ABSTRACT
After a Catholic–Liberal alliance had secured Belgian independence in 1830, the country became increasingly caught up in conflicts over the limits of the Catholic–clerical sphere. Grievances manifested themselves in relation to, among other things, the dead hand of the Church, funerary culture, and primary education, occasionally prompting public disturbances. The chapter chronicles these violent protest acts from a Catholic perspective, zooming in on popular resistance to the Liberal school-reform law of 1879 that reduced clerical influence on primary education. It provides a typology of protest against the law’s implementation, shows that violent action was confined to the period prior to the establishment of state-independent religious schools, and highlights the plurality of Catholic responses on both elite and popular levels. More generally, the chapter contends that the pairing of religion and violence served two purposes: Catholics used it to create a Liberal scapegoat that acted as a catalyst for inner-Catholic reconciliation, while Liberals cited “Catholic violence” as proof of the need for their secularizing agenda.
