Notes on a Contrite Modernity contrite: Venezuela, its faith and its faith and reason, 1830-1876

Abstract

The author analyzes one of the less studied aspects of our history of ideas: the way in which the configuration of a
republican ideology in Venezuela during century XIX took to some conscience problems. The double fidelity of those republicans who simultaneously professed liberal ideas anda religion inherited from their parents, at moments in which Catholicism and liberalism represented antithetic positions, lmplied some difficulties of doctrinal nature. The mechanisms that were found to smooth out an intermediate solution are the subject of this text, which reveals the real dimension of what lesting the modem corollary in Venezuela to take root meant, its reach and its real possibilitles of accomplishments.