Page 159 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Catholic Confraternities, Kinship and Social Discipline

to the Old Regime. Conflicts between the communal authorities and the
parish priests became more frequent. Murith was removed from Liddes
in 1790, and his former curate, Cavé, had to temporarily leave the parish
of Bovernier in 1806 while waiting for new guarantees from the munici-
pality. In 1798, the year the Helvetic Republic (1798–1803) was established
in Switzerland, a distinctly republican rhetoric against the Church’s privi-
leges was beginning to creep into the tensions (mgsb, apb, c8–c18).
The membership numbers of the devotional societies rose again after
the crisis of the Revolutionary period, as a result of new, mainly female,
members, especially with the Confraternity of the Rosary. But men left
the Church and the devotional societies during the years following the rev-
olutionary troubles to join anti-clerical groups. A very turbulent time was
to come. In 1835 the Valais radicals formed an association called La Jeune
Suisse (Young Switzerland) which was inspired by the Young Europe as-
sociation led by Italian agitator Giuseppe Mazzini. In 1836 the conserva-
tives coalesced under the banner of La Vieille Suisse (Old Switzerland) – a
name that was already a kind of manifesto. The 1840s in particular rep-
resented a decisive turning point in the region’s, and indeed the whole
country’s, history. In 1844 there were violent clashes in the Valais region
between liberal-radicals (radicaux) and conservative Catholics, which left
several people dead. The number of male confraternity members declined
dramatically during the 1840s, while the number of female members in-
creased to an all-time high. Male membership in Liddes was at its lowest,
while in Bovernier 89 new female members revived the village’s societies
during these crucial years. This picture suggests that there was a mass mo-
bilization of women against radicalism, especially given that this evolution
was not specific to Liddes and Bovernier. Similar trends can be observed in
anumberofparishesintheregiontothenorth oftheGrand-Saint-Bernard
pass (Registers in mgsb, apl, f.; cf. Johner 2023).
A crucial role in the enrolment of women was played by the very popu-
lar Confraternity of the Holy Rosary which was increasingly composed of
very young female members who entered the society at the age of 12, 13, or
14. We can assume that this confraternity became a crucial means of the
socialization of adolescent girls from the end of the eighteenth century,
while young men gradually became reluctant to enter religious societies
and preferred new forms of social contacts. But women, and often very
young girls, entered other associations as well, such as the Confraternity
of the Carmel (founded in 1761) and the Congregation of the Holy Heart
of Jesus, founded in Liddes in 1806. More than ever before, the devotional

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