Pierre M. Delpu | Universitat de València (original) (raw)
Books by Pierre M. Delpu
This book aims to provide with a synthesis on political martyrdom in Contemporary Europe, with a ... more This book aims to provide with a synthesis on political martyrdom in Contemporary Europe, with a wide chronological approach and a major focus on Southern European society. It defends lay martyrdom was one of the key concepts of the post-revolutionary order and grew importance in the whole political space. It tries to situate martyrdom between heroism and victimism, to reassess the modern processes of sacralization and exemplarity.
Table of contents:
Introduction
Chapitre 1. La matrice révolutionnaire
Chapitre 2. Le temps des héros-martyrs
Chapitre 3. Apôtres de la liberté
Chapitre 4. Martyrs vivants
Chapitre 5. Martyres de peuples et universalisme politique
Chapitre 6. Martyrs de la foi et de la loi
Chapitre 7. Les martyrs de la nation
Chapitre 8. Les martyrs du cléricalisme
Chapitre 9. Martyrs socialistes et anarchistes
Chapitre 10. L’apogée du sacrifice national
Chapitre 11. Que devient le martyre politique au “temps des victimes”?
Conclusion
L'affaire Poerio. La fabrique d'un martyr révolutionnaire européen 1850-1860, 2021
The book pays attention to a European media case of the mid-19th century, having turned a politic... more The book pays attention to a European media case of the mid-19th century, having turned a political convict having a weak protagonism to a political martyr and an international celebrity. At this moment, figures of alive martyrs, being exiles, convicts, or basically deprived from their belongings, gained momentum in the European civil societies. This affair illustrates the processes on which relied the construction of political martyrs and its insertion in the modern culture of celebrity.
Papers by Pierre M. Delpu
Sfida al congresso di Vienna. Quadri internazionali e cultura politica nell'Italia delle rivoluzioni del 1820-1821 (a cura di Silvia Cavicchioli e Giacomo Girardi), 2023
The paper aims to highlight the political evolutions of France and Spain at the beginning of the ... more The paper aims to highlight the political evolutions of France and Spain at the beginning of the 1820s, situating them in their international context. It pays attention to the connexions between both countries and to the symbolic dimension of the revolutionary processes.
La modernisation de l'Espagne: entre réformes et conflits XIXe-XXe siècle (Jean-Claude Caron and Anne Dubet eds.), 2023
In the mid-19th century, Spain saw the development and systematisation of cults in memory of poli... more In the mid-19th century, Spain saw the development and systematisation of cults in memory of political victims who were erected as martyrs because of the moral virtues attributed to them and used for mass politicisation. Particularly mobilised in liberal and democratic political cultures, they were nourished by the very strong social and political conflicts that Spain was experiencing at that time. They structured variable communities of belonging, some ideological, others territorial. In addition to numerous commemorative practices, they reflect the emergence of a liberal literary martyrology that was increasingly identified with the Spanish nation-state, in parallel with European equivalents (particularly France and the Italian States). Therefore, this paper aims to illustrate, with an emblematic case, two of the key issues in Spanish political history in the mid-19th century: on the one hand, the fundamental place occupied by religiosity in the strategies of mass politicisation, and, on the other hand, the fixation of memories of political conflict. Both of these perspectives bear witness to an evolution described in the work of Jean-Philippe Luis, the 'birth of modern politics', which confronted southern European societies from the last decades of the 18th century to the Spanish revolution of 1868.
La política a ras de suelo. Politización popular y cotidiana en la Europa contemporánea (Carlos Hernández Quero y Álvaro París coords.), 2023
The paper aims to study the different ways of elaboration of popular authorities in revolutionary... more The paper aims to study the different ways of elaboration of popular authorities in revolutionary context, with a special focus on local politicization in provincial contexts. It relies on a comparative approach between mid-19th century Spain and Italy.
Los funerales políticos en la España contemporánea. Cultura del duelo y usos públicos de la muerte (Pierre Géal y Pedro Rújula coords.), 2023
The paper aims to situate the 19th-century Spanish political funerals in a broader European conte... more The paper aims to situate the 19th-century Spanish political funerals in a broader European context, shaped by funeral transition and the reconstruction of the political space after the revolutions of the late 18th-century. It highlights five major evolutions: the democratization of public death, the uses of human remains, the nationalization of funeral practices, the imposition of martyrdom as a category of politics, the circulation of models and references.
Subaltern Political Subjectivities and Practices in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Karen Lauwers, Marnix Beyen and Sami Suodenjoki eds.), 2023
In the mid-nineteenth century, the societies of the Italian peninsula saw a significant increase... more In the mid-nineteenth century, the societies of the Italian peninsula saw a significant increase in the number of cults honoring political martyrs, nourished by the many revolts and revolutions repressed by the monarchical powers. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where this practice was particularly developed, a local tradition of revolutionary martyrdom took place, based on local experiences of suffering first transmitted at local scale. By cross-examining police and judicial documentation, the political literature produced by the liberal movement, and the published martyrologies, this chapter sheds light on how, starting from a collection of subordinate experiences, a written memory of martyrdom was formalized and intended to nourish subsequent political movements. Three main stages are observed: first, the emergence of a popular and local memory of political martyrdom in the 1840s; second, its progressive recovery by the revolutionary elites of the kingdom at the time of the 1848 revolution; finally, the multiple ways in which the written tradition of southern European martyrdom was constituted through the experiences of exile which many Neapolitan liberals went through.
De la parole du prédicateur au discours politique. Jalons pour une histoire de la critique religieuse du politique (Vincent Flauraud and Ludovic Viallet eds.), 2022
In the mid-19th century, the tributes given to revolutionary martyrs were one of the most powerfu... more In the mid-19th century, the tributes given to revolutionary martyrs were one of the most powerful tools of liberal politicisation in most pre-unitary Italian states. Their growing mobilisation was part of a wider context of secularised transfers of religious notions for the needs of mass mobilisation, such as catechisms or the Marian cult. The aim here is to study from its protagonists’ point of view a process already well known in its rhetorical and literary aspects, even though it is one of the main discursive media of the Italian cultural nation. The role of the so-called "liberal" priests, in the sense that they defended against the monarchical authorities the claims of political and economic freedom, was from this point of view decisive, revealed both by the very numerous police and judiciary sources and, in some states, by the few published sermons available, particularly at the time of the revolution of 1848 (Papal State and Tuscany). Focusing mainly on this episode, the contribution highlights three fundamental dimensions of the use of political martyrs by liberal priests: their insertion in public celebrations with a strong religious tone, the deployment of a rhetoric of revenge, carried by pulpit preaching, and the implementation of tools of assistance aimed primarily at "living martyrs", a category that emerged in Italian political discourse from the 1840s onwards.
Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 2022
Based on a regional case, this contribution aims to highlight a modality of collective protest, r... more Based on a regional case, this contribution aims to highlight a modality of collective protest, regicidal iconoclasm, which, despite its recurrence in the revolutions of the nineteenth century, was not necessarily recognized by contemporaries in its political dimension. During the revolution of 1848, when the entry of the southern masses into politics accelerated, the destruction of images representing the monarchy took on a considerable scale, which the political and judicial documentation allows us to analyse. This study focuses on the repertoires of action in which the iconoclastic acts were carried out (destructive gestures, staging the death of the king, regicidal
insults), in order to grasp their political significance. Although they were not always accompanied by a coherent political project, they testify to local popular demands with regard to a centralized national government considered distant and unsuitable.
Mourir en révolutionnaire XVIIIe-XXe siècle (Michel Biard, Jean-Numa Ducange and Jean-Yves Frétigné eds.), 2022
The paper aims to explore the different ways public and private commemorations shaped martyrdom a... more The paper aims to explore the different ways public and private commemorations shaped martyrdom as a new category of post-revolutionary politics. It relies on a comparison between Spain and the Italian peninsula, with a special focus on democratic political cultures.
Médias, politique et révolution. Les échos européens de la bataille de Mentana (1867) (Pierre-Marie Delpu, Arthur Hérisson, Vincent Robert eds.), 2021
The chapter highlights the process of edification of the fallen Italian democratic soldiers durin... more The chapter highlights the process of edification of the fallen Italian democratic soldiers during the battle of Mentana (1867) as martyrs of the national community. It analyses the way they were inserted to the national memory, through media culture, subscriptions and monumentality, at different scales of belonging.
Parlement(s). Revue d'histoire politique, 2021
The article aims to study the way Italian MP's Carlo Poerio's death in 1867 shaped his memorial i... more The article aims to study the way Italian MP's Carlo Poerio's death in 1867 shaped his memorial image of a lay saint, reassessing a previous imaginary of martyrdom that was linked with his experience of political prison in the 1850s. Beyond this processes, the paper pays attention to the building of a national commemorative culture in the first decade of unified Italy.
Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie V Historia contemporánea, 2021
The successive revolts and revolutions the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies experienced throughout the... more The successive revolts and revolutions the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies experienced throughout the first half of the 19th century knew the construction of a new archetype, the Catholic man, a mobilising figure supposed to represent the regenerated citizen and associated with a system of values taken from religion, but transposed to the political arena in a secularised form. It took advantage of the support given by part of the lower clergy to the liberal and democratic movements, because of the place they took in revolutionary pedagogy. The figures then promoted, that of the military hero and that of the political martyr, constituted ethical models that were amply developed in liberal literature, but whose uses evolved: the development of radical currents from the 1830s and 1840s consecrated the place of fighting Christian masculinities, capable of resisting the government of Ferdinand II, perceived as tyrannical.
El Argonauta español, 2021
The article highlights the Italian media echo of the revolution that began in Spain at the beginn... more The article highlights the Italian media echo of the revolution that began in Spain at the beginning of January 1820, through the case of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where the Spanish insurrection had been set up as a model by the Neapolitan liberals, starting from the uprising that they provoked in the first days of July 1820. The attention paid to the Constitution of Cadiz and to Spanish parliamentary events is explained by the fact that they are considered experimental, in order to install a liberal regime in Naples. The aim is to highlight the processes of construction built around the Constitution of Cadiz, as well as the debates it provokes within Neapolitan civil society, by drawing on both the information press and Neapolitan and Palermo opinion magazines, which are particularly attentive to Spanish political news.
Rhétorique et politisation, de la fin des Lumières au Printemps des Peuples (Sophie-Anne Leterrier and Olivier Tort eds.), 2021
This paper examines the role Neapolitan priests played in the revolutions which took place in the... more This paper examines the role Neapolitan priests played in the revolutions which took place in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, from 1799 to 1848. It pays attention to the politicization of preaches and to the use of archetypes taken from the religious sphere, such as apostles, lay Christs and martyrs.
This book aims to provide with a synthesis on political martyrdom in Contemporary Europe, with a ... more This book aims to provide with a synthesis on political martyrdom in Contemporary Europe, with a wide chronological approach and a major focus on Southern European society. It defends lay martyrdom was one of the key concepts of the post-revolutionary order and grew importance in the whole political space. It tries to situate martyrdom between heroism and victimism, to reassess the modern processes of sacralization and exemplarity.
Table of contents:
Introduction
Chapitre 1. La matrice révolutionnaire
Chapitre 2. Le temps des héros-martyrs
Chapitre 3. Apôtres de la liberté
Chapitre 4. Martyrs vivants
Chapitre 5. Martyres de peuples et universalisme politique
Chapitre 6. Martyrs de la foi et de la loi
Chapitre 7. Les martyrs de la nation
Chapitre 8. Les martyrs du cléricalisme
Chapitre 9. Martyrs socialistes et anarchistes
Chapitre 10. L’apogée du sacrifice national
Chapitre 11. Que devient le martyre politique au “temps des victimes”?
Conclusion
L'affaire Poerio. La fabrique d'un martyr révolutionnaire européen 1850-1860, 2021
The book pays attention to a European media case of the mid-19th century, having turned a politic... more The book pays attention to a European media case of the mid-19th century, having turned a political convict having a weak protagonism to a political martyr and an international celebrity. At this moment, figures of alive martyrs, being exiles, convicts, or basically deprived from their belongings, gained momentum in the European civil societies. This affair illustrates the processes on which relied the construction of political martyrs and its insertion in the modern culture of celebrity.
Sfida al congresso di Vienna. Quadri internazionali e cultura politica nell'Italia delle rivoluzioni del 1820-1821 (a cura di Silvia Cavicchioli e Giacomo Girardi), 2023
The paper aims to highlight the political evolutions of France and Spain at the beginning of the ... more The paper aims to highlight the political evolutions of France and Spain at the beginning of the 1820s, situating them in their international context. It pays attention to the connexions between both countries and to the symbolic dimension of the revolutionary processes.
La modernisation de l'Espagne: entre réformes et conflits XIXe-XXe siècle (Jean-Claude Caron and Anne Dubet eds.), 2023
In the mid-19th century, Spain saw the development and systematisation of cults in memory of poli... more In the mid-19th century, Spain saw the development and systematisation of cults in memory of political victims who were erected as martyrs because of the moral virtues attributed to them and used for mass politicisation. Particularly mobilised in liberal and democratic political cultures, they were nourished by the very strong social and political conflicts that Spain was experiencing at that time. They structured variable communities of belonging, some ideological, others territorial. In addition to numerous commemorative practices, they reflect the emergence of a liberal literary martyrology that was increasingly identified with the Spanish nation-state, in parallel with European equivalents (particularly France and the Italian States). Therefore, this paper aims to illustrate, with an emblematic case, two of the key issues in Spanish political history in the mid-19th century: on the one hand, the fundamental place occupied by religiosity in the strategies of mass politicisation, and, on the other hand, the fixation of memories of political conflict. Both of these perspectives bear witness to an evolution described in the work of Jean-Philippe Luis, the 'birth of modern politics', which confronted southern European societies from the last decades of the 18th century to the Spanish revolution of 1868.
La política a ras de suelo. Politización popular y cotidiana en la Europa contemporánea (Carlos Hernández Quero y Álvaro París coords.), 2023
The paper aims to study the different ways of elaboration of popular authorities in revolutionary... more The paper aims to study the different ways of elaboration of popular authorities in revolutionary context, with a special focus on local politicization in provincial contexts. It relies on a comparative approach between mid-19th century Spain and Italy.
Los funerales políticos en la España contemporánea. Cultura del duelo y usos públicos de la muerte (Pierre Géal y Pedro Rújula coords.), 2023
The paper aims to situate the 19th-century Spanish political funerals in a broader European conte... more The paper aims to situate the 19th-century Spanish political funerals in a broader European context, shaped by funeral transition and the reconstruction of the political space after the revolutions of the late 18th-century. It highlights five major evolutions: the democratization of public death, the uses of human remains, the nationalization of funeral practices, the imposition of martyrdom as a category of politics, the circulation of models and references.
Subaltern Political Subjectivities and Practices in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Karen Lauwers, Marnix Beyen and Sami Suodenjoki eds.), 2023
In the mid-nineteenth century, the societies of the Italian peninsula saw a significant increase... more In the mid-nineteenth century, the societies of the Italian peninsula saw a significant increase in the number of cults honoring political martyrs, nourished by the many revolts and revolutions repressed by the monarchical powers. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where this practice was particularly developed, a local tradition of revolutionary martyrdom took place, based on local experiences of suffering first transmitted at local scale. By cross-examining police and judicial documentation, the political literature produced by the liberal movement, and the published martyrologies, this chapter sheds light on how, starting from a collection of subordinate experiences, a written memory of martyrdom was formalized and intended to nourish subsequent political movements. Three main stages are observed: first, the emergence of a popular and local memory of political martyrdom in the 1840s; second, its progressive recovery by the revolutionary elites of the kingdom at the time of the 1848 revolution; finally, the multiple ways in which the written tradition of southern European martyrdom was constituted through the experiences of exile which many Neapolitan liberals went through.
De la parole du prédicateur au discours politique. Jalons pour une histoire de la critique religieuse du politique (Vincent Flauraud and Ludovic Viallet eds.), 2022
In the mid-19th century, the tributes given to revolutionary martyrs were one of the most powerfu... more In the mid-19th century, the tributes given to revolutionary martyrs were one of the most powerful tools of liberal politicisation in most pre-unitary Italian states. Their growing mobilisation was part of a wider context of secularised transfers of religious notions for the needs of mass mobilisation, such as catechisms or the Marian cult. The aim here is to study from its protagonists’ point of view a process already well known in its rhetorical and literary aspects, even though it is one of the main discursive media of the Italian cultural nation. The role of the so-called "liberal" priests, in the sense that they defended against the monarchical authorities the claims of political and economic freedom, was from this point of view decisive, revealed both by the very numerous police and judiciary sources and, in some states, by the few published sermons available, particularly at the time of the revolution of 1848 (Papal State and Tuscany). Focusing mainly on this episode, the contribution highlights three fundamental dimensions of the use of political martyrs by liberal priests: their insertion in public celebrations with a strong religious tone, the deployment of a rhetoric of revenge, carried by pulpit preaching, and the implementation of tools of assistance aimed primarily at "living martyrs", a category that emerged in Italian political discourse from the 1840s onwards.
Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 2022
Based on a regional case, this contribution aims to highlight a modality of collective protest, r... more Based on a regional case, this contribution aims to highlight a modality of collective protest, regicidal iconoclasm, which, despite its recurrence in the revolutions of the nineteenth century, was not necessarily recognized by contemporaries in its political dimension. During the revolution of 1848, when the entry of the southern masses into politics accelerated, the destruction of images representing the monarchy took on a considerable scale, which the political and judicial documentation allows us to analyse. This study focuses on the repertoires of action in which the iconoclastic acts were carried out (destructive gestures, staging the death of the king, regicidal
insults), in order to grasp their political significance. Although they were not always accompanied by a coherent political project, they testify to local popular demands with regard to a centralized national government considered distant and unsuitable.
Mourir en révolutionnaire XVIIIe-XXe siècle (Michel Biard, Jean-Numa Ducange and Jean-Yves Frétigné eds.), 2022
The paper aims to explore the different ways public and private commemorations shaped martyrdom a... more The paper aims to explore the different ways public and private commemorations shaped martyrdom as a new category of post-revolutionary politics. It relies on a comparison between Spain and the Italian peninsula, with a special focus on democratic political cultures.
Médias, politique et révolution. Les échos européens de la bataille de Mentana (1867) (Pierre-Marie Delpu, Arthur Hérisson, Vincent Robert eds.), 2021
The chapter highlights the process of edification of the fallen Italian democratic soldiers durin... more The chapter highlights the process of edification of the fallen Italian democratic soldiers during the battle of Mentana (1867) as martyrs of the national community. It analyses the way they were inserted to the national memory, through media culture, subscriptions and monumentality, at different scales of belonging.
Parlement(s). Revue d'histoire politique, 2021
The article aims to study the way Italian MP's Carlo Poerio's death in 1867 shaped his memorial i... more The article aims to study the way Italian MP's Carlo Poerio's death in 1867 shaped his memorial image of a lay saint, reassessing a previous imaginary of martyrdom that was linked with his experience of political prison in the 1850s. Beyond this processes, the paper pays attention to the building of a national commemorative culture in the first decade of unified Italy.
Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie V Historia contemporánea, 2021
The successive revolts and revolutions the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies experienced throughout the... more The successive revolts and revolutions the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies experienced throughout the first half of the 19th century knew the construction of a new archetype, the Catholic man, a mobilising figure supposed to represent the regenerated citizen and associated with a system of values taken from religion, but transposed to the political arena in a secularised form. It took advantage of the support given by part of the lower clergy to the liberal and democratic movements, because of the place they took in revolutionary pedagogy. The figures then promoted, that of the military hero and that of the political martyr, constituted ethical models that were amply developed in liberal literature, but whose uses evolved: the development of radical currents from the 1830s and 1840s consecrated the place of fighting Christian masculinities, capable of resisting the government of Ferdinand II, perceived as tyrannical.
El Argonauta español, 2021
The article highlights the Italian media echo of the revolution that began in Spain at the beginn... more The article highlights the Italian media echo of the revolution that began in Spain at the beginning of January 1820, through the case of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where the Spanish insurrection had been set up as a model by the Neapolitan liberals, starting from the uprising that they provoked in the first days of July 1820. The attention paid to the Constitution of Cadiz and to Spanish parliamentary events is explained by the fact that they are considered experimental, in order to install a liberal regime in Naples. The aim is to highlight the processes of construction built around the Constitution of Cadiz, as well as the debates it provokes within Neapolitan civil society, by drawing on both the information press and Neapolitan and Palermo opinion magazines, which are particularly attentive to Spanish political news.
Rhétorique et politisation, de la fin des Lumières au Printemps des Peuples (Sophie-Anne Leterrier and Olivier Tort eds.), 2021
This paper examines the role Neapolitan priests played in the revolutions which took place in the... more This paper examines the role Neapolitan priests played in the revolutions which took place in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, from 1799 to 1848. It pays attention to the politicization of preaches and to the use of archetypes taken from the religious sphere, such as apostles, lay Christs and martyrs.