The "deep and dark valley" of positive religions and religious conventions. Faith, reason and Catholicism in the work of Rosario de Acuña (1850-1923)

Abstract

Rosario de Acuña (1859-1923) a progressist intelectual, freethinker and freemason, closely related to Krausism, embodies the voice of a committed and audacious woman who denounced the antiliberal wrongs and the inertia of the Spanish society. She was kown as a poet, essayist and journalist who published a wealth of press articles and a significant private correspondence. Her uncompromising committment as a defender of liberty, social justice, the close ties she developped with Republicans and Democrats and her long lasting collaboration with the anticlerical newspaper, Las Dominicales del Librepensamiento (1883), sparked the resentment and the inquisitiveness of the conservative and ultracatholic sectors. She relentlessly challenged the power of the Spanish Church and the intellectual and spiritual submission of believers and women to the Church’s representatives and religious norms. She harboured persistent doubts about specific forms of faith while hungering for spiritual sustenance and authenticity.