From doctrine to public opinion: the literature of saga in the Colombian Catholic press (1850-1880)

Abstract

The role of Catholic writers and thinkers during the second half of the nineteenth-century in Colombia proves to be an important part in the intellectual development of the country; on the one hand, they were to defend the Christian ideology from state measures of the time and, on the other, to legitimize the Church’s presence within a society advancing towards the idea of progress and a secular education. Catholic periodical publications became the ideal stage to disclose this process, prompted to discipline individuals that would warrant the legitimacy and permanence of the ecclesiastic power within society and the state. Consequently a permanent rhetorical apparatus developed through the texts that constitute the above-mentioned publications; the scope of the instructor and the instructed, the establishment of a church’s epic that could relate it to the unfolding civilized world and, finally, the turn towards domestic and family practices guided by the catholic doctrine. This proposal aims to analyze the discursive and philosophical device brought forth by publishers and permanent collaborators of these publications, its influence and endurance within pedagogic practices and later intellectuals.