Abstract
A society undergoing rapid change provided fertile ground for conspiracy theories as clear and simple answers to fears and anxieties arising from multiple transitions. Les Pourquoi de la Guerre Mondiale resonated with conservative Catholics in the tumultuous years marked by the controversy over Americanism in France, the condemnation of Modernism, and the separation of Church and State in France. Overt hostility to the Church from Republicans of various persuasions rendered allegations of an occult orchestration of their multiple efforts directed against Catholicism the more plausible. While Delassus’s theological reading of the factors that brought about the war appear rather eccentric when read against the more familiar accounts privileging political, military, and economic causes, it did resonate with those who shared his ideological framework, which focused and indeed determined interpretation.
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Notes
M. C. Jacob (1991) Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe ( New York: Oxford University Press ), p. 26.
H. Delassus (1919–22) Les Pourquoi de la Guerre Mondiale: Les oeuvres des hommes et les voies de Dieu de la Renaissance à nos jours. 3 vols. (Lille: Desclée, De Brouwer).
H. Delassus (1836–1921), priest of the diocese of Cambrai, as director of the Semaine religieuse of Cambrai campaigned against liberalism and Modernism in the Catholic Church, and the activities of Freemasons and Christian Democrats in society. On Delassus see L. Medler (2005) Mgr Delassus (1836–1921) (Avrillé: Éditions du Sel).
On Barruel see M. Riquet (1989) Augustin de Barruel. Un jésuite face aux Jacobins franc-maçons, 1741–1820 (Paris: Beauchesne). Barruel played a pivotal role in Delsssus’s transformation into a specialist in anti-Christian conspiracy. Medler, Mgr Delassus, p. 48.
J. M. Roberts (2008) The Mythology of the Secret Societies ( London: Watkins Publishing ), p. 24.
J. Grondeux (2002) La religion des intellectuels français au XIXe siècle (Toulouse: Éditions Privat), pp. 26–33.
See also O. Bradley (1999) A Modern Maistre: The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de Maistre (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Medler notes that the author materially most cited by Delassus is de Maistre. See Medler, Mgr Delassus, p. 16.
H. Delassus (1899) L’Américanisme et la conjuration antichrétienne ( Lille: Desclée De Brouwer);
H. Delassus (1905–06) Le problème de l’heure présente. Antagonisme de deux civilisations 2 vols. (Lille: Desclée De Brouwer);
H. Delassus (1910) La conjuration anti-chrétienne. Le Temple Maçonnique voulant sélever sur les ruines de l’Église Catholique 3 vols. ( Lille: Desclée De Brouwer).
For further discussion of the Affaire des Fiches see M. Larkin (1995) Religion, Politics & Preferment in France Since 1890. La Belle Epoque and Its Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Chapter 2. In subsequent chapters Larkin assesses the effects of such suspicion of Catholics on Catholic presence in the judiciary, civil service, and education.
On the complicated history of the Affair see J. D. Bredin (1986) The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus. Trans. J. Mehlman ( New York: George Braziller).
A spirituality of reparative suffering—albeit in an extreme form—emerges in the work of J. K. Huysmans (who also reflects the anti-Masonic, anti-Jewish and anti-Protestant sentiments prominent with Delassus). See C. J. T. Talar (1999) ‘A Naturalistic Hagiography: J. K. Huysmans’ Sainte Lydwine de Schiedam’ in L. Barmann and C. J. T. Talar (ed.) Sanctity and Secularity during the Modernist Period (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes), pp. 151–81.
G. Cubitt (1989) ‘Denouncing Conspiracy in the French Revolution’ in Renaissance and Modern Studies 33, 148–51.
For a survey of French anti-Protestantism see J. Baubérot and V. Zuber (2000) Une haine oubliée. L’antiprotestantisme avant le ‘pacte laïque’ (1870–1905) ( Paris: Alb in Michel).
D. A. Harvey (2005) Beyond Enlightenment: Occultism and Politics in Modern France ( Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press ), p. 36.
M. Fenster (1999) Conspiracy Theories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota), pp. 87–8.
R. Girardet (1986) Mythes et mythologies politiques (Paris: Éditions du Seuil), p. 53.
The proportions and persistence of Jesuit machinations affecting the life of France, characterized as ‘a gradually evolving compound of traditional materials—themes and motifs transmitted from generation to generation and adapted, with varying degrees of flexibility, to the analytical needs and historical conditions of successive periods’. G. Cubitt (1993) The Jesuit Myth. Conspiracy Theory and Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 9.
J.-A. Faucher (1986) Les Francs-maçons et le pouvoir de la Revolution à nos jours ( Paris: Perrin ), Chapter 1.
A. Combes (1987) ‘L’école de la République’ in Daniel Ligou (ed.) Histoire des Francs-maçons en France (Toulouse: Éditions Privat), pp. 249–50.
On the Ligues see Pierre Pierrard (1998) Les chrétiens et l’affaire Dreyfus ( Paris: Les Éditions de l’Atelier ), Chapter 5.
M. J. Headings (1949) French Freemasonry under the Third Republic (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), Chapters 3 and 5.
P. Chevalier (1975) Histoire de la Franc-maçonnerie française. Vol. 3, La Maçonnerie: l’Église de la République ( Paris: Fayard).
R. F. Byrnes (1950) Antisemitism in Modern France ( New York: Howard Fertig ), p. 128.
S. Wilson (1982) Ideology and Experience: Antisemitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair ( Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press ), p. 92.
P. Sorlin (1967) ‘La Croix’ et les juifs (1880–1899) (Paris: Grasset), p. 144.
On Barbier see C. J. T. Talar (1993) ‘Antisemitism as Ally: Campaigning against Masonry and Modernism’ in Continuum 2/2, 199–215.
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Talar, C.J.T. (2015). The Ways of Providence and the Sufferings of War: Canon Henri Delassus’s Les Pourquoi de la Guerre Mondiale. In: Talar, C.J.T., Barmann, L.F. (eds) Roman Catholic Modernists Confront the Great War. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527363_6
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