic, for instance, a Jesuit magazine had proclaimed the illegitimacy of the notion 'that women fight like men, while men rest like women': Estrella del Mar (Organo de la Confederación Mariana Española), 8 Oct. 1931.
24. Mosse, Image of Man, chap. 4 discusses how this countertype could be applied to all threatening figures, notably Jews.
25. Giuliana di Febo, 'El "Monje Guerrero": identidad de género en los modelos franquistas durante la Guerra Civil', in Instituto de la Mujer, Las mujeres y la Guerra Civil Española: III Jornadas de estudios monográficos. Salamanca, octobre 1989, Madrid, 1989, pp. 204-5.
26. Mosse, Image of Man, p. 156.
27. Image of Man, chap. 2.
28. Jo Labanyi, 'Propaganda Art: Culture by the People or for the People?' in Helen Graham and Jo Labanyi, eds, Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction. The Struggle for Modernity, Oxford, 1995, p. 163.
29. Much of Sáenz de Tejada's work was produced as illustrations for Joaquin Arrarás's monumental Historia de la cruzada española, 8 vols, Madrid, 1939-43. Interestingly, he used the same physical type in his fictional depictions of Republican militiamen so suggesting that they were true Spaniards, at least physically, betraying their national and cultural heritage.
30. An article in Estrella del Mar, 24 Aug. 1930, lamented the rise of 'body culture' and its predominance in 'materialist societies', claiming that, in Austria, 'liberals and socialists' were the most fervent supporters of 'semi-nude' gymnastics.
31. Mary Nash, Defying Male Civilization: Women in the Spanish Civil War, Denver, Colorado, 1995, pp. 48-54, 105-16;
32. see also Frances Lannon, 'Women and Images of Woman in the Spanish Civil War', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1991, pp. 213-28.
33. The 'separate spheres' notion that men and women were naturally different was espoused in pre-civil-war Spain not only by Catholics but also by eminent secular figures such as the endocrinologist Gregorio Marañón: Nash, Defying Male Civilization, pp. 10-17.
34. On the developments in medical thinking which underpinned these ideas, see further Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, London, 1990;
35. and Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Hemel Hempstead, 1989.
36. 'Guidelines of the Falange: the 26 Points', no. 25 in Primo de Rivera, Selected Writings, p. 137.
37. On Spanish fascism more generally see Stanley Payne, Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism, Stanford, Calif., 1961;
38. Sheelagh Ellwood, Spanish Fascism in the Franco Era, London, 1987;
39. and Martin Blinkhorn, "The Iberian States' in Detlev Mülberger, ed., The Social Basis of European Fascist Movements, London, 1987, pp. 320-48.
40. FE: Organo de Falange Española 1 Feb. 1934;
41. JAP: Organo nacional de las Juventudes de Acción Popular de España, 27 Oct. 1934, 20 April 1935.
42. La Gaceta Regional (Salamanca), 9 Feb. 1936.
43. 'Speech on the Spanish Revolution', 19 May 1935, Primo de Rivera, Selected Writings, pp. 175-89 at p. 189.
44. No Importa: Boletín de los días de persecución, 6 June 1936.
45. Onésimo Redondo, 'Castilla en España', in Juan Aparicio, ed., JONS, Barcelona, 1939, pp. 160-73, quotation at p. 162.
46. José Antonio's speech made at the founding meeting of the FE de las JONS in Valladolid, 4 Mar. 1934 contains a similar vision (Selected Writings, pp. 88-97), although the unSpanish 'other' for him was Asia rather than Africa. This was a more usual slant, not least because it could encompass Russian communism as well as Jews.
47. Gaceta Regional, 24 Jan. 1934;
48. JAP: Periódico quincenal de la JAP (Avila), 22 April 1934.
49. FE, 1 Mar. 1935 and throughout;
50. JAP, 27 Oct. 1934, 1 Feb. 1936 and throughout.
51. FE, 7 Dec. 1933;
52. JAP, 27 Oct., 10 Nov. 1934.
53. See Mosse, Image of Man, chap. 3.
54. FE, 7 Dec. 1933, 11 Jan. 1934;
55. JAP, 27 Oct. 1933, 10 Nov. 1934.
56. Arriba (Reproducción facsimil del Seminario de la Falange), 2 May 1935.
57. The provision and structure of Catholic education is discussed more fully in Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, chap. 3;
58. and Vincent, Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic, chap. 2.
59. Established in 1877 by a group of liberal intellectuals, the coeducational ILE had great influence among a new cultural and political elite. Famous alumni included the poet Antonio Machado, while the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset was a friend of the Institute. Associations with the Socialist Party were particularly marked: both Julián Besteiro and Fernando de los Ríos were ex-pupils. See further, Carolyn Boyd, Historia Patria: Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875-1975, Princeton, NJ, 1997 chap. 1;
60. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution and Prophecy, pp. 51-2, 68-70;
61. together with Paul Heywood, Marxism and the Failure of Organised Socialism in Spain, 1879-1936, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 20-4, 87-91
62. and Paul Preston, 'A Pacifist in War: The Tragedy of Julián Besteiro', Tesserae 2, 1996, pp. 179-208.
63. Fernando de Lasala SJ, 'Pastoral Jesuíta: Orihuela, 1872-1956', Hispania Sacra 45, 1993, pp. 683-4. The Luises were established for young men of university age and so largely recruited among an already defined social and intellectual elite. Members had commonly previously belonged to the schoolboys' Congregation of Mary Immaculate and St Stanislaus Kostka (Kostkas), though this had a wider membership; ex-Luises could subsequently join the smaller sodality for adult and married men, the Knights of the Immaculate Conception and St Ignatius.
64. He remained director of the Luises during his time in León but was transferred to Gijón rather abruptly in 1940: 'La Prefectura de las Misiones Populares de la provincia de León', pp. 8, 42;
65. 'Memoria de la Residencia de Salamanca durante estos 25 años, 1918-43', pp. 12, 16, 19-20, in Bodas de Plata de la Provincia de León SJ, private publication for the Society of Jesus, n.p., n.d. [León, 1943?].
66. Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, Escritos politicos 1935-6, ed. Trinidad Ledesma Ramos, Madrid, 1988, pp. 70-1 and esp. 255-7.
67. JAP (Avila), 16 Aug. 1933; women and girls also attended Spiritual Exercises, which were always given to groups segregated by sex and age, as well as by marital, social and occupational status.
68. 'Memoria de la Residencia de Salamanca', p. 29, Bodas de Plata de la Provincia de León SJ.
69. Pius XI, Casti Conubii, 1930.
70. 'La personalidad de la mujer', Estrella del Mar, 1933, pp. 226-7, pp. 345-6, pp. 390-1;
71. 'Lo femenino y la Falange', Arriba, 2 May 1935.
72. Estrella del Mar, 1930, pp. 562-3.
73. Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 1981, §10-12. Such teaching was vigorously emphasized under the early Franco regime.
74. The acquisition of full adult status was contingent on marriage; this emerges clearly from anthropological studies of Spain; for example, Julian Pitt-Rivers, The People of the Sierra, 2nd ed.; Chicago, 1971, chaps 6 and 7;
75. Carmelo Lisón Tolosana, Belmonte de los Caballeros, Princeton, 1983, chap. 7;
76. William A. Christian Jr, Person and God in a Spanish Valley, 2nd edn Princeton, 1989, pp. 18-28 (esp. pp. 23-6) and 157.
77. An interpretation which dated from the Counter-Reformation, Francisco Vázquez García, 'Historia de la sexualidad en España: problemas metodológicas y estado de la cuestión', Hispania 194, 1996, pp. 1,007-35.
78. See, for example, Estrella de Mar, 1933, p. 35.
79. E.K. Francis, 'Towards a Typology of Religious Orders', American Journal of Sociology, 1949-50;
80. H.P.M. Goddijn, 'The Sociology of Religious Orders and Congregations', Social Compass, 1960.
81. See further Boyd, Historia Patria, chaps 4 and 6.
82. See further di Febo, 'El 'Monje Guerrero" and, in a Protestant context, Pamela J. Walker, "I Live but Not Yet for Christ Liveth in Me': Men and Masculinity in the Salvation Army' in Roper and Tosh, eds, Manful Assertions, pp. 92-112.
83. In, for example, the series 'Congregant Saints of the Month', Valor y Fe 29, Jan. 1937;
84. Valor y Fe 32, April 1937;
85. or the national bullletin, Estrella del Mar, 24 Nov. 1930;
86. Estrella del Mar, 8 Nov. 1932;
87. Estrella del Mar, 24 July 1934.
88. The Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols, New York, 1913-22, vol. 1, pp. 331-2, 8, pp. 450-1, 14, pp. 245-6;
89. Michael Walsh, ed., Butler's Lives of the Saints, concise edition;
90. Tunbridge Wells, 1985, pp. 187-9;
91. Donald Attwater, A Dictionary of Saints, Harmondsworth, 1965, pp. 40, 298-9.
92. Gaceta Regional (Salamanca), 9 April 1932.
93. Boletín Eclesiástico del Obispado de Salamanca, 1935, pp. 152-3.
94. Estrella del Mar, 24 Oct. 1930;
95. Estrella del Mar, 8 Nov. 1932.
96. During the first months of 1931, for instance, the cover was redesigned to resemble a prayer card, Estrella del Mar, 1930-33 throughout, esp. 8 Feb., 8 Aug. 1930;
97. Estrella del Mar, 8 June 1932.
98. Representations of Mary such as the Sorrowing or Solitary Mother were used at Easter and to convey political messages, only appearing regularly in 1932, under an anti-clerical government.
99. On the development of Marian cult in modern Europe see Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctine and Devotion, combined edn; London, 1985, pp. 78-129;
100. Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, London, 1976;
101. Barbara Corrado Pope, 'Immaculate and Powerful: the Marian Revival in the Nineteenth Century' in Clarissa Atkinson, Constance Buchanan and Margaret Miles, eds, Immaculate and Powerful: the Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality, Boston, 1985, pp. 173-200;
102. and David Blackbourn, The Marpingen Visions: Rationalism, Religion and the Rise of Modern Germany, Oxford, 1993, chap. 1.
103. On the gendered nature of religious symbols, see Caroline Walker Bynum, 'Introduction: the Complexity of Symbols', in C. W. Bynum, S. Harrell and others, Religion and Gender: Essays on the Complexity of Symbols, 1987, pp. 1-20.
104. For an earlier period a Freudian interpretation of this is offered by Luisa Accati, 'The larceny of desire: the Madonna in seventeenth-century Catholic Europe', in Jim Obelkevich, Lyndal Roper, Raphael Samuel, eds, Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarchy, London, 1987, pp. 73-85.
105. See also Michael P. Carroll, The Cult of the Virgin Mary: Psychological Origins, Princeton, 1986.
106. Estrella del Mar, 8 Oct 1933.
107. Similar tactics were employed in many Catholic youth groups to encourage/enforce pious observance. The parish youth groups established in the city of Salamanca, for instance, tried a variety of means of enforcement, including compulsory monthly communion, taking registers, and exclusion from the clubhouse, Gaceta Regional, 4 June, 2 Nov. 1932;
108. Gaceta Regional, 8 Feb. 1933.
109. Recounted by Constancia de la Mora who also recalled an art textbook with human anatomy painted out apart from head, hands, and feet, de la Mora, In Place of Splendour: The Autobiography of a Spanish Woman, London, 1940, pp. 15-19, 27-8.
110. See further, Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, pp. 49-50.
111. The lack of acceptance of homosexuality, even in liberal, intellectual circles is explored in Ian Gibson, Federico García Lorca, New York, 1989,
112. and his earlier, The Assassination of Federico Garcia Lorca, Harmondsworth, 1983.
113. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution and Prophecy, pp. 97-9 discusses non-celibate priests.
114. See further, Vázquez García, 'Historia de la sexualidad'.
115. Shirley Mangini, Memories of Resistance: Women's Voices from the Spanish Civil War, New Haven, 1995, chaps 5 and 6 throughout and esp. pp. 127-30.
116. Polemic accounts had them dressed as men and taking part in executions, see for instance Raquel García González, 'El taller del soldado en Valladolid, marzo 1937-diciembre 1938', in Instituto de la Mujer, Las mujeres y la Guerra Civil Española, pp. 182-3.
117. A point made in Florencia Carrionero Salimero and others, 'La mujer tradicionalista: las Margaritas' in Las mujeres y la Guerra Civil, pp. 192-3.
118. This process is explored further in di Febo, 'El 'Monje Guerrero", esp. pp. 202-3.
119. Letter from Pilar Lamamié de Clairac dated 10 November 37, quoted in full in Mar'a Teresa Camarero Nuñez, Mi nombre nuevo 'Magnificat': Maria del Pilar Lamamié de Clairac y Alonso ACJ 1915-1954, Madrid, 1960, pp. 17-19.
120. Martin Blinkhorn, Carlism and Crisis in Spain, 1931-9, Cambridge, 1975, pp. 260-2 calls them 'the most exaltedly violent element within the Nationalist armies'.
121. Valor y Fe: Extraordinario dedicado a la Patria y sus Martires 28, Nov. 1936.
122. Valor y Fe 26, Aug. 1936.
123. 'Oración de los niños españoles a María Inmaculada' and 'Acto de Consagración a la Virgen Santísima', Boletín Eclasiástico del Obispado de Salamanca, 1937, pp. 99, 165-6. The latter originated in Zaragoza diocese.
124. di Febo, 'El 'Monje Guerrero", p. 206, places this idea of 'redemptive blood' in a fascist tradition as well as a religious one.
125. 'Acto de consagración al Sagrado Corazón de Jesús', Boletín Eclesiástico del Obispado de Salamanca, 1937, pp. 101-2. The cult of the Sacred Heart had been enthusiastically promulgated by the Jesuits in Spain since at least the late nineteenth century, and had come to symbolize the defence of the Church against a material world.
126. Authoritative statistics are given in Antonio Montero Moreno, Historia de la Persecution Religiosa en España, 1936-9, Madrid, 1961.
127. A typical hagiography is Aniceto Castro Albarrán, La gran víctima, Salamanca, 1940.
128. di Febo, 'El 'Monje Guerrero", p. 206. This important article sees these concepts as underlying much of the Nationalist war effort, whether religiously inspired or not.
129. Among illuminating recent work on gender and war see, Margaret R. Higonnet and others, eds, Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, New Haven, Connecticut, 1987;
130. Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds, Divided Houses:Gender and the Civil War, New York and Oxford, 1992 (on the U. S. Civil War);
131. Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War, London, 1996, esp. introduction.
132. Quoted Julio Nuñez Alonso, 'Las mujeres en retaguardia durante la Guerra Civil en Segovia', Las mujeres y la Guerra Civil Española, p. 175.
133. 'Acto de consagración a la Santísima Virgen'.
134. This contrast is touched on in Helen Graham, 'Women and Social Change', in Graham and Labanyi, eds, Spanish Cultural Studies, esp. pp. 100-5;
135. and discussed in Lannon, 'Women and Images of Woman in the Spanish Civil War'.
136. di Febo, 'El "Monje Guerro"', pp. 207-9.
137. See also her La Santa de la Raza: un culto barroco en la España franquista, Barcelona, 1988.
138. Valor y Fe 27, Sept. 1936. The following analysis is based on this bulletin and Piedad y Patriotismo.
139. See Michael Richards, A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco's Spain, 1936-1945, Cambridge, 1998, chaps 1 and 2.