“Plague of vermin that invade the churches”: the beata model in the Spanish catholic women’s movement in the first three decades of the twentieth century

Abstract

In the first three decades of the twentieth century, the beata was a model of femininity that the anticlerical sectors loaded with negative meanings. There were many criticisms, but the most important one was the notion that beatas were women who neglected the main functions of women’s lives by being so focused on developing a fanatical and/or feigned religious practice. A sector of the Spanish Catholic women’s movement was convinced that many of these anticlerical criticisms of the beatas were true. For that reason, many of them tried to distance themselves from the beata, to prevent any kind of association between them and this despised figure. To this end, Catholic women activists frequently established in their ideas a dichotomy between the beatas and the virtuous Catholic women.