Between Virgins and Priests: The Feminisation of Catholicism and Priestly Masculinity in Nineteenth‐Century Spain

The feminisation of religion in the nineteenth‐century has been broadly discussed by historians and sociologists. Considering the main contributions of that debate from a critical perspective, this article defends the hypothesis that the Catholic Church identified itself with the same characteristics with which it defined femininity in the nineteenth‐century through the symbolic link with the Virgin Mary. Although this discursive feminisation of Catholicism left laymen in a difficult situation, it did contribute to reinforcing the patriarchal and hierarchical structure of the Church. The great challenge to bishops and priests, the leading subjects in the project of re‐Christianising society, was to demonstrate their condition as men within a feminised organisation. This article will mainly focus on Spain, although with the international perspective that any study about Catholicism requires.

In 1843, the French anticlerical republican Jules Michelet wrote the following words in Journal, a newspaper of his country: 'Dieu changea de sexe, il faut le dire encore une fois' ('God changed sex, it must be repeated yet again'). Michelet, who two years later published Du prêtre, de la femme, de la famille (Priests, Women, and Families), expressed European anticlericalism's fear of what was perceived as a close alliance between women and the Catholic Church. 1 In his opinion, the main danger was the priest, 'born male and strong, but who prefers to be weak so as to resemble a woman' in order to influence the family life from the confessional. 2 It is noteworthy that the ultramontane journalist Louis Veuillot, despite his political and ideological differences with Michelet, shared with him the idea that religion and particularly Catholicism was more and more identified with women. He commented that 'the time after Voltaire's century could be called Mary's century'. 3 Therefore, it seems clear that, either in a positive or in a negative way, both Veuillot and Michelet perceived religion as a matter of women.
More than a century later, from the 1970s onwards, sociologists, anthropologists and historians have been discussing what has been called the thesis of the feminisation of religion. From different points of view, scholars who have participated in this debate have emphasised the increasing presence of femininity and women in the discourse and the practice of nineteenth-century Christianity, especially Catholicism, and have connected the feminisation of religion with other important debates like those of the secularisation process or the complex relationship between religion and modernity. 4 Some recent publications, however, have questioned the feminisation thesis, highlighting the male presence in some realms of religious life beyond the parish and the deep religious commitment of remarkable groups of men. 5 Considering these international debates, this paper will focus on the situation in nineteenth-century Spain, taking into account the broader transformations experienced by Catholicism during this century. I will defend the hypothesis that the Catholic Church identified itself with the same characteristics with which it defined femininity in the nineteenth century through the symbolic link with the Virgin Mary. Although this discursive feminisation of Catholicism left laymen in a difficult situation, it did contribute to reinforcing the patriarchal and hierarchical structure of the Church.
The paper will be divided into three parts. First, I will briefly present the feminisation thesis through a critical view of international studies of this topic. Second, I will explore in detail the concept of the discursive or symbolic feminisation of Catholicism in light of the Spanish case. Finally, I will illustrate how a feminised church was able to reinforce priestly masculinity, that is to say, the role played by a particular group of Catholic men: bishops and priests.

The feminisation thesis
As noted in the introduction, the feminisation thesis was firstly considered in the 1970s by a group of female American historians who tried to reclaim the important role played by many women in the development of their churches. 6 Later, during the 1980s and 1990s, the main studies on this matter came from Europe, particularly from France, and were generally focused on Catholicism. Historians were not the only ones to participate in this debate about the feminisation of religion; sociologists and cultural anthropologists also contributed. As a result of this multidisciplinary perspective, three aspects of the feminisation of Catholicism were distinguished: religious practice, the question of piety or devotion and the increase in female church personnel.
Influenced by the sociological studies on religion carried out by Fernand Boulard in France, historians like Ralph Gibson came to the conclusion that women were more religious than men in the nineteenth century. Through intensive quantitative research over two markers of religious practice -the attendance to Sunday mass and receiving communion at Easter -Gibson held that women used to fulfil these religious duties more regularly than men in all those French dioceses where information on the nineteenth century is available. 7 However, this dimorphisme sexuel, as this phenomenon was known in France, was soon seriously questioned by other historians. For example, Ann Braude, referring to the USA, pointed out that women have outnumbered men in Protestant and Catholic churches, among whites and blacks, in the North and the South, and across denominations from the seventeenth century. 8 This affirmation could be extended to other countries, including France, because the available information indicates that religious practice was already feminised before the nineteenth century, so there was not a process of feminisation in regard to the practice, at least during that century. On the other hand, scholars like James McMillan and Bernhard Schneider highlighted the mainly male presence, not only among the secular clergy (bishops, priests, pastors), but also in the spaces of social and political mobilisation in defence of religion, such as the press, associations and political parties. 9 Therefore, it can be stated that the female majority in the religious realm was not as great as previously thought, nor did it increase significantly during the nineteenth century.
The second element related to the feminisation of religion is the evolution of piety and devotion. These aspects of the religious experience acquired emotional and intimate traits which, according to the hegemonic gender discourses at that time, were considered natural in women and children. As will be affirmed later, this phenomenon was mainly promoted by the process of Romanisation of the Catholic Church and exaltation of the figure of the pope, particularly since the pontificate of Pius IX. Turning to God when faced with illness, natural disasters or revolutions was another feature of this piety. It was not new in Catholicism but acquired special relevance in a century supposedly dominated by science and reason. As Thomas Kselman stated referring to the French case, 'miracles and prophecies persisted in France because they offered meaning and order to people when a secular perspective failed them'. 10 As was held by some historians and anthropologists, the figure of the Virgin Mary was capital in this process of feminisation of devotion. Apart from the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, we can highlight the popularisation of devotions like the Sacred Heart of Mary, the Rosary and the consecration of May to the Virgin. 11 But perhaps the most stunning evidence of this devotion to the Virgin was the high number of Marian apparitions documented during the nineteenth century in the whole of Catholic Europe. 12 Apparitions were not unknown in the history of Catholicism. The main difference in relation to the previous centuries was founded on the new institutional, political and ideological milieu established by Liberalism. Thus, Marian apparitions were normally instrumentalised by opposition movements characterised by popular, emotional and counter-revolutionary traits. As perfectly illustrated by Lourdes in France (1858) or Marpingen in Germany (1876), this type of apparently supernatural phenomena mobilised thousands of people with political objectives that were generally against Liberalism and in favour of a Romanised Church. 13 In Spain, similar counter-revolutionary movements have been documented associated to Marian devotions like the Virgin of Begoña in Biscay, the Virgin of Covadonga in Asturias and the Virgin of El Pilar in Zaragoza. 14 Finally, another aspect which supports the feminisation thesis concerns the Church structure itself. This resulted in a reduction of male church personnel as a result of the partial abolition of enclosed orders in several Catholic countries and, above all, in a remarkable increase in the number of religious women, mainly due to a rise in the number of religious female congregations (not-enclosed orders). This type of religious organisation was not unprecedented in church history, but the flexibility of its hierarchical and centralised structure and the dedication to educational and charitable tasks poorly served by young liberal states made them much more adaptable to the changing circumstances of the nineteenth century than the traditional enclosed orders. 15 In France, the increase of female congregations developed earlier than in other countries because it began in the last decade of the eighteenth century. According to Claude Langlois, from 1796 to 1880, around 400 female congregations were founded, which explains why the proportion of men and women in the French clergy was reversed in less than half a century: while in 1830 there were two women for every three men, in 1878 this changed to three women for every two men. 16 In Italy and Spain, the process began at a later stage during the mid-nineteenth century, but it continued over a longer period of time. 17 The northern area of Italy, certainly the richest and most industrialised, was the region that promoted congregational growth most strongly since unification. In Spain, although some congregations had begun functioning previously, the increase in female congregations was enhanced at three specific moments: in 1851, with the signing of a concordat with the Holy See; in 1875, with the onset of the Restoration regime; and at the turn of the twentieth century, with the massive influx of French nuns due to the Third Republic's laws against religious orders. The presence of political regimes that favoured ecclesiastical interests, such as Franco's in Spain or the Christian Democrats in Italy, explains the continuation of the process until the mid-twentieth century.
We may agree that the three aspects referred to so far -more female practitioners than males, more emotional piety and great increase of female congregationsmake reference to the effects of the feminisation of religion in Catholic Europe during the nineteenth century. However, what about the causes of this process? Which reasons could explain why Catholicism was more linked to femininity in the nineteenth century than in the previous centuries? This example, which refers to visions and apparitions, can help clarify this matter. According to the historian William A. Christian, from 1399 to 1592 75 per cent of visionaries in Spain were adult men. 18 Nevertheless, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was young women and children who most frequently saw Christ or the Virgin. The reason for this radical transformation of the gender and age of visionaries cannot be logically explained by a supposed development of a special inclination of women and children to have mystical experiences that they lacked in the previous centuries. As Marlène Albert argues, it was the change of the discursive standards used by the Church and believers in deciding about the credibility of visionaries where we are most likely to find an answer. 19 Therefore, it is necessary to focus on the discourses of gender in the nineteenth century and, particularly, the influence of religion on them.

The discursive feminisation of Catholicism in Spain
As has been recently asserted by Joan W. Scott, the link between religion and women should be studied as a specific element of the broader cultural process of the construction of gender difference in the Modern Age. From her point of view, at the same time that indifference with regard to religious matters was becoming a naturalised trait of masculinity, religiosity shaped nineteenth-century femininity. 20 In fact, from the mideighteenth century, first the Enlightenment and later Liberalism established a redefinition of the public and private realm which was decisive for the discursive feminisation of Catholicism in the following century. 21 Most Enlightened thinkers and liberals associated women and religion with the private realm, whereas the public sphere was identified as male and progressively more secularised.
However, Spanish Liberalism was not as favourable as French Liberalism to removing religion from the public realm due mainly to the aspiration of most liberals of linking the Catholic nature of the nation with the exaltation of its political sovereignty. 22 This ideological project took shape through the aims of Liberal governments to control the Church. That is why the first half of the nineteenth century was such a tumultuous period for the Spanish Catholic Church: it lost economic power, political authority and social influence as a consequence of the expropriations of Church properties and secularisation of monks and nuns as ordered by Liberal governments. The concordat signed in 1851 by the Kingdom of Spain and the Vatican marked a turning point for the Church because this treaty allowed it to adjust its structures to the new times. 23 In this process of reconstruction after the revolutionary storm of the first half of the nineteenth century, women occupied an important position in Catholic discourse.
During the reign of Isabella II (1833-1868), both liberals and Catholics published a large number of treatises, essays, novels, plays and newspapers which reflected on the woman as singular, as well as the nature and new functions of women in the postrevolutionary society. 24 It was in texts written about women by bishops and priests where Counter-Reformation moralists like Fray Luis de León -author of an influential handbook for wives -were more powerful. 25 These men, particularly worried about the preservation of celibacy, tended to suspect the supposedly tempting character of women. That is why they employed an extremely hard and strict language full of commands and threats in order to regulate women's free time, dress and social activities.
However, nineteenth-century clergymen did share with the Liberals their faith in education as an instrument of individual and social reform. In other words, it was eventually accepted by the Church that the female nature was not inevitably corrupted by Eve's sin and could be redeemed by the imitation of Mary's virtues. In this way, bishops, priests and some novelists like Cecilia Böhl de Faber (pseudonym Fernán Caballero) came to the conclusion that women were potentially superior to men from a moral point of view as long as they received adequate religious instruction. 26 It is this aspect that distinguishes the discourse of gender of nineteenth-century clergymenlike the confessor of Isabella II from 1857, Antonio María Claret -from the discourse of Counter-Reformation moralists. 27 Furthermore, both liberals and Catholics agreed that there was a close link between women and religion, an essential element of the discursive feminisation of nineteenth-century Catholicism.
The fact of considering women more religious than men, shared by both liberals and Catholics, and the opposition of the latter to the confinement of religion to the private realm, which the most radical sections of Spanish Liberalism had demanded from the middle of nineteenth century, are two factors that explain why the Catholic hierarchy decided to involve women in their project of re-Christianising society. Challenging the ideal notion of separate spheres constructed by Liberalism, Catholic women were legitimised to act in the public sphere in defence of religion as long as the Church was in danger. 28 The most influential author in Europe who supported this idea was Ventura di Raulica with his book The Catholic Woman, originally published in French in 1855 and translated into Spanish two years later. 29 Spanish authors also demanded a larger presence of Catholic women in public matters. The most respectful way of achieving this was referring to motherhood. It is well known that in the nineteenth century there was a general agreement that being a mother was the main destiny of women. 30 But motherhood did not only consist of feeding children but also transmitting knowledge, principles and values. One of the main transformations in the nineteenth-century Catholic discourse of gender was to mainly assign to mothers the task of educating all their children, both sons and daughters, whereas one century before, clergymen like Antonio Arbiol (1651-1726) considered that it was fathers and not mothers who had to concentrate on the religious education of children. He added that it was not necessary that girls learn to write. 31 However, according to Claret, 'women must study religion, not only for themselves, but also to teach others.
[…] This is the only available way to reform families, society and the whole world'. 32 The difference between the thinking of these two clergymen regarding women and their mission in society is evident. Nevertheless, assigning this task to women had one implicit contradiction, and both Liberals and Catholics were soon aware of it: in order to instruct and educate their children, mothers needed to have been previously instructed and educated. This was one of the main ideological reasons which persuaded liberals to declare the schooling of girls as compulsory in 1857, although with a different curriculum to boys, in the Education Law popularly known as Ley Moyano. Catholic priests and laymen also took part in this process. For example, the Catalan journalist Joaquín Roca y Cornet published a treatise in 1868 titled Handbook of Catholic Mothers which was a collection of the progressive educational proposals defended at that time by the French bishop Felix Dupanloup. 33 In practice, the Catholic contribution to primary education in nineteenth-century Spain was mainly in the hands of female congregations, which founded a large number of schools for both poor and wealthy girls across the country. 34 The factor that explains why during the second half of the nineteenth century the Catholic hierarchy tolerated and even promoted the activities of female congregations concerns this acknowledgement of the utility that women could have in the project of re-Christianising society. Educational and care activities carried out by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul and other religious female congregations were legitimised by highlighting the capacity to use their maternal instinct over others beyond the narrow limits of the home. 35 But these nuns were not the only Catholic women who were encouraged to participate in the public sphere in defence of their religion. Catholic wives and mothers, as 'domestic priests' according to Ventura or Claret, had the opportunity to do so in especially unpredictable periods for the Catholic Church, like the Sexenio Democrático (1868-1874), the revolutionary six years after the fall of Queen Isabella II. Hundreds of women from different cities around the country who introduced themselves as 'Spanish, mothers and Catholic women' capable even of 'giving their own lives for the Catholic faith', signed public letters addressed to the government or the parliament against measures and laws which were against Church interests, such as religious freedom in 1869 or civil marriage one year later. 36 The anticlerical press not only accused these women of being fanatics, but also of being ordered by 'vestry mice'. 37 This reaction reflects the misgivings of one sector of Liberalism about the public intervention of women in defence of a matter which they considered private: religion. According to the anthropologist Manuel Delgado, the radical opposition of anticlerical Liberalism to the Catholic Church and the women who supported it had to do with the perception of the Church as a feminising power against which it was necessary to fight, not only to consolidate their political project excluding the Church, but also to assure male supremacy in the family. 38 Delgado's analysis brilliantly studies the reasons and the consequences of this way of perceiving reality by anticlerical groups. However, he does not analyse the way in which the Church itself felt identified symbolically to femininity. From my point of view, it is this symbolic feminisation of the Catholic Church during the nineteenth century, more than the evolution of religious practice, which constitutes the key element that explains the existence of a feminised Catholicism during that century. This concept could be defined as the phenomenon through which the Catholic Church identified itself with the same features and values that the Church considered ideal for the women of that time. 39 Thus, chastity, patience, sensitivity, generosity and self-sacrifice, all of which were considered female qualities by priests and Catholic writers, also defined the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century.
The figure that could undoubtedly represent this fusion between the Church and femininity in Catholicism was the Virgin Mary. It is true that this identification of the Church with femininity was not new to the Christian tradition and, in fact, there were doctrinal elements that could be found in the Bible; for example, Saint Paul had written in his letter to Ephesians (5,25) that husbands should love their wives as Christ had loved his Church, which was identified as Christ's wife. But it was not by chance that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined in the nineteenth century. Two reasons may explain that. Firstly, the Vatican wanted to take advantage of the popularity of the Marian devotion among the laity to strengthen its counterrevolutionary discourse. In fact, it cannot be forgotten that the Syllabus of Errors was issued on 8 December 1864, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. 40 The second reason for which a completely male hierarchy symbolically appropriated the female figure of the Immaculate Virgin must be linked to the Romanisation of the Church. As Roberto Di Stefano affirms, this process was, at the same time, a cause and an effect of secularisation because it contributed to separate the civil and the ecclesiastical spheres. 41 Thereby, the consolidation of the Catholic Church as an institution in charge of spiritual power, which was parallel to the monopolisation of temporal or worldly power by nation states, meant an increase in the pope's authority over the whole of Catholicism and reached its highest point with the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility in 1870. Precisely, Immaculate Conception was the first dogma defined by the Catholic Church without the intervention of a Council, only under exclusive initiative of the pope. 42 A treatise written by the Catalan priest Eduardo María Vilarrasa -published between the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the dogma of infallibility -constitutes an excellent example of this feminised and mariological conception of the Catholic Church. 43 The title of the book, The Two Immaculates, expresses the author's intention to show the analogy that, from his point of view, existed between Mary and the Church, particularly its head, the pope. According to Vilarrasa, 'the Church is very similar to Mary: that is not strange, it is her daughter and daughters tend to look like their mothers'. 44 The Catalan priest attributed to the Church and the pope the same traits which characterised Mary: virginity and maternity. Vilarrasa used the first element to emphasise the pope's will to remain far from the mundane interests: 'Ah! Proud powers, stop: do not bring those bloodied hands close to this chest of justice, purity and holiness; leave her: she is virgin and the touch of your hands offends her modesty'. 45 Making reference to the virginity of the pope, Vilarrasa wanted to reinforce the suffering image of Pius IX, who was threatened at that moment by the twin dangers of revolution and Italian nationalism. 46 On the other hand, Vilarrasa referred to the maternity of Mary in order to legitimise the control that the Church in general and the pope in particular had to have over all Christians. Vilarrasa used the explicit image of breastfeeding to exemplify this union between the pope and Christians: 'On Mary's breasts lies Christ's mouth, he strengthened himself with her breast's milk; on the pontificate's breasts lay the mouth of Christian society, licking the pure milk of the spirit with his definitions'. 47 As Mary was Christ's mother, the pope had to be the mother of all Christians and his mission did not finish with birth and breastfeeding, it had to continue with education: 'Man needs truth because the truth is necessary to complete his food and because, with bread alone, he would not fulfil the necessities of life. By giving truth to man, the pope contributes to the constitution and development of his being and, therefore, he accomplishes the authentic role of mother'. 48 Vilarrasa eventually came to the following conclusion: if it was the pope who had to continue Christ's work, was Christ's main representative on earth and, at the same time, was also the mother of all Christian people, the power of the pope had to be infallible.
Therefore, we can affirm that the discursive link between religion and femininity was the driving force of some of the most important transformations experienced by Catholicism in the nineteenth century. First, it legitimised a more active participation of Catholic women in defence of the Church, preferentially in the private sphere but with connections in the public sphere. Second, the discursive feminisation of Catholicism can explain the progressive acceptance by part of the Church hierarchy of one kind of religious life, the female congregation, which had existed from the seventeenth century and played an essential role in the contribution of Catholicism to shape a constantly changing society. Finally, the emergence of a more emotional piety, exemplified in the Marian apparitions, must not be interpreted as an anachronistic element, but one more sign of the strategy sustained by the hegemonic sector of the Catholic Church to increase the power of the pope taking advantage of the active popular religiosity of that time. The adoption by the Church of a symbolic feminisation, characterised by her virginal and immaculate nature, was used by the male ecclesiastical hierarchy in the nineteenth century in order to augment the Church's influence over all believers, as a good mother was expected to do with her beloved children.

Confused laymen and priestly masculinity
Before a symbolically feminised Catholicism during the nineteenth century, what was the position of Catholic men? As I have previously affirmed, some European research has not only verified the strong presence of men in some religious activities, but also their active role in the public defence of religion. In the Spanish case, both confessional newspapers and political parties were led by men, but few studies have analysed male religious commitment, both within the public and the private realm, from a gender point of view. 49 The following pages do not pretend to fill this historiographic gap but offer some interpretative keys that could help to carry out more specific studies in the future.
Being a Catholic man in nineteenth-century Spain was possibly not as easy as it had been in the previous centuries. Both Republican and Socialist discourses tended to separate men and women into two realms: science, progress and the public sphere were reserved for men, while religion, tradition and the private sphere were reserved for women. 50 Furthermore, as we have just observed, Spanish Catholic men had to manage with a symbolically feminised Catholicism. In fact, the position of Catholic laymen within this context was not encouraging at all. This was quite evident in literature, particularly in the novel. The narrative structure characterised by the presence of a pious woman before an unbelieving father, fiancé or husband was commonly used by the great Spanish novelists of the second half of the nineteenth century: Pérez Galdós, Clarín, Blasco Ibáñez, Pardo Bazán, Valera and Palacio Valdés. 51 Religion does not play a relevant role in the identity construction of these male characters; they will only turn to it in order to win a woman's heart. The Neo-Catholic novel, defined by a highly moralising tone, partially adopted this narrative structure. 52 Although the starting point of these novels is usually the same (religious women and unbelieving men), in the end the male character sincerely converts to Catholicism, thanks to the positive influence of his wife, sister, daughter or mother. That happens, for example, in Un servilón y un liberalito, written by the Neo-Catholic novelist Fernan Caballero (Cecilia Böhl de Faber). In this novel, the Liberal and unbeliever Leopoldo is eventually converted to Catholicism by the powerful example of Margarita, his pious and learned wife. 53 Bishops and priests also participated in the public discussion about how men had to behave in the private and public realms. The above-mentioned Antonio María Claret was particularly active on this matter. Apart from being the confessor of Isabella II from 1857 to 1868, Claret was archbishop of Santiago de Cuba and Trajanopolis, author of around 100 books, opuscules and leaflets about religious and educational themes and one of the founders of the Librería Religiosa, a Catholic publisher specialising in religious and devotional books. Claret addressed his writings to a less cultured audience than did the philosopher and priest Jaume Balmes, but he was able to come to the attention of many more people. Thus, between 1848 and 1866 the Librería Religiosa printed nearly 3 million books, 2.5 million opuscules and 4 million leaflets. 54 He was undoubtedly one of the most influential clergymen in nineteenthcentury Spain. 55 It is quite evident that the masculinity model constructed by Claret and the Catholic hierarchy was not hegemonic in nineteenth-century Spain, but we may well agree that some of its features could have contributed to shaping some elements of this hegemonic masculinity. 56 Youth was considered by clergymen the most dangerous stage in life because of the presence of disturbing temptations. Claret not only considered gambling, bad company and the reading of pernicious books damaging for young men, but also attending theatre and balls. 57 Regarding sex, Claret stated that the sexual instinct of men was natural and often uncontrollable, but he added that it was only in marriage where this instinct could be put into practice. 58 Within marriage, the primacy over the education of children that fathers had held in the preceding centuries was reserved for mothers, as we have seen previously. Nevertheless, once sons were adolescents, the influence of fathers on them had to be, according to Claret, considerably stronger and, with this in mind, it was imperative that they did not get into trouble and were excellent Christians in order to be a good example for their sons. 59 Therefore, the Catholic model of man was probably not too stimulating for nineteenth-century laymen. Not only were they considered spiritually less strong and less suitable than women to educate their children, but they were also criticised if they went to taverns, theatres or balls. Furthermore, actions which were more or less tolerated in the case of womanising (in Spanish donjuanismo), such as male adultery or duels, were absolutely banned for Catholic men. 60 However, in contrast to laymen, the symbolic feminisation of Catholicism does contribute to reinforcing the position of the celibate priest. Despite this apparent contradiction, we cannot forget that the feminisation of Catholicism was partially promoted by a clerical hierarchy, who considered that the symbolic link between the Church and the Virgin Mary could legitimise the process of centralisation and Romanisation of the Church structure around the pope. As a consequence of highlighting the distance between the Church as an institution and the laity, totally subordinated to the former, the figure of the celibate priest was clearly elevated. The great challenge for bishops and priests consisted of adapting their male condition to a feminised organisation or, in other words, legitimising their model of priestly masculinity within a Catholic Church more and more symbolically identified with what, in that time, were considered feminine values.
In Spain, the numerous instances of secularisation forced by Liberal governments during the first half of the nineteenth century, which led to a drastic reduction of the number of monks, contributed to strengthening the position of bishops and priests within an institution that was involved in a deep process of internal transformation. They had to become the cornerstone in order to put into practice the project of re-Christianising society. In this context, seminaries gained importance because future priests needed to be disciplined, well-instructed and have impeccable moral behaviour. 61 Manuals destined to be used in seminaries like El colegial o seminarista by Claret or El Tesoro del Sacerdote by the Jesuit José Mach, published in 1860 and 1861, respectively, with a large number of successive editions, tried to adapt the Counter-Reformation guidelines about the education of future priests to the new rules of behaviour of bourgeois society. 62 In his manual to seminarians, José Mach was categorical with regard to priests' position on society: 'Where could we find a similar power and dignity to the priest's one? Let's climb to God's throne: only there we will find it'. 63 In order to highlight this superiority, priests had to take care of their appearance. Claret insisted on them being tonsured and wearing the cassock, not only to differentiate themselves from the laity, but also because not doing so could be a sign of weakness and effeminacy: 'The cassock is a continuous exhortation to live according to the Church discipline. And experience has taught us that he who dresses effeminately, lives effeminately, and he who dresses as a saint, lives as a saint'. 64 As laymen, priests had to avoid going to the theatre, the café or the tavern and participating in activities like hunting, drinking, smoking or gambling. 65 However, Claret agreed that priests should not have to live in isolation, so he included a section dedicated to urbanity in order to regulate priests' behaviour at the table, when making visits or walking with others. 66 Both Claret and Mach were firmly in favour of the intellectual instruction of future priests -'a clergyman without knowledge is a useless man' -and the curriculum included theology, philosophy, Latin, Bible study, Spanish grammar, history, canon law, mathematics, literature and modern languages. 67 Furthermore, Claret kept some hours a day for physical exercise because it contributed to 'develop the body in harmonious proportions […] and preserve, at any age, health, strength and beauty'. 68 This insistence on men being intellectually well-prepared and physically strong was combined with the requirement of having moral virtues that may be considered feminine at that time, such as patience, obedience, chastity or the love of Mary. Claret tried to demonstrate to seminarians that manifesting these virtues, identified with the Catholic Church itself, was not a sign of weakness but a sign of virility: 'The long-suffering man is better than the brave man and the man who controls his passions is better than he who conquers cities because overcoming oneself is more rational, more natural and, therefore, more meritorious'. 69 That exhortation to control passions included the sexual ones. Within Catholicism, celibacy constituted (and constitutes) the main distinctive trait between clergymen and laity and was, in consequence, an important element of identity among Catholic priests. Consequently, any public questioning of celibacy was actively responded to by bishops and priests. Apart from the anticlerical satire in plays, novels or even pornographic sheets, some very critical essays on celibacy were published. 70 These used scientific and social arguments to prove the necessity to abolish the celibacy of Catholic clergymen. For instance, Julio Lorente y Peñafort considered that celibacy was antinatural, blocked the growth of the human being and harmed the priest's appearance from the laity's perspective: whereas the majority of them were married, the priest remained celibate and could not be a model for laity. 71 Jaume Balmes was against this kind of argument and stated that it was the possibility of having a wife that harmed the priest's appearance. 72 Another clergyman, Miguel Sanz Lafuente, was in favour of Malthus's theories and affirmed that celibacy contributed to control population growth. Quoting important medical authorities like Tissot, who had viewed masturbation as morally damaging and hygienically deleterious in his treatise L'Onamisme (1760), Sanz Lafuente also considered that men were more muscular and stronger in a state of continence than in a state of incontinence. 73 Claret agreed with these arguments in favour of celibacy, but he was more interested in preserving it in practice among seminarians and priests. Of course, the main and most evident danger that threatened priestly chastity were women. In many of his books and opuscules, particularly his manuals and personal letters addressed to other priests and confessors, as well as his own autobiography, it is easy to find recommendations to avoid any unnecessary contact with women. In this way Claret warned a young priest about the possibility of accepting women in the parish choir: 'Consider that you are quite young, especially to deal with young women and, therefore, be very careful so that the envious enemy does not make you fall into temptation'. 74 In his autobiography, Claret claimed he had no idea about the appearance of Cuban women in spite of having been archbishop of Santiago de Cuba for six years. 75 Seminaries were also perceived as potentially dangerous places for the preservation of chastity although women were absent. Other risks, never directly named but many times insinuated, threatened priestly purity. Claret advised bishops and directors of seminaries to expel students with an effeminate attitude: 'When a student uses creams and perfumes he shows an effeminate heart and a corrupted spirit. This person must not be allowed either to be in the seminary or to continue the ecclesiastical career because he is, or will be, a lustful man and, therefore, the scourge and confusion of the whole Church'. 76 In order to avoid succumbing to temptation, Claret considered it absolutely necessary to switch on the bedroom lights at night, to prevent two students from going to the toilet at the same time or a student visiting the bedroom of one of his teachers; students were obliged to remain dressed in bed and any student who lay down next to another student was expelled. 77 As Richard Cleminson and Francisco Vázquez state, the conceptual transition during the nineteenth century from sodomy to homosexuality ran parallel to a different comprehension of the relationship between two men: from being considered an exclusively physical or anatomic problem to including social and psychological aspects. That is why references to effeminacy or effeminate behaviour associated with homosexuality were more and more common as the nineteenth century advanced. 78 The best antidote to fight against temptation was, according to Claret, thinking of the Virgin Mary. He says in his autobiography that he was saved from a strong temptation which threatened his chastity thanks to a Marian vision. 79 That is not strange because, as some studies have proved, celibacy is closely connected to Marian devotion in Catholicism. 80 It is not by chance that during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when celibacy was declared compulsory for priests by the councils of 1059 and 1139, the devotion to the Virgin was broadly expanded within Western Europe. The theologian Hans Küng holds that 'a medieval Roman-Catholic hierarchy […] created the image of Mary as a remedial figure for celibate priests in order to spiritually live femininity, maternity and love'. 81 Similarly, the nineteenth century, the century of Mary, was also the century of affirmation of a hierarchical and patriarchal structure within the Catholic Church. In this context, seminaries played the decisive role of teaching strict rules to control the body and its passions in order to create, in Foucauldian terms, docile and useful subjects for the Church.

Conclusion
In this article, I have argued that the feminisation of Catholicism in the nineteenth century is linked to other general processes that took place in that century. Although it is true that some religious duties, like attendance to Sunday mass and receiving communion at Easter, were dominated by women before the nineteenth century, thus influencing the perception of Catholicism as feminised, there were other more decisive factors that explain why this process took place in the nineteenth century and not before. Firstly, the redefinition of the gender roles by Enlightened thinkers and liberals from the mid-eighteenth century tended to place women and religion in the private sphere, although later the Church opposed the association of religion with the private realm. Secondly, the tragic image perceived by the male hierarchy of a Catholic Church constantly threatened by its enemies convinced bishops and priests of the importance of involving women in their project of re-Christianising society. Both these reasons clarify why, unlike in previous centuries, women were considered more pious than men; the action of female congregations was progressively accepted and valued by the Church hierarchy; and priests and bishops tended to promote the expressions of popular religiosity exemplified by women and children, particularly the Marian apparitions. In fact, the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 not only meant a step further in the process of Romanisation and centralisation of the Catholic Church, which culminated with the dogma of the papal infallibility in 1870, but also served as the main proof of the symbolic feminisation of the Catholic Church, which identified itself with the same traits that defined Mary, the ideal woman: chaste, pure, patient, sensitive, self-sacrificing and motherly.
Although it may seem paradoxical, the century of the discursive feminisation of Catholicism was also the century of the strengthening of the male hierarchy within the Church. The general agreement about the fact that women were more pious than men and the encouragement by the Church for women to participate actively in the project of re-Christianising society left laymen in a difficult position: in the family and the home, their role in the education of children was secondary when compared to the powerful presence of the Catholic mother, whereas in the public sphere they could be severely criticised by bishops and priests because of their presence in taverns, theatres or balls. In contrast, the deepening of the symbolic link between the Church and the Virgin Mary, which ran parallel to the process of ecclesiastical centralisation, strengthened the figure of the celibate priest. This model of priestly masculinity legitimised the privileged position of clergymen within a feminised institution by defending, as totally virile, the ability to control passions, particularly in the realm of sexuality. Indeed, in a historical context where the Church was redefining its role within a slowly secularising society, celibacy became the main identifying trait of a group of men who tried to present themselves as morally superior to the laity. Although it is evident that priestly masculinity was not hegemonic since a priest's way of life was not common among the laity, some of their characteristics, such as the self-control of passions and temperance, contributed to shaping other models of masculinity which were an alternative to the figure of Don Juan.
Raúl Mínguez Blasco is a Marie-Skłodowska Curie fellow at the University of Leeds (UK). His monograph, Evas, Marías y Magdalenas (Madrid: CEPC, 2016), was awarded the Miguel Artola Prize. He has also published numerous articles on the political and religious history of modern Spain from a gender perspective.