Chrétiens dans la première guerre mondiale. Actes des Journées tenues à Amiens et à Péronne les 16 mai et 22 juillet 1992 Edited by Nadine- Josette Chaline

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 457 volume will cover the momentous political and religious events of 1870 and 1871. M. Patricia Dougherty, O.P. Dominican College ofSan Rafael Chrétiens dans la première guerre mondiale. Actes des Journées tenues à Amiens et à Péronne les 16 mai et 22 juillet 1992. Edited by NadineJosette Chaline. [Histoire religieuse de la France, 4.] (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. 1993. Pp. 201. 135 F.) The religious history of World War I in France has in the past focused on the importance of the war in mitigating the church-state conflicts that were so much a part ofprewar politics. Although two ofthe essays in this collection deal with the interplay of politics and religion in wartime, most concentrate instead on the beliefs and practices of ordinary soldiers, chaplains, and civilians . The authors call on a variety of sources—diaries, letters, newspapers, literature—to illuminate the experiences of their subjects, and a number of them make excellent use ofimages as well. The holy cards, photos, and stainedglass windows reproduced in this book make it a rich visual source for anyone interested in the cultural history of World War I. In her introduction Nadine-Josette Chaline notes both the religious revival that accompanied the outbreak of the war and the religious doubts that were sometimes provoked by the havoc that followed. Although the essays are not grouped by the editor according to theme or method, they do fall into rough general categories. Brigitte Waché and Jean-Marie Mayeur deal with the delicate political situation of Catholics who sought to remain loyal to France and the universal Church. Waché reviews the career ofDenys Cochin, the Catholic deputy from Paris whose participation in the cabinet between 1915 and 1917 symbolized the union sacrée;Jean-Marie Mayeur shows how French Catholics interpreted and sometimes opposed the peace initiatives of Pope Benedict XV, when they were judged insufficiently sympathetic to French interests. The prestige of the papacy, considerable after a century of intensifying ultramontanism , was no match for the nationalist sentiments of French Catholics. The most original contributions in this volume are those which show the links between nationalism and Catholicism in the devotional rather than the political domain. According to Annette Becker, the devotions popular with the soldiers reveal a "spirituality of the front" that sometimes aroused the suspicions of a clergy concerned about the taint of superstition. With the help of holy cards, which flowed back and forth between families and the front, soldiers invoked the standard symbols of nineteenth-century Catholicism— the cross, the Virgin, the Sacred Heart—in seeking to understand and alleviate their suffering. Becker's essay is a sensitive reading of soldierly devotions, but 458 BOOK REVIEWS the state of the evidence does not allow her to make any firm statements about the extent to which these were diffused throughout the armies. Becker avoids a functionalist perspective, never asking how these devotions might have assisted politicians and generals in the work of keeping soldiers fighting in the field. Many of the devotional images described by Becker show up also in Jean-Pierre Blin's piece on the stained-glass windows designed to commemorate the war. Artists worked suffering soldiers and scenes from the front into their representations of Christ, Mary, and the saints, but realistic details with which the dying were portrayed (uniforms, weapons, etc.) contrast with an idealized death without the blood and dirt of war. According to Blin, the artists and their patrons had agreed to "tacit self-censorship" (p. 172) in the face of the inadmissible realities ofwar. Frédéric Gugelot's case study of Henri Ghéon illustrates how Catholic devotions and liturgy, combined with the powerful example of practicing Catholics and the omnipresence of death, could contribute to the conversion ofunbelievers. Ghéon's memoirs, analyzed closely by Gugelot trace his progress from a prewar estheticism and a close friendship with André Gide, to the reception of communion on the front at Verdun on Christmas Eve, 1917. Two essays deal with the role of the chaplaincy in the war. Chaline contributes a valuable article on the struggles and partial successes by the French clergy to reach the front in...