Revolutionary Exhumation July 1936

Revolutionary Exhumations in Spain July 1936

Bruce Lincoln

Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol 27 No 2 (Apr 1985) pp 241-260

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Revolutionary Exhumations in Spain July 1936 B R U C E LINCOLN

U n i v e r s i ~of Minnesota

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 nlasse

Of all the actions taken against the Church however among the most horrific was a macabre spectacle played out in numerous towns and cities the exhumation and public display of long-buried corpses of the priests nuns and saints entered within church grounds some of which had been naturally mummified by the dry Spanish heat Such incidents were reported from Batea Belchite Berga Canet de Roig Fuenteovejuna Minorca Orihuela Oropesa Peralta de la Sol Vich and e l ~ e w h e r e ~ and there is photographic evidence from some of the larger cities Thus in Toledo at the Church of San Miguel the disinterred corpses were displayed upon the central altar (Figure

Research for this article was made possible by a National Endowment for the Humanities research grant for which support I am most grateful

I 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 persecucidrl religiosa en Espaiia 1936-1939 (Madrid Bibli- oteca de Autorcs Cristianos 1961 j and (Fray) Justo Perez de Urbel Los martires de la lglesia (Barcelona Editorial AHR 1956) although even these leave much to be desired at times Montero Moreno gives a figure of 6832 religious killed during the war (4184 secular clergy 2365 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 Hugh Thomas The Spanish Ciil War 2d ed (New York Harper and Row 1977) 270 accepts this figure although in his first edition (1961) Thomas cites slightly higher figures (p 173)

See Montero Moreno Historia de lapersecitcicin 6 3 n 36 331 n 3 A de Castro Albarran La grar7 ictima La 1gletia Espanola martir de la revolucitjrz roja (Salamanca n p 1940) 159- 60 [Juan Estelrich] La persccurion relrgieuse en Espagrze (Paris Plon 1937) 39 and photos following pp 80 104 0010-41751852266-1394 $250 C 1985 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

FIGUR~2 Spectators react to exhumations at Iglesia de la Ensenanza Barcelona From Juan Estelrich LNjersecution rcligirirse en Espagne (Paris Plon 1937) before page 33

FIGURE1 Exhumations displayed on altar of the Church of San Miguel Toledo From Fray Justo Perez de Urbel Los martires de Iu Iglrsicr (Barcelona Editorial AHK 1956) facing page 48

FIC~URE3 Exhumations displayed at door of Iglesia de la Ensenanza Barcelona From Perez de Urbel Los murtires de la Iglesiu facing page 97

FIGLIRE4 Crowd reaction5 to exhumations at Iglesia de la Ensenianza Barcelona From Perez de Urbel Los rnurrires tie la Iglesia facing page 49

244 B R U C E L I N C O L N

1) The altar of the Carmelite Church in Madrid was similarly adorned with skulls as rniliciunos clowned and masqueraded about it Within the same church the mummified remains of two young women together with those of a fetus or young infant were discovered and publicly displayed as evidence of sexual depravity within the Church Perhaps the most notorious incident however occurred at the convent cemetery attached to the Iglesia de la Ensefianza in Barcelona where the bodies of nineteen Salesian nuns were exhumed and exhibited flanking the doors of the church and spilling out into the street (Figures 2-4) Here they remained for three full days (23-25 July) during which time more than forty thousand people filed past them some- times silent but more often jeering

Almost immediately these desecrations were seized upon by propagandists for the Nationalist cause who cast the exhumations as conclusive proof not only qf the antireligious nature of the entire Spanish Republic but of its very inhumanity barbarity or be~t ia l i ty ~ Throughout the war and long after religion proved to be the sole issue with which international sym- pathy could consistently be generated for the cause of Francisco Francos Nationalists and accounts of the exhumations often accompanied by maca- bre and grisly photographs regularly occupied a prominent position in the writings of his apologist^^ In truth they sought to establish a sweeping view

The events at the Carmelite Church were extremely embarrasbing to the Republican govern- ment as evidenced by the fact that when the Madrid newspaper ABC ran a photograph of the exhumed mummies on I August 1936 it was immediately suppressed by an order of the D~rec - cidn General de Seguridad Montero Moreno Hisroriu de la persecr~crd~i 431 n 3

The fullest account of the events at the lglesia de la Ensetianza is found in Antonio Perez de Olaguer El rerror rojo en Cutul~rtia (Burgos Ediciones Antisectarias 1937) 18-21 although the nature of the source hardly inspires unqualif~ed confidence It is this incident which continues to be mentioned in most general histories of the civil war e g Thomas Spanish C i~ i l War 272 Gabriel Jackson The Spanish Reprrblic and rhe Ci~ i l War (Princeton Princeton University Press 1965) 290 Pierre Broue and Emile Temime The Re~olrrfior~and the Ci~ i l War in Sl)ain T White trans (Cambridge MIT Press 1970) 126

~ o for instance the judgment of Castro Albarran La gran vicrima 158 Con 10s caduverc~ tzofrreron hombres sitlo besrias The most important such judgment however is that voiced in section 6 of the Joitir Lerrer of the Sparirsh Episcopate ro the Bishops o f f h e Etzrire World (issued I July 1937) in which the exhunlations of the preceding year are cited as the chief evidence in support of the contention that La rerol~rcirit~ inh~rmana Text given in fire

(Archbishop) Isidro Goma y Tomas Por Dios por Espana (Barcelona Rafael Casulleras 1940) 575

It is worth noting that the act of defin~ng certain others as less than human is a necessary step in the process of rendering their killing licit as was observed by Sinione Weil in her celebrated letter to Georges Bernanos (with reference to the atrocit~es perpetrated by the Left in Catalonia which she witnessed during the first months of the civil war) Text available in translation in Murray A Sperber ed Anti I Remernher Spain (New York Collier 1974) 259-63 esp 262

According to Francisque Gay Duns Ies flammcs er [ions I( satzg Les crimes conrre Ies eqlises et les pr6rrcs etz Espugne (Paris Bloud et Gay 1936) 8 press agencies in France first carried photos of the Madrid exhumations on 28 July 1936 which caused an immediate and powerful publ~c reaction LAubr and other Catholic publications repeatedly referred to such incidents in their coverage of the civil war as did the London Daily Muil Osserrarore Romutlo

of the struggle that raged within Spain in which their movimiento was nothing less than a holy war o r righteous crusade-cruzadu being the term they favored-on behalf of Christian civilization with the Spanish Reconquista and Inquisition as its guiding precedent^^

Partisans of the Republic were thus thrown on the defensive with regard to the religious issue and they sought to justify the early assault upon the Church in various ways although rarely were the exhumations themselves mentioned Since the war however even those liberal historians most sym- pathetic to the Republic have been forced to acknowledge these events and they regularly depict them as a regrettable excess perpetrated by uncontrolla- ble fanatics in the stress of c r i ~ i s ~

In some measure this attitude is quite close to that of the Nationalist

the official organ of the Vatican made prominent mention on 19 August 1936 of the Barcelona exhumatlons as did Henry Luces Time for September 1936

Outraged denunciations of the atrocities appeared in Gay Dat~s Ie7 flammes 34-37 (Vice-Admiral) H Joubert La RrrcJrre ilcspagne cJt le Catholici~me (Paris SGIE 1937) 21 [Estel- rich] La pcrsccrrtron relrgrerrse 39 LUIS Cameras The Glory ofMarr~redSpart~ (London Bums Oates and Washboume 1939) 93 E Allison Peers Spain rhe Church arici the Orciers (1939 rpt London Bums Oates and Washbourne 1935) 165 Reli~rorrs Persecutiori in Spain tinder rhe Repuhltc 1931-1939 (Washington DC Spanlsh Embassy Office oi Cultural Relations nd1 21 Castro Albarran La Gran Vicrima 159 Montero Moreno Historrcr cir lu persecricidn 518 Constantino Bayle S J QlrP pasa en Espatia) A 107 Catci1ic~or ciel mrrncio (Salamanca Delegacibn del Estado para Prensa y Propaganda 1937) 53

Photos appeared in [Estelrich] La pcrscc~rrtioti religrerrse preceding p 33 Bayle Qucjpasa en Esr~atio~7 and Perez de Urbel Los murtires facing pp 48 49 as well as In Ttme 7 September 1936 p 31 and the British Sutrrrciu~ Revter~ 15 August 1936 p 199 to name but a few

The official history of the civil war issued under the Franco regime was of course entitled Historiu cie la crrizacia espatiola Joaquin Amaras Iribarren ed 8 vols (Madr~d Ed~ciones Espanolas 1940-44)

For other articulations of the Ideology of the cruocf(~see such works as Bayle Qrrcjpusu rri Espono Aniceto de Castro Albarran Glrerra sonra El setrriilo C~itci1ico ciel riorirnienro na- ciotial tspariol (Burgos Editorial Espanola 1938) or even so recent a volume as Angel Garc~a La I~leia Espafiola y el 18 ilc Jrrlro (Barcelona Ediciones Acervo 1975) where the civil war is st111 interpreted as flrst and foremost a war of religion and where it is argued that the title Cruzada Nacional is most fittlng for what was nothlng less than the defense of Christlanlty See e g pp 192-93

For crit~ques of the use of the crusade theme as propaganda aee Juan de Itumalde El Carolrcrsmo Y Iu c~rrruciu de Fronco 3 volb (Bayonne Editorial Egl-lndarra 1956-65) and Herbert R Southworth El rniro ile lo cru--oda ilc Frat~co (Paris Ruedo Iberico 1963) esp 175- 80

I have been able to locate reference to only one attempted defense of the exhumatlons that of Jean-Rlchard Bloch an ~ntellectual affiliated wlth the French communist party whose commen- tary appeared In the September 1936 issue of Vu a Pans publlcat~on whlch regrettably was not access~ble to me His remarks-in wh~ch he quoted a apecatator at the Barcelona display of corpses to the effect that depuis le temps quelles etaient enfermees ces nonnes elles avaient bien le drolt d0tre remlses en liberte-provoked outraged responses by Ga) Dutis les flurnmes 34-37 (whence this quote is taken) and Cameras G l o n of Morrred Spain 93

For the obligatory references to these events in more recent general histories of the c iv~ l war see Thomas Spar~ish Civil War 272 Jackson Spanirh Reprrblic 290 and Broue and Temime Revolution anci Civil War 126

propagandists for both sides characterize the exhumations as an aberration from the realm of normality differing only as to whether they should be deplored and forgiven or ferociously requited I submit however that as scholars we can dismiss no human action as aberrant but must seek the sources and meanings of even the strangest and most repugnant conduct which on closer analysis may prove to be far more significant and expressive than the stereotypical automatonic behaviors that we think of as comprising normality What follows is an attempt to remove the Spanish exhumations of July 1936 from the realm of the aberrant to place them within a specific historical context to locate phenomenological analogues in similar contexts and to speculate on what may have been expressed in and accomplished through these dramatic and chilling acts

T H E S P A N I S H C H U R C H A N D ~ Z N T I C L E R I C I Z L V I O L E N C E I N T H E

N I N E T E E N T H A N D T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R I E S

July 1936 was hardly the first time that mobs had attacked the Church in Spain Churches and convents were burned in many cities during 1834-35 in the first Carlist war and again in 1868 at the outset of the second Carlist war This was repeated in Catalonia during the Semana Trigica (Tragic Week) of 1909 and once more throughout all of Spain in 193 1 during the first months of the Second R e p u b l i ~ ~ On several of these occasions religious were mur- dered and other atrocities committed among which we must note the exhuma- tion and public display in July 1909 of the bodies of cloistered nuns in Barcelona I U

Details aside one is struck by the frequency of these assaults for almost without exception in recent history whenever there was rebellion in Spain

or general survelh of church-state relat~onb and ant~cler~cal lolence in S p a n d u r ~ n g the nineteenth and tuent~eth centuries see otrer ulra F Garcia de Cortazar La I g l e ~ ~ a en la c r i51~ del e ~ t a d o E~pano l (1898- 1923) in 1111 Coloqttio dr Putt Ltr ~rrsrs tie1 esrtrcio Espairol 1898- 1936 M Tunon de Lara rr trl eds (Madrid Ed~torial Cuadernos para el Dlalogo 1978) 333- 77 Julio Caro Barqa Itrrrotlirc(l(jfl11 lrfi11 lltsrorru iotirrttrporcit~ctr del tttiri-i~lrrtcutio Evl~uirol (Madrid Ed~c~oneh ISTMO 1977) JoaC blanucl Cuenca lgles~a estado en la Eapana contem- poranea (1789-1913) In his Estrrcico ohrt la Iglrsi~r Ecputioltr dcl XIX (Madrid E d ~ c ~ o n e ~ Rialp 1973) 35- 1 13 Ra mond Carr Spur~i IHOX-I939 (Oxford Clarendon Press 1966) 463-72 Jose )I Sanchez Rrf(1rtn trtld Rctrtrtof~ Titc Polcrri~o-Rc~lrqioi~ Batiytoloid of tile SIILUII ~~Cii11 1Vtr1- (Chapel Hill Lniverb~tl of North Carolina Prehs 1963) Gerald Brenan 717r Slcit7rsh Lcib~rtt7tii (Cambridge Cambridge Unicers~t Presb 1971 1 37-56 and Mariano Gra- n a d o ~ La 1rrctrroti rrlrgiosa ltti t p t r t i u (Mex~co Clt) Ed~cioneh de Las Espanab 1959) Biased but ubeful are Peerb Sputtr Clr~rrcit afici Ordrrc and A Orts Ramos At~rtttctitieIt1 lglritr untr el I P I ~ L I I I ~ U I ~ I I ~ ~ I I ~ O de France 19371 An ~nformat~ce fux(~rxrtr(Paris Aasociat~on H~spanoph~le chapter la devoted to the role of rel~gion In the Span~sh c ~ ~ l u a r In Guenter Leu Rcliqioti u t ~ d Re~~oitirtotr(Neu York Okford Uni~erhit) Preha 19731 313-30 but Lewys underatand~ng of reolut~on15 o one-idedl) pol~tlcal at the ekpenae ot social and economlc dlmenhions that he actuall) portrala the Churchs role I that of s~ipl)ortr~iqa reolut~on ie the Nationallat rlblng against the Republ~c (p 567) a l eu uhich In rnl opinion i h noth~ng bhort of pererbe

l 0 See Joan Connell Ullman The Trtr~trIVrcX A Srtrtl of Anrr-Crrrctrlrr~ iti Spait7 1875- 191-7 (Cambridge Harvard Uni~ers l t ) Presh 1968) eap 217 231 236-47 153

R E V O L U T I O N A R Y E X H U M T I O N S I N S P l N J C L Y 1 9 3 6 247

the Church was a prime target of the masses And while the political complex- ion of the Churchs enemies changed-the Liberals taking the lead in the nineteenth century the Radicals of Alejandro Lerroux in 1909 and the Anar- chists in 1931 and 1936-the fact that those seeking social change felt com- pelled to attack the Church with direct physical and material violence re-mained constant Not only did they sense the Church to be antipathetic to their cause but they also believed it to be a sufficiently important (and vulnerable) target within those forces aligned against them to require direct confrontation

The reason in all instances was fundamentally the same from the period immediately after the Peninsular Wars to the present day the Spanish Church has been a classic model of what I have elsewhere called the religion of the status quo that is a religious institution which in exchange for the material support of the dominant class within a given society propagates an ideology which futhers the political and material interests of the dominant class while claiming for that ideology the status of eternal and sacred truthll From the restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1814 the Church has closely allied itself with the monarchy and the wealthy an alliance made indispensable to the Churchs survival by the sweeping appropriation of its lands pursuant to laws enacted under Liberal Prime Minister Juan Alvarez Mendizibel between 1835 and 1837 Officially established as a state church the Spanish Catholic hierarchy made telling use of its monopoly on primary and secondary education its dominant role in charity and its control over formalities of birth marriage and death to disseminate throughout society certain doctrines possessed of powerful political implications obedience to authority redemption through suffering and trust in otherworldly rewards

Although the wealth of the Church was often denounced by its opponents it was less the possessions of the Church which gave rise to violent anti- clericalism than its consistent service to the interests of the wealthy while simultaneously paying lip service to the cause of social justice Nowhere may one better perceive the masses view of the Churchs hypocrisy and enmity toward the common people of Spain than in the rumors which prompted church burnings in the summer of 1834 and again in February 1936 In the first instance it was told that a cholera epidemic in Madrid was caused by wellwater poisoned by monks and in the latter that nuns were giving chil- dren poisoned sweets l 3 These tales as well as other persistent rumors (arms stored in convents women cloistered against their will and tortured priests firing on crowds from church towers) whether possessing any truth o r not

Bruce Lincoln Note tornard a Theor) of Rellglon and Recolutlon In Re11ytori Re- be111o11 Reiollrriori 411 I ~ l r r r d t s i ~ ~ ~ ~ o l u r Collzc~tco~l r L~ncolntrrlti Ct~o-CtrItrrr~il of E ~ I B ed (London tvlacmillan 1985) 266-92

See the literature clted in note 9 especiall the anal)s i~ of Brenan Sptrriirh Luhri~l t ~ 33-55

I Peers Spain Church irrld Orderr 68 158

248 B R L C E LINCOLN

are best understood as metaphors whereby popular opinion found expression the Church being cast as a lethal masquerader a superficially benevolent eminence that preyed on the young and polluted the very sources of all life14

With the establishment of the Second Republic in 1931 the Church lost much of its traditional position The hotly debated article 26 of the new constitution abolished Church schools establishing secular education in their place it dissolved the Jesuit order and forced registry of all other orders with the Ministry of Justice and it forbade the Church from acquiring property or engaging in commerce More important than any of these specific reforms however was the fact that the class which the Church had served so well no longer held political control of Spain Of necessity the Church now shifted from its role as a religion of the status quo to become what 1term a religion of the counterrevolution accommodating the new ruling parties as best it could for a time while working for restoration of the old dominant class15

Support for the old order was clear from the stance assumed by the primates of the Spanish Church (Cardinal Pedro Segura y Sienz-banned from Spain for his outspoken hostility to the Republic-and Cardinal lsidoro G o m i y Tomis) and from Church involvement in the right-wing parties and coalitions which stood for election in 1933 and 1936 particularly the Confederacion Espanola de Derechos Antonomas (CEDA) of Jose Maria Gil Robles16 With the victory of the Popular Front in February 1936 however those groups which sympathized with and stood to benefit from a restoration of the old sociopolitical order (although not necessarily of the monarchy itself)-that is the landed and commercial oligarchies the officer corps of the army the Carlists and the Church hierarchy-began preparing to retake power by other means The rising of 17-19 July 1936 and the civil war which followed are best understood as their counterrevolution l 7

In those cities where the rising failed-Madrid Barcelona Valencia Toledo Granada Milaga Badajoz and others (but not cities of the Basque country where attitudes toward the Church have traditionally been quite different from those in the rest of Spain)-the Church stood exposed as the chief remaining representative of the ancien regime the army having been

I J On rumor as the metaphoric articulation of latent popular sentiment see Peter Lienhardt The Interpretation of Rumour in Studies in Social Anthropolog~ Essays in Me~nory o f E E Evans-Pritchard J H M Beattie and R G Lienhardt eds (Oxford The Clarendon Press 1975) 105-31 esp 128-31

Lincoln Notes toward a Theory of Religion and Revolution I h For the best account of the Churchs role in the years 1 9 3 1 3 6 see Sanchez Rejorr~and

Reucfion 65-213 Highly misleading are the presentations of Peers Spain Church urld Orders and UMassimo Miozzi Storiu della Chiesa Spagt7ola (1931-1066) (Rome lnstituto Editoriale del Mediterraneo 1967)

1 Only recently has serious attention been focused on the Right in the years leading up to the civil war See Richard A H Robinson The Origin of Frtrncos Spain (Nebton Abbot David and Charles 1970) Mart~n Bl~nkhorn Carlrsm and Cr i s i~ in Spuir~ (Cambr~dge Cambridge Univers~t Press 1975) the latter hav~ng particular emphas~s on the role of rel~gion

R E V O L L T I O N i R Y E X H U M A T I O N S I N S P A I N J U L Y 1 9 3 6 249

defeated and the wealthy having earlier fled Accordingly it was not long after the immediate threat from the insurgent garrisons had been put down that the newly formed popular militias-or merely the mobs-turned their atten- tion to the Church The burnings murders and atrocities which followed were their attempts to sweep away the last vestiges of the old order and to initiate a full-fledged social revolution I s

Such an analysis may help us to understand the general nature of the violence against the Church in July 1936 but we are still a long way from comprehending the specific significance of the Spanish exhumations In the absence of personal testimony from knowledgeable participants-and one suspects that such testimony will never be forthcoming-we cannot hope to achieve a full understanding of the conscious and unconscious motives which prompted these acts What follows is thus a series of interpretive ventures essays in the literal sense of the term which suggest various ways-none of them definitive nor exclusive of the others-whereby we may attempt to understand why the exhumations took place and what their authors meant to communicate and accomplish through them

I N T E R P R E T I V E V E N T U R E S

I Millennia1 Antinomianism

One of the most obvious points which can be made regarding the Barcelona exhumations is still one of the most important they were an affront to decen- cyI9 A fundamental norm of civilized behavior-that the dead be treated

l 8 Numerous authorit~es and propagandists of various parties have aas~gned the chlef role In the anticlerical outburst of 1936 to militants of the anarchist organlzatlons (Federacibn Anarquista Iberica (FAI) and Confederaci6n Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) uhich mere particularly influential in Catalon~a Certainly such an analysis has a certain plausibil~ty given the exp l~c~ t ly anti-theistic intellectual stance of Spanish Anarchists on which see Joae A l ~ a r e z Junco Lu ide-ologia polltrcu del A17urq1tismo Espuriol (1X68-1903 (Madr~d Siglo Veint~nno Ed~tores 19761 29-36 204- 13 Also uhereas Marxists in general-with occasional exceptions such as Engels Eduard Bernstein and Antonio Gramsci-hace tended to disrnlss rellgion as an ideological superstructure whlch can onl) distract one from the cruclal task of attack~ng the material and sociopolit~cal base of ones class enemies anarchists slnce Mikhail Bakunin (who rema~ned alwals the most important anarchist theoretician In Spanish circles) considered religious institu- tions and doctrines to be one of the foremost obstacles to real libert and thus the) inaisted that the Church be attacked directly

These points notu~thstanding I am inclined to believe that the role of the Anarchists in the Spanish exhumatlons and other anticlerical violence of 1936 has been overemphaalzed I base this opinion on t u o facts first this k ~ n d of violence occurred throughout Lo)alist Spain and not on11 in areas uhere the FA1 and CNT were iniluential second similar outbreaks predate the entry of anarchism into Spain To be sure the Anarchists played an Important role but they uere hard11 alone in this aspect of the fur

l q One must not overstate the case and c l a ~ m that a un~versal norm u a s involved Zoroastrians for instance regard burial as a sacrilege for it pollute the sacred earth ui th impure matter and their scripturea celebrate the exhumer of bod~es as the man u h o most causes the earth to rejoice (Lidevdar 312) I am indebted to rn colleague Wlad Godzlch Profeasor of Comparat~ve Liter-

with respect-was violently and publicly wantonly and even gleefully tram- pled Yet for all that abusing the dead has been universally abhorred-incest and cannibalism (the latter of which is only a variation on abuse of the dead) alone being condemned with equal consistency and vehemence-we must emphasize that like all prohibitions this is a cultural norm and not a natural law It is itself a social construction propagated by the members of society for the good of society but still transgressible by those who define themselves as standing outside andor in open revolt against the social order

Western literature in fact begins with the story of such a rebel who began by protesting the unjust disposition of wealth power and prestige within this world and was ultimately driven to an obscene display of rage refusing burial to a fallen enemy whose corpse he obsessively dragged through the dustO One need not turn to literature however to locate such examples for the history of religions is replete with them Among the better known are the practices of the Aghorins (those without dread) a class of ~ a i v i t e ascetics of Tantric bent still operative in Benares whose cult centers in cemeteries and cremation grounds where they drink from skulls eat feces and all manner of flesh-including human-in defiance of normative vegetarianism engage in incestuous intercourse and in relations with prostitutes and meditate on ex- humed corpses Far from being orgiastic revels these are sacred rituals in which the Aghorins seek to enact their absolute liberation from the human condition itself together with all its arbitrary restraints It is significant also that they live lives of vagabondage and thoroughly reject the fundamental structure of lndic society the caste system

ature at the Un~versity of M~nnebota for havlng recounted to nie the folloulng stor) told him b) his father In the late thirties Godzich pPre had attempted to arouse s)nipath) for Franco in rural Poland b telling of the Spanish exhumation but ma ama7ed to find that the peasants mith whom he spoke mere barely moved b hi account Only later did he dibcocer that as pan of their preservation of certain pre-Christian ideals and rituals of famil~al wlidarit betmeen the licing and the dead these people regularly visited graveyards and enacted a cariety of behav~ors bordering upon exhumation and thub found the Spanihh ecents no cause for cenhure or outrage

xJ See Charles Segal T11e T ~ e t ~ e E J o f rhe Mirrilariotl of thr Corpse it1 the lliud (Le~den Brill 1971 ) and Jean-Pierre Vernant La belle niost et le cadavre outrage In Lo mort les morrs dutrs les soctirc atrcrentre G Gnoli and J-P Vernant eds (Cambridge Cambr~dge Univerist Press 1982) 15-76 the latter of mhich expands upon points made earlier b) James Redfield Nofirre trtld Ctllrttre iti rllr Iliad (Chicago Unicersit of Chicago Press 1975)

It 1s also uosth noting that it was bhortl) after her return from service in the Ptrrrido Obrrro de Unficaci4n Marrtsiu (POUM) m~litia In Aragon and Catalonia mhere she was profoundl) shaken by the atroc~ties of the recolution that Simone Well publibhed her essay Llliade ou le p o h e de la force Cal~irrsdu Sud I9(December 1910) 230 and 20(Januar) 1911) 231 uhich begins uith a med~tatlon on the corpse of Hektor that rl~itlgto mhich a once-proud human being uas reduced by the force of Akhilles

On the Aghor~nh (or Aghori as he t r anx r~bed the terni) see Mircea Eliade Yoga Imrnorral~r atlif Freeifom (Princeton Pr~nceton U n i ~ e r s ~ t ) Press 1969) 296-301 or more recent Jonathan Parr) Sacr~ficial Death and the Necrophagoub Ascet~c In Llrarh utld rhr Regenerariot7 of Life M Bloch and J Parry eds (Cambridge Cambridge Universit Press 1982) 71-1 10 esp 8 6 1 0 1

One might also consider the Hamatsa (Cannibal) dance of the Canadian northwest coast the centerpiece of the Kwakiutl winter ceremonial After a period in the wild during which time he is said to be with the deity Man Eater the Hamatsa dramatically reenters society smashing his way through the roof of the house in which the ceremonial is held Raging beyond control he assaults the others present biting them and eating their flesh then escapes to the wild once more Lured back by magical songs the promise of more flesh and dances in which naked women carry corpses which they offer him to eat the Hamatsa is captured and ritually tamed The personification of unrestrained hunger and those drives which threaten to tear civilization apart he is a force that must be acknowledged and subdued if the social order is to survive22

It is in millenarian movements however that the deliberate flouting of such fundamental taboos as those against incest cannibalism and abuse of the dead have been best attested and most seriously studied Describing the antinomian extremes of Melanesian Cargo Cults Peter Worsley considers them to be the deliberate enactment of the overthrow of the cramping bonds of the past not in order to throw overboard all morality but in order to create a new m ~ r a l i t y ~ More probing still is the analysis of Kenelm Burridge who also interprets such episodes as representing part of a transition from the old order to the new but who goes further to describe antinomianism as a liminal stage or dialectic moment in which no rules come into being as the radical antithesis of old rules and the necessary precursor of synthetic new rules yet to appear24

That Loyalist Spain in the late summer of 1936 was in the throes of a millenarian upheaval is evident from the writings of those who were there A militant almost ecstatic egalitarianism pervaded many regions in which all signs of social hierarchy in dress and demeanor disappeared The state for all intents and purposes ceased to function beyond Madrid all control falling to spontaneous workers committees Factories farms and utilities were collec- tivized wages equalized a militia established in which there were often no ranks commands o r formal discipline Women fought alongside men as comrades Waiters and bootblacks ceased to be obsequious and rejected tips as condescending charity Peasants refused to wait for members of important committees asserting that they too were busy men A utopian enthusiasm was

A nem and most interesting interpretation of the Hamatsa has recently been offered by Stanley Walens Frating ~ i t l ~ Cant7ibals An Essay on Kbtaktutl Cosmology (Princeton Prince- ton University Press 1981) esp 138-63 See also the classic accounts in Franz Boas Krakiutl Ethnograpb Helen Codere ed (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1966) 171-279 and Ruth Benedict Patfrrns of Culturr (Boston Houghton blifflin 1959) 177-81

3 Peter Worsle) T l ~ r Trurnpet Shall Sound A Study o f Curgo Cirlfs in Melanesrtr 2d ed (New York Schocken 19681 250 j Kenelrn Burridge Ret Heairn Yrkr Etrrth (New York Schocken 19691 esp 166-68

rampant which subsided only as the tide of the civil war turned in Francos favor while the infighting on the Republican side shifted to the benefit of the Communist party and the detriment of the Anarchi~ts ~ But prior to the attempt at establishing the new rules there was an ominous violent and profoundly shocking phase of no rules in the summer of 1936 during which political enemies were ruthlessly murdered churches burned and dis- interred corpses were placed on public display In part these may have been practical steps aimed at demolishing what was left of the ancien regime but they were also the spontaneous dramatization of absolute liberation from all bonds of the past even from those of common d e ~ e n c y ~

I I Rituals of Collective Obscenie

Revolutionary or millenarian outbursts of antinomian excess generally appear to be quite spontaneous No doubt the involvement of most who participate in them is not premeditated but simply results from enthusiasm of the moment Speaking of participants in incestuous orgies within several Cargo Cults Burridge recalls The people to whom Ive spoken cannot really explain afterwards why theyve done that in particular Theyre in a daze In other instances however it is clear that those involved do have consciousness of purpose and that by perpetrating premeditated atrocities they attempt to trans- form themselves and others through their unprecedented a c t ~ ~

The famous Mau Mau oaths provide an important case in point9 Ar-tificially constructed by leaders of the rebellion from the vast store of tradi- tional Kikuyu symbolism they played on two basic themes One of these was

25 The most famous eyewitness accounts of these days are George Orwells Homage to Catalonia (1939 rpt New York Harcourt Brace and World 1952) and Franz Borkenaus The Spanish Cockpit (1937 rpt Ann Arbor University of Michlgan Press 1974) Other less cele- brated testimonies are of equal or in some Instances even greater value as for example Mary Low and Juan Brea Red Spanish Notebook (1937 rpt San Francisco City Lights 1979) H-E Kaminski Ceux de Barcelone (Paris Edltions DeNoel 1937) John Langdon-Davies Behind Spanish Barricades 11936 rpt New York Robert M Mcbnde 1937) and Augustln Souchy Bauer With the Peasants of Aragon (Minneapolis Soil of Liberty 1982)

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 liminal period which while intense subsides with the emergence of new rules The latter terrorism however is decidedly nonliminal being the institutionalized repression whlch accompanies and makes possible the imposition of new rules

2 Remarks at the International Research Conference on Religion and Revolution Min-neapolls 10 November 198 1

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 accusa- tlons such as the allegation that seventy-nine Russlan agitators entered the Republic to coordinate the anticlerical attack (thus the bishops Joint Letter sec 6 para 3 reproduced in Gomi Por Dios y por Esparia 575) have never been substantiated and make one extremely wary of accepting the charge of premeditation too readily

29 The best treatment of these oaths is Roben Buijtenhuijs Le mouvemmt Mati-Mau (The Hague Mouton 1971 ) 255-98

R E V O L U T I O N A R Y E X H U M A T I O N S I N S P A I N J U L Y 1936 2 5 3

initiation the traditional Kikuyu initiatory ceremonies having atrophied badly under British rule Through the administration of complex and binding oaths however prospective activists were elevated to a new level of adult responsi- bility unattainable under colonialism As Kareri Njama says of his own oath- taking I had been born again in a new society with a new faithO

In addition to their initiatory significance the oaths also consciously played on themes of purity and defilement Involving forbidden deeds such as the drinking of blood eating of excrement intercourse with animals and so forth the oaths placed all who took them into the state of what Kikuyu call thahu-spiritual stain Oath-takers willingly assumed this state of stain thereby adopting the status of outlaws persons cut off from society and all its demands for proper behavior Moreover they assumed this role not as iso- lated individuals but as part of a group the members of which were bound together by the stain (Western authors have inaccurately used the terms guilt and shame) which they shared Intentionally shocking even obscene such rituals served as a powerful means of political integration fusing those who celebrated them into a unified antisociety set on a course of rebellion from which there could be no turning back

Nor is it only exotic peoples under colonial rule who have had recourse to such rituals of collective obscenity as Max Gluckman characterizes the Mau Mau oaths31 Thus according to both Plutarch and Dio Cassius those who joined in the conspiracy of Catiline against the Roman Republic (63 Bc )

perform a human sacrifice and together ate of the victims flesh in order to bind themselves together in their bold ~ e n t u r e ~ Again the most radical phase of the Nizari Ismaili (Assassin) movement was inaugurated by a feast given on 8 August 1164 at the height of the fast-month of Ramadan This banquet was referred to as the Festival of the Resurrection (Qiyama) by Hasan 11 leader of the Nizari community and it was meticulously stage-managed to produce a solemn and ritual violation of the law in the words of Bernard Lewis for not only were all participants forced to break their fasts but the pulpit was so positioned that in facing it all attending had their backs to Mecca in violation of Islamic religious law the Sharia Hardly an over- sight this dramatized the explicit message of the festival the end of the

(I Kareri Njama Mau Maufrorn Withrn 121 cited in Buijtenhuijs Lr motivrment MNu-Mati 260

3 1 Max Gluckman The Magic of Despair in his Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (New York Free Press 1963) 137-45 In many ways however Glucknians analysis must now be replaced by that of Buijtenhuijs

32 Dio Cassius 37303 Plutarch Cicero 103 Sallust Bellum Catilinae 22 recounts the same story but expresses skeptic~sni as to whether it is true or merely propaganda directed against Catiline by h ~ s enemies chiefly Cicero

33 Bernard Lewis The Assassins A Radical Sect in Islam (London Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1967) 73 On the festival of the Qiyama see also Marshall G S Hodgson The Ortier of Assassins (The Hague Mouton 1955) 148-58

254 B R U C E L I N C O L N

Sharia and the entry of all who accepted Hsans proclamation into a new paradisal state of being At the same time this was a proclamation of indepen- dence for the Nizari community and a renewal of their war against Sunni orthodoxy as well as with the Saljuq empire which that orthodoxy supported Since the Saljuqs and their Sunni apologists could certainly be expected to condemn those who had profaned Ramadan all in attendance were thereafter bound irrevocably to Hasans cause

Even the Terror of the French Revolution might be considered-in part at least-as a ritual of collective obscenity although one might hesitate to offer such a characterization had not one of its chief authors done so first It is reported that Danton himself told the future Louis XVIII It was my will that the whole youth of Paris should arrive at the front covered with blood bt8hich would guarantee theirfidelih I wished to put a river of blood between them and the enemy34 In similar fashion the exhumations and other atrocities against the Church committed the militants and indeed all of Loyalist Spain to a venture from which there could be no turning back for they could henceforth expect no mercy from Francos cruzada had they ever in fact been able to do so

111 Iconoclasm

In considering the exhumations as an instance of millenarian antinomianism and as a ritual of collective obscenity we have tended to focus on what they accomplished for those who performed them enacted their radical freedom in the first instance and forged their militant solidarity in the latter But we must also consider what exhumation did to those against whom it was performed for there can be no mistaking the aggression implicit in the act That aggres- sion of course was not directed principally against the individuals ex-h ~ m e d ~but against the religious institution which they represented and beyond that against the social order which that institution served Like the widespread burning of churches decapitation of religious statues and car- nivalesque mockery of ecclesiastic paraphernalia the exhumation of nuns bodies may be considered-in a broad sense at least-as an act of iconocla- sm

Although we still lack a general phenomenological investigation of ico-

34 Cited in Christopher Dawson The Gods of Reollction New York Mlnerva 1975) 80 Emphasis added

15 NO specific attitude toward the perons exhumed is consistently ev~dent In the inc~dents reported Thus while most ~ncldents discussed in Castro Albarran LNjirun ~icfrrnu 159-60 seem to involve prominent vlctims who were particularly scorned by their exhumers ( e g Queen Marla of Castille B~shop Torras y Bages and Vifredo el Velloso the conqueror of Catalonla) those d~scussed in Montero Moreno Historici dr lu prrsecricrbn 64 43 1-32 lnvolve anonymous vlctlms who were perceived to be victims of the Church themselves and were consequently mewed with some measure of sympathy (e g children said to have been secretly executed by priests young women said to have been raped w~thin monasteries monks interred with peniten- tial instruments said to be tools of torture)

R E V O L U T I O N A R Y E X H C M A T l O N S IN S P A I N J U L Y 1936 255

noclasm I provisionally define this act as the deliberate and public shattering of sacred symbols with the implicit intent of dissolving all loyalty to the institution which employs those symbols and further of dissipating all re- spect for the ideology which that institution propagates In and of itself iconoclasm has no specific political content although it has always a political vector being directed against a specific power structure Quite often it is employed as an instrument of conquest or colonial oppression as for in- stance in the celebrated felling of the Germans sacred oak at Geismar by St Boniface or the missionaries destruction of the chief shrine of the god Oro in Tahiti which produced a native rebellion against colonial rule36

Conversely revolutionary movements also make frequent use of ico-noclasm as a weapon against the regimes they seek to overthrow During their dechristianization campaign of 1793-94 Hebertists and others promoted massive demonstrations such as that staged by Joseph Fouche in Lyons where asses decked out in cope and mitre dragged copies of the Gospels through the streets37 The English civil war abounds with instances of radical soldiers tearing down altar rails crosses and images and a major intent of the Taiping Rebellion was to cleanse China of idolatry and orthodox Confu- c i a n i ~ m ~ ~

Whether repressive or revolutionary any act of iconoclasm is a highly charged and complex religiopolitical operation the efficacy of which derives from the conscious and unconscious linkages between multiple types of power To begin one must recognize that those who venerate an icon or other religious symbol regularly do so with a sense that it is a locus or representa- tion of or entree to sacred power An iconoclastic party however-which is usually set off from an iconolatrous party by differences of class andor national origin-rejects these claims out of the conviction that either ( I ) the icon in question lacks power or (2) no such thing as sacred power exists

3h On the felling of the sacred oak see Willibald Citu Botrifacii ch 6 (text and translat~on ava~lable in M Tangl and P H Kiilb et ul eds Briefe dcs Botrifirilt~ rltrd Willihuldl Lebc~r d e Botrifurirt~ new edition Reinhold Rau ed (Darrn5tadt Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1968) 494-95 On the de5truction of Oros shrine and it repercu5slonh 5ee W~lhelm Muhl- mann Arioi irtrd llnrnciiu Eitrc eihtrolo~isc~irc rc~liqiotrr~oioIoqrsc~irc~ Strtdiclord irrsiorisc~hc~ ribw Poltresrsc he Kitlthiitlde (Wiesbaden Franz Stelner I955) 214-25 One rnisht also note the practice of a conqueror disrupting the bone5 of deceased members of the dynasty which he overthrew as was common for instance in the ancient Near East For some examples see Mary Boyce A Hisiorv of Zorousrricitristn (Le~den E J Brill 1982) 11 55

The bet general work on the campalsn of dechri5tianitation is Michel Vovelle Rclr~iotl ct rc~~olrtiiotr dc lutl I1 (Pa r~s Hachette 19761 wh~ch is however larsely a lci cic~clrrrsiicit~isuiiotr statistical and dernoraphic study and not a dramnturyical one For the dechritianizat~on specta- cle see Mona Otouf Lu tcic rcjl ollttiotl~roire 1789-1799 (Paris Gallimard 19761 9 9 1 2 3 ei pcissirn

X On the iconoclasm of the English civil war see John Ransome Phillip Tlre Reformation of Irnagrs Drstrlictiot~ of Art in Et~gland 1535-1660 (Berkele) Universit) of California Press 1973) on that of the Taiping Rebellion Vincent Y C Shih The Taipi t l~ Idc~olog~ (Seattle University of Washington Press 1967) 23-29

3ee the discussion of Venet~a Newall Icons as Symbols of Power in Srnbols c~fPort er Hilda Ellis-Davidson ed (Totown NJ Rowman and Littlefield 1977) 61-99

It follows that an act of iconoclasm is never an attempt to destroy an icons sacred power for iconoclasts act with the assurance that it has none Rather it is their intent to demonstrate for all observers to see-be they iconoclasts iconolators or neutral-the powerlessness of the icon and simultaneously to demonstrate that the party of the iconoclasts possesses superior intellectual political andlor material power than that of the iconolators In truth ico- noclasm effects a double disgrace to the latter by exposing first the bank- ruptcy of their most cherished beliefs and second their impotence in the face of their enemies assault

Any number of examples could be cited to show that such dynamics were at work in the anticlerical violence of 1936 To take but one it is related that during the siege of the Alcazar in Toledo a group of militiamen brandished a famous statue of Christ in front of the fortress taunting the Nationalist sol- diers within Here we have the Cristo de la Vega Were going to burn it If you are Catholics come down and stop us Wed stop you if you did the same with a figure of Lenir~~ Like any provocation an act of iconoclasm is an implicit show of force and the more audacious the provocation the more confident of their power the provocateurs seem to be

In the early days of the civil war devotional objects including great works of art were destroyed in vast numbers provoking an anguished response from the Church and its sympathizer^^ Ordinarily the Nationalist denuncia- tions of anticlerical actions treated iconoclasm and the exhumations sepa- rately for the bodies of religious are not normally considered to be icons nor is exhumation strictly speaking an act of iconoclasm Yet it is also true that religious are consecrated persons their very bodies made holy not only by their moral lives but also by the sacraments which they have received As one Jesuit apologist for Francos cause put it these bodies had been nothing less than living temples of God (templos vivos de D i o ~ ) ~ ~ TO tear such sacred entities from their hallowed resting places and to subject them to mockery andlor desecration may surely be considered an act of iconoclasm in precisely the sense discussed above For it was through their savage violation of sacred objects-a corpse being as much an object as it is a person-that the ex- humers dramatized their rejection of all claims to sacred status and further

40Cited in Carreras Glory oj UarpredSpai~~ 99 from an account which appeared in the paper Exrremadtira on 15 October 1936 These sources being highly sympathetic to the Nationalist cause and thus devoted to glorifying the heroes of the Alcazar a fitting end is provided for the story According to Carreras and his source two of the militiamen strayed into the 11ne of fire from the Alcazar while burning the statue whereupon they were shot and pitched into the fire themselves

4See for instance the final section of Montero Morenos Historia de la Persecuctdn 627-53 devoted to inc~dents of iconoclasm and entitled El martirio de las cosas [ The martyrdom of things] One of the most effect~ve pieces of Nationalist propaganda is devoted entirely to photos of heavily damaged rel~gious art Manuel Augusto Via crucis del Serior en rirrras de Esparia (Barcelona Editora National 1939)

42Bayle Que pasa en Esparia 53

R E V O L U T I O N A R Y E X H U M A T I O N S I N S P A I N J U L Y 1936 257

their confidence that those who held such claims to be valid-that is the traditionally faithful whom they considered to be their class enemies-were at that moment utterly powerless to defend the things they held dear

IV Sanctih Corruption Profanophany

The preceding analyses may help to shed light on the significance of the Spanish exhumations but the specific symbolism of exhumation itself is still to be considered The question remains Why would anyone rip ancient bodies of religious from their tombs and set them on public display

In many instances-including some of the most publicized as for exam- ple Toledo and Barcelona-no motive was ever offered or elicited a fact which left Nationalist propagandists free to invoke necrophilia sadism andlor satanic possession as the only possible explanation^^^ Yet in other cases the exhumers did not remain mute for they claimed that the specific corpses which they displayed constituted concrete evidence of either sexual depravity or the practice of torture within churches monasteries and con- vents Thus fetal remains and corpses of young children were prominently displayed in many instances as were the bodies of monks or nuns in peniten- tial orders who were buried with their scourges or other implements of pen- a n ~ e ~ ~Moreover the trials which followed events of the Semana Tragica of 1909 developed a significant record concerning the motives of those who exhumed and displayed corpses of religious at that time who had sought to present graphic evidence of corruption within the C h ~ r c h ~

Within the context of exhumation the category of corruption is an ex-tremely important one for like its near synonyms rottenness and decadence corruption is most concretely and emphatically manifest in the state of bodily decomposition Quite literally corruption-like its Spanish cognate corrup- cidtz-denotes the state of having fallen apart the term being derived from Latin cor-ruptid (for con-ruptib) an abstract noun with passive sense built upon the verb rumpb to break into pieces

The most disquieting of all natural processes bodily corruption inevitably comes with the passage of time dead flesh putrefies and decays From a theological perspective however bodily corruption is a moral process as much as a natural one for decay is the final physical result of a sinful-that is to say corrupt-life And what is more the bodies of those who are purified of sin through the sacraments of the Church and the practice of a saintly life

43See for instance Castro Albarran La gran ~ictima 159-61 [Estelrich] La persdcutron rrlrgieuse 39 Along s ~ m ~ l a r Ilnes speaking of the revolutionary iconoclasm in general Montero Moreno Historia de la persecucidn 649 calls it a diabdl~coo nletscheano asesitlato de Dios

Montero Moreno Historia de la persecticidn 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 Minimas de Jesus Maria in Barcelona)

4sSee Ullman Tragic Week 201 227 246-47 253 276-77 et passim

do not decay but partake of eternity freedom from decomposition being one of the foremost proofs of sanctity Nor is this view peculiar to the Catholic Church as is shown by the reverent display of Lenins body in Red Square and we note with interest that the Anarchists of Barcelona appropriating parts of this symbolism had the body of their fallen leader Buenaventura Durruti embalmed and placed under glass in November 193646

If the absence of corruption constitutes an argument for the presence of saintliness the presence of corruption may conversely bear witness to sancti- tys absence as in the celebrated section of The Brothers Karamozov where the corpse of the widely revered Father Zossima began to stink Seizing upon this as a sign of divine judgment the enemies of Father Zossima were jubi- lant while his partisans stood unable to defend him or his doctrines particu- larly given that his body had decomposed even more rapidly than

Ordinarily the stench of putrefaction arouses disgust or revulsion revul- sion being the reaction of those who would deny their mortality when con- fronted with the hard evidence of what it means to be mortal Father Zos- simas enemies however perceived something quite different in his reeking corpse which caused them to exult rather than recoil for the fumes revealed to them that one for whom great claims had been made was in fact not different from other men but equally subject to death time and decay The episode was nothing less than a profanophany a revelation of the pro- fanity temporality and corruption inherent to someone or something-a profanophany here accomplished through the natural process of bodily decay

Like the funeral of Father Zossima the Spanish exhumations may be un- derstood as profanophanies in which inherent corruption was revealed through profoundly distressing bodily means Indeed it is difficult even now to look at the pictures of these remains without experiencing genuine terror or even nausea at their state Yet we are told that the crowds laughed and jeered at them in July of 1936 a response which is only comprehensible I submit when we recognize that the derision was not directed at the corpses of those unfortunate individuals but at the pretensions of the Church a church which was represented in those tortured bodies Just as the layer of preserved skin accentuated by its contrast the reality of death in those corpses which were mummified so also the veil of sanctity in which the Church cloaked itself served only to accentuate its underlying corruption Despite its claim to eter- nity the Church stood naked in its temporal reality-like all temporal crea- tures and institutions subject to death and decay At this some spectators laughed experiencing joy or liberation at the degradation of the mighty while others mourned in silence and brooded on revenge

Low and Brea Red Spcinrslr Notebook 2 15 Fyodor Dostoevsky Tile Brot1rcr~ Kurumoov Part 3 Book 7 Sect~onI The Breath of

Conuption

R E V O L U T I O N A R Y E X H U M A T I O N S I N S P A I N J U L Y 1936 259

C O N C L U S I O N S

If nothing else I hope to have established that the Spanish exhumations merit serious study No human action is truly aberrant just as no human action is without meaning and extreme acts-however repugnant-call for the most intense study of all because they have the potential for uncovering important aspects of humanity that are usually masked by the demands of civility and order

Certainly this brief study-whose contribution should surely be amplified with the evidence resting in Spanish archives and (if they could be obtained) the testimonies of surviving witnesses-will not be the final word on the exhumations and 1 have sought only to offer some suggestions which arise from my reading of the data Inevitably these suggestions are colored by my own interests and preconceptions particularly as regards the general theme of religion and revolution to which I have devoted some attention in recent years In earlier studies I have tried to show how reli 0 1 0 ~ s structures- myths sacred symbols rituals categories of leadership views of history and the like-are regularly appropriated not just by one party within a revolution- ary struggle but by all parties each one choosing and adapting those struc- tures which are most useful to it in its struggle with its a d v e r s a r i e ~ ~ Even when participants in a revolutionary struggle claim that their positions and motivations are entirely secular rational or even antirelik 710~s-as was true for the parties of the left in the Spanish civil war most of all for the Anar- chists-powerful mythic ritual and soteriological dimensions may still be recognized in their rhetoric ideology and actions

The Spanish exhumations however have consistently been presented as a telling example of revolutionary violence against religion-all religion as indeed against all decency lYBut as the result of the above examination I am more than ever convinced that this is not so First it must be stressed that the

See L I I I C ~ I I I Der polltihehe Notes t o ~ a r d a Theory of Rc l i~ ion and Revolut~on ic1cm Gehalt des hlythos In 4cheriiigu ode- clir h~g i t i i l~ i i c l~~ W) I I I ~ I O R I C Schci~rlli-Zrir Sriteiieii it

iisrriicc ioici Riqioii Hans Peter Ducrr ed (Frankfort Qurnrarl Verlag 19831 9-25 (Italian tran~lation uith add~tions In Srlccii L i~iorerioli cli ri~riu clrllr 1-eiqioiii R~ffucc Prtt~iotii triireiiiir roloric 7 t 1983) 75-86) iclo~i The Earth Shall Becorne Flat-A Study of 4pocalqptlc Imagery Coiirgtc~rutii~ iii Socirtv criici Hisror 25 1 ( 1981) 136-53 Strcclic

Note for inhtance the opin~on voiced wi th~n the Spanish b~ahop Joiiir Lcrrer (Gornb P11r Die ) [or Eltrgtuiiu 57 1 ) (emphah~r added)

And because God is the most profound foundation of a ell-ordered society-as w ~ t h the Spanihh nation-the c o ~ n m u n ~ s t the armed forces of the Goernment revolution In alliance ~ t h wah cihoie c r antidiv~ne The cqcle of secularizing Iesislat~on of the 1931 Constitut~on culmi- nated in the dcbtruct~on of everything that was of God

[ Y porque Dios es el ma5 profundo cimicnto de urla hoeledad b~crl ordenada-lo era de la nacidn cspaiiola- la rcvolucidn cornunita aliada de lob ejerc~tos del Gobierno fuC sohrr todo ant~divina Se cerraba ahi el ciclo de la Icgihlatitin lalea de la Conbtitucitin dc 1931 con la destrucci6n de cuanto era cosa de Dios]

exhumations like all anticlerical violence in Spanish history were not an assault on religion but on one specific religious institution an institution closely aligned with the traditionally wealthy and powerful At the same time that the exhumations were a ferocious assault upon and mockery of that institution they must be understood also as something akin to the horrific foundation ritual of a new religion a millenarian creed that felt a new heaven and a new earth emerging at that very moment and which rejoiced in the overthrow of the old It is only when viewed thus that the complex nature of the Spanish exhumations becomes apparent in its entirety simultaneously an act of iconoclasm profanophany initiation revelation liberation of destruc- tion and creation alike

On the rnillenarian nature of the Spanish anarchists see the discussion in Brenan Spanish Labyritlth 13 1-202 E J Hobsbawn Pr i~n i t ive Rebels (New York W W Norton 19651 74- 92 and rny own brief remarks on the rhetor~c of Buenaventura Durruti in Der politische Gehalt des Mythos 19-20 Other however have been critical of this view-which ult~mately derives from the work of Juan Diaz del Moral Histor iu de lus ugituciones catripesinas an-duluzus-Cdrdobu (Madrid Revista de Derecho Privado 1929)-in recent years See e g Ternrna Kaplan Anarchists of Andalusiu 1868-1903 (Princeton Princeton University Press 1977) esp 210-12 and Jerome R Mintz The Anarchists (fCusus Viejus (Chicago Univerbity of Chicago Press 1982) 5 nn 5-7