Monastic orders and congregations in European Civil Society, 1780-1914 Brussel 23-24 mei 2008

According to French republican deputy and campaigner for secularisation of the hospitals Bourneville, catholic monks and nuns were 'the irreconcilable enemies of the Republic', because the Republic was 'the regime of civil society'. The bottom line of his argument was that the Catholic Church was no part of Civil Society and could never become one: a bold but widespread militant statement heard throughout 19th Century Europe. In a workshop to be held in Brussels on the 23rd and 24th May 2008, we would like to bring together new research on the socio-political position of orders and congregations in Europe between 1789 and 1918.

This workshop will therefore not take an interior view on the religious life or the organisation of a specific order or convent. The chosen focus is the outside, socio-political viewpoint that sees religious institutes as social actors. This includes research of the popular perceptions of religious institutes, but it also covers the specific discursive patterns and lines of argument carried by their representations in the build-up of a European anticlerical political culture.

After the French Revolution the religious institutes in Europe had to be (re)constituted within a new set of civil law boundaries. In this new political framework they had to reaffirm their 'right' or 'social calling' to perform tasks in the areas of welfare and education. They also had to devise ways of accumulating economic resources and property to enable them to deliver these social services. These three goals had to be achieved in political settings in which the national state or the liberal elites were uneasy with or even openly hostile to the Roman Catholic Church as a social power or as a legally recognized body. A specific socio-political conflict confronting catholic religious institutes with the State and a secular civil society arose on the European Continent.