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36 action between religion and the rise of modern antisemitism. In the German context, the Christian Social movement of Protestant court chaplain Adolph Stoecker in the 1880s has received considerable attention1 and so too has Karl Lueger’s Christian Social movement in the Habsburg Monarchy.2 Moreover, many scholars have demonstrated the impact of the Kulturkampf in Germany on the rise of antisemitism there.3 Although it has been argued that Catholic antisemitism in Germany had tapered off by the 1880s, commentators have convincingly shown that it remained strong and sometimes erupted in physical violence, despite the repudiation of antisemitism by the Catholic Center Party.4 At the same time greater emphasis has been placed on the role of religion in the Nazi movement. Doris Bergen, Susannah Heschel, Richard Steigmann-­Gall, and others have challenged the notion that a sharp break existed between the anti-­ Jewish attitudes expressed by the churches and Hitler’s racial antisemitism .5 Indeed, they have argued, without the support of most practicing Christians , Nazism never would have garnered such high levels of popular support. Despite this trend, however, most scholars still suggest that religious varieties of antisemitism were significantly more moderate than their racial counterparts . In his classic study on Christians and Jews during the Kaiserreich, Uriel Tal pitted Christian antisemitism, which he identified with Stoecker’s Berlin movement, against anti-­ Christian antisemitism, which he linked to racial antisemitism . Although Tal never minimized the radical nature of Stoecker’s antisemitism , he depicted racial antisemitism, which severed Christianity from its Jewish roots, as far more virulent.6 Similarly, John Boyer, in his work on the Christian Social movement in Vienna, has significantly downplayed the virulence of Lueger’s antisemitism, especially in comparison to the racial antisemitism of Georg von Schönerer’s Pan German League.7 In France, too, Catholic antisemitism has been painted as considerably more benign than the racial antisemitism of Edouard Drumont. Catholic historians have frequently argued that the rhetorical violence of more secular antisemites such as Drumont or his Vicki Caron CATHOLICS AND THE RHETORIC OF ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE IN FIN-­DE-­SIÈCLE FRANCE In recent years historians have highlighted the inter2 Antisemitic Violence in France : 37 lieutenant Jules Guérin “far outstripped” that of Catholic antisemites, such as FatherVincent de Paul Bailly, editor of the Catholic newspaper La Croix.8 Secular historians have echoed this view as well. According to Frederick Busi, one of Drumont’s biographers, Drumont differed from Catholic antisemites primarily in his rejection of the efficacy of conversion. Although Busi admits that Catholic spokesmen made “limited use of antisemitic themes,” he nevertheless insists that they were more “ambivalent” about the Jewish question because of their recognition of the shared roots of Judaism and Christianity.9 In reality, however, there was far more ideological overlap between Catholic antisemitic spokesmen and Drumont than these scholars suggest. In order to examine this issue, I would like to focus on the responses of Catholic publicists to Drumont’s writings in the years prior to the outbreak of the Dreyfus affair in late 1897. Here we will look briefly at Catholic responses to Drumont’s antisemitic classic La France juive (Jewish France), which appeared in 1886 and experienced immense popularity. Within a year this book had sold over one hundred thousand copies, and by 1912 it had been translated into six languages and reprinted two hundred times.10 But our principal focus will be on the love affair between Catholics and Drumont that persisted up until 1898. This period is of particular interest in that the Vatican and the French Church hierarchy were beginning todistance themselves from Drumont. Indeed, theVatican even considered placing Drumont’s book Le Testament d’un antisémite (Testament of an antisemite) (Paris: E. Dentu, 1891) on the papal index, not because of its antisemitism , but because it pilloried the French Church hierarchy and Catholic politicians like Albert de Mun for their obsequious stance toward the Third Republic.11 By the mid-­ 1890s a rift had opened between the Church hierarchy and Drumont when the latter challenged what he perceived as the hierarchy’s excessively conciliatory stance toward the Ralliement, the papal policy that counseled French Catholics to accept the republic as a legitimate form of government .12 Yet, as we shall see, the Ralliement did nothing to dampen Catholic antisemitism. Rather, it grew even more strident during these years, and many Catholic militants, including numerous priests and even a few bishops, called for an outright holy war against...

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