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 Routledge Studies in Modern History

HOW THE CHURCH UNDER

PIUS XII ADDRESSED
DECOLONIZATION
THE ISSUE OF ALGERIAN INDEPENDENCE

Marialuisa Lucia Sergio

How the Church Under Pius XII
Addressed Decolonization

By paying attention to Algerian independence, this book reconstructs the

action of the Catholic Church regarding the issues of the spread of Islam in
colonies, to Arab nationalism, Marxist propaganda in non-European coun-
tries, and the effects of the Algerian crisis upon the French political system.
The complex relations between the Holy See and France, as well as those
between the Vatican and the Episcopates and clergy of the overseas terri-
tories, are vital aspects of decolonisation, a topic which, to date, has been
overlooked by historiography because of the impossibility of accessing doc-
uments relating to the pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958) held in the Vatican
archives. The opening in March 2020 of the archives of Pius XII, the Pope
who had succeeded in imposing the strategic role of the Holy See upon the
international scene, has made a vast amount of unpublished documentary
material available to scholars.
This book is useful for all students and scholars interested in the Cold War,
the history of contemporary Europe, the history of the Church, post-colo-
nial studies, and the religious phenomenon in post-World War II Europe.

Marialuisa Lucia Sergio is Associate Professor in Contemporary History at

Roma Tre University. Her research interests focus on the Christian-inspired
political movements and on the contemporary Roman Catholic Church.
Among her latest publications: The European Union of Christian Democrats
and the Controversy regarding the Spanish Accession to the EC in the 1970s
(2022); Il Secondo dopoguerra in Spagna nelle carte italiane e vaticane (2021);
Bonaventura Cerretti and the Impossible Missions (2020), Diario di Alcide De
Gasperi 1930–1943 (2018).
Routledge Studies in Modern History

Jewish Self-Defense in South America

Facing Anti-Semitism with a Club in Hand
Raanan Rein

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Histories of Observing the Everyday in the Newspaper Age
Edited by Hansjakob Ziemer

Reenactment Case Studies

Global Perspectives on Experiential History
Edited by Vanessa Agnew, Sabine Stach, and Juliane Tomann

Defrosting the Cold War and Beyond

An Introduction to the Helsinki Process, 1954–2022
Richard Davy

Narratives of Dictatorship in the Age of Revolution

Emotions, Power and Legitimacy in the Atlantic Space
Moisés Prieto

Political Power and Colonial Development in British Central Africa

1938-1960s
Alan H. Cousins

How the Church Under Pius XII Addressed Decolonization

The Issue of Algerian Independence
Marialuisa Lucia Sergio

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.

com/Routledge-Research-in-Modern-History/book-series/MODHIST
How the Church Under Pius XII
Addressed Decolonization
The Issue of Algerian Independence

Marialuisa Lucia Sergio

First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 Marialuisa Lucia Sergio
The right of Marialuisa Lucia Sergio to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-13622-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-13623-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-23017-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003230175

Typeset in Times New Roman

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents

List of Abbreviationsvii
Preface x

Introduction 1
The Roman Catholic Church and colonialism on the eve
of the decolonisation processes: a historiographical
assessment 1
Colonial nationality and the Islamic question: introductory
elements 12

1 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa

from the Second World War to liberation: The beginning
of the Algerian question (1939–1945) 24
The Vatican, Vichy government, and colonial regime:
Pétain, a new French Salazar? 24
The Catholic Church and France libre in North Africa:
a problematic relationship 34

2 How the Holy See and the Fourth Republic dealt with colonial
transition (1945–1949) 49
The constituent debate and attempts to reform the colonial
order: The role of the MRP and the Algerian Episcopate,
and the problem of the 1947 Statute 49
The establishment of the Apostolic Delegation of
French Africa: Holy See, colonialism,
and missionary experience suspended between
continuity and renewal 60
vi Contents
3 The Holy See and the start of the independence processes in North Africa:
The Evangelii praecones encyclical put to the test by decolonisation
(1950–1953) 70
The Vatican and the Tunisian question 70
Catholic mobilisation following the Casablanca uprising and the
Moroccan question 78

4 The handling of the Algerian crisis by the Holy See and the Faure
government (1954–1955) 94
The Vatican and the Catholic world in the aftermath of the
Toussaint rouge: cries and whispers 94
The ecclesiastical hierarchies and the mirage of a “third
way” 104

5 The Holy See and the Mollet government: Distrust and adaptation
strategy. The Fidei donum encyclical (1956–1957) 127
The degeneration of the Algerian conflict and the discovery of
oil. The strategic importance of the diocese of Laghouat 127
Relations between the Holy See, the Algerian Episcopate and
the Apostolic Delegation in Dakar: the origins of the Fidei
donum 142

6 The Vatican, the Algiers Putsch, and the advent of the Fifth Republic 152
French Church in crisis over the torture issue and tensions
between the Algerian Episcopate and the army 152
The Vatican from the coup d’état of 13 May to the Evian
Accords: Ralliement to the Fifth Republic and the
humanitarian emergency 164

Conclusions 180

Index 197
Abbreviations

AA. EE. SS.

Fondo Sacra Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici
Straordinari (Archives of the Congregation for
Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs)
AAS Acta Apostolicæ Sedis
AAV Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (Vatican Apostolic
Archive)
ACA Assemblée des cardinaux et archevêques de France
(Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops of France)
ACPF Archivio Storico di Propaganda Fide (Propaganda Fide
Historical Archives)
ADSS Actes et documents du Saint-Siège relatifs à la seconde
guerre mondiale
AGMAfr Archives générales des missionnaires d’Afrique (General
Archives of the Missionaries of Africa)
ALN Armée de libération nationale (National Liberation
Army, jaysh al-tahrır al-watani)
AML Amis du manifeste et de la liberté (Friends of the
Manifesto and of Liberty)
ASRS Archivio Storico della Segreteria di Stato – Sezione per i
Rapporti con gli Stati (Historical Archives of the Section
for the Relations with the States of the Secretariat of
State)
AUMA/AOMA Association des oulémas musulmans (Association of
Algerian Muslim Ulama)
CCEFI Comité Chrétien d’Entente France-Islam (Christian
Committee of France-Islam Agreement)
CCIF Centre catholique des intellectuels français (Catholic
Centre of French Intellectuals)
CDU Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands
(Christian Democratic Union of Germany)
CESPS Centre d’études supérieures de psychologie sociale
(Centre for Higher Studies in Social Psychology)
viii Abbreviations
CFLN Comité français de la Libération nationale (French
National Liberation Committee)
CNAEF Centre national des Archives de l’Église de France
(National Centre of the archives of the Church of
France)
CNIP Centre nationale des indépendants et paysans (National
Centre of Independents and Peasants)
COPARE Comité de parents pour la réforme de l’enseignement
(Parents’ Committee for Education Reform)
CSP Comité de salut public (Public Safety Committee)
DCF Démocratie Chrétienne de France (Christian Democracy
of France)
ENA Étoile nord-africaine (North African Star)
FADRL Front algérien pour la défense et le respect des libertés
Algerian (Front for the Defense and Respect of
Freedoms)
FLN Front de libération nationale (National Liberation Front,
Jabhat al-Taḥrīr al-Waṭani)
JEC Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne (Christian Student
Youth)
JECF Jeunesse étudiante chrétienne feminine (Female Student
Christian Youth)
J. O. Journal officiel de la République française
J.O.A.N. Journal Officiel de l’Assemblée nationale
JWO Journal de Wladimir d’Ormesson (diary by Wladimir
d’Ormesson, French National Archives)
MNA Mouvement national algérien (Algerian National
Movement)
MRP Mouvement républicain Populaire (Popular Republican
Movement)
MTLD Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques
(Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties)
N.C.W.C. National Catholic Welfare Conference
OAS Organisation armée secrète (Secret Armed Organisation)
OCRS Organisation commune des régions sahariennes
(Common Organisation of the Saharan Regions)
PCA Parti communiste algérien (Algerian Communist Party,
al-hizb al-shuyū’ı ̄ al-jazā’iri)
PCF Parti communiste français (French Communist Party)
PPA Parti du peuple algérien (Algerian People’s Party, hizb
al-shāab al-jazā’iri)
SDECE Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-
espionnage (External Documentation and Counter-
Espionage Service)
 Abbreviations ix
SFIO Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (French
Section of the Workers’ International, the future
Socialist Party)
SRI Service des relations avec l’islam (Islamic Relations
Department)
TOMs Territoires d’outre-mer (Overseas territories)
UDMA Union démocratique du manifeste algérien (Democratic
Union of the Algerian Manifesto)
UDRS Union démocratique et socialiste de la Résistance
(Democratic and Socialist Union of Resistance)
UPC Union des Populations du Cameroun (Union of the
Peoples of Cameroon)
Legenda
Pos. Posizione (position)
fasc. fascicolo (folder)
f foglio (sheet)
ff fogli (sheets)
r recto
v verso
NS Nuova Serie (New Series)
Vol. Volume
Arabic names are transliterated in the form used in the quoted primary
sources and the international bibliography.
The translation from Italian to English is by Marilyn Scopes
Preface

As the introduction to this book explains, the historiography of French North

Africa’s decolonisation is being totally revised, both in France itself and across
the English-speaking world. Until now, this revision lacked the standpoint of
the Holy See, whose archives remained inaccessible to researchers. The opening
by Pope Francis in 2020 of archives from the pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958)
allows us to partially fill this void. By drawing extensively on the archives of
the Roman congregations and of the national archive centre for the French
Church, Marialuisa Sergio – Associate Professor of Contemporary History at
Roma Tre University – provides a first overview of the Vatican’s and French
Catholic Church’s stance regarding the start of the Algerian War (1954–1958)
and in passing the independence of Tunisia and Morocco in 1956.
She eloquently demonstrates how the Holy See – while not identifying
itself with French colonial policy, whose harsh treatment of its subjects it
lamented – was unable to completely distance itself from it, for politico-­
religious reasons that extended far beyond the Maghreb. Even before the
end of the Second World War, Rome was concerned at the spread of com-
munism, not just in Eastern and Central Europe under the influence of
Soviet armies, but also in Third World countries eager to free themselves
from colonialism. In a way we now know was wrong, Rome saw Moscow’s
hand behind the resurgence of Islam, which was seen not as an interlocutor
but rather as a bitter rival, especially in Africa.
It was this dual fear of communism and Islam that dictated Rome’s entire
stance towards decolonisation. Countries moving towards independence
needed to be protected from the influence of Cairo and of Moscow beyond
so, despite its disadvantages, French control in North Africa served as a
guarantee. Hence a dual track policy, both for the long and the short term,
of which the two underlying reasons were not however really compatible.
Long term, Rome was convinced of the inevitability of decolonisation
and showed little interest in supporting the vested interests of colonial pow-
ers, including France. To ensure Catholicism’s survival beyond colonialism,
since Pope Benedict XV (1914–1922), the Holy See had sought to entrench
it by promoting members of the indigenous elite within the clergy and hier-
archy. But while such indigenisation was well advanced in sub-Saharan
 Preface xi
Africa, in the Maghreb it met with fierce resistance from Islam to proselyt-
ism. Hence a call for help from the metropolitan clergy in contradiction, at
least to all appearances, with indigenisation.
One of Marialuisa Sergio’s key contributions is to highlight the role of Mgr.
Marcel Lefebvre, archbishop of Dakar and apostolic delegate to French-
speaking Africa, and also – or maybe especially – of Mgr. Léon-Étienne
Duval, archbishop of Algiers from 1954 onwards, in drafting the Fidei donum
encyclical of 1957 which asked for French secular priests to be sent, not just to
black Africa as is often mentioned, but also to Algeria and the Sahara where
priestly recruitment from the European community was clearly inadequate
and the missionary work of religious congregations was tending to wane.
Short term, Rome took cover behind French domination, although not
without concerns over the obvious weakening of France since its defeat by
the Third Reich in 1940, compounded by its defeat by the Viet Minh in 1954
which confirmed its inability to regain a foothold in Indochina. It also had
concerns about French Catholicism, which was shown by religious prac-
tice surveys to be in decline, although this didn’t preserve it from repeated
unrest amongst its intellectual and clerical elite – disturbances that Rome
saw fit to clamp down on shortly before the outbreak of the All Saints’ Day
Algerian rebellion in 1954 (case of the worker-priests and their Dominican
supporters in February of that year).
In 1941, the Vichy government neglected the Vatican’s offer to give
Catholicism privileged status within the French Empire, like that agreed
in 1940 with Salazar’s regime, which the Holy See considered similar to
the one established at Vichy. Meanwhile, despite being a known Catholic,
General de Gaulle seemed far less congenial to Rome’s diplomats. Not only
had he brought the communists to power, but he also intended to purge an
episcopate overly sympathetic to Vichy. One bishop who paid the price for
supporting Pétain was Mgr. Henri Vielle, the Vicar Apostolic of Rabat in
Morocco. Despite justifiable doubts regarding the stability of the Fourth
Republic, when it came to the Maghreb, the Holy See backed the reform-
ism of the Popular Republican Movement – a Christian democratic party
in all but name – by supporting structural reforms like those set out in the
Defferre framework law of 1956, which aimed to safeguard both the metro-
pole’s presence in overseas France and greater autonomy for former colonies.
But there was no question of independence. This remained Rome’s position
right through the Fourth Republic’s ultimate crisis in May 1958, when it
continued to support its last government – led by Christian Democrat Pierre
Pflimlin – rather than a return to General de Gaulle who was not remem-
bered warmly in the palaces of Rome. It took several weeks or even months
for the French high clergy to endorse the Fifth Republic and its leader.
The Holy See’s key representative in Algeria was none other than the
Archbishop of Algiers, Mgr. Duval, and Marialuisa Sergio’s work provides
a well-argued reassessment of his role. He was certainly an early critic of
the use of torture by French forces in Algeria and an advocate for improved
xii Preface
conditions for the Muslim population, thereby incurring the wrath of
French Algerian extremists. And yet his reports to Rome showed extreme
concern at the resurgence of Islam in Algeria and the possible communist
influence behind it. As in Vatican circles, which saw them as a resurgence of
the “progressivism” denounced between 1949 and 1955, he was also highly
critical of the anti-colonial movements amongst the metropole’s Catholic
Left (as expressed in the publications “Esprit” and “Témoignage Chrétien”)
and in general of any seemingly ill-timed interference in Algerian affairs by
metropolitan France. To consolidate the European strain of Christianity,
to whose imminent disappearance he was oblivious, Mgr. Duval made
insistent requests for priests from the metropole. While in favour of social
reforms for the Muslim population, never did he imagine – or at least, not
until 1958 – that it might gain independence. Backed by Rome, he appears
less daring and more conformist than his legend, fuelled as it was by both
his left-wing thuriféraires (admirers) and his far-right opponents.
It was therefore difficult to find a middle ground between the colonial
repression that Roman circles disapproved of without expressly saying so,
and an independence whose name no one yet uttered in 1958. It is difficult
also to foster a situation conducive to reforms that would gradually (the
keyword throughout) lead to the emancipation of Algeria, following that of
Tunisia and Morocco.
This centrist position steadfastly resisted pressure from many fronts. The
Vatican did not change its centrist position either in the face of pressure com-
ing from several Muslim authorities on the Internuncio at Cairo, for Rome
to stop supporting the French cause in Algeria and not least at international
forums, or in the face of that coming from French nationalists like Mgr.
Lefebvre, who saw military victory in Algeria as the prerequisite for preserv-
ing Christianity in Africa. Marialuisa Sergio reveals that his appointment
in 1948 as the apostolic delegate to French-speaking Africa (except Algeria
and Tunisia) was the subject of much debate in Roman circles, where he was
pitted against a Belgian priest, Maximilien de Fürstenberg, and the newly
appointed Bishop of Constantine and Hippo, Mgr. Duval. If the latter had
been chosen instead of Mgr. Lefebvre, the history of the Church in Algeria,
and Africa generally, might have taken quite a different turn.
But historians study actual facts and events rather than random theories
that are suggested and then abandoned. The first to work on this subject, using
material recently made accessible in Rome and France, Marialuisa Sergio does
justice to her profession. Documents in hand, she challenges existing precon-
ceptions about the supposed anti-colonialism of Rome and its representative
Mgr. Duval. Neither could imagine in 1958 how the future of Algeria would
unroll. To find out how they stood regarding the subsequent shift towards
Algerian independence, won in 1962, we will need to await the opening of the
Roman archives for the pontificate of Pope John XXIII (1958–1963).

Étienne Fouilloux
Introduction

The Roman Catholic Church and colonialism on the eve of

the decolonisation processes: a historiographical assessment
The processes of the national independence of French Africa represented a
decisive challenge for the Roman Catholic Church which, during the second
post-World War period, was struggling with the decline of colonial Europe
and the crisis of its cultural models grounded mainly in the connection,
until then deemed indissoluble, between Christian civilisation and the pri-
macy of the West.
The complex relations between the Holy See and France, as well as
those between the Vatican and the Episcopates and clergy of the overseas
territories, were a vital aspect of the difficult course of decolonisation, a
topic which, to date, has been overlooked by historiography because of the
impossibility of accessing documents relating to the pontificate of Pius XII
(1939–1958) held in the Vatican archives. The opening, in March 2020, of
the archives of Pius XII the Pope who, during the Second World War, had
succeeded in imposing the strategic role of the Holy See upon the interna-
tional scene, has made a vast amount of unpublished documentary material
available to scholars. This access permits us to reconstruct the role of the
Catholic Church during the process of decolonisation.
Within this context, the independence of Algeria was emblematic for
Catholicism, which, in North Africa more than in the home country, had
assumed a very strong connotation associated with the colonial ideal of
the plantatio ecclesiae (the plantation of the Catholic Church within non-­
evangelised territories) meaning the construction of “another France”
on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. In this sense, the Catholic
Church with the army, administrative structures, and the colonial polit-
ical institutions participated in a joint ideologie of Frenchification of the
Maghreb which exalted the Christian missions as a tool capable of fostering
the European “civilisation” of the area.
The historiography regarding the Algerian war of independence has
limited itself, to date, to underlining above all the relatively atypical char-
acter of the Church of Algeria, inherited in part from several innovative

DOI: 10.4324/9781003230175-1
2 Introduction
sensitising religious experiences like that of the Little Brothers and the
Little Sisters of Jesus and la Mission de France, presented as a kind of
Algerian way towards Islam-Christian dialogue precursor of Vatican II
(Henry, 2020).
The documents of the Vatican Archives, focused principally on the
political and diplomatic situation, reveal, however, a scenario more mul-
tifaceted and contradictory than that outlined by the interpretative par-
adigm of binary counterposition between an assimilationist France and a
decolonising Church.
This book, based on this documentation, intends to reconstruct the
political and diplomatic position of the Roman Catholic Church regard-
ing French decolonisation through the magnifying glass of Algerian inde-
pendence, keeping in mind the variety of levels of intervention, parallel but
not superimposable, of the Holy See, the Metropolitan Church, the dio-
ceses, and civilian society, to be interpreted within the vast framework of
international geopolitical relations, the institutional transformation of the
set-up of overseas territories within the ambit of the French Union, as well
as the theology of the revision of missionary models and a more general
social and cultural crisis which saw the Catholic world split up because of
diverse, conceptions incompatible with relations between religious identity
and national membership, between Christian Europe and the post-colonial
Mediterranean.
The cardinal reference points of the situation are the Vatican City, home
to the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, the centre of gravity of Pontifical
diplomacy, and the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, responsible
for the Catholic Church’s missionary action; the Papal Nunciature in Parigi,
that is the Vatican’s permanent diplomatic representative to the French gov-
ernment; the Cairo Internunciature, where the net of the negotiations of
the North African independist movements unfolded; Algiers, the site of the
Archdiocese which directly experienced the drama of the Franco-Algerian
war; Tunis, Carthage in the language of theology, the primatial see of the
Church of Africa; finally, the African Apostolic Delegation of French
Africa in Dakar, an observation post fundamental for a comprehension of
the political and social change of the African continent rife with instances
of national emancipation.
As French historian Claude Prudhomme, one of the most authoritative
scholars of colonial and missionary history, observed, the analysis of the
role of Catholicism in processes of “nation building resulting from decol-
onisation” constitutes “an unparalleled point of observation” for the study
of the encounters and clashes between the cultures of missionary countries
and the European culture destabilised by the crisis of its claim to univer-
salism (Prudhomme, 2007: 26). He noted, however, that one of the main
limitations of the historiography of Catholic missions, especially that of
France, consists in the difficulty of placing the investigation “at the centre
of the system”, that is, in Rome, where the Papacy “has a real […] almost
 Introduction 3
always the last word because it is the only source of legitimacy”. He added
that “observing the mission from Rome also means understanding the link
between mission and politics […] and how Catholicism manages its gradual
internationalisation. The historiographical stakes are therefore important”
(Prudhomme, 2007: 27).
Despite these opportune methodological indications, the study of the
Catholic presence in colonial contexts has been approached, to date, almost
exclusively in terms of the theological and ecclesiastic history of the mis-
sionary experience (Pirotte, 2009: 45).
A brief examination of the academic literature dealing with the link
among Catholicism, missionary enterprise, and colonialism up to the
Second World War is very useful when seeking to place the decolonisation
of French Africa within a long-term perspective, indispensable when striv-
ing to understand the contributing causes of political and religious pro-
cesses between 1939 and 1958, the chronological axis of this work.
First of all, the historiography of this topic underlines the coincidence
between the expansionist cycle of European colonialism during the second
half of the 19th century and one of the most complex phases of the history
of the Holy See, which was engaged at the time in the difficult process of
redefining its international policy following the loss of its temporal power
when the Papal States came to an end in 1870 (Malgeri, 2019).
On that historical juncture, one of the main concerns of the Holy See
was the maintenance of its international role outside of Europe, an area
marked by potential conflict between national interests, Christian univer-
salism, and the role of the missions. The new wave of colonial expansion
which arose during the “age of imperialism” brought new international
diplomatic pressure to bear on the Vatican’s Secretariat of State demand-
ing that it promote the “nationalisation of the missions”, meaning that
they wanted the Vatican to send missionaries from the colonising mother
countries to missionary countries to foster European political control over
them. This prompted the Catholic Church to seek a compromise between
its universalistic evangelising perspective and the narrow nationalistic
interests of the European powers while avoiding an overly evident overlap
between the logic of colonialism and the dynamics of missionary endeav-
our (De Giuseppe, 2011).
In the specific case of relations between France and the Vatican, how-
ever, the revival of the Second Empire’s expansion into Asia and Africa pro-
vided the Catholic Church with new spaces for missionary advancement
in exchange for concessions to colonial nationalism. The Holy See saw
in France’s territorial penetration an opportunity to advance its pastoral
action, while Paris considered evangelisation a phenomenon functional,
even morally so, to the implementation of its policy of affirmation of its
language and culture and maintenance of the pax colonialis at the service of
the patriotic values of the metropolis (Ilboudo,1988; Gadille, Spindler, 1992;
Prudhomme, 1994).
4 Introduction
In the period between the two world wars, however, the pontificates of
Benedict XV and Pius XI drew up a new order of principles and priorities of
Catholic missions less compatible with Eurocentric thinking. In the case of
the pontificate of Benedict XV, historiography has highlighted the extra-­
European extension of the First World War so that it involved the fate
of the colonies and Catholic missions at geopolitical and strategic levels
(Pollard, 2005: 140–162; Sergio, 2019). In this context, the promulgation
of the apostolic letter Maximum illud on 30 November 1919 marked
an ecclesiological turning point prospecting the formation of indigenous
clergy, more respectful of cultural differences and more independent of
political power (Kroeger, 2013; Pollard, 2014: 114–115). In the case of the
pontificate Achille Ratti (Pius XI), historians have examined the contra-
dictions present in the attitude of the Holy See, Propaganda Fide, indi-
vidual missionary congregations, and Catholic culture in general towards
fascist imperialism and its invasion of Ethiopia. On the one hand, Pius
XI, in his encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae of 28 February 1926, affirmed
the need to separate the interests of the colonial nations from those of the
Catholic Church by pursuing a strategy of strong Roman centralisation of
the governing bodies of the Catholic missions to free them from the polit-
ical conditioning of the States and accentuate the supranational dimen-
sion of the Church and its position of neutrality (Canavero, 1998); on the
other, the majority of the Italian Episcopate which was close to the fascist
regime praised Mussolini’s colonial adventure as the enterprise worthy of
a “missionary patriot” (Ceci, 2010; Sergio, 2018: 53–54, 180, 183–184).
The outburst of the Second World War made the contradictions of the
Catholic magisterium regarding the colonial question more evident and
made it more urgent than ever to implement what Benedict XV and Pius XI
had proposed in favour of a separation of the missions from the European
mother countries and a clearer stance regarding political decolonisation.
However, regarding issues that arose prepotently during the pontificate
of Pius XII, historiography continues to present a lack of in-depth investi-
gation, with the exception of well-documented volumes like Mauro Forno’s
Le culture degli altri (The cultures of others) (Forno, 2017) and Elizabeth A.
Foster’s African Catholic (Foster, 2019) where, with keen sensitivity towards
the intellectual dimension of the problem, examined the network of mission-
ary congregations, Catholic students’ associations and intellectuals, which
before and during decolonisation, mobilised and discussed the topic of the
constitution of an authentically African Church and the role of Catholicism
during the political transition towards independence.
This historiographical review of the relationships between the Catholic
Church, colonialism, and missionary action served to understand the reli-
gious precursors of the decolonisation of French Africa, in particular, those
regarding the independence of Algeria.
In this case, too, it is helpful to examine some of the main topics debated
by recent historiography if we wish to obtain a better understanding of the
 Introduction 5
background of the political and religious dynamics that, starting from the
beginning of the French colonial experience and up to the Second World
War, led subsequently to the completion of processes of independence.
Situated at the crossroads between colonial and religious history, the spe-
cific topic of Catholicism in Algeria occupies a grey area, which has been
neglected by scholars of colonialism and religion alike.
First of all, we should note that, at least until the mid-1990s, the historio-
graphical investigation of colonialism and independence in Algeria focused
almost exclusively on the political question of the decline of Catholicism in
French Algeria following the development of Islamic society and the forma-
tion of the nationalist movement (Stora, 1994: 52–58).
According to a now generally accepted pattern of periodisation pro-
posed by Daniel Rivet, after the phase of nationalist and apologetic histo-
riography set in the period of colonial Algeria and a subsequent Marxism
and Third Worldism inspired anti-colonial historiography prevailing in
the 1960s and 1970s, focused on the socio-economic deconstruction of the
colonial system, since the 1980s political and institutional historiography
began to prevail (Rivet, 1992). Since the end of the 20th century, after
1992 and the accessibility of the military archives of Vincennes and the
ECPAD (Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle
de la Défense), the topic of the decolonisation of Algeria imposed itself
upon the attention of historians in particular as the “Algerian war” as
related to the administration of justice and the use of torture (Branche,
2001; Thénault, 2001).
For a long time, the Association française d’histoire religieuse contem-
poraine (AFHRC), founded in 1974, had also neglected the colonial issue,
with the exception of a study-day in 1976 dedicated to “the overseas expor-
tation of religious models” (“exportation des modèles religieux outre-mer”)
(Langlois, 2016: 12).
It is only within the ambit of the history of the missions that the con-
nection between the history of religion and that of colonisation is high-
lighted for the first time, thanks to the studies of Jacques Gadille, Claude
Prudhomme, and, more recently, by a pupil of the latter, Philippe Delisle,
who focused on contacts between different faiths and cultures and the
concept itself of the religious mission (Delisle, 2003; Prudhomme, 2004).
Renewed research into missiological questions has brought to light one of
the most important Algerian congregations, the Society of Missionaries
of Africa (White Fathers), founded in 1868 by the Archbishop of Algiers,
Msgr. Charles-Martial Lavigerie (Cellier, 2008; Nolan, 2015).
Although still rather limited, the bibliography regarding the Catholics of
Algeria has been enriched noticeably by the work of Oissila Saaïdia, whose
research, taken up and developed in L’Algérie Catholique of 2018 (Saaïdia,
2018), is oriented principally towards the State and Church during the 19th
and early 20th centuries (Saaïdia, Zerbini, 2015), the Christian missions and
Catholic representations of Islam (Saaïdia, 2004, 2015).
6 Introduction
This historiography highlights the double vocation of the Algerian
Church, simultaneously at the service of the colonial cultural assimilation
and the universalistic evangelising intentions of Catholic missions.
The Catholic Church, which returned to North Africa following the
French colonial expedition to Algeria in 1830 and after centuries of absence,
considered itself the heir of the ancient Christian communities swept away
by the barbarian invasions and the Arab-Muslim conquest. From this point
of view, the main objective of the missionary initiative of the Catholic clergy
was, therefore, to resuscitate the ancient Church of Africa since “there was
only one way to prevent an entire people from disappearing: that of redis-
covering the faith of its ancestors and becoming a sister nation of Christian
France and in a position to transmit these same values to the centre of the
African continent” (Renault, 1992: 140).
The cross and the French tricolour hoisted on the minaret of the
ex-Ketchaoua Mosque, turned by the settlers into the Cathedral of Saint-
Philippe in 1832, became the symbols of the link between Church and
Nation aimed at cultural assimilation where Christian places of worship
contributed to European appropriation of a territory where Muslim subjects
seemed to be relegated to the role of extras, “the ringing of bells responds to
the call of the muezzin, the bell tower is in front of the minaret, the church
is in front of the mosque” (Saaïdia, 2015: 130).
The archdiocese of Algiers, erected in 1866 with the bull Catholicae
Ecclesiae, and the archdiocese of Carthage (Tunis), restored in 1884 with
the bull Materna Ecclesiae caritas and established as the seat of the Primate
of the Catholic Church in Africa, at the time were a sort of Christian out-
post overlooking the African continent and Islamic civilisation. One of the
main architects of this plan for the re-Christianisation of North Africa is
undoubtedly Msgr. Charles-Martial Lavigerie, who was at the helm of the
archdiocese of Algiers in 1867, founder of the Society of Missionaries of
Africa (also known as the White Fathers or Pères Blancs) in 1868 (Renault,
1992: 164–178) and Archbishop of Carthage from 1884. Lavigerie directed
his evangelisation towards Kabylia, where an ethnographic “myth” in
vogue in France at the time, hypothesised the existence of a residual core
of Christianity in the local customs of the mountain tribes despite centu-
ries of Islamisation (Grandguillaume, 2001; Vermeren, 2016). According to
the instructions imparted by the founder of the White Fathers, evangelisa-
tion was to be implemented by sharing the living conditions of the indige-
nous peoples (accommodation, food, clothing, and language) and avoiding
head-on aggressive proselytism (Saaïdia, 2020).
This missionary enterprise was implemented by creating schools and
hospitals and establishing two Christian villages, Saint-Cyprien and
Sainte-Monique, intended to provide Arab-Christians with the means of
survival in rural and indigenous areas and encourage new conversions
among the surrounding Muslim populations. But the results of this apostolate
were not those hoped for and upon the death of Lavigerie the balance of
 Introduction 7
the missionary experience was poor. The management of Christian villages
proved to be economically costly and not very effective from the point of
view of evangelisation, since the Arab-Christians, perceived as secluded
apostates in a world dependent on missionary aid, did not present an attrac-
tive model of life to the Muslim population which was reluctant to convert.
Catholic schools began to be attended only later. This was not due to reli-
gious conviction but because Muslims considered learning French useful
for individual promotion in colonial society (Saaïdia, 2020).
At the beginning of the 20th century, the White Fathers realised that the
time had come to go beyond a model of apostolate limited to bearing wit-
ness to Christian life by means of direct contact with the local population
and hoped to inaugurate a second phase of missionary action characterised
by a more explicit, dynamic kind of proselytism, where dialogue with the
Arab world had not seemed to have even begun. When, on 26 April 1901,
a revolt of the indigenous population led to the death of some settlers, the
“Semaine religieuse” of Algiers resuscitated the traditional religious vocab-
ulary of the French violently disparaging towards Islam and Mohammed,
accused of being an “impostor, a false prophet” (Saaïdia, 2017).
As for the relationship between Catholicism and Muslim society, the most
recent historiographical research carried out on the subject considers the
Eucharistic Congress of Carthage, held in 1930 in conjunction with the cele-
bration of the Centenary of the French annexation of Algeria, as the peak of
the triumphal exaltation of North-African Christianity, whose contact with
the Islamic population remained fundamentally ambiguous and marginal
(Henry, 2014). The year 1930 is, therefore, seen as a historical watershed
dividing the era of political-religious triumphalism from the subsequent
period when criticism and contestation of colonialism and of the ideology of
French Algeria began to make headway. Both in France and North Africa,
various intellectuals began to advocate dialogue with Muslim culture on an
equal footing, like the authors who, in 1935, contributed to the first collec-
tive edition of L’Islam et l ‘Occident promoted by Émile Dermenghem and
Louis Massignon as a monographic issue of the Cahiers du Sud, a magazine
founded in Marseille in 1925 by Jean Ballard, and the bearer, at least inten-
tionally, of a Christian vision empathetic with Islam.
As pointed out in a 2015 study, the Cahiers du Sud represented, never-
theless, a cultural project devoid of political awareness, which excluded
an analysis of the social and economic conditions of the dialogue between
the West and Islam, which deliberately ignored the movements of Arab
nationalist decolonisation and the phenomenon of the transformation of
Muslim society, proposing, instead, an archaic, stereotyped image of Islam
as a spiritual counterpart to a Western kind of civilisation in decline due to
modernity and oblivion of the tradition (Baquey, 2014).
However, criticism of colonisation begin to emerge, during this same
period, due to open reflections by the Church of France on problems regard-
ing the missions. In 1930, the Church in France dedicated the 22nd session
8 Introduction
of the Social Weeks held in Marseille to the social problem of the colonies.1
These reflections, which had begun in previous years though only in secto-
rial terms, appeared in magazines like Revue d’histoire des missions, Etudes
missionaires, and Union missionnaire du clergé, for the first time arousing
the interest of the Catholic public concerning issues like the education of
African clergy or coexistence in overseas territories. Colonial issues were
explored by a group of so-called social Catholics (catholiques sociaux),
which included missionaries who were experts in African questions like
Father Francis Aupiais, academics like the geographer Jean Brunhes, the
jurist Eugène Duthoit, and the rector of the Academy of Algiers, Georges
Hardy, former director of l’École Coloniale, the national school for the
instruction of administrative directors of French overseas agencies. This
was a heterogeneous circle of specialists that arose spontaneously to address
problems raised by the proposals made by Albert Sarraut (Minister of the
Colonies from 1920 to 1924), the advocate of a plan for the reform of colo-
nial policy, which he himself called a “mirror of one’s own national con-
sciousness”. His reform aimed at healing – by means of a programme of
public works intended to favour economic and social progress – the “shock-
ing contradiction” (“contradiction choquante”) of the distance between
the metropolis and the overseas territories.2 The “social Catholics” met
on several occasions to share ideas and experiences regarding missionary
and colonial problems, especially during the retreats in Juilly Oratorian
College, organised by Georges Hardy from 1926 on, or the Colonial Days
(journées coloniales) promoted by Action populaire, the association cre-
ated by the Jesuit fathers to deepen the Church’s social doctrine. They also
came together during the Social Weeks, in particular that held Marseille
in 1930 and mentioned above. Ultimately, Joseph Folliet, founder of the
Compagnons de Saint-François, a youth movement for peace and friendship
among peoples close to the Catholic Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne (JOC) and
Jeunesse étudiante chrétienne (JEC) organisations, condensed a theoretical
corpus based on the theses of the social Catholics which he presented in his
doctoral thesis of scholastic philosophy at the Institut Catholique de Paris,
published in 1932 and entitled Le Droit de colonisation. Étude de morale
sociale et internationale.3
This work was considered for a long time the origin of a new Catholic
missiology prepared to question the historical and cultural foundations of
colonialism and the prerogatives of France and the expression of a position
favouring the rights of colonised countries (Durand, 2005: 145). However, in
this case too, there is no lack of historiographical contributions highlighting
the limits of this attempt to criticise colonialism seeing that it did not go
beyond the hypothesis of the solidarity-based hoped-for sharing of natural
resources in a perspective of a closer synergy between a metropolis/colonies
(Balard, 1998: 229–240).
These initial attempts to carry out an in-depth investigation of colonial
issues and open up to an understanding of Islam, at all events, did not
 Introduction 9
correspond in North Africa to a significant revision of the position of the
Catholic clergy in favour of the Muslim population, still largely indifferent
or unprepared to face the challenge of exploring new religious pathways.4
Throughout the entire colonial period, the Catholic intention of
approaching the world of Islam in North Africa was contradictory, sus-
pended between coexistence and dreams of religious reconquest.
Attempts at interreligious dialogue were inspired, as we know, by the
spirituality of Father Charles de Foucauld, a hermit since 1901 in Béni-
Abbès in the Algerian desert on the border with Morocco.
Aware that the difficulties encountered when the Catholic Church tried to
proselytise Islamic areas derived from not having taken into account the fact
that Islam was a monotheistic faith with a specific dogma and cult capable of
fully satisfying the human being’s natural need for religiosity, de Foucauld
opposed traditional direct methods of evangelisation. On the contrary, he
proposed an approach where the role of the missionary needed to prepare, in
the long term and with profound patience and action, the ground upon which
to transform the Muslim mentality. As his first biographer René Bazin nar-
rated, de Foucauld summed up his thinking regarding the apostolate among
the Muslims in Morocco as follows, “the work to be done […] is, therefore,
a work of moral greatness to raise them up morally and intellectually using
every means possible to approach them […] and using friendly relations every
day to tear down their prejudices against us; by means of conversation and
the example of our lives their ideas will change”.5
De Foucauld’s philosophy was the basis of the first centres set up in the
1920s in Morocco and Tunisia to study the issue of an Islamic-Christian
dialogue.
The Institut des Hautes études religieuses, inaugurated in the bishopric of
Rabat on 7 February 1929, was based on the Foucaudlian method based
on the concept of mission as bearing witness to the Gospel in their daily
lives among the local population without proselytism but by earning the
esteem of the people by works of benevolence and charity.6
In Tunisia, the IBLA (Institut des Belles lettres arabes), the best known
and most frequently studied centres of Islamic-Christian studies, set up
in 1926 by the White Fathers near La Marsa, was conceived to train mis-
sionaries in Arabic and Islamic culture before undertaking their work.
The aim was to help them to get to know their interlocutors, dialogue with
and patiently convince them. After moving to Tunis in 1932 and, under the
influence of Father André Demeerseman, the IBLA became a meeting place
between Tunisians and Europeans and a centre for cultural and social stud-
ies that opened up progressively during the post-war period, to sociology
and anthropology (Fontaine, Chikha, 1992: 23–28).
In any case, de Foucauld’s method met with mixed success in Morocco.
Though it was consistent with the apostolic lines of the Franciscan Victor
Dreyer, apostolic vicar of Rabat between 1923 and 1927, who carried out
cautious missionary action in Morocco centred on charity, it was viewed
10 Introduction
with scepticism by his successor, his fellow Franciscan Henri Vielle,
convinced that, because the Foucauldian approach was too slow and inef-
fective, it was necessary to adopt a dynamic campaign of conversion and
baptism aimed at creating an authentic local, not an extension of the French
Church (Marguich, 2017). In the late 1930s, however, Vielle, acknowledged
the fact that despite having built “a large enough number of churches in
Morocco”, he had failed to set up “a native Church of indigenous Christians
and priests”. In a ministerial pastoral letter entitled The duty of Catholics in
the land of Islam (2 February 1938), he underlined the values of collabora-
tion, mutual respect, and coexistence as the basis of human relations.7
During the final period of the Protectorate, Msgr. Louis-Amédée
Lefèvre (apostolic vicar and later Archbishop of Rabat from 1947 to 1968)
confirmed these new approaches by attempting, better than his prede-
cessors, the pathway of reconciliation and entente with the Moroccans
(Baida, Feroldi, 2005: 53–83).
The case of Tunisia was different. There, during the three episcopates of
Msgr. Clément Combes (1893–1920), Msgr. Alexis Lemaître (1920–1939),
and Msgr. Charles-Albert Gounot (1939–1953), the Church, having aban-
doned attempts at proselytising and approaching Muslims, addressed itself
almost exclusively to the European settlers, while leaving its social insti-
tutions, schools, and hospitals open to the Muslim population, without
renouncing the advantages of French protection (Soumille, 2017).
The Church of Algeria, born in the shadow of colonisation, and initially
anxious to reconquer by spiritual means the territories it had surrendered
to Islam, followed the same pathway and redirected its efforts promptly
and exclusively towards the European populations. However, if the reputa-
tion of the bishop of Oran, Msgr. Léon Durand (1920–1945), was that of a
“dictator in a mitre”, who openly sided with the more radical colonial right
(Bérenguer, 1994: 48), that of Msgr. Augustin-Fernand Leynaud, Archbishop
of Algiers between 1917 and 1953 was different. Leynaud was considered the
real rebuilder of the Church of Algeria due to his dynamic construction and
restoration of religious buildings and the promotion in Algeria of Catholic
associations like the scouts and branches of the Catholic Action movement
(Gonzalez, 1991: 133–135). Like Lavigerie, whose secretary he had been in
1889, Leynaud enjoyed a reputation as a man of dialogue, due to the develop-
ment under his pastoral guidance of some interreligious initiatives, like the
En Terre d’Islam. La Revue française du monde musulman magazine and the
establishment, in 1951, of the Social Secretariat of Algiers under the Jesuit
Henri Sanson with a view to promoting, in synergy with the L’Effort algérien
weekly directed by Maurice Monnoyer, meetings on the socio-economic
problems of the Algerian reality – hunger, shortcomings of the school system,
effects of illiteracy, overpopulation (Akbal, 2010). These initiatives, driven by
the ambition to promote a spirit of union within a colonial society plagued by
religious and ethnic division, were characterised by a utopian approach which
progressive Christians called an “illusion of community” (Roche, 2003).
 Introduction 11
In the 1940s, the legacy of Father de Foucauld continued to inspire var-
ious new experiences of interreligious prayer and apostolate. In 1943, in
Paris, Father Jean Daniélou, with Mother Marie de l’Assomption (born
Marie-Émilie Taudière), founded the Cercle Saint-Jean-Baptiste, a “circle
of spirituality and missionary culture” open to young people of different
backgrounds and origins (students, social workers, catechists, and spiritual
guides, etc.), with a view to arousing a true “cultural endeavour” aimed at
acquiring knowledge of the so-called pagan civilisations intended as previ-
ously non-evangelised, non-European cultures.8
In 1947, in Egypt, Louis Massignon and Mary Khalil institutionalised
a new model of prayer association of international breadth: the Badaliya.
According to Massignon, Badaliya meant literally “replacing, an exchange
with a soldier chosen by chance”.9 It was neither “a rule of prayer, nor a
systematic method of apostolic permeation” but it urged the “spiritual incli-
nation” of Christian believers to respond to the call of Jesus in place of
their Muslim brothers, praying, in fact, in their “stead”.10 Meanwhile, dur-
ing the Second World War, the Little Brothers of Jesus, the congregation
of the Foucauldian inspiration founded by Father René Voillaume, discov-
ered a profound de-Christianisation of the popular masses in the army and
a practically generalised proletarianisation of the working class,11 which
urged them, at the end of the conflict, to abandon the cloister and bestow
new direction to their apostolate. This brought René Voillaume into con-
tact with various activists of the Action Catholique Ouvrière and Jeunesse
ouvrière chrétienne (JOC) in Algiers. In 1946, on the quays of Marseille, he
met Father Jacques Loew, the founder of the worker-priests movement who
inspired him to set up the first Fraternité Ouvrière open to a new form of
contemplative life based on concretely sharing the everyday life of the poor.
The topic of relationships between Catholicism and Islam in missionary
ambits has been the subject of numerous studies which, however, fall mainly
within the epistemological field of Orientalism, following in the footsteps
of the teachings of Louis Massignon and the spiritual tradition of Father
Charles de Foucauld. The approach that prevails is theological and aimed
almost exclusively at underscoring elements of interreligious dialogue and
ecumenism (Geffré, 2006).
It is by no coincidence that, starting from the 1970s, the first studies
to discover, as the Tunisian historian of Islamic thinking and civilisation
Abdelmajid Charfi put it, the “new phenomenon of Islamic-Christian
relations” (Charfi, 1975), had been launched by the Pontifical Institute for
Arab and Islamic Studies (PISAI) which, since 1975, has been publishing
a magazine called Islamochristiana, aimed at promoting Mediterranean
relations centred on Euro-Arab confrontations aimed at finding, as histo-
rian Algerian Ali Merad called it, a “common language” (Merad, 1975).
The aim of these first publications was to provide an opportunity for reli-
gious dialogue and, to this end, the initiatives of the Sous-commission
pour Islam du Conseil oecuménique des Éslises (COE) and the Secrétariat
12 Introduction
pour les relations avec les non-chrétiens de l’Église catholique fuelled
what later historiography would call “post-conciliar euphoria”.12 After
an initial historiographical assessment attempted at the end of the 1990s
by Rudolph Ekkehard (1996), the Service des relations avec l’islam (SRI)
team began documenting international talks, meetings, and conferences
on the subject (Caucanas, 2015: 146), to go more deeply into the topics of
coexistence between nationalities and different religions to promote the
cultural conditions of peace.
As Dominique Avon claimed regarding this editorial production, the per-
manence of “a confessional episteme” (“épistémè confessionnelle”) sought
to neutralise the conflict in the name of the promotion of what united rather
than separated. This, he held, was responsible for the delay that occurred
regarding an authentic historiographical problematisation (Avon, 2013).
For a long time, publications emphasising conversions to Catholicism or
the baptism of Muslims prevailed as cross narratives (Gaudeul, 1990), biog-
raphies (Keryell, 2009), epistolaries (Mulla-Zadé, Abd-el-Jalil, 2009), or his-
tories of institutions run by French Catholics to establish relationships free
from the conflict of the past (Levrat, 1987).

Colonial nationality and the Islamic question:

introductory elements
At the end of the historiographical overview proposed here in these intro-
ductory pages regarding relationships between Catholicism and colonialism
up until the Second World War and on the beginning of Islamic-Christian
relations, it appears that recent French historiography, especially that of
the years after 2012, the historiographic watershed associated with the 50th
anniversary of the Évian agreements, has striven to bring to light the con-
tradictions and ambiguities of Catholicism in North Africa and the Islamic-
Christian dialogue by providing critiques that help problematise some
interpretative topoi crystallized over time, like the alleged North African
model of interreligious and intercultural coexistence.
This is why, studies of relationships between colonialism and Catholicism
appear to intersect some research trajectories that emerged in French
post-colonial studies which, in recent years, have sought to decipher French
society through the prism of its colonial heritage, reflecting on some under-
lying continuities which subverted the universalism of the values of the
French Revolution in forms of colonial segregation that characterised the
Vichy regime and, after the Second World War, the IV and the first phase
of the V Republic (for example, Blanchard, Bancel, Lemaire 2005; Le Cour
Grandmaison, 2005, 2009; Khiari, 2009). This historiography dialogues
with some Anglo-American reflections concerning colonial Frenchness
(Gosnell, 2002) and the paradoxical conflict between the universality of
French republicanism and the rhetoric of its overseas civilising mission
(Conklin, 1997; Stoler, Cooper, 1997).
 Introduction 13
It is striking, however, that none of the works on Catholicism in col-
onised areas and North-African decolonisation has addressed directly,
specifically or in depth some topics essential to Postcolonial studies.
Among these are the developments of overseas political institutions, with
reference above all to the legal status of colonial subjects in terms of the
ownership of political rights and citizenship, and again, the theme of rela-
tionships between colonial authority and Islamic identity, between Islam
and French secularism (laïcité).
As one can see from a detailed examination of a considerable amount of
documents in the Vatican archives, these were issues that the Church of the
time considered crucial and which therefore constitute a significant part of this
book, whose methodological approach is a careful reconstruction of the inter-
weaving of events as they emerge from the original documents, on which selec-
tive hermeneutical filters of pre-established treatment have not been applied.
For a better understanding of the contents of the Vatican documents,
it is necessary to provide a brief outline, without claiming to be exhaus-
tive, of the problems of colonial nationality and the status of Islam in
overseas France.
Under the first aspect, it is necessary to underline the exceptional nature
of the legal regime of the colonies compared to the republican order in
the mother country based on the principles of citizenship and equality of
citizens before the law. The expansion of the borders of the French State
was not tantamount to the extension of the republican system. Muslims
(and Algerian Jews up to the Crémieux decree of 1870) were, to all intents
and purposes to be acknowledged as nationaux (nationals), members of
the national State, but not citoyens, belonging to the only politically legiti-
mate community possible, the republic made up of citizens and possessors
of political and civil rights. The autochthons of the colonies were attrib-
uted specific legal status that acknowledged their membership of a reli-
gious-cultural community different from the French, thus differentiating
between them and French citizens who were subject to the rules of the civil
code and beneficiaries of the so-called civil statute of common law (statut
civil de droit commun).
The personal statute of local law (statut personnel de droit local) reserved
for the non-French natives had the same regulatory function as the civil code
but was based on customary (coutumières) norms linked to specific ethnic
and religious membership (therefore the Koranic law in the case of Islamic
countries such as Algeria). They concerned all legal matters concerning the
person directly: marital status (name), capacity (measures adopted to pro-
tect the incapable), free union, marriage (its basis, effects, and dissolution),
filiation by blood and adoption (their basis and effects), the matrimonial
regime and succession.
Although conceived in the abstract as an instrument to protect cultural
specificities, the statut personnel de droit local in fact legally sanctioned a
presumed difference in the “civilisation” of the colonised populations that
14 Introduction
demanded their exclusion from the law in force in metropolitan France, due
to the recognition of identities considered an obstacle to republican integra-
tion based on equal rights.
As Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, and Françoise Vergès have
observed, “while basing its legitimacy on the people and only on the peo-
ple taken as a whole (because of its opposition to the principle of a natural
hierarchy), the Republic actually reconstructed [overseas] a society based
around a caste system in its empire” (Bancel, Blanchard, Vergès, 2003: 33).
In fact, the attribution of personal status also corresponded to a special
criminal law, summarised in the Code de l’indigénat of 1881 and applied only
to the indigenous population, which included a complex casuistry of special
offences (infractions spéciales) not provided for in the French Criminal Code.
The Code de l’indigénat increased the number of offences ascribable to the
colonised population, while at the same time increasing the penalties to be
imposed for offences already covered by the French Criminal Code when
committed by autochthons. It provided, among other things, for measures
restricting personal liberty through the punishment of the following alleged
offences: unauthorised meetings; leaving the municipal territory without
a travel permit; and acts and comments deemed disrespectful or offensive
towards officials of the colonial administration (Weil, 2002: 233).
At political level, the indigenous peoples had limited voting rights,
affected by the asymmetry of the double constituency system, emblematic of
what has been called the “legal monstrosity” of the overseas system, based
on the condition of “nationality without citizenship” of colonial subjects
(Schnapper, 1994: 152). Through this electoral system, natives were allowed
to take part in local elections, although not in the first constituency reserved
for European voters who had the greatest electoral weight, but only in a sec-
ond constituency for the election of local assemblies that were a representa-
tion of minority local populations in proportion to their net demographic
superiority. To gain access to citizenship and the full exercise of electoral
rights, they had to prove that they were culturally assimilated by choosing
to voluntarily renounce their personal status and submit to the “civil and
political laws of France” (Sahia Cherchari, 2004).
Although the Sénatus-consulte of 14 July 1865 had opened the way for
indigenous Muslims to have access to the privilege of French citizenship,
albeit through a complicated and strictly individual naturalisation proce-
dure, this ultimately depended on the discretion of the local administra-
tion which, according to Patrick Weil, often showed “a rare unwillingness”
(“d’une rare mauvaise volonté”) to grant it (Weil, 2005: 9).
This is explained in light of the fact that the notion of indigenous was also
highly ethnicised as clearly shown by the decision (arrété) of 30 January 1874
of the Court of Appeal of Algiers which specified that the term indigenous
referred to “all individuals residing in North Africa who do not belong to
the European race” (cited in Urban, 2009: 326). The decision was in accord-
ance with an ethnic approach confirmed by the Court of Cassation in Paris,
 Introduction 15
which in 1903 stated that the indigenous population included “all the natives
of the African race” (cited in Urban, 2009: 328). That the subtext was racist
towards the indigenous population is demonstrated by the fact that even if
a Muslim converted to Christianity this was not sufficient to obtain full cit-
izenship under the civil statute of private law (statut civil de droit commun).
On the other hand, if a French citizen converted to the Islamic faith, as in
the case of the painter Étienne Dinet, his or her citizenship was not called
into question (Colas, 2004: 135).
The second fundamental issue that emerges from the Vatican documents
regarding decolonisation concerns the role of Islam in the Maghreb and its
diffusion in the rest of French Africa.
To contextualise this problem in advance, it is necessary to consider the
regime of exceptions applied to the rules on secularism introduced into the
colonies by the 1905 Law of Separation.
As a pillar of the colonial order, the Catholic Church in the overseas ter-
ritories was in many respects shielded from the effects of the Separation Act
and instead enjoyed the benefits of the derogatory regime in the colonies.
In the metropolis, the Law of Separation, preceded by the breach of dip-
lomatic relations between France and the Holy See in 1904 following the
ban on teaching imposed on religious congregations, marked the culmi-
nation of a bitter clash between secular and religious ideas, which forged
the characteristic French model of secularism in the name of republican
values which resulted in the abolition of State expenditure and subsidies
in favour of religious practice and the end of the free schools (independent
religious schools).
Although voted unanimously by the French deputies elected in the
Algerian departments (Bellon, 2009), this law was never applied fully in the
colonies, where, on the contrary, the State continued to pay an allowance to
the ministers of worship of all religions and provided, in specific cases, for
remuneration by the general government of Algeria of the priests of some
parishes (Saaïdia, 2003).
Although, as we have seen, the French authorities saw Christianisation
as an instrument of European civilisation, the colonial protection of
Catholicism did not translate into a policy of head-on opposition to Islam,
the subject, instead, of a strategy of attention and control aimed at prevent-
ing and/or neutralising potential religious conflict (Triaud, 2000, 2006).
In Algeria, from the beginning of colonisation, between 1830 and 1851,
France – having confiscated and declared the hubus or waqf assets belong-
ing to the Muslim community state property, used these assets, to meet the
expenses of the exercise of the cult, the construction and maintenance of
religious buildings and the remuneration of mosque personnel, in exchange
for full State control over the entire Islamic organisation and ministers of
worship, maintained using the appointment of the directors of the Medersas,
the Koranic training institutes, and of the imams who were granted a sti-
pend (Ainouche, 1987).
16 Introduction
The origin of this policy of assimilation and control was rooted in the
attitude of distrust towards the Islamic faith identified, according to the
famous adage “al-islâm dîn wa dawla” (“Islam is both religion and State”),
a theocratic counterculture potentially subversive towards the metropolitan
national identity capable of controlling the economic, social, and political
field (Saaïdia, 2016).
So, in Algeria, the fundamental contradiction between “republican” and
“colonial” secularism emerged. The former believed that Islam, once it has
been expelled from every sphere of public decision-making, remained a
merely private matter; the latter, on the other hand, considered membership
of the Islamic faith a matter of State, or, rather, of “public security”, to be
governed by administrative interference.
In this sense, the separation of the political and religious spheres, estab-
lished by Article 2 of the 1905 Law of Separation, could not be applied
overseas, because it would have ended up by weakening the systems of con-
trol upon which colonial rule was based, so the decree applying the Law
of Separation in Algeria, dated 27 September 1907, simply introduced
some slight changes to the pre-existing law. The ministers of the Muslim
cult, although no longer appointed by the governor general of the colony,
still had to submit to him; they were no longer paid by the State but contin-
ued to receive an allowance and their recruitment was entrusted to the pre-
fect, who could appoint, promote, or dismiss as he saw fit. Algerian Muslims
were invited to form local associations to take over the direction of religious
affairs, but their leaders were notables close to the colonial administration
(Baubérot, 2021).
The Algerian case of colonial secularism as far as the Islamic question
was concerned is extremely important as it ended up by providing a model
that inspired the colonial administration in the rest of French Africa. The
pioneer of this policy was the engineer Louis Faidherbe, the administrator
of modern Senegal (1854–1865) who, after having served in Algeria in the
Engineer Corps (1842–1847 and 1849–1852), set up institutions in Senegal
based on the Algerian model: Franco-Arab schools, a “Muslim court”, a
colonial infantry corps, the tirailleurs sénégalais, dressed in North African
burnous.
In Senegal, as in the rest of French West Africa, a kind of State Islam was
thus formed to which, as in North Africa, republican secularism and the
spirit of the Separation Act were obviously alien and in which the control
and exploitation of the Islamic religion responded to the immediate needs
of the local administration (Triaud, 2009: 128-129).
The scenario described up to now changed radically after the Second
World War when the time seemed ripe for a relative democratisation of
the colonies. While African political forces borrowed associative mod-
els from the metropolis, i.e. trade unions, political parties, and electoral
programmes, students from French Africa, in the Maghreb and the sub-
Saharan regions, studied at the universities of the Near East (in particular
 Introduction 17
Al-Azhar in Cairo) and acquired a level of the Arabic language that per-
mitted them to refer to a cultured form of Islam that became the source of
the legitimacy of political action that no longer depended on recognition by
the colonial administration or the charisma of family dynasties and local
personalities but on the knowledge that derived from the sources of faith –
cities of pilgrimage and Islamic universities – found in countries, like Egypt,
which had freed itself of colonialism.
From this point of view, the slogan “Islam is our religion, Arabic is our
language and Algeria is our country” coined by Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis
is emblematic. In 1931, he founded the “Association of Algerian Muslim
Ulemas”, which promoted a religious-cultural programme based on the
return of Islam to its original purity, and therefore against supersti-
tion and idolatry, in an attempt to reunite the various Algerian Muslim
currents in a single block under the banner of the Sunni and Arabic-
speaking vision.
Compared to the French legal system, the claim of Algerian national-
ism took the form of a request for greater secularism as an integral applica-
tion of the Law of Separation intended to grant the Muslim religion total
independence from the State and the constraints of the protective shield of
colonial authority. This position was outside patterns of Western thinking,
since this claim of secularism, as a clearer dividing line between French
political authority and the religion, was based, in any case on a strong form
of Islamic identity characterised by a close connection between the Muslim
faith and politics.
On the contrary, as we shall see, the Catholic Church took an oppo-
site stance aimed at maintaining fundamental prerogatives, especially as
regards the school system and education, in the shadow of State author-
ity. Despite enjoying a privileged position due to the benefits granted by
the colonial order, the Catholic Church of the overseas territories was
always solidary with the Metropolitan Church when challenging the Law
of Separation which secularised the public education system and deprived
Catholicism of its role as the cornerstone of national values and social
order and, during the entire process of decolonisation, it did not fail to
polemically address the relationships between religion and politics which
the ecclesiastical hierarchies considered a key to the determination of the
post-colonial process itself.
At the same time, the Catholic Church was extremely critical of the
French policy of management of Islamic identity and governmental propos-
als aimed at reforming the legal system of the French Union (set up after the
war on the territories of the former colonial Empire) regarding the imple-
mentation of demands of autonomy and self-government associated to the
extension of citizenship to the Muslim population.
Albeit inclined in the post-war period to carry through the demands of
religious decolonisation outlined by the pontificates of Benedict XV and
Pius XI, was the Holy See really in favour of a rapid and concrete solution of
18 Introduction
the disengagement of France from the African scenario? Was the Catholic
Church’s interpretation of the Islamic phenomenon marked by an acknowl-
edgement of its intellectual dignity and strategic importance to post-­colonial
transition? Did the Vatican comply with the requests for diplomatic support
advanced by the pro-independence movements?
These are issues of great historiographical importance, which have
remained unanswered to date.
This book aims at reconstructing the policy and action of the Catholic
Church concerning the issues of the spread of Islam in colonies, Arab
nationalism, Marxist propaganda in non-European countries, the legal
and political Statute of countries being decolonised, and the destructuring
effects of the Algerian crisis upon the French political system.
The book begins with 1939, the beginning of the pontificate of Pius XII
and the year of the outbreak of the Second World War, which was also a
historically decisive factor that triggered the political, social, and cultural
processes of the decolonisation of French Africa.
The Vatican documentation testifies how concern over the spread of Islam
was present among the hierarchies of the Holy See from the initial stages
of the Second World War (1939–1940) when the Secretariat of State of the
Holy See promoted a wide-ranging enquiry into the spread of the Muslim
religion among the Catholic missions of Africa and into the strategies of the
Christian apostolate implemented to stem its propagation.

Notes
1 Le problème social aux colonies, C.R. in extenso des cours et conférences. Paris:
J. Gabalda, Lyon: E. Vitte, 1930.
2 Albert Sarraut, La mise en valeur des colonies françaises. Paris: Payot, 1923, 84.
3 Joseph Folliet, Le droit de colonisation. Étude de morale sociale et internation-
ale. Lyon: Neveu, 1932.
4 See the testimony of Jacques Fournier in L’Algérie retrouvée 1929–2014. Saint-
Denis: Éd. Bouchène, 2014: “Ni à Cassaigne (ni à Oran) je n’ai senti une quel-
conque ouverture sur la société algérienne et ses problèmes. ‘Tu aimeras ton
prochain comme toi-même’, nous dit l’Évangile. Il faut croire que dans l’Algérie
française, l’indigène n’était pas un prochain” (“Neither in Cassaigne (nor in
Oran) did I perceive any openness towards Algerian society and its problems.
‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’, the Gospel tells us. You have to
believe that in French Algeria, the native was not a neighbour”).
5 René Bazin, Charles de Foucauld, explorer du Maroc, ermite au Sahara. Paris:
Plon, 1921, 410.
6 Among the most notable missionary figures, we find the Franciscan Charles-­
André Poissonnier (1897–1938) and Abel Fauc (1901–1982) inTazert; Albert
Peyriguère (1883–1959) in El Kbab, where Othon de Launay (1974) in Meknes
exerted a strong spiritual influence over Catholic circles in the 1960s and 1970s.
7 Lettre pastorale sur le devoir des catholiques en terre d’islam et mandement
datée du 2 février 1938, cited in Moussa Marguich, L’Église catholique au
Maroc sous le protectorat français: Rabat-Paris-Rome ou le heurt des logiques
(1912–1956). Histoire, monde et cultures religieuses, 44(4), 2017: 33–54, here 52.
 Introduction 19
8 Jean Daniélou, Mission chrétienne et mouvement ouvrier. Bulletin du Cercle
Saint-Jean-Baptiste, (1950). Axes VI–VII, juin-juillet 1969, 55–60.
9 Louis Massignon, Badaliya, Au nom de l’autre (1947–1962), présenté et annoté
par Maurice Borrmans et Françoise Jacquin (Préface du cardinal Jean-Louis
Tauran). Paris: Cerf, 2011, 60.
10 Ibid., 72.
11 Denise Barrat and Robert Barrat, Charles de Foucauld et la fraternité. Paris,
Édition du Seuil, 1958, 138–139.
12 See for example the studies collected in the dossier edited by Service des rela-
tions avec l’islam, Recherche sur les fondements théologiques du partage de foi
entre chrétiens et musulmans, vol. 9, 1989, in particular: René Metz, Les rela-
tions de l’Église catholique et de l’Islam depuis le Concile Vatican II (1962–1965)
à l’année 1988, 23–26, here 29.

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Sergio, Marialuisa Lucia (2019). Bonaventura Cerretti and the Impossible Missions.
In: A. Melloni, G. Grossi, I. Bernini (eds), Benedict XV. Pope Giacomo Della
Chiesa in the world of the useless massacre. Brepols: Turnhout, 1433–1452.
Soumille, Pierre (2017). Des catholiques en Tunisie. Une longue histoire de con-
flits, de négociations, d’incompréhension (XIIIe siècle-1958). Histoire, monde et
cultures religieuses, 44(4): 13–31.
Stoler, Ann Laura & Cooper, Frederik (1997). Between Metropole and Colony:
Rethinking a Research Agenda. In: Id. (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial
Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of
California Press, 1–56.
 Introduction 23
Stora, Benjamin (1994). Historiographie de l’Algérie (6 novembre 1993). Bulletin
de la SHMC (Société d’histoire moderne et contemporaine), (1–2). Supplement to
Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 41(1–2): 52–58.
Thénault, Sylvie (2001). Une drôle de justice: les Magistrats dans la guerre d’Algérie.
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Triaud, Jean-Louis (2000). Islam in Africa under French Colonial Rule. In: N.
Levtzion, R. L. Pouwels (eds), The History of Islam in Africa. Athens: Ohio
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Triaud, Jean-Louis (2006). Politiques musulmanes de la France en Afrique subsa-
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European University Instiute, 1–15.
1 The Catholic Church and
colonialism in French Africa from
the Second World War to liberation
The beginning of the Algerian
question (1939–1945)

The Vatican, Vichy government, and colonial

regime: Pétain, a new French Salazar?
In the spring of 1938, with the Motu Proprio Sancta Dei Ecclesia (25 March),
Pius XI entrusted the Congregation for the Oriental Churches (the congre-
gation of the Roman Curia responsible for dealing with problems concern-
ing Byzantine rite Catholics and the spread of Catholicism among Orthodox
Christians) with the ecclesiastical jurisdiction over several countries with
a strong Muslim majority, such as Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Transjordan,
Palestine, and Egypt (Leone, 1980: 131). The Secretary of the Congregation
Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, a well-known biblical scholar and orientalist,
was tasked with monitoring the development of relations between the Latin
and Greek Orthodox Christians, while opening a dialogue with the Muslim
populations. Tisserant took on this new responsibility after a three-week trip
to explore the Arab reality in the Maghreb (Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria),
which only served to confirm his personal and deep-rooted Islamophobic
convictions (Fouilloux, 2011: 341). For Tisserant, that Islam was inferior to
Catholicism was indisputable, since in his eyes the Koranic religion was sim-
ply blind submission to a tyrannical and omnipotent God, which translated
into passive habitual ritual practices contrary to individual freedom, in short
a sort of totalitarianism, albeit of a messianic matrix, akin even to Nazism.1
Upon returning from North Africa, the Cardinal was informed by the
missiologist Father Albert Perbal that a number of missionary fathers, with
the encouragement of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide – the
Dicastery of the Roman Curia responsible for missionary activity and
the evangelisation of peoples – had set up a “Temporary Commission for
the Study of the Needs of the Apostolate in Islamic Lands”.2
As Tisserant had jurisdiction over Egypt, and the Catholic Church
already recognised Cairo as the intellectual and theological centre of Islam,
he sat on the commission and soon transformed it into a real “Conference
on Islamic matters”.3
In May 1939, now under the pontificate of Pius XII, the Congregation
for the Oriental Churches and Propaganda Fide agreed on the need to

DOI: 10.4324/9781003230175-2
 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa 25
conduct a survey on the state of Islam in the mission countries, considered
“indispensable” for a deeper knowledge of the Islamic phenomenon and
how widespread it was, and of the apostolic activities undertaken by the
Church in response to Muslim proselytism.4 A questionnaire was sent to
the Apostolic Vicariates and the Mission Superiors present in the terri-
tories with a Muslim majority. It was defined as “absolutely confidential
and secret” and the responses were to be sent to the Vatican in “well sealed
envelopes” to avoid “indiscretions and reactions”. The respondents had to
answer 12 questions aimed at ascertaining the influence of Islam from a
political, juridical, and moral point of view, the effectiveness of its propa-
ganda, the number of conversions to Catholicism, and the possible danger
of family-related retaliation, the ethics of customs (polygamy and the obser-
vance of ritual prescriptions), and the missionaries’ knowledge of Islam.5
However, the initiative received very contrasting reactions from the eccle-
siastical hierarchies since, although it was organised by two congregations
of the Roman Curia, it did not enjoy the full support of the Vatican. The
Secretariat of State – the entity that is the motor behind the Holy See’s polit-
ical and diplomatic activity – was convinced that European governments,
given the delicate geopolitical scenario in 1939, were keen to maintain
good relations with the Muslim populations in their colonial dominions.
It was feared therefore that Tisserant’s project – a capillary collection of
information from the apostolic vicariates in mission lands – could lead to
confidential information on the activities of the Catholic Church in non-­
European countries being leaked, which would expose the Vatican to the
risk of appearing hostile towards Islam.
Secretary of State, Luigi Maglione, replied to Tisserant that the prelates
attached to the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Churches to whom
the questionnaire had been sent, however “excellent” they were, “could
not ensure that others in their circle will observe the rigorous and absolute
secrecy that is necessary to avoid those reactions that [Tisserant himself]
rightly fears and wants to avoid”, and added:

The reactions produced by the knowledge of the questionnaire could

also occur outside the territory in question; and, while today almost all
European governments are busy ingratiating themselves with Muslims,
such knowledge would arouse a general resentment towards the Holy
See, of which the most immediate but also the most serious consequence
would be a decrease in the freedom [of Catholics in Arab countries].6

Cardinal Maglione’s response had been anticipated by an intense

exchange of views within Vatican diplomacy that underlined both the dan-
ger and the futility of Tisserant’s project. Msgr. Domenico Tardini, secretary
of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, responsible
for relations between the Church, States, and international organisations,
described the initiative on Islam as “a fuse that they want to throw in the
26 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa
gunpowder”.7 Similarly, an internal note of the Secretariat of State, which
can be attributed to Cardinal Maglione himself or to a member of his entou-
rage, mocked the claimed secrecy of a correspondence with hundreds of
prelates around the world and the reliability of the opinions of the mission-
ary clergy, which was internally very divided on the attitude to take towards
Muslim proselytism:

Although the Sacred Oriental Congregation recommends that mission-

ary prelates maintain secrecy, I find this absurd. There are hundreds
of prelates, some of whom have the prudence of a … missionary. […]
Lastly, I would have little confidence in the information provided by
the missionaries: some will certainly say that nothing can be done; oth-
ers will assure that things are going in the best possible way, etc. The
extremely long detailed questionnaire will therefore be practically use-
less and dangerous.8

The Secretariat of State tried to induce Tisserant to scale down his pro-
ject and to limit the survey only to the opinion of the apostolic bishops
and vicars, without involving the vast network of missions. The opinions of
the bishops consulted confirmed there was widespread anxiety within the
Church about the Islamic phenomenon. The opinions coming from North
Africa, in particular from the diocese of Oran and the archdiocese of Rabat,
considered Islam almost exclusively from a political and social point of view,
while downplaying it in terms of transcendent faith and religious ethics.
In his report, the Bishop of Oran, Léon-Auguste Durand, wrote that Islam
was not “a religion [but] a Social State […] which lays down rules govern-
ing Muslims in all their economic, legal and political relations. A Muslim
cannot escape from this Social State under penalty of starvation”. Durand
criticised the French State for allowing the establishment of madrasas – the
Koranic schools where religious, theological, and legal teaching based on
the Koran was permitted – in the colonies. In his opinion, this encouraged
among “fervent Muslims” the spread of “pan-Islamism”, i.e. the unification
of all Muslim peoples at religious level, described as a growing phenom-
enon alongside “pan-Arabism”, the political union of Islamic countries
advocated by Egypt in all the Maghreb countries. The bishop also spoke of
two new emerging categories of Arab intellectuals: “modernists” critical of
the Koranic prescriptions they considered inconsistent with the demands
of modernisation in North Africa who supported a “Muslim nationalism
consisting of the establishment of autonomous Muslim States”, such as a
future “Algerian nation”, and “atheist free thinkers” attracted by Marxist
materialism and an internationalist approach to political problems.9
Similarly, the Apostolic Vicar of Morocco, Msgr. Henry Vielle, raised the
problem of the difficult relations between Catholics and the Islamic world.
Firstly, he ascribed it not only to the “spread of xenophobic nationalism”
in the Arab world, but also to “an increasingly pronounced chasm between
 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa 27
French society and the indigenous society, as there are no longer any official
relations between them other than those of an economic nature”. According
to Msgr. Henry Vielle, the nationalist upheaval, which he traced back to the
protests against the so-called Berber Dahir of 1930 – a decree discriminat-
ing against the Berber tribes perceived by the Moroccan people as an attack
by the colonial power on their national unity – was to blame for the failed
“attempts at evangelisation”. He also imputed the extreme complexity, in
the Muslim context, of the question of individual conversions, which would
have deserved “a long and delicate task of social and moral legal transfor-
mation” by the French authorities.10
The analysis and processing of the results of the survey carried out by the
Conference on Islamic Matters, the study commission set up by Tisserant,
immediately revealed two different schools of thought regarding the con-
crete approach of the Catholic Church to the Islamic question. On one
hand, there were those who considered it necessary, first and foremost, to
carry out an intellectual activity of study and understanding of Islam, while
on the other there were those who wished for the resumption of an active
intervention of the Christian apostolate in Muslim countries (Fouilloux,
2011: 343–344).
The outbreak of the Second World War, however, seemed to offer the
Catholic Church the opportunity to find an institutional solution, so to
speak from above, to the Islamic question and the problem of strengthening
its missionary presence in the North African colonies.
The German invasion of France, the signing of the armistice on 22 June
1940 between the occupying army and Marshal Philippe Pétain, the col-
lapse of the Third Republic and the birth of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime,
the exile of General Charles de Gaulle in London, and the establishment
of France libre (Free France) alongside the Allies created a completely
new scenario.
The Catholic hierarchies, who deemed France’s military defeat in June
1940 as the epiphenomenon of a moral defeat caused by the corrupting
principles of the Third Republic, above all secularism, welcomed the offi-
cial ideology of the regime. In fact, they considered the Révolution nation-
ale based on three pillars – Work, Family, and Fatherland – consistent with
the Catholic values of the preservation of religion and tradition (Marrus,
Paxton, 1981: 197–198).
Especially in the field of education, which the leaders of the Catholic
Church had always considered of strategic importance, the Vichy legislation
showed that it intended to repeal the strictly secular education laws of the
Third Republic (Déloye, 1994).
In fact, the regime granted considerable financial aid to Catholic education,
400 million francs in 1941–1942, 471 million in 1942–1943, and 380 million in
1943–1944, not only for primary and secondary education but also for the
Instituts catholiques (the Catholic universities in Paris, Angers, Lille, and
Lyon), considered to be “of public utility” (Duquesne, 1996: 107–108).
28 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa
Directive 414, supplemented by the law of 6 January 1941, once again
made teaching Christian values and duties towards God compulsory
in primary education, and at the beginning of the same year, under the
decree of the Minister of Education Jacques Chevalier of 23 February
1941, parish priests were authorised to teach catechism in State schools
for a few weeks (Singer, 2004: 49). Although Chevalier’s successor as
Minister of Education, Jérôme Carcopino, eliminated the reference to
“duties towards God”, the teaching of the lives of the saints and of the
“great Christian spiritual values” was still obligatory, since, as stated in
Paul Foulquié’s school manual, Cours de Morale pour les élèves de l’Ecole
Primaire Supérieure, éd. des écoles collèges, 1941, “the more a Frenchman
is Christian the more French he is”, particularly in terms of subjective
morals based on the value of the family and the indissolubility of marriage
(Déloye, 1994: 371).
The Vichy government transferred to the French colonial territories in
Africa all its ideological paraphernalia that was antithetical to democracy
and liberalism and aimed at building an authoritarian society, culturally
heir to the main historical currents of the French reactionary right, namely
monarchism, Bonapartism, Maurrassian-style integral nationalism, and
anti-Semitic, anti-Masonic, and corporatist clericalism (Rousso, 1990;
Guillon, 1992).
Pétain’s regime, with its rejection of the idea of natural equality between
men and its elitist and hierarchical message lent itself perfectly to legitimis-
ing the structural discrimination in colonial society and ended up gaining
an easy consensus among the advocates of the uncompromising defence of
French domination overseas.
The Church in North Africa reacted favourably to the new regime and
through the words of the Primate of Africa, Archbishop Charles-Albert
Gounot of Carthage, hailed Pétain as “a revered head of the French State,
and a humble and great servant of God and his country” (cited in La
Barbera, 2004: 294).
In particular, the Algerian Episcopate considered the law promulgated
in Vichy on the dissolution of secret societies (13 August 1940) as a severe
blow to Freemasonry that they held responsible for the alleged anti-clerical
orientation of the old officials of the Third Republic. The latter, in fact, were
divested by Pétain’s local representative, the Governor General of Algeria
Admiral Jean-Marie Charles Abrial, supported by Maxime Weygand,
Minister of National Defence until July 1940 and a fundamentalist Catholic
(Cantier, Jennings, 2004: 69–70ss).
The Bishop of Oran, Msgr. Durand, in his pastoral pronouncements of
1940–1941, expressed his support for the National Revolution, which was
called upon to thwart the false principles of the Enlightenment philoso-
phy, which in his view had always threatened the unity of France under
the “damaging influence of the Judeo-Masonic forces”, in the name of the
“hateful class struggle” (cited in Cantier, Jennings, 2004: 268).
 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa 29
From the date of the armistice with the Germans, the Archbishop of
Algiers Leynaud himself, in line with the traditional Catholic teaching
of submission to the constituted power, reiterated in his discourses that
obedience to the government was a duty. He also projected onto the figure
of Pétain the aura of the “man of Providence” who not only embodied
legitimate authority but also acted as an instrument of divine will. On
22 June 1940, Msgr. Leynaud asked the Algerian population to put their
trust for the future “in those to whom Providence has granted the power to
steer the destiny of the motherland in danger”. On the following 25 June,
the day of “national mourning” for the nation’s defeat, he proclaimed that
it was the duty of all citizens “to submit themselves to those who have
the formidable responsibility of governing, and to rally around them with
discipline and trust” (cited ibid: 266). Leynaud continued to praise Pétain
and in a pastoral letter written in March 1942 spoke of “Marshal Pétain
whom divine Providence sent to France to encourage and raise her up”
(cited in Aouate, 1984: 166).
The application in the colonies of the anti-Semitic measures of the Vichy
regime, such as that of 22 July 1940 that revised the law on naturalisation and
deprived 15,000 Jews of their French citizenship, and that of 4 October on
the “foreign citizens of the Jewish race” interned in “special camps”, even-
tually led to the dissent of the episcopal hierarchies. Their dissent, however,
was limited to gestures of private solidarity towards the persecuted or very
discreet attempts at moral persuasion with the authorities of the regime and
never translated into any form of open condemnation (Aouate, 1984: 167).
On the other hand, the government’s decision to continue to pay the
Church of Algeria and representatives of other religions the allowances
they had been receiving since 1907, in spite of the 1905 law separating the
State and the Church, sanctioned the recognition of the role played by the
local clergy in Frenchifying the Algerian population. The precise purpose
of these allowances was in fact to prevent the Algerian Church from being
forced to resort to foreign priests who were culturally independent of the
French motherland, due to a lack of financial resources (Achi, 2004).
In reality, the Algerian bishops’ praise of Marshal Pétain as an instru-
ment of a providential plan for the good of the homeland like many other
declarations of the European Episcopate in that period11 was part of the
vision of the relationship between religion and politics prevailing at the
time among the ecclesiastical hierarchies. They considered the authoritar-
ian Mediterranean regimes a bulwark to defend the faith against the errors
of modern thought (from liberalism to atheistic materialism), according to
an apologetic pattern that can be traced back to Pius XI’s famous speech of
13 February 1929. In fact, after the Concordat between the Fascist regime
and the Holy See was signed in Italy, the pope celebrated the person of
Mussolini as a “man of Providence”, finally free from the “worries of the
liberal school of thought” and its “ugly and deformed” legal “fetishes”,
i.e. the laws separating Church and State.12
30 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa
As in the case of Pius XI’s pontificate, Pius XII’s Church also had an
ambivalent relationship with the right-wing regimes of southern Europe.
This was particularly so as regards Franco’s Spain (Sergio, 2021), where the
civil war had been experienced by the majority of Catholics as an anti-com-
munist “crusade”, and Portugal, where Catholicism was a founding element
of the Estado novo, the ideology of António Salazar’s dictatorship.
For the Catholic Church, the Portuguese regime was the model par excel-
lence of institutional cooperation among the State, local episcopates, and
missions in the colonial scenario.
The Catholic missions had already been defined in the 1933 Portuguese
Constitution as “instruments of civilisation” in the colonies and, on this
assumption, the “Missionary Agreement” of May 1940, annexed to the
concordat signed between the Holy See and the Salazarist dictatorship,
bestowed on the Portuguese clergy in Africa a series of economic privi-
leges and prerogatives. These included the monopoly of education, with the
objective of both teaching the Portuguese language and transmitting the
country’s culture (and therefore the culture of the white elites) and the for-
mation of a pool of rural labourers and small artisans useful for the devel-
opment of the corporate economy of the motherland (Pinto, 1996).
It was therefore a missionary model of an unequivocal colonial nature,
yet one to which in the encyclical Saeculo Exeunte Octavo of June 1940,
promulgated on the 8th centenary of the foundation of Portugal, Pius XII
attributed great value, recognising the work of Portuguese penetration into
overseas territories as the inspiration for any new missionary vocation.13
Vatican documents show that in 1941 the Holy See tried to export this mis-
sionary model also to French Africa, in the firm belief that the political sce-
nario represented by the Vichy regime was favourable to a repetition of the
Portuguese experience, with Marshal Pétain acting as a sort of new Salazar.
In January 1941, on behalf of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda
Fide, Father Calliste Lopinot submitted “a comparative study of the
Missionary Agreement concluded on 7 May 1940 between the Holy See and
the Portuguese Republic on the one hand and the legislation of the French
colonies on the other” to the French ambassador to the Holy See, Léon
Bérard. The study served to show the Vichy government the benefits that the
adoption of a similar institutional cooperation pact aimed, in particular, at
strengthening the educational role of the Church in the colonial school sys-
tem would bring. The letter referred to an earlier intervention by Cardinal
Gerlier to Pétain who had “reiterated the need to remove the obstacles
opposing the renewal of France, especially with regard to the education of
youth in free schools”. It also mentioned the widespread “impression” in the
Church “that the present government is motivated by the best intentions
and that thanks to the complete freedom of action they are enjoying, all
Catholic initiatives are advancing admirably”.14
In February, after the introduction of the decrees on compulsory religious
education and the funding of public schools in the form of a subsidy from
 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa 31
the local authorities, Propaganda Fide and the Secretariat of State drafted a
letter to submit to the Vichy government through the French Embassy to the
Holy See. In the letter, they asked that the educational prerogatives of the
Catholic Church already established in France be extended to the colonies,
and that a missionary agreement on the Portuguese model be drawn up.
The purpose of the latter was above all to authorise ecclesiastical superiors
without the need for State authorisation to open alongside public schools,
“écoles de brousse”, i.e. rural village schools and catechism schools, not only
for learning the rudiments of religion but also grammar and arithmetic.
The argumentation of the Vatican document insisted on missionary
action “imbued with pure patriotism” being coherent with “the current
head of the French government’s programme of renewal”. It also under-
lined the instrumentality of Catholic education to colonial governance since
“missionary schools are the best places to mould subjects who are loyal to
metropolitan France, because they strongly instil the virtues and customs
which are at the basis of solid families and indigenous societies engaged in a
peaceful collaboration with the colonial government”.15
Propaganda Fide was confident that an agreement between the Vichy
government and the Church would be of a “hand in hand” nature. It there-
fore emphasised the benefits of Catholic teaching from the colonial point
of view, that is, the creation, among African subjects, of a climate of social
cohesion and spontaneous obedience to authority, so as to neutralise the
danger that, by becoming “civilised”, that is, by acquiring knowledge, the
natives might develop political ideas antagonistic to French rule. The doc-
ument reads:

Your Excellency [Ambassador Bérard] sees the immense advantage that

a frank, loyal and at the same time broad collaboration could bring to
the common work of recuperating the indigenous peoples. Better than
anyone else, you also know how important it is that education, even the
most elementary, be based on the principles of Christian humanism.
Seeing the metropolitan government and the missions working together
hand in hand, will give a better impression and produce stronger results
in native society. The subjects of overseas France will understand that
becoming civilised does not mean separating themselves [from the
French culture], and when they realise they are no longer being offered
two different, divergent and sometimes even hostile cultures, they will
only have more courage to collaborate with us and more trust to let
themselves be guided.16

In this perspective, only Catholicism was able to play a role in the col-
onies in safeguarding European “civilisation”, even in the sub-Saharan
region, where the Church acted in support of the “civilising nation” in the
education of peoples “still in swaddling clothes”, and easy prey to Islamic
proselytism that unbridled was spreading from North Africa. After a long
32 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa
negative description of “Mohammedanism”, discredited on account of its
“extremely limited dogmatic knowledge” and its “broad and loose moral
concepts […] very tolerant towards local superstitions and pagan customs”,
Propaganda Fide spoke of the manipulative persuasion of Islamic preach-
ing that “in a quarter of an hour” was capable of inculcating its message
“into the most simplistic minds”, and the “tenacity” with which it “guards,
chains and defends its neophytes”.17 The Vatican document then added:

A black Islamised village is a village impervious to Christian evange-

lisation. It is lost to civilisation as we understand it. It can also be said
to be lost to the civilisation that metropolitan France seeks to penetrate
deeply and generously into the native masses. Testimonies abound, in
fact, to show, through tangible facts, that Islamisation raises the blacks
thus conquered against all European influence. […]
Certainly the Church has never asked missionaries to work directly
in the service of any colonial power; they are there but as ambassa-
dors of Christ and pioneers of the Gospel; but who does not know
how much the mere fact of Christianising a people still in its infancy
contributes greatly to facilitating the task of the civilising nation? Are
not the best auxiliaries of a guardian or father those who endeavour
to inculcate in their children the principles of the Decalogue, that is,
of Catholic dogma and morality? We know that Marshal Pétain’s gov-
ernment is inspired by these sentiments and in the light of his recent
reforms in the field of education in France, we dare to hope that Your
Excellency will have no difficulty in persuading him to look deeper
into this problem and to change the attitude of the colonial adminis-
trations towards Islam.18

The Vatican’s request to export the colonial model of Salazar’s dictator-

ship to French overseas possessions, within the framework of the Vichy
regime, was motivated by a harsh criticism of the African policy of the
Third Republic which, by authorising the opening of mosques and Koranic
schools, had pursued a non-confrontational, or even protective, strategy
towards Islam. According to Propaganda Fide, Pétain’s regime had to “put
a complete end to the tactic of favouring a religion [Islam] that impercepti-
bly, but undoubtedly, creates a hostile society in colonial society, to disinte-
grate it in a certain sense and to prepare for a future of strife and unrest, for
which above all yesterday’s administrators would take full responsibility”.19
In its letter to the French Embassy to the Holy See, Propaganda Fide
enclosed a detailed analysis of the benefits that the Portuguese model would
bring to French Africa, concluding that:

The Missionary Agreement between the Holy See and the Portuguese
Republic shows what freedoms are necessary for the fruitful exercise
of the apostolate and claimed for this purpose by the Church. What
 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa 33
Portugal has given, France, ‘the eldest daughter of the Church’, will not
refuse. On the contrary, at this time when one is trying to make amends
for all the faults in our system of government, also faults committed by
civilising our colonies will have to be repaired.20

Ultimately, the congregation in charge of the evangelisation of peoples, in

support of its requests, stressed the need to uphold Catholicism as a coun-
terweight to Islam and suggested that the French government recognise that
Catholics were entitled to a “Christian Statute” with the same legal value as
the statut coranique and statut païen coutumier. A passage in the preparatory
material for the draft letter reads:

It is not only a question of the good of the Church, but also, if Your
Excellency [the ambassador] allows me to say so, of the good of the
State, because the education our missions give forms good citizens,
whereas the preference given so far to the spread of Islamism will pre-
pare an indigenous nationalist bloc.21

The final letter, signed by the Prefect of the Congregation of Propaganda

Fide, Cardinal Pietro Fumasoni Biondi, was indeed sent to the French
Embassy to the Holy See,22 but only after being analysed and corrected
by the Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione, demonstrating that
Propaganda Fide was acting on behalf of the Vatican.
On 27 March 1941, Maglione wrote to Pietro Fumasoni Biondi that
he had carefully examined the question concerning the situation of the
Catholic missions in the French colonies and that he considered that the
letter prepared for the French ambassador set out “in a complete, clear
and delicate way the justified requests, which are likely to make the mis-
sionary apostolate more profitable”.23 The Secretary of State, however,
asked for even greater emphasis to be placed on the “preference systemat-
ically given by the French government to Islamism (the main cause of the
inconveniences complained of)” and suggested a change in the sentence
concerning “the spread of Islamism [which] will prepare an indigenous
nationalist bloc”. According to Cardinal Maglione, this sentence “echoes
a more than documented observation and hints at a matter that will not
leave the French government indifferent. However, it does not seem to be
entirely suitable in a document of the Holy See, which naturally looks
at the problems connected with indigenous nationalism with different
eyes than those of the French government. The phrase could therefore be
replaced with a less explicit one”, namely that Islam “roused the natives
against any European influence”.24
Ambassador Bérard replied immediately on 9 April, reassuring the
Vatican that he had approached the French government in the hope of con-
tributing to the progress of France, “European civilisation” and the “future
of evangelical expansion”.25
34 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa
At the end of May, Bérard was able to inform the Vatican that Admiral
Charles Platon, Secretary of State for the Colonies, was ready to establish
by decree the extension of measures favourable to Catholic teaching in
overseas schools in line with what had already been adopted in metropol-
itan France. With regard to the possible adoption of a Christian Statute,
analogous to the Koranic Statute and the customary statute, he specified
that these statutes had no real legal value but were merely “local tradi-
tions of which progressive evolution the government seeks to encourage”.
The government, in any case, would be taking the greatest interest in what
Propaganda Fide reported about the spread of Islam.26
In his reply of June 1941, Cardinal Fumasoni Biondi expressed his great
appreciation of the French government’s commitment to education policy
in the colonies but did not hide his disappointment at the evasive way in
which the interlocutor had treated the Muslim question. The Prefect of
Propaganda Fide acknowledged that for Muslims “there is no juridical stat-
ute, in the strict sense of a codified book”, although the Koran is “consid-
ered by all Muslim Islamic scholars to be a true civil code”. He went on to
say that in his opinion this did not demonstrate the futility of a “Christian
Statute”, necessary when Catholics in a predominantly Islamic or “pagan”
context, find themselves forced, against their will, to observe a local custom
that “opposes the religious law that governs their conscience”.27

The Catholic Church and France libre in North Africa:

a problematic relationship
The debate between the Holy See and the Vichy regime concerning the colo-
nial system and the adoption of a missionary statute had to be interrupted
due to developments in the war.
In the summer of 1942, as is well known, the Anglo-American Chain
of Command began planning Operation Torch, a large-scale landing of
troops in North Africa, in a territory under the Vichy government which,
although not belligerent, maintained a favourable attitude towards the
Axis powers. The French army stationed in North Africa, the so-called
Armée d’Afrique, under the command of General Alphonse Juin, although
lacking modern equipment, was formed of numerous units that were still
efficient and combat ready.
In planning the operation, the Allied military strategists therefore had to
take into account the political situation on the ground, rendered complex
not only by the presence of Marshal Pétain’s loyalists, allegiant to the Axis
powers, but also by the rivalry between the opposition groups, i.e. the French
National Committee (Comité national français) of France libre organised
by de Gaulle that had joined forces with the Resistance, and the group
close to General Henri Giraud who supported the ideas of the National
Revolution but had been disappointed by the pro-Nazi evolution of Vichy
and was therefore eager to return to fighting the Germans. “Giraudism”,
 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa 35
according to the definition of Resistance historian Henri Michel, was there-
fore a front that emerged from a sort of secession from Pétainism, and which
“insinuated itself like a wedge between Vichy and Gaullism” preferring to
rely on American aid and an army organised on national soil and not one
precariously installed abroad like that of France libre (Michel, 1962: 445–459).
The American commanders offered Henri Giraud the leadership of the
liberation movement in North Africa in support of the allied manoeuvres
that included three Anglo-American landings at Casablanca in Morocco, at
Algiers, and at Oran.
Operation Torch, which began on 8 November 1942 with the Algiers
landing, met with little resistance from French troops who were either cap-
tured by the Anglo-Americans or immediately surrendered and joined the
Allied forces. The commander-in-chief of the Vichy forces François Darlan
himself ordered all French forces in North Africa to cease resistance to the
allies and to cooperate. On 10 November, a telegram from Vichy dismissed
Darlan who, in the meantime, under pressure from the Americans, assumed
the leadership of a new command organisation under Allied control, with
the title of High Commissioner for France in Africa (Cantier, 2002: 368–369).
On learning of Darlan’s agreement with the Allies, Adolf Hitler immedi-
ately ordered the occupation of Vichy France and sent troops into Tunisia.
When Darlan was assassinated six weeks later, Giraud ended up taking over
as High Commissioner.
The new French government in North Africa gradually became active in
the war effort alongside the Allies and in June 1943, Giraud agreed to form
the French Committee for National Liberation (CFLN) in Algiers along
with de Gaulle. The formation of the CFLN marked a decisive turning point
because de Gaulle, unlike Giraud, represented a clear break with the Vichy
regime, whose officials, still serving in the ranks of the administration, were
in fact dismissed.
In November 1943, de Gaulle became the sole head of the CFLN and
de jure also the head of the French government, recognised as such by the
United States and Britain.
As soon as the CFLN was established in Algiers, in response to a request
from General Giraud, the Holy See entrusted Archbishop Leynaud with
the role of intermediary between the new power and the Vatican, above
all to monitor what was happening to the Axis POWs (the German and
Italian soldiers).28
Initially, de Gaulle himself tried to open a diplomatic channel between
France on the side of the Allies and the Vatican. On 15 February 1942, he
instructed René Massigli, Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the French
National Committee in London, to contact Cardinal Eugène Tisserant so
that he could unofficially identify a French prelate who was resident in the
Vatican and willing to guarantee communications between the Holy See
and France libre. The objective was to “preserve the great Christian tra-
dition that France has always wanted to maintain in its Empire” and to
36 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa
“safeguard Catholic interests in the colonies” over which the Vichy had just
lost control.29 However, this initiative was short lived and relations between
de Gaulle and the Church of Pius XII, between the CFLN in Algiers and
Archbishop Leynaud, remained rather tense for a long time. This occurred
firstly because the Episcopate in North Africa, despite the geopolitical
changes brought about by Operation Torch, remained fundamentally loyal
to Pétain’s regime, considered the only legitimate power, and secondly
because the political experiment of the Resistance, in which anti-German
patriots, communists, and progressive Catholics cooperated, aroused fear
and distrust in the local ecclesiastical hierarchies.
In the autumn of 1943, Archbishop Leynaud informed the Holy See that he
was concerned because Guy Menant, a member of the Algiers Consultative
Assembly and a former member of the Christian-inspired Parti démocrate
populaire, had advocated the need for the various parties of the French
Resistance to collaborate with the communists who, in the common strug-
gle against the Nazi invader, had shown themselves to be “no less fervent
nor less deserving”. In the same dispatch, the Archbishop also mentioned
that the clandestine radio station France catholique “directed by ‘resistant’
priests” had “raised a cry of alarm by asserting that the Church in France
would be heading towards schism or heresy if it did not review its position
in the face of the current national crisis. Too many Catholic leaders are still
too conformist towards Vichy and collaborationists [with the Germans] and
are losing the endorsement of the French population and of the majority
of the clergy who remain close to the ‘resistant’ population. It is necessary
for the [ecclesiastical] hierarchy in France to distance itself once and for all
from the reactionary powers and to face up to the serious and urgent social
problems which will arise from now on”.30
The Archbishop of Algiers considered such radio interventions inap-
propriate and “despite repeated invitations” from Radio Algiers refused
to intervene on behalf of the Allies via its microphones and speak to the
French listeners about how the Church in France had suffered during the
war, because it seemed “inadvisable to go down this path”.31
Msgr. Leynaud was against propaganda openly in favour of the col-
laboration of the Catholic world with the Resistance forces, including the
communists, aimed at provoking a definitive break with the Vichy gov-
ernment. In fact, he clashed with Msgr. Jules Hincky, Curate Deacon of
Colmar, who had taken refuge in Africa in 1939, and who at de Gaulle’s
request, but without the consent of the Archbishop’s curia, had joined the
new authorities in Algiers, along with communist exponents. Leynaud
informed the Secretariat of State of this with great disappointment, com-
plaining that without consulting him, Hincky had accepted both the posi-
tion of president of the Alsace-Lorraine Social Commission, responsible
for the formulation of the measures necessary for the future re-annexation
of these cross-border regions to French territory, and vice-president of the
Commission for Education and Culture. The Archbishop, who considered
 The Catholic Church and colonialism in French Africa 37
such responsibilities to be beyond Hincky’s capabilities, wrote to Cardinal
Maglione saying, “I believed I had to prevent him from doing so, for fear
that he would compromise the Church, at a time when I do not cease to
strongly advise my clergy to act with extreme prudence. He obeyed me only
reluctantly and threatened to make known to the authorities the cause of
my silence”.32 In the meantime, the problem of the North African bishops’
loyalty to the Vichy regime reached its climax in March 1944 when, as Msgr.
Leynaud reported to the Secretariat of State, the Purge Committee set up
by France libre launched an investigation against the Archbishop of Rabat,
Msgr. Henry Vielle, for his pro-Pétainist discourses.33 On 6 March, the
Archbishop of Algiers sent a letter full of affection and solidarity to Msgr.
Vielle in which he wrote, “I am surprised, saddened and indignant at the
untimely visit [of the Purge Committee] that you have received. I know your
profound spirit of faith and high conscientiousness as a bishop make you
accept generously and patiently this painful trial, in which I participate very
strongly. I do not need to tell you that I am with you with all my heart: frater
qui adiuvatur a fratre, quasi civitas firma [a brother who is helped by his
brother is as a steadfast city; Solomon, Proverbs, 18,19]”.34 The Archbishop
of Algiers even went to the Commissioner of Justice of the French National
Liberation Committee, François de Menthon, to firmly declare that “this
way of acting” towards Vielle was “offensive” to his episcopal role and his
“high mission in Morocco” as well as “awkward and harmful” (“maladroite
et nuisible”) for French interests and could even create a state of mind unfa-
vourable to the constituted powers in North Africa.35
In addition to the problems posed by the institutional discontinuity
between Vichy and France libre, the Algerian episcopate was disoriented by
the social changes that the Resistance had brought about in terms of indi-
vidual and collective behaviour. An example of this was the mobilisation
of women that General de Gaulle had desired since November 1940, when
the Corps des Volontaires Françaises (French Women Volunteer Corps)
was born in London. It was the original nucleus of the Arme Féminine
de l’Armée de Terre, the first group of female soldiers in the French army
(Crémieux Brilhac, 1996: 91) and a significant milestone in the construction
of female citizenship in France (Capdevila, 2000).
Archbishops Leynaud of Algiers, Durand of Oran, and Thiénard of
Constantine wrote to de Gaulle severely condemning female mobilisation
that in their opinion posed “serious risks for the health of future mothers
and the gravest dangers for their morality”. They also pointed out that
Catholics would be led to “fear that young girls will return from the [battle]
fields with tastes that are no longer in line with the role they are destined to
play in the family”.36
The mistrust shown by the Archbishop of Algiers towards the Gaullist
movement stemmed directly from the prudent conduct of the Vatican which,
despite repeated requests from the French National Liberation Committee,37
not surprisingly still had not appointed its own diplomatic representative to
Random documents with unrelated
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perheemme kanssa eräästä kasarmin kanslian ikkunasta katsella
tuota juhlallista toimitusta —, silloin olivat upseerien ja soturien
rinnat kunniakkaasti koristetut Yrjönristeillä. "Puolan sodan
kunniamerkillä Virtuti Militari" sekä "Mitalilla Varsovan
valloittamisesta" mutta koko Suomen kaartia ei ollut silloin jälellä
kuin vähän päälle 80 miestä. Venäjän ja Puolan sairaaloista palasi
sittemmin kyllä useita sinne jääneitä pataljoonan osia, mutta
näistäkin suuri osa peitettiin pian kotiintulon jälkeen hautaan niiden
tautien johdosta, joita sotaretkellä olivat saaneet.

Venäläisten kiihko-patrioottien, kun mahtipontisesti kuvaavat,

miten paljo venäläistä verta on vuodatettu Suomen yhdistämiseksi
Venäjään, sopisi muistaa, että mainitussa Puolan sodassa samoin
kuin toisissa, myöhemmissä sodissa, jokunen pisara suomalaistakin
verta on vuodatettu samaisen yhdistymisen puolesta.

*****

Helsinki oli lapsuuteni päivinä vielä sangen pieni kaupunki. Sen

asukasmäärä oli 1830-luvun alulla noin 12,000 henkeä ja se nousi
saman vuosikymmenen lopulla 16 tai 17.000:ään henkeen. Väkiluku
ei siis erittäin huimaavalla kiireellä lisääntynyt. Kaupungin
järjestämistä ja uudestarakentamista jatkettiin kyllä Ehrenströmin
tekemän suunnitelman mukaan lakkaamatta, ja varmasti, mutta
ilman hätäilemistä. Useat muhkeat yksityiset ja yleisetkin
rakennukset, jotka olivat valmistuneet tai tekeillä, enimmät Engelin
piirustusten mukaan, antoivat jo kaupungille jonkunlaisen
pääkaupunkileiman. Mutta vasta suunniteltujen suorain ja leveiden
katujen välissä ja palatsimaisten rakennusten lomassa säilyivät vielä
kauan 1700-luvun, vanhan Helsingin, jätteet, puhumattakaan niistä
kaupunginosista, jotka olivat kaupunginosia ainoastaan
asemakartalla, mutta todellisuudessa vielä olivat veden alla taikka
maamiehen viljavainioina, hiekkasärkkinä tai jyrkkinä mäkinä.

Helsingin keskustana oli Senaatintori ja Kauppatori, joiden varsilla

jo 1830-luvun keskipaikoilla oli melkein samat rakennukset, kuin
vielä nytkin. Puita oli istutettu "Esplanaadille" — s.o. Kauppatorin ja
nykyisen Heikinkadun väliselle linjalle — 1820-luvun lopulla ja ne
kasvoivat vähitellen. Kasarminkatu ja Etelä-Esplanaadikatu ynnä
niiden väliset korttelit Erottajaan ja Kolmikulmaiseen toriin saakka
sekä Uniooninkadulle asti oli ensimmäiseksi rakennettu uuden
kaupunginaseman mukaan. Erottajan ja Kolmikulmaisen torin
länsipuolinen osa, n.s. Uusi kaupunki, oli Fredrikinkatuun asti
rakennettu ja melkein yhtä etäälle oli Kampin puolella ehditty,
pohjoisin katu oli Eerikinkatu. Kampin nummella oli sotaväen
harjoituskenttä ja Hietalahden tienoilla ei ollut vielä muita
rakennuksia kuin kaartin sairaala, Sinebrychoffin olutpanimon ensi
alkeet ja teurastuslaitos. Siitä eteläänpäin olivat Punavuoret vielä
alkuperäisessä tilassaan: siellä oli pari riviä turvekattoisia kalastaja-
ja merimiesmökkejä ja korkeampaa teollisuutta edusti siellä Röön
köydenpunomarata.

Nykyisen Helsingin komein keskipiste Mikonkadun tienoilla oli

siihen aikaan mutanen lampi (Gloet), jota koko lapsuuden aikani
lakkaamatta muutettiin järvestä maaksi. Vesiraja siirtyi siten
Esplanaadin tienoilta askel askeleelta vähitellen pohjoiseen päin.
Sieltä annettiin ilmaiseksi rakennustontteja sillä ehdolla vain, että ne
määrätyn ajan kuluessa olivat täytettävät ja rakennettavat. Mutta
pitkälle 1840-lukua mentäessä oli nykyinen Rautatietori vielä haiseva
vesirapakko. Lammikon ranta sitävastoin ja kalliorinne sen
itäpuolella, nykyiseltä Aleksanterinkadulta aina Kaisaniemen
puistoon, oli vanhastaan tiheäänrakennettu kaupunginosa, jonka
vanhat talot ja kadut pian hävisivät uuden rakennussuunnitelman
tieltä. Kaisaniemi, jota kutsuttiin "Yleiseksi kävelypaikaksi" ja
"Seurapuutarhaksi", oli isoksi osaksi vasta istutettu; kasvitieteellinen
puutarha kasvihuoneineen saatiin kuntoon pian yliopiston
muuttamisen jälkeen Helsinkiin. Kruunuhaka Elisabetintorin tienoilla
oli kaupungin uusimpia osia; vaikka se etäinen kaupunginosa olikin,
oli se aina hyvässä huudossa ja siellä asui aina useita kaupungin
hienoimpia perheitä. Estnäsin mäeksi kutsuttiin seutuja Maarian ja
Vironkadun yläpäässä ja sen Senaatintorille viettävää rinnettä
sanottiin Suoksi, jossa oli vanhoilta ajoilta Suuri ja Pieni Hämeenkatu
y.m. katuja, joihin uusi kaupunginjärjestys ei pitkiin aikoihin paljoa
koskenut, mutta jotka sitten 1830-luvun lopulla yhtäkkiä muutettiin.
Viimeinen ja kauan muiden jälkeen säilynyt osa vanhaa Helsinkiä oli
Katajanokka, jonka muinaisaikaisen muodon vanhat ihmiset vieläkin
muistavat.[2]

Eteläsatama oli reunustettu puu-laitureilla Katajanokalta aina

Saunakadun varrelle, vielä 1890-luvun lopulla säilyneiden
makasiinirivien luo. Pohjoissatamassa ei vielä ollut laitureita. Kaikki
torit, kuten Erottaja, eivät vielä olleet kivitetyt. Suurista kaduista oli
Uniooninkatu — tämän nimen sille antoi, merkittävästi kyllä,
Aleksanteri I itse vahvistaessaan kaupunginaseman,
uudisrakennuskomitea oli sen ehdottanut Aleksanterinkaduksi —
koko pituudeltaan valmis. Samoin Etelä-Esplanaadinkatu.
Bulevaardinkatua vähinerin kivitettiin. Heikinkatuja ei oltu vielä
alotettukaan eikä niiden puistoja. Kaupungin tullipuomi oli vielä
minun muistini aikana nykyisen Aleksanterinkadun päässä. Pohjois-
Esplanaadinkadun keskikohta oli vesiperäinen ja sen läntinen pää
vailla rakennuksia; ainoastaan Uniooninkadun ja Fabianinkadun
välisellä alalla oli runsaammin liikettä. Aleksanterinkatu taikka
Rauhankatu, joksi sitä silloin kutsuttiin, oli senaatintorin kohdalla ja
siitä rantaan asti kaupungin vanhin ja pulskin katu, sen länsipäätä,
joka päättyi Glo-lammikkoon, täytettiin vähinerin, vaan
Hagasundinkadun tienoille keskeytyi täyttäminen pitkäksi aikaa.

Suurista yleisistä rakennuksista ei moni ole muistojani vanhempi.

Senaatintalo ynnä sen eteläinen ja itäinen sivusta oli valmistunut jo
1822; samoihin aikoihin oli syntynyt myöskin silloinen
kenraalikuvernöörintalo tai nykyinen Raatihuone, sekä nykyinen
kenraalikuvernöörintalo, joka alkujaan oli rakennettu Suomen
sotaväen päällikön asunnoksi ja sittemmin luovutettu yliopistolle sen
ensi vuosiksi. Samoilta ajoilta oli myöskin Kaartin kasarmi ja sen
itäinen sotilas-sivusta kotosin. Muuatta vuotta myöhemmin oli
Katajanokan kasarmin päärakennus rakennettu. Vanha luterilainen
kirkko ja entinen puinen Teaatteritalo olivat vuosina 1826 ja 1827
vihityt. Venäläinen kirkko Uniooninkadun varrella ja sitä vastapäätä
oleva nykyinen Venäläinen sairaala (alkujaan kasarmi) olivat paria
vuotta vanhemmat. Keisarillinen palatsi oli jo aikusin paikallaan, vaan
se oli silloin yksityinen talo, kauppaneuvos Heidenstrauchin oma.
Vanhan kaupungin julkisina koristuksina säilyivät jälellä Raatihuone
(nyk. senaatintorilla, kirkon itäisen sivurakennuksen kohdalla),
Kellotapuli (senaatin pihalla) ja sen lähellä Koulutalo aina 1830-luvun
lopulle ja 1840-luvun alulle saakka.

Muut Helsingin julkiset rakennukset olen nähnyt nousevan, niin

sanoakseni, perustuksista asti. Nikolainkirkon perustukset pantiin v.
1830 ja sen rakennustöitä, sen nojatorneja, sivurakennuksia ja
portaita, jotka eivät kuuluneet alkuperäiseen suunnitelmaan,
jatkettiin koko lapsuuteni ja nuoruuteni ajan. Sehän vihittiin vasta
1852. Yliopisto valmistui ja vihittiin v. 1832. Melkein samanikuisia
kuin tämä ovat Seurahuone, Vanha klinikka ja Kampin kasarmi.
Vähän myöhemmin valmistui Tähtitorni ja muutamain vuosien
perästä Yliopiston Kirjasto. Mainitsen tässä ainoastaan nämä, koska
ne kaikki vielä voidaan lukea Helsingin uudisrakennusaikakauteen.
Se, mitä uudessa yliopisto- ja pääkaupungissa oli välttämätöntä, oli
siten saatu toimeen ja arkkitehti Engel, niiden mainio luoja, siirtyi
töistään ijankaikkiseen lepoon.

Mainitsin yliopiston vihkimisen. Se tapahtui kesäk. 19 p. 1832. Se

oli suuri tapahtuma, ei ainoastaan minun pienelle olennolle, joka,
ollen silloin vajaata kuusi vuotta vanha, sen hyvästi muistan, vaan
koko isänmaalle. Sitä pidettiin, tuon Suomen korkeimman
oppilaitoksen talon vihkimistä, joka, kuten silloin sanomalehdissä
kirjoitettiin, "itse yksinkertaisella suuruudellaan vaikutti", koko
Suomen kansalle tärkeänä tapahtumana, jopa "todellisena
kansallisjuhlana". Eikä juhlallisuus rajoittunut ainoastaan
vihkimistilaisuuteen. Kolmena päivänä perättäin tapahtui uudessa,
syystä ihaillussa juhlasalissa ensiksi "lääketieteen tohtorien"
vihkiminen, sitten "filosofian maisterien" vihkiminen ja lopuksi
rehtorin vaihdos.

Sellainen juhlallisuuksien sarja teki pakostakin syvän vaikutuksen

erittäinkin meidän talossa, joka oli yliopistoa niin lähellä. Erityisesti
merkilliset olivat nuo juhlapäivät meille syystä, että perheen vanhin
silloin elävä poika. Frans, sai maisterin-vihkiäisissä laakeriseppeleen
ja että ainoa vihkiäisissä läsnäoleva riemumaisteri oli enomme.
Nousiaisten rovasti Josef Hoeckert, joka silloin vieraili vanhimman
tyttärensä ja vävynsä talossa.

"Glädje nalkas våra sinnen,

Sorgens dystra skuggor flyn,
Sjunken, alla smärtans minnen
Höj dig Tro på en Försyn!"[3]
 Tällainen oli köörin vihkimisjuhlassa laulaman kanttaatin usein
uudistettu loppusäe, jonka vielä muistan, sitä kun me pojat kotona
niin usein juhlallisesti lauleskelimme. Paitsi kanttaattia kuului
juhlallisuuteen ruotsinkielinen puhe, jonka piti silloin melkein
yksinvaltias puhuja ja akateemisten juhlain runoilija, "kaunopuheiden
ja runotaidon" professori Linsén, sekä venäjänkielinen puhe, jonka
piti ylimäär. professori Solovieff. Venäjänkielistä puhetta pidettiin
näet silloin ja kauan senjälkeen välttämättömänä yliopiston suurissa
juhlallisuuksissa; sitävastoin ei pitkiin aikoihin tullut kysymystäkään,
että suomenkieli olisi tällaisissa tilaisuuksissa saanut kuulua.
Juhlallisuuksien päätyttyä yliopistotalossa pidettiin jumalanpalvelus
kaupungin (nyk. "vanhassa") kirkossa, jonne opettajat ja ylioppilaat
kulkivat juhlasaatossa. Kiitosvirttä kun veisattiin kaikuivat
tykinlaukaukset Ulrikaporin vuorelta ja niitä paukkui myös niiden
suurten päivällisten aikana, joita varakansleri, kenraali Thesleff,
antoi.

Vihkiäiset ja rehtorinvaihdos toimitettiin melkein samaan tapaan

kuin tällaisia juhlallisuuksia vielä nykyisinkin vietetään, kumminkin
useammilla juhlatempuilla, suuremmalla komeudella ja prameudella,
ja kaikki kävi tietysti alusta loppuun saakka latinaksi. Itse
juhlatilaisuuksissa en tietenkään saanut olla läsnä, kuulin niistä vain
siskoiltani tarkat kertomukset. Vaan saattokulkueita sain neljänä
päivänä perättäin nähdä omista ikkunoistamme kauniilla kesäilmoilla,
enkä niitä ole kuudenkymmenen vuoden perästäkään unhoittanut.
Vartijat (kurssorit) hopeaisine keihäineen, rehtori punasessa
samettivaipassaan, vihittyjen hatut ja seppeleet, — se oli kaikki
lapselle jotain mielestä lähtemätöntä. Maistereita ei ollut niin paljo
kuin nykyisissä vihkiäisissä, vaan ne olivat sitä koreammat. Kaikilla
ruumiinmukaiset vormutakit, korkeat, kullatut kaulustat, polvihousut,
silkkisukat ja kultasolkiset matalat kengät. Ylioppilasunivormujen
joukossa muistan nähneeni jonkun virkamiehen puvunkin. Myöskin
muistan tykinlaukaukset ja latinankieliset, imelän alamaiset, painetut
ohjelmat, — ne olivat hyviä lukuharjoituksia latinankieltä alotteleville.
Vielä kultareunaisen riemulaulun nuorille maistereille, jonka oli
kirjoittanut J. J. Nervander, jossa vihittyjen nimet olivat, ja jota
laususkeltiin uudelleen ja uudelleen. Ja lopuksi muistan makeiset,
joita äiti toi juhlista, ja komeat puvut ja maisterein tanssiaiset, jotka
pidettiin kaupunginpäällikön talossa, jota, kuten jo olen kertonut, oli
käytetty yliopiston tarpeisiin, kunnes sen oma talo valmistui.

Ilo kyllä näinä juhlapäivinä mielissä vallitsi, kuten runoilija oli

sanonut, mutta surun muistot eivät siltä häipyneet. Entisen
yliopistokaupungin kateus suosittua perillistään vastaan pulpahti
nytkin ilmituleen. Vanhojen turkulaisten sydäntä kirveli nähdessään
uudessa juhlasalissa Aleksanteri I:sen suuren muotokuvan ja
komean juhlalavan, jotka olivat siirretyt tänne Turusta, vieläpä
samasta Turun juhlasalista riistetyt suuret, komeat ovetkin. "Ei edes
näitä muistoja ole annettu vanhan Turun säilyttää", niin kuulin
lähimmässä ympäristössäni huoahdettavan.

*****

Mainitsemani ylioppilasten vormupuvut — sininen hännystakki

ynnä rivi kullatuita nappeja, leuvan alle ulottuva pystykaulus
kullatulla laakerilehdellä molemmin puolin, sekä miekka ja
kolmikulmainen hattu — olivat otetut käytäntöön jo viimeisellä
vuosikymmenellä Turussa. Niiden käyttämistä pidettiin hyvin
tärkeänä: kerrotaan, että kun yliopiston ensi vuosia ollessa
Helsingissä ylhäisiä vieraita kerran odotettiin Pietarista, ja ainoastaan
harvoilla ylioppilailla oli juhlatakit, niin varakanslerin toimesta
komennettiin yliopiston luentosaleihin joukko sotilasräätäleitä
ompelemaan yötä päivää niin paljo vormutakkeja, kuin
ylioppilaskunnan esiintymiskunnon kannalta välttämättömänä
pidettiin. Nämä vormutakit kävivät kumminkin aina kalleiksi, niitä ei
siis voitu pakottaa aivan yleiseen käytäntöön. Mutta vähää ennen v.
1832 vihkiäisiä käskettiin käyttää vormupukuja myöskin arkisin ja
silloin ilmestyi määräys n.s. ylioppilassorttuuttien käyttämisestä. Se
oli sinisestä verasta tehty pitkä takki, jossa oli musta, verkanen
pystykaulus, kaksi riviä kullattuja messinkinappeja, joihin lyyry oli
kuvattu, sekä sinisestä verasta tehty lakki, jonka ponnassa oli
pronssinen, lyyryn muotoinen solki. Ja ilmoitettiin, että ylioppilailla oli
velvollisuus lukuvuoden aikana aina käyttää tätä pukua ja että
professorit ja muut yliopiston virkamiehet sitä myöskin saivat
käyttää. Eikä tämä pukuasetus jäänyt pelkäksi paperiasetukseksi.
Jonkunlaisella vastenmielisyydellä näihin takkeihin aluksi
pukeuduttiin, vaan ne tulivat kumminkin pian käytäntöön ja samaa
mallia käytettiin vielä, joskin se väliin unhotettiin, Aleksanteri II:sen
aikoihin asti. Onhan lakin lyyry käytännössä vielä nytkin, vaikka se
on pienennetty. Ja paitsi ylioppilaita, käyttivät eräät professoritkin
jonkun aikaa tuota armossa heille sallittua arkipukua. Ainoastaan se,
joka on nähnyt vanhan, luisevan, harmajatukkaisen lukutoukan
puettuna tuohon pystykauluksiseen nappitakkiin, voi käsittää, minkä
näköinen hän oli.

Ryhdyttiinkö näihin vormupukutoimenpiteisiin yliopistossamme

muista syistä kuin yhdenmukaisuuden saavuttamiseksi venäläisten
yliopistojen kanssa, sitä en tiedä. Ehkä niitä pidettiin tarpeellisina
myöskin jonkun täällä sattuneen, ikävän tapauksen johdosta, taikka
yleensä sen epähienon käytöksen johdosta, joka sen ajan ylioppilaille
usein kyllä oli kuvaava. Eihän voi kieltää, että silloiset ylioppilaat
panivat toimeen paljo rähinää. Mutta yhtä paljo melua aikaansaivat
silloiset yliopistoviranomaiset pienimmistäkin syistä. "Onpa
muistettava, että helsinkiläinen aivastus kuuluu tykinlaukaukselta
Pietariin", niin oli kerran eräs professori varottaen sanonut; tämä
lausunto on niille ajoille ja vielä paljoa myöhemmillekin ajoille hyvin
kuvaava.

Muistossani säilyy valitettavasti eräs hyvin ruma tapaus, joka

puistatti koko yliopistoa ja koko maata. Yöllä vasten vapunpäivää
1831, kun pääsiäisyötä vietettiin venäläisessä kirkossa, viskattiin kivi
ikkunan läpi kaikkein pyhimpään. Tämän ilkityön tekijää ei koskaan
saatu kiinni, vaikka ankarimpia poliisitutkintoja pidettiin ja kaupungin
porvaristo määräsi 500 ruplan palkkion sille, joka syyllisen ilmiantaisi.
Mutta pidettiin varmana, että kirkon loukkaaja oli joku niitä monia
ylioppilaita, jotka silloin, kuten vuosittain samana pyhänä yönä,
olivat uteliaina kerääntyneet kirkon ympärille. Maa vapisi yliopiston
perustusten alla. Kreivi Rehbinder, virkaatekevä kansleri, saapui
Pietarista Helsinkiin, kutsui puheilleen rehtorin ja kaikki osakuntain
inspehtorit ja hän kuuluu, röhöttäen sohvassa, lausuneen näille
akateemisen tieteen edustajille mitä uhkaavimpia ja ankarampia
sanoja.[4] Mutta sen enempää siitä ei tullut. Seuraavana kevännä,
vihkimisjuhlissa, paistoi armon päivä täydeltä terältään Suomen
yliopiston yli, ja käsky vormupukujen käyttämisestäkin annettiin niin
pehmoisin sanoin, että sitä todellakaan ei olisi uskonut tuon
häpeällisen tapahtuman hedelmäksi.

Mutta, kuten mainittu, valtiollisesti vaarattomia melskeitä sattui

usein ja niiden johdosta saattoi ylioppilasten vormupuku
poliisinäkökannalta olla tarpeen vaatima. Ylioppilasosakunnissa
säilyivät vielä ensimmäisinä Helsinginaikoina vanhat säätyerotus-
ennakkoluulot taikka se henkinen ylpeys, joka aina on ollut niin
tuntuva pikkukaupunkien yliopistoissa. Halveksittiin ja vihattiin
kaikkea, jolla ei ollut akateemista leimaa, — se oli muka
korkeamman sivistyksen tunnusmerkki. Turun aikuiset huonot tavat
siirtyivät tännekin. Tappelut ja milteipä järjestetyt kahakat
käsityöläisten ja kisällien kanssa kuuluivat aluksi Helsingin
ylioppilaiden suosittuihin iltahuvituksiin. Taistelupaikoiksi mainittiin
useimmiten tuo vanha ja mutkikas Kluuvi- taikka Suokatu, Iso
Roobertinkatu taikka joku muu käsityöläisten kaupunginosa. Onneksi
nämä tällaiset ottelut täällä pian kävivät vanhanaikaisiksi. Mutta
pienempää kähäkkää ja rymyä kapakoissa ja konditorioissa, kaduilla,
teaattereissa taikka yleisissä tanssiaisissa ylioppilasten ja sotilaitten,
kauppa-apulaisten, poliisien ja kaikenlaisen muun väen välillä
tapahtui usein, niistä saapui vieläkin myötään valituksia yliopiston
rehtorin kuuluville ja ne antoivat viranomaisille paljo päänvaivaa.
Yliopiston rehtorin ensimmäisenä ja työteliäimpänä toimena pidettiin
siitä syystä, luullakseni, ylioppilaspoliisimestarin tointa. Pipping, tuo
väsymättömän uuttera ja tarkka kirjastomies, joka pitkin koko 1830-
lukua oli rehtorina, hoitikin tätä virkansa puolta, kuten yleensä
kaikkea, täydellä tolkulla. Vaan hänen pikkumainen
turhantarkkuutensa ja kylmä ankaruutensa, ne eivät olleet nuorison
ohjaajan sopivimpia ominaisuuksia, ja hänen hallintoaan pidettiin
siitä syystä ylioppilasten kesken aina vihattavana.

Ylioppilaselämän henkisestä puolesta ei sitävastoin siihen aikaan

niin aivan paljo puhuttu. Yksinäisissä ylioppilaskammioissa kyllä
luettiin ahkerasti ja ahtaammissa piireissä liikkui epäilemättä
jalompia aatteita ja korkeampia pyrintöjä. Yhteiselämä
ylioppilaskunnissa oli vastaseksi hyvin vaatimatonta. Osakunnilla ei
ollut edes omia kokoushuoneita, vaan kokoonnuttiin usein
kuraattorin luo, kuten itse olen nähnyt; nostettiin tilapäisesti
muutamia penkkejä pieneen kamariin. Ainoa henkinen ravinto oli
tavallisesti väittely erinäisistä latinalaisista lauseista. Kansallistunto ei
ollut vielä siksi voimakas, että se olisi yleisemmin elähdyttänyt
akateemista yhteiselämää. Ainoastaan Pohjolaisesta osakunnasta
kuului joskus heräävän kansallistunnon ja ihanteellisten pyrintöjen
oireita. Tämä osakunta ei silloin ollut ainoastaan lukumäärältään
suurin, vaan se luki myös joukkoonsa useimmat yliopiston
nuoremmat henkiset kyvyt. Tämä osakunta se esimerkillään antoi
aiheen säännöllisiin vuosijuhlaviettoihin eli "kansakuntajuhliin", joissa
vähinerin nuorisossa liikkuvat kansalliset pyrinnöt esitelmissä ja
puheissa ja lauluissa yhä selvemmin ja voimakkaammin esiintyivät.

Turun ajoilta kuuluisia, iloisia Toukokuunjuhlia koetettiin kyllä

Helsingissäkin edelleen säilyttää. Ne olivat koko ylioppilaskunnan
yhteisiä luonnon helmassa vietettäviä kevätjuhlia. Kolme sellaista
juhlaa vietettiin 30-luvulla, ensimmäinen 1832 Sörnäisten niemellä,
toinen ja kolmas vuosina 1834 ja 1836 Gumtähdessä. Niitä
suurenmoisesti ja virallisesti valmisteltiin ja niihin kutsuttiin paitse
yliopiston opettajia ja viranomaisia senaatin jäsenet ja muut
korkeammat sotilas- ja siviilivirkamiehet ja maljoja esitettiin
keisarille, keisarinnalle, perintöruhtinaalle ja koko keisarilliselle
huoneelle, kenraalikuvernöörille, v.t, kanslerille ja varakanslerille,
senaatille, rehtorille j.n.e., ja kaikki ne puheet olivat hienosti
muovailtuja korulauseita. Mutta muuta henkistä ravintoa noissa
juhlissa tuskin lienee ollutkaan; juominen oli pääasia, laulettiin ja
iloittiin, palloa lyötiin ja muutenkin urheiltiin. Näin viattomia siis
nämä juhlat olivat, vaan senjälkeen kuin Snellman
viimeksimainitussa juhlassa oli uskaltanut esittää maljan
isänmaallekin, ei näitä kevätjuhlia enää pitkään aikaan saatu pitää.
Vasta 1848 pitivät ylioppilaat taas kevätjuhlan, vaan silloin olikin ajan
henki jo toinen ja tämän juhlan muisto, joka kuuluu minun
ylioppilasaikaani, onkin aivan toisenlainen.
 Tässä puheenalaisilta ajoilta on kumminkin vielä mainittava eräs
tilaisuus, jota kaikki siinä olleet ovat unhottumattomaksi kuvanneet
ja jossa nähtiin, että jalo, isänmaallinen into kyllä saattoi leimuta
senkin ajan akateemisessa nuorisossa. Tarkoitan ylioppilaskunnan
toukok. 8 p. 1837 n.s. Säästöpankissa toimeenpanemaa
jäähyväisjuhlaa Runebergin kunniaksi, jonka ennen pitkää tuli siirtyä
Porvooseen. Siellä selvästi julkilausuttiin niinhyvin surun ja kaipuun
tunne rakastetun opettajan poislähdön johdosta, kuin mielissä
vallitseva harmi niiden olojen johdosta, jotka pakottivat yliopiston
luopumaan parhaasta koristeestaan. Hehkuvia puheita pidettiin,
Lauri Stenbäckin runoja laulettiin ja koko juhlassa, jota kesti
kaksitoista tuntia, kuuluu vallinneen niin lämmin mieliala, että
semmoista ennen ei oltu tunnettu.

*****

Yliopisto- ja ylioppilaselämän tapauksista samoinkuin kaikesta

muusta merkillisestä, jota sattui pääkaupungissa, Suomessa yleensä
ja koko maailmassa, sain lapsuudestani saakka tietoja
perheenkeskeisistä keskusteluista. Ateriain aikana ja muulloinkin
perheen koossa ollessa puhuttiin aina vilkkaasti päivän uutisista,
suurista valtiollisista ja kirjallisista asioista ja pienistä perhekaskuista.

Olihan siihenkin aikaan kyllä jo sanomalehtiä, mutta niissä ei

silloin, kuten nyt, ollut uutisia eikä mielipiteitä. Mitä sanomalehtiä
maassa yleensä oli, niitä oli kaikkia aina meidänkin talossa. Isäni oli
näet niitä harvoja, jotka aina tilasivat jokaisen sanomalehden, joka
maassa ilmestyi, nim. ruotsiksi, suomalaisista lehdistä ei siihen
aikaan, lukuunottamatta Lönnrotin Mehiläistä, ollut paljo
puhumistakaan. Joka päivä, tullessaan kotiin senaatista noin klo 2
tienoissa, oli hänellä povitaskussa kaikki päivän sanomalehdet,
kaupungissa ilmestyneet ja postissa saapuneet, eikä povitasku siitä
ollut ensinkään pullollaan.

Sillä sanomalehtiä ei ollut paljo eikä ne olleet suuria. Muoto oli

kaikilla sama: noin puolentoista neliökorttelin koko. Numeron
muodosti neljä sellaista, kahdelle palstalle jaettua sivua, — joskus,
poikkeustapauksissa, seurasi lisälehti. Joka arkipäivä ilmestyi
Finlands Allmänna Tidning; Helsingfors Tidningar ja Helsingfors
Morgonblad ilmestyivät molemmat kahdesti viikossa, ei toki samoina
päivinä. Kahdesti viikossa ilmestyivät molemmat Turunkin lehdet,
Åbo Tidningar ja Åbo Underrättelser (kumpasenkin nimikuvaa koristi,
omituista kyllä, suuri leväsiipinen kotka), samoinkuin Borgå Tidning,
joka syntyi 1838.[5]

Paljo ei saata otaksua näiden lehtien sisältäneen, vaan niiden

saapumista odotettiin kumminkin jännityksellä aina puolenpäivän
aikaan. Nuo pienet lehdet kiertelivät kädestä käteen, ennenkuin
ruokapöytään käytiin, jopa päivällisen aikanakin, ja sen päätyttyä oli
lehden koko sisältökin tavallisesti loppuunnautittu. Virallisesta
lehdestä oli ehkä saatu tietää jotakin merkillistä valtiollista, jota oli
tapahtunut pari viikkoa sitten — sillä lennätinlangoista ei vielä tietty
mitään eikä posti Pietarin kautta tuonut ulkomaisia lehtiä kuin
kahdesti viikossa. — Helsingfors Tidningar'eitä kutsuttiin
"juorulehdeksi" ja siihen oltiin tyytyväisiä, jos sen toimittaja oli
"huhun mukaan" saanut kerrotuksi jonkun senaatissa äsken
tapahtuneen nimityksen, jota suullinen huhu ei vielä ollut ehtinyt
tehdä aivan tunnetuksi. Jos lehti sen lisäksi tiesi kertoa jostakin
pidettävästä konsertista taikka muusta huvista, taikkapa sään
muutoksesta eli muusta kaupungin tapahtumasta, niin katsottiin sen
täyttäneen kaikki sellaisen lehden vaatimukset, jonka tehtävä
kaupungin varsinaisena ilmoituslehtenä oli sen tärkein.
Maaseutulehdistä luettiin Åbo Underrttelsejä, niin kauan kuin Lars
Anell niitä toimitti, koko paljo; naisista se lehti oli erittäin hauska,
siinä kun oli hyvin käännettyjä pikkukertomuksia sekä vereksimpiä
"Pariisin muoteja"; lehdessä oli muuten luotettavia nimitysasioita
sekä merenkulku-uutisia. — Mutta tunnustetusti paras lehti oli
Helsingfors Morgonblad, — sen lukemiseen meni enin aikaa.

Tämän lehden toimittajana sen alusta asti 1832 oli, kuten

tunnettu, Johan Ludv. Runeberg aina vuoteen 1837. jolloin hän siirtyi
Porvooseen. Vielä muistan hyvin sen riemun, jolla tuota uutta lehteä
tervehdittiin, kuinka sievänä sitä jo ulkopuoleltakin pidettiin, siinä
kun nimikuvana oli avonainen kirja maapallon ja laakeriseppeleen
välillä. Vaan sisältöä tietysti enin ihailtiin. Runebergin nimellä oli
silloin jo hyvä ja mahtava sointu. Ja tiedettiin, että hänen takanaan
oli piiri nuoria miehiä, joiden joukossa yliopiston lahjakkaimmat,
kuten Nervander, Nordström, Cygnaeus, Lille y.m. Syystä odotettiin
lehdestä paljo eikä toiveissa petyttykään.

Runebergin Morgonbladissa sai miltei joka maanantai ja perjantai

lukea jotakin, josta todellakin kannatti puhua, eikä ainoastaan
päivällispöydässä, vaan vielä paljo jälestäkinkäsin, olipa paljo, josta
voi puhua vielä tänään ja vielä kauan. Milloin siinä oli joku
Runebergin oma runoelma taikka Nervanderin, Cygnaeuksen tai
Stenbäckin taikkapa joku Lillen onnistunut tilapää-runo: milloin
käännöksiä Kalevalasta taikka jostakin kauniista, lyyrillisestä
kansanrunosta. Jonakin päivänä huvitti Runeberg lukijoitaan
laskettelemalla leikillisiä mietelmiään uusimmasta ruotsalaisesta
kaunokirjallisuudesta, toisena kirjoitti hän vakavia ja syvällisiä
artikkeleitaan rva Lenngrenistä. Almqvistista j.n.e. Ja kun hän julkaisi
jonkun kertomuksistaan, oli siitä yhtä paljo iloa ja nautintoa
nuorimmille kuin vanhimmillekin lukijoille. Kuinka kilpailtiinkaan, kuka
ensiksi saisi käteensä numeron, jossa oli palanen Runebergin
"Tulipaloa" taikka "Salakuljettajaa", "Kaksintaistelua" tai muuta
hänen kertomustaan. Yhtä suurella ilolla vastaanotettiin hänen
näytelmällinen pilajuttunsa "Kosija maalta" sekä käännöksensä
"Katso kuvastimeen". Hartaalla jännityksellä luettiin "Vanhan
puutarhurin kirjeet" ja ne herättivät pitkällisiä ja vakavia
keskusteluja. — Mutta paitsi kaikkea, mitä Runeberg itse kirjoitti,
sisälsi hänen lehtensä monia muiden kirjoittamia arvokkaita
historiallisia ja kirjallisia artikkeleita, Lönnrotin ja Nervanderin
matkakirjeitä y.m. Muistanpa m.m. millä mielihalulla luettiin J. J.
Nordströmin perinpohjaisia ja arvokkaita "Muistiinpanoja matkalta
Helsingistä Rääveliin"; niinikään herätti saman kirjoittajan
perusteellinen ja ankara v. Bondsdorffin kameraalilainopin arvostelu
tavatonta huomiota ja se oli vastauksineen ja vastineiden
vastineineen miltei ensimmäinen arvostelusota
sanomalehdistössämme. Pikkumainen, nalkuttava
sanomalehtipolemiikki ei ollut vielä muotiin päässyt; vasta
Runebergin lähimmän seuraajan toimittaessa Hels. Morgonbladetia
ruvettiin tätä sanomalehtiurheilua viljelemään, etenkin
teaatteriarvosteluissa, koska molemmat lehdet. Hels. Morgonblad ja
Hels. Tidningar, siinä asiassa alinomaa sattuivat olemaan eri mieltä.
Sittemmin tämä urheilu nopeasti kehittyi ja on kehittynyt viime
aikoihin asti.

Jos siis sanomalehdistössä lapsuuteni aikaan oli koko runsaasti

hyvää lukemista, niin ei se kumminkaan vielä ollut erittäin herättävää
laatua. Siinä oli paljo kertomuksia kotimaasta ja sen historiasta, vaan
ei mitään, joka olisi erittäin kehottanut ja innostanut kansalliseen ja
valtiolliseen elämään. Ei myöskään kirjoituksia yhteiskunnallisista
kysymyksistä. Sanomalehtimiehet varoivat sellaiseen koskemasta.
Elettiin, kuten olen sanonut, pelon aikakaudessa.
 *****

Samoin kuin isäni saattoi meidät kotona tilaisuuteen tutustumaan

melkein koko sanomalehtikirjallisuuteen, tarjosi hän meille enimmät
kirjateokset, joita maassa ilmestyi. Sellainen kirjallinen harrastus ei
siihen aikaan ollut taloudellisestikaan murjova. Kotimaisen teoksen
ilmestyminen oli harvinainen merkki — ilmiö; sellaisen tekijää
pidettiin merkillisenä miehenä.

Kun koetan muistella, mitä arvokkaampia kirjallisia uutuuksia

1830-luku tarjosi, niin kääntyy ajatukseni taas Runebergiin.
Ensimmäinen vihko hänen runojaan (Dikter) ilmestyi huhtikuussa
1830 ja saman vuoden jouluksi saapuivat hänen servialaiset
kansanlaulunsa samaan aikaan kuin J. J. Nervanderin käännös
Baijerin kuninkaan Ludvigin runoista. En voi sanoa, että näiden
runoteosten ilmestymispäivän muistaisin, mutta selvästi on
mielessäni vielä Runebergin runojen kaunis kansilehti, joutsen, joka
ilta-auringon valossa ui yli lehtevärantaisen lahden. Usein viisivuotias
poika tätä kuvaa katseli ja luki sen alta "Joutsenen" viimeiset säkeet.

Tästä ajasta asti muistan, kuinka Runebergin runoutta yleisesti

ihailtiin. Joskin Tegnér oli sen ajan runoilijain kuningas pohjolassa ja
sekä veljeni että siskoni osasivat ulkoa Fritiofin sadun ja muitakin
hänen runoteoksiaan, ja joskin vanhemmilleni Franzénin runot olivat
rakkaimmat ja Choraeuksen runot lapsuudenajan lemmikit, niin oli
sekä vanhempain että nuorempain sydämmissä sijaa
Runebergillekin. Kun tämä 1831 sai Ruotsin akatemian toisen
palkinnon runostaan "Hauta Perhossa", vastaanotettiin se tieto
suurella riemulla; akateemisilla palkinnoilla oli silloin toinen merkitys
kuin nyt. Kun Hirvenhiihtäjät ilmestyivät (syyskuulla 1832), niin ei se
yleisölle ollut mikään yllätys: kaikki sitä tiesivät odottaa, sillä runoilija
oli edellisenä vuonna lehdessään julaissut siitä pitkiä otteita
suositellakseen sitä yleisölle ja kenties saadakseen neuvoja
korjatakseen mahdollisia virheitä. Jokainen käsitti heti alusta
Hirvenhiihtäjät suureksi runoteokseksi. Se oli tosin aivan toista
maata kuin Fritiofin satu ja muut sen ajan runouden helmet:
kuusmittainen runo tuntui vieraalta, Mutta sisällys oli sitä
kodikkaampaa. Siitä tunnettiin heti oma maa ja oma kansa, jota ei
ennen runoista oltu löydetty, paitsi Saarijärven Paavon hallaisilla
mailla. Olemme suomalaisia, niin lauloi runoilija ensi kerran — ja se
ymmärrettiin.

Toinen osa Runebergin runoja, joiden joukossa oli m.m. Hauta

Perhossa, ilmestyi kesällä 1833. Sen julkaisi runoilija Vaasan, Oulun
ja Kuopion läänien hätääkärsiväin hyväksi. Ja niin pieni oli vielä se
yleisö, joka osti noin etevän runoilijan teoksia, että Runeberg piti
välttämättömänä edeltäkäsin tilauttaa runovihkonsa. Tässä, ajalle
kuvaavassa, tilausilmoituksessaan sanoi hän m.m.: "Ettei yrityksestä
kertyvää rahamäärää pienennettäisi tarpeettomani liikakappaleiden
kautta, ei suurempaa painosta oteta, kuin mitä käteisellä rahalla
tilataan; kumminkin aijotaan sen lisäksi painattaa sata kappaletta
myötäviksi Ruotsissa kirjakauppain kautta myöskin hätääkärsiväin
hyväksi". Vielä mainittiin, että teosta tulisi seuraamaan painettu
tilaajain luettelo ja pyydettiin, että tilauslistat niin pian kuin
mahdollista lähetettäisiin yliopistoon Pohjolaiselle osakunnalle, "joka
on päättänyt lahjoittaa ainakin teoksen painatuskustannukset ja, jos
tilauksia tulee vähän, myöskin paperin". — Näkyyhän, että siihen
aikaan ei runoiltu rahan ansiosta!

Vielä saman aikakauden kuluessa, josta nyt puhun, v. 1836,

julkaisi Runeberg "Hannansa". Samoin kuin "Runojen" ensi osaa
koristi tätä teosta kansikuva, joka oli tehty runoilijan langon F.
Tengströmin paria vuotta aikasemmin perustamassa Suomen
ensimmäisessä kivipainossa. Piirustanut sen oli P. A. Kruskopf. Kuva,
joka esitti runoelman molempia nuoria rakastavia kihlautumisensa
ensi hetkenä, ei ollut missään suhteessa mestariteos, vaan ainakin
kymmenvuotinen poika saattoi sitä ihailla samanverran kuin
vanhemmat itse runoa, sen voin vakuuttaa. Hanna hankki
Runebergille vielä enemmän suosijoita ja ihailijoita kuin hänellä
ennen oli ollut.

Olen nyt maininnut kaikki, mitä Runeberg julkaisi 1830-luvulla,

eikä sitä vähän ollutkaan. Jo aikasemmin olen viitannut Kalevalan
ilmestymiseen 1835 ja sen merkitykseen. Muuta mainittavaa ei
paljoa olekaan 30-luvun kirjallisesta tuotannosta, Mutta Runeberg ja
Kalevala riittävätkin tekemään tuon vuosikymmenen taiteajaksi
Suomen kirjallisuudessa ja Suomen kansallisessa historiassa.

Muista samaan aikaan ilmestyneistä teoksista ovat kumminkin

mainittavat eräät historialliset teokset, jotka olivat itsessään
arvokkaat ja joita meidän talossa isä ja pojat erityisellä innolla
lukivat. V. 1833 julkaisi J. J. Tengström "Nuoremman Gezelion
muistot"[6] ja 1838 "Suomen yliopiston entisten varakanslerien,
tiedekuntain jäsenten ja apuopettajain kronoloogiset luettelot
yliopiston perustamisesta sen toiselle vuosisadalle". Samoin julkaisi
arkkipiispa Tengströmin toinen vävypoika ja oppilas historian alalla V.
G. Lagus 1834 "Turun hovioikeuden historian" ja seuraavina vuosina
"Asiakirjoja Suomen kirkkohistorian valaisemiseksi". G. Reinin
"Suomen entisyys kronoloogisesti esitettynä" (1831) ja A. I.
Arvidssonin 1832 ilmestynyt pieni "Suomen historian ja maantieteen
oppikirja" olivat tarpeellisia ja tervetulleita isänmaan tuntemisen
oppaita ja samoin oli laita sen ensimmäisen Suomenmaan tilaston
yrityksen, jonka Rein saksaksi julkaisi 1839 nimellä "Statistische
Darstellung". Laillaan tärkeä teos oli myöskin F. P. v. Knorringin
"Vanha Suomi eli entinen Viipurin kuvernementti" (1833); sama
tekijä julkaisi sitäpaitsi 1832 "Suomen sotakoulujen historiikin".

J. V. Snellman alotti kirjailijauransa julkaisemalla lentokirjan

"Spanska flugan", jonka I:nen vihko ilmestyi 1839 ja jonka ankara,
kriitillinen voide monella taholla kirveli. Jo ennen, 1837, oli hän
julkaissut teoksensa "Logiikan esittämisen koe" ja muuten oli hän
tullut tunnetuksi kieltäytyessään rupeamasta viranomaisten toimesta
kahtia jaetun Pohjolaisen osakunnan toisen puoliskon kuraattoriksi
sekä niiden pitkien rettelöjen kautta, joita siitä punoutui. Jotenkin
samaan aikaan esiintyi myöskin Fredr. Cygnaeus runoilijana, ja
esteetikkona: hän julkaisi 1837 ensimmäisen kirjasensa
"Jääkynttilät"; tunnetuksi tuli hän myös pitäessään
jäähyväispuheensa Suomen kadeteille ja puheen kemian professorin
P. A. Bonsdorffin hautajaisissa, jotka molemmat puheet painettiin ja
herättivät suurta vastakaikua.

Lainopillisella alalla oli J. G. v. Bonsdorffin "Suomen

Suuriruhtinaanmaan Kameraalilain oppi", joka 1833 ilmestyi kolmena
suurena nidoksena, tärkeä ilmiö. Meidän talossa, jossa isäntä oli
kameraalimies ja tekijän virkaveli, huomattiin tätä teosta erityisesti ja
sitä huomiota lisäsi suuressa määrin Nordströmin ennenkerrottu
ankara arvostelu ja siitä johtunut väittely. — Lainopillista kirjallisuutta
edustivat muuten asetuskokoelmat, joita vähinerin ilmestyi: v. 1833
julkasi R. Trapp käytännöllisen lainopillisen käsikirjan, nimellä "Nuori
lakimies", ensimmäinen laatuaan Suomen kansalaisille.

En saa lopuksi unhottaa silloisen ministerivaltiosihteerin kreivi

Rehbinderin 1836 ulosantamaa "Alamaista kertomusta Suomen
suuriruhtinaanmaan tilasta ja hoidosta vuodesta 1826 nykyiseen
aikaan", huomattava julkaisu, jommoisia valitettavasti sittemmin ei
ole ilmestynyt.

Täten olen nyt melkein tyhjentänyt lapsuudenmuistojeni

kotimaisen kirjallisuuden varastot vuoteen 1840 asti. Tästä
yliopistomme riemujuhlavuodesta, joka kirjallisessakin suhteessa on
erityisesti muistettava, puhun tuonnempana.

Kumminkin on mainitsematta kirja, joka silloin jo vuosittain

ilmestyi ja jonka lukutaitoni ensi ajoilta tunsin miltei paremmin kuin
minkään muun. Tämä kirja, jota perheen miehiset jäsenet paljo
viljelivät, oli — Suomen valtiokalenteri. Se päivä vähää ennen joulua,
jolloin pian alkavan uuden vuoden kalenteri ilmestyi, oli
nautintopäivä meille. Kirjasta emme hellittäneet, ennenkuin olimme
sen kannesta kanteen katselleet ja ottaneet huomioon jokaisen siinä
olevan uutuuden tai muutoksen. Valtiokalenteri oli osattava. Ja sen
tuntemisessa pian vaurastuttiin, sillä sitä opiskeltiin innolla. Tälle voi
nauraa! Vaan varmaa on, että kalenterin tunteminen takaa koko
joukon isänmaankin tuntemista.

*****

Kotimainen kirjallisuus oli köyhää, vaan onneksi se ei ollut ainoaa

lukemista, johon meillä kodissamme oli tilaisuus. Isälläni oli, kuten jo
olen maininnut, jommoinenkin kirjakokoelma, eikä ainoastaan
Ruotsin historiaa ja lakitiedettä koskevaa kirjallisuutta, vaan
muutakin. Kaupungin kirjakaupoissa kävi hän usein ja hänet näki
aina, samoinkuin silloisen kirjastonhoitajan Pippingin, jokaisessa
kirjahuutokaupassa. Siten kasvoi kirjasto myötään;
huutokauppaostosten kautta sen sisältö kumminkin kävi hiukan
kirjavaksi.
 On muuten muistettava, että yksityisiä, suurempia kirjastoja siihen
aikaan oli tiheämmässä kuin nykyjään. Ei ollut niin paljo
sanomalehtiä, luettiin siitä syystä enemmän kirjoja. Jos sittenkin
kirjoja ilmestyi vähemmän ja jos niiden menekki oli nykyistä paljo
pienempi, niin se riippui siitä, että sivistys ei ollut ehtinyt niin pitkälle
alaspäin kuin nykyisin. Mutta ylempäin luokkain keskuudessa, niin
sanoakseni sivistyksen etuoikeutetuissa piireissä, oli tarve lukea
kirjoja yleensä varmaankin suurempi kuin nyt. Sen todistaa minusta
sekin, että kohta senaatin ja muiden virastojen siirryttyä Helsinkiin
1819 muodostui virkamiesten y.m. joukossa n.s. Lukuseura, joka
kymmenessä vuodessa keräsi melkoisen kirjaston lainattavaksi
seuran jäsenten kesken. Tämä seura, jonka kirjastoon kuului ei
ainoastaan kaunokirjallisia teoksia, vaan myöskin historiallisia,
matkakertomuksia y.m., myöskin vieraskielisiä, ja jonka kaikki kirjat
olivat kauniisti nidotut ja suurella, kultaisella niinileimalla varustetut,
hajaantui kumminkin alussa vuotta 1829 (arvattavasti, koska se
katsottiin tarpeettomaksi, sittenkuin yliopisto oli Helsinkiin siirtynyt ja
sen Turun palon kautta hävitettyä kirjastoa oli ruvettu uudelleen
perustamaan), ja sen kirjat jaettiin seuran jäsenten kesken. Vaan,
kuten sanottu, useilla yksityisilläkin, vaikkeivät tiedemiehiä
olleetkaan, oli melkoisia kirjakokoelmia. Mainittakoon ainoastaan
kolme silloista senaattoria, salaneuvos C. Walleen, vapaah. G. v.
Kothen ja valtioneuvos J. P. Winter, joiden kokoelmat olivat erittäin
arvokkaat ja kalliit, — useita pienempiä en luettelekaan.

Isäni kirjakaappi oli aina auki perheen jäsenille. Siinä tapasimme

myöskin useita ulkomaisia ruotsiksi käännettyjä teoksia,
maailmanhistorioita ja vanhan ja uuden ajan historiaa koskevia
erityisteoksia, varsinkin useita memoaareja Ranskan
vallankumouksen ja Napoleonin vielä tuoreessa muistossa olevilta
ajoilta. Matkakertomuksia oli maapallon kaikista osista. Karttoja ja
kuvateoksia (myöskin luonnontieteellisiä, kuten veljesten v. Wrightin
"Ruotsin linnut" ja Nilssonin "Skandinaavian eläintieteen kuvasto") oli
paljo. Kaunokirjallisesta osastosta tuskin puuttui yhtään Ruotsin
runoilijaa edelliseltä vuosisadalta. Useita Ranskan suuria kirjailijoita
oli alkukielellä ja Saksan mestariteokset olivat edustetut ainakin
Upsalassa painetun suuren teoksen "Bibliothek der deutschen
Klassiker" kautta. Cervantes (Don Qvixote). Walter Scott,
Washington Irving ja Arnellin ruotsiksi kääntämä Cooper olivat jo
aikasin siellä; samoin pitkä rivi saksalaisia rosvo- ja ritariromaaneja
(Rinaldo Rinaldini, Abellino, Fernando Lonelli, Konrad Toxa von
Toxhjelm ja mitä ne kaikki olivatkaan nimeltään). Ja kun niiden
lisäksi sitten rupesi ilmestymään Hjertan Lukemisto ja Thomsonin
Kabinettikirjasto, joissa viikottain säännöllisesti julaistiin ruotsalaisia
käännöksiä Victor Hugon, Marryatin, Sealsfieldin y.m. aikalaisten
parhaista romaaneista, niin ei voitu enää valittaa romaaninlukemisen
tilaisuuden puutetta.

Halukkaimmin lukivat kumminkin varsinkin naiset ruotsalaisen

kaunokirjallisuuden uusimpia teoksia. Niiden parhaimpain
hankkiminen kotiimme oli vanhimman veljeni Fransin erityisenä
mieleisenä huolenpitona. Tegnér oli, kuten jo olen maininnut, ensi
aikoinani runollinen epäjumalamme; kun oli kysymys Fritioffin
sadusta ei kirjaa tarvittu, jokainen osasi sen melkein kokonaan ulkoa
ja siitä laulettiin pianon ääressä alituiseen lauluja Crusellin säveleillä.
Mutta vähitellen nousi uusia tähtiä ruotsinkielisen kaunokirjallisuuden
taivaalle. Ihailtiin Nikanderin koreita runoja ja pianon ääressä kuultiin
pian "Ingeborgin valituksen" ohessa usein Böttigerin herkkiä ja
tuntehikkaita lauluja. G. H. Mellinin kalenterista "Vinterblommor"
(Talvikukkia), joka pitkän ajan ilmestyi joka jouluksi, tutustuttiin
Ruotsin nuorimpiin lyyrikkoihin sekä Mellinin omiin hyvin suosittuihin
historiallisiin novelleihin. Mutta ennen kaikkea silloin nousevat
ruotsalaiset naiskirjailijat anastivat yhä suuremman vallan
lukijakunnan joukossa. Fredrika Bremerin kuvauksia arkielämästä,
vapaaherratar v. Knorringin kertomuksia luettiin ja niistä puhuttiin
eikä kukaan voinut olla niitä tuntematta. Yhtä suuren huomion
saavutti rva Flygare (sittemmin rva Carlén), kun hän vähän
myöhemmin, 1840-luvulla, astui kirjalliselle näyttämölle. —
Almqvistista en ole vielä maininnut. Hänen neronsa vaikutti
tenhovasti varsinkin miespuoliseen nuorisoon ja se häntä kauan
ihaili, voisipa sanoa, melkein ihannoiden palveli.

Kuvalehtiä ei siihen aikaan ollut perhelukemiseksi. Vanhaa

puupiirrostaitoa ei oltu uudelleen kehitetty, valokuvauksen ja
valopainoksen aika oli vielä kaukana. Mitä oli kuvattava, se kuvattiin
vähää aikasemmin keksityn kivipainon avulla taikka teräs- ja
vaskipainoksella. Meidän kotiin oli kumminkin tilattu F. Boyen
Tukholmassa toimittama taide- ja muotilehti, joka jossakin määrin
ajoi kuvalehden asian; se ei ollut suuri, ilmestyi vain kerran kuussa,
vaan sitä huolella hoidettiin. Joka vihossa oli neljä kuvaa. Yksi esitti
jotakin kuuluisaa päivän henkilöä, toinen oli jonkun taideteoksen
jäljennös, kolmas esitti jonkun uuden konekeksinnön tai
rakennusihmeen piirustusta, jotakin verestä merkkitapausta taikka
jotakin leikillistä aihetta; neljännellä sivulla tarjottiin aina värillisiä
muotokuvia, uusimpia nais- ja miespukujen malleja, ja se oli
luullakseni sen ajan ainoa muotilehti Skandinaviassa. Ilolla
tervehdittiin jokaista uutta numeroa tätä lehteä, joka ilmestyi
vuosina 1818-1844.

Muistettava on vielä, että jommoisenkin osan kirjallisesta

huomiostamme anastivat silloiset rehevät ruotsalaiset valtiolliset
lentokirjat. Tätä kirjallisuutta kehitti etupäässä ruotsalainen
Crusenstolpe, joka julkaisi "Oloja ja suhteita" (Ställningar och
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