On «men without substance»

Masculinity in the discourse of the ecclesiastical counterrevolution at the beginning of the nineteenth century

Abstract

This article analyses the construction of masculinity within the ecclesiastical counterrevolution in the context of the early nineteenth century. The new time opened after 1808 witnessed numerous discursive disputes around the definition of masculinity and the gender order. My aim is to show that the new ideals of liberal masculinity, as well as their vision of the relationship between men and women, were vigorously contested by the reformulations that the reactionary clergy made of the religious masculinity of the Old Regime. From the perspective provided by gender history, I approach this analysis assuming the methodological position according to which the meanings of virility emerge from the conflictive coexistence between disputed gender visions. From the study of the writings of paradigmatic ecclesiastics of the counterrevolution, such as Francisco Alvarado or Rafael Vélez, as well as the press of the period, I will defend that the reactionary clergy identified liberal men and their way of understanding gender relations as immorality and as the causes of the gender disorder in which they observed the nation. To counteract this situation, they tried to underpin the religious content of masculine virtue by reinforcing values of the Catholic tradition such as the containment of passions, the separation between the sexes or the superiority of celibacy over marriage.