Book Review: The Faith and the Fury: Popular Anticlerical Violence and Iconoclasm in Spain, 1931-1936

[...]chapter 6 describes some additional characteristics of the "task of obliterating the Church from the public spaces and body politic" with such "rigorous, meticulous dedication" exhibited by "the people who burned churches and killed priests" (145). [...]this analys...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Church history 2014, Vol.83 (2), p.523
Main Author: de la Cueva, Julio
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
Civil war
Clergy
Iconoclasm
Violence
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:[...]chapter 6 describes some additional characteristics of the "task of obliterating the Church from the public spaces and body politic" with such "rigorous, meticulous dedication" exhibited by "the people who burned churches and killed priests" (145). [...]this analysis provides a plausible interpretation of anticlerical violence for Spain as a whole, essentially basing its study on two cases: the provinces of Madrid and Almeria. Equally unnecessary and excessively simplistic is the view offered of workers accumulating endless grievances against the Catholic Church, some of them impossible, such as when the author asserts that "at the turn of the century . . . many monastery buildings were situated on the outskirts of villages, and peasant day laborers often worked on their vast expanses of land" (39), an assertion that, incidentally, derives from William Callahan's The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875-1998 ([Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998], 12), which naturally contains nothing to support the claim.
ISSN:0009-6407
1755-2613
DOI:10.1017/S0009640714000444