Remerciez-le!

Remerciez @Admin pour avoir partagé cet document gratuitement, de la manière la plus simple, en partageant sur les réseaux sociaux.

Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire Mystics of a Modern Time? Public Mystic

Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire Mystics of a Modern Time? Public Mystical Experiences in Belgium in the 1930s Tine Van Osselaer Citer ce document / Cite this document : Van Osselaer Tine. Mystics of a Modern Time? Public Mystical Experiences in Belgium in the 1930s. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 88, fasc. 4, 2010. Histoire médiévale, moderne et contemporaine. pp. 1171-1189; doi : 10.3406/rbph.2010.7974 http://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_2010_num_88_4_7974 Document généré le 26/05/2016 Abstract This paper focuses on the journalistic fieldwork on a Belgian wave of “ popular mysticism” in the nineteen thirties. As it turned individual mystical experiences into public happenings, the series did not fail to incite discussions, also among the Belgian Catholics. Delving into these debates, this article examines the reports and correspondence of three catholic journalists on one particular site, Lokeren-Naastveld. While documenting the lived devotional culture and the attendant discrepancies in religious agency, the accounts of these reporters illuminate their personal interference at the site and their collisions with the ecclesiastical and public authorities. In addition, their texts indicate how these journalists tried to substantiate or refute claims of authenticity and attempted to situate the phenomena both within catholic tradition and their own time. Résumé Tine Van Osselaer, Mystiques des temps modernes ? Expériences mystiques publiques en Belgique pendant les années trente. Cet article est centré sur les journalistes et leurs recherches sur le terrain concernant une vague de «mystique populaire » pendant les années trente. Transformant des expériences mystiques individuelles en happenings publics, cette vague incita à la discussion, aussi parmi les catholiques belges. En analysant ces débats, l’article examine les rapports et la correspondance de trois journalistes catholiques sur un site en particulier, Lokeren-Naastveld. Documentant la culture dévotionnelle vécue et les décalages en “ religious agency”, les témoignages de ces reporters mettent en lumière leur interférence personnelle et leurs confrontations avec les autorités ecclésiastiques et publiques. Leurs textes soulignent également comment ils essayaient d’étayer ou de récuser des assertions d’authenticité et tentaient de situer les phénomènes dans la tradition catholique et dans leur propre époque. Dit artikel bestudeert het journalistieke veldwerk dat werd verricht naar aanleiding van een Belgische golf van “ populair mysticisme” in de jaren dertig in België. Aangezien in deze reeks individuele mystieke ervaringen tot publieke happenings uitgroeiden, was er stof tot heel wat discussie, ook onder de Belgische katholieken. In dit artikel wordt nader ingegaan op deze debatten en meer in het bijzonder op de rapporten en de correspondentie van drie katholieke journalisten over een specifieke site, Lokeren-Naastveld. Hun teksten documenteren zowel de geleefde devotionele cultuur als de bijhorende discrepanties in ‘ religious agency’ en brengen de persoonlijke betrokkenheid van de journalisten en hun aanvaringen met de geestelijke en publieke autoriteiten in kaart. Daarenboven geven ze aan hoe de reporters probeerden om opvattingen over de authenticiteit van de gebeurtenissen kracht bij te zetten of te verwerpen en hoe ze poogden de fenomenen te situeren binnen de katholieke traditie en hun eigen tijd. Mystics of a Modern Time? Public Mystical Experiences in Belgium in the 1930s Tine Van Osselaer K.U. Leuven, FWO-Flanders Fieldwork on popular mysticism On 22 August 1934, the chief of police of Lokeren, a town in Dutch speaking Flanders, registered a warrant. The defendant was not the average small-time criminal, but a journalist and editor in chief of one of the major Belgian Catholic newspapers, De Standaard (1). Had Jan Filip Boon – charged with riotous assembly – chosen the criminal path? On the contrary, Boon’s ‘crime’ looks rather harmless, as it consisted of him witnessing ‘mystical’ phenomena in the Naastveld district. However, in attending these events he acted against the directives of the Lokeren city council that, displeased by the trouble these gatherings caused, had declared their ‘stage’ public territory and prohibited all “riotous assemblies” of more than five people (2). Boon’s charge therefore was the outcome of a heightened sensitivity towards an affair that had had a hold on the town since October 1933 and brought about the continuous presence of policemen and press at the site. The mystical events – Marian apparitions, re-embodiment of Christ’s Passion, bleeding crucifixes – Jan Boon witnessed in Lokeren were no new phenomena to the Belgian public in 1934. Ever since the first attestation of Marian apparitions in Beauraing in November 1932, similar incidents had been signalled all over Belgium by hundreds of people in dozens of * The research of this paper was supported by BOF (University of Leuven) and Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). I would like to thank Evert Peeters and Rajesh Heynickx for their suggestions and James Chappel for his proofreading. AL= Lokeren, Archives of Lokeren; AAM= Mechelen, Archives of the archdiocese of Mechelen; ADG= Ghent, Archives of the diocese of Ghent; Processus= Processus circa assertas apparitiones et revelationes; XL.1031. Apparitions= XL. Relations with recognised cults. 1031. Apparitions in the district Naastveld. (1) Although De Standaard had been created already in 1914, the first edition appeared – due to the war – on December 4th 1918. The paper had a Catholic orientation, was linked to the struggle for Flemish rights and had (together with Het Nieuwsblad) a circulation of 50.000 (ca. 1935). Jan Boon was editor in chief since September 1929. Els De Bens and Karin Raeymaeckers, De pers in België. Het verhaal van de Belgische dagbladpers. Gisteren, vandaag en morgen, Leuven, Lannoo Campus, 2007, p. 39, p. 288; Theo Luykx, Evolutie van de communicatiemedia, Brussel, Elsevier, 1978, p. 509-510. (2) AL, XX. Police, 413/21, police-warrants, 1934, 158. Jean Philip Boon. Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 88, 2010, p. 1171–1189 T. Van Osselaer 1172 places (3). In this wave of “popular mysticism” (4), individual experiences were turned into public happenings. The series consequently differed widely from an (older) tradition in which mystical encounters were attested by religious secluded from the world outside. This 1930s wave was a case of bodily and visionary Catholic mysticism of ‘common’ people (children, women and men) witnessed by a crowd of spectators who also tried to get a glimpse of the supernatural by carefully watching the bodily reactions of the mystics (kneeling, trance) while imbuing signs and incidents with religious meaning (5). The public character and the singularity of these encounters with the divine presence – Robert Orsi calls them “abundant events” – incited the creation of various reports. Although these accounts offer us an exceptional insight into the lived devotional culture, they have, like the Belgian series, never been studied thoroughly. This article will therefore focus on the reports produced by the Belgian media and, in particular, by Catholic journalists. Their texts illuminate not only the religious world from which the phenomena derived their meaning, but also the authority claims and the attendant discrepancies in (religious) agency (6). Explicitly presenting themselves as Catholic reporters, these men and women aimed to be the eyes and ears of their public. Their involvement evolved, however, far beyond the mere front-row (detailed) reporting on the events as they got caught up in the at times difficult power relations that characterise lived devotional culture. In order to sketch the ‘fieldwork’ of these reporters, this article therefore not only examines their published journalistic accounts but also delves into their personal correspondence with the clergy, ecclesiastical hierarchy and other lay people. While adopting Ann Taves’ “attributional approach” and examining how experiences were deemed religious in certain contexts (7), this analysis will thus include an examination of the journalists’ personal interferences at the site(s) as well. Since the phenomena of the 1930s series and their evaluation differed widely, the focus will be primarily on the coverage of one particular series of events – Lokeren-Naastveld – depicted by one contemporary as “the most wonderful mystical spectacle that Belgium ever experienced” (8). (3) AAM, Van Roey, Apparitions in Onkerzele and Etikhove, 10. List by Louis Wilmet (27 May 1935) and the list by H. Didion. Although there were new attestations of apparitions in 1937-38 (in Ham-sur-Sambre), the zenith of the series of Belgian events seems to have been in the first half until the midst of the nineteen thirties. On the various sites of Marian apparitions, see: René Laurentin and Patrick Sbalchiero, Dictionnaire des “apparitions” de la Vierge Marie, Paris, Fayard, 2007. (4) “L ’affaire de Lokeren”, in La Libre Belgique, 10 August 1934, p. 3. (5) Marlène Albert-Llorca, “Les apparitions et leur histoire”, in Archives des sciences sociales des religions, vol. 116, 2001, p. 53-66, esp. p. 64; Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary. From La Salette to Medjugorge, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 5. (6) Robert Orsi, “Abundant history: Marian apparitions as alternative modernity”, in Historically Speaking, vol. 9, 2008, p. 12-16, esp. p. 14; Robert Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth. The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars who Study Them, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 2-4, p. 12 and p. 51. (7) Ann Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered. A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 5 and p. uploads/Litterature/ public-mystical-experiences-in-belgium-in-the-1930s.pdf