The Language of Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Newspapers Il Veneto Cattolico/ La Difesa in Late Nineteenth-Century Venice

Abstract

The dispute between social versus religious interpretations of anti-Semitism pervaded the whole history of scholarly research. Whereas socio-historical interpretations had underlined the social aspects, current studies on anti-Semitism focus on religious motifs. The thesis that anti-Semitism was a result of a religious conflict, however, is far more alleged than substantially proved by the sources. So it seems necessary to go back to the sources. Therefore this paper analyzes the language of the Venetian Catholic newspaper Il Veneto Cattolico/ La Difesa from the foundation of the newspaper in 1867 up to the First World War. Just a few years before the term anti-Semitism was coined, Catholic journalists of Venice had created the new semantic of secular anti-Semitism. They turned back to religious issues when they tried to systematize their anti-Jewish sentiments. Thus one can observe in the coverage of the Venetian Catholic journals the invention of an anti-Semitic tradition.