Related500 years of the Gospel in the PhilippinesSt. Lorenzo Ruiz, the first Blessed of the Philippines

The title is not peaceful: "A smoking mitre. Bernardino Nozaleda, Archbishop of Valencia: casus belli for Spanish republicanism". Its author, Vicente Escrivá Salvador, a jurist with extensive experience, teacher and historian, assures that he noticed the character by chance, while researching the reform of civil marriage promoted by the Count of Romanones in 1906, which was responded to by the Archbishop of Valencia, Victoriano Guisasola, with a harsh pastoral response. 

A smoking miter

Title: A smoking miter

Author: Vicente Escrivá

Editorial: EUNSA. Ediciones Universidad de Navarra

Year of issue: 2023

"Faced with pressures and death threats from the Valencian Republicans, Guisasola was forced to temporarily abandon his episcopal see, and then I came across the figure of his predecessor and fellow Asturian, Bernardino Nozaleda," explains Vicente Escrivá,

The Archbishop Bermardino Nozaleda (1844-1927), who remained in the Philippines until 1902, was "legally and legitimately appointed by the Spanish government with the acquiescence and approval of the Holy See, and was prevented from taking possession of the Valencia mitre due to furious political opposition that vilified and slandered him. A unique case that I know of in the recent contemporary history of Spain," added Escrivá.

Omnes talks with the author on the eve of the presentation of his book this Wednesday in Madrid. The proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated by Vicente Escrivá to the foundation CARFwhich is organizing the event together with the publishing company EUNSA y Troa.

It is surprising that Archbishop Nozaleda was appointed by the government of Antonio Maura. Was it a government prerogative to appoint him to the See of Valencia?

-I would like to clarify that this is not a book on religious themes, nor a biography of Dominican Nozaleda. It is a work of political history, framed in that Spain of the Restoration enlightened by the Constitution of 1876, with milestones of such magnitude as the so-called "disaster of '98".

Indeed, the so-called "royalties" - among them the right of royal patronage (power to propose, appoint or veto high ecclesiastical positions by the State), was one of the "privileges" that Spanish liberalism inherited from the Old Regime, and wanted to maintain at all costs. It was one of the great contradictions of the Spanish liberals who only wanted to tame a Church that had a wide popular support and that, as they said, indoctrinated the simple people from the pulpit and the confessional. An effective instrument for this purpose was known as the "cult and clergy budget", a control mechanism at the whim of the liberal governments of the day. Its fixation and endowment, like a "sword of Damocles", always hung menacingly and was thus used by the liberal governments to "direct" the Catholic Church along the liberal path. 

The Holy See tried repeatedly since the pontificate of Pius IX to free itself from this royalist yoke. It did not succeed. Let us remember that this way of proceeding was maintained until the end of Franco's regime.

Can you summarize the serious accusations made against Bernardino Nozaleda? Such animosity has rarely been seen in Spanish history.

-They were many and serious. The republican press and a large part of the liberal press put together a story of falsehoods against the last archbishop of Manila. He was accused of being a traitor to the homeland, of being a bad Spaniard, of convincing the civil and military authorities to surrender the Philippines, of not providing spiritual aid to the Spanish soldiers, of conniving with the American troops, etc. 

It is striking that the serious accusations made against the person and conduct of Nozaleda were, for the most part, of a civil-patriotic nature, more in line with those typified in a Code of Military Justice than in a Code of Canon Law. His behavior as an ecclesiastic, as a high dignitary of the Catholic Church, hardly suffered any blemish or amendment in the media and political trial to which he was subjected.

How did the conservative leader's opponents "fit" the appointment?

-When Maura made public the appointment of Nozaleda as Archbishop of Valencia a few days after becoming President of the Council of Ministers in the month of December 1903 (short Government), the political adversaries of the conservative leader and especially the Republicans, considered it as a true provocation, a bravado of the one whom they identified with the most rancid clericalism. A real "witch-hunt" was declared against Maura and against the Dominican prelate, both from very wide sectors of the press and from the parliamentary tribune. 

The immediate objective was to prevent Nozaleda's appointment from becoming effective, as it finally happened. But the target was the conservative politician. Maura was the piece that both the liberal and republican opposition were eager to cash in on. The whole affair, the so-called "affair Nozaleda" became a real media circus.

Why then was Nozaleda chosen to occupy one of the most important archiepiscopal sees in Spain?

-Since the discovery of the Philippine Islands by Magellan (1521) and their definitive incorporation to the Spanish Crown after the arrival of Lopez de Legazpi in 1565, the process of evangelization of such a distant and vast territory began. The first to arrive were the Augustinians. They were followed by the Franciscans, Dominicans and later by the Jesuits. Unlike other overseas possessions such as Cuba, the preaching and missionary organization was carried out by the regular, not secular, clergy. Thousands of mission parishes were created in which the friars, in addition to spiritual assistance, exercised certain civil and administrative powers, given the scarcity of troops and lay people. The relations of the military authorities with the religious congregations settled in the colony were never entirely easy.

Nozaleda arrived in the Philippines with other Dominican companions in 1873. As a professor he taught at the prestigious University of Santo Tomas in Manila, founded at the beginning of the 17th century, of which he became vice-rector, and which today survives as one of the most important Catholic Universities in Asia. On May 27, 1889, at the age of forty-five, Leo XIII appointed him Archbishop of Manila. He soon denounced the anti-Christian and anti-Spanish activities of the Freemasons and the Katipunan (secret revolutionary association). On the occasion of the Spanish-American war of 1898, during the siege of Manila by the American troops, the religious remained all the time in the besieged city, helping in the provision of food and other resources to the Spanish troops.

Were you able to travel to Rome from Manila to see Leo XIII?

-Under the government of the Americans, Nozaleda remained in his archiepiscopal see until 1902, although in April of the previous year he traveled to Rome to present his resignation to the Holy Father and to give him an account of the state of the diocese. However, obeying the decision of Leo XIII, he remained in office for another year. In December 1903 he was proposed and preconized to the prestigious archdiocese of Valencia.

From the nuncio's reports it is clear that the opinion of the Roman Curia towards Nozaleda was excellent, considering him to be very intelligent, educated and endowed with a great pragmatic sense. He enjoyed an excellent reputation in Manila.

-The professor Aniceto Masferrer The report underlines that the republicans, through an anticlerical press with Jacobin roots and mobilizations, attacked the constitutional regime and in particular the monarchy and the Catholic Church. What was behind this reaction?

-I understand that another question can be deduced from that question: ¿was Spanish liberalism notoriously and at all times anticlerical? The answer, based on an analysis of the historical facts, must be clearly negative. Or at least, no more anticlerical than in other European countries where the liberal State was implanted and consolidated (it is enough to remember the III French Republic or the II German Reich with Bismark at the head, to give two examples). 

However, this does not prevent us from affirming that there were specific moments, sometimes prolonged, when the anticlerical phenomenon played an important role, and that certain rulers of that liberal Spain were convinced anticlericals, who adopted policies to the detriment of the Catholic Church, not so much out of hatred for it -which also existed-, but because of a pretension to secularize a society in which they perceived an excessive weight of the Church. The public presence of anticlericalism manifested itself in different ways in the nineteenth century, and was far from being homogeneous. By way of GuadianaThe "Liberal Triennium" (1835-1837), the "Progressive Biennium" (1854-1856), or the "Democratic Sexennium" (1868-1874).

Anticlericalism was a product of Jacobinism....

-At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, that revolutionary Jacobinism, a child of the French Revolution, will find its alter ego in republicanism, that republicanism of a rabidly anticlerical, antimonarchist, Volterian root, strongly influenced by Freemasonry and that will act not only outside the system of the "Restoration", but also within and against it.

This exacerbated anticlericalism sought to counteract an unquestionable fact: during the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878-1903), Catholicism would achieve an apostolic expansion and a flourishing that took the form of new and numerous foundations of religious and secular institutions. Many of those established in France, after the anti-religious policies of the III French Republic, would settle in Spain.

With the turn of the century, anticlericalism in Spain was on the rise, you write. What influence did the journalist and politician Blasco Ibáñez have in Valencia, and perhaps in Spain as a whole?

-Undoubtedly, one of its high points, in which the anticlerical phenomenon overflows the shores of public order, was the first decade of the twentieth century in Spain, and especially in the republican Valencia. "City without law" will be shouted in the Congress. The Republicans will become the ruling party in the main provincial capitals, among them and overwhelmingly in the Valencian municipal Consistory. From that moment on, they would put all their energies into putting into practice an accelerated policy of secularization of civil life. Any excuse was propitious for the followers of Blasco Ibáñez to take over the streets and disturb public order. 

The intimidation of any manifestation of religious worship was part of their political action. Emboldened by their growing presence in the streets and their initial political successes, from the daily newspaper The People (seconded from Madrid by El País o The Mutiny, The religious orders were the vanguard of God, and war must be declared against God", the press reproduced them in an attempt to awaken them.

How did Spanish Catholics react to these attacks, and did the Holy See view these anti-Christian manifestations with concern?

-Once the Constitution of 1876 was approved and some initial doubts were dispelled, the Spanish prelates accepted the liberal regime articulated by Cánovas del Castillo. Thus, on the occasion of the funeral of Alfonso XII, the Spanish bishops signed a pastoral letter supporting the legitimacy of the regency of Maria Cristina. The Spanish episcopate unconditionally seconded the directives of Leo XIII's magisterium, which was characterized by building bridges, by establishing a positive and fruitful dialogue between the Church and the world, between Catholicism and the "new times". 

Leo XIII, in his prolific magisterium, always rejected this clericalism, understood in the most pejorative sense of the term, that is, that which subjugates the legitimate rights of the State. To the credit of the Spanish bishops in those final years of the "Restoration", encouraged by the documents of the pontiff, there were numerous initiatives, both in the ecclesial and secular spheres: new foundations, apostolic activities of various kinds, promotion of the missions, expansion of the Catholic Circles.

 The so-called "religious question In the last century and a half, according to Masferrer, our coexistence and unity as a nation has been put to the test. Is the Nozaleda case that you analyze, the cry 'Die Nozaleda', an example of this?

-No doubt. The religious question, or we would say today after Vatican Council II, the concepts of religious freedom and secularism, in the framework of Church-State relations, is still widely misunderstood by large sectors of the population and politicians.

A secular state need not be hostile to the religious phenomenon. For this to be the case, one presupposition must be met: that it does not see the presence of this phenomenon in the public space, in the agora, as a danger to be combated. And here the so-called "conflicting secularization" comes into play: the role that religion should play in the political community. Many politicians today should take into consideration the words of the philosopher Jürgen Habermas: "Secularized citizens, insofar as they act in their role as citizens of the state, must not in principle deny religious worldviews a potential for truth, nor deny their fellow citizens who are believers the right to contribute to public debates using religious language". And so we are.

Related500 years of the Gospel in the PhilippinesSt. Lorenzo Ruiz, the first Blessed of the Philippines