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Revolutionary Exhumations in Spain, July 1936

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Bruce Lincoln
Bruce Lincoln
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

In the first weeks of the Spanish civil war, there occurred massive popular assaults against the Catholic Church in those cities which did not fall to the Nationalists rising, the Church having been widely (and correctly) perceived as hostile to the Republic and sympathetic to the generals who sought its overthrow. As rumors of priests firing on the populace from church towers circulated wildly, churches and convents were rapidly sacked and burnt. Supporters of the Republic killed religious personnel in large numbers—certainly well into the thousands—while desecrating and destroying church paraphernalia and cultic objects en masse.

Type
Profane Uses of the Sacred
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , April 1985 , pp. 241 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1985

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References

1 Works on the anticlerical violence of the Spanish civil war are understandably often quite extreme in their rhetoric and presentation of data. Among the more reliable commonly cited studies, compiled after the heat of the conflict and following years of research, are Antonio Montero Moreno, Historia de la persecución religiosa en Espana, 1936–1939 (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1961,),Google Scholar and (Fray) Urbet, Justo Pérez de, Los martires de la Iglesia (Barcelona: Editorial AHR, 1956),Google Scholar although even these leave much to be desired at times. Montero Moreno gives a figure of 6,832 religious killed during the war (4,184 secular clergy, 2,365 monks, 283 nuns), most of whom would have died during the outburst of the first few weeks of the conflict (pp. 762–67, with a full listing given on pp. 769–883). The most frequently cited general history of the conflict, Thomas, Hugh, The Spanish Civil War, 2d ed. (New York:Harper and Row, 1977), 270, accepts this figure, although in his first edition (1961),Google ScholarThomas, cites slightly higher figures (p. 173).Google Scholar

2 See Moreno, Montero, Historia de la persecución, 64 n. 36, 431 n. 3;Google ScholarAlbanan, A. de Castro, La gran victima: La Iglesia Espanola martir de la revolución roja (Salamanca: n. p., 1940), 159–60;Google Scholar [Juan Estelich], La persecution religieuse en Espagne (Paris: Plon, 1937), 39, and photos followine ou. 80. 104.Google Scholar

3 The events at the Carmelite Church were extremely embarrassing to the Republican government, as evidenced by the fact that, when the Madrid newspaper ABC ran a photograph of the exhumed mummies on 1 August 1936, it was immediately suppressed by an order of the Direccón General de Seguridad. Moreno, Montero, Historia de la persecución, 431 n. 3.Google Scholar

4 The fullest account of the events at the Iglesia de la Enseńanza is found in Olaguer, Antonio Peréz de, El terror rojo en Cataluna (Burgos: Ediciones Antisectarias, 1937), 18–21,Google Scholar although the nature of the source hardly inspires unqualified confidence. It is this incident which continues to be mentioned in most general histories of the civil war, e.g., Thomas, , Spanish Civil War, 272;Google ScholarJackson, Gabriel, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 290;Google ScholarBroué, Pierre and Tmile, Emile, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain, White, T., trans. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970), 126.Google Scholar

5 Note, for instance, the judgment of Castro Albanan, , La gran victima, 158:Google Scholar “Con los cadáveres no fueron hombres, sino bestias.” The most important such judgment, however, is that voiced in section 6 of the Joint Letter of the Spanish Episcopate to the Bishops of the Entire World. (issued 1 07 1937),Google Scholar in which the exhumations of the preceding year are cited as the chief evidence in support of the contention that “La revolución fué ‘inhumana.’ Text given in (Archbishop) Isidro Tomás, Gomá y, Por Dios v por Espana (Barcelona: Rafael Casulleras, 1940), 575.Google Scholar

It is worth noting that the act of defining certain others as less than human is a necessary step in the process of rendering their killing licit, as was observed by Simone Weil in her celebrated letter to Georges Bernanos (with reference to the atrocities perpetrated by the Left in Catalonia, which she witnessed during the first months of the civil war). Text available in translation in Sperber, Murray A., ed., And I Remember Spain (New York: Collier, 1974), 259–63, esp. 262.Google Scholar

6 According to Gay, Francisque, Dans les flammes et dans le sang: Les crimes contre les glises et les prêtres en Espagne (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1936), 8, press agencies in France first carried photos of the Madrid exhumations ort 28 July 1936, which caused an immediate and powerful public reaction. L' Aube and other Catholic publications repeatedly referred to such incidents in their coverage of the civil war, as did the London Daily Mail. Osservatore Romano, the official organ of the Vatican, made prominent mention on 19 August 1936 of the Barcelona exhumations, as did Henry Luce's Time for September 1936.Google Scholar

Outraged denunciations of the atrocities appeared in Gay, , Dans les flammes, 34–37; (Vice-Admiral)Google ScholarJoubert, H., La guerre d'espagne et le Catholicisme (Paris: SGIE, 1937), 21;Google Scholar [Estel-richÐ, La persecution religieuse, 39;Google ScholarCarreras, Luis, The Glory of Martyred Spain (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1939), 93;Google ScholarPeers, E. Allison, Spain, the Church, and the Orders (1939; rpt. London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1945) 165;Google ScholarReligious Persecution in Spain under the “Republic,” /931–1939 (Washington, D.C.: Spanish Embassy, Office of Cultural Relations, n.d.), 21;Google ScholarAlbanan, Castro, La Gran Victima, 159;Google ScholarMoreno, Montero, Historia de la persecución 518;Google Scholar Constantino Bayle, S. J., Qué pasa en Espada? A los Católicos del mundo (Salamanca: Delegación del Estado para Prensa y Propaganda, 1937), 53.Google Scholar

Photos appeared in [Estelrich]. La persécution religieuse, preceding p. 33;Google ScholarBayle, , Qué pasa en Espana? 7;Google Scholar and Urbel, Pérez de, Los martires, facing pp. 48, 49;Google Scholar as well as in Time, 7 09 1936, p. 31; and the British Saturday Review 15 August 1936, p. 199, to name but a few.Google Scholar

7 The official history of the civil war issued under the Franco regime was, of course, entitled Historia de la cruzada espanola, Iribarren, Joaquin An-ara's, ed., 8 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Espanolas, 1940–1944).Google Scholar

For other articulations of the ideology of the cruzada, see such works as Bayle, , Qué pasa en Espana?;Google ScholarAlbarran, Aniceto de Castro, Guerra santa: El sentido Católico del movimiento nacional Espanol (Burgos: Editorial Espanola, 1938);Google Scholar or even so recent a volume as Garcia, Angel, La Iglesia Espanola y el 18 de Julio (Barcelona: Ediciones Acervo, 1975), where the civil war is still interpreted as first and foremost a war of religion, and where it is argued that the title “Cruzada Nacional” is most fitting for what was nothing less than the defense of Christianity. See, e.g., pp. 192–93.Google Scholar

For critiques of the use of the crusade theme as propaganda, see Iturralde, Juan de, El Catolicismo v la cruzada de Franco, 3 vols. (Bayonne: Editorial Egi-indarra, 1956–1965);Google Scholar and Southworth, Herbert R., El mito de la cruzada de Franco (Paris: Ruedo lbérico, 1963), esp. 175–80.Google Scholar

8 I have been able to locate reference to only one attempted defense of the exhumations, that of Jean-Richard Bloch, an intellectual affiliated with the French communist party, whose commentary appeared in the September 1936 issue of Vu, a Paris publication which, regrettably, was not accessible to me. His remarks—in which he quoted a specatator at the Barcelona display of corpses to the effect that “depuis le temps qu'elles étaient enfermées, ces nonnes, elles avaient bien le droit d'être remises en liberté!” —provoked outraged responses by Gay, , Dans les flammes, 34–37Google Scholar (whence this quote is taken) and Carreras, Glory of Martyred Spain, 93.Google Scholar

For the obligatory references to these events in more recent general histories of the civil war, see Thomas, , Spanish Civil War, 272;Google ScholarJackson, , Spanish Republic, 290;Google Scholar and Broué and Témime, Revolution and Civil War, 126.Google Scholar

9 For general surveys of church-state relations and anticlerical violence in Spain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see, inter alla, Cortazar, F. García de, “La Iglesia en la crisis del estado Espanol (1898–1923).” in VIII Coloquio de Pau: La crisis del estado Espanol, 1898–1936, Lara, M. Tuhon de, et al., eds. (Madrid: Editorial Cuadernos para e1 Dialogo, 1978). 343–77;Google ScholarBaroja, Julio Caro, Introduccin a una historia contemporanea del anti-clericalismo Espanol (Madrid: Ediciones ISTMO, 1977);Google ScholarCuenca, José Manuel. “Iglesia y estado en la Espana contemporanea (1789–1914)” in his Estudios sobre la Iglesia Espanola del XIX (Madrid: Ediciones Rialp. 1973). 35–114:Google ScholarCarr, Raymond, Spain. 1808–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1966), 463–72;Google ScholarSanchéz, José M., Reform and Reaction: The Politico-Religious Background of the Spanish Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1964);Google ScholarBrevan, Gerald, The Spanish Labyrinth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 37–56;Google Scholar and Granados, Mariano. La cuestion religiosa en Espana (Mexico City: Ediciones de “Las Espanas,” 1959).Google Scholar Biased but useful are Peers, . Spain. Church, and Orders: and A. Orts Ramos. Actitud de la Iglesia ante el levantamiento fascista (Paris: Association Hispanophile de France. 1937).Google Scholar An informative chapter is devoted to the role of religion in the Spanish civil war in Lewy, Guenter, Religion and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 413–40. but Lewy's understanding of revolution is so one-sidedly political, at the expense of social and economic dimensions, that he actually portrays the Church's role as that of supporting a revolution. i.e.. the Nationalist rising against the Republic (p. 567), a view which in my opinion is nothing short of perverse.Google Scholar

10 See Ullman, Joan Connelly, The Tragic Week: A Study of Anti-Clericalism in Spain, 1875–1912 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1968), esp. 227, 231. 246–47, 253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Lincoln, Bruce, “Notes toward a Theory of Religion and Revolution.” in Religion, Rebellion, Revolution: An Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Collection of Essays, Lincoln, B., ed. (London: Macmillan, 1985). 266–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 See the literature cited in note 9, especially the analysis of Brenan, . Spanish Labyrinth, 43–55.Google Scholar

13 Peers, , Spain, Church, and Orders. 68, 158.Google Scholar

14 On rumor as the metaphoric articulation of latent popular sentiment, see Lienhardt, Peter, “The Interpretation of Rumour,” in Studies in Social Anthropology: Essays in Memory of Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Beattie, J. H. M. and Lienhardt, R. G., eds. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975), 105–31, esp. 128–31.Google Scholar

15 Lincoln, , “Notes toward a Theory of Religion and Revolution.”Google Scholar

16 For the best account of the Church's role in the years 1931–1936, see Sanchéz, , Reform and Reaction, 65–213.Google Scholar Highly misleading are the presentations of Peers, , Spain, Church, and Orders, and U. Massimo Miozzi, Storia della Chiesa Spagnola (1931–1966) (Rome: Instituto Editoriale del Mediterraneo, 1967).Google Scholar

17 Only recently has serious attention been focused on the Right in the years leading up to the civil war. See Robinson, Richard A. H., The Origins of Franco's Spain (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1970);Google ScholarBlinkhorn, Martin, Carlism and Crisis in Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), the latter having particular emphasis on the role of religion.Google Scholar

18 Numerous authorities and propagandists of various parties have assigned the chief role in the anticlerical outburst of 1936 to militants of the anarchist organizations (Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) and Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), which were particularly influential in Catalonia. Certainly such an analysis has a certain plausibility, given the explicitly “anti-theistic” intellectual stance of Spanish Anarchists, on which see Junco, José Alvarez, La ideologia politica del Anarquismo Espanol (1868–1910) (Madrid: Siglo Veintinno Editores, 1976), 29–36, 204–13. Also, whereas Marxists in general—with occasional exceptions such as Engels, Eduard Bernstein, and Antonio Gramsci—have tended to dismiss religion as an ideological superstructure which can only distract one from the crucial task of attacking the material and sociopolitical base of one's class enemies, anarchists since Mikhail Bakunin (who remained always the most important anarchist theoretician in Spanish circles) considered religious institutions and doctrines to be one of the foremost obstacles to real liberty, and thus they insisted that the Church be attacked directly.Google Scholar

These points notwithstanding, I am inclined to believe that the role of the Anarchists in the Spanish exhumations and other anticlerical violence of 1936 has been overemphasized. I base this opinion on two facts: first, this kind of violence occurred throughout Loyalist Spain, and not only in areas where the FAI and CNT were influential; second, similar outbreaks predate the entry of anarchism into Spain. To be sure, the Anarchists played an important role, but they were hardly alone in this aspect of the fury.

19 One must not overstate the case and claim that a universal norm was involved. Zoroastrians, for instance, regard burial as a sacrilege, for it pollutes the sacred earth with impure matter, and their scriptures celebrate the exhumer of bodies as the man who most causes the earth to rejoice (Vidévdár 3.12). I am indebted to my colleague Wlad Godzich, Professor of Comparative Liter ature at the University of Minnesota, for having recounted to me the following story told him by his father. In the late thirties, Godzich pére had attempted to arouse sympathy for Franco in rural Poland by telling of the Spanish exhumations, but was amazed to find that the peasants with whom he spoke were barely moved by his account. Only later did he discover that as part of their preservation of certain pre-Christian ideals and rituals of familial solidarity between the living and the dead, these people regularly visited graveyards and enacted a variety of behaviors bordering upon exhumation, and thus found the Spanish events no cause for censure or outrage.

20 See Segal, Charles, The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Leiden: E. J. Bill, 1971);Google Scholar and Vernant, Jean-Pierre, “La belle mon et le cadavre outrage,” in La mort, les Torts dans les sociétés anciennes, Gnoli, G. and Vernant, J.-P., eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge Universsty Press, 1982), 45–76,Google Scholar the latter of which expands upon points made earlier by Redfield, James, Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975)Google Scholar

It is also worth noting that it was shortly after her return from service in the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) militia in Aragon and Catalonia, where she was profoundly shaken by the atrocities of the revolution, that Simone Weil published her essay, “L'Iliade ou le poeme de la force,” Cahiers du Sud, 19(12 1940), 230, and 20(01 1941), 231, which begins with a meditation on the corpse of Hektor, that thing to which a once-proud human being was reduced by the force of Akhilles.Google Scholar

21 On the Aghorins (or Aghorīs, as he transcribed the term), see Eliade, Mircea, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1969), 296–301;Google Scholar or, more recent, Parry, Jonathan, “Sacrificial Death and the Necrophagous Ascetic,” in Death and the Regeneration of Life, Bloch, M. and Parry, J., eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 74–110, esp. 86–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 A new and most interesting interpretation of the Hamatsa has recently been offered by Walens, Stanley, Feasting with Cannibals: An Essay on Kwakiutl Cosmology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), esp. 138–63.Google Scholar See also the classic accounts in Boas, Franz, Kwakiutl Ethnography, Codere, Helen, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 171–279;Google Scholar and Benedict, Ruth, Patterns of Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 177–81.Google Scholar

23 Worsley, Peter, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of “Cargo” Cults in Melanesia, 2d ed. (New York: Schocken, 1968), 250.Google Scholar

24 Burridge, Kenelm, New Heaven, New Earth (New York: Schocken, 1969), esp. 166–68.Google Scholar

25 The most famous eyewitness accounts of these days are Orwell's, GeorgeHomage to Catalonia (1939; rpt. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1952),Google Scholar and Borkenau's, FranzThe Spanish Cockpit (1937; rpt. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974).Google Scholar Other, less celebrated, testimonies are of equal or in some instances, even greater value, as for example Low, Mary and Brea, Juan, Red Spanish Notebook (1937; rpt. San Francisco: City Lights, 1979);Google ScholarKaminski, H.-E., Ceux de Barcelone (Paris: Editions DeNoel, 1937);Google ScholarLangdon-Davies, John, Behind Spanish Barricades (1936; rpt. New York: Robert M. Mcbride, 1937);Google Scholar and Augustin Bauer, Souchy, With the Peasants of Aragon (Minneapolis: Soil of Liberty, 1982).Google Scholar

26 This may help explain the difference which Borkenau, Spanish Cockpit, 251–57, observed between “mass terrorism” and “police terrorism,” the former being characteristic of a Iiminal period which, while intense, subsides with the emergence of “new rules.” The latter terrorism, however, is decidedly nonliminal, being the institutionalized repression which accompanies and makes possible the imposition of “new rules.”

27 Remarks at the International Research Conference on Religion and Revolution, Minneapolis, 10 November 1981.

28 It was the consistent charge of the Catholic Church and the Nationalist government that the assault on the churches was premeditated. Given the sheer number of assaults throughout Spain and the rapidity with which they were executed, the charge is plausible, but exaggerated accusations such as the allegation that seventy-nine Russian agitators entered the Republic to coordinate the anticlerical attack (thus the bishops' Joint Letter, sec. 6, para. 3, reproduced in Gomá, ;, Por Dios y por Espana, 575) have never been substantiated and make one extremely wary of accepting the charge of premeditation too readily.Google Scholar

29 The best treatment of these oaths is Buijtenhuijs, Robert, Le mouvement “Mau-Mau” (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 255–98.Google Scholar

30 Njama, Kareni, Mau Mau from Within, 121,Google Scholar cited in Buijtenhuijs, , Le mouvement “Mau-Mau,” 260.Google Scholar

31 Gluckman, Max, “The Magic of Despair,” in his Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (New York: Free Press, 1963), 137–45. In many ways, however, Gluckman's analysis must now be replaced by that of Buijtenhuijs.Google Scholar

32 Dio Cassius 37.30.3; Plutarch, , Cicero 10.3. Sallust, Bellum Catilinae 22, recounts the same story, but expresses skepticism as to whether it is true or merely propaganda directed against Catiline by his enemies, chiefly Cicero.Google Scholar

33 Lewis, Bernard, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 73.Google Scholar On the festival of the Qiyāma, see also Hodgson, Marshall G. S., The Order of Assassins (The Hague: Mouton, 1955), 148–58.Google Scholar

34 Cited in Christopher Dawson, , The Gods of Revolution New York: Minerva, 1975). 80. Emphasis added.Google Scholar

35 No specific attitude toward the persons exhumed is consistently evident in the incidents reported. Thus, while most incidents discussed in Castro Albarran, La gran victima, 159–60, seem to involve prominent victims who were particularly scorned by their exhumers (e.g., Queen Marla of Castille, Bishop Torras y Bages, and Vifredo el Velloso, the conqueror of Catalonia), those discussed in Moreno, Montero. Historia de la persecución, 64, 431–32, involve anonymous victims who were perceived to be victims of the Church themselves and were consequently viewed with some measure of sympathy (e.g., children said to have been secretly executed by priests, young women said to have been raped within monasteries, monks interred with penitential instruments said to be tools of torture).Google Scholar

36 On the felling of the sacred oak, see Willibald, Vita Bon facii, ch. 6 text and translation available in Tangl, M. and KüIb, P. H. et al., eds., Briefe des Bonifatius und Willibalds Leben des Bonifatius, new edition, Rau, Reinhold, ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 494–95.Google Scholar On the destruction of Oro's shrine and its repercussions, see Mühlmann, Wilhelm, Arioi und Mamaia: Eine ethnologische, religionssoziologische, und historische Studie über Polvnesische Kuhbüde (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1955), 224–25.Google Scholar One might also note the practice of a conqueror disrupting the bones of deceased members of the dynasty which he overthrew, as was common, for instance, in the ancient Near East. For some examples, see Boyce, Mary, A History of Zoroastrianism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), II, 55.Google Scholar

37 The best general work on the campaign of dechristianization is Vovelle, Michel, Religion et révolution: la déchristianisatiotz de l'an II (Paris: Hachette, 1976),Google Scholar which is, however, largely a statistical and demographic study and not a dramaturgical one. For the dechristianization spectacles, see Ozouf, Mona, La fête révolutiünaire 1789–1799 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 99–124 et passim.Google Scholar

38 On the iconoclasm of the English civil war, see Phillips, John Ransome, The Reformation of Images: Destruction of Art in England, 1535–1660 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973);Google Scholar on that of the Taiping Rebellion, Shih, Vincent Y. C., The Taiping Ideology (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), 23–29.Google Scholar

39 See the discussion of Newall, Venetia, “Icons as Symbols of Power,” in Symbols of Power, Ellis-Davidson, Hilda, ed. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977), 61–99.Google Scholar

40 Cited in Carreras, Glory of Martyred Spain, 99,Google Scholar from an account which appeared in the paper Extremadura on 15 10 1936. These sources being highly sympathetic to the Nationalist cause, and thus devoted to glorifying the “heroes of the Alcázar,” a fitting end is provided for the story. According to Carreras and his source, two of the militiamen strayed into the line of fire from the Alcázar while burning the statue, whereupon they were shot and pitched into the fire themselves.Google Scholar

41 See, for instance, the final section of Montero Moreno's Historia de la Persecución, 627–53,Google Scholar devoted to incidents of iconoclasm and entitled “El martirio de las cosas” [ The martyrdom of things]. One of the most effective pieces of Nationalist propaganda is devoted entirely to photos of heavily damaged religious art: Augusto, Manuel, Via crucis del Senor en sierras de Espana (Barcelona: Editora Nacional, 1939).Google Scholar

42 Bayle, , Qué pasa en Espana?, 53.Google Scholar

43 See, for instance, Albanan, Castro, La gran victima, 159–61;Google Scholar [Estelrich], La persécution religieuse, 39.Google Scholar Along similar lines, speaking of the revolutionary iconoclasm in general, Moreno, Montero, Historia de la persecuiōn, 649,Google Scholar calls it a “diabólico o nietscheano asesinato de Dios.”Google Scholar

44 See Moreno, Montero, Historia de la persecución, 64 (note in paticular the cases of the Carmelite Church and Capuchin Convent in Madrid, The Franciscan Convent in Berga and that at Fuenteovejuna), and 432 (note the cases of the Salesian Convent and the Minimás de Jesus Maria in Barcelona).Google Scholar

45 See Ullman, , Tragic Week, 201, 227, 246–47, 253, 276–77, et passim.Google Scholar

46 Low and Brea, Red Spanish Notebook, 215.Google Scholar

47 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamozov, Part 3, Book 7, Section 1, “The Breath of Corruption.”Google Scholar

48 See Lincoln, “Notes toward a Theory of Religion and Revolution”, idem,“Der politische Gehalt des Mythos,” in Alcheringa, oder die beginnende Zeit: Studien zu Mythologie, Schamanismus, und Religion, Duerr, Hans Peter, ed. (Frankfort: Qumran Verlag, 1983), 9–25Google Scholar (Italian translation, with additions, in Studi e materiali di sIoria delle religioni: Raffaele Pettazzoni centenary volume, 7 (1983), 75–86):Google Scholaridem,“‘The Earth Shall Become Flat’—A Study of Apocalyptic Imagery,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 25:1 (1983), 136–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Note, for instance, the opinion voiced within the Spanish bishops' Joint Letter (Gomá, , Por Dios y por Espana, 571) (emphasis added):Google Scholar

And because God is the most profound foundation of a well-ordered society—as with the Spanish nation—the communist revolution, in alliance with the armed forces of the Government, was above all, antidivine. The cycle of secularizing legislation of the 1931 Constitution culminated in the destruction of everything that was of God.

[Y porque Dios es e1 más profundo cimiento de una sociedad bien ordenada—lo era de la nación espanola—, Ia revolución comunista, aliada de los ejércitos del Gobierno, fué, sobre todo, antidivina. Se cerraba así el ciclo de la legislatión laica de la Constitución de 1931 con Ia destrucción de Quanta era cosa de Dios.]

50 On the millenarian nature of the Spanish anarchists, see the discussion in Brenan, , Spanish Labyrinth, 131–202;Google ScholarHobsbawn, E. J., Primitive Rebels (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), 74–92;Google Scholar and my own brief remarks on the rhetoric of Buenaventura Durruti in “Der politische Gehalt des Mythos,” 19–20. Others, however, have been critical of this view—which ultimately derives from the work of Moral, Juan Díaz del, Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas-Córdoba (Madrid: Revista de Derecho Privado, 1929)—in recent years.Google Scholar See, e.g., Kaplan, Temma, Anarchists of Andalusia, 1868–1903 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), esp. 210–12;Google Scholar and Mintz, Jerome R., The Anarchists of Casas Viejas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 5, nn. 5–7.Google Scholar