GUARDIANS of the TRUE FAITH Franc Ksaver Meško, A

CHAPTER FOUR GUARDIANS OF THE TRUE FAITH Franc Ksaver Meško, a Slovenian priest and writer, conveyed his expe- rience of the Great War (in literary circles suggestively called universal death),1 in the novel Sin (The Son): “God hit the world with the wrathful fĳist and erased all beauty from it, and He drove all merriness deep into the earth. It may never rise again from the grave.”2 Equally expressive about the “omnipresence” of the war was Ivan Cankar’s novela Kostanj posebne sorte (The Chestnut Tree of a Special Sort) in which horrifĳied villagers dis- covered the reason for the extraordinary beauty of their chestnut, under the crown of which the anxious would always fĳind rest and tranquility, and lovers would love more faithfully than under the celestial sphere of God. The tree was rooted in the fĳield of the dead, for it grew out of countless human skulls and skeletons. The graveyard was large enough to embrace the entire world. Death was the mysterious source of the tree’s power, love and youthfulness: “Oh, my friends, my beloved, still more the chestnuts will blossom”,3 the novela concluded with a clear reference to the contemporaneous blood-shed in Europe. This chapter will concentrate on the religious ideas and values that the priests in the rear transmitted to their flocks through sermons and devo- tions which in turn helped mould the parishioners’ attitudes about the war in the period from 1914 to 1916. The aim is to present the evolution 1 On 1 August 1914 Ivan Cankar published a novela Pogled iz škatlice (A View from the Little Box) in the newspaper Slovenski narod. In anticipation of war he required that the artists reflect upon the consequences of threatening “universal injustice and universal death”, and decide on how would they act at the time, so deeply marked with “horror, strength and struggle”. For a review of the Slovenian wartime literature, see I. Vogrič, ‘Slov- enski književniki in prva svetovna vojna’, in Zgodovinski časopis 54 (2000), 197–232. 2 Ljubljanski zvon XXXV (1915), 180. Among the best of his texts is a psychological sketch with an anti-militaristic idea entitled Zadnja ura Mateja Prosena (The Last Hour of Matej Prosen, 1919). Regarding the home front, Meško’s masterly narrative Pod lučjo (Under the Light) concentrates on the concealed emotions and tense atmosphere in a dramatic tri- angle between a husband, his wife and her former fĳiancé, who pays them a visit upon his return from captivity after the war ended. The best First World War novel remains Gadje gnezdo (An Adder’s Nest, 1919) by Vladimir Levstik, infused with patriotic and religious symbolism. 3 I. Cankar, ‘Kostanj posebne sorte’, in Dom in svet XXVIII (1915), 193. 120 chapter four of the civilians’ perception of war through their participation in religious activities: pilgrimages, common prayers at the local churches, and char- ity work within the fĳirst three years of the conflict. This is not to say that religious pieties ceased after 1916; on the contrary, as the death toll on the front rose and the economic and political pressures in the rear amassed, they became ever more explicit in echoing people’s desire for immedi- ate peace. According to the Catholic Church’s teaching, war was a divine intervention to punish “modern unbelief and immorality” with the pur- pose of bringing the people, “created in God’s image, back to their divine source and [make them] begin to pray”.4 Yet mass death at the front and increasingly difffĳicult living conditions in the rear threatened to unmask the depths of human confusion, which culminated in the people’s fear of being trapped in a situation without prospect; the war with its complex web of political and national alliances radically questioned the power of the old pillars of wisdom, and along with them that of Austria-Hungary. Given that the Church ardently promoted the spiritual fĳight (pre- sented as the means for mental “purifĳication” and enhancement of bodily strength) against the vileness of materialism, “a godless disease of modern time” – in that manner creating religious dimensions in the understanding of war –, the investigation raises two main issues. Taking into account the clergy’s role in imparting the basic messages (political as well as theologi- cal) about war to believers, the question emerges as to how the religious notions of sufffering and sacrifĳice were reflected in the civilians’ imagery of war. What interpretative attempts were made at associating the sufffering on the home front – in particular the women’s sufffering – with that in the theatres of war? Secondly, on a more fundamental level, we need to clarify whether the war had a signifĳicant efffect on tradition,5 the Catholic faith being its constituent part. By highlighting the people’s religious response in the fĳirst three years of hostilities, can we argue that the clergy’s predic- tions at the outbreak of war about moral renewal and the invigoration of faith were right? Is it instead correct to assume that the “years of horror” were the grave of moral values and everything that was thought civilized? The latter argument, which is found in the clergy’s reports to the prince- 4 ACAG, fondo Sedej, Pastirski list, 18 January 1915. 5 I refer to the traditional man as the one who sees religion and devotional practices as a self-evident component (reality) of life; in his natural surroundings he lives in a peaceful cohabitation with the supernatural. Still rooted in such “traditional mentality” the men of 1914 had been raised to believe that there was an indispensable spiritual meaning in the virtues of bravery, decency and nobility. .

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