Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ by William A. Christian, Jr. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS501 Visionaries:The Spanish Republic and the Reign ofChrist. ByWUliam A. Christian ,Jr. (Berkeley:University of California Press. 1995.Pp.xxii, 544. $39.95.) WLUiam Christian continues his examination of Spanish religious anthropology with this exhaustive study of apparitions in the Basque country during the first months of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931. Hundreds of seers reported visions of Mary and of Christ, starting in the smaU Basque town of Ezkioga and spreading to other towns in the region, and then to places as far away asToledo. Christian has unearthed every possible source for his report of events—interviews with survivors, diaries, newspapers, archival holdings of aU sorts, including a large number of photographs which are reproduced throughout the text. It is an extraordinaryjob ofreconstruction. In addition,he has read most of the relevant material on apparitions in general, and he draws conclusions and comparisons with other nineteenth- and twentieth-century apparitions in Europe . He is not a believer, but he treats the visionaries with respect to show how religion, and particularly Catholicism, lends itself to visions. The visionaries—mainly rural folk, but including other classes as weU—were responding to a secular event, the pronounced anticlericalism ofthe new Spanish Republic. Crucifixes were being banned from the schools, processions were proscribed, and worst of all, church buUdings Ln Madrid and southern Spain were attacked and burned by anticlerical mobs.The visionaries were unable to stop this anticlerical onslaught through normal means; so they resorted to supernatural ones.They reported that Mary told them that through prayer and sacrifice the anticlericals would be defeated. Before long, the visionaries moved from the political to the apocalyptic, offering visions of the end of the world and describing calamities to come; in a larger sense,the apparitions were a challenge to materialism, secularism, and rationalism.The visions also gave beUevers a new source of power, that of knowing the future and the supernatural. Quite naturaUy, the visionaries attracted hundreds of thousands of persons, including promoters who sought to take advantage of the events; their main effect was to "connect the rural seers to the wider literate society." Most of these persons were not interested in monetary advantage, but rather in the promotion of their own special religious views.These included such worthies as Raymond de Rigné, a French professional Catholic, and Padre Amado Burguera, a Valencian Franciscan who had already written both a seven-volume encyclopedia of the Eucharist and a four-volume moral evaluation of over 11,000 plays and books. Despite Cardinal Pedro Segura's and other bishops' beUef in the visions, the local bishop denounced the visionaries and got the Holy See to declare that the visions were "devoid of aU supernatural character."The civil government joined with the bishop to suppress the visionaries; it arrested some and interrogated them in the provincial asylum before they were released.The visionaries stubbornly resisted both authorities, but fewer visions were reported after 1932. 502BOOK REVIEWS In most cases the visionaries, consciously or not,were seeking fame, and they drew rural folk together against both the anticlerical state and their skeptical bishop. Christian concludes that the visions had a marvelous leveling effect: "paradoxicaUy whUe having visions of dire events . . . the beUevers were having a wonderful time. . . . The mixing ofunrelated men and women, ofwealthy and poor, of merchants and farmers, ... of adults and chUdren, led to a kind of exhüaration that comes with the breaking of taboo and convention." Cultural underdogs became the most popular persons in society. Christian's comparisons and analyses of the events provide exceptional insight into the nature ofvisions and visionaries, along with a fascinating glimpse into people's inner spiritual Uves. He also captures the mood of CathoUc Spain in one of its most troubled years.This is a powerful work and a worthy addition to the Uterature on modern Spain and on visionaries in general. José M. Sánchez Saint Louis University Para ganar la guerra, para ganar la paz:Iglesia y guerra civil: 1936-1939ByAlfonso Alvarez Bolado. (Madrid: PubUcaciones de la Universidad Pontificia ComUlas. 1995. Pp. 716.) This is a useful analysis of the role of the clergy in the Spanish CivüWar.The author...