© SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without

Vernacular culture as a religious rampart: Roussillon clergy and the defence of Catalan language in 1880s

Francesca Zantedeschi

The aim of this paper is to analyse the attitude of Roussillon secular clergy towards Catalan vernacular culture in the second half of the nineteenth century. I will explore the clerical response to Third Republic anti-clerical politics to point out that the recovery of vernacular culture by Roussillon clergy was suggested by a largely defensive attitude.

France’s attitude towards dialects in the long nineteenth century At the beginning of nineteenth century, patois , a socially unworthy language, acquired new authority by becoming subject of investigation. In fact, since its early appearance, the word “patois” had had a negative implication. In the 1694 edition of Richelet dictionary, besides the distinction between language and dialect – a purely denotative distinction, dialect being considered a non-institutionalized language –, we could find the distinction between dialect and patois . It was a socio-qualitative distinction, and patois possessed a negative connotation, since it was defined as a «sort of coarse language of a particular place which is different from the language spoken by honest people» 1. Since the French language had two definitions, one of a legal nature and the other of a social nature, it follows that French language without a juridical legal status which belonged to the masses was a patois 2. The 1789 Revolution, due to its will to establish a new world also through language, confirmed and deepened this distinction between French and patois by institutionalizing it. Even though a real language politics was not part of the Revolutionaries’ original plans, their resolution to transform social reality had an important repercussion also on the linguistic field. Their need to fix their ideas and visions of the new reality went through the use of fetish words and their fixation in dictionaries, the invention of neologisms, and created a «nomination’s fever» which

1 F. Garavini, Parigi e provincia , Turin, Bollati Boringhieri, 1990, p. 112. 2 S. Branca, «Espace national et decoupage dialectal: deux étapes de la construction de la dialectologie au XIXe siècle», Trames, Histoire de la langue: méthodes et documents , Actes du colloque du groupe d’étude en histoire de la langue française, Limoges, 1982, pp. 43-53. 1 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without showed the importance both symbolic and political of their action. In order to externalize the Revolutionaries’ political ideals, the French language was therefore to be rethought so that it could reach the people and not be locked up in a bourgeois logic 3. According to the French linguist Sylvain Auroux, the political aspect of the language is probably the most outstanding element within the French tradition. The amount of “stories” about the French language shows its political use, typical of the French tradition, in which there was no place for a spontaneous linguistic evolution 4. Along these lines, Grégoire’s enquiry on patois was one of the first measures taken 5. This enquiry, which began on 13 August 1790, prepared a turnaround in the linguistic politics of the members of the 1789 Constituent Assembly, which did become more significant from 1794. Since the attitude of Assembly’s members towards regional languages was dictated by the necessity to spread as much as possible the revolutionary ideas and to propagate all the decrees by translating them into local idioms, until then a real linguistic politics did not exist 6. The National Assembly’s members considered the language as a communication tool and had a strictly instrumental idea about it. In 1794, the Convention elaborated an intervention programme in order to clear up the «chaos» generated by linguistic multiplicity 7. The Grégoire’s enquiry had the purpose to define precisely the number and extent of patois within the République ’s territory, their linguistic forms, their use and the ideas they spread. The 43 questions in total of the questionnaire, combined a scientific enquiry with an opinion analysis, and were sent to Republic’s commons, to Sociétés des Amis de la Révolution and numerous members of the clergy. Grégoire’s inquiry was to have some important repercussions on how local idioms would be considered. The linguistic and ideological distinction between “language” and “patois” took for granted a «geographical difference» between Paris, the capital, and the rest of France 8. The written report by abbé Grégoire was therefore the

3 A. Rey, Mille ans de langue française , Perrin, 2007, p. 931 ss. 4 See S. Auroux, « Langue, Etat, Nation : le modèle politique », in P. Sériot (ed.), Langue et nation en Europe centrale et orientale, du 18 ème siècle à nos jours , Cahiers de l’ILSL (Univ. De Lausanne), n. 8, 1996, pp. 1-20. 5 From the name of Henri-Baptiste Grégoire (1750-1831), an ex-abbé , the constitutional bishop of Blois and later a Convention’s member. 6 M.-C. Perrot, « La politique linguistique pendant la Révolution française », Mots. Les langages du politique , vol. 52, n. 1, 1997, p. 158-167. 7 See B. Schlieben-Lange, Idéologie, révolution et uniformité de la langue , Liège, Mardaga, 1996. 8 M. De Certeau, D. Julia, J. Revel, Une politique de la langue , Paris, Gallimard, pp. 49-51. 2 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without

«mark of a historical moment» 9. It sanctioned a new idea of patois as an indication of prejudices and reactionary ideals, thus creating an obstacle to the spread of revolutionary ideals and democratic participation. It also legitimised the study of etymologic history of languages as the history of the human spirit’s progress. According to Grégoire, the knowledge of dialects correlated directly to the origins of the nation 10 . The concept of local idioms promoted by Grégoire’s report would have enormous repercussions in the future. By treating patois as “monuments”, it eliminated them from everyday usage, however it promoted their study as traces of the history of the nation. The Coquebert de Montbret’s enquiry (1806) had the same purpose to rescue and save a dying heritage. It had political and administrative interests, and required all one hundred and thirty prefects of the empire to know the dialects used in their portion of territory and so to be able to draw the limits of French in relationship to different languages, such as Flemish, Breton, Basque, Catalan, Italian, Germanic Alsatian and German 11 . In France, at the beginning of the 19th century, a new interest in gathering cultural and “ethnic” data took place; beliefs and customs, languages, monuments were all collected as fundamental factors for interpreting and explaining popular life. After the 1789 Revolution, a sense of disappearance concerning the ancient world lead to the will of saving the collective heritage which belonged to the history of France 12 . Popular culture gained a new dignity as the «conservatory of collective heritage» 13 . Interest in national antiquities led towards various directions: enquiries into origins, the writing of a national history, exploration of all that was considered to be an historical heritage of the nation. Archaeological remains, art, architecture, manuscripts, traditions, customs and local idioms, became the object of a new attention and worthy of being recorded. It is in this political and cultural context, greatly marked by the recovery of national antiquities, that neo-Latin studies originated. At the beginning of 19th century, the works of François-Juste-Marie Raynouard (1761-1836), Henri-Pascal de Rochegude (1741-1834)

9 Abbé was the title formerly used in France for members of the secular clergy. 10 De Certeau, op. cit ., pp. 339-340. 11 This enquiry, made under Napoleon I's reign, was led from the Office of the Statistics of the Ministry of the Interior, which was created in 1801 by Napoleon to know the effects of the Revolution and be able to direct the action of the new regime, the Consulate. See, T. Bulot, « L’enquête de Coquebert de Montbret et la glottopolitique de l’Empire française », Romanischen Philologie , 2-89, Auftr. 659/Sch. 1/tr79, Spreu, p. 287-292. 12 F. Mélonio, Naissance et affirmation d’une culture nationale , Paris, Seuil, 2001, p. 150 sqq. 13 A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales , Paris, Seuil, 1999, p. 50. 3 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without and Antoine Fabre d’Olivet (1767-1825) helped to restore the dignity of troubadours’ language and of all neo-Latin languages. At the same time, Romanticism stimulated the study of history, folklore and popular poetry and therefore of philological studies. During XIXth century, language became a relevant matter for dominant elites. According to Herder’s theory, language was a fundamental symbol of the innate nature of a nation which expresses its spirit by means of its literature, and so turned into a fundamental tool to exercise power. A first step towards political awakening of a national community, literary revival has to highlight the literary dignity of the people, before language is converted into a facilitator of ethnic, social and political claims. In France, the slowdown of the centralising assimilation process brought about by Romanticism encouraged the rise of dominated cultures, which found their own momentum by means of their literary revival (as it was the case of Britons, Occitans, Catalans, Basques and others). These cultural movements led an action different from the simple activity of classification and "monumentalisation" of the local languages and cultures. After being inventoried as “national monuments” belonging to French history, local languages and cultures became the object of comparative and scientific studies, and were used to express values inherent to secular civilizations, whereas the stories of the ancient provinces were celebrated as passing on a particular national character.

Cultural Revival in Roussillon Because of its specific historic, geographic and cultural situation, Roussillon represents a very particular case. Since 1660 it has belonged politically to France, while from a cultural and linguistic point of view Roussillon remained within the Catalan cultural sphere, the rest of which was almost completely included within the Spanish State. Due to the growing weight of Barcelona as the Catalan cultural and economic capital in 19th century, it was also natural for Roussillon’s Catalan cultural promoters (and not only for the clergy) to turn to the south, to a culturally close Catalonia, rather than to “France”, which represented in a sense a geographically and culturally distant “north“.

4 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without

Nonetheless, at the very beginning, the cultural and linguistic revival of Roussillon in the nineteenth century was much more influenced by Occitania’s linguistic and literary revival than the Catalan one 14 . The French historian Philippe Martel observed that although activists on both sides of the border thought in terms of a Catalan and Occitan germanor or brotherhood, in fact they were driven by the internal political affairs of the two separate states in which Occitans and Catalans lived (that is France and Spain respectively). The same can be said about French Catalans in their relationship with Spanish Catalans. They were citizens of two separate States and therefore were subjects to different political, economic and social contexts: these different contexts were much more influential as regards their attitudes toward vernacular language and culture than sharing a common language and culture. Therefore, at the very beginning, the Occitan revival within France was more influential on French Catalans than the Spanish Catalan revival over the border in Spain. This particular situation implies that Roussillon was simultaneously a participant in both the Occitan and Catalan revivals. In fact, Roussillon’s linguists and philologists, while participating in the development of Romance studies within France, also made a considerable contribution to the historical and philological study of the Catalan language. In particular, they help to establish the relationship between the Catalan and the Occitan language. At the beginning of nineteenth century, they were among the first to doubt the statement made by the Provençal Romance philologist, François-Juste-Marie Raynouard (1761-1836), that Provençal had played a major role in shaping all the Romance languages. In 1833, in a letter to the Catalan religious Félix Torres Amat regarding Raynouard’s theories, the Roussillon scholar and publisher Josep Tastu (1787-1849) asserted his intention instead to argue that the Catalan language had the primary role, rather than Provençal. The discussion on the origins and the status of Catalan became more and more animated during the 1870s, in particular because of the presence of some Roussillon philologists in the “Société pour l’étude des Langues Romanes”, which was

14 “Occitania”, to which Roussillon geographically belongs, is that area of the Midi of France where a Neo-Latin language is spoken. The main actor of the Provençal literary and cultural revival in the second half of XIXth century was the Félibrige , an association of Provençal poets which was founded in 1854 by Frédéric Mistral and other young poets. Established in Provence, the Félibrige then spread in the whole south of France where an Occitan language was spoken. Because of the peculiar geographic and cultural of its position Roussillon, Félibrige propagated also in Roussillon 5 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without created in 1869 in Montpellier (its first president was the Roussillonnais François-Roman Cambouliu). As a result, Occitan philologists argued that there was a basic unity between the Occitan and Catalan languages, and therefore they classified Catalan as an Occitan dialect, and the counter-claims made by Roussillon linguists and philologists were sidelined. But because of the intellectual formation of Roussillon linguistics took place within a French context, and their ideological and epistemological assumptions were deeply marked by the intellectual and academic French tradition, they were also isolated from the Catalan context. It is also complex to provide an exact chronology for the Roussillon’s Renaixença . The historiography concerning the Renaixença rossellonesa usually locates its early stages in the 1880s, when the abbé Josep Bonafont, in his preface to a collection of poems by another abbé , Antoni Jofre, issued a call for a champion to bring about the resurrection of Catalan language and to lead the Catalan revival in Roussillon. According to the official historiography, the preface by Bonafont should be considered the manifesto of Renaixença rossellonesa and Bonafont therefore be considered as belonging to the first generation of writers and poets who laid the foundations of cultural and literary revival in Roussillon. However, if we look closely at this “first generation” which should stimulate the cultural and language revival in Roussillon, we will observe that the majority of its protagonists came from the Catholic ecclesiastic world. They were highly cultured, had received good educations and were often intrinsically linked to wealthy and influential families 15 .

The anti-clerical politics of the French Third Republic The “first generation” was active in the period of the early Third French Republic, with its strong anti-clerical politics. The dawn of the Third Republic saw, in fact, a flare-up of the conflict between clericals and anti-clericals. 16 1870, year of the French defeat against Prussia, was also significant as the closing year of the First Vatican Council. This council

15 L. Creixell L., «Ideologia de la llengua», Sant Joan i Barres , No. 62, 1976, pp. 19-28. 16 To René Remond, anti-clericalism is a fundamental component of the French political history, indeed a fundamental element of the French political system; R. Remond, L’anticléricalisme en France de 1815 à nos jours , Paris, Fayard, 1976, p. 4. As the author remarks, anti-clericalism does not mean anti-Christianism, nor anti-Catholicism. 6 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without was summoned by Pope Pius IX by the bull Aeterni Patris of 29 june 1868. Its purpose being the condemnation of contemporary errors (rationalism, liberalism and materialism), and the definition of the catholic doctrine concerning the church of Christ. After being defeated in the Prussian war in 1870, and the creation of a Republican electoral majority in the 1870s, the new French government introduced a series of reforms designed to “moralize” and “nationalize” French civil society. As the leadership of the Third Republic identified the Church with superstition and regression, they fought against its influence on the civil society in order to build an authentic republican and national state 17 . When the Republican élites introduced their reforms, Pyrénées-Orientales (the official name of the department which comprises Roussillon, that is French Catalonia) was one of the departments with a low literacy rate: in 1877, only 48,7% of the people could read and write in French. The main reason for this was the poverty of the region, which prevented the municipalities from opening new schools, and thus the Church continued to play a prominent role in the provision of education. However, in the period 1881-1883, school reforms promoted by the Republican Minister Jules Ferry established a non-denominational, but also a compulsory education system and obliged all municipalities, with a population of more than twenty children of school age, to provide a primary school. The clergy of Roussillon, whose politics tended towards royalism, and which was profoundly attached to its privileged control over education, considered the politics of secularization promoted by the French government as without morality and they resisted these developments. The clergy found itself confined to background by more and more restrictive regulations. Therefore, it tried to get closer the people through their vernacular language. As the Alsacian clerical and political activist Pierre Zind remarked: «Language speaks to the hearts and makes itself heard by the heart […]. To reach the depths of a person, religious instruction must use the channel of material dialects; to avoid being

17 It is interesting to remark the presence, beside an anti-clericalism coming from the profane world, of an endogenous one, coming from within the religious world. It was a religious, sometimes Catholic, anti-clericalism. In his exhaustive PhD thesis, Joseph Ramoneda relates the case of abbé Roca (1830-1893) in Perpignan, who fought against the clericalisation of the civil society and Catholic Church and who created a magazine entitled La Semaine anti- cléricale des dioceses du Midi ; Joseph RAMONEDA, Cléricalisme et anti-cléricalisme Durant la IIIème République concordataire dans les Pyrénées-Orientales (1870-1906) ; PhD thesis, University of Perpignan, 2008, p. 19 [unpublished work]. 7 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without removed from everyday life as a consequence of school language, it must tie its destiny to that of the material dialects» 18 . Its seems to me that in Roussillon the so-called “first generation” of Catalan cultural revival was more involved in religious activism than in cultural activism. It is not a coincidence that in the early 1880s, the period of Republic’s attack on the Church, also witnessed a proliferation of a great number of activities and writings in favour of the Catalan language. It seems to me that the cultural action of the Roussillon clerics was more a reaction against the Third Republic anti-clerical politics rather than motivated by devotion towards the Catalan language and culture. Certainly their cultural activism would prove very useful to the Roussillon cultural revival, but preaching and catechizing in Catalan so that everyone could understand “God’s will” can also be seen as the clergy’s attempt to prevent the Third Republic gaining influence over their flocks. We must bear in mind that during the Third Republic, an attitude of indifference towards the Church and religious practice continued to develop in the Pyrénées- Orientales department. The evidence for this is the decrease both of religious observation and the number of new vocations. In 1887-1889, the percentage of the population that made their Easter communion was 34,6% with some individual cantons going as low as 13,9% (although it is noticeable that there was a marked gender and generational differences among communicants) 19 . This situation not was a burden on parish clerics, and it also worsened the alienation from Church: by he end of the century, religious practice was one of the lowest in all France. Nonetheless, the historian of religion in Roussillon and Alsace, Joseph Byrnes, draws a distinction between attending church and more popular local religious practice, which continued to find favour. As the church had served as a refuge in times of trouble, but not as a «unifying force in the maintenance of cultural identity», official observation was feeble but local devotions continued to attract adherents. According to Jules Carsalade du Pont, who would be Bishop of Perpignan (that is the capital of Roussillon), between 1900 and 1932, the neglect of Catalan language in the

18 P. Zind, L’enseignement religieux dans l’instruction primaire publique en France de 1850 à 1873 , Lyon, Centre d’Histoire du Catholicisme, 1971, p. 248; J. Byrnes, «The Relationship of Religious Practice to Linguistic Culture: Language, Religion, and Education, in Alsace and the Roussillon, 1860-1890», Church History, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Sep. 1999), p. 603. 19 J. Sagnes (ed.), Le Pays Catalan , Pau, Société nouvelle d’éditions régionales et de diffusion, 1998, pp. 729-730; Byrne, op. cit. , p. 602. 8 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without teaching of catechism was one of the reasons of the religious decline among the population 20 . And, after 1905 and the separation between State and Church, which he saw as the State’s official denial of the existence of God, Carsalade du Pont would become one of the most active defenders of Catalan language and culture in Roussillon in the first half of the twentieth century. As Joseph Byrnes points out «in the Carsalade era, priest-writers and priest-poets were strong promoters of the preservation of Catalan in the Roussillon» 21 .

Roussillon’s secular clergy and Catalan In order to oppose the politics of the Third Republic, Roussillon clerics tried to get closer the people by adopting Catalan, since it was the language used in daily life, an essentially oral language. In addition, only the Church used Catalan as a written language. As the historian of Catalan language, Lluis Creixell, pointed out, even if on a superior level of hierarchy the Church adopted French (the bishops, for instance), on a local level it was necessary for clerics to know and to speak Catalan. Up until the first half of nineteenth century, publishing and translating catechisms and religious books into Catalan was an attestation of this will to use and maintain the vernacular language. Moreover, because of their recruitment was primarily local, the great majority of the clerics were themselves native Catalan speakers and they also were spiritually more tied to Spanish than French Church 22 . As a consequence of this situation, not only was cultural transfusion from Spanish Catalonia easier among clergy, but also the clergy was the last group, which was able to write literary Catalan in Roussillon. In 1880s, among the Roussillon’s secular clergy who were engaged in the Catalan revival, we can distinguish two sorts of activities toward language. Whereas some clerics

20 «L’abandon de la langue catalane dans l’enseignement du catéchisme était, sans aucun doute, une des principales causes de l’ignorance religieuse don’t nous souffrons si douloureusement, et, par suite, de la diminution de la foi dans nos populations», in J. Sagnes (ed), Le Pays Catalan, op. cit ., p. 732. 21 Byrne, op. cit ., p. 623. 22 In 1857, Perpignan prefect wrote that «le clergé de Cerdagne et du Roussillon entretient des relations plus fréquentes, plus intimes, surtout avec les prêtres espagnols qu’avec le clergé français. Il en résulte que les ecclésiastiques du diocèse de Perpignan, qui comme leurs voisins d’au-delà les Pyrénées ont la langue catalane pour idiome maternel, sont par les idées et les tendances bien moins français qu’espagnols»; L. Creixell, «La Renaixença al Rosselló», in Actes del col.loqui internacional sobre la Renaixença , Barcelona, Curial, 1992, pp. 66-67. 9 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without wrote in Catalan in order to oppose its decline, some others were more concerned with theories about language. They all defend language and culture for religious purposes. Among the first language activists we find Antoni Jofre, Josep Bonafont, François-Joseph Jean Rous, Jacques Boher, Gabriel Boixeda, his nephew Jacqes Boixeda, Esteve Caseponce and Pierre Bonnet. They were principally writers and poets. They used Catalan to write religious verses and odes and traditional lyrics poems, and they were not particularly concerned by theories about language. Gabriel Boixeda (1809-1874), for instance, who was called “ Le Fontaine català “, published, in an anonymous way, Catalan fables on the catholic periodical Le Roussillon , in which he told about common people’s everyday problems. According to Jacques Boher (1820-1908), Catalan was the beloved mother-tongue, the natural organ that permitted fraternization with the men who celebrated it on the other side of Pyrenees 23 . In his preface to Garbèra catalana , a collect of poems by Josep Bonafont, abbé Boher wrote that language is the crowning achievement of God’s masterpiece, that is man. By receiving the gift of language, man comes to life as a moral, religious, social being. Beyond all doubt, the most famous of all these activists was Josep Bonafont (1854-1935), called “Lo Pastolleret de la Vall d’Arles“ (the Arles Valley pastor). He studied Catalan songs, tales, goigs (Catalan religious songs) and proverbs with the purpose of resuscitating «the soul of our ancient province» 24 . He published then Las Bruxas de Carança (1882) by Antoni Jofre (1801-1864), La Garbera catalana (1884), and Ays in 1887. It was in the preface of this anthology that he wrote about the will of resuscitating the faith, the traditions, the songs and the language of Roussillon 25 . He was also one of the founding fathers of the Société d’Etudes Catalanes (SEC, Catalan Studies Society, 1906) and of La Colla del Rosselló (The Roussillon’s band, 1921). In 1913 he was the first Roussillonais who was elected Felibrige’s majoral . Since these activists were well aware of the absence of an organized movement similar to Provençal Félibrige, which was dominated by the impressive genius of Frédéric Mistral, they aspired to arouse a movement in favour of language, in order to stimulate such an organisation. As mentioned above, in 1883 Bonafont called for a man of similar

23 J. Boeher, preface de La Inmaculada , 1891, p. IX. 24 Le Roussillon , February 6 th , 1890. 25 «Nosaltres los pochs catalanistas dels Pireneu-Orientals… volem que lo nostre crit sia un toch de somatent que desperte la fé, les costums, les festes y la poetica historia de la nostra terra… la llengua que parlem… qu’es Deu que l’ha feta exprès pel nostre pays»; p. 13. 10 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without genius to Mistral, who should have been able to lead Catalan language and literature awakening in Roussillon. However other clerical language activists – for example Tolra de Bordas and abbé Santol – were more interested in the history of Catalan literature, and wrote a lot – in French – about the language, its origins and formation. They knew works on linguistic and philological topics very well and they provided their own theory of language or history of literature. In this sense, their works and essays belong to a long tradition of studies and researches about linguistic and literary “monuments”, which had become common in France since the early nineteenth century. The period was favourable to this kind of studies, since vernacular language became a fundamental factor in definition on national identity. Tolra de Bordas (1824-1890) wrote the French preface to Atlantida by the Catalan poet Jacint Verdaguer and translated from Catalan into French another epics by the poet, Canigó . As the Catalan philologist Ramon Pinyol has remarked, Tolra de Bordas wrote the “Essay” with the purpose to popularize and to increase as much as possible the value of the Verdaguer’s poem outside Catalan and Spanish literary circles. He also aimed to point out the national and religious character of Atlantida . (p. 52) In an article on the Catalan language, published in L’Espérance in June 1882, Tolra de Bordas asserted that the language is the sweetest prerogative of a nation, especially if this language is considered to be the source of all the neo-Latin languages 26 . I would like to focus now on the «Essai sur la langue catalane en Roussillon» by abbé Joseph Santol (1853-1923) 27 . The essay, written in French, was published in the Monarchist and catholic magazine L’Espérance in 1883. It claimed to be a philological study on Catalan language and provided a theory on the origin and formation of Catalan.

26 «La langue c’est le plus cher apanage d’une nation, alors surtout que cette langue peut passer à juste titre, pour être la souche des langues néo-latines, et que, traversant les siècles sans subir de notables altérations (6), elle est pratiquée et honorée sans interruption dans plusieurs contrées, comme la langue catalane, qui, produisit des poëmes, des romances et des histoires ou chroniques, et fut la langue maternelle des rois d’Aragon, écoutée et applaudie, non-seulement dans les cours d’Aragon et de Provence, mais dans les cours de Castille, d’Angleterre et d’Italie, avant même d’être célébrée par Dante et Pétrarque ; cette langue qui sert aux rois d’Aragon pour correspondre avec le Pape et les divers monarques d’Europe, le rois de Grenade et le Sultan, la reine de Chypre et le rois d’Arménie, le comte de Foix et les Prudhommes de Marseille, etc.»; Tolra de Bordas, “La Langue Catalane“, L’Espérance , June 17 th , 1882. 27 Born in Céret in 1853, Joseph Santol was ordained in 1870. He was vicar of Banyuls-sur- mer since 1879, and on Cerbère since 1885. In 1894 he left for Paris, where he created the “Œuvre du Placement familial”. He died in Paris in 1923. 11 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without

Santol knew very well the linguistic and philological studies of its time. He was familiar with the works of Romance philologists like Raynouard and Fauriel and all the French philological and “dialectological” studies (Anatole Boucherie, Achille Montel, Granier de Cassagnac, Pierquin de Gembloux, Gustave Fallot), and the modern anthropological school – Paul Broca, Emile Littré, Topinard, Abel Hovelacqe, Frédéric Diez. He distinguished between Catalan and Provençal and between Catalan and Castilian. He claimed that Catalan was a distinct language, with its own grammar and dictionaries. Even though Catalan was similar to Provençal, it had closer links to Latin than Mistral’s language. And whereas Catalan was rich in Iberian roots, Provençal had deep French influences. He stated that 1) Romance languages were barbaro-latin languages, and 2) Catalan was not a Romance language, but the Romance language itself. Contrary to the opinion of the majority of philologists of his time, abbé Santol located the origin of Catalan in a mixture of Latin and Basque. Moreover, to him, Roussillonnais was not a particular dialect of Catalan, but Catalan itself. He regretted that French centralization had a fatal effect on Roussillonnais and pointed that the only way to preserve the language was to use it in writings. Santol defended Catalan against those who wanted to secularize everything. He rejoiced at Catalan cultural and language revival. On the occasion of a meeting between North and South Catalans, held in Banyuls-sur-mer in 1883, he reminded the lectors of the deep ties that existed between Church and Catalan from immemorial time. Since the meeting dealt with the celebration of an ancient language, he justified the intromission of religion in it. In fact, he claimed that the majority of the Catalan language’s words had a religious meaning and that Catalan language was necessarily written and spoken by religious people 28 . According to him, a Catalanist revival could not be successful if it

28 «Nous avons entendu dire qu’en principe la religion (qu’on confond trop souvent avec la politique) doit être bannie de toute reunion scientifique et littéraire. Cela est vrai dans tous les cas, moins un… s’il s’agit de célébrer une vieille langue don’t la plupart des termes sont comme empreints de cachet surnaturel et débordent de sens réligieux, au point qu’un très grand nombre d’entr’eux n’auraient point de sens, si la religion était letter-morte; s’il s’agit de célébrer une langue qui ne fut parlée que par un peuple religieux qui ne fut écrite que par les auteurs religieux et qui jouissait de toute splendeur à une époque où l’idée religieuse remplissait le monde»; Santol, «Le Congrès Catalaniste», L’Espérance , 11 juin 1883. 12 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without remains laic and civil. After having provided a list of Catalan writers and poets over the centuries, Santol stated the religious character of all these works 29 .

Contradictions in clergy’s attitude towards Catalan All these writers, poets and philologists demonstrate the eminent religious character of the Catalan language revival. They all tried to revive the old traditional songs as the expression of natural manners, simplicity, grace and purity. But their efforts went unheeded. Their view of language removed them from social reality of the time. They complained that people were to deserting their language, whereas French was gaining ground as the language of social advancement. In that period, in fact, French was slowly but irreversibly penetrating the countryside. This diffusion raised a major problem since French, after having conquered cities and dominated the literature, was henceforth seen as a necessary instrument of social advancement. These clerics were also unable to eradicate contemporary prejudices against Catalan. Furthermore, their own prejudices about language induced them to use it only for poems, not for prose, so they used French to write articles and historical and philological essays. This dichotomy between a literary language (Catalan) and a scholarly one (French), which was good for prose, contributed considerably to the depreciation and decline of Catalan in Roussillon. Moreover, in spite of cultural transfusion from Catalonia to Roussillon we talked about before, the differences between a French Catalan and a Spanish Catalan attitude towards Catalan language are evident. Ideas coming from the south, after having passed the Pyrenees border, suffered a transformation and an adaptation to the French political, social and economic context. Unlike in Roussillon, Catalonian cultural activists realized that only literary appreciation of the Catalan, although fundamental, was not enough for the social recovery of the language. It was necessary to bring the discussions about Catalan out of the literary domain, to spread its usage from the private sphere to social life by transforming the Catalan language into an instrument of the modern culture.

29 «Il suffit de lire le titre de tous ces ouvrages, pour se convaincre du caractère religieux qui distingua toujours la langue de nos ancêtres. Aujourd’hui le clergé catalan, par profession et par gout est assurément le plus dévoué et le plus autorisé conservateur de l’idiome peternel»; Santol, «Essai sur la langue catalane»; L’Espérance , 5 août 1883. 13 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without

Suffice it to say, for instance, Josep Torras i Bages (1846-1916), the author of La Tradició Catalana (The Catalan Tradition, 1892), who was an authoritative representative of the Spanish Catholic catalanist thought that had its own intellectual nucleus in the Vic’s seminar. For the Catalan Catholics, his work would represent the "gospel" for many years. In La Tradició Catalana , Torras i Bages found the justification for the natural unity of the Catalan people in «the historic existence of a national and unchanging spirit inspired by God», that was the guarantee of its «right to live». The Spanish Catalan regionalism so became the instigator of a strategy of regeneration that plunged its roots into the moral obligation that Catalan people have to improve themselves. But unlike Roussillon’s clergy, this generation of Catalan clerics, who grew up in Vic’s seminar, was aware of the necessity to adapt itself to a quickly changing social reality. In fact, as the Catalan historian Josep Fradera observed, in Torras i Bages’ work, regionalism, in strict association with Catholicism, presented itself as the more solid rampart against revolution and the dissolution of society 30 . Moreover, as regards the political domain, the theoretical systematization of Torras i Bages found an urban implementation in the creation of the Unió Catalanista (Catalanist Union, 1891) and in the political document called the Bases of Manresa (1892) 31 ; in the impulse given to the foundation of Acadèmia Catalana (1891), a centre for gathering and mobilizing the university youth from Barcelona; in the transformation of the weekly La Veu de Montserrat – the first organ of the catholic Catalanism, created by the canon Jaume Collell in 1878 –, into La Veu de Catalunya (1891), much more political. This periodical intended to wake up the Catalan people’s awareness by reawakening their history and protecting local institutions and language. In Roussillon on the contrary, in spite of their pro-Catalan ardour, Catholic clerics did not intend reversing the course of events and, just like the State did, took part,

30 Josep Fradera, « Catalanisme : histoire d’un concept », La Vie des idées , January 26, 2010. ISSN : 2105-3030. URL : http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Catalanisme-histoire-d-un- concept.htm]. 31 «In March 1892, the Catalanist Union held a meeting of delegates in Manresa with the aim of drawing up the organisation's political programme. The result was the Bases per a la Constitució Regional Catalana . The Bases de Manresa , as the document has since become known, was inspired by federalism and the traditional constitutions, and proclaimed Catalonia to be a sovereign country, structured the country by dividing it on the basis of the districts within it, declared Catalan to be the official language, and established a corps of volunteers to form the army. For the first time, Catalanism had a defined political project». http://www.en.mhcat.net/the_mhc_offers/permanent_exhibition/a_steam_powered_nation/rebi rth_patriotism_and_nationalism/the_bases_de_manresa. 14 © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without against their will, in spreading the centralist, linguistic and mythic ideology of “France”. As Lluis Creixell has pointed out, the action of the Catalan cultural activists, even that of the clergy, was an individual action and it could not spread an ideology able to oppose the official linguistic (and cultural) ideology that the French State could elaborate and spread thanks to the means of indoctrination at its disposal. Not to mention that frequently they simply did not intend to do it. In 1920, Mossèn Sarréte would write to Bonafont about Carsalade du Pont’s “official catalanism”: « It’s rather a pity that Monsignor, who has been the standard-bearer of the Catalan’s revival for 20 years, never thought of making our colleges and diocesan seminaries and brothers' schools adopt the system which he recommends himself so piercingly» 32 .

32 Quoted in L. Creixell, op. cit .

15