The pain that inclines to religious melancholy and Jesus Christ’s love: funeral verses in José Manuel Groot’s counterclaim to Catholicism (1842-1852)

Abstract

This article analyzes José Manuel Groot’s (1800-1872) —a well-known artist, historian, and polemicist writer from Bogotá— motives of catholic counterclaim. The analysis of a manuscript notebook in which Groot wrote poetry and poetic sketches between 1842 and 1851 seeks to clarify the emotional impulse that led him to abandon the learning of his freethinking youth and fervently take refuge in Catholicism. Thanks to the History of Emotions’ theoretical and methodological approaches, today is possible to inquire about the personal experiences that motivated his counterclaim. The study on unpublished documents preserved in private archives allows declaring that his philosophism disappointment was based on the impossibility to face death with the philosophical reason. Beyond political or ideological motivations, Groot fervently embraced Catholicism looking for an immediate palliative for his pain. Public reconversions were recurrent during the 19th century in Colombia; however, their eloquence to see cultural, religious, and intellectual relationships is still a little-treated topic. Groot’s case —an early counterclaim in the century— is a reminder for incorporating emotions in broad social processes analysis, phenomenon originated in the private sphere but with public incidence.