Manuel Azaña, la coscienza religiosa e la politica ecclesiastica

Abstract

Manuel Azaña, the religious problem and the ecclesiastical policy

The essay studies Azaña’s standing from the personal, cultural and political point of view on religion and catholic Church’ role in Spain from the beginning of the century till the Civil War. Severely critical of the antelitteram national- catholicism, Azaña sees in this very ideology and ecclesiastical position the biggest obstacle to the building of a modern and lay State. These were the cultural premises of his ecclesiastical policy in the Second Republic’s years, a policy he saw as a struggle of truth against error, and which he pursued without the necessary attention to the different forces existing in the country. The study thus focuses on the very limit of Azaña’s anticlerical policy: the fact that he did not perceive how much capacity of resistance and mobilization still existed within the Spanish Church and Catholicism.