Page 173 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Catholic Confraternities, Kinship and Social Discipline

ing this period. The devotional societies were now at the heart of female
sociability in a society where opportunities for horizontal organization
were rare. This evolution should not be underestimated. For the women
of the Alpine valleys the confraternities provided the only opportunity to
meet collectively in a formal, regular context.
As a result, the content of the practiced religion was changing. Espe-
cially for men, active participation in the devout associations increasingly
assumed a political character in the early nineteenth century as a visible
positioning in support of the traditional Catholic religion and against an-
ticlerical tendencies. In this sense, confraternities experienced a certain
degree of politicization, probably since the French Revolution, and the di-
vide became even clearer in the nineteenth century, when liberal and radi-
cal movements became stronger and more influential; by the 1840s, radical
men have all but abandoned the brotherhoods.
Despite this sharper conflict, all attempts to impose a systematic dis-
cipline through confraternal influence failed: sexual discipline among the
members of confraternities was not much stricter than in the parish in
general. Discipline, religious allegiance and political loyalty were only im-
plementedbywomenandmenwhowereactivelycommittedtoaconfrater-
nity and had decided to actively participate in devotional activities. By this
choice they were bent on making their Catholic identity public and visible.
People who were simply listed as sisters or brothers in the confraternity’s
books did not prove better Catholic churchgoers in their daily lives from
the point of view of their sexual lives. In other words, confraternities did
not shape any specific religious milieu per se; only their active core, the of-
ficials and assignees, rallied within a devout milieu which was recognizable
on the local scene.
The devout milieu revolved around particular families and kinship gro-
ups, which shared common values and attitudes towards the Church and
ensured a certain degree of sexual and political discipline. Nevertheless,
family loyalty was not absolute: brothers, sisters and close relatives could
adopt different ideologies and attitudes and even join different milieus –
as the case of the Arlettaz/2 branch shows. From another point of view,
confraternities effectively defended a strongly outward-looking, ‘baroque’
religiosity against the attacks by reformers. In fact, supported by the mu-
nicipal authorities, they rebelled against the repressive interventions of
rigoristic clerics, particularly in the areas of processions or of sexual rela-
tions and dances, which were often linked to morality problems. The com-
munity of Liddes rose up against Murith’s attempts to prohibit or con-

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