Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860-1940 (Media Performance Histories, 7) (English, French and German Edition) 9782503599083, 2503599087

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Faith in a Beam of Light

Media Performance Histories Series Editors Frank Kessler Sabine Lenk Kurt Vanhoutte Nele Wynants The series media performance histories is part of the techne collection directed by Dániel Margócsy and Koen Vermeir:

Techne Knowledge, Technique, and Material Culture

7 Editorial Board Paola Bertucci, Yale University Lino Camprubí, Universidad de Sevilla Ludovic Coupaye, UCL London Sven Dupré, Utrecht University Ariane Fennetaux, Université de Paris Anne Gerritsen, University of Warwick Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Université de Paris – EHESS Stéphane Lembré, Université Lille Nord de France Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University Viktoria Tkaczyk, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Simona Valeriani, Victoria and Albert Museum Annabel Vallard, CNRS Bing Zhao, CNRS

Faith in a Beam of Light Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940

Edited by Sabine Lenk Natalija Majsova

F

This book is part of a series of publications within the framework of ‘B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830-1940)’, a project funded by Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Vlaanderen – FWO and Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346.

© 2022, Brepols Publishers n. v., Turnhout, Belgium. This is an open access publication made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/4.0/. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, for commercial purposes, without the prior permission of the publisher, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. D/2022/0095/58 ISBN 978-2-503-59908-3 eISBN 978-2-503-59900-0 DOI 10.1484/M. TECHNE-EB.5.128877 ISSN 2736-7452 eISSN 2736-7460 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Contents

Introduction 9 Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova Section 1 An Overview of the Archives A Gospel by Lantern Slides: Christian Pedagogy and the Magic Lantern Isabelle Saint-Martin Le Fascinateur and Maison de la Bonne Presse: Catholic Media for Francophone Audiences † Pierre Véronneau

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New Light on Maison de la Bonne Presse and its Service des Projections 57 Bart G. Moens Mission Projections: Glass Positives in the Archives of the Religious Institutes in KADOC Greet de Neef

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Making Pupils See: The Use of Optical Lantern Slides in Geography Teaching in Belgian Catholic Schools Wouter Egelmeers

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Section 2 Catholic Projections in a Modern Light Shine a Light: Catholic Media Use, Transformations in the Public Sphere, and the Voice of the Urban Masses (Antwerp and Brussels, c. 1880 – c. 1920) 101 Margo Buelens-Terryn, Iason Jongepier, and Ilja Van Damme Teaching Faith with the Lantern: Audio-Visual Lantern Performances by the Clergy in France and Belgium Around 1900 Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk

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The Bijou Collection: A Multimedia Constellation for Multimodal Experiences 139 Natalija Majsova The Editorial Strategy of the Bijou Collection: When Media Diversification Reinforces an Edifying Ambition Adeline Werry and Sébastien Fevry

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Religious Temperance Propaganda and Multimodal Aesthetics of Emotion: The Lantern Slide Set ‘Un poison mortel’ and Early Film Adaptations of Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir 155 Dominique Nasta and Bart G. Moens The Edifying Structures of the Bijou Imaginary: An Investigation into Images, Rhetoric, Memory, and Politics Natalija Majsova and Philippe Marion

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Section 3 Projecting Aspirations, Challenges, and Fears Deep Time Through the Lens of the Magic Lantern: Genesis and Geology Kurt Vanhoutte

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Films Fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization in Interwar Belgium Nelleke Teughels

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‘Hidden Lanterns’ in fin-de-siècle France and Belgium: (Dis)Belief in Spiritualist Apparitions at the Fairground, Music Hall, and Artistic Cabaret Evelien Jonckheere

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Masonic Slide Cultures: Teaching, Meditation, Optimization Sabine Lenk

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Section 4 Historical Articles on Slide Performances by the Church Bou. ‘La Rédemption’, Journal de Roubaix, 30 December 1908, quoted in Anonymous. ‘Causerie du mois’, Le Rayon 1 (January 1909): 2–4 (facsimile)

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Neue evangelische Garnisonskirche. ‘Lichtbilderpredigt über das Leben Jesu, I. Teil’, printed by Ernst Schimkönig, Berlin 1909 (facsimile)

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contents

Index 273 The Authors

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Abstracts 285

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Sabine Lenk and N ata l ija Maj s ova

Introduction Re-Assembling the Lantern for Religious Purposes The projection lantern was one of the most ubiquitous media of the nineteenth and early twentieth century; moreover, it signaled the advent of an era of visual mass media. In this respect, its potential to charm, persuade, instruct, and manipulate was of particular interest to various religious and spiritual groups that sought to edify the audience and win it for their cause. Thus, the beam of the lantern added a very specific, rather literary connotation to the proverbial relevance of light (and darkness) to different kinds of faith. This simple, convincing metaphor is, however, but the tip of the iceberg, prompting the researcher to dig further. How had the lantern affected belief, and how had this medium been used and regulated by various spiritual and religious stakeholders? What were the missionary, evangelical, reformatory, and spiritual needs of inspired groups, and when and how did they discover the projection lantern as the ideal instrument? Thus far, scholarship has primarily addressed these questions through case studies. These have mainly focused on specific national or/and confessional contexts, particular aspects of faith, such as its institutionalization or enactment through certain practices (i.e. sermons or catechism), and on relevant stakeholders (i.e. confessionally-profiled publications). Remarkable insights have been generated. These unveil both the turbulent episodes of the lantern’s involvement with religious interest groups, such as its brief and not yet fully researched history as a device used during sermons in the Catholic Church, and its capacity to illuminate alternative worldviews in the context of fascinating, ideologically-critical theatre performances. They also make one aware of the medium’s quieter role as the faithful teaching aid, used in both religiously profiled and secular schools since the second half of the nineteenth century, and particularly extensively after the First World War. Moreover, such analyses highlight the lantern’s malleability, its capacity to generate spectacle using the means at hand, from industrial to hand-made slides. Equally important, a significant enough number of case studies has emerged over the past couple of decades to open up the broader issue of the field at large: of mapping out the various connections between faith, belief, religion, spirituality, sense of mission and the infrastructure, technology, (multi)mediality, and gradual transformations of optical lantern practices and uses in the time of its peak popularity. This volume will take a step in this direction and establish some important axes for future research. Sabine Lenk • University of Antwerp/Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Natalija Majsova • Observatory for Research on Media and Journalism, UCLouvain, Belgium, and Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 9–15 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129091 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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An Illumination of Relevant Contexts This book builds on the recent interdisciplinary research progress made with regards to various aspects of the lantern as the privileged popular-cultural visual mass medium of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Landmark medium-specific studies from the early 2000s have helped us establish the coordinates of the device as a technology, medium, spectacle, (social) influencer, and archival source. In turn, concerted efforts of various archivists around the world and projects dedicated to the research and preservation of the lantern slides, catalogues, manuals, lecture notebooks, posters, and lanterns have clearly established the multi-layered value of the art of projection as cultural heritage. All of these endeavors have also eventually led to the identification of the larger task at hand: to assess the cultural impact of this medium, positioning it in a set of different contexts and analysing it using various theoretical and methodological lenses. After all, the lantern as a (socio-)cultural phenomenon was never merely a tool or a technological innovation; rather, it existed as an element of various infrastructures, impacting the histories of various fields, from urban history to the history and trends in education. Furthermore, it marked the development of publication and entertainment industries of the time, directly impacting media professions and transnational media networks. The present book wishes to present the lantern and its interactions with religion, faith, belief, and spirituality, precisely in the multi-layered, dynamic context of a time marked by rapid socio-political transformations, cultural changes, and technological advances. The outlined complexity of the topic at hand suggests that any attempt at a comprehensive overview of intersections between the luminous and the spiritual worldwide would be premature. This volume does not aim to provide such a survey; rather, it wishes to highlight the added value of synergies between archival research, historical contextualization, and contemporary concepts and methodologies. For this reason, the book insists on a particular spatial focus that allows for noteworthy analytical depth, and, at the same time limits the necessary degree of ever-novel socio-historical contextualization. Geographically, the contributions in this book focus on Belgian and French archives, sources, and case studies, making use of the abundance of archival materials, and the persuasiveness of existing landmark studies in this particular region. The new studies collected in this book took place in the framework of the research project ‘B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940)’ (2018–2023), made possible by the generous financial support of the Excellence of Science (EOS), a research initiative of the Belgian government. It allowed a nationwide and international interdisciplinary collaboration of eight research groups at universities and academies in Antwerp (Research Centre for Visual Poetics, Centre for Urban History), Brussels (Centre de Recherche en Cinéma et Arts du Spectacle, Centre for research in film and the performing arts), Ghent (Department of Film, Photography and Drama), Leuven (Cultural History since 1750), Louvain-la-Neuve (Observatoire de recherche sur les médias et le journalisme, Observatory for Research on Media and Journalism), and Utrecht (Research group Media and Performance, ICON). In addition, partnerships were established with archives and museums that opened their collections to the team of nine project leaders, ten postdoctoral research fellows, and six PhD candidates.

introduction

Furthermore, this research group benefitted from networking and active research exchanges with numerous collaborators of previous and parallel research projects such as ‘Screen1900 Research Projects’ (Trier, 2005–2018), ‘A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slide Heritage as Artefacts in the Common European History of Learning’ (Antwerp, Exeter, Girona, Salamanca, Utrecht, 2015–2018), ‘Heritage in the Limelight: The Magic Lantern in Australia and the World 1840–1940’ (Perth, Exeter, 2016–2018), ‘Performative Konfigurationen der Projektionskunst in der populären Wissensvermittlung. Medienarchäologische Fallstudien zur Geschichte der Gebrauchsmedien und des Screen’ (Marburg, Trier 2019–2021, Performative Configurations of the Art of Projection for the Popular Transfer of Knowledge. Media Archaeological Case Studies in the History of ‘Useful Media’ and the Screen), and last, but not least, the partner project, ‘Projecting Knowledge – The Magic Lantern as a Tool for Mediated Science Communication in the Netherlands, 1880–1940’ (Utrecht, 2019–2023). Further fellowships from the FNRS and the ULB allowed for additional research in Paris and Rome (Archives of the Augustinians of the Assumption) and Lausanne (Section d’Histoire de l’art de l’Université de Lausanne [Diathèque], Histoire et esthétique du cinéma/Centre des Sciences historiques de la culture, Department of Film History and Aesthetics/Centre for Historical Sciences about Culture, Art History Department, University of Lausanne). Collaboration with Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource (http://lucerna.exeter.ac.uk/) and its coordinator Richard Crangle as well as the lanternists, collectors, and researchers of The Magic Lantern Society in the United Kingdom (http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/) and in the United States (http:// www.magiclanternsociety.org/) deserve a very special mention for enriching the research. Contributing immeasurably to the present volume were the international networking of the B-magic team, its exchange of research results and findings with fellow researchers, archivists, private and public collection owners, as well as practicing lanternists, and above all the exchange of ideas with those who (did) deal with the exploration of the now 370-year history of the art of projection with the magic lantern. Although every country has its own lantern stories to tell, this optical wonder created by Christiaan Huygens and colleagues in the seventeenth century was, and still is, a worldwide phenomenon that, we argue, only common cross-disciplinary and trans-border efforts can retrieve from the past. We hope that our interdisciplinary take on the subject at hand will complement existing studies in the history of religion and freethinking, urban history, history of visual pedagogy, and media history. Staging Faith: Church and Religion, Faith and Belief An equally important ambition of this book stems from our conviction that a focus on media such as the lantern allows us to develop an invaluable comparative perspective on different modalities of faith, religion, and spirituality in a given time period and in a certain space. Instead of focusing on one particular stakeholder, such as the Catholic Church and its impressive infrastructure developed to modernize its means for visual instruction, edification, and propaganda, the contributions assembled in this volume highlight the coexistence of a variety of stakeholders and worldviews. This perspective challenges various tacit assumptions about relations between advocates of different religious and

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spiritual views and the swift technological modernization that took place in the outlined time-period. Previous studies, especially in the English context, have focused on the socio-cultural influence of religiously inspired associations such as the Salvation Army, Temperance Movement, or social reformers with links to the Anglican Church. Jesuit creativity in introducing and publicizing the new medium across European countries has also received some attention, although more in-depth analysis of their educational approach in imparting knowledge and scientific achievements is needed. The involvement of Catholics, especially in France, has already been partially researched, whereas studies of Protestants’ use of slides and projection apparatus in Germany or the Netherlands, for example, are almost entirely lacking. The worldwide record of congregations and their apostolic missions at home and abroad is missing as well. The same applies to non-Christian communities and spiritually inspired, but largely secular associations such as Freethinkers and Freemasons, the latter also prolific users of the optical lantern for their cause, as indicated by the considerable number of preserved slides that can be interpreted as tacit testimony. In this light, these diverse actors emerge as competitors on a market that, by the ever more secularized late nineteenth century, included an ever-increasing range of technological devices which could fulfill a myriad of functions, from instruction to entertainment. Because this early ‘attention economy’ could not have been exclusively religious, this particular book makes a conscious effort to account for the interactions between religion and its institutions and the economy, popular culture, science, and politics. In doing so, our various authors allow readers to map different modalities of ‘believing, bonding, behaving and belonging’ as the widely recognized core dimensions of the religious experience.1 Our volume acknowledges traces of religion in personal belief, in institutionalized practice, in entertainment, and even in critical inquiry, as a component of various aspects of daily life. Admittedly, the focus on archival sources such as lantern slides, newspaper announcements, flyers, articles in contemporary religious, spiritual, and secular journals, as well as historical instruction manuals for projectionists grant a far more nuanced insight into the ‘belonging’ aspect of faith. The equally interesting ‘believing’ pole of the discussion, ephemeral and traceable through scarce archival sources such as diary entries and opinion letters, while occasionally brought up in certain contributions, remains an intriguing topic for further research.2 The Scope and Structure of the Book The chapters in this volume offer a thematically and methodologically nuanced palette of insights into the landscape of religious, spiritual, and lantern practices in Western Europe by deploying four interrelated axes. Acknowledging the significance of the production and circulation of technology, the contributions, therefore, make an effort to position their particular case studies in the context of relevant associations, networks, institutions,

1 Vassilis Saroglou, ‘Believing, Bonding, Behaving, and Belonging: The Big Four Religious Dimensions and Cultural Variation’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 42.8 (2011): 1320–40. 2 Cf., for example, the contributions by Egelmeers and Teughels in this volume.

introduction

and editorial practices. Furthermore, this volume makes an argument for the analytical significance of the multimedia ecology that conditioned the lantern as a cultural product. This ecology consisted of the indispensable technological apparatus necessary for a slide projection, the accompanying supporting materials such as slide catalogues, editors’ notebooks, books, and other media that established a pool of resources as well as narrative and visual models that inspired individual projectionists, and oriented audiences. By exploring the decision-making processes involved in the broader issues of slide production, circulation and uses, the volume aims to tease out the various levels of the lantern medium’s embeddedness in regional (and even municipal) cultural history. Related to the multimedia ecology is the multimodality of experience(s) offered by the lantern. Various contributions in this volume take that into account by combining historical and modern theories of rhetoric, pedagogy, and the construction of sentiment and emotion, in order to decipher the lantern’s intended impact on the spectator. This focus is closely linked to the final research axis that the authors of this volume have been particularly attentive to: the visual and performative aspects of lantern projections. The authors of the chapters also have been careful to consider the dispositif of the lantern presentation which is a combination of the ‘performance context pole’ (e.g. lecturer, projectionist), the ‘textual pole’ (e.g. spoken words, written text, photographic or designed image), and the ‘user-spectator pole’ (e.g. spectators of a (missionary) show, attendees of an illustrated sermon, or pupils in (Sunday) school). The interrelations between these poles are determined by rhetoric strategies and communicative techniques, modes of address, and stimulated expectations, as well as the role assigned to the more affirmative and the more receptive members of the audience in the projection space, resulting in corresponding attitudes.3 As one of B-magic’s objectives is to insist on the multidimensional nature of lantern presentations, this approach is always present, sometimes openly, and sometimes more discretely. To sum up, this volume aims to guide readers, helping them to distinguish between different forms and formats of religious and spiritual lantern projections. The volume traces the evolution of topics and motifs of particular slide sets, addresses the co-existence of various relations between image and text, and highlights particular techniques (such as life-model slides), curious re-appropriation practices, and the cross-fertilization of, for example, scientific discourse and religious imagery. The volume is structured in four complementary sections. The first section, ‘An overview of the archives: Religious lantern heritage and its historical discursive frameworks’, presents four articles that provide an insight into the regional religious lantern heritage, which historical sources make that accessible, and which research disciplines have been deployed. This section offers translations of two landmark French studies by Isabelle Saint-Martin and Pierre Véronneau that construct an overview of the collections of slides, lantern-related historical press, theoretical insights on and practices of religious lantern uses. These texts, translated into English for the first time, will make a timely contribution to Anglophone lantern scholarship. Complementing them are more recent

3 Cf. Frank Kessler, ‘The Educational Magic Lantern Dispositif’, in A Million Pictures. Magic Lantern Slides in the History of Learning. KINtop Studies in Early Cinema 6, edited by Sarah Dellmann, and Frank Kessler (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2020), 181–91.

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studies on the Catholic ‘lanternscape’ in the Belgian context. The third chapter by Greet de Neef presents the fascinating Catholic archives of Leuven University (KADOC-KU Leuven), which hold thousands of Catholic lantern slides, outlining the importance and the challenges of lantern slide analysis for cultural history. In turn, Wouter Egelmeers’s contribution goes a step further by offering an investigation into the role of a particular archive of Catholic lantern slides (Sisters of the Holy Sepulcher) in the context of Catholic education in Belgium. Section two offers a range of articles that dig deeper into the theory, methodology, and analytical tools currently useful for making sense of religious lantern practices. Here, the religious lantern is positioned in the context of urban history and analysed through the lens of GIS mapping in the contribution by Margo Buylens-Terryn, Iason Jongepier, and Ilja Van Damme. The next contribution by Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk provides a different perspective of spatially-focused historical analysis by investigating the theoretical insights used by the clergy to integrate the lantern into the sacred space of the church. The following chapter by Nelleke Teughels expands the topic of theoretical and practical innovation with a study on early Catholic uses of the filmstrip (‘film fixe’) – a related, yet separate medium, explored by the Catholics partly concurrently with the lantern. Chapters 8 (Adeline Werry and Sébastien Fevry), 9 (Bart G. Moens and Dominique Nasta) and 10 (Natalija Majsova and Philippe Marion), in turn, analyse the multimodality of early twentieth-century Catholic lantern uses from the perspectives of media ecology, constructions of affect, and intericonicity in relation to visual rhetorical strategies. These three chapters all focus on a very rare and precious archival find, the ‘Bijou collection’ of slides found excellently preserved in the KADOC archives. Section three provides a much-needed contextualization of Catholic uses of the lantern by examining lantern practices at the intersection of religion, science, and popular visual culture (Kurt Vanhoutte) as well as occultism and shadow theatre (Evelien Jonckheere), along with an overview of the Freemasons’ uses of the lantern in the Belgian context (Sabine Lenk). This section aims to expand our understanding of religious practices, theories, dogma, and influence by pointing to the ways in which religion was embedded in the broader framework of discourses aiming to make sense of the world, from science to popular culture, and from the spiritual to the magical beam of light. Section four completes the volume with a selection of two historical texts that allow readers to engage with some of the source materials. A final remark on the vocabulary used. It may seem strange that one mechanical projection device has several denominations in this book: lantern, optical lantern, magic lantern, projection lantern. However, this very apparatus has served various purposes and was used in different ways over the 370 years since its invention. In this volume, the authors employ the denomination that best suits their research topic and argumentation. When the lantern is described as ‘magic’, its objective is to amaze, mesmerize, bewilder, and charm the eyes and the soul. When it is referred to as ‘optical’, the focus is on the apparatus’s scientific character, its use in a scholarly and academic environment, and its capacity to speak to the brain and to the intellect. The term ‘projection lantern’, in turn, stresses the device’s technical function: the projection of images onto a screen. Finally, ‘the lantern’ is the overarching, general term which invokes the instrument in the most neutral way, without specific connotations to those that use it, to its purpose, or its objectives.

introduction

To conclude our introduction: the topic of this book allows us to uncover just one of the many facets that characterize the nature of the lantern. Its fascinating bandwidth in practical use as a (mass) medium harbors numerous starting points for future studies, which hopefully will be reflected in the publication series initiated by Brepols Publishers that this volume has the honour to inaugurate. Acknowledgments We would like to thank all the members and former members of the B-magic consortium for their research, reflections, and ideas which made this volume possible. We would also like to thank Richard Abel, Isabelle Saint-Martin, Elisa Seghers, and Pierre Véronneau, who passed away prior to the publication of this book, and whose memory this volume honours, as well as all the anonymous reviewers that helped us throughout the editing process. We also want to thank FNRS for supporting the publication of this volume, and Alexander Sterkens and the Brepols publishing house for their excitement about this publication and their excellent expert support during the publication process. This book is part of a series of publications within the framework of ‘B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940)’, a project funded by Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Vlaanderen – FWO and Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Section 1

An Overview of the Archives Religious Lantern Heritage and its Historical Discursive Frameworks

Isabelle S a int-Mart in

A Gospel by Lantern Slides: Christian Pedagogy and the Magic Lantern

Introduction1 The vast majority of people have no time to read and do not like sermons […] I shall make these poor people read a Gospel that they enjoy […] a Gospel with talking examples and action; I shall make them see, like, and string together the facts of Christian doctrine; I shall capture their imagination and their hearts by means of their eyes.2 At the dawn of the twentieth century, these words by Abbot Georges Aillaud (1899) on the relative merits of text and pictures in the ordinary apostolate echo a famous letter by Pope Gregory the Great (540–604). The letter reminded an iconoclastic bishop of the necessary distinction between the cult of images and their didactic use: ‘[…] For what writing presents to readers, this picture presents to the uneducated who behold, since in it even the ignorant see what they ought to follow; in it the illiterate read’.3 Although abundantly repeated over many centuries – first, as the abbots sought to justify using



1 This text is the translation by Natalija Majsova of the article ‘Un évangile en projection lumineuse. Pédagogie chrétienne et lanterne magique’, in La pédagogie par l’image en France et au Japon, edited by Annie Renonciat, and Marianne Simon-Oikawa (Rennes: Rennes University Press, 2009), 107–24. It cross-references and expands Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘Sermons lumineux et projections dans les églises, 1884–1912’, Revue des Sciences religieuses ( July 2004), 381–400. Cf. also for the historical context Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘Usages catholiques de la lanterne magique dans la France des années 1900’, in Lumineuses projections! La projection fixe éducative, edited by Anne Quillien (Chasseneuil-du-Poitou: Réseau Canopé, 2016), 57–65. Particular consultation has been made of the collection of glass slides of the Bayard Editions (in the archives of the Maison de la Bonne Presse), the National Education Museum, the National Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions, as well as the various private collections conserved in the archives of Catholic and Lutheran churches or Protestant temples. 2 . Cf. Abbot Georges Aillaud. L’Enseignement de la religion par les projections lumineuses (Bar-le-Duc: L’Œuvre de Saint Paul, 1899), 59–60. 3 Epistola Sereno episcopo massiliensi. Translated in Daniele Menozzi. Les Images. L’Église et les arts visuels (Paris: Cerf, 1991), 75–77. English translation in Register of the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great. 0590-0604 – SS Gregorius Magnus – Registri Epistolarum, 98. Isabelle Saint-Martin • École pratique des Hautes Études, PSL, France Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 19–38 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129092 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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pictures for didactic purposes, and later in the interpretations of Émile Mâle4 – this vision of the image as a Paupers’ Bible (Biblia pauperum) must nevertheless be greatly nuanced.5 If Christian representations play an important role in Western art, the iconography of paintings and stained-glass windows, far from being a simple ‘translation’ of a story, intertwines the sources and different levels of symbolic interpretation of the text in a most complex manner. Taking after the philosophers of Antiquity, Christian thinkers particularly appreciated those qualities of the visual arts and that stem from these arts’ specificity – pictures are not only more easily accessible to people who cannot read. Above all, they are supposed to have a greater impact on memory and emotions, since the immediacy of perception in these spatial arts causes different emotional reactions than those elicited by the temporal arts.6 In turn, the nineteenth-century preachers, belonging on the long tradition of the Church, and relying on the words of St Thomas Aquinas or St Bonaventure, hoped to capture imaginations and hearts with the help of luminous views. To do so, they resumed a practice known since the very origins of this genre, a method that had been spread by the Jesuits, in particular. Inquiring about the conditions in which this umpteenth variation of the connection between Christianism and visual arts took place allows to clarify the specificities of using images for instruction in the context of a new medium. Moreover, such inquiry sheds light on the particular limitations involved, as well as the relation of this constellation with the resulting text. Before studying the different modes of this practice, it is necessary to briefly return to the context. In doing so, the intention is not to recount the history of projections, the broad brushstrokes of which are well known, but to locate the setting in which this particular use of the lantern for religious purposes took place. From the Magic Lantern to Luminous Projections The techniques and uses of the magic lantern have been studied for a number of years from the perspective of audiovisual media archaeology.7 For a long time, the invention of the lantern was attributed to the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) who in fact only





4 Cf. the criticism by Jérôme Baschet. ‘L’Iconographie médiévale. L’œuvre fondamentale d’Émile Mâle et le moment actuel’, in Émile Mâle (1862–1954). La Construction de l’œuvre: Rome et Italie, edited by André Vauchez (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2005), 273–88. 5 Cf. Jean Wirth. L’Image médiévale. Naissance et développements (VIe–XVe siècle) (Paris: Meridiens-Klincksieck, 1989). And for the use of this argument, cf. Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘L’image “bible des pauvres”, du postulat grégorien au mythe romantique, l’efficacité d’un argument fondateur’, in Efficacité/Efficacy: How to Do Things with Words and Images?, edited by Véronique Plesch, Jan Baetens, and Catarina MacLeod, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), 27–38. 6 On the aspects of the comparison of arts and theories of the image, which sparked off numerous writings which cannot be mentioned here, cf. Rensselaer Wright Lee. Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: Norton & Company, 1967). 7 Cf., in particular, Jacques Perriault. Mémoires de l’ombre et du son. Une archéologie de l’audiovisuel (Paris: Flammarion, 1981); Laurent Mannoni. Le Grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre. Archéologie du cinéma (Paris: Nathan, 1994). For the study of the slide repertoire, cf. Françoise Levie, and Élise Picard. Lanternes magiques et fantasmagories. Inventaire des collections (Paris: Musée National des Techniques/Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers, 1990); Ségolène Le Men (ed.). Lanternes magiques, tableaux transparents (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1995); Annie Renonciat. Images lumineuses. Inventaire des collections du Musée national de l’Éducation, vol. 1 (Rouen: Institut national de recherche pédagogique/Musée national de l’Éducation, 1995).

a  g os p el by lan ter n slides: c hr istian pedag ogy a nd the mag ic la ntern

popularized the process in his work on the art of light and shadow,8 whereas Furetière’s dictionary had recorded the term and explained the mystery in 1690: ‘a small optical machine which, in the dark, on a white wall, makes us see specters and monsters which are so horrible that if one were not aware of the secret, one might imagine that it is the result of magic’.9 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, missionaries knew how to make use of this illusion to bring to life terrifying visions, inspired by the memento mori (remember that you are mortal) of medieval art, in order to motivate the faithful to prepare themselves for the Last Judgment. Apart from these intentionally disquieting effects, peddlers at fairs also used the repertoire of traditional tales together, as well as stories from the Old and New Testaments as popularized by the Histoire Sainte (Sacred History) published as part of the Bibliothèque bleue (Blue Library), which had a predilection for striking stories, such as the fall and expulsion from Paradise, Joseph’s journey when he was sold by his brothers, or Samson’s adventures, which were easier to set to images. Nevertheless, parallel to these uses, the lantern remained an optical instrument, a scientific aid. At the end of the eighteenth century, science had, for various reasons, interested private tutors of members of the royal family, such as Madame de Genlis, the Count of Paroy, and even the Abbot of Nollet (1700–1790), who was tutor to the Duke of Savoy and eager to put pedagogy through images into practice. In the second half of the nineteenth century, these educational and recreational uses led to the creation of toy lanterns which fascinated children, as mentioned by Marcel Proust with regard to his young narrator in A la Recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). Technical improvements of the lantern allowed it to attract new audiences. As an instrument of knowledge, it invited people to look at the world through series of scientific views, which were very different from the phantasmagorical visions of the previous century. As a result, the term magic lantern began to seem inappropriate, as editors and scientists preferred to refer to luminous projections, which to better reflect new forms of ‘demonstration by image’.10 One of the first people to consider the vast undertaking of popularizing knowledge by means of the lantern was a clergyman, Abbot Moigno11 in the 1850s. Due to the distrust of Public Education officials,12 he only succeeded in opening his ‘Progress Room’ in 1872. In L’Art des projections (The Art of Projections) he demonstrated a method that takes the projected image as the foundation of all instruction, while commentary should never be cut off from the picture in sight. His ideas essentially concerned the sciences, history, and 8 Athanasius Kircher. Ars magna lucis et umbrae in decem libros digesta (Amsterdam: Johann Jansson, 1646). In the second edition in 1671 a plate illustrates the way the magic lantern worked. 9 Antoine Furetière. Dictionnaire universel, contenant généralement tous les mots français tant vieux que modernes et les termes de toutes les sciences et des arts (The Hague: A. et R. Leers, 1690). 10 In French, the old, nineteenth-century term is ‘démonstration par l’aspect’, cf., for example, Alfred Molteni’s thoughts on this in 1878 in his Instructions pratiques pour l’emploi des appareils de projection, quoted by Renonciat. Images lumineuses, 156. 11 François-Napoléon-Marie Moigno (1804–1884), cf. Michel Lagrée. ‘L’abbé Moigno, un vulgarisateur scientifique au XIXe siècle’, in Christianisme et Science, edited by Association française d’histoire religieuse contemporaine (Paris: Vrin, 1989), 167–82. 12 Which he demonstrates in the introduction to L’Art des projections, par M. l’Abbé Moigno (Paris: Bureau du Journal ‘Les Mondes’, Gauthier-Villars, 1872), I–III, here II.

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geography, and not religious topics. According to his approach, which did not separate the science of the world from the science of God, deciphering the book of the universe, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, from the microscopic view to the astronomer’s telescope, leads to the love of the Creator. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, images on glass, the preferred tool of scientific popularization, became a place of ideological confrontation in the controversial context of the Third Republic, as French history became the site of a symbolic rewriting, intended to consolidate the nation’s cultural unity.13 In 1881, the very secular League of Instruction (Ligue de l’enseignement, founded by Jean Macé in 1866) inaugurated popular lectures accompanied by projections and did not attempt to hide that it was fighting against what it defined as the Church’s obscurantism. The Church reacted with the help of militant editors, in particular the Maison de la Bonne Presse founded by the Assumptionist congregation with the intention to develop popular press in defense of faith.14 From 1896, it distributed thousands of lantern views and trained networks of lecturers in each diocese. These lecturers were mobilized by a periodical with the very evocative title of: Le Fascinateur (The Fascinator), which had published technical advice and encouragement to these new disciples from 1903. Evident from, the first General Conference of Catholic Work on Conferences and Projections held in 1905, all the Catholic movements of the time, despite their diversity, were concerned. In 1907, Le Fascinateur became the press organ for the Federation of Diocesan Works on Lectures and Projections.15 Effects of the Illustrated Word If projections on scientific and cultural subjects were quickly accepted, as the method seemed to offer priests the opportunity to reach a new audience by presenting various topics, the introduction of projections in the sanctuary was greeted with more reserve. However, the vast movement promoting lectures with projections which was spreading throughout France eventually advanced as far as sermons performed in churches. After several examples in the 1880s, in 1903 (cf. Fig. 1),16 some Parisian churches proposed lantern sermons accompanied by views on glass projected onto an unfolded cloth in front of the Communion rail. This sudden visual irruption during the sermon, the emblematic place of holy eloquence, which secured the glory of the orators of the Classical era, was of enormous symbolic

13 Cf. Christian Amalvi. De l’art et la manière d’accommoder les héros de l’histoire de France. Essai de mythologie nationale (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988). 14 Cf. Charles Monsch. ‘La Bonne Presse et l’Audiovisuel’, in L’Image Religieuse. Collection Musée Niépce (Chalonsur-Saône: Musée Nicéphore Niépce, 1986); cf. also Jacques André, and Marie André. ‘Le Rôle des Projections Lumineuses dans la Pastorale Catholique Française (1895–1914)’, in Une Invention du Diable? Cinéma des Premiers Temps et Religion, edited by Roland Cosandey, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning (Sainte-Foy, QC: Les Presses de l’Université Laval/Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 1992), 44–59. 15 Cf. the Catalogue général de la librairie (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1908), 18. It was also widely circulated in Quebec, cf. the English translation of Pierre Véronneau, ‘Le Fascinateur et la Bonne Presse: des médias catholiques pour publics francophones’ in this volume. Cf. also the chapter by Bart G. Moens on the Maison de la Bonne Presse in this book. 16 Le Pèlerin (29 mars 1903): 247. The projections were five metres and eight metres in diameter, cf. Anonymous. ‘Les Projections à l’Église’, Le Fascinateur 4 (April 1903): 98, quoted in Saint-Martin. ‘Sermons lumineux’, 386.

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Fig. 1. Projection in a Parisian church in 1903, Lantern sermons, drawing by Damblans: ‘The Descent from the Cross’ by Fra Bartolomeo, coloured glass slide, possibly based on Le Fascinateur 4 (April 1903): 98.

importance. ‘We no longer come to listen to sermons which are too often delivered in a language which people no longer understand’,17 said some. Others deplored the fact that the words of the magisterium should capitulate and be facilitated by an entertainer’s lantern unworthy of serving the cause of the faith. To the great talents who scorn pointless artifices, projection is merely an inferior form of public speech, allowing for childishness and cabotinage [sic] at the same time, something, as it has been noted, like Epinal prints in public speaking.18 The partisans of projections, however, responded by reinforcing the Gregorian postulate’s didactic argument that images are the Bible of the poor, by emphasizing the power of light: Luminous projections have an advantage over mural pictures. This light which shines into the darkness and this illuminated, brilliant image have something both mysterious and dazzling which attracts, captivates, and fascinates the spirit, consequently engraving in it the teaching which one wants to instil.19

17 Abbot Parmentier. ‘Projections dans les églises’, Le Fascinateur 46 (October 1906): 324. 18 Catechistic Congres in 1909, report by Abbé Joseph Charleux. ‘Les projections lumineuses et le catéchisme’, in Léon Mury. Guide des catéchismes (Reims: Action populaire, 1911), 188. 19 Abbot Braun. ‘Rapport de M. Abbé Braun sur les projections’, Congrès de l’Œuvre des catéchismes (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1908), 320.

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Fig. 2. With this redemptive sacrifice, the cross illuminates the word, echoing the theme of ‘Christ Light of the World’; cf. ‘Vision du sang rédempteur’ (‘A vision of redemptive blood’), slide from the series ‘Triomphe de l’eucharistie’ (‘Triumph of the Eucharist’), Maison de la Bonne Presse, c. 1920.

The dematerialized image, projected by the beam of light which passes through the shadows to take shape on the canvas in a fleeting incarnation, becomes a metaphor of the light which penetrates the glass like God who penetrates substances and bodies. This metaphorical network culminated in the figure of the Word of God, Christ the Light of the World, according to the prologue to the Gospel of St John. Abbot Moigno, who wanted to ‘inundate intelligence with divine light which would change into an intense and invigorating warmth in people’s hearts, with a return to faith’20 glorifies in his own way this ‘light which leads to life’ ( John 8, 12) (cf. Fig. 2). Those who might have used iconoclastic arguments against these unwarranted objects in the churches were countered with the example of Protestantism. As early as 1899, Abbot Aillaud indicated that ‘in America, for several years, Bible lessons and moral instruction have been given with illuminated projections in a great number of Protestant churches,

20 Abbot Moigno. ‘Les Splendeurs de la Foi illustrées’, Cosmos – Les Mondes. Revue hebdomadaire des sciences et leurs applications aux arts et à l’industrie par Abbé Moigno, thirty-first year, third series, second volume, number 1, MayAugust 1882 (Paris: Bureau du Journal Cosmos-Les-Mondes, 1882): 43.

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Fig. 3. Cover of Le Fascinateur, organ of educational recreations of the Maison de la Bonne Presse (1 January 1904). (Source: Collection of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris).

Fig. 4. Cover of Le Fascinateur (1 June 1904).

and the results are marvellous’.21 Here, Catholic preachers, always keen to discover their adversary’s strong points, allude to an educational reality which was well documented in the Anglo-Saxon world. Gospel Societies, which had undergone a notable revival in the middle of the nineteenth century, provided the French Protestants in the Cévennes and Vivarais regions with lanterns and glass slides with biblical or edificatory subjects. It is true that the luminous sermon appealed to a public of all ages and even succeeded in making men return to church22 since they were as fascinated as children by the magic of the projected images. The cover of Le Fascinateur seemed to bear witness to this development. The 1903 issue (cf. Fig. 3) showcases the beam of light from the lantern in the centre of the page, highlighting, by the effect of redundancy of the signified and the signifier, the title ‘Fascinator’, in twisted Gothic letters, evocative of phantasmagoria, which had itself become an object of fascination where all the gazes converged. At the bottom of the page, children and a young woman, seen from behind, are raising their eyes to this luminous beam where dancing cherubim carry a projector and a phonograph, two instruments of

21 Abbot Aillaud. L’Enseignement de la religion par les projections lumineuses, 60. 22 Cf., for example, G. Clair. ‘A Sainte-Elisabeth’, Le Fascinateur 4 (April 1903): 98–99, and G. Clair. ‘A Sainte-Anne’, Le Fascinateur 4 (April 1903): 99.

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modernity. Fitted inside an ‘art nouveau’ style frame, this drawing by Achille Lemot,23 the former illustrator of the Chat noir (Black Cat) who had become a regular collaborator of Maison de la Bonne Presse publications, placed the lantern in a dreamlike, magical universe, still close to childhood. In June 1904, the cover changed (cf. Fig. 4). The projector, now held by an angel of a more rigid constitution, was now just an instrument which is no longer the focus of attention, but which directs its light towards the monument of true faith – Saint Peter of Rome – which it illuminates. The spectators are presented either from behind or in profile inviting the reader’s gaze to place itself behind them. In this crowd, a child stands out, the first to be fascinated by the power of the image, followed by the mother and then a group of men, first those dressed simply (in workmen’s overalls) and then those in more bourgeois attire (with hats). This could be read as the illustration of a strategy: visuals first of all attract the children and then the rest of the family, in accordance with the preconceived notion that the image would entice simple people and children in particular. Or should we consider this a staged parable? Children and humble people would be the first to enter the ‘Kingdom of God’, while the stronger minds, who pride themselves in preferring rational explanations and not succumbing to emotions, come last. To reach the Father, one should rediscover the soul of a child!24 This change of the cover image was not commented upon, but it appeared in the issue which recounted the visit of Guillaume-Michel Coissac,25 the journal’s main editor, to Rome, where Pius X ‘allowed himself to be shown the magic lantern’. The journal’s sub-title, with its graphically subdued, still remained the ‘organ of educational recreation of the Bonne Presse’ – but the apostolic dimension was now more clearly displayed. Nevertheless, complementing the speech wish several images was not enough to persuade. To this end, illustrated sermons needed to be constructed following a new rhetoric. The secret, as explained by one of the orators, Canon Henri Chamayou, was not to use the images for a lecture but to construct a real sermon: ‘I proceed by making my audience work almost as much as myself in the association of ideas which make up my sermon’.26 The screen thus became ‘the teacher’s blackboard’27 and made it possible to project the plan of the sermon and the text of the hymns, in addition to the images. An ordinary sermon would include around sixty pictures, but for a large Lenten address, the number could go up to one hundred and fifty views.28 The advantage of projection seems clear in the context of catechism. While the most widespread printed editions of catechistic pictures, such as those by Tolra or the Bonne Presse, measured 35 cm × 48 cm or 66 cm × 40 cm, ‘projections showed these same images with the same touch and the

23 The picture is not signed, but the Le Pèlerin (1363 (15 February 1903): 120–21) mentions ‘the frontispiece of the new review, a little chef d’œuvre by Lemot’. 24 Cf. the Evangelists Mark 10, 13–16; Matthew 19, 13–15; Luke 18, 15–17. 25 La rédaction. ‘L’Œuvre des projections au Vatican’, Le Fascinateur 18 ( June 1904): 165–68. Guillaume-Michel Coissac, director of the projection service up until 1919, published La Théorie et la pratique des projections (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, n.d. [1906]) as well as a Manuel pratique du Conférencier-projectionniste (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, n.d. [1908]), and in 1925 one of the first histories of the cinema. 26 Canon Henri Chamayou. ‘Projection et prédication’, Les Conférences 186 (1908): 30–32. 27 Ibid. 28 Canon Henri Chamayou. ‘Les Sermons avec projections. Deuxième Congrès général des Œuvres catholiques de Conférences et de Projections, 19–22 Février 1906’, Les Conférences 129 (3 May 1906): 309–11.

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same colours, but in a format of 2 or 3 metres’.29 There were often some twenty, thirty, or fifty children in a group, since ‘all the three years of preparation for Holy Communion were together, in just one group’. This method made it possible to associate elements of the liturgy such as ‘the mass ceremony, the administration of the sacraments’30 with the biblical or catechistic images, as well as […] images that address timely issues. […] After projecting the picture [of the] sacrament of Holy Orders, I will follow by screening the portraits of Leo XIII, Pius X, Cardinal Perraud, and His Grace our bishop; I will show the little and the great seminaries of our diocese, the successive ordinations, with prostration, and the different functions. My dear children will then better understand these ecclesiastical functions.31 Here, the image had a documentary effect, allowing to specify the points addressed or the liturgical purposes mentioned, as well as to refer to timely subjects, brought up by people’s portraits. This use of the projected image was inspired by the principle of ‘object lessons’, and involved proceeding from the concrete to the abstract, beginning the session with pictures. The uses of images in illustrated lectures varied and were based on editorial practices used in engraved books. Advise on giving such lectures willingly compared the organization of a projection with the layout of plates which could appear ‘in the text’ or be rejected ‘outside of the text’.32 But the practice of teaching by images was not limited to objects or persons that could easily be shown by a photographic or other kind of image. It also involved older methods of visual pedagogy, which lecturers liked to cite in order to support their modern methods. Accordingly, the Jesuit Gabriel Le Bail reminds us, with reference to Nicolaus Sanderus: ‘There is no easier method to teach the holy scriptures than to confront the eyes with paintings of the heroes’ main actions’,33 because ‘sight helps the ear, and learning is facilitated if information is taken in by both these senses’, he specifies, summing up the Aristotelian scholastic adage, according to which nothing is properly understood if it has not passed through the senses. The Bible in Pictures: From Print to Screen The growing popularity of lectures led to the production of numerous slide series, which very often put old pictures onto glass. The process was already widely used for traditional imagery, and Epinal prints, very popular at fairground shows ever since the first uses of the lantern. Biblical subjects were not uncommon, as important episodes of the Old and New Testaments were integrated into the repertoire of morally instructive stories. These were

29 Mury, Guide des catéchismes, 189. 30 Ibid., 191. 31 Ibid. 32 Gabriel Le Bail. Peut-on employer les Projections lumineuses dans les retraites? (Enghien: Bibliothèque des Exercices de Saint Ignace, 1907), 29. 33 Nicolaus Sanderus. De Typica et honoraria imaginum adoratione libri duo, quorum prior in adorandis sanctorum imaginibus nullum esse idolatriae periculum, posterior docet figuralem quandam adorationem illis deberi (Lovanii: apud J. Foulerum, 1569), cited by Le Bail. Peut-on employer les projections lumineuses, 6.

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adapted to the screen as the lantern would showcase a succession of scenes synthesizing a striking episode, this naive illustration mimicking the layout of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Bible Figures. Projections of such, accompanied by the appropriate story, led to a kind of oral collective reading. The captivating projected image encouraged one’s attention to focus on the emblematic scene, which condensed the crux of the action and the fate of the protagonists and set the narration to a specific rhythm with these many ‘freeze frames’. But the editors’ ambitions were not limited to the reproduction of classical works. They aspired to create a real apostolate through beauty, by constructing a sort of ideal anthology of the religious subjects painted by the masters exhibited in important European museums.34 Artistic popularization and education were intertwined to put art at the service of faith, an art which would be accessible to everyman due to the democratic effect of the lantern: Educating taste by means of these paintings borrowed from the grand masters of art, the appearance of the most touching scenes in religious and national history, the awakening of the strongest emotions of which the human mind is capable – all these were united to create a real festival of art and Christianity out of these representations, accessible to all.35 Photographic reproduction on glass made it possible to construct this pocket museum which the lecturers could put to use according to their inspiration. They were then free to rearrange the pictures of the great Biblical stories without having to follow the predefined order of a book with a limited number of engravings. Available evidence reveals a new way of illustrating these famous texts, which was very different from choosing one main scene condensing the story. A case in point is the story of Hagar, who, abandoned in the desert, sees an angel coming to her rescue, announcing that her son will be the father of a great people. The subject was popular with painters because of its dramatic and emotional aspects, but they only retained one aspect of the story. In contrast, the Maison de la Bonne Presse offered a series of views by artists of different Schools in order to provide a visual narrative which would follow the Biblical narration as closely as possible. ‘Abraham sending away Hagar’ by Adriaan Van der Werff (1659–1722)36 was followed by ‘Hagar in the Desert’ by Eustache Le Sueur (1616–1655),37 succeeded by ‘Conversation with the Angel’ by Giovanni Gaspare Lanfranco (1582–1647).38 The rhythm of these images unified the story, and, at the same time, segmented it into a series of closely grouped sequences, anticipating the first strip films a.k.a. films fixes.39 Effectively, if illustrations functioned as an entertaining supplement to the text, lantern slides, central to the session, inflected the narration, which came to resemble a ‘narrative in pictures’. Admittedly, these images were accompanied by the words of the lecturer, who maintained an essential role, as evident from the advice given to apprentice projectionists. Nevertheless, the visual medium which made it possible to grasp audience’s attention influenced the form of the speech. 34 In 1909 alone, the series ‘Sujets religieux d’après les maîtres’, which included the most remarkable works in French, Belgian, Italian and other museums’ increased by 600 copies: Guillaume-Michel Coissac. ‘Le Service des Projections de la Bonne Presse – Rapport technique de M. Coissac’, Le Fascinateur 84 (December 1909): 392. 35 La Croix de Provence (19 June 1898). 36 ‘De wegzending van Hagar en Ismael (Genesis 21:16–21)’, c. 1696. 37 Possibly ‘Agar et Ismaël secourus par l’ange’. 38 Possibly ‘Agar nel deserto’/‘Agar secourue par l’ange dans le désert’. 39 Cf. Nelleke Teughels’s contribution in this volume on the film fixe.

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A variety of images illustrating almost every verse of a particular episode seemed to be preferred over a synthetic layout. This could lead to the modification of the form of the didactic pictures. The example of a catechistic series edited by the Maison de la Bonne Presse in the 1880s, and then adapted into a slide series is significant here.40 In this case, the image of the Creation recomposed, in an original and synoptic manner, the first pages of one of the most famous illustrated Bibles of the century, that of the Nazarene painter Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld.41 Published in several scholarly and popular editions between 1850 and 1860, it was the principal competitor of the Bible illustrated by Gustave Doré,42 edited in 1866 by Mame. One hundred and sixty views by Schnorr and two hundred and thirty-one by Doré indicate that, most often, all the engravings were transferred to glass plates. Real ‘best-sellers’, these two series of biblical views could be found at the Maison de la Bonne Presse as well as Mazo editions, or in the catalogue of generalist publishers, such as Molteni and their successors Radiguet and Massiot.43 However, the images by Schnorr, who asserted that he did not want to ‘create images that would be put in a Bible, but rather a Bible in Pictures’44 were especially valued in the context of religious projections. Directly inspired by Raphael, this Bible was considered less original than Doré’s, but although less dramatic and theatrical, it seemed to be more respectful of man’s place in a trusting relationship with God. This publication by a Protestant painter therefore also enjoyed great success in Catholic circles. Its influence is also evident in the 1884 creation-themed plate of the Grand catéchisme en images (Great Catechism in Pictures), edited in chromolithography by the Maison de la Bonne Presse (cf. Fig. 5). The narrative of this plate is organized in a series of concentric circles symbolizing the perfection of divine creation. The original couple, Adam and Eve, is at the center, invited to name to the creatures of the animal world. The succession of divine gestures summarizes the action in the same way as pre-cinema pop-up books very much in fashion at the time. On each side of God, the Creator, represented with folded arms and resting on the seventh day, the sun and the moon are represented as simple lights – as stressed in the Genesis. The fixed image could thus serve as a starting point of the lesson (in the interrogatory mode: ‘what do we see here?’, followed by an explanation) or as a final summary where visual synthesis served as a precious memory aid intended to anchor certain ideas. The editors of catechisms in pictures discussed the advantages of the two methods45 which were used for luminous projections.

40 For other aspects of this series, cf. Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘Du vitrail à la lanterne magique, le catéchisme en image’, in Lanternes magiques, tableaux transparents, edited by Ségolène Le Men (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1995), 105–20. 41 Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794–1872), a Protestant, was part of a group of painters known as Nazarenes, who strived to reestablish the ideal of Christian art, cf. Cordula Grewe. Painting the sacred in the age of romanticism (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009). 42 Cf. Annie Renonciat. La Vie et l’œuvre de Gustave Doré (Paris: ACR éditions, 1983); cf. also Dan Malan. Gustave Doré: Adrift on Dreams of Splendors (St Louis: Malan Classical Enterprises Publishing Co., 1995), 239–53. 43 Cf., for example, Alfred Molteni. Catalogue des tableaux sur verre (1880), 18; for Gustave Doré’s Bible in an abridged version, which only includes about one hundred slides, and for Radiguet and Massiot who succeeded Molteni in 1903, cf., for example, the nineth edition of the Catalogue des vues sur verre, 16. 44 Cf. preface in Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Biblia sacra, tabulis illustrata (Paris: A. W. Schulgen, 1860). 45 Cf. on this aspect Isabelle Saint-Martin. Voir, savoir, croire. Catéchismes et pédagogie par l’image au XIXe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2003), 282–87.

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This large board was extremely popular and was distributed widely. However, the didactic overload of this theological summary which aimed at condensing everything into a single image, was incompatible with the dynamic of a projection, which could not keep the same slide on display for a long time and had difficulty with this multitude of details. The lecturers preferred to go back to Schnorr’s engravings, which deconstructed Fig. 5. ‘The Creation’, subjects into simpler narrative episodes which Grand Catechism in were easier to read (cf. Fig. 6). Pictures (Paris: La Maison de la Bonne Similarly, medieval-inspired borders Presse, 1884). that framed the board in this series, were painted over, creating ‘a black frame which gives more value and relief to the projected image’46 – and the compositions were usually refocused on the main subject. The disappearance of these multiple registers on the glass slides deprived the image of part of its significance and called for the oral commentary of the lesson, as the slides could only illustrate some of its aspects. Focused on the main subject, such an image was clearer, easier to read and no doubt avoided the excesses of a dogmatic synthesis, but in gaining in intelligibility it possibly lost some of its interpretative richness. Precisely this capacity to highlight a subject, to break down multiplicity, was considered as a great advantage of the projections – ‘the images are larger and clearer and do not get mixed up in an artistic jumble like they do in a stained-glass window’47 – and as a formal imperative that should be respected. Advice to the projectionists insisted on the fact that the images should be large and that they should avoid ‘pictures with insignia’.48 Furthermore, […] the large image formed on the screen by the lantern should possess all the qualities of a painting and in particular the unity of composition […]. The print itself should be corrected by removing all the details which are detrimental to the general effect and divert attention from the main subject […].49 This approach seems to have gradually become dominant in the course of the century in a tendency to neglect the importance of visual trajectories, favoring the effect of equivalence, where the image is reduced to a single striking scene. Diverting attention and modifying use went hand in hand. From the polyptych composition which exposed scenes to the influence of the senses and offered a synthesis which gathered all the elements of a lesson, glass slides developed toward a succession of images which were ordered in a narrative sequence articulated with the help of oral commentary.

46 Guillaume-Michel Coissac. Manuel pratique du Conférencier-projectionniste (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1908), 382. 47 Guillaume-Michel Coissac. ‘La Marche de l’Image’, Le Fascinateur 46 (October 1906): 312. 48 Abbot Aillaud. L’Enseignement de la religion par les projections lumineuses, 43. 49 Albert Reyner. ‘Le Montage des Diapositives’, Le Fascinateur 44 (August 1906): 260.

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Fig. 6. ‘The Creation’, after Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, glass slide, Maison de la Bonne Presse, between 1900–1910.

Seeing Beyond the Visible: Abolishing Material and Temporal Distances The importance of reuse should not make one forget that new images were also created, specifically designed for these new media – the projector and soon the cinematograph. The luminous image which dispelled the shadows was inseparable from a magical effect, as indicated by its original name. Far from completely disappearing with scientific progress, this aura gave it evocative powers unknown to paper illustrations. Religious projection slide series seem to have aimed at doing away with the constraints of reality in order to lead the spectators into a different relationship with space and time and make them part of an experience of the visible which went beyond material limitations. For example, certain Protestant series, fairly uncommon in France but circulated by the Anglo-Saxon Gospel societies, played on the contrast between an ordinary daily routine, a photo-book-like account presenting a short moralizing tale on subjects such as the struggle against drunkenness and debauchery,50 and the sudden appearance of the face of the Lord, the faithful shepherd. He entered to remind the audience of the spiritual demands in the

50 Cf., for example, the Mac Hall Mission series on temperance, presented in the exhibition on ‘Religions and Popular Traditions’ in the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires (4 December 1979–3 March 1980); cf. Jean Cuisenier, Françoise Lautman, and Josselyne Chamarat (eds). Religions et traditions populaires (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Musée national des Arts et Traditions Populaires, 1979), 238.

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banality of everyday life. In the Catholic series, the ‘presence effect’ (‘mise en presence’) operated in various registries, distinguishing the different forms of the repertoire of slides: a. The simplest one seems to have been the photographic realism of reports on missionary destinations. These were very abundant, accounting for a large percentage of available projection slides. However, the aim was not only to allow the faithful to discover new scenery, but to transport them in thought to the reality of far-off missions, inciting them to make donations and say prayers to help missionary actions. These slides also facilitated the argument of the universal presence of Christianism. Slides, depicting a mass carried out by Eskimos in a series of pictures on ‘The Triumph of the Eucharist’ (cf. Fig. 7), for example, allowed to activate the effect of contrast. b. Abolition of material distances which allowed Africa to suddenly appear in the parish room of a French village, corresponded to the abolition of temporal data. This made it possible to bring into presence an oneiric world, featuring important episodes from the Saviour’s life. Several choices were therefore possible. One of the newer aspects involved attempts to reconstruct the picturesque Orient, resembling the one that pilgrims – increasing numbers of which had been visiting the Holy Land since the end of the nineteenth century – could have seen. Apart from the influence of Orientalist painters, a taste for the illusion of the real could be noted, resembling the first scenes of silent movies, as well as the preoccupation of archaeological and ethnological quests for authenticity, characteristic of, for example, James Tissot’s illustrated Vie de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (Life of our Lord Jesus Christ) published in 1896. These circumstances account for the success of the tableaux vivants, or living pictures, where people posed dressed like Bedouins in appropriately decorated surroundings. The Maison de la Bonne Presse took up this genre, inaugurated in 1908 with ‘La Pastorale de Noël’ (‘The Christmas Bible Study’), often using scenarios by Honoré Le Sablais (the pseudonym of an Assumptionist priest)51 and decorations by Amédée Vignola, the former illustrator of the cabaret Le Chat Noir. ‘La Passion de Notre Seigneur’ (‘The Passion of Our Lord’), was thus available in 1909 on glass slides or on film that could be bought by the metre depending on the scenes one wanted to see.52 The appearance of the Angel to Zacharias involves an effort to faithfully reproduce the Hebrew attire as well as the illusion of the angel levitating in a halo of light (cf. Fig. 8). The tradition of ‘shadow plays’ for which Lemot, also a former collaborator at the Chat Noir, was well-known, had not disappeared and it influenced the staging of certain tableaux vivants.53 The image was thus dematerialized by the effects of silhouettes and backlighting, with carefully crafted chiaroscuro contrasts which sanctified the scene. The black and white sobriety of the beginnings of religious cinema sought to keep its lyricism, while the coloured images, thanks to the rich palette of the paintings on glass,54 almost heralded the first Hollywood re-enactments.

51 For more an Abbot Honoré Le Sablais, cf. Bart G. Moens’s contribution in this volume. 52 The first film produced by the Maison de la Bonne Presse, cf. the different prizes in Anonymous. ‘La Passion en Cinématographie’, Le Fascinateur 85 ( January 1910): 60. 53 For more on the Chat Noir and shadow play, cf. the contribution by Evelien Jonckheere in this volume. 54 The slides were generally hand-painted in the workshops of the Maison de la Bonne Presse, even if since the 1870s, a method for chromolithographic transfer (decalcomania) enabled the multiplication of coloured slides.

a  g os p el by lan ter n slides: c hr istian pedag ogy a nd the mag ic la ntern

Fig. 7. ‘Annunciation’, glass slide, Maison de la Bonne Presse, c. 1910.

Fig. 8. ‘Appearance to Zacharius’, glass slide, Maison de la Bonne Presse, c. 1910.

Whichever method was chosen, it was essential to put together a coherent series. Tastes changed over the years, and the juxtaposition of master paintings seemed too complicated, as well as liable to be detrimental to the illusion of presence that continuous action could keep up. New priorities directing the right choice of subjects were specified by a critic, Abbot Henri Braun, in Le Fascinateur. While considering that Schnorr’s pictures were among the best, he added that none of them really fulfilled the desired conditions of historical veracity, faithfulness to the writing, or the unity of composition: […] How do you expect the minds of working people, children, and women to know where they are amidst this multiplicity of artistic and archaeological interpretations?

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Their brains are not like the crystalline eyes, which immediately adapt to the sight of objects, either near or far away. […] What is needed is a continuity of landscapes and types, designed by a single artist, so that the scenes are deeply engraved in the eyes, […] And in this way your spectators will live – that’s the modern word – the pictures that are represented and believe that they are part of them.55 So, ‘to live the action’ was the identified ambition; it was not enough to simply get rid of time and space to place the scene in front of the spectators’ eyes. The spectator also had to be transported into the heart of the drama, made to feel, beyond the words and the narrative, the emotions experienced by the different characters. This ambition was nothing new, but projections provided it with a new generalization which tended to offer the faithful expectations close to those of mystical experience, or at least to the more modest practice of the Jesuit spiritual exercises which involved place-creation using mental images. Indeed, the projected image ‘gave the illusion of reality’56 to a greater extent than the drawing or chromolithography; during illuminated preaching and sermons, the projection seemed to be able to arouse more emotion. Faced with the images of the Passion, the audience trembled when they saw Christ arrested and at times ‘tears appeared in the corners of their eyes’.57 In this way, the projected image aroused devotion by appealing to people’s senses, and favored the faculty of the imagination, compensating for the lukewarmness of emotions. It could then be used in meditation exercises and retreats. Admittedly, the Bibliothèque des Exercices de Saint Ignace (The Book of Exercises of Saint Ignatius), which brought up this question, specified that for audiences accustomed to spiritual meditation, projections would be of little use, but for simpler audiences, they would elevate the imagination, allowing it to reach spheres where it could be succeeded by will and intelligence. Therefore, the appeal of projections should not be disregarded: Before they are understood, spiritual and invisible things can only be expressed by comparison with known objects. This is why nobody is permitted to deride what is offered in a corporal image, but each person must strive to deserve to extract the smooth intelligence and the taste of the delights of the spirit from these corporal images.58 The old engravings of the Evangelicae historiae imagines (Illustrations of the Gospel Stories), a collection of plates ordered by the Jesuit Jérôme Nadal and published in Antwerp between 1593 and 1595, were adapted into a glass version to this effect.59 The booklets used by persons in retreat put forward the merits of projections which ‘make it possible to offer the eyes an impression consistent with the impression offered to one’s ears at the same time’.60 In particular, these booklets resonate with Saint Ignatius’s recommendations in the Second

55 Abbot Braun. ‘Rapport de l’abbé Braun. “Les sujets religieux dans les projections”. Premier congrès général des Œuvres catholiques de Conférences et de Projections, 6–9 février 1905’, Les Conférences 102 (1905): 183. 56 Mury. Guide des catéchismes, 190. 57 Un Directeur du Grand Séminaire d’Angoulême. Excerpt from Patronage (Mai 1908), quoted in ‘Les Projections à l’église’, Revue du clergé français (15 July 1908): 232–34. 58 Le Bail. Peut-on employer les projections lumineuses, 25. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., 29.

a  g os p el by lan ter n slides: c hr istian pedag ogy a nd the mag ic la ntern

way to pray, ‘with eyes closed or fixed on the same point, without letting them wander from side to side’.61 To attain the invisible through the visible. If this appeal to meditation was connected to a specific use, resorting to glass slides in religious instruction was an attempt to go beyond the simple acquisition of knowledge, with the help of images as a narrative or documentary medium. The aim was to engrave the pictures of faith more deeply in the imagination. One of the reporters at the 1907 Diocesan Congress hoped: When the abstract definitions of the catechism which have been painfully pressed into their brains dry up and come unstuck […], there will remain, in the depths of their souls, a few beneficial visions that we will have put there in reserve.62 Playing on the different didactic, mnemonic, and emotional aspects that Catholic tradition lent to instruction by images, luminous projections were able to establish themselves as a means of popular evangelization, which was particularly adapted to Pope Leo’s appeal to find ‘the people’ again.63 The ban on projections in churches in 1912, for fear of misuse and confusion with a concert hall,64 put an end to the ‘luminous sermons’, but not to the vast movement of illustrated lectures which paved the way to film screenings in parish halls. However, the latter did not oust the lantern from teachers’ hearts: ‘The visual impression [there] is too fleeting […] projections [leave] a clear, precise, and durable impression and serve the same favorable purpose as engravings or illustrations do in a book’.65 In this way, the editors of Le Fascinateur delighted in imagining that ‘if St Paul came back, he would be a projectionist!’.66 Bibliography Aillaud, Georges. L’enseignement de la religion par les projections lumineuses (Bar le Duc: L’Œuvre de Saint Paul, 1899) Amalvi, Christian. De l’art et la manière d’accommoder les héros de l’histoire de France. Essai de mythologie nationale (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988) André, Jacques, and Marie André. ‘Le Rôle des Projections Lumineuses dans la Pastorale Catholique Française (1895–1914)’, in Une Invention du Diable? Cinéma des Premiers Temps

61 Ibid. 62 Charles Thellier de Poncheville. ‘Rapport sur les conférences avec projection de M. l’abbé Thellier de Poncheville’, Troisième Congrès diocésain de Paris. Compte rendu (27, 28 et 29 mai 1907) (Paris: P. Féron-Vrau, 1907), 398. 63 Cf. the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, speech given at St Peter’s in Rome on 15 May 1891. 64 Published by Cardinal Gaetano de Lai. ‘Decretum circa actiones scenicas in ecclesiis’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Commentarium Officiale, fourth year, fourth volume (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1912): 724. Cf. La Rédaction. ‘Projections dans les églises’, Le Fascinateur 122 (February 1913): 35–36, in the case of France, just after the Law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, it was also a question of ‘not making the churches serve for uses that were foreign to religion, so as not to give an argument to Masonic and radical sects, which also demand to use it’. 65 Guillaume-Michel Coissac. ‘Projections… Cinéma?’, Le Fascinateur 124 (April 1913): 102. 66 Guillaume-Michel Coissac. ‘L’œuvre des projections lumineuses à la Maison de la Bonne Presse’, Le Fascinateur 1 ( January 1903): 5.

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et Religion, edited by Roland Cosandey, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning (Sainte-Foy, QC: Les Presses de l’Université Laval/Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 1992), 44–59 Anonymous. ‘Nouveau testament. Extrait du catalogue Général des Projections Lumineuses’, Le Fascinateur 1 ( January 1903): 99 ——. ‘Les Projections à l’Église’, Le Fascinateur 4 (April 1903): 97–98 ——. ‘La Passion en Cinématographie’, Le Fascinateur 85 ( January 1910): 60 Baschet, Jérôme. ‘L’Iconographie médiévale. L’œuvre fondamentale d’Émile Mâle et le moment actuel’, in Émile Mâle (1862–1954). La Construction de l’œuvre: Rome et Italie (Actes du colloque des 17 et 18 juin 2002), edited by André Vauchez (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2005), 273–88 Braun, Henri. ‘Rapport de l’abbé Braun: “Les sujets religieux dans les projections”, Premier général des Œuvres catholiques de Conférences et de Projections, 6–9 février 1905’, Les Conférences 102 (1905): 183 ——. ‘Rapport de M. l’Abbé Braun sur les projections’, Congrès de l’Œuvre des catéchismes (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1908) Catalogue général de la librairie (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1908) Chamayou, Henri. ‘Les Sermons avec projections. Deuxième Congrès général des Œuvres catholiques de Conférences et de Projections, 19–22 Février 1906’, Les Conférences 129 (3 May 1906): 309–11 ——. ‘Projections et prédication’, Les Conférences 186 (1908): 30–32 Clair, G. ‘A Sainte-Elisabeth’, Le Fascinateur 4 (April 1903): 98–99 ——. ‘A Sainte-Anne’, Le Fascinateur 4 (April 1903): 99 Coissac, Guillaume-Michel. ‘L’Œuvre des projections lumineuses à la Maison de la Bonne Presses’, Le Fascinateur 1 ( January 1903): 3–5 ——. ‘La Marche de l’Image’, Le Fascinateur 46 (October 1906): 311–13 ——. Manuel pratique du Conférencier-Projectionniste (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1908) ——. ‘Le Service des Projections de la Bonne Presse – Rapport technique de M. Coissac’, Le Fascinateur 84 (December 1909): 389–95 ——. ‘Projections… Cinéma?’, Le Fascinateur 124 (April 1913): 101–03 Cuisenier, Jean, Françoise Lautman, and Josselyne Chamarat (eds). Religions et traditions populaires (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Musée national des Arts et Traditions Populaires, 1979) De Lai, Gaetano. ‘Decretum circa actiones scenicas in ecclesiis’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Commentarium Officiale, fourth year, fourth volume (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1912), 724 (https://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/documents/AAS-04-1912-ocr.pdf, [accessed 8 February 2022]) Furetière, Antoine. Dictionnaire universel, contenant généralement tous les mots français tant vieux que modernes et les termes de toutes les sciences et des arts (The Hague: A. et R. Leers, 1690) Grewe, Cordula. Painting the Sacred in the Age of Romanticism (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009) Kircher, Athanasius. Ars magna lucis et umbrae in decem libros digesta (Amsterdam: Johann Jansson, 1646) Lagrée, Michel. ‘L’abbé Moigno, un vulgarisateur scientifique au XIXe siècle’, in Christianisme et Science, edited by Association française d’histoire religieuse contemporaine (Paris: Vrin, 1989), 167–82 La rédaction. ‘L’Œuvre des projections au Vatican’, Le Fascinateur 18 ( June 1904): 165–68

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——. ‘Projections dans les églises’, Le Fascinateur 122 (February 1913): 35–36 Le Bail, Gabriel. Peut-on employer les projections lumineuses dans les retraites ? (Enghien : Bibliothèque des Exercices de Saint Ignace, 1907) Lee, Rensselaer Wright. Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: Norton & Company, 1967) Le Men, Ségolène (ed.). Lanternes magiques, tableaux transparents (Paris : Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1995) Leo XIII. Rerum Novarum (15 May 1891) Levie, Françoise, and Elise Picard. Lanternes magiques et fantasmagories. Inventaire des collections (Paris : Musée National des Techniques/Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers, 1990) Malan, Dan. Gustave Doré: Adrift on Dreams of Splendors (St Louis: Malan Classical Enterprises Publishing Co., 1995) Mannoni, Laurent. Le Grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre. Archéologie du cinéma (Paris : Nathan, 1994) Menozzi, Daniele. Les Images. L’Église et les arts visuels (Paris : Cerf, 1991) Moigno, François-Napoléon-Marie. ‘Préface’, in L’Art des projections, par M. l’Abbé Moigno (Paris : Bureau du Journal ‘Les Mondes’, Gauthier-Villars, 1872), I–III ——. ‘Les Splendeurs de la Foi illustrées’, Cosmos – Les Mondes. Revue hebdomadaire des sciences et leurs applications aux arts et à l’industrie par Abbé Moigno, thirty-first year, third series, second volume, number 1, May-August 1882 (Paris : Bureau du Journal Cosmos-LesMondes, 1882) : 41–44 Molteni. Alfred. Instructions pratiques pour l’emploi des appareils de projection, Lanternes magiques, fantasmagories, polyoramas, appareils pour l’enseignement fabriqués par A. Molteni, Constructeur d’instrument d’Optique, de Physique, de Mathématique et de Marine (Paris : Molteni, n.d.) ——. Catalogue des tableaux sur verre (Paris : A. Molteni 1880) Monsch, Charles. ‘La Bonne Presse et l’Audiovisuel’, in L’Image Religieuse. Collection Musée Niépce (Chalon-sur-Saône : Musée Nicéphore Niépce, 1986) Mury, Léon. Guide des catéchismes (Reims : Action populaire, 1911) Nadal, Jérôme. Evangelicae historiae imagines (Antwerp : Martinus Nutius, 1593) Parmentier, Abbé. ‘Projections dans les églises’, Le Fascinateur 46 (October 1906) : 322–24 Perriault, Jacques. Mémoires de l’ombre et du son. Une archéologie de l’audiovisuel (Paris : Flammarion, 1981) Renonciat, Annie. Images lumineuses. Inventaire des collections du Musée national de l’Éducation, volume 1 (Rouen: Institut national de recherche pédagogique/Musée national de l’Éducation, 1995) ——. La Vie et l’œuvre de Gustave Doré (Paris: ACR éditions, 1983) Reyner, Albert. ‘Le Montage des Diapositives’, Le Fascinateur 44 (August 1906): 260–62 Saint-Martin, Isabelle. ‘Du vitrail à la lanterne magique, le catéchisme en image’, Lanternes magiques, tableaux transparents, edited by Ségolène Le Men (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1995), 105–20 ——. Voir, savoir, croire. Catéchismes et pédagogie par l’image au XIXe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2003) ——. ‘“Sermons Lumineux” et Projections dans les Églises, 1884–1912’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 78.3 (2004): 381–400

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——. ‘L’image “bible des pauvres”, du postulat grégorien au mythe romantique, l’efficacité d’un argument fondateur’, in Efficacité/Efficacy: How to Do Things with Words and Images?, edited by Véronique Plesch, Jan Baetens, and Catarina MacLeod (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), 27–38 ——. ‘Usages catholiques de la lanterne magique dans la France des années 1900’, in Lumineuses projections! La projection fixe éducative, edited by Anne Quillien (Chasseneuil-du-Poitou: Réseau Canopé, 2016), 57–65 Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Julius. Biblia sacra tabulis illustrata (Paris: A. W. Schulgen, 1860) Thellier de Poncheville, Charles. ‘Rapport sur les conférences avec projection de M. l’abbé Thellier de Poncheville’, in Troisième Congrès diocésain de Paris (27, 28 et 29 mai 1907) (Paris: P. Féron-Vrau, 1907) Tissot, James. Vie de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (Tours: Maison Alfred Mame et fils, 1896) Un Directeur du Grand Séminaire d’Angoulême. Excerpt from Patronage (Mai 1908), quoted in ‘Les Projections à l’église’, Revue du clergé français (15 July 1908): 232–34 Véronneau, Pierre. ‘Le Fascinateur et La Bonne Presse: des médias catholiques pour publics francophones’, 1895. Mille Huit Cent Quatre-Vingt-Quinze 40 (2003), 25–40 Wirth, Jean, L’image médiévale. Naissance et développements (VIe–XVe siècle) (Paris: MeridiensKlincksieck, 1989)

†  Pierre Véronneau

Le Fascinateur and Maison de la Bonne Presse: Catholic Media for Francophone Audiences*

All churches, and the Catholic Church in particular, have had varying relationships with different popular media. While some have only intervened on the level of censorship or control, others have exhibited a more proactive attitude. As a part of research on the discourse of film journals in the 1920s,1 I became interested in the case of the publishing company Maison de la Bonne Presse and its journal, Le Fascinateur, abundant material traces of which are found in Quebec. My aim was to analyse the links between France and Quebec in the context of Catholic media, and more specifically cinema, by studying the case of a journal and a French company that had had a certain influence in Quebec. However, let us begin by specifying the context of their emergence. The Catholic Church had faced powerful opposition, if not hostility, in nineteenth-century France, where secular powers called for the separation of Church and State. This separation would limit the church to one specific domain: religion and the parish. One of the protagonists of this movement, Jean Macé, believed that the purpose of public education was to instruct the people so that they could choose their representatives in a careful manner. Under the guidance of this educator of the people, some secular thinkers set up the Ligue de l’enseignement (League of Instruction) in 1866 to promote these ideas. The Ligue’s goal quickly became to establish a free, obligatory, and secular education system. In the words of its historian: It emerged as a result of republicans’ desire to grant everybody access to education and culture, with the goal to allow people to fully exercise their citizenship and to establish a more just, freer, and more cohesive society over the long term.2 To reach the broadest possible spectrum of the population, the Ligue set up popular lectures intended to educate people via visual means, using luminous projections. Concurrently,



* This article translated by the collective of the Leemeta Translation Agency was first published in 1895. Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-cinq 40 (2003): 25–40 (https://doi.org/10.4000/1895.3282). Missing references were added by the editors. 1 This research received the support of the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. I give particular thanks to Jacynthe Plamondon-Émond and Louis Pelletier, who were of assistance to me in the process. 2 Pierre Tournemire. La Ligue de l’enseignement (Toulouse: Éditions Milan, 2000). Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 39–55 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129093 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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shortly after their defeat in 1870, the Catholics, inspired by the Augustinians of the Assumption (the Assumptionists), established Maison de la Bonne Presse, a Catholic publishing company that would very quickly become the French leader in Church propaganda.3 This congregation, particularly active in the domain of pilgrimages, had faith in the power of the press to serve the Catholic and popular apostolate, and progressively consolidated a press empire in order to inform, guide, and even convert people and consciences. I will not go into detail regarding all their publications. Nevertheless, the 1883 launch of the La Croix (The Cross) daily is worth mentioning. The company believed in the power of images and set up an imagery department as a part of its printing press. The department’s greatest success was the 1894 publication of Le Grand Catéchisme (The Great Catechism).4 This greatly successful collection of eighty chromolithographies was distributed in various places including Quebec. However, all printed imagery necessarily implied individual consumption and therefore limited pastoral intervention. As a result, Maison de la Bonne Presse quickly started to use luminous projections, just like their opponents in the League of Instruction (cf. Fig. 1, 2, 3).5 Furthermore, the staff of Maison de la Bonne Presse included G.-Michel Coissac, an expert in optics, who would eventually be entrusted the establishment and management of the company’s Services des Projections lumineuses (Luminous Projections Service). The department’s first accomplishment was the production of seventy images from Le Grand Catéchisme as glass projection slides.6 The catalogue of fixed images expanded quickly. Maison de la Bonne Presse also developed projection lanterns, that is both simple and more complex models that could create fade-outs and other aesthetic effects. It must be noted that the use of projections during lectures was very popular in the nineteenth century. In mid-nineteenth-century France, visual instruction was pioneered by Abbot François Moigno who practiced it almost until his death in 1884.7 Of course, as a priest, he preached ‘the return to faith through its splendors’, to quote the subtitle of one of his texts published in 1880.8 The League of Instruction continued this projectionist tradition at republican schools and campaigns, while the goals of Maison de la Bonne Presse were rather spiritual. It intended to ensure that projections contribute to the glory of Catholic









3 Regarding this subject, cf. Jacques André, and Marie André. ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses dans la pastorale catholique française (1895–1914)’, in Une invention du diable? Cinéma des premiers temps et religion, edited by Roland Cosandey, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning (Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 1992). 4 Cf. André, André. ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses’, 46–47. 5 For a detailed description of this activity, cf. Gérard Tilloy, Les Projections lumineuses de la Bonne Presse et la croisade du cinéma (1903–1938) (Master thesis, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III, 1993). A more detailed study of the publishing company is available in Jacqueline Godfrin, and Philippe Godfrin. La Maison de la Bonne Presse (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965). For a more apologetic perspective, cf. also Rémi Kokel. Vincent de Paul Bailly. Un pionnier de la presse catholique (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1957). 6 Cf., for example, the advertisement for ‘Le Grand Catéchisme en Images en Projection’, Le Fascinateur 2 (February 1903): 62. 7 For more on the role of Abbot Moigno in popular education, cf. Frank Kessler, Sabine Lenk. ‘The Emergence of the Projected Image as a Teaching Tool in Higher Education (1860–1914)’, in Learning with Light & Shadow. Educational Lantern and Film Projection, 1860–1990, edited by Nelleke Teughels, and Kaat Wils (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) (forthcoming). 8 Abbot Moigno. Les Splendeurs de la Foi. Accord parfait de la révélation et de la science, de la foi et de la raison, par M. l’abbé Moigno (Paris: Blériot Frères, 1879).

Le Fa sc inate ur a nd Ma ison de la Bonne P resse

Fig. 1. Advertisement for projection lanterns and sound devices in La Croix (2 February 1901): 4. (Source: Gallica. bnf.fr).

Fig. 2. Advertisement for projection lanterns and sound devices, now under the producer’s name, in La Croix (8 June 1902): 4. (Source: Gallica.bnf.fr).

Fig. 3. Advertisement also for film projectors in La Croix (12 June 1904): 4. (Source: Gallica.bfn.fr).

devotion. Very quickly, Maison de la Bonne Presse created a magnificent catalogue, or rather a visual encyclopedia. In 1903, it consisted of 12,000 black and white, as well as coloured glass slides, and offered slide projectors, including the Le Bayard model.9 In 1900–1901 alone, Les Conférences (Lectures) – a journal that preceded Le Fascinateur –, provided texts for seventeen new projection-aided lectures. The organization received thousands of orders each year, including from Canada, where thousands of its slides can be found. Soon after the advent of cinema in 1895, Maison de la Bonne Presse decided to venture down this new path, too. If fixed black and white images were already appealing and fascinating, moving images – unknown to previous generations – would make an even stronger impression, anchoring the transmitted message in peoples’ memory. In 1897, it debuted its first projector, which followed the 35 mm Edison standard (it could have adopted the Lumière standard), which was called ‘L’Immortel’ (‘The Immortal’),10 not in reference

9 Today, the Bayard Presse Group continues the work started during the previous century. 10 Cf. André, André. ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses’, 47.

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Fig. 4. Advertisement for the new lantern projector in Le Fascinateur 11 (November 1903): 319. (Source: Collection of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris).

Fig. 5. Advertisement for the journal Le Fascinateur in La Croix (25 August 1906): 4. (Source: Gallica.bnf-fr).

to God but to the belief that cinema would succeed in immortalizing movement – and therefore life (cf. Fig. 4). Thus, at the time, Maison de la Bonne Presse possessed two types of devices that required it to produce two different kinds of material, namely slides and films. It was also working to develop its distribution network in order to set up units that would take care of Catholic intervention on different locations. To facilitate this work, it launched a new model of ‘L’Immortel’ in 1903, which allowed to project both films and glass slides, laterally sliding the lantern.11 Moreover, Coissac later published several works on projection.12 However, most importantly, Maison de la Bonne Presse set up a film journal that analysed both the technical aspects of projection and the content of particular works, also looking at the phenomenon of film as a whole. This monthly publication, which was described as the ‘organ of educational recreation of La Bonne Presse’,13 was first published in January 1903. It was called ‘Le Fascinateur’ (The Fascinator) because it sought to piously fascinate the faithful and because it aimed at being an organ of educational recreation (cf. Fig. 5). It is also worth noting that, intending to incorporate all mass media, Maison de la Bonne Presse set up a phonography department that published phonograph cylinders

11 Cf. Hilcem, C. G. ‘Les projections photographiques animées’, Le Fascinateur 13 ( January 1904): 1–19. Cf. also the advertisement for the ‘Immortel 1903’: ‘Projections lumineuses. Principaux appareils’, Le Fascinateur 7 ( July 1903): 222–23. 12 La Théorie et la pratique des projections (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1906); Manuel pratique du Conférencierprojectionniste (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1909); Le Cinématographe et l’enseignement (Paris: Éditions du Cinéopse, 1926). 13 Cf. the cover of the journal.

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Fig. 6. Advertisement for the ‘Boîte aux Secrets’ in Le Fascinateur 2 (February 1903): 64. (Source: Collection of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris).

and sold phonographs called the Boîte aux secrets (Box of secrets). Therefore, it is clear that the organization had an impressive technical and propagandistic background (cf. Fig. 6). To achieve its apostolic goals, Maison de la Bonne Presse drew support from all the eighty-three dioceses present in France at the time. In this very period, France was undergoing the separation of Church and State, with the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 abolished in 1905. However, this turn of events should not be perceived as entirely natural. While the lay stakeholders enthusiastically embraced the promises of fixed and moving images, some Catholics were suspicious of these modern methods, denouncing cinema in its entirety due to its so-called harmful influence. One of the purposes of Le Fascinateur was therefore to advance this ideological battle within the Catholic establishment. Not everybody agreeds around the subject of using luminous projections for catechesis or preaching. A number of priests were hostile to the ‘luminous sermons’ that nonetheless reaped significant success. Even though the final authorization to proceed came from the bishop, the director of Maison de la Bonne Presse, Paul Féron-Vrau, and Guillaume-Michel Coissac traveled to the Vatican on two occasions to present their spectacle of fixed and moving images in order to obtain the official approval of the Pope for their activities.14 Nonetheless, on 12 December 1912, the Sacred Consistorial Congregation banned fixed and animated projections in churches, considered as sacred spaces where the central purpose of prayer should not be side-lined, even due to pious and honest images. This decision undoubtedly resulted in a significant decline in the activities of Maison de la Bonne Presse.15 The organization’s famous annual congress was reduced to a single day in 1913, and did not take place in 1914. Moreover, [The First World] war had begun. Priests

14 Cf. André, André. ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses’, 53. 15 G.-Michel Coissac. ‘La projection dans les églises’, Le Fascinateur 122 (February 1913): 35–36.

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and Catholic laypeople continued to use projections, but only as a part of their pastoral activities that took place outside of churches. One of the first films by Maison de la Bonne Presse dates back to 1897. It is La Passion du Christ (The Passion Play).16 It combines a variety of fixed and animated images, and is the first ever ‘Carême lumineux’ (luminous Lent).17 Over the years, more works of this type accumulated, always in a mixed-media format. The October 1903 issue of Le Fascinateur makes particular mention of Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) and Le Pèlerinage à Lourdes (The Pilgrimage to Lourdes),18 both directed by Abbot Jacques de Fauchécour.19 The Jeanne d’Arc production resorted to mixed projections, which alternated according to the requirements of the narrative. These highly static, illustrative, and educational works were projected accompanied by a soundtrack and the comments of a preacher, who would sometimes act as an animator (‘bonimenteur’). During these screenings-sermons, the preacher passed on his message through serious and pedagogical fixed images, whereas animated projection was mainly used to relax the atmosphere and enliven the message. Because fixed images costed less than animated images, even when in colour, la Maison de la Bonne Presse mainly preferred to use the former. While Jeanne d’Arc was a fictional production, Le Pèlerinage à Lourdes alternated between a real pilgrimage filmed in Lourdes and the story of the life of Bernadette Soubirous (cf. Fig. 7).20 Apart from its activities related to the production of religious works, Le Fascinateur fought for the development of a moral cinema or for assuring the morality – according to Catholic criteria – of cinematographic works in general, and the places where they were presented. Phono-Ciné-Gazette, a periodical edited by Edmond Benoît-Lévy,21 previously a member of the League of Instruction, later joined Le Fascinateur’s struggle. One of their common enemies were the travelling cinemas that went from village to village, distracting people – who were often also the faithful – from religious instruction and Church attendance. Both Le Fascinateur and Phono-Ciné-Gazette recognized the need for censorship that would guarantee the quality and moral content of works. It must be stressed that while Maison de la Bonne Presse and the League joined forces in the domain of cinema, the scope of fixed image projections rapidly declined, becoming almost obsolete by 1910. The audience no longer followed those commented slide shows – regardless of attempts to increase their appeal by using coloured images – as animated images were available at cinemas, at the fairground, and even in places of worship. Interestingly, Maison de la Bonne Presse continued to believe in the virtues of mixed-media projections. In 1913, it released the Solus projector, which allowed to stop on a single image; in other words, safely transforming a

16 Directed by an ecclesiastic, filmed by Léar [Albert Kirchner] with the participation of brother Basile and of Coissac, who would describe this film as an indescribable spectacle in his Histoire du cinématographe (Paris: Cinéopse, 1925). 17 André, André. ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses’, 51. 18 Cf. Maison de la Bonne Presse. ‘Principales collections de Vues extraites du Grand Catalogue Illustré des Projections Lumineuses’, Le Fascinateur 10 (October 1903): 289. Films could not be identified (the editors). 19 André, André. ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses’, 51. 20 André, André. ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses’, 51. 21 For more information on this important figure, cf. the work of Jean-Jacques Meusy. ‘Qui était Edmond BenoitLévy’, in Les vingt premières années du cinéma français, edited by Michel Lagny, Michel Marie, Jean A. Gili, and Vincent Pinel (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1995), 115–43.

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Fig. 7. Advertisement for the slides series ‘Mission de Jeanne d’Arc’ in Le Fascinateur 4 (April 1903): 81. (Source: Collection of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris).

35 mm animated image into a fixed one.22 Moreover, the two organizations tried to find common ground in their advocacy of educational cinema. This is why the League made real efforts to penetrate educational environments by providing teachers with a variety of films to address their diverse needs, complemented by explanatory pamphlets. These were intended to feed into the teacher’s or any other speaker’s intervention by suggesting entertaining films that were perfectly in line with moral standards. The question of cinematographic production became unavoidable by 1909. People were asking for expressly religious films. Le Fascinateur announced the establishment of an image production workshop. In September, Coissac advocated for the creation of truly moralizing films that were also frankly and historically religious.23 Maison de la Bonne Presse sought to develop a broad repertoire allowing it to set the standard for other productions by restricting them to the moral, historical, and religious truth. The first topics were the passion of Christ, the Lourdes apparitions,24 and the Passion with Jean-Marie de l’Isle. In September 1910, Coissac argued: We urgently need to enlighten the public’s taste, to clean it up, to limit the choice of subjects. Filmmakers must become an instrument of education and instruction, a leisure activity on the same level as Art, joy, and honesty.25

22 Cf. André, André. ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses’, 55. 23 G.-Michel Coissac. ‘Le Cinématographe dans les œuvres’, Le Fascinateur 81 (September 1909): 259–61. 24 La Passion de Notre Seigneur, Bernadette et Les Apparitions de Lourdes, and also Jeanne d’Arc were directed by Le Sablais and released in 1909; cf. Valentine Robert. ‘Performing Painting: Projected Images as Living Pictures’, in Performing New Media 1890–1915, edited by Kaveh Askari, and others (New Barnet (UK): John Libbey Publishing, 2015), 288. No information could be found on a Passion-related film with Jean-Marie de l’Isle (note by the editors). 25 Coissac as cited in Honoré le Sablais. ‘Le cinématographe: Rapport de l’Abbé Honoré’, Le Fascinateur 120 (December 1912): 336.

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However, despite these good intentions, Catholic filmmaking remained limited to the circles of diocesan movements and Catholic projectionists. It did not prevail in the spaces where the general public went to experience cinema. In the March 1912 issue of Le Fascinateur, Coissac even called for the moralization of cinema, pleading for the increased involvement of Catholics in the domain of cinema in all of its diversity.26 Otherwise, he argued, it will be secular thinkers who will mount an offensive in favor of educational cinema. Several years later, in 1927, Coissac exclaimed in La Croix: ‘Just like the moral journal [“le bon journal”], moral cinema [“le bon cinéma”] will save lives. It is a question of God’s rule, of the struggle against evil cinema’.27 He also argued for the creation of Catholic projection spaces, which would provide healthy entertainment, serve as a comprehensive educator, and often an effective means for the salvation of the soul. In 1920, la Maison de la Bonne Presse started to offer the service of renting ‘beaux et bons films’ (beautiful and good films) – somewhat dated films, the rights for which could be obtained almost for free –, which were advertised in Le Fascinateur.28 It also published a catalogue. La Bonne Presse had a particular preference for patriotic melodramas, such as Mères françaises (Mothers of France, René Hervil, Jacques Mercanton, F 1917) or Pour la France,29 films that glorified tradition, the society of the past, and offered a negative image of modernism such as Mon village (Émile Joseph Porphyre Pinchon, F 1920), Un drame au pays breton (Gaumont, F 1913) and Ramuntcho ( Jacques de Baroncelli, F 1919), as well as Italian historical films and epics such as Spartaco (Spartacus, Giovanni Enrico Vidali, prod: Ernesto Maria Pasquali, I 1913) and Il sacco di Roma (The Sacking of Rome, Enrico Guazzoni, I 1910). Vie et Passion de N. S. Jésus Christ (Life and Passion of Christ, Ferdinand Zecca, F 1907), which was distributed in colour and in black and white, remained the most successful production. It is interesting to note that these films were not only viewed by the distribution department of Maison de la Bonne Presse but were also ‘censored and revised by multiple qualified ecclesiastics that closely monitored the moral quality of the film’,30 sparing customers unpleasant surprises, and avoiding the expense of a preliminary screening. What did this censorship consist of? Abbot Honoré Le Sablais31 provided details in his 1921 report: It is a laborious, delicate, and often highly complicated process. Titles and subtitles need to be deleted, others need to be modified, images and sometimes entire scenes need to be cut, all the while making sure not to remove anything that benefits the film.32

26 G.-Michel Coissac. ‘Autour d’un congrès’, Le Fascinateur 122 (March 1912): 69. 27 Léon Berteaux. ‘Nos vœux’, La Croix (25 December 1927): 1. 28 Cf., for example, Une histoire de brigands (E. B. Donatien, F 1920). 29 Probably For France (Wesley Ruggles, Vitagraph, USA 1917) (note by the editors). 30 Honoré le Sablais. ‘À nos amis’, Le Fascinateur 157 ( June 1921): 73. 31 Honoré le Sablais, director of the Projection Department of Maison de la Bonne Presse, was also the director from 1910–1920 of several religious-themed short movies that were practically filmed tableaux vivants. His last films, in 1928, were a series of biblical and evangelical tableaux of approximately 200 m each (Le Sacrifice d’Abraham, La Samaritaine, La Parabole du bon Samaritain, Les Disciples d’Emmaüs), which had the intent of teaching the Christian doctrine. 32 Honoré le Sablais. ‘L’Œuvre des projections de la Bonne Presse: Les réalisations – Les projets’, Le Fascinateur 161 (November 1921): 356.

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Even at the beginning of the 1930s, when Maison de la Bonne Presse was dabbling in the transition to sound, the films that it included in its catalogue were similar (Bernard’s Les Croix de bois, Golgotha by Duvivier, L’Appel du silence by Poirier).33 The popularization of sound cinema that began in the 1930 turned Catholic plans and practices upside down. Their substantial efforts made over the precedent three years could not be repeated to replace these silent devices with much more expensive sound devices. Off the mark in its evaluation of the impact of sound from 1928 on, a few years later, Maison de la Bonne Presse continued to believe in the future of silent film, developing disk-based sound devices that it called the Synchrovox, Polyvox, and Patro-orchestre. It was not successful. In 1931, it launched a sound projector, but only sold a single device over the span of one year. Desperate, it placed its hopes in the Pathé-Baby, in 9.5 mm format, but still silent, and the Pathé rural, in 17.5 mm format. Only in 1934 was Maison de la Bonne Presse able to offer the owners of its silent projectors separate sound players that could be adapted to their device at an affordable price. However, many customers who had chosen projections for educational, rather than entertainment purposes preferred to abandon animated projections altogether. Instead, these lecturers returned to illustrated lectures that allowed them to better reach the hearts and spirits of the members of their flock. In 1938, a new catechism in images was even launched.34 This was also the final year in the history of Le Fascinateur. However, let us go back in time. In addition to supporting Maison de la Bonne Presse’s distribution of beautiful and good films, Le Fascinateur also advocated for the screening of these types of films in public spaces. Moreover, it called for the establishment of Catholic productions for presentation in regular theaters. To do so, Maison de la Bonne Presse co-produced the films of the company Isis Film up until 1929. Some of them were filmed in collaboration with Abbot Eugène Edmond Loutil, better known under the pseudonym Pierre L’Ermite.35 A writer and journalist for La Croix, he collaborated with Maison de la Bonne Presse, wrote for Le Fascinateur, and influenced its filmmaking practices. Convinced that cinema was important for the proliferation of Catholic beliefs, he became the apostle of ‘moral cinema’ focused on glorifying the family and the motherland, promoting sympathy for the suffering, kindling a desire to travel and love for one’s job. His popular 1921 novel Comment j’ai tué mon enfant (How I Killed My Child) about a young man’s dedication to priesthood opposed by his mother sold 200,000 copies. In 1925, it was adapted for the screen under the same title by Alexandre Ryder and produced by the French Établissements Louis Aubert. That same year, Ryder filmed another film based on an original scene by Pierre L’Ermite, La Femme aux yeux fermés (The Woman with Closed Eyes, F 1926), produced by Isis Film, which also produced two films by Duvivier – Credo ou la Tragédie de Lourdes (Credo or The Lourdes Tragedy, F 1924) and L’Abbé Constantin (Abbot Constantine, F 1925) which Le Fascinateur would praise greatly. Isis followed up with La Rose effeuillée ou Un miracle de sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant (The Vow, Georges Pallu, and Honoré Le Sablais, F 1926) which recounts, in the form of an everyday melodrama, 33 Les Croix de bois (Wooden Crosses, Raymond Bernard, F 1932), Golgotha (Behold the Men, Julien Duvivier, F 1935), L’Appel du silence (Call of Silence, Léon Poirier, F 1936). 34 For more information on catechism in images, cf. the chapter by Isabelle Saint-Martin in this volume. 35 Later, in 1948, Loutil was appointed Monseigneur.

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Fig. 8. Advertisement in La Croix (23 December 1927): 4. (Source: Gallica.bnf.fr).

the story of Thérèse de Lisieux, canonized one month prior to the film’s premiere. A few months later, the adaptation of another novel by Pierre L’Ermite was released, this time La Grande Amie (The Great Friend, Max de Rieux, F 1927) (cf. Fig. 8), a film glorifying France to the values of the past.36 Isis Film continued along its path of success, producing another film on the scout movement, distributed exclusively by Maison de la Bonne Presse, Les Cœurs héroïques (Heroic Hearts, Georges Pallu, F 1929). The organization did not have monopoly over the distribution of moral and edificatory films in general, but only over those about the apostolate, as testified to by Nicae Films’ production of Le Martyre de Sainte Maxence (The Martyr of Sainte Maxence, E. B. Donatien [Émile Charles Bernard Wessbecher], F 1928). In the same way, La Bonne Presse also distributed two Italian films: Fabiola a.k.a. I Misteri delle Catacombe (Enrico Guazzoni, I 1918), and Frate Sole (Sun Friar, Mario Corsi, I 1918). In 1928–1929, Maison de la Bonne Presse distributed two films by Jean Choux produced by Isis Film: Espionnage ou La Guerre sans armes (Espionage or War without Arms, F 1929), and Chacun porte sa croix (Each Bears His Own Cross, F 1929, with the collaboration of Abbott Honoré Le Sablais). It also produced La Vie merveilleuse de Bernadette (The Marvelous Life of Bernadette, Georges Pallu, F 1929). It goes without saying that sound film put an end to Maison de la Bonne Presse’s ambitions of producing religious films for large audiences, because sound technology overhauled the entire production and distribution structure. Players that were not flexible enough to adapt were eventually pushed out of the game. La Bonne Presse was forced back into the domain of apostolate films, which Father Joseph Danion was entrusted responsibility for. These films were intended for audiences present in places where Catholics were active. Maison de la Bonne Presse’s first production of such kind, La Meilleure Part (The Best Part, Joseph Danion, F 1928) was also inspired by Pierre L’Ermite. However, this production remained limited to a few screening locations. Maison de la Bonne Presse and Quebec Let us now take a look what links this story to Quebec. In this province, the Catholic Church maintained diverse relations with France. If we consider the Maison de la Bonne 36 It must be noted that during this same year, Maison de la Bonne Presse produced a film on the author entitled Pierre L’Ermite à Noirmoutiers ( Joseph Danion, F 1929); cf. A. M. ‘Le XVIIIe congrès de projection’, La Croix (12 October 1929): 2.

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Presse, for example, its works could be found at numerous public libraries and educational institutions. Moreover, it published several Canadian works, including Avant les neiges (Before Snowfall, J. Topri, CA 1926)37 or Jeanne Mance au Canada (1606–1673) (Jeanne Mance in Canada, Jeanne Danemarie, CA 1937). Pierre L’Ermite, a successful author who had been taught in schools up until the 1950s, was even republished in Quebec, to evoke the case of La Grande Amie in 1904.38 His works resonated loudly in Quebec. His books could be found at the majority of libraries, and in the domain of cinema, a text of his that argues for the need for Catholic film production was even published in the province. There, he writes: ‘It would be a pity if Catholics, overcome with a new blindness, were to leave, to the Spirit of Evil, a weapon even faster, more moving, and more all-powerful than the newspaper to the Souls of crowds’.39 In the field of luminous projections, multiple educational establishments adopted either Maison de la Bonne Presse magic lantern or series of educational or edificatory slides. Their presence in the collections of the Cinémathèque québécoise, collected during the 1970s from a variety of religious institutions, is physical proof of their distribution in the country. However, a specific study would be required to provide precise analysis of the situation. Nonetheless, it is primarily on the level of ideas and concerns that these ties are most visible. The rivalry between Maison de la Bonne Presse and the Freemasons could be heard all the way to Quebec. In June 1904, Le Fascinateur published an article entitled ‘La Ligue de Jean Macé au Canada’ (‘Jean Macé’s League in Canada’).40 It denounced Macé as a Freemason agent whose battlefield was the sphere of education. The League was using the poor quality of education in the province as its battle horse to gain ground in Quebec. As Coissac writes in his commentary, ‘the true, unstated goal [of the League] was to take education away from the influence of the Church and to de-Christianize schools’.41 All this started in 1902, when the League of Instruction in Quebec was founded. In an ironic turn of history, its founding assembly was held in the Poiré Room, the same room where Léo-Ernest Ouimet would set up his Ouimetoscope42 four years later. The League was composed of powerful men (senators, ministers, elected officials, magistrates, independent professionals), amounting to approximately two hundred members. Shortly afterward, it submitted a report entitled La Question de l’instruction publique dans la province de Québec (The Issue of Public Education in the Province of Quebec) to the Executive Council, the

37 J. Topri is the Belgian Abbot Jules-Joseph Pirot (1877–1955), missionary in Canada; cf. Cornelius J. Jaenen, Promoters, planters, and pioneers: the course and context of Belgian settlement in Western Canada (Calgary (Alberta): University of Calgary Press, 2011), 254 (note by the editors). 38 The original was published in 1899 by Maison de la Bonne Presse (note by the editors). 39 Pierre L’Ermite in Semaine religieuse de Montréal (16 July 1927): 480, cited by Yves Lever. L’Église et le cinéma au Québec (Master thesis, Université de Montréal, Faculty of Theology, 1977), 21. 40 The article was first published in the Catholic newspaper L’Univers; cf. André, André. ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses’, 57. For additional information on the affair, cf. 57–58. 41 G.-Michel Coissac. ‘La Ligue de Jean Macé au Canada’, Le Fascinateur 18 ( June 1904): 174. It is worth noting that today dozens of French schools are named after Jean Macé. 42 For more information on the the Ouimetoscope, cf. Marie-France Boucher. La Construction du discours médiatique sur le cinéma au Québec 1896–1939 (Master thesis, Université Laval, Faculté des Sciences Sociales, 2000), 23–25. Cf. also Germain Lacasse. ‘De Passions en passions: le cinéma des débuts au Québec’, in Une invention du diable? Cinéma des premiers temps et religion, edited by Roland Cosandey, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning (Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 1992), 85–86.

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provincial legislature, the Catholic Committee of the Council on Public Education, and the Amis de l’éducation (Friends of Education). Its goal was to advocate that public education should be the responsibility of the State, as a duty of the public authorities.43 Catholics in Quebec reacted to this ‘invasion’ with numerous publications. For example, Henri Bernard published his Histoire d’une conspiration maçonnique à Montréal (The History of a Masonic Conspiracy in Montreal).44 These works aimed to unmask the alleged Masonic scam and justified the suspension of the League’s activities in July 1903. The League tried to react by separating itself from France and, in 1904, by denouncing the recognition supposedly granted to it by the French League of Instruction, in the Le Canada newspaper, which the Church considered to be infiltrated by Freemasons. However, this did not pacify the clergy. In 1910, father Thomas Cyrille Couët published La Franc-maçonnerie et la conscience catholique (Freemasonry and the Catholic Conscience) which argued that legally denouncing Freemasons was the ‘duty of a good Canadian and a good Christian’.45 A few years later, as another reaction to the alleged Masonic propaganda, Abbott Antonio Huot published, as a part of the Lemieux proceedings,46 Le Poison maçonnique (The Masonic Poison),47 where he detailed the actions of the group in Quebec. For Catholics, schools were the field of a fierce battle, if not mortal combat, between the Church and the Freemasons. For the French episcopate, the Freemasons had taken over schools and public education, while for Quebec Catholics, their Quebecois counterparts at the Émancipation lodge wanted to do the same by defending public education in the province. The church reacted with all the means at its disposal. We can therefore observe a close relationship between the battles waged in France and those waged in Quebec, and the actions that result from them. One could conclude that the influence of the French Catholic press on social actors in Quebec was indirect. Nonetheless, a few cases of direct influence are known, including that of the Paradis brothers. The elder, Benjamin (1868–1924), was a priest and worked with his younger brother, Jean-Baptiste. During a study trip to Europe from 1897 to 1900, Benjamin discovered the importance of the magic lantern as an instrument of evangelization and ministry. He purchased a projection lantern and slides from the Maison de la Bonne Presse. A few years later, in 1907, the two brothers founded a company, Le Bon Cinéma National48 (The Good Cinema of Quebec), for the purposes of religious education and 43 Cf. Ruby Heap. ‘La Ligue de l’enseignement (1902–1904): héritage du passé et nouveaux défis’, Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 36.4 (December 1982), 339–73. 44 Henri Bernard. La Ligue de l’Enseignement: histoire d’une conspiration maçonnique à Montréal (Ouest (P.Q.): NotreDame-des-Neiges, 1903, new ed. 1904). 45 Thomas Cyrille Couët. La Franc-maçonnerie et la conscience catholique: étude sur la dénonciation juridique (Quebec: Imprimerie de l’Action Sociale Ltée, 1910), 16. 46 ‘Albert-J. Lemieux, succeeded in getting his hands on the minutes of the meetings of [the lodge] L’Émancipation. To do so, he and three accomplices committed an armed robbery on the person of [Lodge] secretary Ludger Larose. The stolen documents, however, did not reveal anything about the plot [against the Catholic Church at the International Eucharistic Congress, to be held in Montreal in September]’. Martin Lavallée. ‘Un complot maçonnique à Montréal en 1910?’, Le Devoir (1 August 2020) (https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/le-devoir-dephilo-histoire/583425/un-complot-maconnique-a-montreal-en-1910, [accessed 18 March 2021]) (Note added by the editors). 47 Antonio Huot. Le Poison maçonnique (Quebec: Éditions de l’Action Sociale Catholique, 1912). A first editions seems to have been published in 1906 according to Heap. ‘La Ligue de l’enseignement’, 364. 48 Not to be confused with the homonymous company founded in 1922 by distributor Arthur Larente, filmmaker Joseph-Arthur Homier, and other business partners.

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propaganda. The films they acquired were often those distributed by Maison de la Bonne Presse. Jean-Baptiste traveled around the province and supervised film distribution at parishes, while Benjamin was responsible for acquiring films and guaranteeing their moral conformity. He did not hesitate to cut out parts or to add comments rectifying historical or religious misinterpretations. Following its role-model institution, Le Bon Cinéma National also sold projection devices to its customers, namely the portable and stationary versions of the ‘La Scolaire’ model, ‘La Collégienne’, and ‘L’Universel’. In 1927, Maison de la Bonne Presse and Le Fascinateur launched their ‘Good Cinema’ campaign aiming at providing cinematographic materials to parish theaters (between 1927 and 1928, the number of halls rose by 250, the total number of Catholic theaters amounting to approximately 800). This very year, echoing this campaign, Jean-Baptiste Paradis launched the Le Bon Cinéma journal to support his film distribution activities and to serve as a reference body for the other projectionists hired by his company. This journal often reiterated the arguments of French Catholic journals and cited G.-Michel Coissac, as well as Le Cinéopse, another journal founded by Coissac, along with the star writers of Le Fascinateur, Pierre L’Ermite and Abbot Honoré Le Sablais, and texts simply copied from the model. Even its contents and layout closely resembled Le Fascinateur’s. However, there was one clear difference: Le Bon Cinéma explicitly expressed the desire to replace the ‘Jewish-American’ films bombarding the Catholic and French populations of Quebec, threatening the morals, faith, and patriotism of the ‘French-Canadian race’ and eating away at its moral fiber.49 Le Bon Cinéma spoke of ‘regeneration’ and Le Fascinateur of ‘renovation’: this was a minor difference. The Bon Cinéma stopped coming out in the late 1930s, likely for reasons similar to those that put an end to Le Fascinateur, that is the spread of sound film that forced all film companies and works to adapt their practices and their strategies. Although the opposition to secular action did not reach the same intensity in Quebec as it did in France, its activities demonstrate that it drew considerable inspiration from Catholic modes of action. In this regard, the efforts of Maison de la Bonne Presse to set up ‘bons cinemas’ (moral cinemas) and to provide parishes and Catholic institutions with projection devices (in 1928, La Croix wrote about arming priests with a film projector)50 were stressed less than the works themselves. In other words, the religious, moral, educational, and instructive films that allowed the Catholics to achieve their apostolic goals, as well as the content of the films screened in film theaters. This explains a certain number of film censorship interventions, which were nicely brought up by Yves Lever.51 A publication by Léo Pelland in 1926, entitled Comment lutter contre le mauvais cinéma (How to Fight Bad Cinema) is a case in point.52 This pamphlet, which mainly targeted American cinema, supported the activities of the Censorship Bureau, calling for their reinforcement. One of the common features of the discourse of Le Fascinateur and the productions of Maison de la Bonne Presse was resistance to a secular world order characterized by modernism,

49 Lever. L’Église et le cinéma au Québec, 26. 50 Cf., for example, ‘Suscription pour le Cinéma Paroissial afin d’aider les paroisses peu fortunées par l’acquisition d’appareils et la projection de bon films’, La Croix (21 February 1928): 1). 51 Lever. L’Église et le cinéma au Québec, 21–22. 52 Joseph-Évariste Léon ‘Leo’ Pelland. Comment lutter contre le mauvais cinéma (Montreal: L’Œuvre des tracts, 1926).

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rationalism, and urbanization, as well as lamentation for the agricultural world of the past. They called for a moral and religious renewal and for inner re-Christianization. It is not surprising that their texts, audio-visual productions, and the films that they recommended resonated in Quebec. Above, I mentioned some works distributed by Maison de la Bonne Presse. I also believe it is not coincidental that many films distributed in Quebec – first by Europa Film (a company set up by Charles Lalumière, a former manager of Pathé frères in Quebec) from 1922 onward, and later, from 1924, by Film de Luxe (a company created by Lalumière and Télésphore Latourelle) – were precisely those recommended, if not distributed by Maison de la Bonne Presse, thanks to the work of Alexandre Ryder, Jacques de Baroncelli, Julien Duvivier, E. B. Donatien, Jean Choux, and Henri Fescourt. These companies had to fight against American influence in Quebec, and to overcome numerous obstacles. Thus, their choice of films shows that at the very least, they managed to win over the Catholic community in their desire to spread French film in Quebec. Moreover, in 1924, on the occasion of the premiere of Credo ou la Tragédie de Lourdes in Quebec, Duvivier declared: There are a many available theaters in Canada. This is where we need to attract the public, resorting to the same kind of advertising that the Americans use for their films. The public will enjoy works that are perhaps not as exciting, but that highlight the virtues of the Catholic race and the French race: logic, kindness, sincerity, courtesy, the markings of a refined civilization, qualities tat were not thrown into the fire when the Chevalier de Lévis decided to burn his flags rather than surrender them to the enemy.53 However, more systematic research of the Maison de la Bonne Presse’s catalogue, the films advertised by Le Fascinateur, those distributed in Quebec, and their reception is necessary to provide a clearer picture of the relationships between all these elements. At the time, both Quebec and France witnessed a Catholic crusade towards cinema and a crusade for Catholic cinema. I recounted part of the story of Catholic production in Quebec.54 Let us recall that it was inspired by a Frenchman, Abbot Claude ‘Aloysius’ Vachet. In the late 1920s, he was a curate in a ‘red’ neighborhood, and wanted to work with the youth. He became involved in the scout movement, and produced his first film for it in 1929, on 16 mm: Nino, scout de France (Nino, Scout of France, F 1929). The film was screened in Catholic establishments. Later, he directed Pour la moisson (For the Harvest, F 1932), a priesthood-propaganda film on 35 mm. In 1932, he established a company to educate people through cinema called Éditions catholiques de cinéma éducatif (Catholic Editions of Educational Cinema). With the help of René Delacroix, a director and competent technician, he established another commercial organization, FiatFilm, which set up a film studio in a Parisian suburb in 1936. FiatFilm succeeded where Maison de la Bonne Presse failed: it produced a great number of Catholic films and established a network to distribute them, a series of Catholic film theaters

53 Julien Duvivier. ‘La tragédie de Lourdes’, La Presse (3 May 1924): 40. The editors thank Louis Pelletier for this information. 54 Cf. Pierre Véronneau. Le succès est au film parlant français (Histoire du cinéma au Québec I), Les Dossiers de la Cinémathèque 3 (Montreal: Cinémathèque québécoise, 1979) (http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/articles/ la-production-de-films-commerciaux-au-quebec-2/fiatfilm-et-labbe-vachet-1946/), [accessed 28 February 2021]).

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associated with L’Action catholique. In 1939, FiatFilm produced its first fiction film, Notre-Dame de la Mouise (Our Lady of la Mouise, Robert Péguy, F/CA 1941), financially endorsed by producer Joseph-Alexandre DeSève. This business relationship – if not friendship – explains why DeSève asked Vachet for help in setting up a production studio in Montreal (namely, Renaissance Films Distribution), in the post-war period. Vachet arrived in Montreal with several colleagues. I do not want to dwell any further on this story but would simply like to emphasize the similarity between the arguments advanced by Maison de la Bonne Presse and Le Fascinateur in the 1920s, those retained by Vachet in the 1930s, and those present in Quebec in the 1940s. The goal was always the same: to ensure that Catholics had an influence in the domain of film production, to organize a Catholic film distribution action promoting religious films or films that subscribed to a Christian mentality, and to ensure that Catholic morals were imposed through censorship. Moreover, Renaissance’s advertisements often cited Maison de la Bonne Presse’s authority in the domain of cinema, Pierre L’Ermite. Effectively, ‘the minute the church closes in a busy district, sparkling and colourful lights are lit in almost every street, announcing the opening of the greatest world power, cinema’.55 Conclusion This text has aimed to analyse some of the trajectories of Maison de la Bonne Presse and Le Fascinateur’s influence and impact in Quebec. Although Catholic cinema in Quebec has its distinctive dynamic and is sometimes considered in the North American context, it is impossible to analyse it without taking into account the French reality, and the tensions that mark cinema in France. Both in Quebec and in France, the dynamic of the institution of cinema is inscribed in an ideological and political context that must be taken into consideration. Cinematic history is also social history. A variety of social actors have attempted to intervene in the domain of cinema, to instrumentalize it, to muzzle it, to enlist it for their purposes. The Catholic Church and its various derivative organizations are among these. Hence, the history of the Church cannot be conceived of without, in some way, taking into account the history of its relations with media and the representations they convey. Bibliography André, Jacques, and Marie André. ‘Le Rôle des projections lumineuses dans la pastorale catholique française (1895–1914)’, in Une invention du diable? Cinéma des premiers temps et religion/An Invention of the Devil? Religion and Early Cinema, edited by Roland Cosandey, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning (Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 1992), 44–59 Anonymous. ‘Suscription pour le Cinéma Paroissial afin d’aider les paroisses peu fortunées par l’acquisition d’appareils et la projection de bon films’, La Croix (21 February 1928): 1

55 Eugène Edmond Loutil. Le cinéma maître du monde vous appelle (Montreal: Renaissance Films Distribution, 1946). The quotation is on page 62 of this extract: http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2013/08/DCQ_1979_03_p62–75.pdf, [accessed 15 March, 2021].

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Bernard, Henri. La Ligue de l’Enseignement: histoire d’une conspiration maçonnique à Montréal (Ouest (P.Q.): Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, 1903) Berteaux, Léon. ‘Nos vœux’, La Croix (25 December 1927): 1 Boucher, Marie-France. La Construction du discours médiatique sur le cinéma au Québec 1896–1939 (Master thesis, Université Laval, Faculté des Sciences Sociales, 2000) Coissac, Guillaume-Michel. ‘La Ligue de Jean Macé au Canada’, Le Fascinateur 18 ( June 1904): 174 ——. La Théorie et la pratique des projections (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1906) ——. Manuel pratique du Conférencier-projectionniste (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1909) ——. ‘Le Cinématographe dans les œuvres’, Le Fascinateur 81 (September 1909): 259–61 ——. ‘Autour d’un congrès’, Le Fascinateur 111 (March 1912): 67–69 ——. ‘La projection dans les églises’, Le Fascinateur 122 (February 1913): 35–36 ——. Histoire du cinématographe (Paris: Cinéopse, 1925) ——. Le Cinématographe et l’enseignement (Paris: Éditions du Cinéopse, 1926) Couët, Thomas Cyrille. La Franc-maçonnerie et la conscience catholique: étude sur la dénonciation juridique (Quebec: Imprimerie de l’Action Sociale Ltée, 1910) (http://www.liberius.net/ articles/La_franc-maconnerie_et_la_conscience_catholique.pdf) Godfrin, Jacqueline, and Philippe Godfrin. La Maison de la Bonne Presse (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965) Heap, Ruby. ‘La Ligue de l’enseignement (1902–1904): héritage du passé et nouveaux défis’, Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 36.4 (December 1982): 339–73 (https://www.erudit. org/fr/revues/haf/1982-v36-n3-haf2328/304067ar.pdf) Hilcem, C. G. [G.-Michel Coissac]. ‘Les projections photographiques animées’, Le Fascinateur 13 ( January 1904): 16–19 Huot, Antonio. Le Poison maçonnique (Quebec: Éditions de l’Action Sociale Catholique, 1912) Jaenen, Cornelius J. Promoters, Planters, and Pioneers: the Course and Context of Belgian Settlement in Western Canada (Calgary (Alberta): University of Calgary Press, 2011) Kokel, Remi. Vincent de Paul Bailly. Un pionnier de la presse catholique (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1957) Lacasse, Germain. ‘De Passions en passions: le cinéma des débuts au Québec’, in Une invention du diable? Cinéma des premiers temps et religion, edited by Roland Cosandey, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning (Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 1992), 81–87 Lavallée, Martin. ‘Un complot maçonnique à Montréal en 1910?’, Le Devoir (1 August 2020) (https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/le-devoir-de-philo-histoire/583425/un-complotmaconnique-a-montreal-en-1910, [accessed 18 March 2021]) Le Sablais, Honoré. ‘Le cinématographe: Rapport de l’Abbé Honoré’, Le Fascinateur 120 (December 1912): 331–38 ——. ‘À nos amis’, Le Fascinateur 157 ( June 1921): 273–74 ——. ‘L’Œuvre des projections de la Bonne Presse: Les réalisations – Les projets’, Le Fascinateur 161 (November 1921): 355–58 Lever, Yves. L’Église et le cinéma au Québec (Master thesis, Université de Montréal, Faculty of Theology, 1977) Loutil, Eugène Edmond. Le cinéma maître du monde vous appelle (Montreal: Renaissance Films Distribution, 1946) (http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ DCQ_1979_03_p62-75.pdf, [accessed 15 March, 2021])

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M., A. ‘Le XVIIIe congrès de projection’, La Croix (12 October 1929): 2 Maison de la Bonne Presse. ‘Principales collections de Vues extraites du Grand Catalogue Illustré des Projections Lumineuses’, Le Fascinateur 10 (October 1903): 289 Meusy, Jean-Jacques. ‘Qui était Edmond Benoit-Lévy’, in Les vingt premières années du cinéma français, edited by Michel Lagny, Michel Marie, Jean A. Gili, and Vincent Pinel (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1995), 115–43 Moigno, François Napoléon Marie. Les Splendeurs de la Foi. Accord parfait de la révélation et de la science, de la foi et de la raison, par M. l’abbé Moigno (Paris: Blériot Frères, 1879) Pelland, Joseph-Évariste Léon. Comment lutter contre le mauvais cinéma (Montreal: L’Œuvre des tracts, 1926) Robert, Valentine. ‘Performing Painting: Projected Images as Living Pictures’, in Performing New Media 1990–1915, edited by Kaveh Askari, and others (New Barnet (UK): John Libbey Publishing, 2015), 282–92 Tilloy, Gérard. Les Projections lumineuses de la Bonne Presse et la croisade du cinéma (1903–1938) (Master thesis, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, 1993) Tournemire, Pierre. La Ligue de l’enseignement (Toulouse: Éditions Milan, 2000) Véronneau, Pierre, Le succès est au film parlant français (Histoire du cinéma au Québec I), Les Dossiers de la Cinémathèque 3 (Montreal: Cinémathèque québécoise, 1979) (http:// collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/articles/la-production-de-films-commerciaux-au-quebec-2/ fiatfilm-et-labbe-vachet-1946/), [accessed 28 February 2021])

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Bart G. Moens

New Light on Maison de la Bonne Presse and its Service des Projections

Introduction One of the first scientific publications that examined Maison de la Bonne Presse’s journal Le Fascinateur (The Fascinator) as a source for religious optical lantern and early film heritage was the article of Canadian film historian Pierre Véronneau, ‘Le Fascinateur et la Bonne Presse: des médias catholiques pour publics francophones’, which appeared in 2003 in the French journal dedicated to the history of cinema, 1895. Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-quinze.1 With a focus on the relationship between the French and Canadian media contexts, Véronneau explores the use of the projection media and related print media of Maison de la Bonne Presse by the Catholic Church. Together with Jacques and Marie André’s article ‘Le rôle des projections lumineuses dans la pastorale catholique française (1895–1914)’,2 which appeared in the proceedings of the first International Conference of Domitor in 1990, and Isabelle Saint-Martin’s ‘“Sermons lumineux” et projections dans les églises, 1884–1912’,3 Véronneau’s article is therefore considered an important starting point for research on religious lantern practices. Over the years, several studies about the lantern slides and cinematographic activities of Maison de la Bonne Presse appeared and, accordingly, approached Le Fascinateur as a primary source.4 In the framework of my research on the life model slides and films of Maison de la Bonne Presse, I was diligently





1 Pierre Véronneau. ‘Le Fascinateur et La Bonne Presse: Des médias catholiques pour publics Francophones’, 1895. Mille Huit Cent Quatre-Vingt-Quinze 40 (2003): 25–40. 2 Jacques André, and Marie André. ‘Le Rôle des projections lumineuses dans la pastorale catholique française (1895–1914)’, in Une Invention du Diable ? Cinéma des premiers Temps et Religion, edited by Roland Cosandey, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning (Sainte-Foy, QC: Les Presses de l’Université Laval/Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 1992), 44–59. 3 Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘Usages religieux des projections lumineuses 1890–1914’, in La Lanterne Magique, Pratiques et Mise en Écriture. Cahiers d’histoire Culturelle N°2, edited by Jean-Jacques Tatin-Gourier (Tours: Presses de l’Université de Tours, 1995), 73–87. 4 Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘Un Évangile en projections lumineuses: pédagogie chrétienne et lanterne magique’, in La Pédagogie par l’image en France et au Japon, edited by Marianne Simon-Oikawa, and Annie Renonciat (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009), 107–23; Valentine Robert. ‘Performing Painting: Projected Images as Bart G. Moens • Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 57–67 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129094 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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looking for sources that would provide more insight into the creation process of these projection media. Both Véronneau’s article and that of Jacques and Marie André, with their references to the Augustinians of the Assumption as founders of Maison de la Bonne Presse in particular, directed me to the archives of the congregation. Based on sources safeguarded in this archive, this contribution provides additional information about the history of the Parisian-based Catholic publisher, in particular about its Service des projections (Projection Service). Furthermore, these archival findings indeed shed light on the position of the Le Fascinateur as a main source for research on the religious use of the optical lantern. The Apostolic Mission of Maison de la Bonne Presse The congregation of the Augustinians of the Assumption was founded in Nîmes by Father Emmanuel d’Alzon (1810–1880) in 1845. In France, the Jesuits were renowned for their contributions in education, the Dominican and the Franciscan orders for their preaching, and the Assumptionists were particularly successful in their contributions to the popular press.5 With Le Pèlerin they launched a first periodical in 1873, which was redesigned as a popular illustrated magazine in 1877, publishing engravings and caricatures, as its initiator Father Vincent de Paul Bailly (1832–1912) testified in the first issue of that year: ‘Le Pèlerin is thus illustrated after the example of other richer newspapers, because we know better than anyone else, through our long journeys, how powerful preaching for the eyes can be’.6 Hence, Véronneau rightly acknowledges that the Assumptionists recognized the potential of the press and visual media in particular to educate and build a Christian community early on. Consequently, they played a pioneering role during the nineteenth century; however, harking back to a centuries-old Catholic tradition, they considered the image as an important tool to form and educate the masses.7



Living Pictures’, in Performing New Media, 1890–1915, edited by Kaveh Askari, and others (New Barnet (UK): John Libbey, 2015), 282–92; Valentine Robert. ‘La part picturale du tableau-style’, in The Image in Early Cinema. Form and Material, edited by Scott Curtis, and others (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 15–25. 5 Cf. Jean-Paul Périer-Muzet. ‘Notre Histoire’, February 2000 (https://www.assumptio.org/qui-sommes-nous. php?pLingua=FRA&pFile=notre-historie.html, [accessed 30 August 2020]). 6 Bailly, quoted in Yves Pitette. 1900, Naissance du multimédia à Bayard (Paris: Bayard, 2007), 4. All the translations are by the author. 7 From 1882, the Assumptionists continued their apostolic ambitions of visual education throughout the publishing of an illustrated catechism: Le (grand) Catéchisme en images consisting of 68 plates, printed in colour through chromolithography or in black-and-white engravings. One year later, in June 1883, Father François Picard (1831–1903), the successor of Father d’Alzon, together with Father Bailly launched the daily newspaper La Croix. From then on, the publisher would expand into a media enterprise with different editions to reach a wide and diverse audience. After years of successful editorial practices, with several religious-inspired publications to accomplish their apostolic ambitions, the Assumptionists encountered a period of political and judicial turmoil around the turn of the century. Due to their active apostolic mission to (re)Christianise the masses and their capacity of creating and influencing public opinion, the Vatican asked the Assumptionists to withdraw from the publisher’s activities in 1900 to calm the tense relations between Rome and the French government, and to save the company of Maison de la Bonne Presse. Moreover, the lay French government ordered the congregation of Assumptionists, which had about three hundred members in those years, to be dissolved and to leave the French republic. In 1904, a second trial against the congregation would be held, when the Assumptionists were accused of rebuilding their former community in isolation. The congregation returned to French soil after World War I (cf. Jean-Paul Périer-Muzet. ‘Notre Histoire’). In spite of these dramatic events, the activities of Maison de la

New Light on Maison de la Bonne Presse and its Service des Projections

The Service des projections of Maison de la Bonne Presse The Catholics made use of the optical lantern to counter lay, masonic, and other initiatives of l’École sans Dieu (School without God) that made successful use of the medium,8 as Father Bailly stated: ‘Those instruments that must be used to project the true light’.9 In November 1895, one month before what would be the first public screening with Lumière’s cinematograph, G.-Michel Coissac (1868–1946), who had been engaged as a technician for Maison de la Bonne Presse three years earlier, was appointed by Father Bailly to lead and develop the Service des projections at 22 and 22bis, Hôtel du Prince Bonaparte, Rue Bayard, Cours de La Reine.10 With Coissac’s unbridled enthusiasm for projection media and his technical knowledge of the subject, he developed the projection service to become an integral part of Maison de la Bonne Presse’s activities and became an influential film theorist and historian. On 17 November 1895, Le Pèlerin (The Pilgrim) announced that Maison de la Bonne Presse would release its own lantern equipment, and in February 1896, the periodical listed the first lantern slide sets, including the illustrated catechism and the Gospels consisting of 153 slides and twelve ‘séries pittoresques’ (‘picturesque series’), each consisting of six views.11 According to Father Gervais Quenard (1875–1961), Coissac’s strategy was successful because it combined three axes: (1) the creation of a vast collection of slides, (2) the commercialization of projection and photographic equipment, and (3) the publishing of the periodicals Les Conférences (Lectures) and Le Fascinateur.12 In 1898, Father Bailly created a supplement of the Chronique de la Bonne Presse, entitled Nos Conférences. Three years later in 1901, an independent journal was created with Les Conférences, edited by a canon of the diocese of Poitiers, Marie-Léopold Théodermire Gerbier (1851–1916), which was published until 1914. The journal appeared bimonthly and later weekly, and in total contains about five hundred written accounts of lectures intended for Catholic lecturers, of which around three hundred concerned projection. Maison de la Bonne Presse’s other journal, dedicated to ‘projection fixe et projection animée’, was Le Fascinateur, which was published from January 1903 until June 1938 and played an important



8



9

10

11 12

Bonne Presse persisted under a new direction committee composed exclusively of devoted lay people. It was Paul Féron-Vrau (1864–1955), a Christian-inspired industrialist from Lille, who from April 1900 officially took over the company and became the President of the Société de la Maison de la Bonne Presse until his resignation in 1926; cf. Gervais Quenard. ‘Le Miracle de La Bonne Presse’, Pages d’Archives (1953): n.p. Cf. Pitette. 1900, Naissance du multimédia à Bayard, 4; Frank Kessler, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2019): 91. Bailly, quoted in Pitette. 1900, Naissance du multimédia à Bayard, 7. The non-religious organizations and institutions that used the optical lantern in France on a large scale were the Ligue de l’enseignement and the Musée Pédagogique, disseminating republican values and secular convictions (cf. Laurent Mannoni. ‘Elbow to Elbow. The Lantern/Cinema Struggle’, New Magic Lantern Journal 7.1 (1993): 1–2). Cf. Charles Monsch. ‘La Bonne Presse et l’Audiovisuel’, in L’Image religieuse. Collection Musée Niépce (Ville de Chalon-sur-Saône: Musée Nicéphore Niépce, 1986), n.p.; Charles Monsch. ‘Le Fascinateur’, Châpo. Journal de l’Amicale des Anciens Bayard Presse: 3. Regarding the start of the projection service, I also came across the mention of another date, as in 1934, Honoré Le Sablais situated the beginnings of the department some months later, in May 1896, ‘[…] With a few poor sets of lantern slides; then came the production and further development of equipment and light sources […].’ (Honoré Le Sablais. ‘Glorieux Centenaire. Amiens fête magnifiquement le P. Vincent de Paul Bailly’, Le Fascinateur 308 (1934): 4). The 70 slides of the illustrated catechism were available in black and white for FF 15 and in colour for FF 155; cf. Pitette. 1900, Naissance du multimédia à Bayard, 7–8. Cf. Quenard. ‘Le Miracle de La Bonne Presse’, n.p.

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didactic and marketing role with regard to projection media. Similar to related journals such as Ombres et Lumière edited by the company E. Mazo (from 1895) and Phono-Ciné-Gazette (Phono-Cinema-Gazette) (from 1905) its target audience were lanternists and other parties interested in the more technical aspects of the optical lantern and cinema. The journal also contained contributions on related audio-visual media such as photography and the gramophone. From 1903 until 1913, an issue of Le Fascinateur consisted of about thirty pages and appeared every first Thursday of the month, with a circulation of approximately 3000 copies a year.13 Due to World War I, the publication was interrupted from 1914 until 1919. From 1920 to 1938, the circulation numbers of the monthly journal decreased and it contained some sixteen pages, with an ever-increasing emphasis on cinema, to the detriment of the optical lantern. Another fundamental reason for the flourishing of the Service des projections was, as indicated by Saint-Martin, the engagement by the dioceses, which were strongly involved in the promotion and use of the lantern for religious initiatives in France, and functioned as distribution networks.14 The projection practices of the Catholic Church were, after all, developed by virtue of the Associations diocésaines de projectionnistes (Diocesan Associations of Projectionists) from 1896, to which Maison de la Bonne Presse rented lantern slides and projection equipment.15 In 1905, more than four hundred priests who used the lantern would show up at the ‘Congress of Catholic work through lectures and projections’, which demonstrates the popularity of the lantern for religious purposes in France.16 Next to France and Canada, as Véronneau emphasized, the publications, lantern equipment, and slides of Maison de la Bonne Presse were distributed and widely used in other countries with French-speaking regions and Catholic backgrounds such as Belgium and Switzerland.17 An additional element that contributed to this success is the quality of the materials the company developed and distributed. Presumably, the projection service insisted on high quality of lantern equipment, not only to resist to lay materials and practices, but also to counteract certain criticism within the Catholic Church, as the relatively new media of the optical lantern and the cinema were at the time still problematic in some Catholic circles.18 As mentioned, the Assumptionists had a progressive and pragmatic view on these media. They recognized the advantages and possibilities of projection with the lantern and the cinematograph in religious and educational contexts. However, they were well aware that these media were also used for ‘less noble’ purposes, such as pure entertainment, which they strongly condemned. Therefore, they created an ensemble of texts, lantern slides, and musical accompaniment, often in the form of musical scores or rolls for the phonograph. Accordingly, the projection service offered projectionists and lecturers the materials for a total spectacle to communicate their religious propaganda effectively, and as an alternative to non-Christian means of education and entertainment.19 Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Rome, Etat comparatif des tirages, QA 87–107. Cf. Saint-Martin. ‘Usages religieux des projections lumineuses 1890–1914’, 74. Cf. Saint-Martin. ‘Sermons lumineux et projections dans les églises, 1884–1912’, 383. Cf. Mannoni. ‘Elbow to Elbow’, 2. Cf. Kessler, Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy’, 95. Cf. Richard Abel. The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896–1914, updated and expanded Edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 42. 19 Cf., for example, G.-Michel Coissac. La Théorie et la pratique des projections (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1906). The accounts of the annual meetings of the projection service in Le Fascinateur provide a good idea of their high ambitions and annual novelties, in particular during the years before the war. 13 14 15 16 17 18

New Light on Maison de la Bonne Presse and its Service des Projections

Fig. 1. Assembly studio at Maison de la Bonne Presse around 1910. (Source: Collection of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris).

The Organization of the Service des projections During the first decade of the twentieth century, Maison de la Bonne Presse became an important French lantern slide producer, alongside companies such as E. Mazo and Radiguet & Massiot. These enterprises were all part of a movement that strongly believed in the potential of the optical lantern, and they provided a technological environment in which projection materials were perfected so that high-quality images could be projected in an effective way. For example, increasingly powerful light sources played an important role in improving the medium, allowing the projection of brighter and larger images. Such new developments were promoted and explained in Le Fascinateur: ‘The new lamp with an independent reservoir created by the Maison de la Bonne Presse, is the result of two years of research; remarkably simple, this lamp provides an intensity exceeding 220 candles, of which 160 or 180 are actually used by the condenser lens in our Bayard and Bonne Presse lanterns’.20 By 1912, the Service des projections of Maison de la Bonne Presse consisted of several gender-divided departments. The slide set ‘Une œuvre moderne d’apostolat catholique. La Maison de la Bonne Press’ (‘Modern Work of Catholic Apostolate’), consisting of ninety-six photographic slides, contains precious information about the practical organization of the service. The lecture written by Henry Dercy is described in Les Conférences number 412, 20 Anonymous. ‘Lampe Alcool – Bonne Presse’, Le Fascinateur 14 (1904): 53.

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Fig. 2. Testing room of the projection service of Maison de la Bonne Presse around 1910. (Source: Collection of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris).

which gives us an account of the sectioning and daily operation of the company and its Service des projections. Fifty-six people were employed at the service, of which twenty-nine young girls – described in the lecture as ‘jeunes filles’ (‘young girls’) – members of the sisters of the congregation that were united with the Oblate Sisters of the Assumption, and twenty-seven men – described as ‘hommes’ (‘men’).21 The service consisted of an administrative department, a photography section with darkrooms for the development of the pictures, and special laboratories for the enlargement and retouching of the photos, in which mainly men were employed. The finishing and quality check of the slides were performed by the women. The colouring and assembling (cf. Fig. 1) of the diapositives was executed in two neighbouring studios. Furthermore, there was a room where the orders were prepared and packaged, a shop and sales room for the slides and films, a ‘salle d’expérience’ or ‘testing room’ (cf. Fig. 2), a studio for repairs of projection equipment, and storage rooms for slides (cf. Fig. 3) and gas vessels.22 By the 1910s, the projection service had become a well-organized and important section of the Catholic publisher, and it was still based right next to the paper press unit, at 22, Cours de la Reine. The offices of the executives of the department, Coissac and Father 21 By comparison, two hundred workmen were employed at the printing plant of Maison de la Bonne Presse and the administrative department counted almost eighty employees; cf. Anonymous. ‘Une œuvre moderne d’apostolat catholique. La Maison de la Bonne Presse’, Les Conférences 412 (1912): 310, 317. 22 Cf. Anonymous. ‘Une œuvre moderne d’apostolat catholique’, 315–16.

New Light on Maison de la Bonne Presse and its Service des Projections

Fig. 3. Storage room for the diapositives at Maison de la Bonne Presse around 1910. (Source: Collection of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris).

Honoré Brochet (1870–1948), were located on the ground floor of this building. Brochet, who used the pseudonym Honoré Le Sablais – referring to his home region in the Vendée – for his artistic activities, started working for Maison de la Bonne Presse in 1906 and was a creative jack-of-all-trades, as we can read in Le Fascinateur of 1909: ‘[…] who devoted his whole life to Christian theatre, to tableaux vivants, in a word to religious art in all its expressions. […] Father Honoré dreams of Christian cinema and theater’.23 Le Sablais was what we would today call a creative director and not only designed and directed life model slides (cf. Fig. 4) and films for Maison de la Bonne Presse – some of them produced simultaneously –, he was also a theatre director at Le Bon Théâtre,24 a painter, a writer of poems and scenarios, and a musician.25 Both Coissac and Le Sablais strongly believed in, 23 Anonymous. ‘Ve congrès général des œuvres de Conférences et de Projections (11–14 Octobre 1909)’, Le Fascinateur 84 (1909): 392–93; cf. also Anonymous. ‘Honoré (Auguste) Brochet – 1870–1948’, Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris, n.d. (https://www.assomption.org/fr/mediatheque/necrologies/honore-augustebrochet-1870-1948, [accessed 30 August 2020]). 24 As director and coordinator of the Bon Théâtre, a theatre company with a theatre hall for almost fifteen hundred people at the 32, Quai de Passy, today Avenue du Président Kennedy in the sixteenth arrondissement in Paris, Le Sablais devoted himself to Christian theatre; cf. Anonymous. ‘Au bon théâtre. Les représentations de la Passion’, Le Fascinateur 168 (1922): 67. 25 From his appointment as director of the projection service, Le Sablais was much less actively involved in the creation of slides and films. From the 1920s, it was mainly Father Joseph Danion (1880–1948) and Father Eugène Edmond Loutil (1863–1959), a writer under the pseudonym of Pierre L’Ermite, who directed and wrote for the film productions of Maison de la Bonne Presse; cf. Yves Poncelet. ‘Pierre L’Ermite (1863–1959). Un Apôtre du

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Fig. 4. ‘La prière de la petite aveugle’ (‘The little blind girl’s prayer’). Slide 7 of ‘Noël de la petite aveugle’ (‘The little blind girl’s Christmas’), Maison de la Bonne Presse, series of 19 slides, c. 1914. (Courtesy: Mundaneum collection, Mons).

and advocated for the use of the lantern and film for the apostolic purpose.26 From 1912 on, they developed a lending service for motion pictures from the United States, Germany, and France. The films were carefully selected and censored when thought necessary.27 As was the case for the publishing of Le Fascinateur, the war also interrupted the other activities of the Service des projections for five years. Mainly focusing on the early years of Le Fascinateur, the studies of Véronneau, Saint-Martin, and Jacques and Marie André largely omit the further development of the journal, although it existed for almost another nineteen years. When the department was relaunched, Le Sablais succeeded Coissac – who became the co-director of Guilbert & Coissac – in October 1919 as the director of the projection service and the editor of Le Fascinateur. During that time, Le Sablais also installed the Bon Cinéma at 10, rue François Ier and created the Consortium des bons cinémas. But even in the 1920s, his main goal was to support the use of the optical lantern. When indeed the success of the cinema was well installed at the expense of the optical lantern, he praised the medium explicitly in 1921 in Le Fascinateur: ‘Lantern projection [projection fixe] will always have our preference, because we believe it is the most serious, most effective way to educate and do good. The still and well-explained images capture the attention and leave something in the mind. There is something pleasant, calm and restful in it, Cinéma à l’âge du Muet’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 93.1 (2007): 165–66. 26 Cf. Paul Bresdin. ‘P. Honoré Brochet’, Lettre à la Famille 252 (1958), 78. 27 Cf. Monsch. ‘La Bonne Presse et l’Audiovisuel’, n.p.

New Light on Maison de la Bonne Presse and its Service des Projections

which does good while recreating’.28 By 1927, the assortment of lantern slides of Maison de la Bonne Presse covered a wide range of topics from religious subjects (3440 slides), church life (3022 slides), hagiography (1740 slides), to history (2018 slides), science and the professions (3831 slides), geography and travel (10,888 slides) as well as the arts (1236 slides). There was also a category of ‘variétés’ (‘varia’), including hymns, illustrated stories and songs, humorous projections, curtains and announcement slides, and shadow play (2536 slides). These slides, good for a total of almost thirty thousand, spread over eight hundred different sets,29 all served the apostolic mission and propagating of Catholic truths and morals. From the start of the Service des projections, the collection had already been increasing exponentially to six thousand diapositives in 1896. In 1903, the collection contained twelve thousand individual slides, and in 1910, approximately one thousand slides a day were produced.30 Saint-Martin calculated that during the period from 1905 to 1909, approximately five thousand lanterns and eight hundred thousand slides were sold.31 Up to the 1930s, slide sets were made occasionally, particularly when compared to previous decades, as they were gradually replaced by more affordable ‘stop films’.32 In 1935, five hundred twenty optical lanterns were sold, and the renting service for lantern slides rented out more than four hundred thousand slides, which led Le Sablais to conclude: ‘Let us thus acknowledge that, contrary to certain prophets, cinema has not killed lantern projection. It is very much alive and remains an excellent teaching aid for priests’.33 Le Sablais, who by then devoted himself to evangelical work in the Parisian suburbs, was succeeded by his secretary Paul Bresdin on 30 June 1938, after which Le Fascinateur no longer appeared. The Service des projections ceased to exist in the 1950s and was replaced by a ‘service audio-visuelle’ (‘audio-visual service’).34 Conclusion Published by Maison de la Bonne Presse, Le Fascinateur presents an important primary and exceptionally rich source for the study of the religious projection heritage produced by the company. As the work of Pierre Véronneau illustrates, this journal is vital in understanding both the use of projection media in the religious sphere in French speaking countries, and the motivations and ambitions of the Parisian publisher. Le Fascinateur offers us an insight into the output, organization, and philosophy of the Service des projections of the company. Despite the rich source of information the 352 issues provide, we have to be aware that they remain a product of their time and their commissioner. Notwithstanding Le Fascinateur has the status 28 Anonymous. ‘L’Œuvre des Projections de la Bonne Presse. Les réalisations – Les Projets. Rapport général présenté au Congrès par M. l’abbé Honoré, directeur de Service des projections’, Le Fascinateur 162 (1921): 356. 29 Cf. Maison de la Bonne Presse. Vues pour Projections Lumineuses. Catalogue B (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1927). 30 Cf. Véronneau. ‘Le Fascinateur et La Bonne Presse’, 25; Anonymous, ‘Projection Pratique’, Le Fascinateur 88 (1910): 105. 31 Cf. Saint-Martin. ‘Usages religieux des projections lumineuses 1890–1914’, 74. 32 For more information about ‘stop films’, cf. the contribution of Nelleke Teughels in this volume. 33 Anonymous [Le Sablais]. ‘Faisons le point. Les projections lumineuses et le cinéma dans les œuvres’, Le Fascinateur 329 (1935): 365–66. 34 Cf. Pitette. 1900, Naissance du multimédia à Bayard, 25, 34.

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of the main source on Maison de la Bonne Presse’s enterprises regarding projection media, as argued by Véronneau, additional archival and material-based research is indispensable. By investigating and comparing other types of sources we can indeed establish a more comprehensive interpretation of the information provided in Le Fascinateur, of the importance of the activities of the Service des projections of Maison de la Bonne Presse, and of the fascinating development of projection media during the first decades of the twentieth century.35 Acknowledgments I would like to profoundly thank Father Patrick Zago, archivist of the congregation of Augustinians of the Assumption in Paris, for his kind hospitality and valuable guidance during my visits to the archive. Bibliography Abel, Richard. The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896–1914, updated and expanded edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) André, Jacques, and Marie André. ‘Le Rôle des projections lumineuses dans la pastorale catholique française (1895–1914)’, in Une invention du diable? Cinéma des premiers temps et religion/An Invention of the Devil? Religion and Early Cinema, edited by Roland Cosandey, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning (Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 1992), 44–59 Anonymous, ‘Lampe alcool – Bonne Presse’, Le Fascinateur 14 (1904): 53–54 ——. ‘Ve congrès général des œuvres de Conférences et de Projections (11–14 Octobre 1909)’, Le Fascinateur 84 (1909): 392–93 ——. ‘Projection pratique’, Le Fascinateur 88 (1910): 101–06 ——. ‘Une œuvre moderne d’apostolat catholique. La Maison de la Bonne Presse’, Les Conférences 412 (1912): 289–320 ——. ‘L’Œuvre des Projections de la Bonne Presse. Les réalisations – Les Projets. Rapport général présenté au Congrès par M. l’abbé Honoré, directeur de Service des projections’, Le Fascinateur 162 (1921): 356 ——. ‘Au bon théâtre. Les représentations de la Passion’, Le Fascinateur 168 (1922): 67 ——. ‘Faisons le point. Les projections lumineuses et le cinéma dans les œuvres’, Le Fascinateur 329 (1935): 365–66 ——. ‘Honoré (Auguste) Brochet – 1870–1948’ (Paris Augustinians of the Assumption, n.d.) (https://www.assomption.org/fr/mediatheque/necrologies/honore-augustebrochet-1870-1948, [accessed 30 August 2020])

35 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Bresdin, Paul. ‘P. Honoré Brochet’, Lettre à la Famille 252 (1958): 76–80 Coissac, G.-Michel. La Théorie et la pratique des projections (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1906) Groupe Bayard. ‘Notre Histoire’, 2020 (https://www.groupebayard.com/fr/decouvrir-bayard/ notre-histoire/, [accessed 30 August 2020]) Kessler, Frank, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 17.1 (2019): 89–111 Le Sablais, Honoré. ‘Glorieux Centenaire. Amiens fête magnifiquement le P. Vincent de Paul Bailly’, Le Fascinateur 308 (1934): 4 Maison de la Bonne Presse. L’Œuvre de la Bonne Presse 1872–1914 (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, n.d.) ——. Vues Pour Projections Lumineuses. Catalogue B (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1927) Mannoni, Laurent. ‘Elbow to Elbow. The Lantern/Cinema Struggle’, New Magic Lantern Journal 7.1 (1993): 1–6 Monsch, Charles. ‘La Bonne Presse et l’Audiovisuel’, in L’Image Religieuse. Collection Musée Niépce (Chalon-sur-Saône: Musée Nicéphore Niépce, 1986) ——. ‘Le Fascinateur’, Châpo. Journal de l’Amicale des Anciens Bayard Presse 3 (1998) Périer-Muzet, Jean-Paul. ‘Notre Histoire’, February 2000 (https://www.assumptio.org/quisommes-nous.php?pLingua=FRA&pFile=notre-historie.html, [accessed 30 August 2020]) Pitette, Yves. 1900, Naissance du multimédia à Bayard (Paris: Bayard, 2007) Poncelet, Yves. ‘Pierre L’Ermite (1863–1959). Un Apôtre du Cinéma à l’âge du Muet’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 1.93 (2007): 165–82 Quenard, Gervais. ‘Le Miracle de La Bonne Presse’, Pages d’Archives (1953) : n.p. Robert, Valentine. ‘Performing Painting: Projected Images as Living Pictures’, in Performing New Media, 1890–1915, edited by Kaveh Askari, and others (New Barnet, UK: John Libbey, 2015): 282–92 ——. ‘La part picturale du tableau-style’, in The Image in Early Cinema: Form and Material, edited by Scott Curtis, and others (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 15–25 Saint-Martin, Isabelle. ‘Usages religieux des projections lumineuses 1890–1914’, in La Lanterne magique. Pratiques et mise en écriture. Cahiers d’histoire culturelle N°2, edited by Jean-Jacques Tatin-Gourier (Tours: Presses de l’Université de Tours, 1995), 73–87 ——. ‘“Sermons lumineux” et projections dans les églises, 1884–1912’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 78.3 (2004): 381–400 ——. ‘Un évangile en projections lumineuses. Pédagogie chrétienne et lanterne magique’, in La Pédagogie par l’image en France et au Japon, edited by Marianne Simon-Oikawa, and Annie Renonciat (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009): 107–23 Véronneau, Pierre. ‘Le Fascinateur et La Bonne Presse: des médias catholiques pour publics francophones’, 1895. Mille Huit Cent Quatre-Vingt-Quinze 40 (2003): 25–40

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Mission Projections: Glass Positives in the Archives of the Religious Institutes in KADOC

In 2009, photographer and photo reviewer Johan De Vos curated an exhibition within the framework of Europalia China; in this context, he discovered and became fascinated by old glass plates in the collections of the KADOC – KU Leuven’s Documentation and Research Centre on Religion and Society.1 At the time, KADOC already preserved two important collections of plates related to China, namely the collections that had belonged to the Fathers of Scheut and to the Flemish Friars Minor. Upon KADOC’s request, De Vos compiled a selection from thousands of photos and glass plates. This selection was certainly idiosyncratic, as surprise and emotion were the curator’s crucial incentives. In the first half of the twentieth century, Catholic worshipers were equally amazed when, as De Vos describes, a missionary in the parish hall or a darkened village-school classroom used projected images to bring a story to life. At least at the beginning of the century, the projection technique and projections of ‘distant lands’ must both have appeared impressive. In fact, many Belgian missions were then represented by a money box in the shape of a nodding black child (or elephant, when missions in India were concerned) on the grocer’s countertop, a fundraiser for the parish’s ‘own’ missionary at the local church, a missionary exhibition, or by lectures given by missionaries on leave during missionary days or weeks.2 The impact of these illustrated ‘causeries’ about missions, missionaries, and missionary countries and populations can hardly be overestimated. In this sense, the preserved glass plates are an important historical source. De Vos remarked in 2009: ‘They will certainly become the subject of scientific research. Until then, we can just look at them’.3 In the meantime, the investigation is ongoing; due to a lack of texts, we still have to inspect the images closely.





1 Johan De Vos. Fotograferen in verwondering. Missionarissen in China (Leuven: KADOC, 2009), catalogue of the homonymous exposition (29 October 2009–16 January 2010), curated by Johan De Vos, coordinated by Greet de Neef, and Luc Vints. 2 For more information, cf. files in the archives of the Redemptorist Fathers (BE/942855/981), the Jesuits (BE/942855/1595), the Passionists (BE/942855/1940), the Friars Minor (BE/942855/1649), the Capuchins (BE/942855/1884), the Dominicans (BE/942855/2164), the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (BE/942855/1696). 3 De Vos. Fotograferen in verwondering, 36. Greet de Neef • Retired Researcher Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 69–82 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129095 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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In this contribution, I will present a short overview of the glass positives preserved in KADOC’s vaults in Leuven and explain their historical value for today’s society. I will then present a case study which is different from most others, as written documents accompanying the glass plates still exist. Luckily, not all slide sets have been separated from their accompanying lectures. Three complete lectures and one fragment related to the glass positives produced by the Friars Minor have survived. All these texts were written by Father Piatus Wantz and invite the beholder on a trip through Chinese daily life and customs. I will combine his words with the photographed scenes they refer to. This will allow me to show his way of presenting image content to a contemporary audience, guiding their eyes toward certain visual details, using verbally delivered instructions and explanations on how to understand the projected image. This example demonstrates how the Belgian religious communities visited by Father Piatus acquired an impression about the missionary efforts of the Friars Minor in China. It also shows how Father Piatus influenced the audience in its perception and understanding of the foreign culture. Glass Plates in KADOC KADOC preserves twenty rich and varied collections of glass plates. In total, they account for approximately 20,000 slides (and about 25,000 glass negatives). From the end of the nineteenth century to the early 1950s, many priests and missionaries made used of projections of glass slides to enhance their preaching; the materials in question are black and white prints on glass made from a negative and sometimes coloured to liven up the image. A black paper passe-partout was placed around the print, framing the subject. To protect the fragile photographic emulsion, a second glass plate was placed over it and sealed with black paper tape. These glass plates are also called magic lantern slides or light images. The collection preserved by KADOC covers almost all activities of the Church: from catechist education to religious propaganda, (moralizing) entertainment, and missionary activities. About three quarters of the glass plates are part of the archives of various religious institutes. KADOC offers to preserve congregations’ religious heritage as increasing numbers of cloisters and churches are abandoned, as their inhabitants grow older and their overall numbers decline. The monks’ and nuns’ age does not allow them to assure the physical survival of the objects, nor can they make these archival materials publicly accessible. KADOC offers to take over these tasks and allows researchers to access the collection, ensuring the preservation of both the objects and the memory of the congregation. In the process of transferring these archives to KADOC, heavy wooden boxes full of glass plates were discovered in many monasteries, sometimes alongside large projection devices. In addition to the above-mentioned collections of the Fathers of Scheut and the Flemish Friars Minor, those belonging to the Redemptorists, the Brothers of the Christian Schools, the Capuchins, the Jesuits, and the Franciscan missionaries of Mary should also be mentioned in this context. Most glass plates are related to the missionary activities of these institutions. Except for the collection of the Franciscan missionaries of Mary (a female missionary congregation), such glass positives have primarily been found in the archives of male religious institutions.

Mission Proj ections

This should not come as a surprise. In line with current gender beliefs, women were not allowed to engage in anything ‘technical’ like photography. Moreover, in the first half of the twentieth century, the female religious workers did not have the same freedom of movement as their male colleagues. Sisters never travelled alone, and it was considered inappropriate for a female missionary to tell her story in the parish halls of her home country when on leave. Geographically, the glass slides mainly cover Congo and Mongolia, although visualizations of lesser-known mission areas, such as the Philippines and Chile, are also common. These images were often unique; along with merchants, colonial officials, scientists, and doctors, missionaries were the first to take photographic recordings outside of Europe. They took pictures of the accomplishments of their missionary work, for example the construction of a chapel or a church, a school or a dispensary, or the baptism of inhabitants. In addition, they focused their lens on the landscape, the fauna and flora, the people and their traditions and customs. They photographed everything that caught their eye and was somehow different from life in their homeland. Today, these glass plates have great documentary and ethnographic value. They are an important source for historical and anthropological research. Like images in general, glass slides are of course never an objective representation of historical reality. It is important to keep in mind in which context and for what purpose they were made. In the first place, they represent a certain mentality, a certain vision of what being a missionary meant at that time. In general, they are an expression of a Eurocentric worldview. These various layers of meaning are often hidden under the ‘real’, apparently authentic image and only emerge after thorough image analysis. For example, these glass slides could have been put on display in connection with a certain story in order to serve as mission propaganda tools. During the interwar years, photography certainly granted religious institutions an unparalleled advantage. It allowed them to present their missionary activities to the audience that they counted on for moral and financial support. As indicated, missionaries on leave, but also missionaries that had returned home, used the glass slides during lectures for a non-specialized audience of worshippers. For a long time, especially until the middle of the twentieth century, lantern lectures were preferred to mission film screenings.4 During a presentation with glass plates, the speaker could reflect on an image and, if necessary, go into detail and adapt his commentary to the specific audience in front of him. This was not possible during the projection of a fast-moving film. Compared to mission magazines, another important propaganda channel of the religious institutions, missionaries reached a broader, more general and less intellectual audience with their lectures during mission evenings. Moreover, glass slides allowed them to interact with this audience in a more direct way. A presentation with glass plates made use of a fixed repertoire: nature and people in distant, foreign lands were shown; the strange and ‘wrong’ (read ‘non-Western’) habits of the ‘indigenous people’ were emphasized; the ‘heroes’, namely the missionaries were

4 Luc Vints. ‘Beeld van een zending. Nieuwe propagandamedia voor de missies’, Trajecta 5 (1996): 369–87; Luc Vints. ‘Kerk en film in België. De houding van de katholieke kerk en de religieuze instituten’, in Bewogen missie. Het gebruik van het medium film door Nederlandse kloostergemeenschappen, edited by Joos van Vugt, and MarieAntoinette Willemsen (Hilversum: Verloren, 2012), 11–21.

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introduced, often with names and surnames; the social, educational, and spiritual work they did was foregrounded, visually symbolized by images of the hospital, the school, and the church service. The missionary’s word significantly influenced the ways in which glass plates functioned during lectures. Certainly, this presents contemporary researchers with a major challenge: in most cases, the accompanying comments can no longer be traced. Sound recording technology was very limited at the time and, above all, not common. At best, we dispose of a written text, which was, however, never used ‘literally’. In the case of the above-mentioned collections, we only found additional, non-visual information in two archives. More than two hundred handwritten booklets with texts to be read aloud to a young audience by the representatives of the Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk (Eucharistic Catechist Service) in Ghent were preserved in the archives of this institution,5 and typed-out identification lists of slides,6 accompanied on rare occasions by the text of a performance: the aforementioned typo-scripted lectures by Wantz were found in the archives of the Flemish Friars Minor. Below, we take the Friars Minor as a case study of lectures that were aimed at adult audiences. Friars Minor7 The thousands of glass positives discussed below form an important part of the extensive audiovisual collection within the archive of the Flemish Saint Joseph province of the Friars Minor. The relationship and interconnections between the various parts of the archive are an important element in the research. The collection of glass plates ought to be studied and interpreted in relation to the files of the provincial administrative bodies, the missionary apostolate and mission animation, and the files of individual members. These files make it possible to historically contextualize the origin and uses of these glass plates. The missionary activities of the Belgian Friars Minor started in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1914, some eighty Friars Minor, fifteen per cent of the total number of members, were active as missionaries. During the interwar period, the missionary work of the Friars Minor reached its peak with 188 missionaries or twenty-five per cent of the total number of religious on the eve of the Second World War. From 1872 onwards, the order was active in China, in the missionary vicariate of southwest Hubei, which was transferred to the Belgian province of Saint Joseph in 1891. The Friars Minor devoted themselves to parish service, education, and social work. From 1920, the Friars Minor also administrated a mission area in the Belgian colony of Congo. In the province of





5 For more information on this collection, cf. the contributions by Natalija Majsova and Phílippe Marion, as well as Adeline Werry and Sébastien Fevry in this volume. 6 The lists preserved contain an introductory lecture on ‘La Chine centrale, physique et ethnographique: La famille’ with two sections on the Valley of the Yangtze river and ethnographic information on Central China (85 slide numbers). It is possible that Piatus Wantz made this inventory, but we do not know when. The slides have been preserved, however, the title of a slide is sometimes missing on the list. 7 Dirk Laureys. De mindere broeders van Franciscus 1842–1992. 150 jaar minderbroeders in Vlaanderen (Leuven: KADOC, 1992); Carine Dujardin. Missionering en moderniteit: de Belgische minderbroeders in China (1872–1940) (Leuven: KADOC, 1996).

Mission Proj ections

Katanga, some posts formed the new apostolic prefecture of Lulua-Katanga. In 1934, the vicariate of Lulua-Central Katanga was established. The missionaries founded churches and chapels, schools and hospitals, orphanages, dispensaries, and workhouses. They were supported in this by several sister congregations. The Congo Mission would gradually outstrip the China Mission in scale and importance in the 1930s as, due to law changes, it became progressively difficult to run private schools and teach religion.8 Ultimately, the Communist takeover in the late 1940s led to the discontinuation of the mission in China. From 1890 onwards, missionary procurators were established to support the missions: to collect donations and handle the material and organizational management of the missions. In the interwar period, mobilization for the missions in Flanders reached cruising speed. In addition to and under the supervision of the provincial procurators, regional procurators started a missionary campaign in their own districts. Societies such as the Franciscaanse Missiebond (Franciscan Missionary Union), the Franciscaans Missiehalfuurtje (Franciscan Mission Half Hour), and the Franciscaanse Missiekelk (Franciscan Missionary Chalice) were established locally. The provincial procuration was established in 1931 in the monastery of Antwerp. In 1946, a Central Propaganda Agency was established in Ghent. The provincial procurator moved to Mortsel in 1948 and was henceforth called the ‘Centrale van de Franciscaanse Missies’ (‘Headquarters of the Franciscan Missions’). Stimulated by the central and local procurations, numerous initiatives were launched for the moral and financial benefit of the Franciscan mission. Mission action and mission propaganda consisted of lectures, exhibitions (travelling and permanent), mission evenings, mission sewing circles, local mission unions, mission fairs, and so on. The St Anthony moneybox adorned counters in shops, churches, and schools. Congregational magazines such as De Stem van Sint-Antonius (The Voice of Saint Anthony, starting in 1919) presented photos and stories about missionaries and their activities. Profound as well as vulgarizing mission literature was published. Light images and mission films told the visual story of heroic missionaries in distant, exotic lands. This form of communication probably captured most strongly the imagination of the public, which was introduced to the world of the missionary in parish halls and schools. Mission propaganda changed radically after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). The days were over when every mission congregation had appointed a propagandist who gave presentations with the projection lantern in schools and patronages, and at least once a year in the parish on the occasion of a mission evening. The dioceses and religious institutions were now responsible for information and animation on their social activities in the global South. Glass Plates of the Friars Minor The thousands of glass positives are the work of many, often anonymous hands. The first link towards identification refers to the missionaries who made the pictures during their

8 Jean-Paul Wiest. ‘Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools and China’s Drive Toward a Modern Educational System (1850–1950)’, Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 33 (2011): 92–114 (https://journals.openedition.org/ extremeorient/187, [accessed 1 February 2021]).

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stay with the mission. From diaries we sometimes find out that a particular missionary had a camera at his disposal, but this rarely means that we can attribute specific pictures to him. The missionary photographer worked in and for a larger whole. From this perspective, it was not important for the Friars Minor to know who had taken which photos. We are also barely informed about the formation and composition of the image collection as we now find it in the archive. However, as was the case with similar collections of religious institutions preserved in KADOC, this collection did not grow organically, and the development of an audiovisual archive was not a priority. Usually, it was not until the second half of the twentieth century that work was done on a thematic ordering of the visual material, with little regard for provenance and contextualization. From the scant information available, it can be concluded that the mission archive was originally kept by the provincial procuration. There, former missionary Leontius Adams was in charge of arranging the mission photos, presumably in the late 1940s. The result are a dozen loose-leaf albums devoted to the mission areas of the Friars Minor, namely China, Chile, Congo, and the Holy Land. The albums follow a somewhat calibrated pattern, ranging from portraits of individual rulers and fathers through mission areas and monasteries to local customs. They were compiled from photographs whose provenance can hardly be traced, except by comparing the manuscript on the back of the photographs with that of the correspondence of individual fathers. However, we do know one photographer: Father Piatus Wantz (1884–1968).9 We know that he had several cameras at his disposal, including a special ‘rotating’ device. He joined the Friars Minor in 1904 and was ordained a priest in 1910. As a missionary in China, he became rector of the Ichang Minor Seminary in the early 1920s, and reorganized it with the aim of attracting more students. At the end of May 1930, Father Wantz came to Belgium on holiday. During this stay, he compiled eight lectures with black and white slides drawn from his own pictures and destined for the mission procurators. These procurators had been locally appointed since 1924, but few had a lived knowledge of missionary work in China. Wantz left for China for a second time in September 1931, but definitively returned to Belgium as early as May 1933. He was initially member of the Walloon Friars Minor province, but lived in the monastery of Leuven since November 1948, and became a confessor in the monastery’s church. He died there in 1968. The eight series of slides about China, which we discovered in the mission archive of Sint-Truiden, were produced by Wantz. There is an introductory series on Central China, a series on Chinese agriculture, and a series on ordinary Chinese people with a focus on means of transport, retailers, and small professions. There is also a series on Chinese art, with special attention to architecture. Another series depicts Chinese acrobatics, and another one focuses on religion and superstition. The city of Ichang and the major centres of christianization are also the subject of a series, the latter also discussing the secular Chinese clergy.10 Each array contains between eighty-five and one hundred twenty glass

9 Archief Minderbroeders (OFM). Vlaamse Provincie Sint-Jozef. Piatus Wantz. (BE/942855/1649/2229). 10 These are the exact titles: ‘Série introductoire. La Chine Centrale, physique et ethnographique: La famille. I. Physionomie de la vallée du “Yangtse”, vulg. dit “Fleuve Bleu”. II. Ethnographie de la Chine Centrale’ (85 slides); ‘Série A. L’Agriculture chinoise. A. Généralités. B. Culture en terre sèche. C. Culture du Riz’ (110 slides); ‘Série B. Le petit peuple de la Chine: mariniers, ouvriers, etc. A. Moyens de transport. B. Les petits

Mission Proj ections

slides, amounting to a total of 756. All series were available in several copies. Especially precious are the preserved lists of identification and the accompanying commentary texts to the series on the common Chinese people, the acrobatic arts, and the training of the native Chinese clergy, handwritten by Piatus Wantz himself.11 We could not find the commentary texts for the other series. Images of China Presented by Piatus Wantz A series like ‘Le petit peuple de la Chine’ (‘The small people of China’) – a ‘virtual’ walk through the city of Ichang – will certainly have fascinated the attentive Flemish audience of priests, college and boarding school students, members of Flemish cultural associations, such as the Davidsfonds (David Fund),12 or associations for Action catholique (Catholic Action).13 A contemporary audience is likely to raise eyebrows at a bias that is difficult to conceal: it is clear that the missionaries came to China convinced about the superiority of their own culture. Ordinary Chinese people are presented as childlike, languid, unsanitary, and superstitious. The following pictures have not been identified yet, as their year of production has not been retrieved from the written source material in KADOC’s collection. No further commentary on the photographs or on the texts will be provided, in order not to influence the reader’s own interpretation of both.

marchands. C. Petits métiers et professions diverses’ (126 slides); ‘Série C. Les Arts et quelques métiers chinois. A. L’Architecture’ (73 slides); ‘Série D. Acrobaties chinoises. I. Acrobatie sur le mât. II: Bonds périlleux. III. Garçon suspendu au mât par sa tresse. IV. Bond du haut de deux tables superposées. V. Danseuses de corde. VI. Acrobatie avec une cruche. VII. Acrobatie avec une table. VIII. Acrobatie avec une échelle. IX: Varia’ (110 slides); ‘Série E. Religions, pagodes, superstitions. A. Pagodes bouddiques [sic]. B. Culte des Ancêtres’ (64 slides); ‘Série F. La ville d’Ichang et nos grands centres d’évangélisation. A. Ichang. B. Shasi. C. King-chow-fu. D. Keouhien-Kang et Tchang-Kia-houi. E. Divers postes dans la pleine. F. Tan-tse-chan (montagnes)’ (104 slides). List of series G is missing. ‘Série H. Éducation du clergé séculier chinois. A. Notre Séminaire de Ichang. B. Notre Grand Séminaire Régional, fondé en 1921 (sept.)’ (85 slides). 11 Archief Minderbroeders (OFM). Vlaamse Provincie Sint-Jozef. Lijsten van dia’s met betrekking tot China en Kongo en begeleidende teksten (conférences). (BE/942855/1649/12242). 12 ‘The Davidsfonds is a Catholic organisation in Flanders, Belgium, with the purpose of promoting the Flemish culture in the areas of literature, history and art. The Davidsfonds was founded in Leuven, Belgium on 15 January 1875, with the motto Voor Godsdienst, taal en volk (E: For religion, language and people)’ (https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Davidsfonds, [accessed 1 February 2021]). 13 ‘Catholic Action was the name of many groups of lay Catholics who were attempting to encourage a Catholic influence on society. They were especially active in the nineteenth century in historically Catholic countries that fell under anti-clerical regimes such as Spain, Italy, Bavaria, France, and Belgium’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Catholic_Action, [accessed 1 February 2021]).

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Slide no. 010 entitled ‘Pêche au carrelet’ (‘Plaice fishing’): ‘The Chinese like fishing because it is a calm activity that does not require much effort; it corresponds well to their peaceful, somewhat sluggish nature’.14

14 Beeldarchief Minderbroeders (OFM). Vlaamse Provincie Sint-Jozef. Glaspositieven van de fotoreportages van Piatus Wantz. Serie B: Het gewone volk. (BE/942855/1612/2045_010); text taken from slides 10 to 14.

Mission Proj ections

Slide no. 078 (according to the lecture) entitled ‘Les oranges, les mandarins et les pamplemousses’ (‘Oranges, mandarins, and grapefruit’) (according to the inventory list): ‘Ichang has its own vegetable market […] But don’t be too picky about the cleanliness […] Chinese people, who don’t care much about our principles of health science and think that everything will be fine with a wash […] If we want clean fruit that has not yet been touched by twenty hands, let’s buy it early in the morning: after all, later on the passers-by will come and look with their dirty hands, to deprive you of all the desire to eat such foods. And when it gets warm, a layer of dust and a flock of flies falls on the beautiful yellow-and-red fruit’.15

15 Beeldarchief Minderbroeders (OFM). Vlaamse Provincie Sint-Jozef. Glaspositieven van de fotoreportages van Piatus Wantz. Serie B: Het gewone volk. (BE/942855/1612/2045_078); text taken from slides 66 and 75.

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Slide no. 105 ‘Curetage des oreilles’ (‘Ear cleaning’): ‘A trade which is widespread in the cities is that of the barber. […] Many barbers prefer to wait for their customers, patiently sitting on their bench at a crossing. In the past, all the Chinese wore a braid; since the revolution of 1911 they have their head shaved completely bald with a razor, or “in the European way” […] When the hair reaches its desired length, the small hairs around are shaved away with a razor; even the forehead, eyebrows, and the back of the nose are shaved. Then, if you wish, the ears are cleaned: first, the guy pulls your ear back, scrapes the inside with a little bone and then cleans it with a little bit of cotton on a pair of pliers. But […] he uses the same little bone for everyone and I don’t recommend that you let this operation be done to you, you might regret it’.16

16 Beeldarchief Minderbroeders (OFM). Vlaamse Provincie Sint-Jozef. Glaspositieven van de fotoreportages van Piatus Wantz. Serie B: Het gewone volk. (BE/942855/1612/2045_105); text taken from slides 101 to 104.

Mission Proj ections

Slide no. 114 ‘Scribe public installé au coin du bureau des postes Chin. à Ichang’ (‘Public scribe at the corner of the Chinese postal office in Ichang’): ‘In many places in the city, public writers sit behind a pile of books […] waiting for a poor, illiterate person who needs their services: writing a letter, or deciphering one […] That’s certainly a good job for failed mandarins or schoolmasters without occupation’.17

17 Beeldarchief Minderbroeders (OFM). Vlaamse Provincie Sint-Jozef. Glaspositieven van de fotoreportages van Piatus Wantz. Serie B: Het gewone volk. (BE/942855/1612/2045_115); text taken from slides 112 to 114.

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Slide no. 117 ‘Un diseur de bonne aventure jouant du violon’ (‘A fortuneteller playing the violin’): ‘These people are not only ignorant, they are also very superstitious, and that is why, besides the writers, there are many soothsayers […] The best and most trusted diviners are the blind; the Chinese say that the blind who do not see the earthly see the otherworldly great clarity, and can read the future in it’.18

18 Beeldarchief Minderbroeders (OFM). Vlaamse Provincie Sint-Jozef. Glaspositieven van de fotoreportages van Piatus Wantz. Serie B: Het gewone volk. (BE/942855/1612/2045_117); text taken from slides 115 and 116.

Mission Proj ections

Slide no. 108 entitled ‘Fillette recourbée en arrière, debout sur les pieds [sic] de la femme’ (‘Little girl bent backwards, standing on the feet [sic] of a woman’): ‘Chinese nature can be characterized as too calm, too soft to indulge in violent physical exercises. Every respectable Chinese is obliged to behave in such a dignified and reserved manner in public that people who could not do so because of their profession would fall far down the social ladder; they were discarded as inferior, almost as outcasts. The only physical activity of this kind that has existed in China for a long time is acrobatics. […] Isn’t this really a long and remarkable series of real balance exercises? In our country, she [the young female acrobate] would have been applauded enthusiastically; the Chinese, in their usual phlegm, mark their satisfaction and their admiration with these few words: Tìn-hào-ti Kòng-fòu! That’s a great job!’.19

19 Beeldarchief Minderbroeders (OFM). Vlaamse Provincie Sint-Jozef. Glaspositieven van de fotoreportages van Piatus Wantz. Serie B: Het gewone volk. (BE/942855/1612/2051/103). The first part of the text is taken from the introduction of Wantz’s lecture on ‘Les sports en Chine: Acrobates’ (‘Sports in China: Acrobats’); the second part describes slide 108. The incorrect slide title is corrected in the lecture which states ‘on the hands of the woman’.

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Conclusion The collection of the Flemish Friars Minor is the best documented glass plate collection at KADOC. Unfortunately, even analysis of this collection requires a lot of guesswork. The Friars Minor handled photos carefully, as well as carelessly at the same time. On the one hand, they preserved the glass plates meticulously in series. On the other hand, the series were composed with only elementary metadata, resulting in the loss of all contextualization. We can assume that the tenor and structure of other collections were similar. At a time when there was hardly any travel, and no television or internet, these light images, in addition to mission exhibitions and mission magazines, were one of the first introductions to non-Western cultures for most people. These unique collections equip contemporary anthropologists with an extraordinary insight into the history of people about which few other sources from that era are available. They give present-day indigenous populations a picture of the life of their ancestors. This might help them discover a part of their own identity, one of the roots of their culture, albeit under the direct influence of Western culture brought by Christian Belgian missionaries. However, these multi-layered ethnographical sources will first have to be stripped of their Christian message, which also applies to the anthropological research carried out by many missionaries in the past. Finally, the slides are study material for historians and missiologists who want to get an idea, even if idealized, of the way in which missionaries worked in the former mission countries. Bibliography De Vos, Johan. Fotograferen in verwondering. Missionarissen in China (Leuven: KADOC, 2009) Dujardin, Carine. Missionering en moderniteit: de Belgische minderbroeders in China (1872–1940) (Leuven: KADOC, 1996) Laureys, Dirk. De mindere broeders van Franciscus 1842–1992. 150 jaar minderbroeders in Vlaanderen (Leuven: KADOC, 1992) Vints, Luc. ‘Beeld van een zending. Nieuwe propagandamedia voor de missies’, Trajecta 5 (1996): 369–87 ——. ‘Kerk en film in België. De houding van de katholieke kerk en de religieuze instituten’, in Bewogen missie. Het gebruik van het medium film door Nederlandse kloostergemeenschappen, edited by Joos van Vugt, and Marie-Antoinette Willemsen (Hilversum: Verloren, 2012), 11–21 Wiest, Jean-Paul. ‘Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools and China’s Drive Toward a Modern Educational System (1850–1950)’, Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 33 (2011): 92–114 (https://journals.openedition.org/extremeorient/187, [accessed 1 February 2021])

Wouter Egelmeers

Making Pupils See: The Use of Optical Lantern Slides in Geography Teaching in Belgian Catholic Schools

Introduction In 1879, the inaugural issue of the new Catholic teachers’ journal Het Katholiek Onderwijs (Catholic Education) opened with an article that argued that ‘nothing can make the treated subject more attractive and simpler for the child to understand than a visual representation’.1 While the increasing popularity of class teaching from the 1860s gave rise to the need for media that could be viewed by larger groups of pupils, the nineteenth century also bore witness to a number of educational innovations that sought to make learning less dry and monotonous.2 Inspired by innovative pedagogical theorists such as Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) and Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), many educators implemented new, more hands-on, and visual ways of teaching to complement the text-centered method that had until then been the standard.3 One of the instruments that pedagogues championed as a means to achieve their goal was the optical (or magic) lantern, which was introduced into educational institutions from the late nineteenth century onwards.4 A handful of scholars have recently addressed optical lantern practices in primary and secondary education, and most have observed that the medium was not broadly embraced by educators until after the introduction of mass-produced photographic slides, which



1 C. J. Dullé. ‘Het lezen in de lagere school, of het aanschouwelijk onderwijs in betrekking daarmede’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 1 (1879): 9. 2 Cf. Karl Catteeuw. ‘Als de muren konden spreken… Schoolwandplaten en de geschiedenis van het Belgisch lager onderwijs’ (PhD thesis, KU Leuven, 2005), 46–84. 3 Cf. Catteeuw. ‘Als de muren konden spreken’, 42–43. 4 In line with contemporaneous terminology, I use the name ‘optical lantern’. When the magic lantern was introduced to education, its advocates started using more ‘scientific’-sounding names like ‘sciopticon’ or ‘optical lantern’ in order to increase its appeal for serious matters; cf. Jens Ruchatz. Licht und Wahrheit: Eine Mediumgeschichte der fotografischen Projektion (München: Fink, 2003), 291–93. Wouter Egelmeers • Research group Cultural History since 1750, KU Leuven, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 83–98 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129096 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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were perceived to ensure a measure of scientific objectivity.5 As Jens Ruchatz points out, ‘Only with the introduction of photography to slide projection is a connection between “light and truth” realized, in which the photographic image seems to plastically present reality itself ’.6 In her study of optical lantern use in Argentinian teaching colleges, Veronica Hollman argues that ‘positivism became the scientific discourse to support the use of glass lantern slides in educational institutions’.7 In a similar way, both Jennifer Eisenhauer as well as Carmen López San Segundo and her co-authors have stressed that the ‘lantern’s emergence as a scientific and educational tool’ was dependent on the recasting of the apparatus as an instrument of ‘scientific vision’ that projected reputably objective photographic images.8 As Robert Nelson has demonstrated, art historians, for instance, introduced photographical lantern slides into their teaching in order to ‘approach certain methods of the natural sciences’ with larger cultural status and currency. Victoria Cain has similarly argued that the producers of educational slide series and stereographs contended that their wares could be used to teach pupils how to see the world in a ‘coolly rational way’.9 Still, the introduction of the optical lantern into schools was dependent on more than merely the alleged objectivity of photographic slides. As Sarah Schaefer observes, the instrument was the pedagogical tool par excellence for modern religious communities well into the twentieth century due to the participatory mechanisms and flexibility that it offered lecturers.10 In France, the educational use of the instrument was strongly intertwined with the conviction amongst Catholic priests that they could use the medium to win over the public in their fight against the French secularist movement.11 For early twentieth-century Belgian Catholics, too, the objectivity and scientific subtexts of the optical lantern were arguably less important. Indeed, the influence of religious beliefs and other contemporaneous ideologies on educational lantern use need to be taken into



5 Cf. Armelle Sentilhes. ‘L’audio-visuel au service de l’enseignement: Projections lumineuses et cinéma scolaire, 1880–1940’, Gazette des archives 173.1 (1996): 165–82 (https://doi.org/10.3406/gazar.1996.3400). 6 Ruchatz. Licht und Wahrheit, 423. 7 Veronica C. Hollman. ‘Glass Lantern Slides and Visual Instruction for School Teachers in Early TwentiethCentury Argentina’, Early Popular Visual Culture 14.1 (2 January 2016): 5 (https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2015.1 092390). 8 Jennifer F. Eisenhauer. ‘Next Slide Please: The Magical, Scientific, and Corporate Discourses of Visual Projection Technologies’, Studies in Art Education 47.3 (Spring 2006): 201–04; Carmen López San Segundo, and others. ‘The Projection of Images in the Spanish Secondary School Classrooms in the First Third of the 20th Century’, Fonseca, Journal of Communication 16 (1 June 2018): 32–33 (https://doi.org/10.14201/fjc2018163145). 9 Robert S. Nelson. ‘The Slide Lecture, or the Work of Art “History” in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Critical Inquiry 26.3 (2000): 431; Victoria E. M. Cain. ‘Seeing the World: Media and Vision in US Geography Classrooms, 1890–1930’, Early Popular Visual Culture 13.4 (2 October 2015): 287 (https://doi.org/10.1080/1746065 4.2015.1111591). 10 Cf. Sarah C. Schaefer. ‘Illuminating the Divine: The Magic Lantern and Religious Pedagogy in the USA, ca. 1870–1920’, Material Religion 13.3 (3 July 2017): 278 (https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2017.1308176). 11 For the most recent overview of French historiography on the magic lantern, cf. Anne Quillien (ed.). Lumineuses projections! La projection fixe éducative (Chasseneuil-du-Poitou: Canopé éditions, 2016). In this book, cf. especially the contributions by Yves Gaulupeau. ‘Une technologie nouvelle au service de l’enseignement’, 25–37, and Laurent Mannoni. ‘Science ou spectacle? La lanterne magique éducative’, in Lumineuses projections! La projection fixe éducative, 11–23. On the competition between laymen and Catholics, cf. Frank Kessler, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2 January 2019): 89–111 (https://doi.org/10 .1080/17460654.2019.1641971).

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account. The medium not only served as a means to impress an audience with colourful, luminous images of God’s wonders, it also offered the presenter an unfettered flexibility to curate new, self-made visual narratives.12 As Katie Day Good has demonstrated, teachers did not always deploy new educational media, such as lantern slides, in ways prescribed by administrators and teaching aid producers, but rather alternated their use with a range of media which they themselves produced or sourced from media such as illustrated magazines.13 As Nelleke Teughels has recently shown, a more user-centric analysis of the optical lantern in education yields insights into ways in which individual educators adapted the instrument to everyday classroom practice as well as its relationship with other media.14 This contribution, then, offers an initial examination of optical lantern practice in the teaching of geography in a Belgian Catholic girls’ school in the early twentieth century and considers both the normative discourses that enabled and legitimized its use by Catholic educators and the influence of religious and pedagogical beliefs on optical lantern classroom practice. I do so, firstly, by analysing the debates on the introduction of the optical lantern in Catholic educational journals and at Catholic educational conferences. These reveal a gradual acceptance amongst Catholic priests and educators with regards to employing the optical lantern in their pedagogy, as well as how, and under what didactic circumstances, they deemed the medium fit for use in the Catholic classroom. Secondly, the analysis of a unique corpus of slides, used in geography lessons taught at the Heilig Graf (Holy Sepulcher) girls’ school in the city of Turnhout, sheds light on the narratives that Catholic teachers constructed by means of the optical lantern and reveals the impact of their attitudes and beliefs upon teachings about the wider world through the medium.15 This analysis is enriched by the preservation of a small number of notes containing texts used in some illustrated lessons, alongside the slides with which they were used. Significantly, these notes were written by teachers who constructed their own lectures while engaging critically and creatively with the medium by recombining slide sets and adding their own slides. The coincidence of notes and slides – seldom encountered in educational slide collections – offers a more informed understanding of classroom practice. The Optical Lantern in Catholic Secondary Schools After the Liberals came to power in the 1878 Belgian elections, the new Education Minister Pierre van Humbéeck decided to put an end to rote learning and instead introduced modern

12 Cf. Natalija Majsova and Philippe Marion’s contribution in this volume. 13 Cf. Katie Day Good. ‘Making Do with Media: Teachers, Technology, and Tactics of Media Use in American Classrooms, 1919–1946’, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 13.1 (2 January 2016): 87–89 (https://doi.org /10.1080/14791420.2015.1092203). 14 Cf. Nelleke Teughels. ‘Expectation Versus Reality: How Visual Media Use in Belgian Catholic Secondary Schools was Envisioned, Encouraged and Put into Practice (c. 1900–1940)’, Paedagogica Historica (2021) (https://doi.org /10.1080/00309230.2020.1856153). 15 Geography is known to have been a very ‘visual’ subject, cf. Federico Ferretti. ‘The Spatiality of Geography Teaching and Cultures of Alternative Education: The “Intuitive Geographies” of the Anarchist School in Cempuis (1880–1894)’, Cultural Geographies 23.4 (1 October 2016): 615–33 (https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474015612731).

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concepts like learning through observation and experimentation to school programs: ‘the teacher is required to render his instruction intuitive by means of methodologically performed experiments, observations of natural objects, models, and wall charts’.16 To help schools organize this new kind of teaching, his ministry provided subsidies for the acquisition of scientific collections, and in 1881 provided all state secondary schools and teaching colleges with an optical lantern that was intended for use in physics lessons on the properties of light, as well as in geography lessons in teaching colleges.17 It remains unclear to what extent these newly distributed lanterns were actually used, since contemporary observers noted that in most cases, the lantern ended up in the cabinets of the physics laboratory.18 The liberal government’s plans to modernize and secularize Belgian education increased tensions with the Catholics and brought about a so-called school war over the influence of Catholicism on the educational system.19 In the 1884 elections, the Catholics won a large parliamentary majority that would endure until the First World War. The new Catholic government was in favour of a stronger focus on the classical humanities, and largely cut the previous government’s generous subsidies for the study of science. It also delayed the proliferation of expensive instruments like the projection lantern for a period of about 15 years.20 Catholic educators, too, were not immediately won over by the idea of implementing the optical lantern in their lessons.21 In the decades after the first distribution of lanterns to public secondary schools, the journal Het Katholiek Onderwijs (1879–1914), for example, did not mention the apparatus once. After repeated calls by liberal teachers to finally introduce the optical lantern into Belgian education, the government changed its mind and started recommending its use in 1899 as a way to make lessons livelier and more accessible. While Het Katholiek Onderwijs and the more liberal Catholic educational journal De Opvoeder (The Educator, 1900-present) now occasionally referenced the possible advantages of the instrument, they mostly focused on other, less technically advanced instructional aids, like wall charts and the blackboard.22 16 Rapport triennal sur la situation de l’instruction primaire en Belgique. Années 1879–1880–1881 (Brussels: Fr. Gobbaerts, 1884), lxxiv; italics in original. 17 Cf. ibid., cxxxiv, 207, 226. It seems that a similar evolution took place in Spain, where secondary schools first acquired an optical lantern for lessons on optics, while its use was later extended to the actual teaching of subjects like geography. Cf. Daniel Pitarch. ‘“To Transform the Blackboard into a Blank Screen”: Magic Lanterns and Phantasmagorias in Nineteenth-Century Spanish High Schools’, Fonseca, Journal of Communication 16 (2018): 88, 92 (https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2172-9077/article/view/fjc20181681100/18793). 18 Cf. Congrès international de l’enseignement moyen. Rapports préliminaires (Tournai: Decallonne-Liagre, 1901), 132; Émile Dony. ‘Les procédés intuitifs dans l’enseignement de l’histoire’, Revue de l’instruction publique en Belgique 45 (1902): 86. 19 Cf. Els Witte. ‘The Battle for Cemeteries, Monasteries and Schools: Belgium’, in Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Christopher Clark, and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge: University Press, 2006), 118–26. 20 Cf. Rapport triennal sur l’état de l’enseignement moyen en Belgique. Années 1885–1886–1887 (Brussels: Fr. Gobbaerts, 1890), lxv, xcv. 21 Cf. Wouter Egelmeers and Nelleke Teughels. ‘A Thousand Times more Interesting. Introducing the optical lantern into the Belgian classroom, 1880–1920’, History of Education. Journal of the History of Education Society 50.6 (2 November 2021): 792, 795 (https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2021.1918271). 22 For one example of a text on positive effects of using a projection lantern, cf. H. Memor. ‘Welk onderwijs gereedschap moet eene welingerichte school bezitten. Wat kan de onderwijzer zelf zich aanschaffen of vervaardigen’, De Opvoeder 3 (1902): 459.

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In the meantime, Belgian Catholic clergymen had started to establish ‘projection services’ that were supposed to help priests combat the influence of the Liberal movement and its secularization politics by lending-out slide sets. Modelled on organizations set up by their colleagues in France, who fought a fervid battle against the separation of State and Church, these Œuvres de projections or Werken der lichtbeelden (i.e. the Catholic Church’s organization for lantern projections) offered Catholic laymen and clergymen the possibility to borrow slide series for lectures on a wide range of topics. Founded in Brussels (1897), Tournai (1904), Leuven (before 1905), Namur (1905), Antwerp, Verviers, and Liège (all 1908) these services often catered to the needs of educators and schools.23 The most influential, founded by a history teacher at the Catholic Sint-Jan Berchmanscollege in Antwerp, even explicitly indicated this objective in its name: Werk der Lichtbeelden in het Onderwijs (i.e. the organization for lantern projections in schools). Whereas a small group of liberal teachers working at state institutions had launched a call for the introduction of the optical lantern to Belgian schools as early as 1895, only in 1910 did Catholic pedagogues and teachers begin to discuss the use of the optical lantern in Catholic schools.24 As priest and secondary school teacher Karel Elebaers explained at a 1911 conference on Catholic education, the positive results of illustrative teaching had demonstrated that it was best to show pupils the things that they were supposed to understand. As direct observation was not always possible, projections could provide a very ‘clear and complete image’ of those things that could not be taken into the classroom.25 He recommended that projections should only be used on the condition that teachers did not show too many pictures at once: in order to keep the pupils’ attention from wandering, teachers ought only to show one ideal picture instead of a series. And the images had to be shown in a serious manner: ‘it cannot be a play time, it has to be a study’.26 At another Catholic congress, the diocesan school inspector Louis Carrière contended that religious instruction should indeed be intuitive, and that the projection lantern could be used to achieve this aim. However, it should only be used in exceptional cases, and as a recreation, since the author supposed that not all teachers had enough authority to ensure their class from descending into chaos. He concluded that teachers should ‘be wary of getting carried away with novelties that are attractive at first glance’.27 Other detractions of the apparatus discussed amongst Catholic educators included the price of projection materials and the complexities of using gas or electricity as light sources.28 Catholic secondary school teachers were more hands-on in their approach to the optical lantern, and sometimes decided to take matters into their own hands, as is demonstrated by 23 Cf. Theophile-Marie Van de Vivere. ‘Les œuvres de projections en Belgique’, Le Fascinateur 19 ( July 1904), 230–31; G.-Michel Coissac. ‘Les projections en Belgique’, Le Fascinateur 90 ( June 1910): 147–51. 24 On the Catholics’ ambiguous attitude towards images in education, also cf. Nelleke Teughels’s contribution in this volume. 25 Karel Elebaers. ‘De Lichtbeelden in ’t Onderwijs’, in Compte-rendu des travaux du Congrès national de l’Enseignement Moyen Libre de Belgique, tenu à Bonne-Espérance les 11, 12, 13 septembre 1911/Verslag der werkzaamheden op den landdag van het Vrij Middelbaar Onderwijs van België, gehouden te Bonne-Espérance den 11, 12, 13 september 1911, volume II (Roeselare: De Meester, 1911), 338–51. 26 Ibid., 338–41. Part of Elebaers’s argument was based on Amaat Joos. Aanschouwing en begrip (Ghent: Siffer, 1907). 27 [Louis] Carrière. ‘La question de l’enseignement religieux au Congrès de Malines (1909)’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 32 (1910): 119. 28 Cf. K. D. L. ‘Radioptican’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 34 (1913): 183.

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Fig. 1. Projection of an image of a tsetse fly in an illuminated room by Joseph Gorlia in Nova et Vetera 1.4 (1912): 483. (All reproductions made by the author).

a debate in Catholic secondary school journal Nova et Vetera (New and Old, 1912-present). In a 1912 article, the physics teacher Joseph Gorlia introduced his colleagues to a number of self-designed solutions to the problem that most projectors posed in requiring darkened classrooms, which could result in unwanted behaviour amongst pupils. By means of two mirrors and a projection screen, Gorlia had found an ingenious way to project an image bright enough to be seen in an illuminated room, which he used with great satisfaction (cf. Fig. 1).29 Since the availability of commercially made educational lantern slides was limited, Gorlia advised his colleagues to widen the repertoire of projectable images substantially by making their own slides by photographing images from handbooks, or by adjusting their projection lantern to function as an episcope to project opaque objects such as postcards or handbook illustrations.30 Although it is difficult to assess what proportion of educators implemented the optical lantern in their practice, discussions in educational journals suggest that, from the 1920s onwards, most Catholic educators fully accepted the optical lantern as a teaching aid for subjects like history and geography and further integrated it in their teaching. This was the case even in the face of contemporary controversy surrounding the assumed ‘corruptive’

29 J. G. [ Joseph Gorlia]. ‘Projections Lumineuses’, Nova et Vetera 1.4 (1912): 477–93. 30 Ibid.

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influence of (worldly) cinema. Some pedagogues were of the view that the moving images in films were too distracting and not fit for the developing brains of young people, while slide projection could provide a decent, more informative, and less harmful alternative for Catholic children.31 In the 1920s, model lessons published in educational journals started mentioning lantern slides as teaching aids for geography and history lessons.32 While direct observation remained the norm for phenomena close to home, when things were too far away to witness in real life, ‘projected images and cinema screenings could usefully complement actual lessons’, one author noted.33 Educators writing on the optical lantern placed greater value on the medium’s affective qualities, its ability to provide large images or to mentally transport pupils, than on objectivity. As some enthused, projected images provided impressions during, for instance, a history lesson, that would last a lifetime: ‘in imagination… no: in reality [the pupils] have gone back in time 2000 years. They are themselves Old Belgians […] before the arrival of Julius Caesar’.34 The Collection of the Heilig Graf School: Creating Narratives A valuable collection of projection materials that can shed light on the ways in which the optical lantern was put to use in at least one Belgian school is held at the Heilig Graf School in Turnhout. Founded in the seventeenth century as a part of a convent for the Canonesses Regular of the Holy Sepulcher, this girls’ school offered primary and secondary education and teacher training. Although its teachers – all Canonesses – probably started using an optical lantern by the end of the nineteenth century for lessons on astronomy, most extant lantern slides date from the 1920s, and were most likely used in secondary school or teaching college lessons on (art) history, religion, and geography until the 1950s.35 Approximately 1200 slides have survived up to now in early twentieth-century boxes stored in the school’s attic, along with eighteen notebooks in handwritten text that describe what is to be seen on the slides and provide additional information and references to be used in the lesson. A large proportion of the surviving slides were used to illustrate geography lessons, which is unsurprising given that the Belgian government had stimulated the use of the optical lantern in geography teaching from the early 1880s onwards.36 The slides depict a variety of geographical subjects, ranging from physical geographic themes, such as the ‘earth’s crust and mountains’ and ‘glaciers and polar seas’ to individual countries. These sets consist of various kinds of images, originating from diverse sources. The series on Spain, for instance, is a combination of slides from at least five commercially produced slide series and home-made

31 Cf. H. Deckx. ‘De kinema-plaag’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 33 (1911–1912): 547; Anonymous. ‘Schoolbioscopen en groote-stadsleven’, De Opvoeder 21 (1924): 424–26. 32 Cf. R. de Brauwere. ‘Practische beschouwingen over ’t onderwijs in de aardrijkskunde’, Nova et Vetera 4 (1921): 304–05; Anonymous. ‘Tweede en derde graad: eenige grote reizen op den aardbol: Nansen’s poolexpeditie’, De Opvoeder 22 (1925): 84. 33 P. Th. ‘De actieve methoden in het nieuw modelprogramma der lagere scholen’, De Opvoeder 20 (1923): 358–59. 34 B. H. D. ‘Nieuwe Methode voor de behandeling der Belgische Geschiedenis op de Lagere school door R. Wagner’, De Opvoeder 21 (1924): 334. 35 Cf. Teughels. ‘Expectation Versus Reality’. 36 Cf. Rapport triennal 1879–1880–1881, 207.

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Fig. 2. Slide showing the digestive tract of a chicken. The slide’s glass cover is missing, and part of the black paper previously covering up the French text surrounding the image has disappeared. (Courtesy: Heilig Graf Turnhout).

slides. Most slides contain photographic images, often with hand-painted colours. Most of the slides that can be identified as published by commercial slide producers originate from the French publishing houses Maison de la Bonne Presse and E. Mazo or the significantly smaller Belgian publisher Norbert Laflotte.37 Unfortunately, no records or other sources relating to the acquisition and use of these slides have been preserved in the school archive. Some of the images on the slides were copied from handbooks. This can be deduced from a number of disassembled slides revealing the text from the surrounding pages (cf. Fig. 2). It is not clear if these slides were ordered from publishing houses or made by the teachers themselves. The drawn slides in the collection showing maps, graphs, or schematic representations of geographic phenomena and architecture, on the other hand, were certainly produced by the teachers themselves. This is indicated by a map in the Switzerland lecture drawn in the same hand as the one on a slide (cf. Fig. 3, 4). These home-made slides are made up of two glass plates encasing a transparent film on which the teacher had drawn. They were combined with the slides from the existing series provided by commercial producers to construct a wholly new narrative befitting the pedagogical, political, and religious convictions of the teacher who assembled it.

37 On Maison de la Bonne Presse, cf. Pierre Véronneau. ‘Le Fascinateur et la Bonne Presse: des médias catholiques pour publics francophones’, 1895. Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-quinze 40 (1 July 2003): 25–40 (https://doi. org/10.4000/1895.3282), translated in this book. Also cf. Bart Moens’s contribution in this collection. On E. Mazo, cf. Annie Renonciat. ‘Un média oublié d’enseignement populaire. Les vues sur papier transparent pour projections lumineuses’, in Quilien (ed.). Lumineuses projections, 67–75. On Laflotte, not much is known, cf. Directory of Belgian Photographers, accessible at: https://fomu.atomis.be/index.php/laflotte-nestor;isaar (accessed 8 February 2022).

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Fig. 3. Hand-drawn map of Switzerland in the notebook containing the notes to the Switzerland slide series. (Courtesy: Heilig Graf Turnhout).

Fig. 4. Slide titled ‘Switzerland’, showing a map of Switzerland in the same hand. (Courtesy: Heilig Graf Turnhout).

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Geography by Slide A closer look at the institution’s geography slides sheds light on how teachers created their own visual narratives. The numeration on stickers on the bottom right corners of individual slides, and the order in which the slides are mentioned in the notebooks accompanying some of the series, indicate the sequence in which the slides were most likely shown. Slide series on specific countries reveal differences in the depiction of European and non-European countries. The series on India and Japan, for instance, both begin with colourful slides focusing on physical geographical phenomena like the Himalayas, earthquakes, exotic vegetation, and landscapes. The abundant attention paid to culture and religious customs is strongly orientalist in tone, favouring colour, spectacle, and the macabre. Along with the marvellous gold-plated temples and mausoleums of ancient rulers, the slides depict a colourful boat with dozens of rowers ‘bringing home a maharaja’, a coloured image of fearsome Japanese idols, and an etching of the execution of ‘a slave’ whose head is being crushed by the foot of an Asian elephant. The bodies of the people depicted in the series on Japan are literally coloured yellow. A home-made slide in the lesson on India shows a table with the numbers of Indian ‘child widows’ from the ages of one to fifteen years. The series’ dramatic imagery thus conforms with contemporary constructs of the East as a region of despots, of curious customs, and non-Christian religions. It is not clear what exact proportions of these slides were bought or home-made, but it is evident that the teacher who compiled the sets combined slides from various sources to create a unique visual narrative focusing on Asian religions and customs – through the ideological lens of the institution in which she worked. While the notes pertaining to the lessons on physical geography, India, and Japan have not survived, those concerning lessons on France, Spain, and Switzerland have. These texts attest to the flexibility afforded by the use of slide series that could be recombined with each other and with images from other media. A number of the slides required for the Switzerland lesson, for instance, could be found ‘in other boxes, e.g. [those on] mountains and glaciers’, as the notes indicate.38 The text for the lesson on France opens with a map that had to be ‘explained on the blackboard’ and contains two hand-drawn maps that could either be copied to the blackboard or projected by means of an episcope.39 It is likely that some slide sets were complemented by images projected by an episcope. A number of explanations in the notes on the lesson on Switzerland, for example, refer to pages in illustrated publications such as Katholieke Illustratie, which the teacher might hold in a scrapbook or collection of press cuttings. The proliferation of insertions and additions, deleted or bracketed sections, re-numbered slides, and references to additional literature in the lesson notes together reveal the extent to which these were, in practice, working documents that were regularly updated and revised (cf. Fig. 5). Like the lessons on Switzerland, the lesson on France presents the geographical characteristics of the country in the form of a travelogue. The text only briefly turns to human geography when it discusses four views of the city of Paris, one of which shows

38 Archive Heilig Graf Turnhout (HGT), notebook Zwitserland, n.p. All translations are by the author. 39 HGT notebook Frankryk, n.p.

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Fig. 5. Two pages in the notebook containing notes to a slide series on the production of steel. They show numerous additions and the renumbering of slides. (Courtesy: Heilig Graf Turnhout).

Notre Dame Cathedral. In her description of the cathedral and its history, the author’s Catholic bias becomes clear: ‘Barbarically damaged during the Fr[ench]. revolution: the statues of the kings were thrown to the ground with a noose around the neck’. Fortunately, the cathedral was ‘given back to the Cath. Rel[igion]. [and] restored as best as they could in the course of the 19th century’.40 Another reference to the harmful effects of French anti-clericalism in the notebook appears in a 1927 newspaper cutting on the Grande Chartreuse monastery, then in danger of being donated to the League of Nations by influential Freemasons who reportedly wanted to prevent the return of the Carthusians.41 This suggests that the teacher chose to focus on French physical geography to avoid addressing the country’s historically problematic relationship with the Catholic Church, demonstrated by the destruction of Catholic heritage during the French Revolution and a persistently strong anti-clerical movement. In contrast to the lessons on Switzerland and France, the lesson on Spain pays little attention to the country’s physical geography, and focuses on its history, culture, and strong ties with Roman Catholicism. Opening with a map of Spain, the narrative turns to the cathedral of Burgos, with a relatively large number of five slides devoted to it. The text speaks approvingly of King Philip II of Spain (1527–1598), who positioned himself as the 40 HGT notebook Frankryk, n.p. 41 Cf. Ibidem; ‘De Loge en de “Grande Chartreuse”’, unknown newspaper (22 January 1927), HGT notebook Spanje, n.p.

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defender of Catholic Europe and battled the Low Countries during the Protestant Dutch Revolt of 1566–1648. In her discussion of the Escorial palace, built by Philip II, the author portrays him as a deeply pious man, who spent his days ‘almost like a monk’ in a small and simple room, his only companion a small organ ‘that he played himself when he would break his quiet loneliness by singing a psalm or a song’.42 Although the text refers to the 1931 proclamation of the Spanish republic, no mention is made of the anticlerical aspects of the new government or the fate of the Royal Palace in Madrid after the monarchy was abolished. Instead, the court’s magnitude, beauty, and customs are vividly described as if the king were still living there: The servants wear beautiful uniforms, and at the entrance of each room there are 2 giant halberdiers, who lift their halberds 1 metre high in salute when you arrive and then drop them to the marble floor, vibrating.43 Considerable attention is paid to Spain’s Islamic architecture. The teacher included an extended passage discussing the characteristics of Arab mosques, illustrated with slides from various sources, at least one of which was home-made. The tone of this section is not disparaging and indeed praises Arabic architecture. The author describes Islamic wall ornamentation as ‘a masterpiece of unsurpassed beauty and enchanting form’, and laments the fact that a cathedral nave was constructed in the middle of Cordoba’s former mosque, ‘which of course completely corrupted the entire building, ripped it out of context, and robbed it of its original harmony’.44 Indeed, it would have been best, she claims, ‘if this mosque had been kept intact as an antiquity and a new cathedral had been founded’.45 Leaving this cultural digression behind, the lesson took pupils further to other Spanish cities, palaces, and cathedrals and included slides on bullfighting, traditional Spanish costume, and the export of oranges. The session was closed with another nine slides on ‘Catholic life’. In the end, the lesson’s foray into Islamic architecture in Spain was safely tucked away between accounts of the pious Spanish monarchs and the country’s devoutly Catholic population.46 Conclusion When optical lanterns were introduced to Belgian public schools from the 1880s onwards, Catholic educators were not immediately won over by the instrument – possibly because of its initial association with science teaching and the teaching policies of the Liberals.47 From 1910 onwards, Catholic teachers started to value the lantern’s ability to

42 HGT notebook Spanje, n.p. 43 Ibidem. 44 Ibidem. 45 Ibidem. 46 Further analysis of both the official and the Catholic geography curriculum in Belgium, on which no secondary literature exists, shall have to make clear to what extent the discussed lessons digressed from the norm for geography classes on these subjects. 47 Further research is needed to ascertain this hypothesis, which I will undertake as part of my PhD thesis at KU Leuven.

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show images of objects and phenomena that could not be brought into the classroom. They did nevertheless formulate requirements in order to safeguard its educational use: teachers should always use the medium intentionally, they should ensure that their pupils’ attention stayed focussed, and should prevent the class from descending into chaos. From the 1920s onwards, they fully accepted the optical lantern as a valuable teaching aid that both served as an alternative to the moving images of films and was capable of forming impressions on children’s minds strong enough to ensure their memorization of subject matter. Whereas previous research in this field has tended to connect the introduction of the optical lantern in education to the appeal of the alleged objectivity of photographic images, this objectivity was of no importance to the Catholic educators debating the use of the apparatus in early twentieth-century educational journals. The lantern clearly held other promises that intrigued them. They argued, for instance, that the immersive affective experience provided by the radiant images projected by the optical lantern would evoke lasting memories of the contents of the lesson, making such images very attractive from a pedagogical perspective. An examination of the slides and notebooks that were used to organize illustrated lessons at the Heilig Graf school in Turnhout reveals that Catholic teachers clearly saw the potential of the medium. They combined slides from various sources, added home-made slides, incorporated other media, and drafted their own accompanying texts in order to create narratives that they deemed suitable to their pupils. Unsurprisingly, these narratives were heavily influenced by the world views of these very educators and the institutions in which they operated. The flexibility of optical lantern slides not only offered teachers the advantage of being able to devise their own narratives, it also enabled them to preserve authorship over their lessons and to guide their pupils in what they were supposed to see. Such flexibility was of much greater value for the teachers at the Heilig Graf school than the objectivity attributed to the projection of photographic images. Thus, the optical lantern enabled teachers to show young Catholic women the world from a Catholic perspective in a way that ensured memories that would, so the Canonesses hoped, last a lifetime.48 Acknowledgments I would like to thank Kaat Wils and Nelleke Teughels, as well as the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this volume for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this text. I would also like to stress my gratitude to Peter Coupé, collection manager of the Heilig Graf school in Turnhout.

48 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830-1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Bibliography Anonymous. ‘Schoolbioscopen en groote-stadsleven’, De Opvoeder 21 (1924): 424–26 ——. ‘Tweede en derde graad: eenige grote reizen op den aardbol: Nansen’s poolexpeditie’, De Opvoeder 22 (1925): 81–84 B. H. D. ‘Nieuwe Methode voor de behandeling der Belgische Geschiedenis op de Lagere school door R. Wagner’, De Opvoeder 21 (1924): 333–34 Cain, Victoria E. M. ‘Seeing the World: Media and Vision in US Geography Classrooms, 1890–1930’, Early Popular Visual Culture 13.4 (2 October 2015): 276–92 (https://doi.org/10.10 80/17460654.2015.1111591) Carrière, [Louis]. ‘La question de l’enseignement religieux au Congrès de Malines (1909)’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 32 (1910): 116–19 Catteeuw, Karl. ‘Als de muren konden spreken… Schoolwandplaten en de geschiedenis van het Belgisch lager onderwijs’ (PhD thesis, KU Leuven, 2005) Coissac, G.-Michel. ‘Les projections en Belgique’, Le Fascinateur. Organe des récréations instructives de la Bonne Presse 90 ( June 1910), 147–51 Congrès international de l’enseignement moyen. Rapports préliminaires (Tournai: DecallonneLiagre, 1901) De Brauwere, R. ‘Practische beschouwingen over ’t onderwijs in de aardrijkskunde’, Nova et Vetera 4 (1921): 299–305 Deckx, H. ‘De kinema-plaag’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 33 (1911–1912): 545–47 Dony, Émile. ‘Les procédés intuitifs dans l’enseignement de l’histoire’, Revue de l’instruction publique en Belgique 45 (1902): 81–96 Dullé, C. J. ‘Het lezen in de lagere school, of het aanschouwelijk onderwijs in betrekking daarmede’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 1 (1879): 9–13 Egelmeers, Wouter, and Nelleke Teughels. ‘A Thousand Times more Interesting. Introducing the optical lantern into the Belgian classroom, 1880–1920’, in History of Education. Journal of the History of Education Society 50.6 (2 November 2021): 784–801 (https://doi.org/10.1080/004 6760X.2021.1918271) Elebaers, Karel. ‘De Lichtbeelden in ’t Onderwijs’, in Compte-rendu des travaux du Congrès national de l’Enseignement Moyen Libre de Belgique, tenu à Bonne-Espérance les 11, 12, 13 septembre 1911/Verslag der werkzaamheden op den landdag van het Vrij Middelbaar Onderwijs van België, gehouden te Bonne-Espérance den 11, 12, 13 september 1911, volume II (Roeselare: De Meester, 1911), 338–51 Ferretti, Federico. ‘The Spatiality of Geography Teaching and Cultures of Alternative Education: The “Intuitive Geographies” of the Anarchist School in Cempuis (1880–1894)’, Cultural Geographies 23.4 (1 October 2016): 615–33 (https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474015612731) Good, Katie Day. ‘Making Do with Media: Teachers, Technology, and Tactics of Media Use in American Classrooms, 1919–1946’, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 13.1 (2 January 2016): 75–92 (https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1092203) Gorlia, Joseph. ‘Projections Lumineuses’, Nova et Vetera 1.4 (1912): 477–93 Hollman, Veronica C. ‘Glass Lantern Slides and Visual Instruction for School Teachers in Early Twentieth-Century Argentina’, Early Popular Visual Culture 14.1 (2 January 2016): 1–15 (https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2015.1092390)

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Joos, Amaat. Aanschouwing en begrip (Gent: Siffer, 1907) K. D. L. ‘Radioptican’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 34 (1913): 183–86 Kessler, Frank, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2 January 2019): 89–111 (https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2019. 1641971) López San Segundo, Carmen, and others. ‘The Projection of Images in the Spanish Secondary School Classrooms in the First Third of the 20th Century’, Fonseca, Journal of Communication 16 (1 June 2018): 31–45 (https://doi.org/10.14201/fjc2018163145) Mannoni, Laurent. ‘Science ou spectacle? La lanterne magique éducative’, in Lumineuses projections! La projection fixe éducative, edited by Anne Quillien (Chasseneuil-du-Poitou: Canopé éditions, 2016), 11–23 Memor, H. ‘Welk onderwijs gereedschap moet eene welingerichte school bezitten. Wat kan de onderwijzer zelf zich aanschaffen of vervaardigen’, De Opvoeder 3 (1902): 456–59 Nelson, Robert S. ‘The Slide Lecture, or the Work of Art “History” in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Critical Inquiry 26.3 (2000): 414–34 Pitarch, Daniel. ‘“To Transform the Blackboard into a Blank Screen”: Magic Lanterns and Phantasmagorias in Nineteenth-Century Spanish High Schools’, Fonseca, Journal of Communication 16 (2018): 81–102 (https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2172-9077/article/ view/fjc20181681100/18793) Quillien, Anne (ed.). Lumineuses projections! La projection fixe éducative (Chasseneuil-du-Poitou: Canopé éditions, 2016) Rapport triennal sur l’état de l’enseignement moyen en Belgique. Années 1885–1886-1887 (Brussels: Fr. Gobbaerts, 1890) Rapport triennal sur la situation de l’instruction primaire en Belgique. Années 1879–1880-1881 (Brussels: Fr. Gobbaerts, 1884) Renonciat, Annie. ‘Un média oublié d’enseignement populaire. Les vues sur papier transparent pour projections lumineuses’, in Lumineuses projections!, edited by Anne Quillien (Chasseneuil-du-Poitou: Canopé éditions, 2016), 67–75 Ruchatz, Jens. Licht und Wahrheit: Eine Mediumgeschichte der fotografischen Projektion (München: Fink, 2003) Schaefer, Sarah C. ‘Illuminating the Divine: The Magic Lantern and Religious Pedagogy in the USA, ca. 1870–1920’, Material Religion 13.3 (3 July 2017): 275–300 (https://doi.org/10.1080/17 432200.2017.1308176) Sentilhes, Armelle. ‘L’audio-visuel au service de l’enseignement: Projections lumineuses et cinéma scolaire, 1880–1940’, Gazette des archives 173.1 (1996): 165–82 (https://doi. org/10.3406/gazar.1996.3400) Teughels, Nelleke. ‘Expectation Versus Reality: How Visual Media Use in Belgian Catholic Secondary Schools was Envisioned, Encouraged and Put into Practice (c. 1900–1940)’, Paedagogica Historica (2021) (https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2020.1856153) Th., P. ‘De actieve methoden in het nieuw modelprogramma der lagere scholen’, De Opvoeder 20 (1923): 358–61 Van de Vivere, Theophile-Marie. ‘Les œuvres de projections en Belgique’, Le Fascinateur. Organe des récréations instructives de la Bonne Presse 19 ( July 1904): 230–31

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Véronneau, Pierre. ‘Le Fascinateur et la Bonne Presse: des médias catholiques pour publics francophones’, 1895. Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-quinze. Revue de l’association française de recherche sur l’histoire du cinéma 40 (1 July 2003): 25–40 (https://doi.org/10.4000/1895.3282) Witte, Els. ‘The Battle for Cemeteries, Monasteries and Schools: Belgium’, in Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Christopher Clark, and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge: University Press, 2006), 118–26

Archival material Archive of the Heilig Graf Turnhout (HGT): notebooks ‘Zwitserland’, ‘Frankryk’, and ‘Spanje’; slide series on India, Japan, Switzerland, France, and Spain.

Section 2

Catholic Projections in a Modern Light Infrastructure, Theory, Strategies

Margo Buelens-Terryn, Iason Jongep ier, and Il j a Van Da mm e

Shine a Light: Catholic Media Use, Transformations in the Public Sphere, and the Voice of the Urban Masses (Antwerp and Brussels, c. 1880 – c. 1920)

In Darkest Belgium and the Way Out: An Introduction This chapter questions the appropriation of the projection lantern by Catholic civil society in Belgium at the start of the twentieth century. The so-called ‘magic lantern’ had come into use in north-western Europe after a series of optic discoveries dating back to the seventeenth century.1 However, only in the second half of the nineteenth century did the media technology gain global currency within a wide variety of social contexts: from children’s private playrooms, in darkened lecture theatres and classrooms, to outdoor public spaces. This broadening use of the lantern has frequently been linked to technological change. Due to improvements in lightning, slide production as well as a decrease in the cost of manufacturing, the projection lantern – increasingly marketed and advertised under a variety of names around 1880 – became a more versatile tool, easier to handle and cheaper to come by.2 Moreover, by combining photographic slides with a more powerful projection technology, in many ways the lantern anticipated the rise of illuminated moving pictures or cinematography.3 The clarity and detail of projection created an intensely



1 Daan Buddingh. ‘A Peep into History: the 19th-Century Magic Lantern in the Netherlands’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 20th Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Ine van Dooren, and Mervyn Heard (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 116–23, 117. 2 Richard Crangle, and others. ‘Introduction. Realms of Light’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 20th Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Ine van Dooren, and Mervyn Heard (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 6–8; in the same volume, cf. also Mike Simkin. ‘The Magic Lantern and the Child’, 25–33; Ine Van Dooren. ‘Projection International: the Lantern in Different National Contexts. Introduction’, 75–76. 3 Charles Musser. Politicking and Emergent Media. US Presidential Elections of the 1890s (Oakland (CA): University of California Press, 2016), 52. Margo Buelens-Terryn • Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp, Belgium Iason Jongepier • Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp, Belgium Ilja Van Damme • Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 101–122 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129097 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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realistic illusion which, according to film historian Charles Musser, ‘was similar to the experience that spectators would later have with the first projected films – the sense of being transported to a different place/and or time’.4 Nevertheless, it would be wrong to categorize the projection lantern simply as ‘pre-cinematic’ as has been done by a previous generation of media historiographers, thereby woefully neglecting the lanterns’ widespread use and continuous adaption until well into the twentieth century.5 Equally myopic in interpretation would be a historical narrative focused on technological change alone. The increasing use of lanterns was not a societal breakthrough in response to technological tinkering as such, rather, the lantern was appropriated and more widely mobilized in a fin-de-siècle world because it fitted perfectly the changing socio-economic, political, and cultural contexts of the times. Our case study, for this chapter at least, argues how the instrumentalization of lantern technology by Catholic civil society in Belgium should be positioned and explained against such wider transformations in the public sphere. On the basis of an extensive study of early twentieth-century Belgian newspapers, this contribution will illustrate how a boom in lantern use in Belgium can be more properly tied to the broadening of the public sphere, the rise of universal suffrage, and the increasing ideological compartmentalization (‘verzuiling’ or ‘pillarization’) of Belgian society at the end of the nineteenth century. Challenged to adapt and respond creatively to a series of important societal challenges while being eager to maintain social control, and to respond to a growing call for emancipation from the urban masses, the lantern became an effective tool for Belgian Catholic civil society to reach a much wider audience than before about a much broader spectrum of issues. The lantern, literally, ‘enlightened’ an increasingly segmented and pluralistic Belgian society and showed Belgian Catholics – in itself an increasingly splintered group – the way forward through the vagaries of modern times. Through the projection lantern, the Belgian masses were able to be led out of the darkest problems of nineteenth-century society and set onto a ‘righteous path’ of Catholic living – and voting – in the twentieth century. In what follows, we start by briefly situating Belgian Catholicism, which found itself at an important crossroads around 1880. We pay particular attention to the use of (visual) media by Belgian Catholic civil society and illustrate the specific contextual predicaments they were facing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by going deeper into the urban scene of Antwerp and Brussels – both cities being central to our source analysis. Next, by closely studying newspapers from both cities for two samples periods (1902–1904 and 1922–1924), we will be able to describe the Catholic use of the projection lantern in Belgian cities in much greater detail than has been done before (cf. section ‘Appendix Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the Projection Lantern’). We question and scrutinize which Catholic organizations made use of the lantern and why in addition to shedding new light on where lantern projections were being held in both cities and how they contributed to the higher purpose of elevating people to becoming dutiful Catholics,

4 Ibid., 72. 5 Mervyn Heard. ‘The Lantern is not Dead. Lanterns and Slides in the 20th Century and Beyond. Introduction’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 20th Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Ine van Dooren, and Mervyn Heard (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 193.

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voters, and citizens. As such, our study should, first and foremost, be seen as an explorative exercise in unearthing projection lantern contexts in Belgian cities around the turn of the century. To do this we turn to an interpretative and explanatory framework which shies away from a traditional preference for technological causation in media histories to one that is centred around transformations in the public sphere due to the rise of the masses that manifested itself in many domains in Belgian society such as politics, leisure, culture, religion, and education.6 Embracing the Light: Catholic Media Use in Changing Cities In a series of recent studies on the subject, Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk have argued how French and Belgian Catholic priests and dioceses adopted the projection lantern around 1900 ‘as a means of education and propaganda in reaction to successful initiatives of this kind by secularist organisations’.7 While not being uncontested in itself within the Church, the use of lantern slides and wide-scale instrumentalization of the projection technology at the start of the twentieth century thus fitted into a longer pictorial tradition of teaching catechism and the Gospel through images. Catholic proponents of the projection lantern sought to ‘ennoble’ its use as ‘serious means of communication and not a simple amusement or toy’, by connecting the lighting technology to older visual strategies in churches, such as the stained-glass windows, wall paintings, and sculptures surrounding them.8 However, a more thorough contextualization and in-depth study of media use in Belgian Catholic hands seems necessary. Catholic appropriation of the lantern in Belgian cities was not limited to the clergy and to religious subjects alone, nor to church buildings and dioceses, and neither can handling of the medium be solely seen as reaction to secularization. This becomes clear when delving deeper into the position of Catholicism in Belgian cities and, in particular, when detailing the challenges Belgian Catholic civil society faced around 1880. Ever since the creation of the Belgian nation state in the years 1830–1831, the Catholic Church had made very clever use of the new constitutional freedoms introduced at that time in order to cement and strengthen its position within Belgian society.9 Crucially, at the municipal level, the Church remained in control of welfare and education, key domains





6 For a wider international discussion on nineteenth and early twentieth-century changes in the public sphere, cf. Robert J. Morris. ‘Introduction’, in Civil Society, Associations and Urban Places: Nation and Culture in NineteenthCentury Europe, edited by Graeme Morton, Boudien de Vries, and Robert J. Morris (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1–16. Our focus on mass transformations in the public sphere is, of course, indebted to the work of Jürgen Habermas. For a good introduction, read: Craig Calhoun (ed.). Habermas and the Public Sphere (Massachusetts: MIT Press, Ltd., 1992); and specifically, on the role of religion: Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West (eds). The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 7 Frank Kessler, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2019): 89–90, 100, 102. 8 Frank Kessler, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Projecting Faith: French and Belgian Catholics and the Magic Lantern Before the First World War’, Material Religion 16.1 (2020): 67. 9 Vincent Viaene. Belgium and the Holy See. From Gregory XVI to Pius IX (1831–1859). Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in 19th-Century Europe (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001), 25–37.

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through which both social control and mass emancipation could be guaranteed.10 It became commonly assumed with respect to all levels of Belgian society that strong attachment to Catholic morals and behavioural codes would facilitate local and national governance and the building-up of a new, unitary nation state.11 When urban populations started to grow due to industrialization, the Church successfully petitioned official support for the funding of new schools, the building of new churches, and the appointment of new parish priests in Belgian cities. The establishment of new congregations and orders literally provided the manpower to keep the urban populace close to the Catholic faith. Finally, through the building-up of a strong Catholic civil society in urban associational life, local Catholic mayors were helped into office and in cities where other majorities held sway, opposition to important Catholic themes was often fierce and well-organized and played a crucial role in electoral conflicts.12 Of course, throughout the nineteenth century, many local differences with regard to the Catholic cause existed in Belgium, and these were gradually reinforced as the nineteenth century progressed. The two central cities studied in this chapter provide a good study in contrasts in regard to Catholic faith and Catholic associational practice. While being only 50 kilometres apart, the Belgian capital, Brussels, and the important port city of Antwerp, mirrored each other in their attachment to Catholicism. Antwerp was Belgium’s ‘second’ political city, representing the old ‘counter-reformatory’ stronghold of the past, interwoven with a modern, growing Flemish sense of identity and Catholic self-awareness.13 Strongly rooted in local traditions, Antwerp’s citizens were often the polar opposite of those of Brussels, the city that housed a Liberal and vehemently anticlerical haute bourgeoisie, home to Belgium’s largely Francophone financial circles, and one of the most important industrializing cities in Belgium.14 In both cities, however, the standing of Belgian Catholicism was increasingly challenged due to the growing heterogeneity of the population, religions, creeds, and, above all, because of the rise of anticlericalism and socialism within large swathes of urban society. As elsewhere in Europe, in the conservative-religious imagination of the nineteenth century, cities came to be equated with the Biblical Babel or Babylon, where the loyalty and strength of faith of the urban masses was put on trial in an increasingly pluralistic splintering of positions and identities.15 10 Jan Art. ‘Social Control in Belgium: the Catholic Factor’, in Social control in Europe, 1800–2000, edited by Clive Emsley, Eric Johnson, and Pieter Spierenburg (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004), 113–17. 11 Els Witte. ‘The Battle for Monasteries, Cemeteries and Schools: Belgium’, in Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Christopher Clark, and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 102–28. 12 Maarten Van Ginderachter. ‘An Urban Civilization: the Case of Municipal Autonomy in Belgian History 1830–1914’, in Nationalism and the Reshaping of Urban Communities in Europe, 1848–1914, edited by William Whyte, and Oliver Zimmer (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2011), 110–30; Carl Strikwerda. ‘A Resurgent Religion. The Rise of Catholic Social Movements in Nineteenth-Century Belgian Cities’, European Religion in the Age of Great Cities, 1830–1930, edited by Hugh Mcleod (London, New York: Routledge, 1995), 65. 13 Henk de Smaele. Rechts Vlaanderen. Religie en stemgedrag in negentiende-eeuws België (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009). 14 Michiel Wagenaar. Stedenbouw en burgerlijke vrijheid. De contrasterende carrières van zes Europese hoofdsteden (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Thoth, 2001), 54–70; Inge Bertels, Bert De Munck, and Herman Van Goethem (eds). Antwerpen: Biografie van een stad (Antwerpen: De Bezige Bij, 2010). 15 Richard Dennis. Cities in Modernity: Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 46–50.

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Fig. 1. Frequency of newspaper pages mentioning ‘lichtbeelden’, ‘projections’, ‘lumineuses’, and ‘projections lumineuses’ in all digitized newspapers to be found on BelgicaPress between 1862 and 1924; red lines indicate the introduction of universal ‘plural’ male suffrage (1893) and universal ‘single’ male suffrage (1919).16

Within these emerging religious-ideological ‘culture wars’ in Belgian cities, the clever use of media became integral to upholding, strengthening even, Catholic dominance in Belgian society and the creation of a Catholic public sphere. While being essentially ‘anti-modern’ or conservative in its societal and political goals, the revitalized nineteenth-century Belgian church was thoroughly modern in terms of its widespread media use.17 Thus, within wider Catholic civil society, newspapers, caricatures, pamphlets, and periodicals increasingly began to circulate from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards.18 Similarly, Luc Vints has outlined how Belgian Catholics were quick to adapt the use of photography and cinematography to its missionary and catechistic goals in Belgium and abroad.19 While 16 This graph only gives an indication of the number of times the search terms appear in the Belgian daily press, digitized on BelgicaPress, occurring within ten-yearly samples (1862–1864, 1872–1874, 1882–1884, 1892–1894, 1902–1904, 1912–1914 and 1922–1924). The graph shows the number of pages on which the four search terms occur; the number of entries on this page itself is not included. In addition, not every mention of ‘lichtbeelden’, ‘projections’, and ‘lumineuses’ refers to the use of the projection lantern. Moreover, these numbers also include lectures that were announced several times. Nevertheless, these search terms give a good indication of the ‘boom’ of (possible) mentions of the projection lantern in the Belgian press. 17 Patrick Pasture. ‘Introduction: Between Cross and Class. Christian Labour in Europe, 1840–2000’, in Between Cross and Class: Comparative Histories of Christian Labour in Europe 1840–2000, edited by Lex Heerma van Voss, Patrick Pasture, and Jan De Maeyer (Bern, New-York: Peter Lang, 2005), 48. 18 Witte. ‘The battle’, 108–11. 19 Luc Vints. ‘Beeld van een zending. Nieuwe propagandamedia voor de missies’, Trajecta 5.4 (1996): 371–87.

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remaining ‘blind’ to the Catholic appropriation of the projection lantern – typical in terms of the way this technology has often been neglected in traditional media histories – he dates the widespread use of photographic images in Catholic publications to around 1880 and the use of moving images to the turn of the century. This chronology neatly overlaps with our own research on the projection lantern, indicating how in Belgium newspaper references to the lantern and ‘illustrated lectures’ began to boom in the same period (cf. Fig. 1). Although still more research is needed here, it is clear that the projection lantern fitted a clear Catholic need to underpin a written media offensive in Belgian cities with public meetings and lectures structured mainly around oral and visual means of mass communication. In order to reach and communicate with illiterate and ill-educated urban groups beyond their direct control and supervision, Belgian Catholic civil society started to embrace the projection lantern and integrated its myriad uses within their own cultural associations, assembly rooms, educational institutions, and so on. The timing of such Catholic appropriation of the projection lantern in Belgium, similar to the parallel use of photographic and moving images, holds important clues for explaining and speculating on the reasons for doing so. Especially from the 1880s onwards, the relatively unchallenged position of the Belgian Catholic Church in matters of education became an open debate when the Liberal and radical-anticlerical national government Hubert Joseph Walthère Frère-Orban took over in 1878. With a series of legislative initiatives aimed at curtailing the influence and power of Catholic education, the Belgian Liberal government seemed to openly undermine the dominance of the Catholic faith in Belgian society.20 The anticlerical strategy backfired, however, and strengthened the inward cohesion and organizational force of Catholic Belgium. By the next national elections in 1884, the Liberals were dealt a severe blow by the Catholic Party, which was to remain in office for the next thirty years. Political frictions around the ‘soul of the child’, however, were to trigger an incipient form of ideological compartmentalization or ‘pillarization’ following ideological fault lines. When visiting Belgium in 1910, British sociologist Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree already commented upon the fact that Belgian politics had entered ‘into almost every phase of social activity’. Due to pillarization, he noticed remarkably little or no interaction between Catholics and people with other viewpoints, and this deep cleavage extended ‘to cafés, gymnasia, choral, temperance, and literary societies, indeed it cuts right through life’.21 The trend towards pillarization in Belgian civil life and its public sphere at the end of the nineteenth century was further reinforced by an even bigger challenge for Belgian Catholicism, namely the rise of organized socialism with the creation of the Belgian Labour Party (Belgische Werkliedenpartij, BWP) in 1885.22 Severe disturbances in the

20 Jacques Lory. ‘La Résistance des catholiques Belges à la “loi de malheur”, 1879–1884’, Revue du Nord 67 (1985): 729–47; Jeffrey Tyssens. ‘Om de schone ziel van ’t kind’. Het onderwijsconflict als een breuklijn in de Belgische politiek (Gent: Provinciebestuur Oost-Vlaanderen, 1994). 21 Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree. Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1910), 24. 22 Maarten Van Ginderachter. The Everyday Nationalism of Workers: A Social History of Modern Belgium (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), 16–17.

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world economy from the 1870s to 1890s (the so-called ‘long depression’) drove Belgian urban workers to socialist radicalization and even led to agitation among the Catholic rural base in Flanders. It became clear that classic paternalist poor relief along with other Catholic charitable and welfare initiatives from the past, would no longer suffice in the face of increasing unemployment and destitution. Social questions began to be taken more seriously by Catholics – both within Belgium and abroad – even leading to the publication of the famous Encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. In Belgium, the battle against poverty was spearheaded by a growing group of so-called ‘Christian Democrats’.23 Their organizational fervour went hand-in-glove with a plea for the extension of voting rights for the (male) labouring masses, which both conservative Catholics and Liberals had failed to address. This battle for the ‘soul of the worker’ would prove to be both continuous and relentless, with a positive outcome for Belgian Catholicism and its Catholic-based civil life was all but guaranteed. Indeed, for Socialists, Liberals, as well as Catholics, the gradual extension of the right to vote in Belgium triggered a widely supported process of civic participation and co-determination in which the ‘civilisation of the masses’ and ‘popular education’ became central goals. Such calls for emancipation were not only transmitted in a top-down manner, but increasingly articulated and amplified from the bottom-up, through the voice of the masses. After all, a large number of citizens were given the right, obligation even, to cast their vote for the very first time.24 Moreover, the increasing pillarization of Belgian society pushed each pillar to try to bind new voters to a particular denomination from the ‘cradle to the grave’ – a strategy which became particularly popular among Catholic civil society in Belgium.25 Belgian Catholics were the only pillar who managed, after the introduction of the plural male suffrage in 1894, to appeal to all layers of society.26 Although the first election following the introduction of plural male suffrage was a great victory for the Catholics retaining as they did an absolute majority in parliament until 1914, the introduction of proportional representation into Belgian politics (1899) was a clear setback for the party. This was mostly due to a decline in followers in the increasingly pluralistic Belgian cities such as Antwerp and Brussels.27 Moreover, Belgian Catholics had seen their French colleagues lose their political power. With the successful formula seen in France, namely propaganda through words and images, they wanted to prevent this from happening in their own country by quickly appropriating the new mass media of their time, including the projection lantern.28 How did this process take shape in Antwerp and Brussels?

23 Jan Art. ‘Van “klerikalisme” naar “katholieke zuil” of van “régime clérical” naar “CVP-Staat”. Een benadering van het Vlaams georganiseerd katholicisme in de Nieuwste Tijd’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis 13.1 (1982): 1–22; Emiel Lamberts (ed.). Een kantelend tijdperk: de wending van de Kerk naar het volk in Noord-WestEuropa, I890–1910 (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 1992). 24 Els Witte. ‘Politiek leven: 1830–1914’, in Brussel. Groei van een hoofdstad, edited by Jean Stengers (Antwerpen: Mercatorfonds, 1979), 193; Van Ginderachter. The Everyday Nationalism of Workers, 29, 39; De Smaele. Rechts Vlaanderen, 129. 25 Van Ginderachter. The Everyday Nationalism of Workers, 16–17. 26 De Smaele. Rechts Vlaanderen, 11; Strikwerda. ‘A Resurgent Religion’, 15, 31. 27 De Smaele. Rechts Vlaanderen, 9, 73, 252. 28 Kessler, Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy’, 102.

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Those Who Light the Way: Catholic Actors and Spaces in Lantern Use Based on two extensive sample periods (1902–1904 and 1922–1924) of two newspapers belonging to Catholic civil society, namely the Dutch Het Handelsblad (The Trade Journal) for Antwerp and the French Journal de Bruxelles (The Brussels Journal) for Brussels, we gain better insight into the Catholic actors who were putting the projection lantern to work. Since the middle of the nineteenth century Het Handelsblad had dominated the Antwerp press on the Catholic side. This newspaper could be considered as being the spokesperson and voice mainly of the (lower) middling groups of society, such as small entrepreneurs, retailers, and middle-sized businessmen. Within Brussels, the Journal de Bruxelles was one of the leading Catholic newspapers, but one that was probably more strongly oriented towards the higher middle classes and the upper layers of society (a subscription price of FF 25 compared to FF 3.6 for the neutral Le Soir (Evening)). These social differences among Catholic newspapers reflected wider tendencies within Catholic civil life in both cities, with Catholicism having a broader appeal in Antwerp than in Brussels (as mentioned above). Both newspapers were published throughout the entire period under investigation and experienced strong growth in circulation from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, which provides a necessary continuity in our source material.29 Attributing an exact number of speakers to Catholic civil society is a difficult undertaking. Many different people are mentioned in these newspapers but are sometimes only named by their surnames or without record of their professions. Further research into their identities is needed, but a clear picture already emerges from the newspapers analysed: experts from all corners of the Catholic pillar came into play, mainly from the upper classes of society. Interestingly enough, the analysed newspapers do reveal a disproportionate presence of religiously affiliated speakers in relation to the number of lectures devoted purely to the topic of religion or faith. One in four speakers was explicitly labelled as ‘religious (affiliated)’ in the advertisements, while ‘only’ seventy-six of the lectures (14%) given referred to a religious subject. In the Catholic newspapers no distinction seems to have been made between the different orders, with both Franciscans, Jesuits, White Fathers of Africa, Friars Minor and the Scheut Fathers being mentioned. Almost 40% of these religiously affiliated speakers were also mentioned as having a ‘profession’, such as professor, doctor, curator, missionary in the Congo and so on. Christian Democrat and lawyer Henri Carton de Wiart, who advocated for Catholic social action, was not explicitly referred to as ‘Catholic’ in these announcements but was undoubtedly part of broader Catholic civil society.30 The exact number of Catholic speakers is therefore probably well over 25%. Moreover, the organizations and clubs themselves, which invited these speakers to give illustrated lectures, can also, to a large extent, be located within wider Catholic civil 29 H. De Borger. Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de Antwerpse pers. Repertorium 1794–1914 (Leuven, Parijs: Nauwelaerts, 1968) 12, 16; De Smaele. Rechts Vlaanderen, 289; Jeroom Vercruysse, Jacques Willequet, and Liane Ranieri. ‘De pers en de audiovisuele media’, in Brussel. Groei van een hoofdstad, edited by Jean Stengers (Antwerpen: Mercatorfonds, 1979), 401. 30 Journal de Bruxelles (2 December 1904, 15 March 1923, and 24 December 1924); cf. also Carl Strikwerda. A House Divided: Catholics, Socialists and Nationalists in Nineteenth-Century Belgium (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997), 223, 46.

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society. Historical literature shows that urban leisure and club life in Belgium was largely shaped by pillarization, something which our analysis seems to confirm. About 82% of the lantern lectures announced in Catholic newspapers did so exclusively within their own pillar.31 Catholic affiliated organizations thus specifically targeted their own followers with lantern lectures about themes that served the higher purpose of the pillar, or contributed to the formation of good, Catholic citizens. Educational institutions were increasingly consistent in this respect, particularly the Brussels Extension Universitaire Belge (Belgian University Extension) (nine lectures or 12% of the Brussels lectures in 1902–1904) and the Antwerp Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding (Catholic Flemish University Extension, hereafter KVHU, six lectures in 1902–1904, sixteen lectures in 1922–1924, both 8% of the Antwerp lectures). It is no coincidence that these Catholic University Extensions were created shortly after the introduction of plural male suffrage in 1893. The founding fathers of, among others, the KVHU saw the need to provide these new voters with sufficient knowledge to act ‘wisely’ – and thus not to overthrow the existing social order.32 They considered the dissemination of culture, also among the lower classes, as a means of achieving class reconciliation instead of class struggle.33 Incipient pillarization, in other words, mobilized the entire Catholic field. Moreover, this ideological compartmentalization was also translated into spatial terms, with urban spaces claimed exclusively by a particular pillar (cf. Fig. 2). Many (of the smaller) lecture halls in both cities were clearly marked by one pillar. In Antwerp, with its strong Catholic self-awareness and broadly dispersed Catholic associational life, the Catholic pillar was visibly much stronger in both sample periods (average of 56% exclusively Catholic spaces) than its more Liberal-oriented Brussels counterpart (average of 30%). The Antwerp café In den Kalkoenschen Haan (In the Gobbler) was the greatest Catholic stronghold. At least twenty-five lectures took place there, 12% of the total Catholic-approved lantern lectures of 1922–1924. The competition between the various pillars, however, took place precisely in these scarce urban spaces, with the pillars often having to tolerate each other in close proximity – sometimes literally when using the same buildings or sitting next to each other when listening to popular lantern lectures. These cross-pillar lectures are mainly found in cultural and scientific, ‘unionist’ organizations with more well-off members, such as the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire (The Arts and Literature Circle) (ten lectures) and Société Royale Belge de Géographie (Royal Belgian Geographical Society) (four lectures), which were active in both cities. The discrepancy between the percentage of mixed lantern lectures (18%) and the mixed

31 An important nuance is that the Het Handelsblad, Journal de Bruxelles, and L’Indépendance (The Independence) have been digitally researched on BelgicaPress. Le (Nouveau) Précurseur (The (New) Precursor) and Le Matin (Morning) were not digitized and were therefore analysed for the months of February, March and December. In Antwerp, the Liberals are thus ‘underrepresented’, as only three months a year can be compared to their Catholic counterpart. The processing of digital newspapers, however, shows that most of the lectures were given during the winter months, so it can be assumed that these months provide a good insight into lantern practice. Cf. Margo Buelens-Terryn, Iason Jongepier, and Ilja Van Damme. ‘Lichtbeelden voor de Massa. Toe-eigening en gebruik van de magische lantaarn in Antwerpen en Brussel (c. 1860 – c. 1920)’, Stadsgeschiedenis 14.2 (2019): 132. 32 Maurice De Vroede. ‘Hogeschooluitbreidingen en Volksuniversiteiten’, BTNG – RBHC 10.1-2 (1979): 258–59. 33 Ibid; De Smaele. Rechts Vlaanderen, 11; Strikwerda. A House Divided, 15, 31; Beatrijs Bossaerts. Drie Volksuniversiteiten uit het Brusselse, begin twintigste eeuw (PhD thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1979), 12.

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Fig. 2. Spatial scattering of the Catholic, Liberal and mixed venues in Antwerp and Brussels, 1902–1904 and 1922–1924.34

places (24%), however, illustrates that even within these shared, ‘non-pillarized’ urban spaces, separatism was at work. The different pillars sometimes rented the same spaces but did not always do so on the same days or with the same lectures. The most popular venue in this respect was the hotel l’Union Coloniale (Colonial Union) in Brussels, where seventy-one lectures were organized in 1922–1924. Of these, twenty-six were announced exclusively in a Catholic newspaper, twenty in a Liberal one, and twenty-five in both. 34 Places where 90% or more of the lectures are set up by one particular pillar are counted as exclusively ‘Catholic’ or ‘Liberal’.

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Although segregation within broader cultural life in Belgium was the norm, grey zones also remained an integral part of the lantern landscape. Segmentation was therefore never complete in Antwerp and Brussels.35 How then, is this related to the themes discussed in lantern lectures, and how are these themes related to the increasing pillarization of associational life in both cities? All the Light They Can See: Catholic Themes and Subjects in Lantern Use The themes addressed in cross-pillar lectures can often be located within the broader framework of nation-building, namely travel/geography, colonization, and history, but also (art) history or science.36 This was also the case for political lectures in 1922–1924 that propagated unity, for example, readings entitled ‘Nos soldats de 1914 à 1918’ (‘Our soldiers from 1914 to 1918’) or ‘L’Inondation du front de l’Yser en 1914’ (‘The flooding on the Yser front in 1914’), which appealed to a recent past in which, through ‘God’s peace’, the traditional pillars suspended their political struggle for a united fight against a common enemy during the First World War.37 The lectures announced in the Catholic newspapers entered into a different discourse. The two sample periods expose a wide range of subjects (cf. Fig. 3), which (indirectly) served the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ missionary goals of the Catholic pillar in the first decennia of the twentieth century. After all, the Belgian Catholics were active on two fronts: in their own cities and in the new Belgian colony. In the former they had to bring back the labouring classes and, more broadly, the urban masses to the true faith to be formed into God-/authority-fearing citizens. In the latter the local, Congolese population had to be Christianized at the same time as ensuring that the Belgian population back home was enthusiastic about (the religious missions of) the new colonial cause. As for the inward mission, in the 1920s religious topics really took off in urban (Catholic) club life. Important Catholics and miracles were discussed in illustrated lectures as well as religion combined with art history and the work of missions in the Congo. In addition, scientific lectures accounted for a significant part of all Catholic illustrated lectures. With their Extension(s), amongst other things, the Catholics wanted to spread higher knowledge and science among the people, in order to show that religion and science were

35 For a deeper insight into the situation in Antwerp and Brussels, cf. Margo Buelens-Terryn. ‘Taking the university to the people. The role of lantern lectures in extramural adult education in the early twentieth-century Brussels and Antwerp’, in Learning with Light & Shadow. Educational Lantern and Film Projection, 1860–1990, edited by Nelleke Teughels, and Kaat Wils (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) (forthcoming). 36 Van Ginderachter. The Everyday Nationalism of Workers, 81, 89; Katie Day Good. ‘Sight-Seeing in School: Visual Technology, Virtual Experience, and World Citizenship in American Education, 1900–1930’, Technology and Culture 60.1 (2019): 98, 102. 37 L’Indépendance Belge (24 December 1923); Journal de Bruxelles (21 October 1923, 22 October 1923); L’Indépendance Belge (14 December 1922, 17 January 1923, 21 January 1923, and 23 January 1923); Journal de Bruxelles (23 January 1923). Cf. also Luc Vandeweyer. Une guerre totale? La Belgique dans la Première Guerre Mondiale. Nouvelles tendances de la recherche historique, edited by Serge Jaumain, Michaël Amara, and Benoit Majerus (Brussel: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 2003), 99.

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Fig. 3. Themes of lantern lectures announced and/or reviewed in the Catholic newspapers Het Handelsblad (Antwerp) and Journal de Bruxelles (Brussels), 1902–1904 and 1922–1924.

by no means at odds with each other.38 The combination of science and religion comes together neatly in the figure of François Dierckx, one of the most enthusiastic speakers on the Catholic side. This Jesuit, doctor in natural sciences and professor at the Faculty of Science of Namur, gave no less than twenty lectures in Antwerp and Brussels during the studied timeframe and, as quoted by Het Handelsblad in 1924, ‘can be counted among the greatest scholars in our country for his studies of geography and especially his knowledge of volcanoes and earthquakes’.39 In a publication from 1910 entitled ‘Which subjects are best treated’, the KVHU described the importance of science for the Catholic pillar as follows: Our goal is science in the broadest sense – science that enriches and elevates the mind, enriches mind and heart, forms willpower and character. Our goal is the uplifting of our Flemish people in all their being, in all their expressions of life: life of the spirit, peace of mind, Christian life.40 However, this association did not focus exclusively on what we today would call ‘exact sciences’; lectures on history, art, and culture were also common. In order to make these subjects as vivid and practical as possible, the projection lantern was used on a regular basis in addition to other technology and experiments. Moreover, illustrated lectures tended

38 Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding van Antwerpen (Antwerpen: Vereeniging Hooger Onderwijs voor ’t Volk, 1903–1904), 3; Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding Antwerpen. Algemeen programma (Antwerpen: Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding, 1901–1902), 16–17, 26–27. 39 Het Handelsblad, 25 October 1924. 40 [Leo van Puyvelde, E. H. August van Roey]. Aard en Inrichting. Welke onderwerpen worden best behandeld (Antwerpen: Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding, 1910), 8.

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to respond to current topics which sparked the interest of the public since a ‘University Extension should not fail to make use of this interest in order to spread some knowledge and science once again’.41 In the broader samples more explicit socio-political themes were also addressed in lantern lectures that responded to current topics or events. In the first decennia of the twentieth century, lectures were organized on the harmful effects of alcoholism, the fight against tuberculosis, and on venereal diseases. The triangular relationship between these three topics fitted neatly into the broader Catholic ideological approach to hereditary diseases and degeneration processes in which medicine and science did not contradict Catholic dogmas, but instead validated them.42 Catholic temperance movements, for example, had emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, as Ann Vleugels stated, ‘in order to enable it to compete with the arguments of its political enemies’.43 During the First World War, the ‘venereal danger’ had become even more pressing, the aftermath of which could still be clearly felt in the inter-war period.44 In addition, there were several lectures about the earthquake in Japan, the aftermath of World War I, and the reconstruction following it, but also about the humanitarian response to the Hungarian famine in 1923. The Catholic Church organized relief action by setting up the Hungarian Children’s Work which brought children to Belgium to recover. There were also informative illustrated (travel) lectures on Hungary by Floris Prims, doctor in historical and social sciences and associated with the Antwerp clergy as well as the Hungarian priest Miklós Knébel who had been staying in the Netherlands for several years. These lectures were intended to encourage the public to seek and find housing for Hungarian children after seeing with their own eyes the misery they endured.45 From a Catholic point of view, not only were lantern lectures which shone a light on the ‘missionary projects within’ promoted, they also focused on the outside world with their projection lantern. The Hungarian case already makes clear that the projection lantern was also mobilized to connect Belgian changes to the broader world and Catholicism to internationalism.46 Figure 3 shows that in illustrated lectures travel themes were popular across the board. We can detect in these travelogues the imperial and tourist gaze as the projection lantern made ‘the assimilation and uplift of diverse audiences through the mass consumption of ethnological representations of non-Western others’ possible.47 Before 41 KVHU van Antwerpen (1903–1904), 3–4, 13. 42 An Vleugels. Narratives of Drunkenness 1830–1914: Belgium (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 123–27; Liesbet Nys. ‘De Ruiters van de Apocalyps. “Alcoholisme, tuberculose, syfilis” en degeneratie in medische kringen, 1870–1940’, in Degeneratie in België, 1860–1940: een geschiedenis van ideeën en praktijken, edited by Jo Tollebeek, Geert Vanpaemel, and Kaat Wils (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2003), 11–26. 43 Vleugels. Narratives of Drunkeness, 126–27. 44 Margo Buelens-Terryn. ‘“The Practices of Lantern Lectures, They Are a-Changin”. The Cultural Policy and Changing Lanternscapes in German-occupied Antwerp and Brussels During the Great War’, Journal of Belgian History (2023) (forthcoming). 45 Vera Hajtó. De ‘Hongaartjes’. Belgisch-Hongaarse Kinderacties (1923–1927 en 1946–1948) (Leuven: KADOC, 2016), 5, 9–10; Het Handelsblad, 28 November 1923, 28 September 1924, 1 October 1924, 12 October 1924, 16 October 1924, and 9 November 1924. 46 Daniel Laqua. The Age of Internationalism and Belgium, 1880–1930: Peace, Progress and Prestige (Manchester, NewYork: Manchester University Press, 2013), 80, 85–93. 47 Day Good. ‘Sight-Seeing in School’, 102; Andrew Gill. Victorian Edinburgh Through the Magic Lantern (Wroclaw: Amazon Fulfillment, 2014).

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the turn of the century, the clergy and politicians had already discovered the power of the projection lantern as a way of shining a light on the colonial project, both by organizing informative lectures on the Congo and as a means of raising money for the Catholic missions in the colony.48 After all, King Leopold II used various media for his pro-empire propaganda and to arouse the interest of the Belgians in his colonial project. Subsequently, different Catholic organizations or individuals also spoke in support of imperialism in the Congo.49 Although Matthew G. Stanard stated that ‘Belgian Catholic missionary groups engaged in little overt propagandizing’ at the beginning of the twentieth century, a series of illustrated lectures about the Congo was advertised in February 1904 in Het Handelsblad, with the following motivation: The systematic campaign by the English press against Belgian Congo, the aim of which is becoming all too clear, has by its very nature increased sympathy for this major undertaking, and we believe that these lectures will be welcomed by the public.50 In doing so, they clearly appealed to the increasing criticism of the policy of Leopold II in the Congo Free State which began from the 1890s onwards and came to a head in 1904 following the report of the British consul in Boma.51 Conclusion In this chapter we have argued how the widespread appropriation of the projection lantern by Belgian Catholics around 1880 should mainly be understood in reaction to transformations in the public sphere. Both in Antwerp and Brussels, civil society began to alter fundamentally from c. 1880 onwards, due to the rise of the masses in societal domains such as politics, leisure, culture, religion, and education, and the increasing pillarization of urban life, civil society began to alter fundamentally. Rather than being a simple reaction to the increased technical capability of the lantern at the end of the nineteenth century, the swift use of this media technology in all domains of public life – education, politics, propaganda, and so on – seems to suggest a broader Catholic civil society mass media strategy aimed at reaching a wider and more diverse audience than ever before and by any means necessary. Through printed and visual media, via words and images, around 1900 Belgian Catholics anxiously tried to appeal to all layers of a polarized urban landscape. The rise of mass politics, so to speak, upped the ante for Catholics in Belgium. For the first time their safe societal dominance in Belgium became increasingly questioned and was under attack by rising anticlericalism and socialism. A new era of pillarized associational life was just beginning for which the widespread

48 Sabine Lenk. ‘De Robert Vrielynck Collectie. Een “Imaginair Museum rond het bewegend beeld”’, Tijd-schrift. Heemkundig en lokaal-erfgoedpraktijk in Vlaanderen 8.1 (2018): 130. 49 Matthew G. Stanard. Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian Imperialism (Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 32–33; Journal de Bruxelles, 22 November 1903, 29 February 1904, and 10 April 1904; Het Handelsblad, 25 December 1904. 50 Het Handelsblad, 7 February 1904; Stanard. Selling the Congo, 43. 51 David Van Reybrouck. Congo. Een Geschiedenis (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2010), 110–11; Stanard. Selling the Congo, 27, 30–31.

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application of all forms of mass media, including the projection lantern, was needed to strengthen and secure Catholic dominance and Catholic-oriented emancipation of the masses in Belgium. On the basis of an extensive study of Antwerp and Brussels newspapers it has been possible, for the first time, to question the actors, spaces, and themes connected to this novel, pillarized Catholic lantern practice. While able to offer a much more fine-grained and detailed analysis of Catholic civil life in Antwerp and Brussels at the start of the twentieth century than ever before, our preliminary results nevertheless confirm older findings, demonstrating how the Catholic pillar was able to tighten its grip on Belgian urban society around 1900. Via the application of illustrated lectures, Belgian Catholics were able to communicate in a more direct fashion – even to illiterate and uneducated audiences – their views on scientific and technological progress, societal issues, and important political questions such as the involvement of Belgium in the Congo. Catholic speakers from all across society, and Catholic organizations of various sizes and natures, were passionately committed to reaching the urban masses, segmenting urban space in pillarized venues, schools, and audiences. The dynamics, interplay, and clashes between the different pillars in Belgium offer an interesting perspective for future studies: how did the different pillars deal with the same challenges within the widening Belgian public sphere and corresponding ‘battle fields’ in society? Did this lead to differences in media use and lantern practice in Belgian cities, and what were they? Did such evolutions also translate spatially into further segregation within Antwerp and Brussels, for example? What was the outcome of the use of lanterns on the spread of scientific, political, and other debates in society? For the time being answers to such questions require further research. More urgent, however, is illuminating differences and similarities between media use between the different pillars. After all, how both words and images were (and are) used for different ideological and other purposes has only become more rather than less relevant in our twenty-first century of hyper-mediatization.52 Appendix: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the Projection Lantern The ‘spatial turn’ in history led to the recognition of a more interesting and active role for space in terms of how we understand history and culture. The assessment of the impact of space on human interactions and cultural development is facilitated by emerging GIS-technologies that allow spatial patterns that would otherwise ‘remain hidden in texts and tables’ to be analysed.53 Until now GIS has more commonly been used in the more traditional domains of history (history of cartography, historical geography) but other

52 Erkki Huhtamo. ‘Messages on the Wall. An Archaeology of Public Media Displays’, in Urban Screens Reader, edited by Scott Mcquire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Niederer (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009), 25–26. 53 David J. Bodenhamer. ‘Narrating Space and Place’, in Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives, edited by David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 9.

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disciplines are now also turning to this technology. Within Media History, and more specifically ‘New Cinema History’, attempts are being made to incorporate space and GIS.54 The B-magic project aims to take this approach one step further, as pioneers within magic lantern research, by applying these techniques to the projection lantern and delving into the micro-level spatial context of lantern lectures. Before any spatial analysis can be conducted, reliable spatial backgrounds (GIS-layers) that contain detailed information of historical city dwellers must be constructed. Within the B-magic project, these backgrounds were constructed for two important Belgian cities: Antwerp and Brussels. The following will shortly sketch the development of these spatial infrastructures, the sources involved, and the (future) possibilities when applying these infrastructures to research into the projection lantern. For Antwerp, the specific background layer(s) were/are produced within the framework of the Antwerp Time Machine of which sub-project GIStorical Antwerp is building a spatial infrastructure covering the period of 1584 to 1984.55 In a first phase of this project, the nineteenth century was explored, starting with the 1830s ‘cadastre’. This planning device was the first ‘modern’ inventorying system mapping all individual plots of land within Belgium. This inventorying comprised both very detailed maps and accompanying documents in which, for each plot, land use, ownership, and land value were registered (amongst other things). By locating these maps with reference to present-day maps (georeferencing), digitizing the plots, and assigning the corresponding data to this digitalization, a first full-territory GIS-layer of Antwerp was constructed. Based on this layer, projections both backwards (to 1584) and forwards (to 1984) in time became possible. Specifically of interest for the B-magic project is the 1898 reconstruction. For this date an elaborate address book was digitized and connected to the GIS-system by comparing historical maps with house number indications to the addresses in the address book.56 This resulted in around 35,000 geolocated professions (and names) of the heads of households in Antwerp. For Brussels, collaboration was started with the MICM-arc team of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), which had already spent years conceiving a base GIS-infrastructure (‘BHiGIS’ or ‘Brussels Historical Geographical Information System’) consisting of street names and the lowest and highest house numbers per street (linear referencing) based on maps from 1866 and 1893 (extended according to the situation in 2015).57 This system allows additional datasets to be plotted after a thorough reworking. Within the B-magic 54 Cf., for example, the comparative analyses of Rotterdam and Antwerp by overlay of evolving cinema locations with aggregated population data: Daniël Biltereyst, Thunnis Van Oort, and Philippe Meers. ‘Comparing Historical Cinema Cultures: Reflections on New Cinema History and Comparison with a Cross-National Case Study on Antwerp and Rotterdam’, in The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History, edited by Daniël Biltereyst, Richard Maltby, and Philippe Meers (New York: Routledge, 2019). 55 Ellen Janssens, and Iason Jongepier. ‘GIStorical Antwerp: Historisch GIS als laboratorium voor de Stadsgeschiedenis’, Stadsgeschiedenis 10 (2015): 49–62 (https://repository.uantwerpen.be/docman/ irua/64a84e/130121.pdf, [accessed 28 March 2021]). 56 Adresboek Ratinckx. Stadsarchief Antwerpen, BIB-AB#26. 57 MICM-arc, Action de recherche concertée ‘Culture, mobilité, territoire. Emergence et transformation de l’identité métropolitaine bruxelloise (18e–21e siècles)’, ULB, 2012–2017 (https://micmarc.ulb.ac.be/); BHiGIS, 2020. Brussels historical Geographic Information System. IGEAT/ULB (https://bhigis.ulb.be, [both accessed 28 March 2021]).

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framework, address books for the years 1834, 1878, and 1913, originally digitized by Anneleen Arnout, were reworked and added to the BHiGIS-system which resulted in the plotting (including an indication of possible errors) of around 120,000 professions (and names) of the heads of households in Brussels.58 The resulting GIS-layers can be directly juxtaposed with the projection lantern data that was gathered though various newspapers including Het Handelsblad, Le (Nouveau) Précurseur, and Le Matin for Antwerp, and the Journal de Bruxelles and L’Indépendance Belge for Brussels, as mentioned in the main text. Any spatial reference in the text of each newspaper article was gathered along with thematic attributes like lecture themes, organization type, and political ideology. Where the spatial reference consisted of a street and house number, a direct link to both the Antwerp and Brussels system was possible. Where only the name of the venue was known, additional research was conducted to find the exact location. In cases where only a street name was known the centre of the street was chosen, and if no spatial reference was found at all, the lecture could not be plotted. GIS therefore allows us to: (1) represent, (2) analyse, and (3) compare various spatial datasets (cf. Fig. 4). Adding new data to the system (e.g. hotels, industry, or public transport layers as well as a more recent GIS layer with professions for Antwerp) allows complex spatial analyses to be carried out. Possibilities are to be found in: 1) conducting spatial analysis on the projection lantern lectures itself: identifying clusters or high density areas (point/kernel density analysis) and their evolution over time can reveal, for instance, (de-) centralization processes; 2) comparing the lantern lectures with their socio-economic environment: extracting representative professions for different social-economic population groups and analysing their occurrence in the two cities sheds new light at a micro-level on the social composition of the studied cities. Comparing this to the actual locations of the lectures allows a detailed analysis of the embedding of these lectures within the urban fabric and the range of social classes that were reached by these lectures to be carried out; 3) spatial comparison of thematic data on lectures: based on the lecture database, specific thematic attributes of each lecture can be compared in space (distribution of Catholic vs. Liberal lectures as shown in figure 2 of the main text, distribution of the theme of the lectures, and so on); 4) studying the evolution of projection lantern locations in comparison with evolutions in the urban fabric, such as the growth of an urban transport network; and 5), last but not least, a further in-depth analysis of spatial segregation of (pillarized) lantern lectures.59

58 Anneleen Arnout. Streets of Splendor: Shopping Culture and Spaces in a European Capital City (Brussels, 1830–1914) (London: Routledge, 2018). 59 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Fig. 4. Three strengths of GIS, applied to the locations of lantern lectures.

Acknowledgements We wish to thank Sabine Lenk, Natalija Majsova, and our anonymous peer reviewer for providing such useful feedback and suggestions.

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Bibliography Adresboek Ratinckx. Stadsarchief Antwerpen, BIB-AB#26 Arnout, Anneleen. Streets of Splendor: Shopping Culture and Spaces in a European Capital City (Brussels, 1830–1914) (London: Routledge, 2018) Art, Jan. ‘Van “klerikalisme” naar “katholieke zuil” of van “régime clérical” naar “CVP-Staat”. Een benadering van het Vlaams georganiseerd katholicisme in de Nieuwste Tijd’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis 13.1 (1982): 1–22 Art, Jan. ‘Social Control in Belgium: the Catholic Factor’, in Social Control in Europe, 1800–2000, edited by Clive Emsley, Eric Johnson, and Pieter Spierenburg (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004), 113–17 Bertels, Inge, Bert De Munck, and Herman Van Goethem (eds). Antwerpen. Biografie van een stad (Antwerpen: De Bezige Bij, 2010) Biltereyst, Daniël, Thunnis Van Oort, and Philippe Meers. ‘Comparing Historical Cinema Cultures: Reflections on New Cinema History and Comparison with a Cross-National Case Study on Antwerp and Rotterdam’, in The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History, edited by Daniël Biltereyst, Richard Maltby, and Philippe Meers (New York: Routledge, 2019), 96–111 Bodenhamer, David J. ‘Narrating Space and Place’, in Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives, edited by David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 7–27 Bossaerts, Beatrijs. Drie Volksuniversiteiten uit het Brusselse, begin twintigste eeuw (PhD thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1979) Buddingh, Daan. ‘A Peep into History: the 19th-Century Magic Lantern in the Netherlands’, in Realms of light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 21st Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Mervyn Heard, and Ine van Dooren (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 116–23 Buelens-Terryn, Margo. ‘“The Practices of Lantern Lectures, They Are a-Changin”. The Cultural Policy and Changing Lanternscapes in German-occupied Antwerp and Brussels during the Great War’, Journal of Belgian History (2023) (forthcoming) Buelens-Terryn, Margo, Iason Jongepier, and Ilja Van Damme. ‘Lichtbeelden voor de Massa. Toe-eigening en gebruik van de magische lantaarn in Antwerpen en Brussel (c. 1860 – c. 1920)’, Stadsgeschiedenis 14.2 (2019): 122–36 Butler, Judith, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West (eds). The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) Calhoun, Craig (ed.). Habermas and the Public Sphere (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1992) Crangle, Richard, and Mervyn Heard. ‘The Temperance Phantasmagoria’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 20th Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Ine van Dooren, and Mervyn Heard (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 46–55 Day Good, Katie. ‘Sight-Seeing in School: Visual Technology, Virtual Experience, and World Citizenship in American Education, 1900–1930’, Technology and Culture 60.1 (2019): 98–131 De Borger, H. Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de Antwerpse pers. Repertorium 1794–1914 (Leuven, Paris: Nauwelaerts, 1968)

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Dennis, Richard. Cities in Modernity: Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) De Smaele, Henk. Rechts Vlaanderen. Religie en stemgedrag in negentiende-eeuws België (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009) De Vroede, Maurice. ‘Hogeschooluitbreidingen en Volksuniversiteiten’, BTNG – RBHC 10.1–2 (1979): 225–78 Gill, Andrew. Victorian Edinburgh Through the Magic Lantern (Wroclaw: Amazon Fulfillment, 2014) Hajtó, Vera. De ‘Hongaartjes’. Belgisch-Hongaarse Kinderacties (1923–1927 en 1946–1948) (Leuven: KADOC, 2016) Heard, Mervyn. ‘The Lantern is not Dead. Lanterns and Slides in the 20th Century and Beyond. Introduction’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 20th Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Ine van Dooren, and Mervyn Heard (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 193–94 Huhtamo, Erkki. ‘Messages on the Wall. An Archaeology of Public Media Displays’, in Urban Screens Reader, edited by Scott Mcquire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Niederer (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009), 15–28 (https://www.networkcultures. org/_uploads/US_layout_01022010.pdf) Janssens, Ellen, and Iason Jongepier. ‘GIStorical Antwerp: historisch GIS als laboratorium voor de stadsgeschiedenis’, Stadsgeschiedenis 10.1 (2015): 49–62 (https://repository.uantwerpen. be/docman/irua/64a84e/130121.pdf, [accessed 28 March 2021]) Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding Antwerpen. Algemeen programma (Antwerpen: Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding, 1901–1902) Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding van Antwerpen (Antwerpen: Vereeniging Hooger Onderwijs voor ’t Volk, 1903–1904) Kessler, Frank, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2019): 89–111 Kessler, Frank, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Projecting Faith: French and Belgian Catholics and the Magic Lantern Before the First World War’, Material Religion 16.1 (2020): 61–83 Lamberts, Emiel (ed.). Een kantelend tijdperk: de wending van de Kerk naar het volk in NoordWest-Europa, I890–1910 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992) Laqua, Daniel. The Age of Internationalism and Belgium, 1880–1930: Peace, Progress and Prestige (Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2013) Lenk, Sabine. ‘De Robert Vrielynck Collectie. Een “Imaginair Museum rond het bewegend beeld”’, Tijd-schrift. Heemkundig en lokaal-erfgoedpraktijk in Vlaanderen 8.1 (2018): 126–31 Lory, Jacques. ‘La Résistance des catholiques Belges a la “loi de malheur”, 1879–1884’, Revue du Nord, 67 (1985): 729–47 Morris, Robert J. ‘Introduction’, in Civil Society, Associations and Urban Places: Nation and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Graeme Morton, Boudien de Vries, and Robert J. Morris (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1–16 Musser, Charles. Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1890s (Oakland (CA): University of California Press, 2016) Nys, Liesbet. ‘De Ruiters van de Apocalyps. “Alcoholisme, tuberculose, syfilis” en degeneratie in medische kringen, 1870–1940’, in Degeneratie in België, 1860–1940: een geschiedenis van ideeën

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en praktijken, edited by Jo Tollebeek, Geert Vanpaemel, and Kaat Wils (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 11–26 Pasture, Patrick. ‘Introduction: Between Cross and Class. Christian Labour in Europe, 1840–2000’, in Between Cross and Class: Comparative Histories of Christian Labour in Europe 1840–2000, edited by Lex Heerma van Voss, Patrick Pasture, and Jan De Maeyer (Bern, New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 9–48 Puyvelde, Leo van. Aard en inrichting, together with August van Roey. Welke onderwerpen worden best behandeld (Antwerpen: Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding, 1910) Rowntree, Benjamin Seebohm. Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1910) Simkin, Mike. ‘The Magic Lantern and the Child’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 20th Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Ine van Dooren, and Mervyn Heard (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 25–33 Stanard, Matthew G. Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian Imperialism (Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press, 2011) Strikwerda, Carl. ‘A Resurgent Religion. The Rise of Catholic Social Movements in NineteenthCentury Belgian cities’, in European Religion in the Age of Great Cities, 1830–1930, edited by Hugh Mcleod (London, New York: Routledge, 1995), 61–89 ——. A House Divided: Catholics, Socialists and Nationalists in Nineteenth-Century Belgium (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997) Tyssens, Jeffrey. ‘Om de schone ziel van ’t kind’. Het onderwijsconflict als een breuklijn in de Belgische politiek (Gent: Provinciebestuur Oost-Vlaanderen, 1994) Vandeweyer, Luc. ‘Zuilvorming tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog’, in Une guerre totale? La Belgique dans la Première Guerre Mondiale. Nouvelles tendances de la recherche historique, edited by Serge Jaumain, Michaël Amara, and Benoit Majerus (Brussel: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 2003), 97–108 Van Dooren, Ine. ‘Projection International: the Lantern in Different National Contexts. Introduction’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 20th Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Ine van Dooren, and Mervyn Heard (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 75–76 Van Ginderachter, Maarten. ‘An Urban Civilization: the Case of Municipal Autonomy in Belgian History 1830–1914’, in Nationalism and the Reshaping of Urban Communities in Europe, 1848–1914, edited by William Whyte, and Oliver Zimmer (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2011), 110–30 ——. The Everyday Nationalism of Workers: A Social History of Modern Belgium (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019) Van Reybrouck, David. Congo. Een Geschiedenis (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2010) Vercruysse, Jeroom, Jacques Willequet, and Liane Ranieri. ‘De pers en de audiovisuele media’, in Brussel. Groei van een hoofdstad, edited by Jean Stengers (Antwerpen: Mercatorfonds, 1979), 395–407 Viaene, Vincent. Belgium and the Holy See: From Gregory XVI to Pius IX (1831–1859): Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in 19th-Century Europe (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001) Vints, Luc. ‘Beeld van een zending. Nieuwe propagandamedia voor de missies’, Trajecta 5.4 (1996): 371–87 Vleugels, An. Narratives of Drunkenness 1830–1914: Belgium (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013)

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Wagenaar, Michiel. Stedenbouw en burgerlijke vrijheid. De contrasterende carrières van zes Europese hoofdsteden (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Thoth, 2001) Witte, Els. ‘Politiek leven: 1830–1914’, in Brussel. Groei van een hoofdstad, edited by Jean Stengers (Antwerpen: Mercatorfonds, 1979), 188–205 ——. ‘The Battle for Monasteries, Cemeteries and Schools: Belgium’, in Culture Wars: SecularCatholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Christopher Clark, and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 102–28

Frank Kessler and Sabine L enk

Teaching Faith with the Lantern: Audio-Visual Lantern Performances by the Clergy in France and Belgium Around 1900

By the dawn of the twentieth century numerous Western European associations, societies, organizations, and special interest groups as well as schools and universities, had adopted projected images as a way of achieving their educational goals. Optical lanterns were used not only for formal and informal instruction, for information and entertainment, but also for propaganda and indoctrination.1 Among all those who adopted the projection lantern for their activities, the Roman Catholic Church2 distinguished itself from others, with the clergy resorting to the medium to pursue one central purpose, the defense, preservation, and dissemination of religious faith in an increasingly secularized and rational modern world.3 This was a particularly important development in France and Belgium, where the Catholic Church was the dominant Christian denomination but had to face strong secular opposition.4 Whereas most laic5 organizations addressed largely adult and, frequently, male audiences, including adolescents from the age of twelve and up,6 the clergy wanted to reach the



1 Cf., for instance, Sarah Dellmann, and Frank Kessler (eds). A Million Pictures. Magic Lantern Slides in the History of Learning (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2020). 2 When we use the term ‘Catholics’, we always mean Roman Catholics. 3 Cf. Th.-M. van de Vivere. ‘Communication de Belgique’, L’Ange des projections lumineuses 1.1 (October 1902): 6–7. 4 Cf. the contribution by Margo Buelens-Terryn, Iason Jongepier, and Ilja van Damme in the present volume. 5 We chose to translate the French ‘laïque’ as ‘laic’ rather than the more common ‘secular’ to emphasize the political character of these organizations. 6 Cf. the website of La Ligue de l’enseignement et de l’Éducation permanente. ‘Quand les enfants n’allaient pas à l’école: histoire du travail des enfants en Belgique’ (https://ligue-enseignement.be/la-ligue/chroniqueshistoriques/eduquer-n132-quand-les-enfants-nallaient-pas-a-lecole-histoire-du-travail-des-enfants-en-belgique/, [accessed 11 August 2020]), and Lionel Vanvelthem. ‘Le Temps de travail en Belgique durant le “long XIXe siècle” (1800–1914)’ (http://www.ihoes.be/PDF/Analyse_159_Temps_travail_1.pdf, [accessed 11 August 2020]) for the situation in Belgium. For France cf. Jacques Perriault. Mémoires de l’ombre et du son. Une archéologie de l’audiovisuel (Paris: Flammarion, 1981), 103, and the website of Jean-Charles Champagnat (ed.). ‘Histoire du travail des enfants en France’ (https://www.droitsenfant.fr/travail_histoire.htm), [accessed 11 August 2020]). Frank Kessler • Utrecht University, The Netherlands Sabine Lenk • University of Antwerp/Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 123–138 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129098 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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entire population, so that it would lead a life in accordance with the teachings and moral precepts of the Church. To do so many members of the clergy adopted the lantern as a tool for communication, visual instruction and even sermonizing, something their secular opponents and their Protestant competitors in the US had already successfully been doing for over a decade.7 Yet the illustrated lectures organized by laic institutions and associations generally had an educational or scientific character and thus mainly addressed the intellect of their audiences, whereas the Catholic Church often also attempted to appeal to the senses using a multimedia approach. The clergy’s ultimate goal was to tie parishioners as firmly as possible to the Church, to bolster their faith and win back those troubled by doubt. The optical lantern offered them the ability to go beyond the traditional sermon and the strictly scripted liturgical ritual. In what follows, we would like to look at Catholic lantern practices in relation to the Church’s age-old tradition of transmitting its teachings with the help of images and other visual instruments and the associated discussions. Thereafter we will focus on the specific form of audio-visual lantern performances, which combined music, chants, and projected images and which could serve different functions in the Church’s efforts to rally the faithful around its cause. Our study is based mainly on primary source material, i.e. publications in Catholic journals dedicated to lantern projections, which we studied to reconstruct the Church’s positions and strategies, as well as lantern slide sets preserved in Belgian and Dutch collections that document the audio-visual discourse addressed to parishioners. Sensualist Church Traditions The influence of images and imagination on behaviour was an important aspect of the many discussions concerning visual media. As the French Catholic Philosopher and sociologist Henri Joly declared in his popular book L’Imagination: ‘Imagining an action alone fosters the inclination to execute it […] Whoever familiarizes himself with the idea of sin, will commit sin’.8 In accordance with such ideas, conservative members of the clergy often rejected visual media, and in particular cinema, because of their presumed negative effects on viewers. This was the case not only for the Catholic Church in France or Belgium, but also, for instance, for Protestants such as the German Pastor Walter Conradt in his 1910 pamphlet Kirche und Kinematograph. Eine Frage9 and many others in different countries who in particular feared the influence of moving pictures, especially on youth.





7 Cf. Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘“Sermons lumineux” et projections dans les églises, 1884–1912’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 78.3 (2004): 381–400 as well as her contribution in this volume; Frank Kessler, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2019): 101; Frank Kessler, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Projecting Faith: French Catholics and the Magic Lantern Before the First World War’, Material Religion 16.1 (2020): 61–83. For the United States, cf. Sarah C. Schaefer. ‘Illuminating the Divine: The Magic Lantern and Religious Pedagogy in the USA, ca. 1870–1920’, Material Religion 13.3 (2017): 275–300. 8 Henri Joly. L’Imagination. Étude psychologique (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1877), 163. Unless stated otherwise; all translations are by the authors. The book was published in the popular series Bibliothèque des merveilles on the basis of a course Joly taught in 1871–1872 at the Faculté des Lettres in Dijon and arguably represents the predominant ideas on the subject, albeit from a Catholic perspective. Joly taught in Paris from 1881 on. 9 Walther Conradt. Kirche und Kinematograph. Eine Frage (Berlin: Hermann Walther, 1910).

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Fig. 1. Series ‘Elisabeth of Thüringen’, slide 11 ‘Death of Elisabeth’. Maison de la Bonne Presse. (Courtesy: Collection Toverlantaarnmuseum Scheveningen).

Conversely, those among the French Catholic clergy who promoted the use of slide projections, even occasionally calling themselves ‘apostle-projectionists’,10 drew exactly the opposite conclusion from this observation: familiarizing churchgoers with depictions of pious acts and episodes from the lives of the Saints by repeatedly showing them visual representations of such, was to encourage the faithful to imitate these examples (cf. Fig. 1). Once they had developed a moral compass with the help of illustrated lectures they would not fall prey to sin, thus echoing the famous line from Thomas a Kempis in the first chapter of his The Imitation of Christ (De imitatione Christi, c. 1418–1427): ‘He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, saith the Lord’.11 In his report on the 1903 congress of the Catholics in northern France, the French priest Alfred Lemoine indicated how this could be achieved: ‘In his “Avertissement sur le Catéchisme” Bossuet wrote: “Learn how to seize the senses, and through the senses you will reach the mind and the heart”’.12 This precept concerned both the Catholic Church’s tradition of teaching through images and the modern practice of illustrated lectures, in line with the centuries-old sensualist axiom: ‘Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu’13 (Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses). 10 A. [Alfred] Lemoine. ‘Causerie du mois’, Le Rayon 4 (April 1910): 50. 11 Thomas van Kempen, quoted after the English translation on Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ cache/epub/1653/pg1653-images.html, [accessed 11 August 2020]). 12 Lemoine in his article ‘L’Enseignement par les projections lumineuses’, L’Ange des projections lumineuses, 1.7 (April 1903): 98, refers to the sermon given by Jacques-Bènigne Lignel Bossuet on 6 October 1686. 13 Lemoine. ‘L’enseignement’, 99; Lemoine writes: ‘Nihil est in intellectu quod prius fuerit in sensu’. For the original, cf. http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/qdv02.html, [accessed 11 August 2020].

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Fig. 2. Light effect in a church (unidentified slide). (Courtesy: Collection Toverlantaarnmuseum Scheveningen).

Going to a church in the nineteenth century may in fact be considered as an aesthetic audio-visual experience that was presumably experienced far more intensely than a church visit today, especially in rural areas where people’s everyday lives did not offer many distractions. As the French economist Henri Baudrillart observed in 1885 about peasants in Brittany: A church, even modestly decorated, an altar shining with a few ornaments, sacred chants, ceremonies that speak to the imagination, to the eyes as well as to the soul – that is what the peasants do not cease to look for in the village church.14 (cf. Fig. 2) It has been argued that the visual acquired a specific position for the Church as early as the twelfth century, with a shift to a form of ‘visual piety’ linked not only to shimmering 14 Henri Baudrillart. Les Populations agricoles de la France. Normandie et Bretagne (Paris: Hachette, 1885), 452–53, quoted in Jean-Claude Farcy. ‘Le temps libre au village (1830–1930)’, in L’Avènement des loisirs 1850–1960, edited by Alain Corbin (Paris: Champs Flammarion, 1995), 316.

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devotional objects, the richly ornamented robes, stained glass windows, and wall paintings, but also the act of elevating the Host.15 In a religious illustrated lecture and a ‘sermon lumineux’, the latter being given by clerics only, seeing and hearing were certainly the most important senses to be addressed.16 Yet, other senses could be involved as well, particularly when the projected images were shown in a church, which regularly occurred in France from the mid-1880s onward.17 We will therefore first briefly consider touch and smell, both of which are involved in religious practice at a fundamental level, but are given less prominence than sight and sound, at least as far as the explicit communication of Christian faith is concerned. Touch and Smell For Catholic churchgoers in general the sense of touch clearly plays an important role when pictures, relics, statues are touched, caressed, and even kissed. The entire body is involved in participating in the service, when the faithful sit on wooden benches, kneel, or stand. These bodily actions, the physical contact with the sacred space of the church, not to mention the various ways in which certain more extreme religious acts consist of the self-infliction of pain, constitute a corporeal mode of expressing one’s faith. This in turn, appears to be very much in line with the idea that expressive movements can themselves produce the sentiment that they express, which means, in other words, that ritually executed gestures during the service were understood as being conducive to the experience of religious ardor.18 As for smell, frankincense has for many centuries been an important element of the Catholic rite, in particular during the missa solemnis or High Mass, as a symbol of God’s presence. According to Matthew 2, 11, the gifts that the three Magi offered Jesus were frankincense, gold, and myrrh. The burning of incense in churches during mass thus introduced a strong olfactory dimension to the religious rites and became profoundly associated with the very idea of the sacred. The lingering scent of frankincense may have often still been present when lantern sermons or other projections took place in a church.

15 Cf. Jürgen Bärsch, Kleine Geschichte des christlichen Gottesdienstes (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2015), 78–80. 16 The difference between a ‘conférence religieuse’ and a ‘sermon’ is defined as follows: ‘If the Sermon differs from the Religious Lecture in that it makes God speak instead of talking about God, it follows that the style of the Sermon must be sober and serious; that the image and the feeling must be subordinated to the idea; in a word that the sermonary must be classical and not romantic’ (Robert Lefebvre. ‘La Prédication III’, La Bonne Parole (10 February 1909): 34) ‘[…] let us note then: That the Religious Lecture employs above all reason as its major means, and, consequently, extends more on History, Philosophy, Exegesis, in short, Apologetics; it discusses the principles revealed. And that the sermon uses above all the major means of faith, of authority; it does not discuss them, but exposes them, develops them, draws consequences from them. The Conference assumes the skeptical audience, the Sermon the convinced audience’ (Robert Lefebvre. ‘La Prédication IV. De la conférence, du sermon et de l’homélie’, La Bonne Parole (25 October 1909): 216. 17 Cf. Saint-Martin. ‘Sermons lumineux’. 18 Cf. Joly. L’Imagination, 160–62.

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Visual Stimuli and the Problem of Images The Catholic Church can look back upon a long tradition of imagery. The inside of a church is decorated with murals, mosaics, paintings, sculptures, and stained-glass windows, all of which creates a rich visual spectacle for the congregation. The presence of images in churches did nonetheless provoke controversy. As long ago as Pope Gregory I (540–604), when measures had to be adopted to oppose the iconoclastic efforts of the Bishop of Marseille, the Pope wrote: For to adore a picture is one thing, but to learn through the story of the picture what is to be adored is another. For what writing presents to readers, this a picture presents to the unlearned who behold, since in it even the ignorant see what they ought to follow; in it the illiterate read. Hence […] a picture is instead of reading.19 This passage is quoted in a treatise discussing whether lantern projections could be used for religious exercises by the French Jesuit Gabriel Le Bail,20 who gave illustrated lectures for factory workers in the north of France. In his plea in favor of using the lantern, Le Bail referred to Pope Gregory to stress the fact that visual teaching aids had been accepted in the Catholic Church even in the sixth century. Even so discussion about the role of imagery in religious practice persisted, particularly during the Reformation and when prompted by Protestant accusations of Catholic idolatry, not to forget criticism from within the Church itself.21 Yet in addition to the numerous images inside churches, performances such as short stage plays at Easter or other holidays had intensified the visual dimension of the liturgy since at least the fifteenth century, although conservative members of the clergy continued to be skeptical or even outright hostile to such spectacles.22 These arguments were reiterated by both the promoters and opponents of illustrated lectures in the Catholic Church. When the detractors expressed the view that the profane innovation harmed the sanctity of the church, the supporters replied that they were simply following an age-old tradition by adopting an up-to-date medium.23 19 Sancti Gregorii Magni, Registri Epistolarum, Epistolarum Liber XI (undecimus), mense Septembri, indictione IV, Epistola XIII, Migne JP, 1128, quoted in Gabriel Le Bail. Peut-on employer des projections lumineuses dans les retraites? (Enghien: Bibliothèque des Exercices, 1907), 5; we thank Bart Moens for sharing this source. English translation in Register of the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great. 0590–0604 – SS Gregorius I Magnus – Registri Epistolarum, 98 (http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/01p./0590-0604,_SS_Gregorius_I_Magnus,_ Registri_Epistolarum_[Schaff],_EN.pdf, [accessed 11 August 2020]). 20 On Le Bail cf. Saint-Martin, ‘Sermons lumineux’, 385. 21 Cf. Reinhard Hoeps (ed.). Handbuch der Bildtheologie I: Bild-Konflikte (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), in particular the contributions by Jean Wirth (191–212) and Thomas Lentes (213–40). Cf. also the contribution by Isabelle Saint-Martin in the present volume. 22 According to Kees van der Ploeg. ‘De zichtbare erfenis van het christendom. Van geloofspraktijk tot cultureel erfgoed’, Gronrek 47 (2015): 215–29 (https://ugp.rug.nl/groniek/article/download/27530/24944/, [accessed 11 August 2020]) this happened for the first time in the thirteenth century in Utrecht, however more often such plays are documented in the fifteenth century. Van der Ploeg mentions scenes from the Gospels that were performed accompanied by songs on major holidays, an early example being a late thirteenth-century play performed at Easter in Hellum near Groningen; another example is a ‘Heaven’s hole’ (‘hemelsgat’) in the Der Aa church in Groningen, which may have served to enact the Ascension of Christ. While not confirmed in this case, this practice was recorded elsewhere according to Van der Ploeg (221–22). The Jesuits are known to have regularly organized performances in churches. 23 Cf. Anonymous. ‘Petite controverse’, L’Ange des projections 1.12 (September 1903): 132–33.

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From the end of the nineteenth century up to the summer of 1912, when the Vatican prohibited the practice,24 projections on religious topics regularly took place in churches. These were not only illustrated sermons, but also included lectures on the catechism, Bible stories, the lives of the Saints or the history of the Church. The specific atmosphere of the church building itself, its sanctity, awe-inspiring architecture, impressive spatial dimensions, and often overwhelming decoration which, when combined with the mighty tones of the organ and the occasional whiff of frankincense, provided a multi-sensory environment for slide projections that no other group, institution, or setting could offer. The characteristics of the church space, which also afforded working with large screens – Canon Chamayou of Toulouse sometimes used one measuring fifty square meters25 – for the illustrated sermon created an atmosphere that could deeply impress the audience and may have often surpassed their expectations. Given the size of the projected images, their visual quality was key according to G.-Michel Coissac,26 who headed the slides and film distribution service of the Catholic Maison de la Bonne Presse in Paris: The audience attending an illustrated lecture does not merely expect a good lecture or a causerie presented with verve if they have been promised a delight for their eyes, and they will leave only half-way satisfied should their expectations not be met.27 Coissac was referring not just to the quality of the projection itself, but to the visual qualities of the slides as well, and in particular to the use of colour. That this recommendation was indeed largely followed is suggested by the fact that almost all narrative slide series held in the collections of the KADOC (Catholic Documentation Centre) in Leuven and which were used to teach the catechism, are coloured.28 Accordingly, many priests opted for showing only a limited number of slides, albeit of a high quality in their ‘sermons lumineux’ and other projections. Abbé J. Parmentier, according to Saint-Martin the editor of La Croix des Pyrénées-Orientales at Perpignan, for instance, recommended using a maximum of twenty-five slides in a religious lecture.29 Too 24 For the prohibition of projections in churches cf. Saint-Martin, ‘Sermons lumineux’, 382. 25 Anonymous. ‘Projections et prédications’, Le Rayon 5 (May 1908): 68–69. 26 G.-Michel Coissac’s real first name is Guillaume and not Georges as certain sources state. We are indebted to Jacques Malthête who shared the results of his research, and which was subsequently confirmed by our own online searches in the Corrèze archive (www.archinoe.fr/cg19/visu_affiche. php?PHPSID=1c00a274e86a18df3181b03daa6507ce¶m=visu&page=1#): cf. the document ‘R1449 Bureau de recrutement de Tulle. Répertoire alphabétique des hommes inscrits au registre matricule 1888’ stating ‘Coissac Guillaume dit [called] Michel’, http://www.archinoe.fr/cg19/recrutement_liste. php?PHPSID=1c00a274e86a18df3181b03daa6507ce&page=1, [accessed 11 August 2020]. 27 G.-Michel Coissac, quoted in J. [ Joseph] Périé. ‘L’Apostolat par les projections (suite et fin)’, La Semaine religieuse de l’Archidiocèse d’Albi 37 (11 September 1909): 540. 28 Members of the Church, too, appreciated the quality of the colours: ‘While our ears hear music and delightful songs detailing the works of the Divine Creator, coloured views pass before our eyes, representing our Earth during the different stages of its slow formation. […] What varied landscapes appear, expertly rendered by the brush of the eminent and daring draughtsman Mr Vignola with the aid of a master colourist, Mr D’Inguimbert’. A. [Alfred] Lemoine. ‘Causerie du mois. Le Congrès des Œuvres de Projection à la Bonne Presse du lundi 19 Octobre au Jeudi 22 Octobre 1908’, Le Rayon 10 (October 1908): 130–31. 29 Cf. Saint-Martin. ‘Sermons lumineux’, 394. According to Nathalie Boulouch. ‘L’image de lumière comme tableau noir’, in La plaque photographique. Un outil pour la fabrication et la diffusion des savoirs (XIXe–XXe siècle), edited by Denise Borlée, and Hervé Doucet (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2019), 31, projection manuals recommended a projection speed for slides between 6–7 and 15–20 seconds per slide.

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much excitement, not to mention passion, provoked by visual stimuli should be avoided, if control over the congregation is not to be lost. Henri Joly, for instance, had warned of the contagious effect of excessive religious passion that women in particular were prone to and which might be triggered by visual representations.30 On the other hand, the spoken words could in a way guide the congregation’s understanding of the image and thereby prevent undesired devotional excess. Conversely the effect of the projected image could be seriously impacted by a bad speaker. A common complaint in lantern circles concerned the inability of a lecturer to capture the audience. As the experienced lantern performer Thomas Cradock Hepworth stated, ‘A lecture entertainment will fail sometimes owing to the total incapacity of the speaker, – to his bad articulation, nervousness, lack of voice, or want of tact in dealing with the audience’.31 Many Catholic priests were equally aware of the negative effects of an uninspiring sermon, ‘[…] To talk about sermons means evoking boredom and even intensified boredom, as a consequence many churches are now deserted’.32 Even traditional members of the clergy did not deny this problem, and liturgical forms such as the missa cantata were one way of augmenting the churchgoer’s participation in the service. Hymns and anthems, generally accompanied by an organ, together with the sermon and the exchanges between priest and congregation, constituted the multi-layered aural dimension of every service. Although the early Christians included music in their mass, it was during the Reformation that singing gave the attendee an active role and let him or her feel part of the community. Martin Luther was convinced that ‘the devil, the creator of saddening cares and disquieting worries, takes flight at the sound of music almost as he takes flight at the word of theology’.33 Chanting also helped to internalize and amplify religious teaching. Singing to God could be a form of prayer and worship. The optical lantern made it possible to address the faithful by combining visual teaching with music and singing, a quality that the Catholic Church used in its projection practices in various ways (cf. Fig. 3). Audio-Visual Performances: Music, Chants, and the Projected Image In the catalogue of Maison de la Bonne Presse and in the catalogue of slides available for distribution published in 1910 in the journal Le Rayon, edited by the diocese of Cambrai, there was a specific section dedicated to ‘chants lumineux’, i.e. slides that could be projected while music was performed or the church choir and congregation sang a hymn.34 These slide series were divided into different categories. 30 Joly. L’Imagination, 129–32. 31 Thomas Cradock Hepworth. The Book of the Lantern. Being a Practical Guide to the Working of the Optical (or Magical) Lantern (New York: Edward L. Wilson, 1889), 265–66; cf. also G.-Michael Coissac, quoted in J. Périé. ‘L’Apostolat’, 539–40. 32 L’Ami du Clergé (1904): 1049, quoted in Saint-Martin. ‘Sermons lumineux’, 390. 33 Martin Luther. Letter to Ludwig Senfl (October 1530), quoted in Adam Hough. ‘Martin Luther and Musically Expressed Theology’, Illumine 11.1 (2012): 35. 34 Cf. Diocèse de Cambrai. Œuvre Diocésaine des Conférences et Catéchismes avec projections (ed.). ‘Catalogue des Séries de Vues de Projections en dépôt au siège principal de l’Œuvre, 33 bis, Rue du Vieil-Abreuvoir, Roubaix’, Le Rayon 6–7–8 ( June, July, August 1910): 98–99. It seems that others such as Abbé Pelez de Cordova in Paris also constituted a repertory of songs with and without lantern slides. Cf. Anonymous. ‘Petite

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Fig. 3. Song slide 6 of the series ‘Je suis Chrétien’ (‘I am a Christian’) (unidentified producer). (Courtesy: Collection Toverlantaarnmuseum Scheveningen).

First there were ‘Cantiques’ (‘Canticles’), most of them praising Jesus and the Virgin Mary, whereas others celebrated a life lived in accordance with the precepts of the Christian faith. Just as in the other sub-categories, many of the sets were offered both in colour and black and white, but the majority were coloured. The slides presented a combination of text and illustration, one slide per verse. Secondly, there were ‘Chants’ by French nineteenth-century composers such as Jules Granier, Adolphe Adam, Gabriel Fauré, Charles Gounod, Gustave Goublier or the Irish-French Augusta (Mary Anne) Holmès, as well as works by the poet-musician Pierre Dupont and the Swiss-born opera composer and sacred music writer Abraham Louis Niedermeyer, who lived most of his life in Paris. Most of these ‘Chants’ were sacred music, others were about peasant life and poverty. French compositions dominated this category and stressed the link between the Catholic Church and the French nation. This was also the case for other sets in the catalogue, which emphasized Catholic patriotism.35 Correspondance. Pièces et Chants’, La Vie au patronage 10 (October 1912): 751. 35 Cf. Kessler, Lenk. ‘Projecting Faith’, 70–72.

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Maison de la Bonne Presse also distributed slides of songs by a popular singer and poet from Brittany, called Théodore Botrel. These constituted another sub-category in the section ‘chants lumineux’. Botrel’s compositions in fact represented the numerically largest section in the category, which contained twelve canticles and twenty chants, and thirty-three of his songs. While the hymns were undoubtedly used during services, Botrel’s textual slides were probably projected as part of an entertainment in venues such as meeting rooms. Botrel was extremely popular for his lyric poems and songs about the simple life of peasants and fishermen, inspired by his beloved Breton home as he was born in Dinan as son of a blacksmith.36 As he openly celebrated his faith and stayed in touch with the congregation that had spiritually nurtured him, despite a move to Paris when still a boy, the Catholic Church accepted his chansons as part of its community life. Botrel toured not only in France, but also came to Belgium where he must have had many admirers.37 Invited by the Duchess d’Ursel and the Countess of Flanders, he gave his first Belgian performance in the presence of members of the Royal family with a program of folk songs at the Grande-Harmonie in Brussels in January 1901.38 It may seem surprising that Botrel appeared so prominently in the distribution catalogue of a Catholic organization, but he was first of all firmly aligned with the Catholic Church and moreover a large proportion of French and Belgian Catholics lived in the countryside, which may have made his spiritual folk songs particularly attractive to rural audiences. Furthermore, in this period of rapid industrialization and modernization, Botrel’s songs and artistic persona probably also satisfied a certain nostalgia for an idealized form of pastoral piety. At the other end of the cultural spectrum, projections with chanting and musical accompaniment that addressed bourgeois and cultivated audiences were also organized by the Catholic Church. Chants played an important role during, for instance, the festive event entitled ‘La Rédemption’ that took place at a Catholic parish hall in the industrial French town of Roubaix in December 1908. The evening was dedicated to a representation of the history of the world that started with the Genesis and was followed by the events leading up to the birth of Christ.39 The projected glass-plates then illustrated the life of Christ and the various stages of the passion. A large part of the slides showed famous paintings and were accompanied by local singers and musicians performing nineteenth-century French sacred music by composers such as Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, or Camille Saint-Saëns. ‘In each scene and with a moving concordance, the music offered the support of its captivating charm to the paintings and made the illusion of reality complete’.40 Such an ‘exceedingly dignified spectacle’, wrote Le Rayon, extolling its virtues, 36 On Botrel cf. Élisabeth Pillet. ‘Gaston Couté, ou la parole aux paysans sur les scènes parisiennes’, Le Mouvement social 160 ( July-September 1992): 125–46; for a contemporary Jesuit view on his life and poetic work, cf. T. J. M‘L. ‘Theodore Botrel, the Poet of Brittany’, The Irish Monthly 39.451 ( January 1911): 33–42. 37 Cf., for example, a fonds of ‘partitions and song texts […] and some newspaper cuttings’ catalogued under ‘BE/942855/1477/667 Partituren en liedjesteksten bijgehouden door Roobaert Jozef (broeder Jozef Ireneüs) en enkele knipsels betreffende de zanger T. Botrel, 1926’ in the collection of ‘Broeders van de Christelijke Scholen’ held at KADOC-KU Leuven. 38 Théodore Botrel. Les Mémoires d’un Barde Breton (Paris: P. Lethielleux, Brussels: Collections Durendal, 1933), 247. 39 On the representation of Genesis, cf. also the contribution by Kurt Vanhoutte in the present volume. 40 Bou. ‘La Rédemption’, Journal de Roubaix (30 December 1908), quoted in Anonymous. ‘Causerie du mois’, Le Rayon 1 ( January 1909): 3.

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with its combination of religious paintings and music, could not be objected to, not even by those members of the Church who opposed lantern shows. With ‘La Rédemption’, the Church indeed showed itself capable of integrating the lantern into a high-culture event that at the same time presented central articles of Catholic dogma. It is instructive to compare this French spectacle with another event that made use of local soloists and a boy choir, which was organized a year later on 12, 19 and 22 December 1909 and held in a Protestant house of prayer, the Neue evangelische Garnisonskirche at Kaiser Friedrich-Platz in Berlin.41 Here too the audience enjoyed a mixture of slides of famous paintings by, among others, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. However, the majority of the slides showcased the works of the then popular German artists Bernhard Plockhorst, Walter Firle, Heinrich Hoffmann, Josef Scheurenberg, and others. The music consisted of traditional Protestant hymns and popular German Christmas songs.42 The organizers insisted that the spectators should read the program leaflet in advance to learn about the paintings they would see and the music they were to hear as the church would be dark during the ‘Lichtbilderpredigt’ (illustrated sermon), and those attending were asked to observe a ‘solemn silence’. Like the soirée in Roubaix, the program of music apparently featured primarily national composers. The paintings too were largely by German artists. This national, or maybe even nationalist bias no doubt reflected the political atmosphere of the years preceding the First World War. Whereas the French Catholic reporter of Le Rayon presented ‘La Rédemption’ as a concert with religious imagery, the German Protestant organizers settled on a church service as the format for the three evenings, with projected religious images replacing the sermon. Each slide was accompanied by music. Apart from several pieces played on the organ and one cello solo, most of the songs were pious or were Christmas carols intoned by the soloists or the boys’ choir. Sometimes the audience joined in. In many cases, the songs were thematically related to the paintings displayed on the screen. The service ended with a blessing by the pastor. The event was announced as the depiction of Jesus’s life, ‘The Story without equal in word, images and sound’. The program leaflet gives the impression of something like an antiphony between the religious element – as represented by the images of Jesus on the screen – and the spectators, comprising for the most part the choir, the singers, and the musicians. An actual sermon is not mentioned despite the announcement of a ‘Lichtbilderpredigt’ (illustrated sermon). During the event the focus is clearly on ‘Lichtbilder’, not on ‘Predigt’. The projected images were apparently supposed to speak for themselves. Still, as the public could at certain moments participate in the singing, the overall effect and mode of address of the German ‘Lichtbilderpredigt’ was arguably closer to a ‘sermon lumineux’, despite the lacunae, notably the absence of a sermon, than was the Roubaix spectacle, which appears to have been more of a cultural event, more akin to a concert rather than a church service. In addition to cultural events or actual church services combining slides and chants or instrumental music, ‘chants lumineux’ were also used by the Church to combat secularization in France and to rally the faithful around its cause. From the French slides we 41 Leaflet by Neue evangelische Garnisonskirche. Lichtbilderpredigt über das Leben Jesu, I. Teil, printed by Ernst Schimkönig in Berlin 1909 (authors’ collection). 42 The French source does not contain information about which paintings were projected.

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Fig. 4. Song slide 8 of the series ‘Nous voulons Dieu’ (‘We want God’), Maison de la Bonne Presse. (Courtesy: Collection Toverlantaarnmuseum Scheveningen).

Fig. 5. Song slide 4 of the series ‘Nous voulons Dieu’ (‘We want God’), Maison de la Bonne Presse. (Courtesy: Collection Toverlantaarnmuseum Scheveningen).

have had access to,43 it is clear that institutions such as Maison de la Bonne Presse relied on the power of the visual, ‘even the ignorant see what they ought to follow’ (Gregory I). This was reinforced by the songs, especially when they were sung as an expression of a community’s faith. The slide set ‘Nous voulons Dieu’ (‘We want God’), which was part of Maison de la Bonne Presse’s repertory,44 shows scenes illustrating the song’s words, a slide representing the Virgin, churchgoers praying during mass, a three-generation family reading at home, a cemetery with an insert representing a priest going to a house to administer extreme unction, a scene of a court of law, a dying soldier on a battle field receiving the last rites, all visibly accompanied by religious symbols such as the cross, Mary, angels, and priests (cf. Fig. 4, 5). The words to be sung emphasize the importance of God’s presence in all these situations. There is moreover a clear subtext in the selection of the people who are depicted (a bourgeois family, for instance) and their behaviour (adults fervently praying, well-dressed children reading in their hours of leisure), thus showing ‘good examples’ to be followed. Two slides in the set openly attack the ‘enemies’ of the church. The first references the laicist French government: in a scene in a classroom, boys watch how the crucifix is detached from the wall by a policeman under the eyes of a city official, with another policeman standing by and already laden with three crosses (cf. Fig. 6). In the second slide a horde of angry men dressed in modern clothes are shouting at Jesus, who has just collapsed under the weight of the cross, an image familiar from the Stations of the Cross. Some of the men shake their fists at him, one bends forward to pick up a stone, and

43 We thank Henk Boelmans Kranenburg from the Toverlantarenmuseum Scheveningen for giving us ample access to his collection. 44 Cf. Diocèse de Cambrai, 98. The original series had eleven slides, we had access to nine of them, all in colour.

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Fig. 6. Song slide 3 of the series ‘Nous voulons Dieu’ (‘We want God’), Maison de la Bonne Presse. (Courtesy: Collection Toverlantaarnmuseum Scheveningen).

another one carries a stick. The text of the song echoes and amplifies the message of the pictures: ‘We want God, as the godless have rallied against His name and in the excess of their rage these fools reject Him’.45 This example demonstrates how lantern slides could be used to complement the political message of a song aimed at closing the ranks of the faithful against the ‘godless’. This strategy contrasts with another set of a ‘chant lumineux’ where the commercial producer Elie-Xavier Mazo simply selected a series of reproduced paintings for ‘Il est né le divin enfant’ (‘He is born, the Devin child’) .46 Conclusion Projected images combined with music and chants offered the Catholic Church a range of possibilities for the promotion and defense of it cause, in addition to other lantern practices such as illustrated lectures or ‘sermons lumineux’. When the members of the congregation sang themselves, the combination of the music they heard, the projected image they looked at, and their own physical involvement resulting from their singing could indeed produce extraordinarily strong effects. 45 The original French text says: ‘[…] les impies contre son nom se sont ligués’. The choice of the verb ‘liguer’ might have implied an attack against the laic teachers’ association ‘Ligue de l’enseignement’. 46 Also in Henk Boelemans Kranenburg’s collection.

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More generally, however, the ‘apostle-projectionists’ celebrated the lantern as a powerful new weapon in their battle against their laic enemies, taking care at the same time to emphasize the solid ties that attached the medium firmly to Church tradition. Even so despite their efforts and the support they won among of the higher ranks of the French Catholic Church, all slide projections inside a church were banned by the Vatican in 1912. Whether this ban was directed in the first instance against the moving pictures that by then had become a burgeoning new industry and was perceived by many as a moral threat, or whether those who had opposed the lantern from the very outset had now finally achieved their goal, is difficult to say. Whatever the case, both projection media continued to be a part of the Church’s evangelism and missionary work, albeit not inside the church building itself with the result that the optical lantern became part of church tradition after all.47 Acknowledgments A first version of this contribution was presented at a workshop entitled ‘Multimodality: Illusion, Performance, Experience’ in October 2019 at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University. We would like to thank Jessie Fillerup for organizing this event and for inviting us. We also would like to thank Natalija Majsova and Isabelle Saint-Martin for their helpful comments and suggestions. Last, but not least our thanks go to Henk Boelemans Kranenburg for always having welcomed us at the Toverlantarenmuseum Scheveningen and for having given continuous support to our research. Bibliography Anonymous. ‘Petite controverse’, L’Ange des projections 1.12 (September 1903): 132–33 ——. ‘Projections et prédications’, Le Rayon 5 (May 1908): 68–69 ——. ‘Petite Correspondance. Pièces et Chants’, La Vie au patronage 10 (October 1912): 751 Bärsch, Jürgen. Kleine Geschichte des christlichen Gottesdienstes (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2015) Botrel, Théodore. Les Mémoires d’un Barde Breton (Paris: P. Lethielleux, Brussels: Collections Durendal, 1933) Bou. ‘La Rédemption’, Journal de Roubaix (30 December 1908), quoted in Anonymous. ‘Causerie du mois’, Le Rayon 1 ( January 1909): 2–4 Boulouch, Nathalie. ‘L’Image de lumière comme tableau noir’, in La plaque photographique. Un outil pour la fabrication et la diffusion des savoirs (XIXe–XXe siècle), edited by Denise Borlée, and Hervé Doucet (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2019), 23–37

47 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Champagnat, Jean-Charles (ed.). ‘Histoire du travail des enfants en France’ (https://www. droitsenfant.fr/travail_histoire.htm), [accessed 11 August 2020]) Conradt, Walther. Kirche und Kinematograph. Eine Frage (Berlin: Hermann Walther, 1910) Dellmann, Sarah, and Frank Kessler (eds). A Million Pictures. Magic Lantern Slides in the History of Learning (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2020) Diocèse de Cambrai. Œuvre Diocésaine des Conférences et Catéchismes avec projections. ‘Catalogue des Séries de Vues de Projections en dépôt au siège principal de l’Œuvre, 33 bis, Rue du Vieil-Abreuvoir, Roubaix’, Le Rayon 6–7–8 ( June, July, August 1910): 81–99 Farcy, Jean-Claude. ‘Le temps libre au village (1830–1930)’, in L’Avènement des loisirs 1850–1960, edited by Alain Corbin (Paris: Champs Flammarion, 1995), 302–61 Hepworth, Thomas Cradock. The Book of the Lantern. Being a Practical Guide to the Working of the Optical (or Magical) Lantern (New York: Edward L. Wilson, 1889) Hoeps, Reinhard (ed.). Handbuch der Bildtheologie I: Bild-Konflikte (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007) Hough, Adam. ‘Martin Luther and Musically Expressed Theology’, Illumine 11.1 (2012): 27–49 Joly, Henri. L’Imagination. Étude psychologique (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1877) Kessler, Frank, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2019): 89–111 ——. ‘Projecting Faith: French Catholics and the Magic Lantern Before the First World War’, Material Religion 16.1 (2020): 61–83 Kempis, Thomas a [Thomas van Kempen]. The Imitation of Christ (https://www.gutenberg.org/ cache/epub/1653/pg1653-images.html, [accessed 20 August 2020]) Le Bail, Gabriel. Peut-on employer des Projections Lumineuses dans les Retraites? (Enghien: Bibliothèque des Exercices, 1907) Lefebvre, Robert. ‘La Prédication III’, La Bonne Parole (10 February 1909): 34 ——. ‘La Prédication IV. De la conférence, du sermon et de l’homélie’, La Bonne Parole (25 October 1909): 216 Lemoine, A. [Albert] ‘L’Enseignement par les Projections Lumineuses’, L’Ange des projections lumineuses 1.7 (April 1903): 97–103 ——. ‘Causerie du mois. Le Congrès des Œuvres de Projection à la Bonne Presse du lundi 19 Octobre au Jeudi 22 Octobre 1908’, Le Rayon 10 (October 1908): 129–31 ——. ‘Causerie du mois’, Le Rayon 4 (April 1910): 49–51 La Ligue de l’enseignement et de l’Éducation permanente (ed.), ‘Quand les enfants n’allaient pas à l’école: histoire du travail des enfants en Belgique’ (https://ligue-enseignement.be/ la-ligue/chroniques-historiques/eduquer-n132-quand-les-enfants-nallaient-pas-a-lecolehistoire-du-travail-des-enfants-en-belgique/, [accessed 11 August 2020]) M‘L., T. J. ‘Theodore Botrel, the Poet of Brittany’, The Irish Monthly 39.451 ( January 1911): 33–42 Neue evangelische Garnisonskirche. Lichtbilderpredigt über das Leben Jesu, I. Teil (Berlin: Ernst Schimkönig, 1909) Périé, J. [ Joseph]. ‘L’Apostolat par les projections (suite et fin)’, La Semaine religieuse de l’Archidiocèse d’Albi 37 (11 September 1909): 540 Perriault, Jacques. Mémoires de l’ombre et du son. Une archéologie de l’audio-visuel (Paris: Flammarion, 1981)

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Pillet, Élisabeth. ‘Gaston Couté, ou la parole aux paysans sur les scènes parisiennes’, Le Mouvement social 160 ( July-September 1992): 125–46 Ploeg, Kees van der. ‘De zichtbare erfenis van het christendom. Van geloofspraktijk tot cultureel erfgoed’, Gronrek 47 (2015): 215–29 (https://ugp.rug.nl/groniek/article/ download/27530/24944/) Saint-Martin, Isabelle. ‘“Sermons lumineux” et projections dans les églises, 1884–1912’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 78.3 (2004): 381–400 Schaefer, Sarah C. ‘Illuminating the Divine: The Magic Lantern and Religious Pedagogy in the USA, ca. 1870–1920’, Material Religion 13.3 (2017): 275–300 Vanvelthem, Lionel. ‘Le Temps de travail en Belgique durant le “long XIXe siècle” (1800–1914)’ (http://www.ihoes.be/PDF/Analyse_159_Temps_travail_1.pdf, [accessed 11 August 2020]) Van de Vivere, Th.-M. ‘Communication de Belgique’, L’Ange des projections lumineuses, 1.1 (October 1902): 6–7

Natalija Majsova

The Bijou Collection: A Multimedia Constellation for Multimodal Experiences

The following three chapters all focus on one fascinating archival find: the Bijou Collection. This collection of forty didactic stories produced by the French Tolra and Simonet publishing house in the early twentieth century consisted of illustrated printed booklets and lantern slide series. Eight Bijou stories (publisher’s booklets with appropriate slide sets) have been preserved in the KADOC archives in Leuven,1 alongside handwritten notebooks (in Dutch), probably filled out and used by catechism teachers. The archival materials were generously offered for inspection to the B-magic research team by KADOC’s archivist Greet de Neef in 2019. The scarce evidence available allows for the hypothesis that these materials (the slide sets, the publisher’s booklets, and the lecturers’ notebooks) were used in the 1920s and 1930s by the Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk in Gent for the purposes of catechism teaching and evening public lectures aimed at young working audiences. The Flemish lecturers’ handwritten notebooks suggest the publisher’s booklets in French served as the basis for the catechists’ lantern performances, providing them with basic narratives and offering insights into the narrative logic of the slide series. At the same time, the state of the slide series found in the KADOC and the handwritten notebooks in Dutch show that the lecturers carefully adapted the publisher’s narratives, and even their slide sequences. This archival find is especially valuable for a number of reasons. First, the Bijou Collection testifies to the inherent intertextuality and intermediality of lantern-aided catechist teaching and provides fresh insights into the works of the Tolra and Simonet publishing house, which have not yet been researched as meticulously as those of the Maison de la Bonne Presse. Moreover, this very publisher is particularly interesting as an outlet for both didactic as well as ‘lighter’, purely entertaining content. The stories assembled within the Bijou Collection attest to this versatility, combining edifying and entertaining slides. The Collection is hence an intriguing case in point to inspect following Isabelle Saint-Martin’s (this volume) insightful observations on the resourcefulness of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century religious visual instruction.

1 For more information on KADOC, cf. the contribution by Greet de Neef in this book. Natalija Majsova • Observatory for Research on Media and Journalism, UCLouvain, Belgium, and Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 139–140 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129099 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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Accordingly, the following three contributions tackle the Collection from three different, yet interrelated perspectives. Werry and Fevry’s text illuminates the editorial strategies at work in construction of the collection, taking issue with the prevalent tacit assumption that the publisher’s booklets were probably a mere instruction manual for the catechists. The authors position the booklets and the slides in the context of their early twentieth-century media ecology, using the story (‘Une nuit terrible’ – ‘A Terrible Night’) to assess both medium’s edifying capacity. Moens and Nasta’s contribution takes the discussion on the intermediality and intertextuality a step further by examining a temperance story from the Bijou Collection (‘Un poison mortel’ – ‘A Lethal Poison’) in the context of the widespread anti-alcoholism propaganda of the time. This chapter traces the significance of creating emotional experiences in temperance propaganda generally, and religious temperance propaganda in particular, and illustrates how different media (especially lantern slides and early cinema) developed melodramatic strategies for this very purpose. Majsova and Marion’s final chapter in this triptych builds on both Werry and Fevry and Moens and Nasta’s texts, exploring the potential held by the Bijou Collection as a mnemonic device. Using a religious (‘Le Fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’ – ‘The Son of the Mute from AïnKarim’) and a non-religious (‘Un poison mortel’) story from this collection as case studies, Majsova and Marion demonstrate how visual and narrative devices were intertwined in Bijou stories in order to create a coherent worldview that subscribed to Catholic values and sought to edify the audience. As a coherent whole, the three contributions before you offer a glimpse into the complexity of the relationship between religion, media, and popular culture upon the advent of the rise of visual mass media.

Adeline Werry and Séb as tien Fevry

The Editorial Strategy of the Bijou Collection: When Media Diversification Reinforces an Edifying Ambition

Introduction This contribution will focus on the editorial strategy of religious publishers Tolra and Simonet, with particular emphasis on the multimedia aspect of their productions, epitomized here by the Bijou collection and the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim (Tol-Sim Light Projections) which both convey the same stories and the same images, but using different devices: illustrated publications for the Bijou collection, and glass plates and publisher’s booklets for the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim. This fascinating double media set came to our attention after the discovery of eight complete sets of glass plates in the archives of KADOC, the Interfaculty Documentation and Research Centre on Religion, Culture, and Society at KU Leuven. The slides were stored there in cardboard boxes that had been donated by the Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk (Eucharistic Catechist Service) institution, a catechism training centre in Ghent founded by Edward Joannes Maria Poppe (1890–1924), a priest who devoted himself to the education, especially the religious education, of children and young people. In those boxes, the slides were accompanied by notebooks handwritten in Dutch1 and sometimes by booklets linked to the slides of the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim or illustrated publications from the Bijou collection. It is with regard to this material that we will investigate the editorial strategies of the publishers Tolra and Simonet, with the aim of gaining a better understanding of the interrelationships between the different media that are the illustrated publications and the glass plates intended for a magic lantern performance. In other words, the main goal of this contribution is to explore the differences and continuities between two media sets (the collection of books and the



1 KADOC’ s archivist hypothesizes that these slides were probably used for teaching young working women who wanted to get some extra education. These young women were the most frequent attendees at the Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk. Adeline Werry • Institut Langage et Communication (ILC), UCLouvain, Belgium Sébastien Fevry • Institut Langage et Communication (ILC), UCLouvain, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 141–153 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129100 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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catalogue of slides) and to clarify the specific contribution of each in order to fulfill the edifying purposes of the publisher. In this sense, our approach is clearly related to an intermedia perspective seeking to understand the media ecosystem within which religious publishers such as Tolra and Simonet operated. Illustrated publications, booklets, glass plates, and the projection of the latter during catechism classes will be considered not as separate media, but as media interconnected with each other in a complex mediascape.2 In this perspective, as Rémy Besson points out, ‘it is no longer a question of linking elements that are potentially separate, but of understanding arrangements, complex systems of relationships that make up a whole: an intermedia’.3 According to Besson, intermediality refers to a media environment characterized by the interplay between sensible inscriptions (books and light projections) and media supports (paper, glass plates, and screen) within a given ‘milieu’,4 in our case the institutional space (including publishers, but also the audience) in which religious (or edifying) publications circulated at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this contribution, the Bijou collection and the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim will thus give us the opportunity to examine in depth the media ecosystem developed by the publishers Tolra and Simonet. Publishers Tolra and Simonet and the Case of the Bijou Collection The publisher Tolra was one of the new religious publishers who, in the second half of the nineteenth century, competed with La Maison de la Bonne Presse, which was already well known in the publishing world at the time. Joseph Tolra, broker and employee of the Lecoffre bookstore, founded his own company in 1860 when he obtained a bookseller’s license and bought up the stock of a bookshop housed at 68, rue Bonaparte in Paris, where he set up his business. While the Tolra publishing house was in existence, Joseph Tolra and his successors made several alliances with other publishers, starting with Haton in the early days and ending in 1950 with the Belgian publisher Dessain, which led to the loss of Tolra’s status as a religious publisher and its specialization in other areas such as the fine arts.5 With regard to ‘Tol-Sim’ mentioned in some volumes of the Bijou collection,6 and qualifying the series of slides entitled Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim, this name refers to an association between Joseph Tolra and another publisher, a certain M. [Monsieur?] Simonet, which



2 Arjun Appadurai. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 33. 3 Rémy Besson. ‘Prolégomènes pour une définition de l’intermédialité à l’époque contemporaine’, submitted on 1 July 2014, 23 (https://hal-univ-tlse2.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01012325v2/document), [accessed 28 March 2021]). Translation by the authors from the French: ‘il n’est plus question de mettre en relation des éléments étant potentiellement séparés, mais d’appréhender des agencements, des systèmes complexes de relations, qui sont constitutifs d’un ensemble: d’un intermédia’. 4 Besson. ‘Prolégomènes pour une définition, 23. 5 Cf. Isabelle Saint-Martin. Voir, savoir, croire. Catéchisme et pédagogie par l’image au XIXe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), 58–59; also cf. Claude Savart. Les Catholiques en France au XIXe siècle: le témoignage du livre religieux (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985), 178. 6 The reference to ‘Tol-Sim’ does not appear in all the illustrated booklets. Most of the time, the name ‘Tolra’ appears. In fact, the production of the booklets lasted longer than the association between the houses Tolra and Simonet. We can also consider that the booklets already published were reissued during the association between Tolra and Simonet.

T he E ditor ial S trategy of the Bij ou Collection

began in 1900.7 Due to the dearth of Tolra archives and the lack of information about this M. Simonet, we only have a few details about their affiliation. Tolra and Simonet shared two addresses: 28, rue d’Assas and 16, rue Vaugirard, both in Paris. The association between them is not thought to have lasted until the next one with the publisher Dessain: evidence of the Tolra and Simonet association can be found in books published between the years 1900 and 1927. Between 1860 and 1950, Tolra published all types of documents related to religion, many of which contributed to the moral and religious education of children and young adults. Among these, the most complete and well known was the Grand Album d’images pour l’explication du catéchisme (Great Album of Images for Catechist Explanation), published in 1899, a major competitor to the Grand Catéchisme en images (Great Catechism in Pictures), published by La Maison de la Bonne Presse in 1893. However, besides this iconic publication, Tolra also developed other smaller publications. For instance, we can mention the existence of devotional books retracing, among other things, the holy history and including illustrations in order to ‘teach through the eyes’. We can also cite the publication of a magazine for the clergy: L’Écho des presbytères (The Echo of the Presbyteries, published from 1896).8 The Bijou collection should be considered in the context of such publications. Initially, examination of the elements found in the archives led us to believe that the Bijou collection formed only one ensemble consisting of elements used together by the catechists: illustrated booklets, glass plates, explanatory textbooks, and notebooks (the textbooks translated into Dutch by the catechists). However, even though they are part of this same media system, two main sets emerge clearly and are able to function independently of each other: the illustrated books form a closed book collection, and the glass plates form another set comprising views accompanied by unillustrated books: the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim. This distinction between the Bijou collection and the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim more generally reflects the usual context of publication of catechisms by religious publishers. In the tradition of illustrated catechisms, it was the practice to adapt the images in various forms and on diverse media. The Tolra publisher was no exception to the rule with its Grand Album d’images pour l’explication du catéchisme following the example set by the Le (Grand) Catéchisme en images ((Great) Catechism in Pictures) of La Maison de la Bonne Presse.9 The catechisms were initially gathered in large albums made up of large illustrated plates with only a small amount of text, but the intention was to republish the plates later in smaller fascicles or individually, for example in the form of postcards.10 Tolra and La Maison de la Bonne Presse were also well known for having published their Catechism in the early twentieth century, on glass slides for light projections.11 The goal of both editors was to attract as many people as possible by varying the types of media, mainly for commercial reasons, because they saw catechism and religion as an important market.12 7 As evidenced by the appearance of the name Simonet alongside Tolra in the Bibliographie de la France between the issues of 1899 and 1900: Bibliographie de la France: ou Journal général de la librairie et de l’imprimerie 47 (November 1900): 3067; Bibliographie de la France: ou Journal général de la librairie et de l’imprimerie 40 (October 1899): 3078. 8 For more information about the publications produced by Tolra, cf. Saint-Martin, Voir, savoir, croire, 58–59. 9 For more information on catechism in images, cf. the chapter by Isabelle Saint-Martin in this volume. 10 Cf. Saint-Martin. Voir, Savoir, Croire, 40. 11 Ibid., 33–34. 12 Ibid., 60, 519–20.

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The Double Delivery Technology of Tolra’s Publications Since the Tolra publisher used this same strategy of diversifying the media support while retaining the same texts and images by publishing the Bijou collection and the Tol-Sim Light Projections, we want to address this question of media diversification in more detail. We would therefore like to put forward the idea that Tolra is developing a double ‘delivery technology’. This is a concept developed by Henry Jenkins in his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, in which he defines it as ‘the tools we use to access media content’ and as tools that ‘become obsolete and get replaced’. In order to deepen this, Jenkins qualifies the concept of media in two definitions that he borrows from Lisa Gitelman. The first defines a medium as a ‘technology that enables communication’, while the second designates it as ‘a set of associated “protocols” or social and cultural practices that have grown up around that technology’.13 According to Jenkins, the delivery technology corresponds to the first definition: only the technology or material that can be exchanged with another technology or material, while the media content remains the same. To be more specific, Jenkins cites the example of recorded sound: the sound is the medium, and it needs different delivery technologies to transmit it, for example a CD or an MP3 file.14 This concept is not only useful for contemporary technologies, but it can also be extended back to the end of the nineteenth century (or the beginning of the twentieth) to designate the technical means (illustration, photography, text, engraving, et cetera) by which media content is conveyed. In the case of Tolra’s publications, we have two media sets that differ from each other in their delivery technology, and consequently in the cultural and social practices triggered by these technologies, even though the media content is still the same, from one set to another. We consider the booklets (including texts and illustrations) of the Bijou collection as the first ‘delivery technology’ developed by Tolra. This collection forms a set of forty booklets composed of texts and images whose subjects are both religious, such as Les deux vieillards d’Israël (The Two Old Men of Israel), and moral (social), such as Un poison mortel (A Lethal Poison). It forms a closed and intermedia system. Indeed, the text is not alone and even takes second place to the illustrations, which are dominant both in the body of the booklet and on the cover. The publisher also has a strong presence, particularly on the cover, which is repeated on the first page. Beyond the highly visible mention of the name and address of Tolra Publisher, this is manifested through what Matthieu Letourneux refers to as architexture: all the elements that remind the reader that the volume is part of the collection’s serial process,15 notably the same format (colour, layout, publication type) and the mention of the collection at the top of the page. By emphasizing this architexture, the publisher establishes an editorial line expected by readers and creates the unity of the collection. Referring to the author Maximilien-Raoul de Roussel de Préville as ‘R. P. de Préville’ also contributes to this. A posthumous biography of the Abbé de Préville: Un Père de Jeunesse, ou Vie de M. de Préville, prêtre de la congrégation des Frères de 13 Henry Jenkins. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 13–14. 14 Cf. Jenkins. Convergence culture, 13–14. 15 Matthieu Letourneux. Fictions à la chaîne: Littératures sérielles et culture médiatique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2017), 40.

T he E ditor ial S trategy of the Bij ou Collection

St-Vincent de Paul, 1845–1894 (A Father of the Youth, or the Life of M. of Préville, preacher of the Congregation of Fathers of St-Vincent de Paul, 1845–1894), issued in 1896, identifies this abbot as an eminent figure in the context of religious education for young people. In addition to the Bijou collection, he was the author of several publications released by Tolra, such as Le Grand album d’histoire sainte (The Great album of sacred history), Foch le sauveur de la France (Foch the saviour of France), and Un grand français: le cardinal Lavigerie (A Great Frenchman: the cardinal Lavigerie). The systematic inclusion of the author’s name on the front cover contributes to the moral legitimacy of the collection and so supports the visibility of the publisher. However, given that the publication of the Bijou collection dates from after the Abbé’s death and there is no mention of his writings for the Bijou collection in his posthumous biography, it seems to us that, as an important figure, his name is included here in a quest for unification, but also to enhance the reputation of the collection, without him being the author of all the texts. Moreover, his name disappears from the booklets accompanying the slides for the light projections, which reinforces the hypothesis that the reference to Abbé de Préville mainly serves to give additional coherence to the Bijou collection. Tol-Sim slides differ from the collection in two ways. The first is the ‘delivery technology’ by which the same media content is delivered: the image, represented on a flat surface, is sold in the shape of transparent cellophane paper squares. This type of slide appeared for the first time in the late nineteenth century in France and was used almost exclusively for educational purposes. It consisted of a thin sheet of paper that, after printing, was varnished to make the paper transparent. These slides were cheap (up to a tenth of the price of a conventional slide) and therefore more affordable than printed glass plates. Although some advocates of glass slides were opposed to them because the quality of the image was not as good, the paper slides became widespread, especially since they were used by and for children because they were lighter, less fragile, and therefore more easily handled and transported than those made of glass.16 In order to be projected using professional lanterns, they were inserted between cardboard frames or between two or more glass plates measuring 8.25 × 10 cm.17 There is also the question of colour. The illustrations in the Bijou collection were always monochrome, while the views could be sold in either black and white or colour. Regarding the text, it is presented separately in an explanatory booklet. In addition, in advertisements and inside catalogues, lanterns are on sale next to the slides. This provides an indication of the intended use of these slides: to be projected. The second difference is based on Tolra’s publishing strategy (cf. Fig. 1). The series of slides are not part of a unified collection in the same way as the Bijou collection. They were part of a larger series of images printed on transparent cellophane paper published 16 Annie Renonciat. ‘Un média oublié d’enseignement populaire. Les vues sur papier transparent pour projections lumineuses’, in Lumineuses projections! La projection fixe éducative, edited by Anne Quillien (Chasseneuil-duPoitou: Futuroscope Canopé éditions, 2016), 67–68. For more information about the paper slides, cf. Annie Renonciat. Images lumineuses. Tableaux sur verre pour lanternes magiques et vues sur papier pour appareils de projection (Rouen: Musée national de l’Éducation, 1996). 17 The same glass plates could be used several times during the same projection session: the paper slides were removed from the glass plates to be replaced by others. However, it seems that this was not the technique adopted by the catechists of the Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk. Indeed, in the KADOC archives, we find each of the paper slides inserted between individual glass plates.

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at the beginning of the twentieth century under the name Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim.18 Unlike the book collection, where the publisher and the architexture19 of the collection were immediately highlighted, the name of the publisher does not appear much: not at all on the slides and only at the end of the explanatory books. The aim is then to mention the prices, but mostly to direct readers to other Tol-Sim series of views on various topics, such as alcoholism, the model family, or the history of France. Moreover, as already mentioned, while the text in the explanatory booklets accompanying the slides is identical to that in the illustrated booklets from the Bijou collection, the author’s name is totally absent from those explanatory booklets, whereas its inclusion is a unifying factor for the Bijou collection. A Premediated Material Although it is difficult to find a clear chronology in the archives, cross-checking different sources allows us to advance that the Bijou collection was published first and the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim appeared later, starting on 15 December 1900.20 However, despite this temporal succession, we would argue that the two delivery technologies share the same visual and textual material, which explains the similarities between the two sets. As indicated previously, it was usual at the time for publishers like La Maison de la Bonne Presse or Tolra and Simonet to present the same edifying or religious content using different media supports, principally for cost reasons and economy of scale, in an environment very similar to that of contemporary transmedia or cross-media architectures where the same story is adapted, almost simultaneously, on different supports.21 This is why we will assume the existence of what we call premediated material, gathering images, texts, and titles that can be updated in the two delivery technologies, first in the Bijou collection, then in the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim. By using the term premediation,22 we wish to draw attention to the fact that this first set of material has already been prepared to be transplanted into different media with the fewest possible changes. In this sense, the premediated material should be considered a kind of matrix that can be brought up to date with minimal modifications by the literary collection or by the light projections. Far from being an abstract category, premediated material refers to something concrete, having some tangible reality, particularly in the context of high audience publishers like Tolra and Simonet, where cost efficiency can be improved by updating the same stock of images and texts. In the case of Tolra and Simonet, as with many other editors, the traces of this initial material are impossible to find, but it is not difficult to imagine the existence of a storehouse or reserve in which the designers and printers were able to find visual and textual material that could be 18 Cf. De Luikerwaal, ‘Séries comiques Tol-Sim and other transparencies’ (https://www.luikerwaal.com/ newframe_uk.htm?/inh_platen_uk.html, [accessed August 6, 2020]). 19 Letourneux. Fictions à la chaîne, 40. 20 Cf. Bibliographie de la France 47, 3067; Bibliographie de la France 40, 3078. 21 On this point, cf. Jenkins, Convergence Culture. 22 We use premediation in a very different sense from Richard Grusin, for whom this term refers to the fact that, after the shock of 9/11, the media became obsessed with the ‘pre-mediation’ of future events. Cf. Richard Grusin, Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

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adapted for the different delivery technologies.23 For Tolra and Simonet, we can find a reliable indicator of this process in the format of the images. For most of them, the illustrations in the booklets and the images slipped between the glass plates are exactly the same size. This may indicate that in both cases, the printers operate on the basis of the same prototype and that the only, and minimal, adjustment concerns not the format of the image, but the switch from monochrome to polychrome. A similar phenomenon occurs with the written text. The narrative is the same, word for word, in the illustrated booklets and in the explanatory books accompanying the slides. Each narrative unit corresponds to one number and this number system determines both the pagination of the booklet and the sequence of the slides. Once again, this parallelism suggests that we are starting from a common textual matrix guiding the relative position of text and image, both on the page and during the lantern projection. In this context, the concept of premediated material shows its usefulness by allowing us to develop another perspective on the process of adaptation. Indeed, the point here is not to focus on how the booklets of the Bijou collection were adapted for the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim. This question does not seem crucial, particularly as we can hypothesize that the Bijou collection and the Projections lumineuses were involved in the same editorial project, which means that the publication of the Projections lumineuses was already planned when the booklets of the collection were first published. Such a hypothesis relies on the name of the collection. In the nineteenth century, the term ‘Bijou’ referred to a certain type of lantern for children, which was produced by some French lantern manufacturers around the same time as the release of the Bijou collection.24 Using this name for the collection suggests a desire on the publishers’ part to allude in the title to the upcoming set of projections that were intended for children, although the ‘Bijou’ lanterns actually projected smaller and much broader ‘panoramic’ images than those used for the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim. So, rather than focusing on the adaptation from one support to another, it appears to be more productive to establish the specific characteristics of the premediated material, to which we have access through the two delivery technologies. From this perspective, the premediated material for the Bijou collection and the light projection series is remarkable, first of all, for the place given to the visual, which reveals the primacy of the image in the catechism, where the image rather than the text was supposed to directly affect the children’s senses and hold their attention.25 Whether for the book reading or the lantern session, the image was seen as the best way to encourage a child to concentrate and reflect, as indicated in the preface to the Catechism for children published by Tolra in 1899: ‘The image engraves the idea in the mind like a note taken; its recollection is used to find the lost thread’.26 The second remarkable characteristic is

23 For instance, in a similar context, we were able to find a compilation of prints from the French publisher Lapierre. With regard to their format and the arrangement of the images on the sheets, it does not seem possible that the publisher was selling this compilation as such. However, it is quite possible that it served as a compendium intended to include all the images and texts that the publisher could then print on glass plates. 24 Cf. the catalogue of Lapierre lanterns and slides from 1893: Édouard Lapierre Fils Ainé, Fabrique de lanternes magiques. Fantasmagories, Lampascopes et Réflectoscopes (Paris: Lapierre, 1893), 1 (https://www.collectionbinetruy.com/4677.html?&tx_jppageteaser_pi1[backId]=8100, [accessed 25 March 2021]). 25 Cf. Saint-Martin. Voir, savoir, croire, 192. 26 Ibid., 188. Translation by the authors from French: ‘L’image grave l’idée dans l’esprit comme une note prise, son souvenir sert à retrouver le fil perdu’.

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Fig. 1. The editorial strategy of the publisher Tolra.

the existence of a strong textual structure, divided into short narrative units that help the reader as well as the audience of a lantern projection to focus their attention on the moral or religious purpose of such productions. As Théodule-Armand Ribot27 pointed out in his Psychologie de l’attention (Psychology of Attention) published in 1889, the process of attention depends on both intensity and duration.28 While intensity can be provided by the large images, maintaining attention over time is sustained more by a strong narrative structure preventing the viewer’s mind from getting lost in purposeless ruminations. In this way, we see how the premediated material is organized by social and cultural concerns that exist before the delivery technologies as such, and that will be fully activated when the technologies turn into media in the strong sense of the term, meaning, as Lisa Gitelman points out, the activation of specific cultural practices linked with these technologies. From the Delivery Technology to the Performance of Tol-Sim Slides Through this research, some evidence of the use of the Bijou collection and the Tol-Sim projection series in catechism classes has emerged. So, we can mention the similarities of the collection with the Grand Album d’images pour l’explication du catéchisme, the various sources promoting the use of the Bijou collection or the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim for

27 Théodule-Armand Ribot was a philosopher and professor at the Collège de France. His theory of attention is notably commented on by Jonathan Crary and Yves Citton in their essays on the subject: Jonathan Crary. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 22; Yves Citton. Pour une écologie de l’attention (Paris: Édition du Seuil, 2014), 15–46. 28 Théodule Ribot. Psychologie de l’attention (Paris: Alcan, 1889), 17.

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teaching purposes29 and of course their preservation in the KADOC archives. In the case of the Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk institution, from which the collections held at KADOC originated, the material found in the archives suggests that the catechists owned and used to read the booklets from the Bijou collection, unlike the students to whom they taught the content of these booklets. In fact, it seems that the catechists used the booklets from the Bijou collection to conduct their own teaching session in Dutch, translating them into Dutch while remaining faithful to the content of the French text. A moral, or ‘Toepassing’ in Dutch, was always added to these translations, and both were handwritten in notebooks. Regarding the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim, the situation of reception was also different for the teachers and for the students. Except for the catechists who projected the slides using an optical lantern, the receiver of the images on the slides saw them only on the screen. In these circumstances, the delivery technology of glass slides and explanatory books played a background role: students did not perceive and touch this sensitive material, unlike the teacher, who often made the slides him-/herself and put on a performance with them. Through this process, a modal transformation took place. The image of the glass plate acquired new dimensions: projection enlarged the image, bringing out details or imperfections. The previously visual text became an audible text (in the case of the Tol-Sim slides preserved at KADOC, it was probably the notebooks written in Dutch that corresponded to the comments made by the teacher during the projection). Thus, once presented on the screen, the materiality of the glass plate did not appear to the students, while the content of the image remained and was mediated through a new delivery technology: the magic lantern handled by a teacher who performed the story conveyed by the images. Moreover, performance was impacted not only by the tools used, but also by the context in which it took place and which implied its specific social and cultural practices. A projection session held at a fairground would not have proceeded in the same way as one in a classroom or a church, even though the tools used were similar: slides, a lantern, and the voice of a speaker, entertainer, or teacher. With regard to the Tol-Sim projection by the Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk institution, there is now no evidence of exactly how these projections took place. We cannot know exactly how the slides found in the archives were used and how the texts were spoken: the performance cannot be reproduced today as it was then. However, knowing that these slides and texts were used to teach catechism, we can hypothesize a projection taking place in a classroom and the use of teaching techniques intended to achieve the moral elevation of the students. For example, the addition of a moral at the end of the handwritten Dutch notebooks suggests that the lessons illustrated by the slides were summarized after the projection (probably with the aim of ensuring that the moral content was properly conveyed to the students). In addition, we can envisage that these catechism classes were held in accordance with what was advocated by the Catholic promoters of light projections. Thus, for example, the Abbé François Napoléon Marie Moigno in his Art des projections lumineuses (Art of luminous projections, 1872) promoted a method of teaching in which the image had to take centre stage. Besides this image, the teacher’s explanation had to be

29 One example is the Bulletin des patronages de jeunes filles. Organe mensuel du Comité de l’Œuvre générale des patronages de jeunes filles published in Paris in 1902.

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succinct and clear. In his work, Moigno also considered supplementing the series of slides with small texts that anyone could adapt and use to perform with the slides: a process that therefore resonates with the existence of these explanatory booklets or handwritten notebooks accompanying the slides of the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim. The Specificity of the Projection. The Case of Une nuit terrible Through the lens of the performance, we can grasp one of the main differences between the lantern and the written book, particularly if we consider the role of the close-up picture. In this regard, the story Une nuit terrible (A Terrible Night) is a very interesting example, highlighting as it does the specific characteristics of the projection. In the book, the first image is the one on the front cover, representing a close-up of the French General LouisGaston de Sonis (cf. Fig. 2). Paratextual references to the Bijou collection appear around the image, such as the author’s or publishers’ name. During the projection, the first image shown is not this one, but the glass slide illustrating the beginning of the story, which may suggest that the oral narrator immediately starts to tell the story. The text written by hand in Dutch and bearing the same number as the first slide attests to this: ‘When young Gaston de Sonis came to the college at the age of twelve, he was so fine, so distinguished, so gentle, so shy, that his schoolmates called him “Miss”’.30 However, the close-up has not been completely removed from the series of glass plates, but comes later, this view being labelled number 32, which indicates that this image is not the first one, but the last. For the lantern, the close-up view was used to conclude the story, unlike the illustrated book, which shows a funerary monument as the final picture. This example is interesting for two reasons. First, it indicates that one of the specific characteristics of the magic lantern relies on the permutability of the images and on the possibility for the operator to change the sequence of a glass plate in the series, which is not of course possible with the illustrated book. For Une nuit terrible, given that no caption accompanied this image, we do not know if this permutation was prescribed by the publisher (with, for example, a pre-order in the box to show the slides) or if we have here a personal initiative on the part of the operator who projected these views as part of a catechism class. The second reason is related more to the use of the close-up. In the book, the close-up is placed outside the story, on the front cover, in the paratextual apparatus. In the context of the projection, the status of the close-up tends to be more ambiguous, overlapping between attraction and monstration. This view is both outside and inside the story, corresponding to one of the four attraction images that Livio Belloï has identified,31 namely the emblematic shot. For Jan Baetens, this ‘plan emblématique’ corresponds to ‘liminal images in which a “character” looks at the viewer and which were used by the “directors” to introduce or

30 Translation by the authors from the Dutch: ‘Wanneer de jonge Gaston de Sonis op twaalfjarige ouderdom, op het college kwam, was hij zoo fijn, zoo voornaam, zoo zacht, zoo bedeesd, dat zijn kameraden hem “Juffrouw” heeten’ [sic]. 31 Cf. Chapter 4 in Livio Belloï. Le regard retourné. Aspects du cinéma des premiers temps (Montreal: Édition Nota Bene/Paris: Klincksieck, 2002).

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Fig. 2. Front cover and end of the illustrated booklet Une nuit terrible (A terrible night) from the Bijou Collection (Paris: Ed. Librairie Tolra). (Courtesy: KADOC-KU Leuven. Collection: Archief Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk Gent).

conclude sequences that were already more or less narrative’.32 Of course, this power of attraction already works on a potential level on the front cover of the illustrated book, but increases during the projection, when the image becomes liberated from the paratextual elements of the books in the Bijou collection. However, we would argue that, despite diametrically opposed choices, at the beginning for the book or at the end for the projection, the position of the emblematic shot could be related to a certain idea of remanence, particularly in the context of religious education. In both cases, the picture of General de Sonis is positioned so as to remain before the gaze of the viewer for as long as possible. This is the case for the front cover, because this image is the most visible when the book is closed, whether it be on the teacher’s desk or on the shelf of a display stand. In a similar way for the projection, the last image is the one that will stay with the audience when the performance is over. In both cases, there is the same concern: to keep the public’s attention on the exemplary figure of General de Sonis. Once again, we see how a common edifying purpose is reinforced by performing the premediated material through the two delivery technologies. The ‘remanence effect’ 32 Translation by the authors from French: ‘les images-seuil où un “personnage” regarde le spectateur et dont se servaient les “metteurs en scène” pour introduire ou terminer des séquences déjà plus ou moins narratives’. Jan Baetens. ‘Livio Belloï. Le regard retourné. Aspects du cinéma des premiers temps’, Recherches en communication 19 (2003): 236.

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certainly depends on the position of the picture in the narrative sequence, but also on the possibilities offered by the technologies and acted out by the performers (viewer of the image or reader of the book) to hold the audience’s attention. Conclusion Through the case of Une nuit terrible, we can clearly see how the intermedia approach allows us to grasp not only the specific media characteristics of the double media set – the Bijou collection and the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim – but also the mediascape in which the latter takes place and the editorial strategies of the Tolra publishing house, especially in terms of media diversification. The Bijou collection and the Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim are produced, sold, and apprehended independently through two delivery technologies and yet are connected by the existence of premediated material. It is in this material that the content is crystallized, responding to the moralizing intent of many religious publishers’ publications of the time. It is important to mention, however, that – depending on the type of publication – the moral or edifying impact can manifest itself to varying degrees. In the case of the projection of Tol-Sim views, the delivery technology of the glass plates combined with the use of the lantern constitutes a new device capable of attracting the attention of a sizeable audience thanks to images being projected in great dimensions, in partial darkness. Depending on his/her oratorical talent, the person performing with the slides, here the catechist in the classroom, can reinforce the moralizing nature of the story, an enhancement that the book format of the Bijou collection does not allow. On the other hand, since the Bijou collection’s booklets can easily be read in various settings (living room, station, library, et cetera), the moralizing message can be spread more widely than with the slide projection, which can only take place in specific and closed environments such as catechism classes. Thus, with both media advantages and media disadvantages, the productions developed by the Tolra publishing house, like those of other religious publishers at the time, respond to the wish to promote the moral education of children and young people using the most relevant delivery technologies available at the dawn of the twentieth century.33 Bibliography Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996) Baetens, Jan. ‘Livio Belloï. Le regard retourné. Aspects du cinéma des premiers temps’, Recherches en communication 19 (2003): 235–37

33 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Belloï, Livio. Le regard retourné. Aspects du cinéma des premiers temps (Montreal: Éd. Nota Bene/ Paris: Klincksieck, 2002) Besson, Rémy. ‘Prolégomènes pour une définition de l’intermédialité à l’époque contemporaine’ (2014) (https://hal-univ-tlse2.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01012325v2/document, [accessed 28 March 2021]) Bibliographie de la France: ou Journal général de la librairie et de l’imprimerie 47 (November 1900) Bibliographie de la France: ou Journal général de la librairie et de l’imprimerie 40 (October 1899) Citton, Yves. Pour une écologie de l’attention (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2014) Crary, Jonathan. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999) De Luikerwaal. ‘Séries comiques Tol-Sim and other transparencies’ (https://www.luikerwaal. com/newframe_uk.htm?/inh_platen_uk.html, [accessed 6 August 2020]) Grusin, Richard. Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006) Lapierre, Édouard. Fabrique de lanternes magiques. Fantasmagories, Lampascopes et Réflectoscopes (Paris: Lapierre, 1893) (https://www.collection-binetruy.com/4677.html&tx_jppageteaser_ pi1[backId]=8100, [accessed 25 Marchj 2021]) Letourneux, Matthieu. Fictions à la chaîne: Littératures sérielles et culture médiatique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2017) Moigno, Abbot. L’Art des projections lumineuses (Paris: Bureau du Journal ‘Les Mondes’, Gauthier-Villards, 1872) Occre, Émile. Père de Jeunesse ou vie de M. de Préville prêtre de la congrégation des Frères de StVincent de Paul, 1845–1894 (Paris-Auteuil: Imprimerie des Orphelins, 1896) Préville, Maximilien-Raoul de Roussel de. Les deux vieillards d’Israël (Paris: Librairie SaintJoseph, Tolra, n.d.) ——. Un poison mortel (Paris: Librairie Saint-Joseph, Tolra. n.d.) ——. Une nuit terrible (Paris: Librairie Saint-Joseph, Tolra, n.d.) Renonciat, Annie. Images lumineuses. Tableaux sur verre pour lanternes magiques et vues sur papier pour appareils de projection (Rouen: Musée national de l’Éducation, 1996) ——. ‘Un média oublié d’enseignement populaire. Les vues sur papier transparent pour projections lumineuses’, in Lumineuses projections! La projection fixe éducative, edited by Anne Quillien (Chasseneuil-du-Poitou: Futuroscope Canopé éditions, 2016), 67–75 Ribot, Théodule. Psychologie de l’attention (Paris: Alcan, 1889) Saint-Martin, Isabelle. Voir, savoir, croire. Catéchisme et pédagogie par l’image au XIXe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003) Savart, Claude. Les Catholiques en France au XIXe siècle: le témoignage du livre religieux (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985)

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Religious Temperance Propaganda and Multimodal Aesthetics of Emotion: The Lantern Slide Set ‘Un poison mortel’ and Early Film Adaptations of Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir

Introduction Emotions are a vital component of religious life and its various forms of expression; this paragon importance has been confirmed by recent psychological research.1 Historically, terms such as passions, sentiments, and affections were commonly used to label and explain phenomena that stirred the soul, in particular by religious thinkers such as Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). In the heyday of the optical lantern in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a scientific and secularized psychological discourse discarded such theologically inspired terms and largely replaced them with the overarching term emotions.2 In this contribution, we consider the lantern medium as a cultural instrument to communicate narratives and messages, in particular through the projection of emotions, to investigate the role of emotions and affective aesthetics in religious temperance propaganda involving the optical lantern at the turn of the twentieth century. As such, this research should be considered as part of the emotional turn in the humanities, a recent trend that has been endorsed by psychological and neurological studies that emphasize the role culture plays in the construction of emotions, through linguistic, conceptual, and



1 John Corrigan. ‘Introduction: The Study of Religion and Emotion’, in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion, edited by John Corrigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 11–12 (https://www.oxfordhandbooks. com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195170214.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195170214, [accessed 28 March 2021]). 2 Thomas Dixon. From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 11, 14. The term ‘emotion’ first came about in the English language through Scottish Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume. However, Hume also used the terms passions and affections regularly. As Dixon’s research demonstrates, the overarching term ‘emotions’ we know today does not coincide with the meaning of passions, affects and sentiments, although he points to the complex relations between religious theories and the scientific theories of emotions during the nineteenth century. Cf. Dixon. From Passions to Emotions, 239. Dominique Nasta • Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Bart G. Moens • Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 155–168 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129101 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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visual elements.3 From such a constructionist perspective, emotions are highly variable states of mind that consist of individual and collective processes, as emotions are precisely constructed out of somatic, cognitive, and socio-cultural components.4 According to this theory, historical, and mediated emotions, and the sociocultural context wherein they occur, are highly relevant for the cultural historian. Moreover, these mediated emotions shape the connection between individual experiences and recollections, and ‘cultural memory’.5 The multimodal performances carried out with the optical lantern provide rich and hitherto unexplored source material for the historical study of emotions.6 In what follows, we explore the expressive qualities of the lantern medium through an analysis of the emotional communication and aesthetics in religious temperance propaganda. Using primary sources that have not been interconnected before, we aim to answer the following research questions by relating a temperance lantern slide set and its text to early melodramatic temperance films: what is the place of these lantern practices in a broader media historical context; what are the connections between lantern slides sets to early melodramatic temperance films; and how does connecting these sources contribute to the study of historical and mediated emotions? Correspondingly, we explore the place and role that the melodramatic mode of expression holds in anti-alcohol campaigns. Emotional Communication in Religious Temperance Propaganda During the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the representation of overt emotions was central in picturing and framing alcoholism as a social issue. With the generalization of realism as a mode of representation, daily subjects and social contexts were exhibited in a dramatized way: pictorially, on the theatre stage and later as short films. An early and well-known pictorial example is the engraving series ‘The Bottle’ by George Cruikshank, published in 1847, which would also become popular as a lantern slide set. In line with this archetypical illustrated narrative, we identified the slide set ‘Un poison mortel’ (‘A Lethal Poison’) as part of the Belgian educational sphere. Dating from the beginning of the twentieth century, this lantern slide set of printed images on cellophane is part of the Bijou Collection, manufactured by the Catholic publisher Tolra. This Parisian company had a background in Catholic literature and aimed to







3 Jan Plamper. The History of Emotions: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 63; Lisa Feldman Barrett. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (London: Macmillan, 2017); Batja Mesquita. Jozefien de Leersnyder, and Michael Boiger. ‘The Cultural Psychology of Emotions’, in Handbook of Emotions, edited by Lisa Feldman Barrett, Michael Lewis, and Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, fourth ed. (London: Guilford Press, 2016), 393–411. 4 There is no scholarly consensus to define or understand emotions. For our purpose, we follow a constructed view to understand emotions called the conceptual act model or the theory of constructed emotions, which incorporates two constructivist theories: psychological construction and social construction. Cf. Lisa Feldman Barrett. ‘Constructing Emotion’, Psychological Topics 20.3 (2011): 359. 5 Carrie Hamilton. ‘Cultural Memory and the Emotions: Exploring the Connections’, in Memory, Narrative and Histories: Critical Debates, New Trajectories, edited by Graham Dawson (Brighton: Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories, 2012), 71. 6 Joe Kember, and Richard Crangle. ‘Folk Like Us: Emotional Movement from the Screen and the Platform in British Life Model Lantern Slide Sets 1880–1910’, in Fonseca, Journal of Communication 16 (2018), 115–33.

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provide accessible Christian educational materials as well as respectable entertainment with the distribution of lantern slides.7 With their colourful images and touching stories, the lantern slide sets and the accompanying readings offer a rich ground to explore the affective aesthetics of the lantern medium within the Christian tradition. These particular lantern slides of ‘Un poison mortel’ were used by the Flemish Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk (Eucharistic Catechist Service) in Ghent during catechism classes for children and young adults, and they were designed to warn children about the dangers of alcohol from a Catholic perspective, first and foremost by addressing their emotions.8 An explicitly emotional mode of expression, which we also identify in lantern culture, is melodrama, whose uniquely modern function is characterized by film scholar Linda Williams as a ‘quest for moral legibility in an era where moral, not to mention religious, certainties are no longer self-evident’.9 The arrival of melodrama, which is part of our field of research, marks the culmination, not the beginning, of a sustained movement toward affective aesthetics that can be identified through the mainstream of theatre, music, and lantern slide projection at least as far back as the Reformation. By 1820, melodrama had become more closely connected with the domestic sphere and everyday life, and by then morality had developed into a form of moralism. Tackling socially sensitive issues, the melodramatic mode of expression depended on the audience’s ability to distinguish good from evil by depicting moral conflicts in a polemical manner.10 Accordingly, the melodramatic mode of expression was successfully used in temperance propaganda and catechism teaching to attract, touch, and convince audiences. Temperance, being a central Christian virtue,11 occupied a specific place in the education of future generations in Catholic schools, in particular during catechism lessons.12

7 Cf. the contribution by Fevry and Werry in this volume. 8 The contribution of Majsova and Marion in this volume explores this same story in terms of intericonicity. A complete slide set of ‘Un poison mortel’ and a translation of its accompanying readings are preserved in the KADOC archive in Leuven, under the reference BE/942855/2322/74. In some cases, the original booklets with their French texts, which were sold together with the cellophane images, are available. For all the series present in the KADOC archive, a handwritten text in Dutch is available. This is an accurate translation of the original French texts by R. P. de Préville, which teachers used to explain the projected images to the children. At the end of these written accounts, the story was contextualized, referring to the Bible. 9 Linda Williams. ‘Melodrama’ (https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791286/ obo-9780199791286-0043.xml, [accessed 30 September 2020]). 10 Matthew Buckley. ‘Unbinding Melodrama’, in Melodrama Unbound. Across History, Media, and National Cultures, edited by Christine Gledhill, and Linda Williams (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 15–28. 11 Temperance or moderation is a central Christian virtue, one of the four cardinal virtues, together with prudence, courage, and justice, virtues that were already identified in classical antiquity by Plato. In the Old and New Testaments, temperance is considered a basic virtue, with the vice of gluttony, as excessive overconsumption to the point of waste, as its opposite. During the Middle Ages, the virtues were extended to the seven theological virtues and seven sins, which led to its Christian teachings. In Catholic doctrine, temperance is a virtue to ‘govern our actions, order our passions, and guide our conduct according to reason and faith. They make possible ease, self-mastery, and joy in leading a morally good life’ (Saint Charles Borromeo Parish (ed.). ‘Catechism of the Catholic Church’, Part Three: ‘Life in Christ’, Section One: ‘Man’s Vocation: Life in the Spirit’, Chapter One: ‘The Dignity of the Human Person’, Article 7: ‘The Virtues’ (https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/ catechism/p. 3s1c1a7.htm, [accessed 30 September 2020]). Accordingly, the issue of temperance is directly linked to emotions and morals, which both play a central role in the melodramatic mode of expression. 12 Although catechismus is derived from the Greek κατήχησις [‘katèchèsis’], meaning oral instruction, the image was recognized as an important means of instruction and way to communicate the church’s doctrine during the course of the nineteenth century. For example, the major Catholic publisher Maison de la Bonne Presse released

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With regard to the lantern medium, media historian Karen Eifler acknowledges the role of emotions in temperance propaganda in the UK during the last decades of the nineteenth century and up until World War I: ‘Magic lantern shows were conceived as a multimodal experience to achieve a strong emotional effect in the spectators, for which it was an overwhelming experience’.13 Eifler highlights the role of the British Band of Hope, whose goal was not a matter of reaching – potential – adult drinkers, but preventively teaching children about the perils of excessive drinking, often by means of the optical lantern. This British temperance society was an important source of inspiration for Belgian anti-alcohol societies and their approach of educating of children in elementary school, in particular during catechism classes.14 In her Conférences sur l’alcoolisme et sur les œuvres de prévoyance en Belgique (Lectures on alcoholism and pension funds in Belgium), Elise Plasky, inspector of the Belgian Ministry of Industry and Labour, writes in 1904 about the role of image in the fight against alcoholism: ‘It is through the eyes that we must speak to the heart’.15 Like their British colleagues, Belgian temperance lecturers were well aware that they had to appeal to the feelings of the audience to win over their hearts and to convey their messages. Besides the projected images, the words and voice of the lecturer, in this case of an adult – spiritual and moral – authority towards a group of children, were essential in the way the depicted emotions were seen and felt: ‘The projection of anti-alcohol slides, the explanations and the pathetic peroration of the speaker impressed the large audience’.16 By means of the multimodal lantern medium, emotions were effectively expressed through the projected images, the text, and the voice of the lecturer and often through music and songs to touch and impress the children and young adults. Furthermore, the dark surroundings and the seriality of the projected images, which highlighted the key moments of a narrative, most often representing intense emotional situations, emphasized the melodramatic progression and the emotional rhythm of the story. In the following case study, we examine how the melodramatic mode of expression was employed for temperance propaganda resorting to the projection lantern. ‘Un poison mortel’: An Exemplary Temperance Slide Set Like many similar dramatized narratives in other French and especially English lantern slide sets, the slide set ‘Un poison mortel’ is an archetypal melodramatic story about the

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a richly illustrated catechism with engravings from 1880, which it produced on slides from 1895; cf. Yves Pitette. 1900, Naissance du Multimédia à Bayard (Paris: Bayard, 2007), 8. Karen Eifler. ‘Between Attraction and Instruction: Lantern Shows in British Poor Relief ’, Early Popular Visual Culture 8.4 (2010): 364. Ligue Patriotique contre l’alcoolisme (ed.). Almanak der Matigheid 1902 (Brussels: Ligue Patriotique contre l’alcoolisme, 1902), 19. Elise Plasky. Conférences sur l’alcoolisme et sur les Œuvres de Prévoyance en Belgique (Huy: Imprimerie Emond & Cie., 1904), 3 (all the translations are by the authors). Anonymous article in L’Autre Cloche. Organe du Bien-Être Social, Société de Tempérance de la Province de Liège (April-May 1923), 11. Language, emotional concepts, and context play a central role in the construction of emotions, as the brain constantly and simultaneously uses concepts to give meaning to both internal and external sensations according to the theory of constructed emotions; cf. Feldman Barrett. How Emotions Are Made, 30.

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terrible effects of alcoholism on a middle-class man’s life and family.17 Obviously a domestic melodrama, it tells the story of a family in shambles, due to a drinking husband and father, and it features a clear teleological narrative structure. Although the protagonist, Jacques, is only a moderate drinker in the beginning, he is seduced by the lures of drinking due to his friends. From early on in the story, the wife, Lucette, is portrayed as a suffering and passive victim, and as a kind-hearted woman, taking care of the family at home, in strong contrast to the representation of morally troubling behaviour embodied by her drinking man. The emotional dynamic between these characters is extremely stereotyped and modelled on a social reality charged with moral and gender conventions. The sixth slide of the set powerfully reflects Lucette’s loneliness and helplessness, as Jacques does not seem to care about his family anymore, turning his back on his sad wife and their new-born child, who is shown haplessly reaching out for his daddy. The text accompanying the following slide highlights the woman’s emotional viewpoint: ‘Lucette’s intimate pain was now getting worse. Jacques would sometimes come home with a burning face, haggard eyes, and a certain amount of confidence. This sight produced an insurmountable impression of horror and fear on the poor woman’.18 The emotions of the victim(s) and the emotions experienced by the spectator are the main concern in melodramatic temperance propaganda. Consequently, the melodramatic mode of expression implies focused attention on the individual’s emotions. In ‘Un poison mortel’, Lucette and her children’s emotions are recognized and emphasized, while the emotional life of the drinking man is barely depicted. The story’s scriptural emplotment moves forward by juxtaposing Lucette’s good and dutiful behaviour: ‘The mother worked hard to feed her family’, with Jacques’s intolerable violent ways: ‘he would get into fits of rage like madness, break the dishes, threaten his wife and often go as far as to hit her’, leading to Lucette’s intense emotional reactions.19 Through the grasping, by way of their audio-visual spectra, of Lucette’s heightened emotions, the spectator reaches an overall understanding of the issue at hand. In another dramatic scene, the audience is made aware of the dangers of alcohol, as we witness Lucette’s impression of ‘an insurmountable sense of horror and fear’. The subsequent slide confirms her fears: ‘But the man who no longer had his mind, taken by a brute’s anger, raised his hand to her, and Lucette cried for a long time’.20 The slide depicts the woman taking cover and the aggressive man on the forefront raising his arms: the drunk is stereotypically depicted with a red nose, often showcasing aggressive behaviour (cf. Fig. 1), and dressed in worn clothes. The spectator, conducted by established Christian emotions of sympathy and empathy for the suffering female subject, is expected to condemn this drama, and accordingly,

17 The identification of alcohol as a poisonous or toxic substance, often with lethal consequences, was a recurring theme in temperance propaganda; first in scientific works about alcoholism and later in fictional stories. For example, doctor and Catholic senator Ferdinand van den Corput (1872–1948) pleaded against alcoholism in a book titled Le Poison alcool. Nouvelles considérations à propos de l’alcoolisme (The Poison alcohol. New perspectives on alcoholism) (1895), and priest and president of the main Belgian temperance society, Jos. Lemmens (1863–1941), wrote: ‘Doctors tell us that alcohol is a poison: Belgians are therefore poisoned by drinking all those millions of litres of jenever; nothing is more certain’. ( Jos. Lemmens. Conférence anti-alcoolique à l’usage des Dames du BienÊtre Social pour la propagande dans les écoles des filles (Liège: D. Cormaux, 1903), 4). 18 Anonymous. Een dodelijk gif. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

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Fig. 1. Slide 8 of slide series ‘Un poison mortel’, Bijou Collection (Paris: Ed. Librairie Tolra). (Courtesy: KADOCKU Leuven. Collection: Archief Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk Gent).

emotional and moral meanings are constructed and shared, and power relations confirmed. Near the end of the story, final punishment is inevitable: Jacques dies a painful death, leaving his wife and children destitute. Notwithstanding this disruptive development, the oldest son has understood the moral lesson of his father’s dramatic life – and so should the audience. He swears to his mother never to drink, thereby embodying the Christian virtue of temperance.21 In this Manichean world it is crystal clear for the spectator which side to choose, as the psychological and moral state of the characters is made intelligible and externalized through their physical appearance and actions, and further signified through the surroundings in which they move. Moreover, the text spoken by the lecturer during the slide show directs the audience’s interpretation and emotional experience. On the one hand, fictional temperance propaganda most often depicts alcohol as the ultimate poison that ruins people’s lives physically, mentally, and socially. Communicating this message by provoking feelings of fear, horror, and aversion – especially by means of the optical lantern and the projection of images with vibrant colours – is typically phantasmagorical, and thus hearkens back to the earliest uses of the medium.22 On the other, these melodramatic lantern slide sets are also designed to stimulate positive

21 In the notebook safeguarded in the KADOC archive, containing the Dutch translation used by the sisters, however, we find the following concluding Appendix: ‘Dear children, gluttony is one of the seven capital sins, and is also the cause of drunkenness. Therefore, learn from an early age to try the virtue of moderation in food and drink’. The lesson is concluded by a prayer. Accordingly, the illustrated temperance lecture fitted perfectly into religious educational purposes, referring to the Catholic virtues and sins, and to family values. 22 Richard Crangle, and Mervyn Heard. ‘The Temperance Phantasmagoria’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 20th Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Ine van Dooren, and Mervyn Heard (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005).

Religious Temperance Propaganda and Multimodal Aesthetics of Emotion

feelings related to moderation, empathy, and compassion with suffering heroes, through the expression of good character, emotional strength, good parenting, and a general concern for ethical justice, all in line with the Christian tradition. This is the moral basis of religious melodramas, supposing an emotional sensibility and ethical attitude on the part of the audience, which eventually has to lead to adequate moral choices. Another enduring impression left by such a powerfully orchestrated temperance tale on audiences came from a different type of projected images, namely early filmed melodramas with religious connotations. Lantern Slides and Early Films as Intermedial Aesthetic Vectors of Religious Temperance Propaganda Opting for a temperance case study such as the slide show ‘Un poison mortel’ inevitably invites comparisons with related components of a cultural series, that is, media practices determined by intermedial applications, such as the visual arts, literature, and cinema. The term cultural series, coined by film scholar André Gaudreault in his seminal survey Film and Attraction, is particularly relevant as it enables one to understand the essential role played by lantern performances as a stepping-stone for early film production and distribution better.23 Gaudreault argues that: ‘Indeed, on the level of what we today would call the phenomenon’s syntagmatic aspect, we might say that the cultural series that left the greatest impression on the kine-attractography was the magic lantern’. He adds: What Lumière, James Williamson, and Méliès did was ‘simply’ to use a new device, the kinematograph, within another cultural series (photography for the first, magic lanterns for the second, and magic sketches among other things, for the third). Each of them was already working in these domains in their own identifiable way. At this time, cinema had not yet become an autonomous medium, and the kinematograph was neither more nor less than an instrument, a tool, that made available to anyone cultural practices and genres in vogue at the close of the nineteenth century.24 In this regard, the relation between lantern slides and early films focusing on temperance proves extremely dense and innovative. Not only do they inform us about the condition of individuals and of the measures taken to change and improve critical situations, but they also reveal the cultural and emotional impact of religious propaganda in terms of storyline, stylistic innovation, and last but not least, audience reception. Analysing the series of slides ‘Un poison mortel’ and its published booklet led us to conclude that both were most certainly inspired by Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir (The Drinking Den), published for the first time in 1877. Melodrama, implying a heightening of tension and an exaggeration of character and scene, is put to use by the theatrical reworking of Zola’s writings. During the silent era, L’Assommoir, having been successfully reworked by different authors for the stage, was freely adapted to the screen for the first 23 André Gaudreault. Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 65. 24 Ibid.

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time by Ferdinand Zecca under the title Les Victimes de l’alcoolisme (Victims of alcoholism, F 1902) and a second time by Albert Capellani with the symptomatic alternative English title Drink (F 1908). The same film could have various titles, depending on location and circumstances, e.g. Victims of Alcoholism became Ravages of Alcoholism or Mischief of Alcoholism. These are, in Claire Dupré la Tour and Thierry Lefèbvre’s view, thematic titles that feature a direct link with the diegetic universe of the film. Thus the paratextual level of the title existed independently; it was even showcased during a lantern performance. Their title designated, clarified, and enhanced the vision of these early films.25 Though not explicitly related to the original source and acting as some kind of illuminating mise en abyme, Zola’s narrative plot line was embedded a third time within David Wark Griffith’s ground-breaking A Drunkard’s Reformation (USA 1908). Temperance lantern slide sets and topic-related early film melodramas have as a common denominator not only narratives that condemn alcoholism as an utterly destructive addiction, but also specific emotional devices aiming to transcend real situations through spiritual, albeit religious symbolism. Both early cinema practices and subsequent transitional or classical cinema adaptations dealing with the moral consequences of alcoholism required a blend of excess in the representation of facts (e.g. delirium tremens as consequence of heavy drinking), often supported by histrionic acting techniques on the one hand and a distancing in mood and tone via specific comments and titles on the other hand. Les Victimes de l’alcoolisme, released by Pathé in 1902, is a moralizing tale of intemperance and the first of numerous adaptations of L’Assommoir. Zola’s novel focuses mainly on the story of Gervaise Macquart, who is featured briefly in the first novel in the series, running away to Paris with her shiftless lover Lantier to work as a washerwoman in a hot, busy laundry in one of the seedier areas of the city. L’Assommoir begins with Gervaise and her two young sons being abandoned by Lantier, who starts to drink heavily and takes off for parts unknown with another woman. Zecca’s film is composed of five scenes, each of them including one wide shot of a theatre-like set introduced by an intertitle. The latter resemble and echo the contents of texts used for lantern lectures. According to film historian Richard Abel, ‘Each of the film’s five […] tableaux constitutes an autonomous shot-scene, illustrating a different stage in the worker’s fall from “happiness and prosperity” to “misery” and “madness”’.26 Although this film is often presented as the first adaptation of Zola’s novel it is in fact, as suggested by Abel, only loosely inspired by it. It does not use the names of the characters of the novel and only presents a few events related to it. It is an illustration of the early use of cinema to achieve goals of moral and social interest through explicit emotional impact – showing how a working-class family’s happiness is destroyed by the father’s alcoholism. The studio sets are quite detailed and include seemingly authentic props, as if the principle of verisimilitude, perhaps emanating from the naturalist theatre of André Antoine, were beginning to infiltrate the genre’s tableaux.

25 Claire Dupré la Tour. ‘Pour une étude des titres des films des premiers temps. Les 540 premiers titres de la firme Pathé, un aperçu lexical’, in La firme Pathé frères 1896–1914, edited by Michel Marie, and Laurent Le Forestier (Paris: AFRHC, 2004), 254. 26 Richard Abel. The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896–1914, updated and expanded edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 99.

Religious Temperance Propaganda and Multimodal Aesthetics of Emotion

Fig. 2. ‘Homospatiality’ in slide 15 of slide series ‘Un poison mortel’ on the left side (Courtesy: KADOCKU Leuven) and in Zecca’s film Les Victimes de l’alcoolisme (screenshot from YouTube, right).

Thus, in most scenes, the narrative tableau technique is extremely transparent and has an immediate impact on the audience – as was already the case in the lantern slide series. Each tableau focuses on both the story’s general mood and the emotionally relevant aspects of the narrative: domestic family bliss, the alcoholic husband exiting, the drinking den, etc. These tableaux are in Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja’s terms striking examples of ‘homospatiality’, in which different modes of representation co-occur in one spatial entity (cf. Fig. 2).27 Despite her efforts to take him out of the drinking den, as in the case of the lantern slide set, the drunkard refuses to follow his wife. The increasingly struggling family is obliged to move to an attic, where the alcoholic suffers his first intense crisis of delirium tremens, after which he ends up a raving lunatic in a mental asylum. Though the film does not contain any overtly religious message, the emotional means used to reassert the temperance virtues are tangible and have an immediate impact on the audience, resonating with the religious stories adapted in lantern slide sets. As detailed by David Mayer and Helen Day-Mayer in their survey on ‘Performing/Acting Melodrama’, performances involving multiple layers in a character paradoxically helped neuroscientists to foresee healing properties: gestures, impulses, and emotional stimulus were encouraged in the actor’s performances in both theatre and film.28 Male and female actors’ emotions were interpreted first by means of plates with depicted bodily attitudes, revealing psychological states. At the beginning of 1908, French director Albert Capellani, appointed artistic director of the newly created Société Cinématographique des Auteurs et Gens de Lettres (Cinematographic Society of Authors and People of Letters – SCAGL), was entrusted with the direction of the 27 Maarten Coëgnarts, and Peter Kravanja. Embodied Cognition and Cinema (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2015), 231–32. 28 Helen Day-Mayer, and David Mayer. ‘Performing/Acting Melodrama’, in Melodrama Unbound. Across History, Media, and National Cultures, edited by Christine Gledhill, and Linda Williams (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 103.

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second film produced by the SCAGL, namely L’Assommoir. The film is more closely related to Zola’s work, but contrary to what is indicated in the opening credits, it is not an adaptation of the novel, but rather of the 1879 play by William Busnach and Octave Gastineau (itself an adaptation of the novel). In line with the cultural series paradigm mentioned earlier, the play not only attempts to describe a social class ravaged by alcoholism, but also mostly focuses the action of a few characters, making it the story of the implacable revenge of an insulted woman against a decadent individual. The film has ten scenes organized in three parts. Most scenes are filmed on indoor sets, closely following the theatrical tradition, and the film features almost no camera movements. There are, however, a few scenes filmed in the streets of Paris, the Parc des Buttes Chaumont and in a guinguette, where a collective gathering descends into heavy drinking. The most memorable scene in terms of modes of melodramatic excess, namely the hyperbolic mode, is again the final fit of madness of the alcoholic husband. Interestingly enough, as detailed by recent historical research, Capellani’s film was shown in both France and Belgium alongside lantern temperance lecture performances.29 In the United States, D. W. Griffith’s Biograph-produced film A Drunkard’s Reformation was described as the most powerful temperance lecture ever given in an advertisement in one of the important media vehicles from the beginning of the twentieth century, namely The Moving Picture World, a trade journal for the American film industry issued in March 1909: There is not the slightest question that in this subject the Biograph has produced the most powerful motion picture ever made. No stronger nor intensely moral sermon has ever been given; the superb acting bringing out the psychological importance so clearly that we may well say that ‘actions speak louder than word’. […] The subject is beautifully staged, and the photographic quality perfect. The theatre scenes are most novel.30 Griffith offers the audience an openly Christian and profoundly religious temperance tale featuring John Wharton, the husband of a true and trusting wife and father of a young girl praying for his redemption. For the first time probably in the history of film ‘[…] The psychological development of a character, primarily conveyed here by editing, forms the basis of a film’.31 From the onset there is a contrast between the family at home and the husband loitering with his drinking buddies. This spatial separation poses the imbalance that the film’s story will endeavour to right, gathering the family together in the final shot – hence the importance of non-domestic locales, the saloon and the theatre. Through the association of malevolent companions, he becomes addicted to the drink habit. Coming back home fully intoxicated one afternoon, the husband turns violent and aggressive, a terrifying spectacle to his family, filmed and framed in unusually modern and dynamic ways by early cinema standards. Later in the film, desperate about his condition, the daughter implores her father to take her to the theatre. The play we see them watching is once 29 French travelling showman Pierre Morieux exhibited the film from 1908–1909 in France and Belgium; cf. Stéphanie Salmon. ‘Les films Capellani de la collection Morieux’, in Albert Capellani-Coffret (Paris: Éditions Pathé), 20. 30 Advertisement by American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, The Moving Picture World 4.13 (March 1909): 357. 31 Tom Gunning. D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 169.

Religious Temperance Propaganda and Multimodal Aesthetics of Emotion

Fig. 3. Religious connotations in the booklet of the slide series ‘Un poison mortel’ (Collection Adeline Werry, left), on slide number 5 of ‘Un poison mortel’ (Courtesy: KADOC-KU Leuven, middle), and in a frame enlargement of D. W. Griffith’s film The Drunkard’s Reformation (screenshot from YouTube, right).

again a dramatization of Zola’s L’Assommoir, entitled Drink. Film scholar Tom Gunning argues that ‘“The play within a play” format allowed Griffith to create the most extended twenty-shot-sequence of psychological editing in his career’.32 The powerfully emotional portrayal rests on intercutting spectator and stage play and forms in Gunning’s acceptation ‘a proto-point-of-view/reaction shot pattern’.33 As the curtain comes down on the play, the father is a changed man, going homeward with a firm determination that he will drink no more, which he promises his wife. The role of the theatre here creates a self-reflexive structure, the theatre becoming a moral and didactic medium, and an explicitly religious vehicle for ‘the most powerful temperance lesson’. Sermons in film became almost clichés in much of Griffith’s Biograph filmic output. The dramatic methods proper to the motion picture were commended by the Board of Censors. They had a priest preach the best sermon and bring a great temperance lecturer and instruct him ‘to make his best effort’.34 The lecture would be followed by two reels of film at the theatre, and if the public did not vote one of them a greater temperance sermon than the one the speaker had delivered, and the other a greater religious appeal than the sermon by Sunday, he would donate the money to a local hospital. One of the films referred for showing was The Drunkard’s Reformation (cf. Fig. 3). Conclusion: The Melodramatic Mode of Expression as a Multimodal Aesthetic of Emotions The importance of the melodramatic mode of expression in early cinema has been widely demonstrated; in this study we have also attempted to identify and analyse the overwhelming

32 Gunning. D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film, 165. 33 Ibid. In Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema, Gaudreault states that this particular scene is one of the most innovating ones in terms of the transition from an attraction-based cinema system to a narration-based one. 34 Gunning, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film, 169–70.

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presence of this mode of expression in fictional temperance slide sets. In such lantern slide or filmic accounts as ‘Un poison mortel’, Les Victimes de l’alcoolisme, L’Assommoir, or The Drunkard’s Reformation, the temperance discourse and the issue of alcoholism are either explicitly or more subtly, by means of implied moralizing, melodramatized; small lives and big emotions are represented through recognizable conflict situations with strong emotional connotations to reinforce the message. Along these lines, the melodramatic mode of expression is employed as an effective vehicle for conviction in temperance propaganda and education. Through emotional communication and attraction, the same kind of temperance story remained interesting and engaging, even if repeated time and time again through different media. As we have demonstrated, eliciting emotional experiences is central in religious temperance propaganda, and the multimodal expressive qualities of both the lantern and film medium serve this goal effectively through respectively still and moving images, but also in relation to text and voice. From a constructionist perspective on emotions, the employed images and texts provide attractive emotional concepts with which people could construct their emotional lives. As such, the multimodal and sociocultural components of both film and the optical lantern medium make it highly relevant to study historical and mediated emotions. The dramatization of alcoholism, and its representation as a narrative fiction, invites the audience not only to observe, but also to interpret its own emotional reality. It is precisely this connection between the social issue and the melodramatic mode of expression that is present in various media, along with its sentimental plot and a comprehensible moral universe of right and wrong, which served the propagandistic aims of the temperance societies with clear-cut and simplified representations that reassert the virtue of temperance. Accordingly, the multimodal aesthetics of melodramatic emotions in temperance propaganda was aptly expressed through cinematographic realisations and through the optical lantern culture.35 Bibliography Abel, Richard. The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896–1914, updated and expanded ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) Anonymous. Een dodelijk gif, n.d., booklet accompanying slide set BE/942855/2322/74 preserved at KADOC-KU Leuven Buckley, Matthew. ‘Unbinding Melodrama’, in Melodrama Unbound. Across History, Media, and National Cultures, edited by Christine Gledhill, and Linda Williams (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 15–28 Coëgnarts, Maarten, and Peter Kravanja (eds). Embodied Cognition and Cinema (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2015)

35 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

Religious Temperance Propaganda and Multimodal Aesthetics of Emotion

Corrigan, John. ‘Introduction: The Study of Religion and Emotion’, in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion, edited by John Corrigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) (https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195170214.001.0001/ oxfordhb-9780195170214, [accessed 28 March 2021]) Crangle, Richard, and Mervyn Heard. ‘The Temperance Phantasmagoria’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 20th Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Ine van Dooren, and Mervyn Heard (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 46–55 Day-Mayer, Helen, and David Mayer. ‘Performing/Acting Melodrama’, in Melodrama Unbound. Across History, Media, and National Cultures, edited by Christine Gledhill, and Linda Williams (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 99–114 Dixon, Thomas. From Passions to Emotions. The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Dupré la Tour, Claire. ‘Pour une étude des titres des films des premiers temps. Les 540 premiers titres de la firme Pathé, un aperçu lexical’, in La firme Pathé frères 1896–1914, edited by Michel Marie, and Laurent Le Forestier (Paris: AFRHC, 2004), 253–59 Eifler, Karen. ‘Between Attraction and Instruction: Lantern Shows in British Poor Relief ’, Early Popular Visual Culture 8.4 (2010): 363–84 Feldman Barrett, Lisa. ‘Constructing Emotion’, Psychological Topics 20.3 (2011): 359–80 ——. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (London: Macmillan, 2017) Gaudreault, André. Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011) Gunning, Tom. D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994) Hamilton, Carrie. ‘Cultural Memory and the Emotions: Exploring the Connections’, in Memory, Narrative and Histories: Critical Debates, New Trajectories, edited by Graham Dawson (Brighton: Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories, 2012), 63–71 Kember, Joe, and Richard Crangle. ‘Folk Like Us: Emotional Movement from the Screen and the Platform in British Life Model Lantern Slide Sets 1880–1910’, Fonseca, Journal of Communication 16 (2018): 115–33 Lemmens, Jos. Conférence anti-alcoolique à l’usage des Dames du Bien-Être Social pour la propagande dans les écoles des filles (Liège: D. Cormaux, 1903) Ligue Patriotique contre l’alcoolisme (ed.). Almanak der Matigheid 1902 (Brussels: Ligue Patriotique contre l’alcoolisme, 1902) Mesquita, Batja, Jozefien de Leersnyder, and Michael Boiger. ‘The Cultural Psychology of Emotions’, in Handbook of Emotions, edited by Lisa Feldman Barrett, Michael Lewis, and Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, fourth ed. (London: Guilford Press. 2016), 393–411 Nasta, Dominique. ‘“Ne pleure pas maman, c’est ta fête aujourd’hui”. Figures de l’excès dans les mélodrames Pathé d’avant 1915’, in La firme Pathé frères 1896–1914, edited by Michel Marie, and Laurent le Forestier (Paris: AFRHC, 2004), 151–63 Pitette, Yves. 1900, Naissance du multimédia à Bayard (Paris: Bayard, 2007) Plamper, Jan. The History of Emotions. An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Plasky, Elise. Conférences sur l’alcoolisme et sur les Œuvres de Prévoyance en Belgique (Huy: Imprimerie Emond & Cie, 1904) Saint Charles Borromeo Parish (ed.), ‘Catechism of the Catholic Church’, Part Three: ‘Life in Christ’, Section One: ‘Man’s Vocation: Life in the Spirit’, Chapter One: ‘The Dignity of the

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Human Person’, Article 7: ‘The Virtues’, n.d. (https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/ archive/catechism/p. 3s1c1a7.htm, [accessed 30 September 2020]) Salmon, Stéphanie. ‘Les films Capellani de la collection Morieux’, in Albert Capellani-Coffret (Paris: Éditions Pathé, 2011), 20–21 Van Den Corput, Fernand. Le Poison alcool. Nouvelles considérations à propos de l’alcoolisme (Brussels: P. Weissenbruch, 1895) Williams, Linda. ‘Melodrama’ (2011) (https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/ document/obo-9780199791286/obo-9780199791286-0043.xml, [accessed 30 September 2020])

Natalija Majsova and Phili pp e Mario n

The Edifying Structures of the Bijou Imaginary: An Investigation into Images, Rhetoric, Memory, and Politics

Edification Within and Beyond Catechism This chapter focuses on the structures of moral instruction or edification which characterize the Bijou collection of lantern slides. We argue the collection’s potential to make its audience internalize very basic assumptions about how the world works, and what in this world is good, bad, and mediocre should be assessed in the context of a specific memory politics, typical of Catholic catechism-teaching in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We depart from the arguments developed by Adeline Werry and Sébastien Fevry in this volume, namely that the Bijou collection was based on an advanced, cross-media editorial strategy and aimed to appeal to both the senses and sentiment, in order to best exploit the potential of the growing and ever more diverse market of visual and narrative aids for catechist teaching targeting different age groups and audiences with varying levels of knowledge about the Bible.1 In turn, our contribution shows that the collection provides a unique insight into the relationships between Catholic catechist teaching, the tacit moral assumptions widespread in a certain society, and the intericonic context of Western Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.2 Intericonicity is thus understood in line with its uses in illustration and visual culture studies and related disciplines: as an image’s capacity to refer to other images, that is to recycle and adapt iconic references, creating new meanings.3 Here, intericonic context refers to the relationships

1 Cf. the contribution by Werry and Fevry, and Nasta and Moens, in this volume. 2 For more on the ideology of the family in Belgian Catholic teaching, cf. Paul Servais. ‘The Church and the Family in Belgium, 1850–1914’, Revue belge d’histoire contemporaine. Belgisch tijdschrift voor nieuwste geschiedenis, 31.3–4 (2001): 621–47. 3 Cf. Alain-Marie Bassy. ‘Le texte et l’image’, in Histoire de l’édition française, volume 2, edited by Henri-Jean Martin, and Roger Chartier (Paris: Promodis, 1984), 140–61. Cf. also Jane Bayly. ‘Attacks on the United States: Index, Icons and Intericonicity in Photojournalism’, E-rea. Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone 13.1 Natalija Majsova • Observatory for Research on Media and Journalism, UCLouvain, Belgium, and Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Philippe Marion • Observatory for Research on Media and Journalism, UCLouvain, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 169–183 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129102 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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between images that belong to a certain sequence, as a locus of meaning-formation. We believe that these meanings must be discussed in the context of the narrative strategies deployed by those producing various popular-cultural items from this particular time, such as comic strips and temperance films. The kind of analysis that we propose additionally takes into account that the relationships between these various imagetexts should also be considered.4 Our approach to intericonicity in the media-specific context of the magic lantern and the Bijou collection relates to the concept of the cultural series developed by André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion.5 Particularly fruitful in the context of dynamic media-archaeological endeavors, cultural series unite tropes, which may be scattered across diverse media and styles, by emphasizing persistent similarities such as the choice of a point of view.6 In the context of this contribution, the point of view is a focal point that offers the possibility of dynamically relating traits and components which are associated in a way that largely transcends the institutionalized landscape of media and media theory. Focusing on cultural series enhances the qualitative dimension of the research, allowing us to pose questions that cut across contexts and times, like the question of certain continuities within edificatory imagery. Through this analysis, selected stories from the Bijou collection thus interact with a wide array of other narratives and visual representations, which, at first glance, might seem to belong to an entirely different, apparently secular world. The contribution highlights two different, yet complementary stories from the Bijou collection: a biblical story (‘Le Fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’ – ‘The Son of the Mute from Aïn-Karim,’ hereinafter ‘The Son of the Mute’) and a secular one (‘Un poison mortel’ – ‘A Lethal Poison’), analysing them in the context of collective memory from two interrelated perspectives: Catholic memory politics and popular-cultural intericonicity. The aim of the analysis is to map out the cross-fertilization mechanisms at work and to stipulate the intersections between secular and religious narration, monstration, and mediatization.7



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(2015). Accessible at: https://journals.openedition.org/erea/4615. The work of French semiotician Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle is also referential in this regard, especially the author’s explication of idea of the ‘double bottom’ as a quality integral to images. This is how Fresnault-Deruelle has used the ‘double bottom’ to explain Belgian comic book artist Hergé’s (1907–1983) work: ‘In fact, the drawings are clandestinely “processed” by figures and are either “antecedent” (Hergé creates his own stencils) or “immemorial” (bequeathed by culture) to these figures’. Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle. Hergé ou la profondeur des images plates (Brussels: Éditions Moulinsart, 2002), 110. For more on this approach to intericonicity, cf. also Christopher Wood. ‘Painting and Plurality’, Yearbook of Comparative Literature 56 (2013): 96. We adopt William John Thomas Mitchell’s term ‘imagetext’ to refer to cultural products that convey meaning via a fusion of image and text, such as light projections, films, certain comic strips, and videogames, where images and texts are not symbolically separated. As we show below, lantern lectures are a relevant case in point. Cf. William John Thomas Mitchell. ‘Beyond Comparison’, in A Comics Studies Reader, edited by Thomas Andrae, and others ( Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2009), 116–23. André Gaudreault. Cinéma et attraction (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2008); André Gaudreault, and Philippe Marion. ‘Défense et illustration de la notion de série culturelle’, in A History of Cinema without Names: A Research Project, edited by Diego Cavallotti, Federico Giordano, and Leonardo Quaresima (Udine: Mimesis, 2016), 59–71. Cf. André Gaudreault, and Philippe Marion. The Kinematic Turn: Film in the Digital Era and its Ten Problems (Montreal: Caboose, 2012), 10. Monstration, that is visual exhibition that does not necessarily advance the plot, is used in accordance with Gaudreault’s influential definition of the term in André Gaudreault. From Plato to Lumière: Narration and Monstration in Literature and Cinema (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009).

T he E dif y in g Structures of the Bij ou I mag ina ry

Catholic Memory Politics between Catechism and the Lantern We invite the reader to conceive of cultural series as integral elements of both Catholic catechist practices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and of its spontaneous memory politics, the tenants of which we summarize below. While Isabelle Saint-Martin convincingly argues about the importance of memorization and individual memory for the internalization of Catholic dogmas, we wish to expand on this claim by demonstrating that the mnemonic functions of stories from the Bible, transmitted to a selected audience with the help of the lantern, were not only essential for teaching religious faith, but also for cementing a certain social model based on a clear axiology. In fact, there is considerable evidence that Catholic education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not simply aimed at providing the pupils with new knowledge. Catholic education not only sought to instruct about religious dogma rather than fact; it was also structured as an interactive mode of upbringing, to encourage the internalization of the Christian spirit through lay and religious stories that pushed a pupil to identify with their overarching message with a clear moral.8 In France, the country of origin of the Bijou collection of lantern slides and accompanying publisher’s (Tolra and Simonet’s) booklets, the question of pedagogy was particularly important for two main reasons. Firstly, ever since the Protestant reformation and the growing popularity of Protestantism since the sixteenth century, Catholic catechist education was increasingly conceptualized as a holistic methodology. The notion of catechism entailed three distinct dimensions: a set of religious stories, a practice of upbringing, and a performative act. Catechism for children, aged 6 to 12, was intended to be as dialogical and interrogative as possible, inviting the audience to actively participate in the learning process in order to achieve two aims: literacy and internalization of the Catholic dogma.9 Secondly, the Catholic Church had to re-think its strategies for targeting the youth after Jules Ferry’s government’s new secularization laws of 1881–1882 that banned religion from schools, relegating catechism to Sunday schools.10 These were neither compulsory nor restricted to certain age groups, contributing to the rise in religious educators’ interest in efficient and new pedagogical devices. The largest Catholic French publishing house, Maison de la Bonne Presse, flourished in this particular context, as did its competitors, such as the Tolra-Simonet publishing house.11 While the role of the catechism as a reading aide declined in fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century France – as reading was now taught in secular schools –, the industry of edifying imagery, engaging an increasing variety of media, proliferated.12 Moreover, a

8 Cf. Elizabeth Germain. Parler du salut? (Paris: Beauchesne, 1969), 10. 9 Ibid., 282. 10 Cf. Pauline Piettre. ‘Catéchèse et instruction religieuse en France depuis le XIXe siècle’, Transversalités 3.115 (2010): 27–40. 11 For more on the history of the Tolra-Simonet publishing house, cf. Fevry and Werry in this volume, and Claude Savart. Les catholiques en France au XIXème siècle (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985). 12 Evidence for this claim can be found in the KADOC archive, which showcases an unprecedented variety of slides from this period, as well as an interest in the lantern, expressed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by particular publication houses, such as the Maison de la Bonne Presse, which published the monthly journal Le Fascinateur (The Fascinator) in 1903–1936, entirely dedicated to engaging ‘new’ media, and showed particular

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new doctrine on catechism books emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, and grew ever more popular in France, promoting a clear division of the contents of these books into three parts: Dogma, Morals, and Cult; in other words, ‘the truths that one should know, the rules that one should obey, and the means (such as grace, kindness et cetera, worshiping God) to do so’.13 Illustrated catechisms, such as the ‘Catechism in Pictures’ (Catéchisme en Images, 1908) of the Maison de la Bonne Presse, and the ‘Great Catechism’ (Le Grand Catéchisme, numerous editions since 1889) in pictures by Tolra and Simonet – two of the most prominent Catholic and ‘popular-Catholic’ publishers in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century-France – are good examples of this structure. The combination of text and image made these catechisms more accessible to both the literate and illiterate public. This is particularly important while discussing the Catholic Church’s struggle with the declining interest among the ‘new’ generations. These generations were not simply younger, but also, in the wake of the nascent movements for women’s and workers’ emancipation, comprised a larger-than-ever population eager for education.14 Technological advances gradually increased the projection range of the lantern, making it possible to project catechist imagery in churches. Although this innovation did attract a share of the aforementioned younger population, it was banned by Pope Pius X in 1912, following a heated debate on the place of imagery in the Church.15 By the last decade of the nineteenth century, coinciding with the proliferation of luminous sermons, catechism classes in France had incorporated the magic lantern as a welcome aide, that is, as a means to intensify the impact of the course by way of ‘education through the senses’.16 Education through the senses, a concept also used by missionaries during their projection-aided accounts of their missions in Africa, China, et cetera, was based on a range of methods that invited the spectator to ‘live the action’, pulling her into the story. Narrated text took on the role of explanatory intertitles, instead of serving as the primary motor of identification.17 The main idea was to reach the invisible (the spiritual) through sight and recollection. In terms of form, the imagery was to combine contemporary subjects and religious themes. Its aim was to provide instructive, appealing, yet not mystical stories, which were to transform religious abstractions into understandable stories and to localize universal ideas by anchoring them to familiar settings and situations. The images were to invite the audience to identify with them (the ‘mirror-function’) and to fulfill a clear

interest in the lantern in the first decade of the twentieth century. 13 Gilbert Adler, and Gérard Vogeleisen. Un siècle de catéchèse en France, 1893–1980: histoire, déplacements, enjeux (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985), 10. 14 Western European Catholicism faced numerous challenges ever since the French Revolution of 1789. In France in particular, after 1830, the Catholic Church was only one religion among others, and as by 1905, the State had officially become separated from the Church. In Belgium, where the French-produced slides that are the topic of this chapter were used, Catholicism faced distinct challenges linked to pillarization (more on these in the contribution by Margo Buelens-Terryn, Iason Jongepier, and Ilja Van Damme in this volume). 15 Cf. Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘Sermons lumineux et projections dans les églises, 1884–1912’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 78.3 (2004): 381–400 (https://doi.org/10.3406/rscir.2004.3730). 16 Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘“Catéchisme en images”, une pédagogie par le sensible?’, Archives de sciences sociales des religions 111 (2000) (https://journals.openedition.org/assr/20223, [accessed 30 April 2020]). 17 Cf. Isabelle Saint-Martin. ‘Un évangile en projections lumineuses. Pédagogie chrétienne et lanterne magique’, in La pédagogie par l’image en France et au Japon, edited by Marianne Simon-Oikawa, and Annie Renonciat (Rennes: Presses Universitaires, 2009), 107–32.

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mnemonic function.18 Namely, the images were to serve as revision of a religious lesson or as an example of one; by no means were they to invite the pupil to recollect an individually experienced, transient past emotion related to a certain event from personal history. On the contrary, their function was transtemporal since they were to facilitate connections between different epochs and different perspectives, such as national, personal, and global history. The images were to be ‘imprinted into memory as a slab of clay’; and ‘the recollection of an image was to allow one to find the lost thread’.19 As universal ideas about good and bad, right and wrong (the religious lessons) were tied to locally familiar and culturally-specific contexts (like familiar landscapes, clothes, historical events), they created a familiar imaginary that could be navigated. These devices favored the development of a clearly morally-profiled collective memory, joining national history, fictional personal stories, and Christian imaginary into a mutually supportive imagetext. National causes were hence intertwined with religious dogma, and both national achievements and personal happiness were aligned with religious virtue. From this perspective, the Christian worldview inherent to the Bijou stories presents a metanarrative – ‘a story that comes after every other story’ and ‘encompasses, relativizes and situates every other story that came before it’.20 But how exactly does it do so in the multimedia context of lantern projections? A Note on Available Materials The Bijou collection of lantern slides should be understood in the context of a verbo-iconic culture centred around the dispositif of the magic lantern.21 The magic lantern is a delivery technology – a technical way of transferring messages to the audience because it is intended to communicate to the audience a series of images that appear as a luminous projection with live verbal commentary.22 But this immersive dispositif of consumption should be particularly considered in relation in particular to the work involved in the prior production processes, such as the crafting of the slides, their selection to offer a relevant series of images for different contexts, the aims of the projection, et cetera. All of these elements add to the construction of the magic lantern’s identity as a medium, and to the entire mediatic culture that accompanies it.

18 Both concepts are taken from Isabelle Saint-Martin (2000). The mirror-function of the images refers to their capacity to engage the spectator through identification. Catholic conceptualizations of the mirror-function do not correspond to Jacques Lacan’s theory of the mirror-phase in the child’s development. 19 Saint-Martin. ‘Catéchisme en images’. 20 Duane Alexander Miller. ‘Narrative and Meta-Narrative in Christianity and Islam’, St Francis Magazine 6.3 (2010): 501. 21 In the context of this discussion, we understand the term dispositif in line with Frank Kessler’s use of the term. The dispositif of the lantern is thus used to refer to the constellation of various relationships between the actants (the content, performer, and audience of the projection) in a screening situation, and to the broader media configuration, that is, the relationship between the technology, text, and the communicative situation. Cf. Frank Kessler. ‘The Cinema of Attractions as Dispositif ’, in The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, edited by Wanda Strauven (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 57–70. 22 Cf. Fevry and Werry in this volume; cf. also Henry Jenkins. Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide (New York, London: New York University Press, 2006).

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As Werry and Fevry argue in this volume, the Bijou collection exhibits a great awareness of the complexity of the magic lantern as a medium. This complexity raises the collection’s value as a research object and simultaneously makes the research more challenging. Namely, in contrast to the basic theoretical tenants of Catholic catechist teaching, which are accessible through analyses, such as Germain and Piettre’s, as well as sources like Guillaume-Michel Coissac’s 1905 seminal study on the theory of Catholic projections,23 it is very difficult to retrace the actual genetic background, let alone the impact of these ephemeral projections. This chapter has benefited from a set of fortunate circumstances. The case studies examined in this contribution would not have been possible had the Bijou slides not been found alongside accompanying material, and not too far away from their source of use. The question of the educational and emotive impact of the Bijou slide projections on the audience remains a mystery. However, we hope to be able to provide some insight into the aims and rhetorical strategies used by the lecturers. The Catholic Documentation Centre (KADOC) in Leuven retains eight out of the forty stories published as part of the Bijou collection, according to the publisher’s catalogue and advertisements. All the eight stories preserved at KADOC come with a hand-written notebook, once meticulously filled in by the lecturers. The slides and notebooks were donated to KADOC by Ghent’s Eucharistic Catechist Service (Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk) – an institution established and first managed by the famous Belgian Catholic educator Edward Joannes Maria Poppe (1890–1924), that held (mostly evening) lectures for the broader interested public in the 1920s and 1930s.24 This indicates that the Bijou stories were still in use in education several decades after they initially appeared, that is the production of lantern slides and the stories’ publication in the format of editors’ booklets (both occurring between 1895 and 1903, as estimated by Henk de Roo on his helpful website Luikerwaal).25 This temporal gap appears to explain why some of the narratives provided by the publisher’s booklets appear in slightly altered variants in the lecturers’ hand-written notebooks. They were probably modified by the lecturers to account of newer didactic principles that were particularly attentive to the question of engaging the listener’s imagination. An analysis of Poppe’s catechist method alongside the archival materials indicates the educator’s awareness of the popular ‘Munich method’ of religious instruction. This method focuses on the audience’s imagination rather than on their knowledge of facts. The Munich method advises educators to engage all of the listeners’ faculties of cognition according to the latest developments in pedagogical approaches.26 The Munich method was especially propagated by the influential German Catholic teacher Heinrich Stieglitz (1868–1920), who believed that children should be educated in a scientific manner, and even advanced the so-called

23 Cf. G.-Michel Coissac. La Théorie et la pratique des projections (Paris: Paul Féron-Vrau, 1905). 24 In 1923, Edward J. M. Poppe published a seminal study on catechism teaching, entitled La méthode d’éducation eucharistique, praised by Cardinal Désiré-Félicien-François-Joseph Mercier. The study proposed to refresh classic catechist teaching to better reach the modern youth, including by employing new visual media, and by appealing to the senses. Cf. also Sabine Lenk, and Nelleke Teughels. ‘Spreken met licht. Magische projectieplaatjes’, KOORTS: Erfgoedmagazine KADOC 1 (2020): 4–10. 25 The resource is available at: https://www.luikerwaal.com/indexx_uk.htm. 26 Cf. Piettre. ‘Catéchèse et instruction religieuse’.

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‘science of religion’.27 Yet, the intended audience of the Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk was not necessarily only children; these lectures quite possibly also reached working women, mostly the younger ones, who were free of family obligations and were the most common visitors to the institution. This partly accounts for the lectures’ social awareness, particularly visible when we compare the Tolra/Tol-Sim-produced materials against the lecture-evidence preserved in the archives. Out of the eight stories preserved in KADOC, four do not appear to have been altered in any significant way by the lecturers. The other four stories are more interesting from the perspective of montage: the lecturers’ original (re-)arrangement of individual slides and parts of accompanying text – either from the publisher’s booklet or their own – into a story underscores the lecturers’ creative re-use of the original materials provided by Tolra/Tol-Sim. This contribution highlights two stories that clearly testify to the lecturers’ capacity to re-arrange, re-interpret, and re-mediate the source materials: ‘Le fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’ and ‘Un poison mortel’, already explored in Moens and Nasta’s contribution in terms of its melodramatic structures. Edificatory Temporalities: ‘Le Fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’ The Bijou-aided catechism, as it appears to have been taught in Ghent, addressed the audience’s perception in a multimodal way in two respects. First, by engaging the faculties of the memory, imagination, and empathy. Montage was used to create transtemporal memories of a distant, fictional past associated with particular Christian values, and to ensure a link between this fictional past and the present. The lecturers combined visual imagery and narrative in a way that allowed them to construct a certain moral message by relying on different points of view and with reference to three different temporalities: Biblical time that clearly belongs to the past where it unraveled in linear progression, heavenly time, which does not progress and is eternal, and contemporary historical time. Analysis of the slides reveals that contemporary (nineteenth-century historical time) was – interestingly – indicated by the imagery (clothes, technologies, household interiors); at the same time, this ‘modern’ world was depicted as marked by repetitive religious cult-related practices. Hence, history was not shown as progress, but as the faithful repetition of religious dogma. Second, the lecturers provided several levels of narrative to reinforce their edificatory message: the moral imaginary of the Christian worldview functioned as the texture that bound a set of semi-autonomous Biblical or other fictional stories together. These stories rhetorically re-iterated the moral metanarrative’s validity through various action-based plots that either affirmed or resisted it. In cases where the action-based plot resisted the Christian metanarrative, the protagonist was doomed, as we will exemplify below. In addition, individual images were provided, responding to both the metanarrative and the specific stories, as well as relating the two to famous historical events in French history or to widespread social phenomena.

27 Ibid.; cf. also Chapter 7 of Stephen Hinton. Weill’s Musical Theater: Stages of Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).

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Fig. 1. Slides 17a, 17b, 17c of the series ‘Le Fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’, Bijou Collection (Paris: Ed. Librairie Tolra). (Courtesy: KADOC-KU Leuven. Collection: Archief Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk Ghent).

‘Le Fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’ is a telling example of this kind of montage (cf. Fig. 1). In this story, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, is the Mute from Aïn-Karim, whose elderly wife Elisabeth seems unable to conceive; this part of the story takes up seventeen out of thirty-four slides, and teaches the importance of being earnest and maintaining faith in God. When Elisabeth conceives (slide 17), the narrative provided by the initial Bijou collection is broken up, as two extra slides (17b and 17c) are added, clearly standing out in terms of aesthetics. Both added slides highlight the miracle. Slide 17b (a hand-coloured printed black-and-white drawing) depicts Elizabeth’s presentation of her infant child to his father, and slide 17c (a life-model slide from an unidentified collection) portrays her showing the baby to the public, as his father Zacharias signals in writing that the child shall be named ‘John’. The extra slides transpose us into the world of the miracle. Instead of naming his son after a member of his family, Zacharias agrees with Elisabeth to name him ‘John’. This decision counters ‘tradition’ because the child is given a name that does not refer to anyone from Zacharias’s kin. However, this name is God’s suggestion to Elisabeth; Zacharias’s consent, confirmed in writing (cf. slide 17c), ‘unties his tongue’, to use an expression from the catechists’ notebook, and he can speak again. Later, the same strategy is employed to emphasize the encounter between John the Baptist and Jesus when the latter is thirty years old and wishes to be baptized by John the Baptist. Here, slides 21a, c, and d are added to slide 21b (simply numbered ‘21’ in the original, unaltered Bijou slide series) in order to allow the catechist to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity to the class. While slides 21c and 21d have unfortunately not been preserved – or might have been re-used in a different series or even simply discarded –, the catechists’ notebook testifies to the importance of this episode since the slides are mentioned and the concept of the Trinity is underlined. After this, the story quickly shifts to John the Baptist’s beheading, ordered by King Herod upon request by Salome, his alluring niece, who thus fulfilled her mother Phasaelis’ wish. According to the original Bijou set, the story is recounted quite swiftly, over nine slides (slides 23–31). In the set kept at KADOC, the slides used to show the murder deviate from the one slide devoted to the event in the initial Bijou collection. The slide set from Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk contains two images intended to describe the event: slides

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27a and 27b clarify that the murder was first ordered by King Herod and was then executed by his men. Slide 27b is a reproduction of a famous sixteenth-century painting with this motif, usually attributed to ‘after Bernardino Luini’. This image introduced the audience to the rich tradition of Renaissance painting, integrating religion into art history, social history, and the broader concept of the symbolic imaginary of the time, in the same way as the life-model slides described above. The highlighted iconographic details and the catechists’ hand-written notebook outline that the intriguing ‘action’ in this final ‘action-story’ is of minor importance. The primary goal of the slide-set was to educate the audience about the importance of transtemporal, ritual-based ‘Faith’. ‘Faith’ was in fact the title given to the ‘Moral’ of the story, found at the end of this slide set. Deviations from the logic of Faith, such as the evil and unjust murder of John the Baptist, can only lead to the deviants’ (in this story: Salomé’s) suffering. ‘Le Fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’ taught the audience about the Bible and about the Christian worldview by creating a static and eternal heavenly temporality where the heroes of the narratives varied, but the spectator was encouraged to identify with the abstract concept of an evolving (that is, growing, ageing) Christian self. This abstract self was produced through specific interactions between the various protagonists of the diverse narratives, and reinforced by the Christian morality indicated in special passages entitled ‘Toepassing’ (‘Application’) or, to clarify, the moral lesson of the story and a synthesis of biblical and contemporary historical time in heavenly time. Clearly, this kind of alignment of a given story and the Christian metanarrative is particularly well-suited to Biblical stories; in the following paragraph, we analyse how it plays out in non-religious stories, such as ‘Un poison mortel’, an exemplary cautionary tale about the consequences of alcoholism that, at first glance, does not have much to do with the Bible. Intericonicity in the Context of Catholic Memory Politics The complexity of the Bijou collection lies in its apparent ambition to address the mnemonic faculty of both the individual and of the collective. This is evident in the fact that the collection relied on three types of story, two of which (historical and social (melo)dramas, which together represent one quarter of the entire collection) were not directly related to catechism-teaching. Particular stories from the collection corresponded to a variety of cultural series, such as educational projections, temperance lectures, and amusing illustrated short stories. It may be argued that the aim of the collection as a whole was to depose affective sediments in the collective memory, that is to make certain ideas clearly associated with specific stories and images, which would be remembered by all participants in Catholic education. Therefore, these images should always be interpreted against a more or less perceptible dual background: the immediate background provided by the narrative, and the background offered by the entanglement of these images in a dynamic intericonicity. The non-religious stories from the Bijou collection are a particularly interesting example for the analysis of the intericonic aspect, as they uncover the relationship of certain images with the broader pool of similar imagery, employed in different media (films, comic strips) for non-religious ends (like pure entertainment). We argue that such images

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added intrigue to faith and to belief in religious institutions, fulfilling the same function held by the action-based subplots in the religious stories. This dynamic of intrigue and instruction, characteristic of the emplotment of faith within the Bijou collection, addressed the believer’s coherence of spirit; it demonstrated to the believer that he or she did not need to relinquish his or her mundane world in order to follow Christian dogma.28 This coherence was guaranteed by the interplay of the edificatory imaginary as described in this chapter with other popular-cultural imaginaries. Moreover, it was to grow with time, as the spectator’s pool of references expanded, as they encountered new images. Edification Profaned: ‘Un poison mortel’ If our analysis of ‘Le fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’ is largely a narratological account, retracing the intericonic dimensions of the non-religious story ‘Un poison mortel’ calls for a slightly different approach. The catechists, well versed in the arts of persuasive re-appropriation and ‘seduction’ (we should not forget that one of the best definitions of rhetoric contends that it entails a mix of persuasion and seduction), used the potential and the characteristics of the mediatic configuration of the magic lantern in a very mediagenic way.29 Namely, the catechists and the collection editors made exemplary use of the plasticity and malleability of the expressive and mediatic system of the magic lantern. ‘Un poison mortel’, a cautionary temperance table full of melodramatic structures explored by Nasta and Moens in this volume, is an especially fitting case in point to explore this aspect of the collection. A quick look at the narrative sequence of images intended for projection reveals that special attention should be paid to the question of the slides’s significance in the context of the narrative. It should be kept in mind that the latter was expressed in two different ways. The two written narrative companions of the images – the publisher’s booklet and the hand-written notebook – did not function in the same way. The publisher’s booklet was a memory aide, a user’s manual for the catechists-projectionists. In this sense, the booklet possessed a certain autonomy: it could be read or written as such, as a small, illustrated album, where a single image per page was always followed by an explanatory text at the bottom of the page. The publisher’s booklet was thus a self-sufficient entity, where the relationships between the text and the image were fixed. In contrast, the catechists’ hand-written notebooks were written in a dialogue with the available images, as shown in our analysis of ‘Le fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’. The catechists played around with the words and images from the Tolra/Tol-Sim slide set, constructing speeches where words called for visualizations that illustrated abstract ideas.

28 According to Ricoeur, the ‘mise-en-intrigue’, commonly translated as ‘emplotment’ is the configuration of narrative that allows for a live, engaged experience of fictive time. The ‘mise-en-intrigue’ enables the fictive world, that is the world of the text, to come into being and action for the reader. Cf. Paul Ricoeur. Time and Narrative, Volume 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 29 Philippe Marion (1991) defines ‘mediagénie’ as a specific relation between particular media and narratives. Certain narratives are thus more suited to particular media (for example comic strips, film, photography) than others, and the art of adaptation should take this specificity into account, first breaking down a particular narrative into its constituents: the materiality and capacities of the media of origin, and the story itself. Cf. also Philippe Marion. ‘Narratologie médiatique et médiagénie des récits’, Recherches en communication 7 (1997): 61–87.

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Fig. 2. The alcoholic’s rage. Slides 19 and 20 of ‘Un poison mortel’, Bijou Collection. (Courtesy: KADOC-KU Leuven. Collection: Archief Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk Ghent).

If we reconsider the same story from the perspective of monstration, a very different dynamic emerges. In ‘Un poison mortel’ in particular and in the Bijou stories generally, images which were autonomous in both visual and narrative terms alternated with images that required a necessary complementarity (or integration) with the textual anchor which stabilized the meaning. A good example of this necessary alternation of certain images is the scene where the artisan-turned-alcoholic messes up his job. This scene is legible without textual support, following the principle of integration with the preceding narrative. Images constructed following the principle of autonomy, on the other hand, show us actions that we can easily recognize, such as the anger of the alcoholic that goes on to destroy everything around him despite the frightened faces of his wife and children. The images that follow the principles of autonomy or integration (complementarity with the narrative) do not necessarily correspond to the principles of intradetermination (self-sufficient monstration that does not require other images) or extradetermination (dynamically incomplete images that, monstrating clearly unfinished action or motion, call for new images).30 ‘Un poison mortel’ shows us that images can be extradetermined while, paradoxically, obeying the principle of autonomy. An example of this type of imagery is one of the scenes of the alcoholic’s violence, captured and distributed by many successive images, which express a consciously sought-after effect – dramatic acceleration of the tempo. A coherent succession of several poses describes the drunk’s violence (cf. Fig. 2). Each image is autonomous because they each reveal a significant aspect of alcoholism. They are simultaneously part of a narrative series of united images, as each scene calls for the next one (extradetermination). Apart from this strictly narratological reading, the story should be viewed from the perspective of a cultural series of representations of alcoholism and inebriation, which 30 Cf. Guy Gauthier. Initiation à la sémiologie de l’image (Paris: Cahiers de l’audiovisuel, Ligue française de l’enseignement et de l’éducation permanente, 1984); Philippe Marion. ‘Les images racontent-elles? Variations conclusives sur la narrativité iconique’, Recherches en communication 8 (1998). Accessible at: https://sites. uclouvain.be/rec/index.php/rec/article/view/1631.

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formed part of an important intericonic network in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as partly presented in Nasta and Moens’s contribution in this volume. Numerous convergent sequences of slides (especially in the slide-sets produced by Molteni) presented the classical narrative of the progressive decay of the alcoholic and the collateral damage that ensues. At the same time, in the same cultural context, the imagery of alcoholism also re-emerged in more positive visual representations and narrative forms. These mused on the phenomenology of the drunkard by picturing his damaged perception (for example, his moving head), and the disturbed ecology (exemplified by items such as unstable, moving buildings, or streetlamps). Such representations were common in certain lantern series, as well as numerous comic strips and other illustrated narratives. Importantly, some of these stereotypical representations (for instance, the alcoholic’s red nose) could be found in both the temperance-oriented and the more ‘entertaining’ narratives concerning inebriation. Our analysis shows that the collection of images prepared for projection held semiotic, narrative, and persuasive potential. As sequences of these images were granted agency, they were also vectored, that is, oriented either towards certain narrative or rhetorical ends. This coincided with the teachers’ particular liberty of being able to add certain images that did not belong to the same plastic, graphic, or formal registry as those from the original set. Interestingly, our analysis shows this incoherence did not matter because the discourse that accompanied the projections ensured a certain coherence, even verisimilitude. While the images in a certain projection-episode might sometimes have seemed heterogeneous and disparate, the argumentative orientation and the catechists’ care to highlight the catechist-approved moods would endow the projected sequence or even collection of images with credibility. In a sense, the work of projecting, preparing for the projection, and the intermediatic scripto-visual effort of assembling the booklets may be interpreted as narrative incubation: the availability of images in sequences, accompanied by commentary, allowed the collection of available images to be equipped with a sort of edificatory coherence. Accordingly, iconographic polyvalence was characteristic of both the contemporary (melodramatic and socio-historical) and the Biblical stories in the Bijou collection, such as ‘Le fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’. Conclusion Throughout our analysis, the Bijou collection emerges as an example of efficient persuasion on several levels. Technologically, it was a product of its time, building on the magic lantern’s increased popularity in the Catholic world (luminous sermons) and general accessibility, enabled by the surge in financial accessibility of the images, sold on cellophane rather than glass, as elaborated by Fevry and Werry in this volume, and eventually by the machinery’s greater safety when electricity gradually became the standard light source. Strategically, too, it was conceived to best respond to the needs of Catholics in a rapidly secularizing society by offering an accessible, engaging, easy-to-use education-aide in line with recent advances in pedagogical approaches, that favored giving attention to the imagined audience’s identification strategies, and expressed a renewed interest in the visual. Moreover, the Bijou collection was designed to remind the audience about the eternal validity of Catholic values by repeating them through three different kinds of narratives, drawing

T he E dif y in g Structures of the Bij ou I mag ina ry

on examples from varying time periods, from the distant Old and New Testaments to the late nineteenth century. In so doing, it both engaged cultural series, prominent in the secular world (such as the cultural series of representations of inebriation), and employed three different temporalities (Biblical, historical, and heavenly time) that all stipulated the eternal righteousness of the Christian faith. The spectators of the series were invited to ‘grow into’ Christian faith through complex narratives, where Christian values, such as grace, faith, temperance, and modesty, were essentially portrayed as superior to hasty, individualist, and selfish conduct. The Bijou collection, as used by the catechists in Ghent, reflected the latest trends in late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century catechism-teaching: bringing up a child (or young adult) in the Faith was its primary, self-standing aim. It was intended that a child would learn good from bad and was invited to henceforth partake in the Catholic model of society. The broad brushstrokes of this society are seen in our analysis of ‘Le fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’. This story argued that ideal social structures were eternal and based on one’s devotion to God. In so doing, the projections were more efficient than the publisher’s booklets, analysed at length by Fevry and Werry. Our analysis demonstrates how the lecturers made specific efforts to highlight the key messages using apparently contextually preferable imagery, and audience-tailored explanations, outlined in the catechists’ notebooks. At the same time, both the editors’ booklets and the catechists’ notebooks were clear: an individual’s devotion presumed meek, non-threatening, and non-ambitious conduct in daily life, an openness to miracles, and the capacity to embrace God’s will as one’s own. This kind of faith did not exclude living in accordance with the norms, laws, and convictions about politics, society, and science, typical of a certain time, as implied by the aesthetic diversity of the stories, which was the result of the catechists’ creativity. While living in the ‘modern’ world, devoted Christians were instructed to remain open to God’s miracles (such as Elisabeth’s pregnancy) and to follow age-old Christian rituals without questioning their purpose. ‘Un poison mortel’ showed a complementary strategy at work. This story played with amusing, fun, and entertaining popular-cultural imagery of inebriation, drawing on contemporary comic strips, temperance films, and other pop-visualizations. Although this imagery celebrated certain aspects of modern society, it was integrated into two very different overarching narratives. The first stressed the drunkard’s eventual inevitable demise, and the second highlighted his young Christian son’s moral supremacy, seen after the drunkard’s death in the teenager’s promise to always take care of his mother and her other children. Just like the action-driven passage on Salome from ‘Le fils du muet d’Aïn-Karim’, the dizzying adventures of the drunkard from ‘Un poison mortel’, complemented by the melodramatic presentation of his family’s suffering, ended in an unfulfilling way: death, mourned by no one. This constantly repeated stable mythical structure that placed patience and submission above pro-active conduct and adventurism was particularly cunning. In our case studies, the cross-fertilization of Catholic memory politics and of the capacity of popular culture to play with whatever is forbidden, and to engage using monstration and thrilling plotlines, led to a surprising result, as entertainment was turned against itself. Stories from the Bijou collection did offer happy ends, but these were anchored exclusively in the mythical structures of Biblical narratives, where humility, tradition, and faith in dogma were rewarded. The popular-cultural imagery and its indulgence in monstration for amusement was simultaneously intended to encourage mirror-identification with the

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protagonists, while also demonstrating the discrepancy between the subjective, individual experience of these protagonists and their place in the world, as viewed and judged by Christians. In other words, the Bijou images not only ‘etched’ certain religious concepts into the audience’s memory ‘like a slab of clay’, to return to Saint-Martin’s formulation; they also served as an entertaining warning against seeking alternatives to these concepts. Thus, Catholic memory politics successfully expanded beyond strictly religious teaching, stepping into competition and dialogue with popular-cultural imagery.31 Bibliography Adler, Gilbert, and Gérard Vogeleisen. Un siècle de catéchèse en France, 1893–1980: histoire, deplacements, enjeux (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985) Bassy, Alain-Marie. ‘Le texte et l’image’, in Histoire de l’édition française, volume 2, edited by Henri-Jean Martin, and Roger Chartier (Paris: Promodis, 1984), 140–61 Bayly, Jane. ‘Attacks on the United States: Index, Icons and Intericonicity in Photojournalism’, E-rea. Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone 13.1 (2015) (https://journals. openedition.org/erea/4615 [accessed 8 November 2021)]) Cottin, Jérôme, Wilhelm Gräb, and Bettina Schaller (ed.). Spiritualité contemporaine de l’art: approches théologique, philosophique et pratique (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2012) Coissac, Guillaume-Michel. La Théorie et la pratique des projections (Paris: Paul Féron-Vrau, 1905) Fresnault-Deruelle, Pierre. Hergé ou la profondeur des images plates (Brussels: Éditions Moulinsart, 2002) Gaudreault André. Cinéma et attraction (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2008) ——. From Plato to Lumière: Narration and Monstration in Literature and Cinema (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009) Gaudreault, André, and Philippe Marion. The Kinematic Turn: Film in the Digital Era and its Ten Problems (Montreal: Caboose, 2012) ——. ‘Défense et illustration de la notion de série culturelle’, in A History of Cinema without Names: A Research Project, edited by Diego Cavallotti, Federico Giordano, and Leonardo Quaresima (Udine: Mimesis, 2016), 59–71 Gauthier, Guy. Initiation à la sémiologie de l’image (Paris: Cahiers de l’audiovisuel, Ligue française de l’enseignement et de l’éducation permanente, 1984) Germain, Elizabeth. Parler du salut? (Paris: Beauchesne, 1969) Hinton, Stephen. Weill’s Musical Theater: Stages of Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012) Kessler, Frank. ‘The Cinema of Attractions as Dispositif ’, in The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, edited by Wanda Strauven (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 57–70

31 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Lenk, Sabine, and Nelleke Teughels. ‘Spreken met licht. Magische projectieplaatjes’, KOORTS: Erfgoedmagazine KADOC 1 (2020): 4–10 Marion, Philippe, ‘Narratologie médiatique et médiagénie des récits’, Recherches en communication 7 (1997): 61–87 ——. ‘Les images racontent-elles? – Variations conclusives sur la narrativité iconique’, Recherches en communication 8 (1998) (https://pdfs.semanticscholar. org/1d44/0802414f3dd65aea7d63b9432dfe61a4ead2.pdf, [accessed 28 March 2021)]) Miller, Duane Alexander. ‘Narrative and Meta-Narrative in Christianity and Islam’, St Francis Magazine 6.3 (2010): 501–16 Mitchell, William John Thomas. ‘Beyond Comparison’, in A Comics Studies Reader, edited by Thomas Andrae, and others ( Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2009), 116–23 Piettre, Pauline. ‘Catéchèse et instruction religieuse en France depuis le XIXe siècle’, Transversalités 3.115 (2010): 27–40 Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, Volume 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) Saint-Martin, Isabelle. ‘“Catéchisme en images”, une pédagogie par le sensible?’, Archives de sciences sociales des religions 111 (2000) (https://journals.openedition.org/assr/20223, [accessed 20 March 2021]) ——. ‘“Sermons lumineux” et projections dans les églises, 1884–1912’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 78.3 (2004): 381–400 (https://www.persee.fr/doc/rscir_0035-2217_2004_ num_78_3_3730) ——. ‘Un évangile en projections lumineuses. Pédagogie chrétienne et lanterne magique’, in La pédagogie par l’image en France et au Japon, edited by Marianne Simon-Oikawa, and Annie Renonciat (Rennes: Presses Universitaires, 2009), 107–23 Savart, Claude. Les catholiques en France au XIXe siècle: le témoignage du livre religieux (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985) Servais, Paul. ‘The Church and the Family in Belgium, 1850–1914’, Revue belge d’histoire contemporaine. Belgisch tijdschrift voor nieuwste geschiedenis 31.3–4 (2001): 621–47 Wood, Christopher. ‘Painting and Plurality’, Yearbook of Comparative Literature 56 (2013): 116–39

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Section 3

Projecting Aspirations, Challenges, and Fears The Spiritual Lantern

Kurt Vanhoutte

Deep Time Through the Lens of the Magic Lantern: Genesis and Geology

Origins of Life Who are we and where do we come from? The issue of origins is one of timeless inquiry. The question arises from a fundamental human desire to know and has therefore always been a matter of both science and religion. During the nineteenth century, however, a revolutionary transformation in the understanding of the earth formation and development sharpened the question in an unprecedented way. What eventually changed was the history of life itself. The Industrial Revolution and the mining industry stimulated the rapid development of geology as a science that arranged rocks according to their order of formation in time. Amateur fossil hunters, moreover, discovered the remains of dragon-like creatures walking an ancient earth. By the mid-nineteenth century, these observations and the findings were blended with theories of scholars who themselves formed new academic disciplines such as geology and palaeontology.1 Gradually but surely, the story of the earth started to unfold. The discovery and exploration of ‘deep time’2 continued to combine the insights of those who we would now call theologians and those we call scientists. Both areas of inquiry had a considerable overlap at the time, especially when considering the twofold question of human identity and the origin of life, as many scholars had indeed long worked with competences in both domains. However, the acknowledgment that human history was dwarfed by pre-human time came down to a reshuffling of cards that were mostly new. Empirical science presented the contemporary with overwhelming evidence that mankind had been preceded not just by one week of God’s primal creative act, but





1 The explorations eventually gave rise to ‘dinosaur’ research in 1842, when Richard Owen, a British expert in animal anatomy, described several sets of recently discovered bones, established a separate taxonomy and coined the word. For a comprehensive and exciting account of the progress of earth sciences in the nineteenth century, cf. Martin J. S. Rudwick. Earth’s Deep History: How It was Discovered and Why It Matters (Chicago: University Press, 2014), and Brenda Maddox. Reading the Rocks: How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). 2 For a historical account of the conceptualization of ‘deep time’, cf. Stephen Jay Gould. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1987). Kurt Vanhoutte • University of Antwerp, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 187–207 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129103 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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by an immensely lengthy and eventful past. It reduced the whole of history, as it has been known until then, to a brief final scene in a far longer drama. The first human re-entered as a very recent actor on this vast and inhuman stage. Integral to this scientific revolution was the contribution by the new scientific visual languages. Novel scenes of creation had to be designed, and they had to perform the impossible, making visible what is really invisible, or more precisely: they had to make the contemporary a virtual witness to a historical scene that had vanished long before there was any human being to witness it. The contemporary had to imagine deep time against recorded history. Recorded history referred to approximately the last four thousand years for which written records existed. The plot dynamic of this history was religious, based on the Bible, more specifically on the book of Genesis. Picturing an image of deep time, the millions of years preceding those written accounts, meant visualizing the invisible, picturing the unseen. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, so-called ideal views of prehistory rose to the challenge. Science popularizers teamed up with artists to reveal the origins of life in landscape settings representing the successive geological periods. Much was at stake. This new visual language had to go beyond being an aid in the scientific description of prehistory to become central in the interpretation of the findings in relation to religion. More specifically, ideal views of deep time were to be scientific in the sense that they presented facts about long gone species and their environments, religious in the sense that biblical authority remained largely unshaken, and aesthetic in the sense that artistic imagination mediated fact and belief. Due to its imaginary power in tandem with empirical foundations, the scientific genre immediately became very popular.3 The magic lantern had a crucial part in opening up the thought-provoking space of deep time. It is not by accident that the heyday of the lantern as an instrument to learn and entertain in Europe coincided with the breakthrough of the earth sciences in the 1860s. Itinerant showmen accordingly played a crucial role in the marketing of scenes of creation. Taking advantage of their contemporaries’ enthusiasm for learning, they reproduced scientific illustrations of deep time and exploited all the resources of performance, showmanship, and rhetoric.4 They offered mixed attractions as part of the repertoire of family-friendly theaters, and created value and meaning while doing so. Knowledge was communicated through the spoken word in conjunction with images, and all layers of society, both literate and illiterate, could be introduced to the new earth sciences. The magic lantern performance, I want to argue, perfectly matched the demand for a new vision of prehistory. Due to the flexibility of the medium, genesis and geology could indeed harmonize with each other very well when adopted in the repertoire of the lantern. It possessed the capacity to set up the negotiation of science and religion, to effect ‘movement’ in thought and to allow new objects of knowledge to emerge. In this contribution, I will first discuss the nature

3 Cf. Stephanie Moser. Ancestral Images: The Iconography of Human Origins (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), especially Chapter 5: ‘The Scientific Vision of Prehistory’, 107–45. 4 In her influential book, Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin: Out of the Natural (London, New York: Routledge, 2002), Jane Goodall has exclusively focused on burlesque counter-culture, ‘[w]here museum displays concentrated on portrayals of the natural order, the entertainment side of their business began to exploit a counter-fascination with what might be “out of the natural order”: freak shows in which extreme differences of bulk and stature, form and feature were the staple ingredients’ (7). But there was more to geology shows than mockery; as I aim to demonstrate in his article, serious science shows represented a huge part of the market.

deep time through the lens of the magic lantern: genesis and geology

and context of a canonical slide series. I will then hold a crucial slide from this series depicting the arrival of man up to the light to gauge the relation between science and religion. Thereafter, I will discuss the medium-specific properties of the lantern in relation to the drama of deep time and the embodied performance of the slides before an audience. Scenes of Creation The incentive to research scenes of creation came from a remarkable French collection of geology lantern slides archived in IES Bárbara de Braganza, a school in Badajoz in the Spanish Extremadura region.5 The set combines hand drawn images of geological time table charts which indicate the successive layers of sedimentary rock, photographs of important sites and their findings (mountains, glaciers, traces of earth quakes, volcanoes, sea shores), and undated reproductions of etchings taken from popular scientific journals such as La Nature (Nature) and Le Magasin Pittoresque (The Picturesque Magazine).Its heterogeneity makes it hard to determine the exact date of the set as a whole. Mixing and matching slides with other slides and series was common practice in the case of the lantern, as they typically travelled through time and space, appearing in a variety of contexts. What strikes out immediately, however, are seventeen lantern slides depicting so-called vues idéals (‘ideal views’) of deep time. This sequence begins with the period before the origin of life itself. We see torrents of rain falling on the still hot globe and the subsequent condensation announcing the cooling and the conditions for the creation of the first organisms. What follows is earth’s history divided into a series of time intervals with exotic names that must have stirred the imagination of the audience – ‘Ideal view of the earth during the Silurian Period’ and, subsequently, the Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Conchylian, Saliferan, Lias, Oolite, Cretaceous, and Eocene epochs. The narrative arc involves the depiction of the first marine organisms thrown on rocky shores, the emergence of plant and animal life, and, finally, the creation of man. Interestingly, the seventeen slides can be traced back to catalogue no. 38 by Radiguet & Massiot, successors of Molteni, that, in the 1905 edition, advertised sets for ‘Conférences Scientifiques et Mondaines’ (‘Scientific and Mundane Conferences’). They are listed in the chapter on geology, marked with the same number and title, under the heading ‘History of the Globe’.6 The series, however, already appeared in an earlier and more general catalogue from 1874, albeit as part of less elaborate sequences; the ideal views bore the same titles but have different numbers.7 It is in other words safe to assume that the slides sparked performances for over at least thirty years.





5 The IES Bárbara de Braganza in Badajoz, Spain, is the heir of the Provincial Institute, created in 1845 at the request of the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País. The archive of the school holds materials belonging to the Physics and Natural Sciences Cabinets and works from the National Museum of Painting. 6 Radiguet & Massiot. Projections Molteni. Éditions des Diapositives pour Conférences Scientifiques et Mondaines, N° 38, 1er fascicule Astronomie (Paris: Radiguet & Massiot, n.d.), 14; cf. Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource (http://lucerna.exeter.ac.uk/text/index.php?language=EN&id=4009989, [accessed 28 August 2020]). All the translations are by the author. 7 Cf. Joseph Molteni, and Alfred Molteni. Catalogue des appareils de projection; tableaux et accessoires de J. & A. Molteni, No 31, courtesy of Jacinto Pedro Carrasco Claver, Braganza Institute, Badajoz.

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Fig. 1. ‘L’ichthyosaure et le plesiosaure’ (‘The ichthyosaurus and the plesiosaurus’) (slide recto – verso), E. Riou. (Courtesy: IES Bárbara de Braganza Institute).

The lantern slides are taken from a magnificent sequence of scenes printed in La Terre avant le déluge (The World Before the Deluge), a book published in 1863 by the French popularizer of science Louis Figuier (1819–1894). The work immediately became an international classic in popular science, opening up the new field of earth sciences to a wide audience of non-specialists. It went through nine editions, the last appearing in 1883, and was translated into various European languages, including Dutch, Spanish, and Danish. The ‘Twenty-five ideal views of landscapes of the ancient world’8 included in the book most certainly played a crucial role in this unparalleled success. They were initially drawn by Édouard Riou (1833–1900), a young illustrator and former student of the French printmaker Gustave Doré, one of the most prolific and successful illustrators of the nineteenth century. The scenes are truly spectacular, especially when foregrounding monstrous animals. An ichthyosaur spouting like a whale while confronting the giant reptile-like plesiosaur (cf. Fig. 1), a gloomy pterodactyl swooping on a big dragonfly, the iguanodon biting (and being bitten by) a megalosaur (cf. Fig. 2): what invariably stands out in all the pictures are the monsters’ sharp teeth and their ferocious behaviour. The contemporary undoubtedly viewed the first humans as the beginning of redemptive history through the lives of Adam and Eve. This was a familiar picture. But to see creation framed in a presentation that depicted an utterly uninhabitable and inhuman environment must have sent shivers down the reader’s (and spectator’s) spine. Nobody had ever seen a dinosaur, and nobody ever would, yet very soon everybody would know what they looked like. Even today, dinosaurs are so familiar that we tend to forget that they are products of creative imagination, assembled out of empiric fragments and augmented with aesthetic speculation.9 The realistic style invites us to imagine that we are seeing deep time with our own eyes, unproblematically, as for the first time. However, ideal views are very far from simple realism, not only because they crowd a variety of entities into one scene that would

8 Subtitle of Figuier’s book (1863). 9 William John Thomas Mitchell documents the dino-obsession, the extraordinary pervasiveness and continuous resurrection of the dinosaur as a popular icon throughout history and until the present in The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon (Chicago: University Press, 1998).

deep time through the lens of the magic lantern: genesis and geology

Fig. 2. ‘L’iguanodon et le megalosaure’ (‘The iguanodon and the megalosaurus’), E. Riou. (Courtesy: IES Bárbara de Braganza Institute).

be unlikely to pose in real life, they are also and above all indebted to a specific pictorial tradition. There is indeed the major influence of Doré’s dark hand, whose exuberant and bizarre fantasy created demonic scenes that made him no stranger to enthusiasts of the magic lantern (for example, his illustrations of the Bible and Dante’s Inferno were reproduced as lantern slides).10 But it was probably the work of John Martin that had a profound effect on Riou’s representation of deep past. The painter and devout Christian earned great fame with his huge Romantic scenes of doom and apocalypse, and very often biblical themes taken from the Old Testament, such as ‘The Evening of the Deluge’ (1828). Martin did not pass up on the opportunity to occasionally populate his landscapes with gigantic lizards. His ‘The country of the Iguanodon’ was even a frontispiece to Gideon Algernon Mantell’s The Wonders of Geology in 1838, a crucial book in geology that sparked the study of dinosaurs. Riou’s antediluvian world consequently retained a sense of dark romanticism (cf. Fig. 3), yet at the same time emancipated itself from the mythological through a scientific design that was first and foremost grounded in facts. The artist more specifically based his ideal views on similar scenes published in 1851 in Die Urwelt in ihren verschiedenen Bildungsperioden (The Primitive World in its different periods of formation) by Austrian botanist and palaeontologist Franz Unger.11 The then well-known landscape painter Karl Josef Kuwasseg had created fourteen large lithographed scenes for Franz Unger’s book.12 At the time, this was the most ambitious project of this kind yet undertaken to make deep time amenable to thought through visual imagery. The result was published as a beautiful folio atlas mostly focusing on plant life in geohistorical contexts. Kuwasseg’s sequence would obtain great 10 Dan Malan. ‘Gustave Doré: Magic Lantern Slides’, The New Magic Lantern Journal 9.1 (Winter 2001): 3–6. 11 Taylor and Francis, London. Also cf. the original: Franz Unger. Die Urwelt in ihren verschiedenen Bildungsperioden (Gratz: Minsinger, 1847). 12 Martin John Spencer Rudwick. Scenes From Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World (Chicago: University Press, 1992), 97–135. This book is an invaluable source for everyone wanting to research scenes of creation and early pictorial representations of prehistory, regardless of the discipline one is working in. This article most certainly could not have been written without it.

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Fig. 3. ‘Vue d’une forêt et d’un marécage pendant la période houillère’ (‘View of a forest and a swamp during the Carboniferous period’), E. Riou. (Courtesy: IES Bárbara de Braganza Institute).

international fame through the magic lantern performances by Paul Hoffmann, who in 1858 started his geological program and toured the capitals of central Europe thereafter.13 According to Martin Rudwick, Édouard Riou ‘established the genre of scenes from deep time throughout the Western world’, continuing their influence even during the twentieth century.14 This is worth contemplating: whenever we see a dinosaur today, we are somehow looking at Riou’s 1863 etchings. His representations implied a human perspective on a world in which there never was a human to record the scene, nor would there be in the future. There was (and is) simply no other way to show and tell about deep time. It is in this regard telling that, around the same time, Riou’s marine reptiles also appeared in Jules Gabriel Verne’s soon to be legendary Voyage au centre de la Terre (Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 1864), where they figured in far more fantastic scenes. The ubiquity of the scenes proves their popularity and the decisive grip they held on the imaginary. Riou’s depictions of deep time indeed sat very comfortably in the middle of the continuum between fact and fiction, science and sensation. It should not come as a surprise that, as will be demonstrated below, lanternists and showmen eagerly responded to the magnetic and performative attraction of the series. The ideal views activated formats, modes, and ideas from the realm of aesthetics, as the scientist at least partially gave over control to a professional artist. Nevertheless, Figuier did not proceed without care when he approached the artist. In fact, the main motivation to write La Terre avant le déluge was the author’s reluctance towards books

13 The well-researched catalogue of the exhibition about Hoffmann at the Historisches Museum Frankfurt in 1981 offers a detailed comparison between Kuwasseg and Hoffmann next to context about the shows; for the geology shows, cf. especially Detlef Hoffmann. ‘Malerische Wissenschaft’, in Laterna Magica – Vergnügen, Belehrung, Unterhaltung. Der Projektionskünstler Paul Hoffmann, edited by Historisches Museum Frankfurt (Frankfurt am Main: Dezernat für Kultur und Freizeit, 1981), 63–77. Cf. also the massive book by Detlev Hoffmann, and Almut Junker. Laterna Magica. Lichtbilder aus Menschenwelt und Götterwelt (Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1982) to get a picture of the collection of Paul Hoffmann’s lantern slides. 14 Rudwick. Scenes From Deep Time, 219.

deep time through the lens of the magic lantern: genesis and geology

Fig. 4. ‘Apparition de l’homme’ (‘The appearance of man’), E. Riou. (Courtesy: IES Bárbara de Braganza Institute).

that wandered too far from the actual domain of science into the realms of the imaginary. The young generation was tainted by ‘the love of wonder’ and the ‘faculty of imagination’ urgently needed to be brought back into scientific service to promote ‘the naked truth’.15 Yet, as one of the greatest pioneers of his time, Figuier was also conscious that science popularization operated through an appeal to the senses and generated consent through visual imagery. He found Riou’s creations important enough in the marketing of the book to highlight the name of the artist in its subtitle. Riou’s drawings were not only meant to sharpen the appetite of the contemporary for new knowledge. The skills of the artist were above all directed at persuading the audience of the rightness of the argument. As such, the illustrations did not merely illustrate the text, it was rather the other way around with Figuier detailing prehistory on account of his describing what the reader saw when they looked at the pictures. The ideal views were in other words constitutive of the scientific argument.16 The portrayal of the first humans is a case in point. In what follows, we propose

15 Louis Figuier. La Terre avant le déluge, second ed. (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1867), iv–vi. All the more surprising is Figuier’s introduction to his book, a fiery tirade against the culture of spectacle and popular entertainment. ‘Youngsters visit the theatre only in search of the féerie, the diablerie, the phantasmagoria and the allegory’ (iv). Figuier grumbles, detailing the catalogue of damned spectacles: ‘Puppet shows’, ‘the unchanging annual procession of revues-féeries’, ‘Chinese shadow shows’, ‘escamotages’ (especially Robert Houdin), ‘table-turnings and spirits’ (iii–v) – they spoil the youth and definitely expose them to ‘the invasion of an alternatively ignorant fanaticism or a menacing socialism’ (v). Figuier’s attack on ‘the love of wonder’ may easily be interpreted as a general aversion to the appeal of the sensuous. This is not the case, as Figuier wanted instead to divert the reader’s attention from the supernatural to nature itself, while preserving ‘the faculty of imagination’ (vi). This, however, required a new genre. With his scientific edition Figuier explicitly aims to move away from the fictional dialogues between scholars and the theatrical mise-en-scène of science, that ‘obsolete form’, that ‘genre vieilli’ (ix–x). He searched for and found that new genre in the ideal views drawn by Riou. Ironically, towards the end of his life Figuier would try his hand at writing plays for the theatre with legendary scientists as protagonists: cf. Fabienne Cardot. ‘Le théâtre scientifique de Louis Figuier’, Romantisme 65 (1989): 59–68. 16 Richard Somerset has analysed Figuier’s narrative strategies and the place of Riou’s images in it; cf. Richard Somerset. ‘Textual Evolution: The Translation of Louis Figuier’s La Terre avant le déluge’, The Translator 17.2 (2011): 255–74.

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to focus on this crucial slide, because it also allows us to gauge the dynamic relationship between science and religion. Image and Narrative: The First Humans The slide in question (cf. Fig. 4) depicts three men outside a cave that is overgrown with dense vegetation. They are clad in furs and hold flint axes while confronting a hostile nature across a defensive gap. It is a very dynamic scene. The hunters apparently defend the family hiding in the cave behind them against a remarkably heterogeneous horde of animals such as hyenas, bear, deer, white horse, and the more prehistoric mammoth and rhinoceros. Different times merge in this image. This depiction returns to us as a lantern slide that was to have a lasting life. However, this was not the illustration that Riou had initially drawn for the book. As Rudwick has demonstrated, Figuier had at first instructed Riou to portray the scene in a way that made no allusion whatsoever to current debates about the antiquity and evolution of human species. The result explicitly did not mix fiery animals with cave-dwellers. It instead highlighted Adam and Eve (with child) in the foreground of a peaceful Arcadian landscape (cf. Fig. 5). While woman is playing with the child, man confidently glances into the distance. He carries a staff signalling that domestication of the animals nearby, farm animals such as sheep and cows, is just a matter of time. This pastoral scene was fully in line with biblical scriptures. It picked up on a long and religious iconographic tradition. What prompted Figuier to change the scene was the discovery of a human jaw by amateur archaeologist Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes in 1863. This important finding forced the author to bow to the inevitable, alter his edition, and adapt a wilder scene. Perthes’ fossil man was proof that the first human had coexisted with species formerly believed to be extinct – hence the peculiar and somewhat awkward coexistence of cave-dwellers, mammals, and prehistoric beasts in Riou’s new version. It can be argued that the new scene marked the transgression of early man into prehuman world. Without doubt, it stirred the audience up with new ideas about evolution. It did not, however, erase the divine status of their ancestors. Nor did it impose upon the wider public the suggestion of a clear break between biblical record and scientific account. To begin with, in the two versions, the human beings were blatantly white and European in demeanor, in line with contemporary depictions of biblical figures. The contrast between the dark background and the white bodies of the protagonists is made strong enough not to unsettle or disconcert the audience. The artist’s rendering of his earliest ancestors as noble white people remained in the service of racial goals, even when they appeared in the guise of ‘savages’. As Rudwick aptly notes: Morally, if not technologically, they were still familiar and reassuring to Figuier’s vast middle-class Western public: they were themselves dressed up as primitives, though hardly more convincing than Marie Antoinette as a milk-maid.17

17 Rudwick. Scenes from Deep Time, 250.

deep time through the lens of the magic lantern: genesis and geology

Fig. 5. E. Riou’s ‘Apparition de l’homme’, in Louis Figuier, La Terre avant le Déluge, second ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1867), 363, figure 303.

Moreover, Figuier did not change the text that accompanied the scene in the first editions. It consequently remained explicitly clear that, in his words: We are […] far from sharing the opinion of the naturalists who represent man at the beginning of the existence of his species as a sort of ape, of hideous face and with a hairy body, dwelling in caves like the bears and lions, and participating in instincts as brutal and ferocious as theirs. There is no doubt the primitive man had to pass through a period in which he had to fight for his existence with ferocious beasts, living in the wild in woods or in savannahs, where Providence had thrown him. But this period of education did not last long, and man, an eminently social being, promptly combined in groups, animated by the same interests and the same desires, to find ways to tame the animals and to triumph over the elements, to protect him from innumerable dangers that threatened him, and to subdue to his rule the other inhabitants of the earth.18 This was an ultimate effort to (re)frame the iconography of the new version in order to (re)establish a sense of proportion and not let the reader get carried away. Figuier’s disclaimer contradicted Riou’s more dramatic image, which was in itself wilder than the earlier version. But it would be exaggerated to state that the iconography sang completely separate from the text. Next to the whiteness of the first humans that made them appear as contemporaries to the nineteenth century viewers, there is the gap that dominates the picture and that separates the humans from the animals. The cave-dwellers yield their axes 18 Figuier. La Terre avant le déluge, 361–62.

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but from a safe distance; they are not really endangered by the creatures on the other side of the rift. Riou’s clever compositional move mitigated the otherness of the cave-dweller by setting the earliest human apart from the inhuman scenery he inevitably inhabits. The illustrator neatly encapsulated the historical moment at which the human species was brought fully into the epistemological panorama of the history of life on earth.19 This allowed Figuier to evoke the primitive without an allusion to the evolution of man suggested by Darwinian literature since the 1860s. The artist together with the scientist made sure not to compromise the fundamental idea that human creation is a divine mystery which is impenetrable to science. Science could only work when it remained free of ambivalent or potentially scandalous elements. A year after publication, Figuier would reiterate his move on the occasion of the discovery of fossil man, formulating his perspective on the paradigm struggle in the clearest of terms: In fact, French science has a wise and excellent rule. Its principle is never to mix religion and science, as it is not always within man’s power match. The scientist must do science, the theologian theology, and it is never without peril for the dignity and majesty of both of these great lights that one tries to amalgamate them. Faith is faith, science is science, man’s lights are weak: this is what we must say to ourselves to avoid the temptation to merge these incompatible elements. Let us study and record scientific facts without worrying, for the moment, about their agreement or disagreement with facts of another order. It is in this spirit, in this philosophical feeling, that we are going to report the facts discovered in 1863, which, together with a mass of others previously known, have put the high antiquity of the human species beyond doubt.20 The author casually added that ‘biblical England’ might well experience fossil man as an attack on the holy scriptures, but that things were different in France, where public opinion was not troubled by an all too literate reading of the Bible. There was margin for interpretation and commentary. This meant that it was deemed possible to integrate deep time and its geological periods in an enlarged understanding of the six days of Creation. ‘Creation leads into worship of the Creator’, Figuier maintained.21 But from another point of view the constellation of image and narrative in response to fossil man also betrayed the epistemological uncertainties of his time. After all, the new earth sciences did invite the contemporary to a journey into the unknown. The reader of books might not be adequately reassured by a strictly empirical account. He or she would want more assurances on the basis of scientific attitude and its relation to religion. In other words, contemporaries wanted to see the balance between genesis and geology kept even not only by the written results of science, but by the way its practitioners looked and talked about it while projecting the images. This was the modus operandi of the lantern performance and its dramatic logic.

19 For a discussion of Figuier’s treatment of primitive man throughout his work, cf. Claude Blanckaert. ‘Les bases de la civilisation; lectures de l’homme primitive de Louis Figuier (1870)’, Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française 90.1 ( January-February 1993): 31–49. 20 Louis Figuier. L’Année scientifique et industrielle, eighth year (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1863), 232. 21 Figuier. La Terre avant le déluge, xvi.

deep time through the lens of the magic lantern: genesis and geology

Projection and Dramatic Logic Looming in the background around the time that Figuier published his work was the theory of evolution. 1862 was indeed a notable year in science, with both a French translation of Darwin’s The Origin of Species and subsequent challenges to ‘creationist-fixist’ theories thanks to extensive empirical research. The impact of Charles Robert Darwin in France should, however, not be overestimated. Historians of science agree on the slowness of the French reception of Darwinism: on the one hand, nationalism held Darwin’s influence at bay, while, on the other hand, the French opinion held on to various elements of positivism, thus overvaluing scientific fact to the detriment of questioning the overall picture that connected the different stages in development of the earth and its inhabitants.22 Despite this unfavorable climate, a balance nonetheless had to be found between a nascent (and often pseudo-)Darwinism and older theories. As demonstrated above, a certain eclecticism helped, especially for science popularizers such as Figuier, as it allowed an approach and a depiction of science that did not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead drew upon multiple ideas.23 It is useful to remember that, after all, scientists were immersed in an adventure carried out in a context where incompleteness and reversals, misunderstandings and reinterpretations were more rule than exception. In any case, the inference of evolution that human beings were derived from animals by some kind of purely biological natural process was a bridge too far. A case can be made for assuming that the medium of the magic lantern was thus that it kept this risk in check. I more explicitly want to suggest that the specific quality of the apparatus in regard to structure, experience, and perception helped the new knowledge to feed back into a coherent story or at least kept possibilities of different interpretations open. Indeed, while texts and images were allied in the service of facts, the performance of the images gestured beyond factuality, especially when viewed collectively and in the company of a lecturer, as they were designed to be experienced. Their effects exceeded the particulars of the lesson, calling attention to the flow and pace of the narrative. Lantern performance typically offered a continuous linear narrative, yet the different stages were disjointed due to the relative autonomy of the slides that substituted each other in the process of show and tell. This logic seems to rather perfectly align with the widespread conception in France that geological history was a progressive narrative punctuated by interruptions and, possibly, divine intervention. Georges Cuvier was one of the first to remark upon the possibility of great catastrophes that had enveloped the planet and wiped out the successive geological periods. At the Musée national d’Histoire naturelle (National Natural History Museum) in Paris, where he was appointed shortly after the French Revolution, the French naturalist and zoologist developed the idea that natural catastrophes were part of the intrinsic way the earth worked. He had noticed several gaps in fossil records where all evidence of life would vanish and then abruptly reappear. Cuvier recognized these gaps as major events of mass extinction. His interpretation of natural history as a succession of ‘lost worlds’ had a huge impact on 22 Thomas Glick. The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (Chicago: University Press, 1988). 23 Valérie Narayana. ‘Des Espèces de l’origine: le feuilleton scientifique de Louis Figuier dans la presse de 1862’, Études littéraires 10.3 (2009): 73–86.

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scientific audiences worldwide. It was also widely absorbed by the broader public who heard him lecture or read his more accessible work.24 Cuvier did not explain what precisely happened in the intervals, and this conveniently left the possibility of divine intervention. This is probably why catastrophism also provided a template for science popularizers to organize the history of the world in an intelligible sequence of events. In his book Die Katastrophische Feerie (The Catastrophic Féerie), Romanist Jörg Dünne has convincingly correlated drama and literature to Cuvier’s speculations on natural history. According to Dünne, the plot logic of La terre avant le déluge is indeed driven by catastrophism, as […] due to the choice of the means of representation itself, Figuier’s tableaux give the impression of a discontinuous succession of relatively stable sections of the earth’s history, between which discontinuous breaks have obliterated what can be seen in the tableaux and replaced it with a new appearance of life.25 A more fitting device than the lantern to articulate this format can hardly be thought of. The audience witnessed each evening how a period emerged out of darkness to eventually retreat into darkness, awaiting a new epoch to arise: this is the logic of slide projection and it matched Cuvier’s theory. Moreover, Cuvier never really explained any force that could have caused the occasional cataclysms that had revolutionized the history of nature. Because he never identified these forces, many indeed believed that the extinctions were the result of divine intervention. Cuvier, at one point in time, even identified the most recent ‘revolution’ as the flood in Genesis. The handling of the flood was a delicate passage in geo-history, because it marked a symbolic boundary between the human world and the deep past. It was important that this central biblical event retained a place in scientific understanding, and it did, as testified by the many variations of the traditional term ‘antediluvian’ in titles of the lantern shows to come to terms with a scientific understanding of the primitive world. But, at the same time, only empirical findings would give the deluge a legitimate basis for inclusion in the historical account. The question whether the historical reality of massive inundations had also been the biblical flood recorded in Genesis, runs throughout the nineteenth century, dynamizing the territories of science and religion, and challenging their borders. As a result, Genesis and geology merged into a dual plot. It was quite possible to foreground the progressive dynamic of nature while maintaining that the orientation of that dynamic remained positively guaranteed by God’s all-pervasive presence.26 Unfortunately, the slide depicting the flood was not part of the Braganza archive, but it is mentioned in the Molteni catalogues and hence was undoubtedly once part of the lantern sequence of ideal views. In a way, the common image of a globe periodically wrecked by cataclysms survives in all depictions of violent epochs and their monstrous inhabitants. Against the backdrop of catastrophism, a sequence of lantern scenes could be interpreted in either of two ways. It could, on the one hand, be regarded as a series of independent epochs

24 Rudwick. Earth’s Deep History, 103–20. 25 Jörg Dünne. Die Katastrophische Feerie. Geschichte, Geologie und Spektakel in der modernen französischen Literatur (Konstanz: University Press, 2016), 45. 26 On the relationship between biblical flood and geological deluge in the context of Cuvier, cf. Rudwick. Earth’s Deep History, 120–27.

deep time through the lens of the magic lantern: genesis and geology

with intervals of darkness, each time an individual glass slide plucked from the shelf, held before a light source, and projected in front of an audience: the paratactic logic of breaks and (probably divine) changes of scene. On the other hand, the format of a sequence at least allowed for the possibility of a more evolutionary approach, as together, the separate slides evoked the continuous panorama of prehistory; it set up the captivating illusion of scenes converging into one sequence. This dual plot structure was easily reunited into a single strand through the use of the lantern. The technology itself in a way lent itself well to showmen who wanted to treat geology as compatible with Genesis while simultaneously adopting new geological findings. In order to further investigate this hypothesis, we have to actively broaden our perspective of the lantern and not view it as only an apparatus. We should not forget that the lantern functioned as a mode of display shaped, marked, and circulated by live performance – even if the ephemeral meeting between performer and audience is notably difficult to reconstruct. By definition, a performance does not only represent given facts, it produces them by engendering a situation that inscribes the spectator in certain assumptions, values, and imaginaries.27 This especially holds true, as Aileen Fyfe and Bernd Lightman have demonstrated in Science in the Marketplace, for ‘a period when people differing in gender, rank and depth of experience not only talked about science but in doing so contributed directly to its making’.28 The meaning of the slides was, then, defined from the user’s end as much as from the scientific end in a period when an eager audience not only talked about science, but contributed to its development in doing so. Looking back at the golden age of science popularization, Robert Fox noticed particularly in France a distinctive sense of freedom after 1860; a trend among lecturers ‘to become more opiniated’ alongside ‘a move toward a greater degree of audience participation’.29 Public involvement was fostered by invoking a communal purpose among audiences, and discussion through direct address of the audience was a common tactic. In order to better understand the multiple ways science and religion overlapped we have to gain insight into this interaction. Performer and Audience One of the showmen who promoted the strange otherness of deep time to the full and put it on display over a long period of time was Henri Robin, a French magician who turned science into entertainment in the 1850s after having extensively toured Europe as a magician. Newspapers for the first time advertised his ‘Histoire de la création de la terre’ (‘History of Earth’s Creation’) in Brussels in October 1860.30 Robin’s ‘geological

27 On the performative aspect of the lantern and its relation to practices of reconstruction, cf. Kurt Vanhoutte. ‘Re-enactment and the Magic Lantern Performance: Possessed by History’, in A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slides in the History of Learning, edited by Sarah Dellmann, and Frank Kessler (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2020), 251–63. 28 Aileen Fyfe, and Bernd Lightman. Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences (Chicago: University Press, 2007), 25. 29 Robert Fox. The Savant and the State: Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth Century France (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 207. 30 Journal de Bruxelles (18 October 1860, 23 October 1860, 3 November 1860, 15 November 1860, and 28 November 1860).

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demonstration in two parts and 38 tableaux’ was the apex of his program in Gymnase Polytechnique (The Polytechnic Gymnasium), the theater that he had opened in the Belgian capital the year before, a stone’s throw from the opera house La Monnaie. Newspapers announced the shows of the ‘skilled physicist’ on a daily basis in what must have been a magnificent theater venue that included several exhibition rooms, where machines and a gallery of Cosmoramas could be visited before and after the performances. The lantern show on creation presented the grand finale of Robin’s stay in Brussels. But it was not the end of the story. Two years later, Robin would emerge in the London Egyptian Hall with ‘for the first time, the History of the Creation of the World, geological illustrations by the agioscope, Showing the different changes our Planet has undergone from its origin to the present day’.31 The geology program was mounted together with a demonstration of electricity and astronomy. In 1863, ‘Creation’ resurfaced in Paris (cf. Fig. 6), where the new and permanent Théâtre Robin on the legendary Boulevard du Temple advertised a forty-five minute magic lantern performance depicting earth’s evolution, from a boiling ball of gas to a world covered with vegetation and populated by dinosaurs and, finally, Adam and Eve. There, the science program would successfully be combined with ghost apparitions and other illusionistic tricks.32 All in all, the geology program in particular seemed to have settled the reputation of Henri Robin as one of the greatest. Remarkably, the first mention of Robin’s interest in geology is not a performance but a ‘scientific and artistic exposition’ of his minerals, fossils, and shells.33 This collection was already on exhibition in his Brussels theater the year before he actually brought ‘Creation’ as a performance to the stage. The collection of objects remained key in the putting together of the show before the audience. Robin rather proudly reproduced the following laudation by a journalist in his professional biography: Mr Robin, who has traveled extensively and must have learned a great deal from his travels, possesses himself a very remarkable collection of antediluvian fossils, which would be the envy of the best-composed museums, and we can personally state that the paintings he shows have been drawn from the originals in his hands, so they cannot fail to be true and resembling.34 I have already noted that the ideal views were new and of speculative nature. In order to fully appreciate the veracity of the lantern scenes, the visitor apparently wanted proof. Material objects, presumably assembled from authoritative scientific sites outside the theater and now there to be touched, matched the performance to the expectations of the visitor. The audience could see with their own eyes the fossils that were part of the

31 ‘Henri Robin’s appearance at the Egyptian Hall, 1862’, Evanion Catalog number 1392 of the British Library, Evan.1392, [accessed 3 September 2020]. 32 For a broader discussion of Robin’s theatrics with regard to science (especially astronomy) and entertainment, cf. Kurt Vanhoutte, and Nele Wynants. ‘On the Passage of a Man of the Theatre Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: Henri Robin, Performing Astronomy in Nineteenth Century Paris’, Early Popular Visual Culture 15.2 ( June 2017): 152–74. 33 Journal de Bruxelles (24 February 1859, 16 May 1859, 23 September 1859, 24 September 1859, and 11 October 1859). The same newspaper advertises on 9 January 1861 the sale of Robin’s collection including the fossils and minerals. 34 Robin. L’Almanach illustré ‘Le Cagliostro’, 32.

deep time through the lens of the magic lantern: genesis and geology

Fig. 6. ‘La science pour tous du 30 juillet 1863’ (‘Science for everyone from 30 July 1863’), taken from Henri Robin, L’Almanach illustré ‘Le Cagliostro’ (Paris: Pagnerre, 1864).

drawn landscapes projected on screen, which in turn attested the truthfulness of these landscapes and the animals dwelling there. Scientific realism was indeed an important element of the performance. It is significant that none other than contemporary Abbot Moigno mentioned Robin’s geological shows to promote the magic lantern as an instrument of truth. François Napoléon Marie Moigno was a French Catholic priest and Jesuit who devoted his life to science communication for the masses. He belonged to the progressive clergy and was a supporter of ‘concordism’, the principle of exegesis consisting in interpreting the sacred texts in such a way that they do not contradict scientific knowledge. Already during his life, Moigno became known as ‘the apostle of projection’.35 He clearly admired Robin for his shows, merely suggesting a technical update to enhance scientific accuracy:

35 Laurent Mannoni. The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema (Exeter: University Press, 2000), 268.

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Mr Robin, in these last evenings, has taken up his geological tableaux again […]; but these tableaux, like almost all the views projected by the skillful physicist, are paintings that leave much to be desired from the point of view of design and truth; when he has photography at his disposal, he will show us many other wonders!36 Moigno’s remark underscores once again that ideal views were a tight balancing act and that the ‘faculty of imagination’ (Figuier) had to be restricted when it came to science. Representation of new knowledge should not venture off too far into aesthetics. Truth depended on correspondence with facts. But what mattered as much as anything for the audience’s understanding of earth’s history was the relationship of evidence to belief. When visitors saw geology on show they were not only taught how to interpret the history of the world but also to situate divine providence in it. A large picture reproduced by Robin as an illustration to his lantern show drove the point home.37 A composite image reassembles the protagonists of deep time in a typical prehistoric landscape. Remarkably enough, in the middle of the scene there is an emblematic earth globe. The great iguanodon, the mammoth, pterodactyl, and other animals that roamed the earth raise their head to gaze with awe and reverence at this globe beyond which God appears in full, with a white beard and rays emanating, to leave no doubt that creation could only have come from His hand. The picture blends together in one image the reconstructions by sculptor and natural history artist Benjamin Hawkins of some of the most spectacular fossil animals that geological research had revealed. When the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London finally closed, Hawkins created life-sized sculptures of dinosaurs for the permanent arts and science exhibition in the Crystal Palace, the steel and glass building that held the heritage of the mass event of 1851.38 Robin was in London around the same time, where he opened his ‘Salle Robin’ in 1850, and there is no doubt that the avid showman had picked up the popular display of monsters and copied the scientific illustrations that went along with it.39 Robin recombined them into a tableaux which succinctly set the scene for the reconciliation of science and religion. It is moreover striking that commentaries on Robin’s geology shows invariably stress the breaks between the epochs. In what must be the longest and most poetic evocation of Robin’s geology performance, the author and critic Paul de Saint-Victor recounts the evening in detail, focusing on the interruptions in the progressive plot towards the appearance of man. After each epoch, ‘creation gets back to work; it sees that what it has done is not good’ by way of an ‘unknown and purifying cataclysm’.40 God in other words simply did away with an epoch because he wanted to abolish barbaric nature or punish

36 Abbot Moigno. Les Mondes: revue hebdomadaire des sciences et leurs applications aux arts et à l’industrie, volume 1 (Paris: Étienne Giraud, 1863), 480; also cf. a similar remark on page 340. 37 Cf. Robin. L’Almanach illustré ‘Le Cagliostro’, 30. 38 Rudwick. Scenes from Deep Time, 135–73. 39 Robin as a magician imported the format of the science show mainly from London. Cf. Edwin Alfred Dawes. Henri Robin Expositor of Science & Magic (Balboa Island: Abracadabra Press, 1990); cf. also Vanhoutte, and Wynants. ‘On the Passage of a Man of the Theatre’. 40 De Saint-Victor, quoted in Édouard Secrétan. Secrets et Mystères de la sorcellerie: ou, la magie mise à portée de tout le monde (Paris: Lebigre-Duquesne frères, 1865), 313.

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the cruel creatures roaming his earth. The geologic periods were, so to speak, chapters in His work in progress, leading up to the creation of man. This picturing of deep time as a gradual story punctuated by occasional ruptures corresponds to the theory of catastrophism developed by Georges Cuvier as discussed above. All the while, any incompatibilities between geology and Genesis that might have profoundly unsettled the audience of science performance seemed to ebb away. When, as an example, M. Fossier brought his ‘The Earth Before Man’s Creation’ to the Brussels Alhambra in 1874, he could freely address ‘[…] The morals and customs of antediluvian man according to the facts acquired by science’.41 Fossier, director of the ‘amusing physics matinee’ of the famous Théâtre de Folies-Dramatiques, toured France, the Netherlands, and Belgium between 1870 and 1892 with a performance that was reportedly ‘half science, half magic lantern’.42 He used between thirty and forty lantern slides that, judging by the titles of his shows, he recuperated from different source books, from Figuier to Flammarion.43 The appearance of the first human was invariably the culminating point in the concept of prehistory, in which the deep past found its fulfillment in the human world. We saw how it had prompted Figuier and Riou to alter the scene in the middle of a successful edition. But to address the issue like Fossier did, as a social situation with a certain continuity (‘morals and customs’), and not as a deus ex machina with an encapsulated – Caucasian – couple fallen from the heavens, seems to suggest a context that was less tense. It appears that the awareness of current ideas in the earth sciences increased in the wider world. Genesis and geology usually stayed on the same page, even when science progressed and knowledge increased. This is made explicit by a commentator who reassured the audience on occasion of Fossier’s passage through Belgium. He wrote in 1870: Don’t cry heresy, M. Fossier’s paintings, and the explanations which accompany his views of the primitive world, of races, of extinct animals, of the appearance of man […] have precisely brought back our memories of […] lectures given at Notre Dame by R. P. Félix on mystery and science, on the days, or rather on the epochs of creation.44 The journalist’s somewhat enigmatic reference was to the then famous Jesuit priest and rhetorician Joseph Félix, whose conferences in the Parisian cathedral had a great impact on public opinion. Félix safeguarded the thesis of divine intervention. ‘Not only is geological science not against us, it is for us, it speaks like us’, the sermon straightforwardly noted, ‘these two books answer each other page by page with an accuracy that we could not even have imagined’.45

41 L’Écho du parlement (10 May 1874). 42 Ibid. 43 ‘La Terre avant le déluge’, ‘La Terre avant la création de l’homme ou le Berceau de l’univers’. The latter seems a contraction of the titles of books by Figuier (La Terre…) and Flammarion (Berceau…). There are slides from Flammarion in the Braganza archive, and they are also enlisted in the aforementioned Molteni and Massiot & Radiguet catalogues. So, it is safe to assume that showmen like Figuier combined both sources. 44 Courrier de l’Escaut (24 June 1870). 45 Joseph Félix. Le progrès par le christianisme. Conférences de Notre-Dame de Paris (Paris: A. Le Clère, 1863), 138.

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Conclusion The magic lantern positively facilitated the transfer of new ways of thinking into the popularization of the earth sciences. The mission required the capacity to reassure the audience that the new knowledge was not harmful, that it was in fact edifying, because its findings were compatible with the core religious teachings. This is where lantern projection as a performative experience actualized its full potential. Scenes of creation continued to attract large audiences well into the twentieth century. Showmen picked up on the mediating efforts of the authors and illustrators who produced the new scientific source books. Riou’s canonical sequence of scenes in particular was designed to bring home the scientific argument in a time when orthodox religious belief had to be reconciled with new empiric findings. I have shown that the imaginative repertoire more specifically brought into conjunction three pictorial traditions: natural history illustration based on the reconstruction of fossils and skeletons, historical, biblical illustration based on the interpretation of Genesis, and, of equal importance, aesthetic pictorial traditions. There was a sensuous aesthetic at play that can be followed through the most crucial twists and turns in Figuier’s narrative. Even the plainest of facts could apparently be combined with images culled from the narratives of creation in the early chapters of Genesis. Likewise, standing before the audience, the lecturer served as a mediator, guiding viewers through the slides and dictating the narrative in which these slides found their place. He controlled the presentation syntax and the discursive context. References to divine stewardship of the overall plot of deep time were crucial for their capacity to reassure the audience. Popularizers actively sought signs of divine imprints in the empirically-traced patterns of science, or, like Robin, they simply added them. Ideal views of deep time were hybrid pictures. They were firmly rooted in new scientific evidence, yet they slotted the empirics, with artistic brilliance, into older and more familiar frames of reference that were biblical. As such, they were able to confirm religious metaphysics in the intellectual space of secular science. An important reason why lanternists chose to use the same tableaux for over more than fifty years, was indeed the comfort of familiarity and the ability to harmonize the new and the old. The ultimate meaning of the slide was moreover not necessarily in keeping with its predefined function and intention. Slides could easily be re-arranged and reordered for different purposes and audiences. Generating awe and wonder was as much part of the process as was the inquiry into nature. Interrogating prehistory and turning prehistory into a spectacle were the same thing. It of course manifested itself in spicier and more exciting offerings, but the shows also in a profound way mediated scientific realism and religious belief. For a long time, catastrophism seemed able to balance scientific and religious concerns. The theory that sudden events of great intensity gradually wiped out the successive geological periods was widespread. Its basics aligned with the projection logic of the lantern, which in turn implied a progressive narrative of history punctuated by divine interruption. Gradually, bolder scientific statements heightened the tension and the empirical grounds of Cuvier’s theory were eventually disproved. Theories that did not comply with hard evidence were becoming harder to accept. Moreover, by the early twentieth century, the use of other technologies (such as radiometric dating) lay claim to the truth. Also, the staging context and its technologies drastically changed. Remarkably enough, there are

deep time through the lens of the magic lantern: genesis and geology

clues that geological shows were still being performed by Jesuits in Antwerp until well into the 1960s, but these seem to be rare exceptions.46 By that time, the magic lantern as a major instrument of geological knowledge had largely retreated from the scene. Acknowledgments I wish to thank Jacinto Pedro Carrasco Claver of the IES Bárbara de Braganza in Badajoz (Spain) for the slides that prompted me to find out more about scenes of creation, Diana Arbaiza for facilitating the transfer, Sabine Lenk for bringing to my attention a beautiful copy of Figuier’s La Terre avant le déluge (second edition, 1867), Kristien Van Damme and Sylvia Alting van Geusau for their help with archival material on M. Fossier, and Ilja Nieuwland for the engaging conversations on the interplay of palaeontology and entertainment.47 Bibliography Blanckaert, Claude. ‘Les bases de la civilisation; lectures de l’homme primitive de Louis Figuier (1870)’, Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française 90.1 ( January-February 1993): 31–49 Cardot, Fabienne. ‘Le théâtre scientifique de Louis Figuier’, Romantisme 65 (1989): 59–68 Dawes, Edwin Alfred. Henri Robin Expositor of Science & Magic (Balboa Island: Abracadabra Press, 1990) Dünne, Jörg. Die Katastrophische Feerie. Geschichte, Geologie und Spektakel in der modernen französischen Literatur (Konstanz: University Press, 2016) Félix, Joseph. Le Progrès par le christianisme. Conférences de Notre-Dame de Paris (Paris: A. Le Clère, 1863) Figuier, Louis. L’Année scientifique et industrielle, eighth year (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1863) ——. La Terre avant le déluge, second ed. (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1867) Flammarion, Camille. Le Monde avant la création de l’homme ou le Berceau de l’univers (Paris: Schulz et Thuillié, 1857) Fox, Robert. The Savant and the State, Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth Century France (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) Fyfe, Aileen, and Bernd Lightman. Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences (Chicago: University Press, 2007) Glick, Thomas. The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (Chicago: University Press, 1988)

46 The archive of the Letterenhuis in Antwerp (Belgium) contains posters advertising Albert Raignier or Florent C. Bertiau and the Elckerlyc Genootschap with shows entitled ‘Ontstaan van het heelal’ (‘Creation of the Universe’) and ‘Ontstaan van de mens’ (‘Creation of Humankind’) as a ‘voordracht met lichtbeelden’ (‘demonstration with slides’). 47 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Goodall, Jane. Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin: Out of the Natural (London, New York: Routledge, 2002) Gould, Stephen Jay. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1987) ‘Henri Robin’s appearance at the Egyptian Hall, 1862’, Poster in the Evanion Catalog of the British Library, Evan.1392, [accessed 3 September 2020] Hoffmann, Detlef. ‘Malerische Wissenschaft’, in Laterna Magica – Vergnügen, Belehrung, Unterhaltung. Der Projektionskünstler Paul Hoffmann, edited by Historisches Museum Frankfurt (Frankfurt am Main: Dezernat für Kultur und Freizeit, 1981), 63–77 Hoffmann, Detlef, and Almut Junker. Laterna Magica. Lichtbilder aus Menschenwelt und Götterwelt (Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1982) Maddox, Brenda. Reading the Rocks: How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2018) Malan, Dan. ‘Gustave Doré: Magic Lantern Slides’, The New Magic Lantern Journal 9.1 (Winter 2001): 3–6 Mannoni, Laurent. The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema (Exeter: University Press, 2000) Mitchell, William John Thomas. The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon (Chicago: University Press, 1998) Moigno, François Napoléon Marie. Les Mondes: Revue hebdomadaire des sciences et leurs applications aux arts et à l’industrie, volume 1 (Paris: Étienne Giraud, 1863) Molteni, Joseph, and Alfred Molteni. Catalogue des appareils de projection; tableaux et accessoires de J. & A. Molteni, N° 31 (Paris, 1874) Moser, Stephanie. Ancestral Images: The Iconography of Human Origins (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998) Narayana, Valérie ‘Des Espèces de l’origine: le feuilleton scientifique de Louis Figuier dans la presse de 1862’, Etudes littéraires 10.3 (2009): 73–86 Radiguet & Massiot. Projections Molteni. Éditions des Diapositives pour Conférences Scientifiques et Mondaines, N° 38, 1er fascicule Astronomie (Paris: Radiguet & Massiot, n.d.), Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource (http://lucerna.exeter.ac.uk/text/index. php?language=EN&id= 4009989, [accessed 28 August 2020], and https://archive.org/ details/RadiguetEtMassiotCatalogue38part1Images/page/n. 17/mode/2up?q=mondaines) Robin, Henri. L’Almanach illustré ‘Le Cagliostro’. Histoire des spectres vivants et impalpables. Secrets de la physique amusante, dévoilés par M. Robin (Paris: Pagnerre, 1864) Rudwick, Martin John Spencer. Scenes From Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World (Chicago: University Press, 1992) ——. Earth’s Deep History: How It was Discovered and Why It Matters (Chicago: University Press, 2014) Secrétan, Édouard. Secrets et mystères de la sorcellerie ou, la Magie mise a portée de tout le monde (Paris: Lebigre-Duquesne frères, 1865) Somerset, Richard. ‘Textual Evolution: The Translation of Louis Figuier’s La Terre avant le déluge’, The Translator 17.2 (2011): 255–74 Unger, Franz. Die Urwelt in ihren verschiedenen Bildungsperioden (Vienna, 1851), translated by Samuel Higley as Ideal Views of the Primitive World in Its Geological and Palaeontological Phases (London: Taylor and Francis, 1863)

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Verne, Jules. Voyage au centre de la terre (Paris: Pierre-Jules Hetzel, 1864) Vanhoutte, Kurt. ‘Re-enactment and the Magic Lantern Performance: Possessed by History’, in A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slides in the History of Learning, edited by Sarah Dellmann, and Frank Kessler (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing: 2020), 251–63 Vanhoutte, Kurt, and Nele Wynants. ‘On the Passage of a Man of the Theatre Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: Henri Robin, Performing Astronomy in Nineteenth Century Paris’, Early Popular Visual Culture 15.2 ( June 2017): 152–74

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Films Fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization in Interwar Belgium

Introduction In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the more visually oriented didactic of the Éducation Nouvelle (New Education) established itself in Belgium as elsewhere in Europe as an antidote to the supposed verbalism and passivity that characterized teaching informed by older pedagogical principles.1 Whereas the latter favored an exclusively textual mediation of knowledge through books, lectures, and memorization, the former was firmly grounded in positivist epistemology and advocated a more immediate style of learning: it favored an ‘active-intuitive’ method, in which children learned by touching, observing, and even listening to natural objects, or, in their absence, by closely examining models, illustrations or projected still, or moving images.2 For a long time, however, these pleas were often met with resistance, especially in Catholic circles. To a large extent this was due to the widespread suspicions among many Catholic educators about the supposed dangers of exposing young people to commercial images in a non-didactic setting or without ‘proper’ methodological and moral framing. In their view, these commercial images were not so much carriers of information as potential incendiaries, which were potentially evil and harmful, and ushered in temptation.3 Well into the 1930s, Belgian Catholic pedagogical journals and magazines frequently published warnings about the negative effects of unmediated image consumption. At the same time,



1 Dominique Grootaers. ‘Belgische schoolhervormingen in het licht van de “Éducation Nouvelle” (1870–1970)’, Jaarboek voor de geschiedenis van opvoeding en onderwijs (2001): 9–15. 2 Grootaers. ‘Belgische schoolhervormingen’, 14; Marc Depaepe, and others (eds). Orde in vooruitgang. Alledaags handelen in de Belgische lagere school (1880–1970) (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 1999), 57. 3 Daniël Biltereyst, and Daniela Treveri Gennari, ‘Catholics, Cinema and Power. An Introduction’, in Moralizing Cinema: Film, Catholicism, and Power, edited by Daniël Biltereyst, and Daniela Treveri Gennari (New York: Routledge, 2015); Hans-Ulrich Grunder. ‘Die Verteufelung des Bildes in der Geschichte der Pädagogik’, Paedagogica Historica 36.1 (2000): 53–71. Nelleke Teughels • Research group Cultural History since 1750, KU Leuven, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 209–223 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129104 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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Fig. 1. Various containers for and spools of films fixes (stopfilms) from the private collection of Hans Luyten. From left to right: films fixes by La Photoscopie, Centrale voor Projektie-Onderwijs, and La Cinéscopie. (Photograph by the author, reproduced with the permission of Hans Luyten).

all of these authors recognized the opportunities and ways to exploit the didactic and pedagogical possibilities offered by images. This ambiguous attitude towards the visual would remain a constant in Belgian Catholic writing and practice throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leading to a number of explorations of and experiments with modern media that all served the same goal: to gain and maintain ‘moral’ and educational control over image consumption and thereby to strengthen the influence of the Catholic Church over children and adolescents. During the interwar years, the Church was confronted with the relentlessly increasing popularity of film, which it considered to be one of the great modern dangers to children’s and adolescents’ morality and even their physical well-being.4 It struggled to decide on the most effective measures to take. Aside from various initiatives to adapt the themes and storylines of commercially produced films to Catholic standards of morality, this struggle also served as an incentive to explore other modern media that allowed for greater control over narratives and world views than film, but were equally enthralling to children and youngsters. From its first appearance in the early nineteen-twenties, Catholic school teachers, priests, and Catholic youth organizations were quick to embrace the opportunities offered by film fixe (also known as diafilm, stopfilm, or filmstrip) (cf. Fig. 1). A film fixe is a spooled roll of 35 mm (sometimes also 30 mm) positive film about one metre long on which between twenty and fifty images are reproduced back-to-back in sequential order. These images are projected one by one, with the lecturer providing the necessary commentary. Closely

4 Cf., for example, H. Derckx. ‘De kinema-plaag’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 33 (1911): 542–47; V. R. ‘Het kinemagevaar’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 35 (1914): 332–36; Les Choncq Clotiers, ‘À propos de Cinéma’, JOC 20 (17 May 1930): 306; Pius XI’s encyclical Divini illius Magistri of 31 December 1929; Pius XI’s encyclical Vigilanti Cura of 29 June 1936; Daniël Biltereyst. ‘The Roman Catholic Church and Film Exhibition in Belgium, 1926–1940’, Historical Journal of Film 27.2 (2007): 193–214.

Films Fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization

related to film, it shared all of its benefits: it was lightweight, easy to operate and appealed to a wide audience by providing more direct and presumably more long-lasting sensory impressions.5 However, unlike films, with their prefabricated storylines and worldviews that were often at odds with Catholic teaching, films fixes provided more structured encounters with the world and allowed teachers to retain control over the narrative. Despite their widespread use in education, especially during the first three decades after the Second World War, films fixes are now largely forgotten by the public. However, in recent years the medium has attracted the attention of a small group of French media historians and historians of education.6 They offer important insights into the introduction of film fixe in France, its use by the French clergy and missionaries, and how it was considered by the exponents of the Mouvement de l’éducation nouvelle (New Education Movement). By studying producers’ and the Catholic discourse on the introduction and use of film fixe projection in religious teaching and evangelization in Belgium during the interwar period, this article investigates how and why film fixe became an important pedagogical tool for Belgian Catholic teachers, priests, and organizations. In doing so, it seeks to add to our knowledge of the Catholic Church’s ambiguous attitude toward still and moving image projection and the underlying anxiety about the power of images. Additionally, by investigating the discussions about related educational media such as magic lantern slides and educational film, it contributes to our understanding of the conditions or dispositif that shaped the perception of images as trustworthy and the intermedial relationships between different types of light projection. Theory and Methodology The analysis presented in this paper is inspired by the concept of dispositif, a concept that is frequently used in film studies to analyse the screening situation. This study draws on the concept of the dispositif as defined by Frank Kessler, who builds on Jean-Louis Baudry’s use of the term in film theory rather than on Michel Foucault’s.7 In Kessler’s view, it can be used to understand the functioning of an entire range of media configurations involving a specific arrangement of technology, subject, and textual form.8 When addressing the technological component, he stresses the need to take into account the pragmatic dimension of communication: not only should we study the media technology





5 Valérie Vignaux. ‘Le film fixe Pathéorama (1921) ou généalogie d’une invention’, Trema 41 (2014): 36–43 (https:// doi.org/10.4000/trema.3128). 6 Cf., e.g., Isabelle Dujonc. ‘Les films fixes et les missionnaires de l’Ouest de la France’, Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest 112.2 (2005): 115–33; Didier Nourission. ‘Le 7e art… d’enseigner: le film fixe’, in Cinéma-École: aller-retour, Saint-Étienne, edited by Didier Nourrisson, and Paul Jeunet (Saint-Étienne: Presses universitaires de Saint-Étienne, 2001), 151–64; Didier Nourisson. ‘Une histoire nationale et locale des films fixes d’enseignement’, Trema 41 (2014): 24–35; Vignaux. ‘Le film fixe Pathéorama’; Sylvain Wagnon, and Hélène André. ‘Le film fixe, un outil pédagogique au service de l’histoire de l’éducation?’, Le cartable de Clio. Revue suisse sur les didactiques de l’histoire 13 (2013): 200–12. 7 Frank Kessler. ‘The Multiple Dispositifs of (Early) Cinema’, Cinémas 29.1 (2018): 54; Frank Kessler. ‘The Cinema of Attractions as Dispositif ’, in The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, edited by Wanda Strauven (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 57–70. 8 Kessler. ‘The Multiple Dispositifs’, 55.

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intervening in the communication process, but also the purpose for which it is used. In addition, the techno-pragmatic pole assigns a specific role to the subject(s) and also influences the texts that accompany the screening. The textual aspect consists of a mode of address that is aimed at eliciting a certain response in the user-spectator and a rhetoric strategy that relates directly to the space of communication in its broadest sense (e.g., lantern screenings with the aim of evangelization). The user-spectator can either accept or reject the role he or she has been assigned in this communication process and adjust his or her attitude accordingly.9 Building on these insights, this paper uses the concept as a constructive tool to investigate the relationship between the various elements involved in the act of light projection of still or moving images and the relationship between the various actors involved (the projectionist, the audience, and the subject). The concept also permits a comparison between different media. In addition, it allows us to investigate changes throughout time and space; for, as Frank Kessler rightly pointed out, the dispositif is also subject to change.10 The Origins of Film Fixe The origins of films fixes remain somewhat unclear. The French film company Pathé frères was probably the first to patent and commercialize the medium: on 25 March 1921, it applied for a patent for a ‘Pathéorama’. The name referred both to a noncombustible film about 1 m long and 30 mm wide, made up of various cinematographic views, and to a device that could be used for the direct viewing of said film.11 In October 1922 the firm filed a patent for a projection apparatus, named Cocorico, which allowed owners of a Pathéorama device to transform it into an image projector. As Charles Pathé himself stated, the apparatus was intended to replace the images on fragile and heavy glass plates as used in lantern slide projection with still images on 30 mm film.12 However, the small dimensions of the projected image (no more than 100 cm in width and 80 cm in height) implied that it was not fit for use in large-scale projection or lecture halls.13 Its particular dispositif undoubtedly came about mainly as a consequence of Pathé’s search for new ways to make use of the film waste from its film factory: the excess sections of blank celluloid film that were too short to be used in the production of motion pictures were now used to produce films fixes. Together with the apparatus’ reasonably affordable price, its dispositif made it accessible and easy to use by families and small organizations. It was marketed as a projection device for popular use, both as a children’s toy and an instructional tool.14 Despite a publicity discourse that explicitly marketed the instructional use of film fixe, the Pathéorama catalogue of 1929 did not contain any films that could be called ‘scientific’ 9 10 11 12 13

Ibid., 55–56. Ibid., 53. Vignaux. ‘Le film fixe Pathéorama’. Ibid., 2. Coralie Goutanier, and Julien Lepage, ‘Le film fixe: une source à découvrir’, Histoire@Politique. Politique, culture, société 4 (2008): 1; Vignaux, ‘Le film fixe Pathéorama’. 14 Charles Pathé. Écrits autobiographiques (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006), 299.

Films Fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization

or truly fit for use in instruction. Half of the films fixes listed were what the company called ‘documentary’. However, most of those contained mainly picturesque views of cities and landscapes, highlighting tourist attractions rather than offering information about a country’s or region’s population, flora and fauna or cultural practices. Religious topics made up only 5% of all the titles in the catalogue.15 Competitors were quick to launch their own projection devices and series of films fixes. One of Pathé’s rivals was La Photoscopie, a company founded in 1924 by the Belgian chemist, physicist, and engineer Robert Goldschmidt. Even before the First World War, Goldschmidt, together with Paul Otlet, had already investigated the possibilities of microfilm digitization of books. In the early 1920s, he commercialized the Photoscope, a 35 mm positive film fixe projector, and a series of films microphotes, as the company called the spools (cf. Fig. 2).16 In an article published in 1927, Albert Crémieux, the Paris representative of the Belgian firm, described how this celluloid film could be used to reproduce texts, manuscripts, art works, etc. and how these reproductions could be enlarged through light projection, using the ‘machine à lire’ (‘reading machine’) the company had developed for this purpose. Although the author made no reference to Pathé, the ‘photoscopic procedure’, as he explained it, was almost identical to the dispositif of the Pathéorama.17 There is no doubt that Goldschmidt was familiar with the Pathéorama, given the amount of publicity that was generated for the French invention. Moreover, La Photoscopie had established a branch in Paris somewhere between 1924 and 1927, and it is therefore safe to assume that its owner was familiar with the French market. The only difference between Goldschmidt’s apparatus and the Pathéorama was that the machine à lire could also be used to project the images on a horizontal surface, such as a table or desk top.18 Indeed, ever since his influential 1906 article written with Paul Otlet on the possibility of creating microphotographic (microfiche) books,19 it was clear that Goldschmidt was focused on the educational market. La Photoscopie would produce mainly educational films microphotes on various subjects (e.g., art history, natural sciences, industrial production), filling the gaps left by Pathé.20 Soon, new firms specializing in film fixes emerged in Belgium and abroad, while other companies expanded their business activities to include this visual medium. Like La Photoscopie, most of them were aimed at a specific niche market. In line with its magic lantern slide series, films, and publications, the French company Maison de la Bonne

15 Vignaux. ‘Le film fixe Pathéorama’. 16 François Stockmans. ‘Goldschmidt (Robert Benedict)’, Biographie Nationale publiée par l’Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 42 (Brussels: Établissements Émile Bruylant, 1981), 300–44. 17 Albert Crémieux. ‘Un instrument nouveau pour le travail historique’, Revue d’histoire moderne 2.12 (1927): 401–11. 18 Ibid., 401–02. 19 Robert Goldschmidt, and Paul Otlet. ‘Sur une forme nouvelle du livre: le livre microphotographique’, Bulletin de l’IIB 12 (1907): 61–69. 20 Cf., for example, La Photoscopie. Matériel d’enseignement primaire, secondaire, technique, post-scolaire (Paris: Éditions de la Photoscopie, 1934); Ministère des Sciences et des Arts, Administration de l’enseignement moyen. Huitième supplément au catalogue des ouvrages classiques dont le Gouvernement autorise l’emploi dans les établissements soumis au régime des lois organiques et des moyens matériels d’enseignement et d’ornementation des classes dont l’emploi est recommandé (Brussels: Imprimerie du Moniteur Belge, 1928). In 1928, the Belgian Ministry of Sciences and Arts added a large selection of educational films microphotes and the projector needed to project the images to its list of teaching aids recommended for secondary education.

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Fig. 2. A film microphote by La Photoscopie about Bruges (series 2), from the private collection of Hans Luyten. Suggested lecture notes were reproduced on the film before the opening image. (Photograph by the author, reproduced with the permission of Hans Luyten).

Presse for example offered mainly films fixes on religious (Roman-Catholic) themes.21 Likewise, the film spools produced by La Cinéscopie, apparently a Belgian spin-off of La Photoscopie,22 often drew inspiration from the Bible and the lives of saints and martyrs, although the company also offered series on geography, history, including history of art, and science.23 The Crusade Against Immoral Images Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church had felt it was under increasing attack from an ever-growing number of secular organizations (socialists, Freemasons, liberals, among others), spreading their ‘corrupting’ messages by means of illustrated lectures and motion pictures. Despite their enduring suspicion of images, the success of their enemies’ initiatives prompted Catholic educators and priests to fight them with their own weapons.24 However, this is not to say that the Church adopted an ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ attitude: not every visual medium was met with the same enthusiasm. Ever since its emergence at the end of the nineteenth century, commercial cinema had been viewed with distrust by the Catholics. As the medium’s popularity increased, this distrust intensified: commercial films came to be regarded as sinful and highly dangerous by the Church, because of the presumed nefarious influence they could

21 Cf. the lists of ‘films-stop’, as they were called by the company, published regularly in Le Fascinateur from 1926 onwards. 22 According to the Brussels business guides, until 1928 the S. A. La Photoscopie was registered on Rue aux Laines 29 in Brussels, with engineer André Van Remoortel as its owner. In 1929, the firm had moved to Rue Berckmans 121. From then on, the S. A. La Cinéscopie was registered in Rue aux Laines 29, again with Van Remoortel as owner. 23 Cf., from 1935 onwards, the lists of films fixes published in La Société Anonyme La Cinéscopie. Les Films Cinéscope. Bulletin périodique pour la diffusion des méthodes nouvelles d’enseignement et de propagande (Brussels). 24 Frank Kessler, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2019): 89–111; Nelleke Teughels. ‘Expectation Versus Reality: How Visual Media Use in Belgian Catholic Secondary Schools was Envisioned, Encouraged and Put into Practice (c. 1900–1940)’, Paedagogica Historica (2021) (DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2020.1856153).

Films Fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization

exert on the malleable souls of children and adolescents. When commercial films entered schools during the interwar years, many members of the Catholic Church became involved in a genuine crusade against immoral motion pictures.25 Central to this movement was Action catholique (Catholic Action), the active engagement of the Catholic laity whose aim was to bring about a re-catholicization of modern life. It was initiated by Pope Pius X, but turned into a true mass movement targeting the perceived forces of immorality – including film – under Pope Pius XI from 1922 onward.26 Various methods of combat were explored: film censorship, film recommendations, Catholic film productions and distribution.27 The battle was also fought through the deployment of other modern visual media which would equally captivate the audience but which at the same time offered more flexibility to the lecturer to impose Catholic standards of morality on the images. Light projection of still images seemed very well-suited for these purposes, since for over three decades now, there appeared to have been general agreement among educators that they had a mesmerizing effect on children and adults alike, and an assumption that this would raise educational effectiveness. In the years leading up to and immediately after the First World War, before the advent of film fixe, Belgian Catholic pedagogical journals regularly discussed the dangers and merits of light projection of both still and moving images, contrasting them to decide which medium was best suited for religious instruction. The general consensus seems to have been that lantern slide projection was to be preferred over film projection, since the latter was frequently associated with moral decline and health problems in young people, such as nervousness, impaired concentration, and fatigue. Some Catholic educators asserted that cinema placed excessive strain on the senses – a negative attribute it shared, according to these authors, with modern urban life as it was emerging at the time.28 On the other hand, some Catholic authors claimed that cinema required no intellectual effort at all from young people, and that it was a very passive method of instruction, at odds with all modern views on education. Therefore, it was argued, the use of motion pictures as a means of instruction would yield very little in the way of educational and moral results.29 Lantern slide projection, by contrast, if used sparingly and wisely, could bring religious subjects to life and provide children and adolescents with clear, complete, and lasting images.30 Moreover, the inherent mental passivity that some Catholic authors associated with film not only supposedly affected the audience, but by extension also the person in charge of the film screening. Even silent films offered prefabricated narratives that could 25 26 27 28

Biltereyst, and Treveri Gennari. ‘Catholics, Cinema and Power. An Introduction’, 2. Biltereyst. ‘The Roman Catholic Church and Film Exhibition in Belgium’. Biltereyst, and Treveri Gennari. Moralizing Cinema. Cf., e.g., Abbot Victor Carrière. ‘La question de l’enseignement religieux au Congrès de Malines (1909). La Méthode Catéchétique’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 32 (1910–1911): 119; H. Deckx. ‘De kinema-plaag’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 33 (1911–1912): 547; L. Chevalier. ‘Le cinema éducateur’, Nova et Vetera 6.3 & 6.4 (1923): 398–99; Anonymous. ‘Schoolbioscoop en groote-stadsleven’, De Opvoeder 21 (1924): 424–26; Anonymous. ‘De Cinema en St-Vincentiusgenootschap’, Maandschrift van het Sint Vincentius a Paolo genootschap 68 (October 1927): 290–93. 29 Cf., e.g., Anonymous. ‘Schoolbioscoop en groote-stadsleven’, 425. 30 Cf. Carrière. ‘La question de l’enseignement religieux’, 116–19; Karel Elebaers. ‘De Lichtbeelden in ’t Onderwijs’, in Compte-rendu des travaux du Congrès national de l’Enseignement Moyen Libre de Belgique, tenu à Bonne-Espérance les 11, 12, 13 septembre 1911, volume II (Rousselare: De Meester, 1911), 338–41; P. Th. ‘De actieve methoden in het nieuw modelprogramma der lagere scholen’, De Opvoeder 20 (1923) 358–59.

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not be altered to cater to the specific needs or purposes of the person, organization, or institution using them. Lantern slide projection, by contrast, allowed educators to build their own storylines, both textually and visually. In some Catholic schools, rather than rely on commercially available, ready to use religious themed slide series and lectures, teachers mixed and matched slides from disparate series and from different producers to create new narratives. In addition, Catholic school teachers often created and added their own slides, by copying images from textbooks, periodicals, newspapers, and other commercial media and by drawing or writing on blank or commercial lantern slides. The lecture notes were regularly changed or updated when new information was made available through textbooks recommended by the Ministry of Sciences and Arts, Catholic newspaper articles, or periodicals.31 This was in line with the popular belief among teachers that teacher-made or teacher-modified media were of higher quality and more in line with the latest pedagogical and didactic principles.32 However, film and lantern slide projection also shared some shortcomings when considered for use in religious instruction. First and foremost, both types of image projection required expensive projection materials. The lack of sufficient financial means to buy the necessary equipment for film or lantern projection seriously hampered the widespread use of these technologies by Catholic schools and organizations.33 Other common stumbling blocks were the technical limitations (or even dangers) of projection equipment and the shortage of appropriate commercial images.34 Moreover, common to both media’s dispositifs was the need to darken the room to allow a clear projection of the images. Various authors were wary of this, for pupils were bound to take advantage of their temporary invisibility, and not all teachers could claim the authority needed to maintain order in class.35 The Film Fixe Dispositif, or ‘Why films fixes?’ When film fixe appeared on the Belgian market in the middle of the 1920s, its producers claimed it would overcome most of the aforementioned problems with high-tech visual media. In an advertorial published in the Catholic pedagogical journal Nova et Vetera in 1928, the Photoscope and films microphotes were dubbed ‘the next step in intuitive teaching’.36 The text was written by André Van Remoortel, head of La Photoscopie, who

31 For a more detailed discussion of these practices in Belgian Catholic secondary schools, cf. Teughels, ‘Expectation Versus Reality’. 32 Cf. J. Gorlia. ‘Projections lumineuses’, Nova et Vetera 1.4 (1912): 480–84; Anonymous. ‘Exposition internationale, scientifique, pédagogique et industrielle “le monde de l’enfance” de St-Petersbourg’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 25 (1904): 364; A. Tomsen. ‘Projection des corps opaques’, Nova et Vetera 2.4 (1913): 521–22. 33 Cf. K. D. L. ‘Radioptican’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 34 (1912): 183–86; N. Wallez. ‘Désidérata scolaires et projets’, Nova et Vetera 5 (1922): 478–81; Chevalier. ‘Le cinema éducateur’. 34 Cf. Véron De Deyne. La lanterne de projections à l’école. Propagation de l’enseignement scientifique par les projections lumineuses (Brussels: J. Lebègue & Cie, 1896), 54; Georges Kemna. Les projections lumineuses dans l’enseignement. Conférence donnée au corps professoral de l’Athénée royal de Liège (Antwerp: Imprimerie J.-E. Buschmann, 1895), 38–39; K. D. L. ‘Radioptican’, 183. 35 Carrière. ‘La question de l’enseignement religieux’, 119; Gorlia. ‘Projections lumineuses’, 480–84. 36 André Van Remoortel. ‘Une étape dans l’intuition’, Nova et Vetera 12.1 (1928): 94–97.

Films Fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization

Fig. 3. Advertisement by the Service Central de l’Éducation (Central Department for Education ) of J. O. C. in the JOC hebdomadaire 11.24 (14 June 1930): 382.

stressed the mesmerizing effect of projected images and acknowledged the pioneering role of Catholic apostolates in their use of this instructional aid, at a time when projection lanterns were still large and heavy, highly combustible, expensive, and difficult to operate.37 All of these troubles would become a thing of the past, Van Remoortel argued, now that La Photoscopie had managed to replace lantern slides with comparable images on film strips. Both the projection apparatus needed to project these images and the images themselves were much smaller, safer, and lightweight and thus easier to transport and operate.38 The author claimed that the whole set-up would be ready in under five minutes and ruled out any mishaps, such as images that were in the wrong order or upside down, that would distract the audience from the main message.39 La Cinéscopie described itself as a firm specializing in ‘new methods for teaching and propaganda’40 and, from 1937 onwards, as offering ‘intellectual recreation’.41 It offered clients who only had a limited budget a small, lightweight, and easy to operate ‘school projector’ (cf. Fig. 3), which could enlarge images to up to 150 × 150 centimetres.42 In answer to the

37 38 39 40

Ibid., 94. Ibid., 95. Ibid., 96. Les Films Cinéscope. Bulletin périodique pour la diffusion des méthodes nouvelles d’enseignement et de propagande (Brussels: La Société Anonyme La Cinéscopie, 1935): 1. 41 Clairs loisirs 1.12 (1937). 42 Les Films Cinéscope, 2.

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question ‘Why films fixes?’, the company immediately made a favorable comparison with magic lantern and cinema projection to underline the particularities and benefits of its product’s dispositif. In this age of movement, trepidation, speed, and vertigo, it stated, the magic lantern of our childhood may seem a childish distraction.43 ‘Cinema that doesn’t move? What is the point of that?’, it went on to ask its readers.44 The answer was simple enough: although the author himself had first been one of the advocates of using film in instruction, or so he claimed, experience had taught him that, generally, film was useless for this purpose, and sometimes even harmful. For in most cases, motion added nothing to the audience’s understanding of what was being shown, and in fact often served only to distract from the important point the lecturer was trying to make. The only area where moving images offered some benefit, he argued, was in science instruction, but for evangelization, nothing was more efficient for showing the audience the ideas and achievements one wanted to discuss, or the miseries one wanted to alleviate, than projected still images.45 The older lantern slides, however, were no match for films fixes. While it was true that they had enlivened many passionate talks by enthusiastic missionaries, who were so devoted to their cause that they put up with the difficulties of handling the cumbersome lantern projectors and fragile but heavy lantern slides, the modern film fixe projectors and celluloid carriers were lightweight, easy to operate, and much cheaper.46 In addition, the article went on to claim, the medium offered teachers and lecturers another great advantage in comparison to most film and lantern slide projectors: according to its producer, the Cinéscope projectors could project clear images even in well-lit rooms or broad daylight.47 It was presumed that this would prevent listeners from dozing off, fumbling in the dark, or engaging in other unwanted behaviour and to allow the lecturer to keep control over the room. By 1935, approximately seven years after the company was founded, La Cinéscopie offered its customers nearly 3800 titles from which to choose.48 Like most producers of lantern slide series, the company also sold extensive lecture notes to accompany the views. Nevertheless, it stressed how difficult it was to apply a one-size-fits-all concept to the texts and lecturers were encouraged to adjust the notes to suit their own needs.49 Indeed, at first glance film fixe seems to have had one major disadvantage over lantern slides that it shared with film: the storylines were more or less fixed, given that the order of the images seemingly could not be changed by the lecturers, nor could they easily add or remove images. So although, in theory, they could alter the accompanying text, this was only possible within the limits imposed by the fixed order and selection of images. Nevertheless, some of the films fixes found in Catholic secondary schools in Belgium show that there were religion teachers who defied the medium’s apparent limitations: some of them were taking the scissors to these film strips, changing the narratives by cutting

43 André Van Remoortel. ‘Pourquoi films fixes?’, Clairs loisirs 1.1 (1937): 3. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Anonymous. ‘Projections lumineuses’, Clairs loisirs 1.2 (1937): 18–19. 47 Ibid., 20. 48 Les Films Cinéscope 1.2. 49 Anonymous. ‘Conférences’, Clairs loisirs 1.2 (1937): 22.

Films Fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization

and adding images.50 In response to this, La Cinéscopie added films on demand: they invited individuals, institutions, and organizations to send in their proposals, including a detailed plan of both the textual and visual narrative, references to the images that should be reproduced, and the order in which this should be done.51 Saving Souls with Film Fixe Projection But how did Catholic teachers, priests, and organizations react to the new medium? Were they actually buying the claims made by sellers and distributors? The answer is apparently yes. The number of films fixes on religious topics that could be obtained from commercial firms such as Maison de la Bonne Presse, Pathé, La Photoscopie, and La Cinéscopie grew rapidly, indicating a significant demand for this type of product. Also testifying to the increasing popularity of films fixes among Catholics was the fact that various Catholic organizations were quick to establish their own production and lending services.52 One of the most important Catholic initiatives encouraging the use of film fixe in Belgium was the Centrale voor Projektie-Onderwijs (Central Service for Teaching with Light Projection, or C. P. O.). It was founded in 1932 by the Davidsfonds, a Catholic organization with local branches all over Flanders promoting Flemish culture. The C. P. O.’s main goal was to provide those local branches with all the necessary equipment to organize illustrated lectures. Davidsfonds members could borrow or buy film fixe projectors, films fixes, and lecture texts. In its laboratory, the C. P. O. developed its own films, but members could also choose from a wide selection of films fixes from other producers in Belgium and abroad.53 In its 1934 catalogue, the C. P. O. advertised its films fixes and projectors with the same arguments as commercial producers, highlighting the low cost, user-friendliness, and wide choice of topics.54 The aim was to boost initiatives by local branches, for the cost of renting or even buying a projector and some films fixes from the C. P. O. was often still lower than a professional lecturer’s fee.55 By the 1930s, many other Catholic organizations had followed suit. The Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne (Young Christian Workers, or J. O. C.), an international organization founded in 1925 and a scion of the contemporary Catholic Action movement, also set up a lending service for films fixes and projectors. By 1930, it had set up a collaboration between its educational department and La Cinéscopie. They found common ground in their strategy of offering workers and their families a wholesome alternative to the commercial and mostly foreign films which drew large crowds but which they considered to be of dubious taste.56 50 Teughels. ‘Expectation Versus Reality’. 51 L’opérateur. ‘La préparation de nouveaux films privés ou de série’, Clairs Loisirs 1.1 (1937): 9–10. 52 Cf., for example, Lumen Christi, an Antwerp company serving the Belgian dioceses and specializing in mission material and religious instruction; Lumen de lumine, a Catholic stopfilm service in Linkebeek, that catered for Catholic priests and organizations. 53 Wouter De Pooter. Het Davidsfonds tijdens het interbellum (Master thesis, KU Leuven, 2005) (http://www. ethesis.net/davidsfonds/davidsfonds.htm); Jan Baptist David. ‘Het Davidsfonds… oud én nieuw! Enkele flarden historie…’, Neerlandia 9 (1964): 141–43. 54 Centrale voor Projektie-Onderwijs, Filmstrook-toestellen kataloog (Leuven, 1934). 55 De Pooter. Het Davidsfonds. 56 JOC hebdomadaire 16 (1930): 250; Anonymous. ‘Projections lumineuses’, Clairs loisirs 1.1 (1937): 2.

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Both the C. P. O. and the J. O. C.’s educational department wanted to serve their own members, but also other (Catholic) groupings and even schools. Judging by the number of films fixes present in school archives and school museums, many Catholic schools and Sunday schools did indeed take an interest in the new medium.57 The teachers at the Heilig Graf (Holy Sepulcher) school in Turnhout for example bought at least eighteen films fixes for religious instruction from various manufacturers, including La Photoscopie, Maison de la Bonne Presse, and La Cinéscopie. Two of the films fixes, a two-part series about Jesus’s childhood, were made by La Cinéscopie on commission for the school, as is stated on the first frame of the film. As mentioned above, another way in which the teachers maintained control over what the children were shown and told, was by altering some of the other films fixes: some strips were carefully cut and a still of a hand-drawn map or of an image copied from a book was added.58 This enduring wish by Catholic lecturers and teachers alike to maintain control over their own narratives, leading them to alter the accompanying text and occasionally even cutting out or adding images, was not lost on the producers. As a result, in December 1937, at their clients’ request, La Cinéscopie announced that made-to-order positive films were now also available as separate images, set in metal frames or between glass plates.59 And thus it heralded a new era, that of the 35 mm slide projector, a medium that would lead to film fixe becoming obsolete and eventually to its disappearance in the 1970s. Conclusions From this study it is clear that the Catholic Church’s ambiguous attitude towards the visual as it emerged in response to the arrival of new visual media at the end of the nineteenth century, and motion pictures in particular, would continue to influence Catholic writing and practice even in the interwar period. It led to various experiments with modern visual media, in which their dispositifs were carefully compared and sometimes even challenged in order to determine the most effective way to capture the audience’s attention without lapsing into mindless entertainment. The main goal was to find the best visual pedagogical tool that would allow Catholic educators and organizations to maintain ‘moral’ control over image consumption and to strengthen the Catholic influence in society. Films fixes offered a good deal of potential for designing and managing the visual experience. Visual narratives could be easily modified or manipulated by altering the accompanying text, by on-demand production, or even by cutting out and adding images. As such, they seemed to be the ideal tool to mold youngsters’ visual consumption habits and adjust their field of vision. It also allowed producers and Catholic teachers and lecturers to set the medium apart from earlier visual media such as the optical lantern 57 For example, Heilig Graf in Turnhout, Leiepoort Deinze Campus St-Vincentius, previously Sint-Vincentius Instituut in Deinze, Sint-Ursula-Instituut in Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver, the collection of teaching aids donated to the Pedagogical Institute, KU Leuven, the collection of the former priest of Heusden-Zolder, now part of the private collection of Hans Luyten. 58 Teughels. ‘Expectation Versus Reality’. 59 Anonymous. ‘Fabrication de nouveaux films. Préparation & documentation des documents’, Clairs Loisirs 1.3 (1937): 39.

Films Fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization

and cinema: it was marketed as a sanctioned educational activity, whereas the other two were portrayed by films fixes producers as being stained by their recreational uses and the darkened rooms they required.60 Bibliography Anonymous. ‘Exposition internationale, scientifique, pédagogique et industrielle “le monde de l’enfance” de St-Petersbourg’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 25 (1904): 362–64 ——. ‘Schoolbioscoop en groote-stadsleven’, De Opvoeder 21 (1924): 424–26 ——. ‘De Cinema en St-Vincentiusgenootschap’, Maandschrift van het Sint Vincentius a Paolo genootschap 68 (October 1927): 290–93 ——. ‘Projections lumineuses’, Clairs loisirs 1.2 (1937): 18–19 ——. ‘Conférences’, Clairs loisirs 1.2 (1937): 22–23 ——. ‘Fabrication de nouveaux films. Préparation & documentation des documents’, Clairs Loisirs 1.3 (1937): 38–39 Biltereyst, Daniël. ‘The Roman Catholic Church and Film Exhibition in Belgium, 1926–1940’, Historical Journal of Film 27.2 (2007): 193–214 Biltereyst, Daniël, and Daniela Treveri Gennari. ‘Catholics, Cinema and Power. An Introduction’, in Moralizing Cinema: Film, Catholicism, and Power, edited by Daniël Biltereyst, and Daniela Treveri Gennari (New York: Routledge, 2015), 1–15 Carrière, Victor. ‘La question de l’enseignement religieux au Congrès de Malines (1909). La Méthode Catéchétique’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 32 (1910–1911): 116–19 Centrale voor Projektie-Onderwijs (ed.). Filmstrook-toestellen kataloog (Leuven, 1934) Chevalier, L. ‘Le cinéma éducateur’, Nova et Vetera 6.3 & 6.4 (1923): 398–99 Crémieux, Albert. ‘Un instrument nouveau pour le travail historique’, Revue d’histoire moderne, volume 2.12 (1927): 401–11 David, Jan Baptist. ‘Het Davidsfonds… oud én nieuw! Enkele flarden historie’, Neerlandia 9 (1964): 141–43 (https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_nee003196401_01/_ nee003196401_01_0145.php, [accessed 14 February 2022]) De Deyne, Véron. La lanterne de projections à l’école. Propagation de l’enseignement scientifique par les projections lumineuses (Brussels: J. Lebègue & Cie, 1896) Depaepe, Marc, and others (eds). Orde in vooruitgang. Alledaags handelen in de Belgische lagere school (1880–1970) (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 1999) De Pooter, Wouter. ‘Het Davidsfonds tijdens het interbellum’ (Master thesis, KU Leuven, 2005) Derckx, H. ‘De kinema-plaag’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 33 (1911): 542–47 Dujonc, Isabelle. ‘Les films fixes et les missionnaires de l’Ouest de la France’, Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest 112.2 (2005): 115–33

60 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Elebaers, Karel. ‘De Lichtbeelden in ’t Onderwijs’, in Compte-rendu des travaux du Congrès national de l’Enseignement Moyen Libre de Belgique, tenu à Bonne-Espérance les 11, 12, 13 septembre 1911, volume II (Rousselare: De Meester, 1911), 338–41 Goldschmidt, Robert, and Paul Otlet. ‘Sur une forme nouvelle du livre: le livre microphotographique’, Bulletin de l’IIB 12 (1907): 61–69 Gorlia, J. ‘Projections lumineuses’, Nova et Vetera 1.4 (1912): 480–84 Goutanier, Coralie, and Julien Lepage. ‘Le film fixe: une source à découvrir’, Histoire@Politique. Politique, culture, société 4 (2008) (https://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-politique-2008-1page-18.htm, [accessed 28 March 2021]) Grootaers, Dominique. ‘Belgische schoolhervormingen in het licht van de “Éducation Nouvelle” (1870–1970)’, Jaarboek voor de geschiedenis van opvoeding en onderwijs (2001): 9–33 Grunder, Hans-Ulrich. ‘Die Verteufelung des Bildes in der Geschichte der Pädagogik’, Paedagogica Historica 36.1 (2000): 53–71 K. D. L. ‘Radioptican’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 34 (1912): 183–86 Kemna, Georges. Les projections lumineuses dans l’enseignement. Conférence donnée au corps professoral de l’Athénée royal de Liège (Antwerp: Imprimerie J.-E. Buschmann, 1895) Kessler, Frank. ‘The Cinema of Attractions as Dispositif ’, in The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, edited by Wanda Strauven (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 57–70 ——. ‘The Multiple Dispositifs of (Early) Cinema’, Cinémas 29.1 (2018): 51–66 Kessler, Frank, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2019): 89–111 La Photoscopie. Matériel d’enseignement primaire, secondaire, technique, post-scolaire (Paris: Éditions de la Photoscopie, 1934) La Société Anonyme La Cinéscopie. Les Films Cinéscope. Bulletin périodique pour la diffusion des méthodes nouvelles d’enseignement et de propagande (Brussels: La Société Anonyme La Cinéscopie, 1935–1936) Les Choncq Clotiers. ‘À propos de Cinéma’, JOC 20 (17 May 1930): 306 L’opérateur. ‘La préparation de nouveaux films privés ou de série’, Clairs Loisirs 1.1 (1937): 9–10 Ministère des Sciences et des Arts, Administration de l’enseignement moyen. Huitième supplément au catalogue des ouvrages classiques dont le Gouvernement autorise l’emploi dans les établissements soumis au régime des lois organiques et des moyens matériels d’enseignement et d’ornementation des classes dont l’emploi est recommandé (Brussels: Imprimerie du Moniteur Belge, 1928) Nourission, Didier. ‘Le 7e art… d’enseigner: le film fixe’, in Cinéma-École: aller-retour, SaintÉtienne, edited by Didier Nourrisson, and Paul Jeunet (Saint-Étienne: Presses universitaires de Saint-Étienne, 2001), 151–64 ——. ‘Une histoire nationale et locale des films fixes d’enseignement’, Trema 41 (2014): 24–35 Pathé, Charles. Écrits autobiographiques (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006) Pius XI. Divini illius Magistri. Encyclical Letter (31 December 1929) (https://www.vatican.va/ content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121929_divini-illius-magistri. html, [accessed 28 March 2021]) ——. Vigilanti Cura. Encyclical Letter (29 June 1936) (https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/ en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_29061936_vigilanti-cura.html, [accessed 28 March 2021])

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V. R. ‘Het kinema-gevaar’, Het Katholiek Onderwijs 35 (1914): 332–36 Stockmans, François. ‘Goldschmidt (Robert Benedict)’, in Biographie Nationale publiée par l’Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 42 (Brussels: Établissements Émile Bruylant, 1981), 300–44 Teughels, Nelleke. ‘Expectation Versus Reality: How Visual Media Use in Belgian Catholic Secondary Schools was Envisioned, Encouraged and Put into Practice (c. 1900–1940)’, Paedagogica Historica (2021) (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00309230.202 0.1856153, [accessed 28 March 2021]) Th., P. ‘De actieve methoden in het nieuw modelprogramma der lagere scholen’, De Opvoeder 20 (1923): 358–61 Tomsen, A. ‘Projection des corps opaques’, Nova et Vetera 2.4 (1913): 521–22 Van Remoortel, André. ‘Une étape dans l’intuition’, Nova et Vetera 12.1 (1928): 94–97 ——. ‘Pourquoi films fixes?’, Clairs loisirs 1.1 (1937): 3 Vignaux, Valérie. ‘Le film fixe Pathéorama (1921) ou généalogie d’une invention’. Trema 41 (2014), 36–43 (https://doi.org/10.4000/trema.3128, [accessed 28 March 2021]) Wagnon, Sylvain, and Hélène André. ‘Le film fixe, un outil pédagogique au service de l’histoire de l’éducation?’ Le cartable de Clio. Revue suisse sur les didactiques de l’histoire 13 (2013): 200–12 Wallez, N. ‘Désidérata scolaires et projets’, Nova et Vetera 5 (1922): 478–81

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‘Hidden Lanterns’ in fin-de-siècle France and Belgium: (Dis)Belief in Spiritualist Apparitions at the Fairground, Music Hall, and Artistic Cabaret

Introduction In 1897, the enterprise by Élie-Xavier Mazo, producer of magic lanterns and since 1896 one of the secular rivals of the catholic Maison de la Bonne Presse,1 published a handbook, Le Grand Manuel de projection. Guide de l’amateur par le Prestidigitateur (The Great Projection Manual. The Amateur’s Guide by the Illusionist Alber and A. Hégé).2 In the section ‘dérivés de la lanterne’ (‘lantern derivatives’), the author Alber detailed techniques such as the illusion of ‘métempsycose’ (‘metempsychosis’) and ‘ombres chinoises’ or shadow theater used to produce apparitions with a Mazo lantern. These fin-de-siècle attractions were characterized by a lantern, often reduced to a stable and easy to handle light source in an invisible position for the spectator. This ‘hidden lantern’ echoed back-projection of phantasmagoria shows by well-known pioneers such as Paul Philidor and Étienne-Gaspard Robert (Robertson).3 The ombres chinoises used a projector positioned behind the screen from where it presented silhouettes and light effects to the audience via back projection.4 The métempsycose was rather a derivative of the famous ‘Pepper’s Ghost’, a sophisticated phantasmagoria by Henri Pepper that projected ghosts onto glass with a hidden lantern under the stage from the 1850s onwards. (Fig. 1) But the métempsycose required no longer projection from



1 For more information on the illusionist Alber (pseudonym of Jean Jacques Édouard Graves) and Élie-Xavier Mazo, cf. Laurent Mannoni. The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), 277. For more information on the Mazo productions, cf. http://diaprojection.unblog. fr/2011/11/27/histoire-de-l%e2%80%99entreprise-mazo/, [accessed 14 September 2020]. 2 Alber, and A. Hégé. Le Grand Manuel de projection. Guide de l’amateur (Paris: E. Mazo, 1897). 3 Laurent Mannoni. ‘The Phantasmagoria’, Film History 8.4 (1996): 390–415. 4 For technical details concerning light projection and accompanying glass slides at the Parisian Chat Noir, cf. Paul Jeanne, Les Théâtres d’Ombres à Montmartre de 1887 à 1923 (Paris: Les Éditions des presses modernes au Palais Royal, 1937), 52–60. For a detailed report on the application of the lantern in fin-de-siècle shadow play, cf. Alber, Les théâtres d’ombres chinoises: renseignements complets et inédits sur la manière de fabriquer soi-même et d’employer un théâtre d’ombres et les personnages (Paris: E. Mazo, 1896). Evelien Jonckheere • Research Centre for Visual Poetics, University of Antwerp, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 225–240 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129105 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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Fig. 1. Pepper’s Ghost stage set up in Brignogan, La Sorcellerie Amusante (Paris: Librairie Louis Chaux, 1898), 11.

below the stage as it projected light from the wings onto both glass and objects.5 A similar popular fin-de-siècle attraction was the serpentine dance. Here, too, several projectors were positioned in the wings and sometimes below the stage too, from where the light was projected onto the dress of the dancer on the stage.6 As with the projection of ghosts by Philidor, Robertson, and Pepper, hidden lanterns were still popular in fin-de-siècle attractions. They stimulated a magical or supernatural dimension, perfect to raise discussions on popular spiritual themes.7 Yet these fin-de-siècle ‘hidden lantern attractions’ are much less documented than those of the pioneers mentioned above. Nevertheless, the extraordinary Belgian Vliegende





5 For more information on details of the technology of the metempsychosis and the difference with the Pepper’s Ghost, cf. following publications that are the first to treat the illusion of the metempsychosis: Evelien Jonckheere, and Kurt Vanhoutte. ‘Métempsycose as attraction on the fairground: the migration of a ghost’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.3 4 (2019): 261–78; Evelien Jonckheere, and Kurt Vanhoutte. ‘Spirits in the Fairgrounds: Métempsycose and its After Images’, in The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting, edited by Martyn Jolly, and Elisa DeCourcy (New York, London: Routledge, 2020). 6 For technical details concerning light projection in serpentine danses, cf. Hopkins. Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, II and 342–44. In Alber’s Grand Manuel de projection, serpentine dance is very briefly mentioned: Alber, Le Grand Manuel de projection, 214. 7 For more information on the characteristics of reflecting and transparent screens, cf. Hyacinthe P. Fourtier, La pratique des projections. Étude méthodique des appareils. Les accessoires. Usages et applications diverses des projections. Conduit des séances (Paris: Gauthier-Villars et fils, 1893), 1–11.

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Fig. 2. Fairground leaflet ‘Théâtre des Mystères et Merveilles’. (Courtesy: Ghent University, Vliegende Bladen – Collection, BIB.VLBL.HFI.F.032.05).

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Bladen (Flying Razors) Collection demonstrates their popularity given the large number of leaflets referring to apparitions of devils, fairies, ghosts, animated stone busts, and artistic shadows in late nineteenth-century fairgrounds, music halls, and cabarets8 (Fig. 2). These primary sources contain the traces of a rich diversity of underexposed ‘hidden lantern’ illusions produced in fin-de-siècle phantasmagorias that generated new questions of spectatorship and (dis)belief. Media scholars often perceive phantasmagorias as precursors of cinematography, as they generated a first immersive cinematic experience with illusions of movement in a dark auditorium.9 Nevertheless, this contribution will demonstrate that phantasmagoric apparitions, created by ‘hidden lanterns’, were still popular in fin-de-siècle Belgium and France between 1895 until the turn of the century thanks to their references to (dis)belief in spirituality. Inspired by Tom Gunning’s essay ‘Phantasmagoria and the Manufacturing of Illusions and Wonder: Towards a Cultural Optics of the Cinematic Apparatus’ (2004), this contribution explores the complexity in the attraction of phantasmagoric illusions to fin-de-siècle spectators by analyzing a complex interplay of belief and disbelief related to the diversity of specific performance contexts in fin-de-siècle history. According to Gunning, the spectatorship involved in phantasmagoria was much more complex than suggested by the majority of media-archaeologists. Influential studies like Laurent Mannoni’s Le grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre (The Great Art of Light and Shadow, 1994) mainly position phantasmagorias in the enlightened tradition of ‘physique amusante’, as their main aim was to unveil the fallibility of the eye and the deception of so-called supernatural phenomena.10 This statement is widely accepted by media scholars and leads them to position fin-de-siècle illusionists in a similar context of rationality, believing that the main goal of illusionists was to educate the audience. Gunning claims, however, that the connection between phantasmagoria and enlightenment was much more complex. By pointing out that the mystical lantern illusions of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher were used to promote catholic faith rather than enlightenment, and by stating that many mountebanks were merely aiming for entertainment with phantasmagoria shows, Gunning pleads for more historical analysis of phantasmagorias and their effect on the spectator, since these could be both education and belief, as well as/or entertainment.11 This contribution aims to expose a similar diversity in (dis)belief in three fin-de-siècle phantasmagorias or ‘hidden lantern’ attractions: métempsycose, serpentine dance, and ombres chinoises. By paying special attention to the historical context of these lantern performances and specific elements of their dispositif (set up) such as location and audience, a more complex vision of phantasmagorias and spectatorship will be revealed. While most studies of phantasmagoria and optical illusions focus on the spectacles of well-known illusionists

8 For more information on this collection, cf. Yana-Frauke Vandendriessche. ‘Ne détruisez jamais un document. De collectie Vliegende Bladen van de Boekentoren’, Tijd-Schrift 1 (2018): 56–63. 9 Tom Gunning. ‘Phantasmagoria and the Manufacturing of Illusions and Wonder: Towards a Cultural Optics of the Cinematic Apparatus’, in The Cinema: A New Technology of the 20th Century, edited by André Gaudreault, Catherine Russell, and Pierre Véronneau (Lausanne: Payot, 2004), 32. 10 Mannoni. The Great Art of Light and Shadow, 235–37; Iwan Rhys Morus. ‘Illuminating illusions, or, the Victorian art of seeing things’, Early Popular Visual Culture 10.1 (2012): 37–50; Laurent Mannoni. ‘La lanterne magique du Boulevard du Crime. Henri Robin, fantasmagore et magicien’, Revue d’histoire du Cinéma 16 (1994): 5–26. 11 Gunning. ‘Phantasmagoria’, 40–42.

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and performances in cities that were mainly frequented by an upper-class audience, this chapter pays attention to ‘hidden lantern’ attractions in often-overlooked locations, such as the fairground, music hall, and artistic cabaret. As such, a diversity in spectatorship that is frequently overlooked will be detected. Closely connected to the diversity in different entertainment locations, this contribution hopes to show that, notwithstanding an increasing Catholic interest in visual attractions (as addressed in the other contributions in the volume), ‘hidden lantern spectacles’ in fin-de-siècle France and Belgium provide evidence of a broad diversity of (dis)belief(s), reflecting the presence of spiritualist movements such as Spiritisme (making connections between the living and the souls of the dead) and occultism (connecting ancient wisdom with contemporary science in order to develop a complete science of the human mind and body) in fin-de-siècle Belgium and France. As demonstrated by scholars such as Sofie Lachapelle and Lynn L. Sharp, spiritualism generated profound discussions in fin-de-siècle society.12 Consequently, this contribution examines how phantasmagorias or ‘hidden lantern’ illusions mediated these discussions of spirituality and translated them into a diversity of phantasmagoric illusions, thus illustrating a complex of ‘(dis)belief ’ in fin-de-siècle Belgium and France. Spiritism at the Fairground One of the dérivés de la lanterne mentioned in Alber’s projection manual in 1896 was the so-called métempsycose. This illusion was characterized by a sequence of metamorphoses in a black box: a plaster or stone bust transforming into a living woman, then into a skeleton, followed by a bouquet of flowers, and then back again into a woman. This illusion appeared at several Belgian and French fairground booths, mainly between 1887 and 1890, and was titled ‘Le rêve de Pygmalion’ (‘Pygmalion’s dream’), ‘Le secret de Pygmalion’ (‘Pygmalion’s secret’), and ‘Le triomphe des Dieux de l’Olympe’ (‘The triumph of the Gods of Olympus’).13 According to the leaflets of these fairground attractions, the sequences of projected images represented different stages of métempsycose, a notion that derived from the Greek word metempsukhosis meaning ‘changing soul’, and referred to the concept of ‘reincarnation’ that gained popularity in nineteenth-century French spirituality (Fig. 3). Only one journalist of the Gazette de Charleroi (Charleroi Gazette) of 14 November 1887 refers to the technology of the métempsycose illusion performed by illusionist M. Burton. The journalist mentions an object that slowly disappears in the reflection of an object projected from the backstage in ‘a two-way mirror, vertical, tilted at 45 degrees […] placed 12 Sofie Lachapelle. Investigating the Supernatural: From Spiritism & Occultism to Psychical Research & Metaphysics in France, 1853–1931 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2011); Lynn L. Sharp. Secular Spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2006). 13 Cf. newspaper reports on the topic of ‘métempsycose’: La Meuse, 13 September 1887, 2; La Meuse, 16 September 1887, 2; La Meuse, 5 November 1887, 2; Gazette de Charleroi, 14 November 1887, 2; La Meuse, 19 November 1887, 6; La Meuse, 4 February 1888, 2; La Meuse, 2 October 1888, 2; La Meuse, 8 October 1888, 2; La Meuse, 10 October 1888, 2; Journal de Bruxelles, 27 January 1889, 2; La Meuse, 2 October 1889, 2; La Meuse, 14 May 1890, 3; La Meuse, 4 October 1890, 2; Journal de Bruxelles, 9 November 1890, 2.

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Fig. 3. Two boys of the Salvation Army in front of a metempsychosis-booth at the fairground in Ghent. Picture by Arnold Vander Haeghen, c. 1890. (Courtesy: Collection Huis van Alijn).

at an angle at the opening of the stage entrance’.14 Thanks to the gradual dimming of light on a bust and the simultaneous strengthening of light on the head of an invisible woman in a hidden corner of the stage, a reflection of Galatea was projected on the glass. Alber’s handbook describes the mechanism of this illusion in detail, with its ‘hidden lantern’ and the important function of the tab that makes it possible to fine-tune the gradual dimming and turning up of the light in the projector.15 The metempsychosis trick could be perceived as a further development of the well-known ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ one, where the lantern was concealed below the stage. Scarce details in newspaper reports show that the audience was plunged into darkness when attending the illusion. Compared to illusions in theater auditoria, the limited setting of a fairground booth enabled more immediacy and intimacy. On some occasions, spectators were even invited to touch the bust before it turned into a living person. No indications have been found of metempsychosis performers instructing the audience about the true nature of the metempsychosis illusion at the fairground. This might suggest that it was less the technique that was appealing to the spectators, than the experience of the performance itself as well as the ‘philosophy’ behind the representation. This was at least the case with 14 Gazette de Charleroi, 14 November 1887, 2 (Author’s translation). 15 Cf. Alber, Hégé. Le Grand Manuel de projection, 224–25.

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the French author and traveling journalist Hugues Le Roux who gave a lively description of his experience with a metempsychosis-attraction at the fairground in Les Jeux du Cirque et la Vie Foraine (Circus Games and Fairground Life, 1889): The beautiful head of Miss Lutèce was transformed into a death’s head right before the audience. Then, from this young skull, polished like ivory, there burst forth a rosebush. This contrast, eminently philosophical, inspired Mr Sténégry the father, to astonishing reflections.16 This reference to ‘philosophy’ is remarkable and suggests that the topic of metempsychosis was more than a random ‘technique of misdirection’, a technique used by illusionists to hide their secrets of technology by suggesting a belief in extra-sensory perception.17 It is plausible that the popularity of this attraction was partly due to the appeal of certain popular philosophical issues, such as reincarnation, as this concept gained popularity in the second half of the nineteenth century in France, mainly thanks to the publications Livre des esprits (Book of spirits, 1857) and Revue Spirite (Spirit Revue, 1858) by Allan Kardec. In these publications, Kardec introduced a doctrine of Spiritisme (the French counterpart of Anglo-Saxon Spiritualism) with a pronounced Christian accent in which he convinced people, that by doing good, their souls progressed after death, coming closer to God through other-worldly reincarnations.18 Spiritisme offered consolation and a feeling of universal connection, especially for suppressed groups in society.19 With spiritualist belief in a reincarnated afterlife for a progressed soul, the way was paved for a strong belief in social progress and therefore appealed to people from all kinds of social classes. Although Kardec died already in 1869, his spiritualist ideology was kept going thanks to Léon Denis with his tours taking him across France and Belgium in order to promote his spiritualist beliefs in 1889.20 Denis believed in a unifying Spiritisme, a fusion of positivist and experimental science with Christian religion, resulting in the ‘mother of all religions and philosophies’.21 With this specific context in mind, it is not surprising that a poster announcing metempsychosis at the fairground revealed a god-like character at the top of a series of reincarnations. This immersive fin-de-siècle fairground phantasmagoria, accessible to people from different social classes, was consequently not only a matter of entertainment, but similarly a thought-provoking vision for spectators searching for progress and an alternative belief system.

16 Hugues Le Roux. Les Jeux du Cirque et la Vie Foraine (Paris: E. Plan, Nourrit et Cie, 1889), 54 (Author’s translation). 17 Peter Lamont. Extraordinary Beliefs: A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 37. 18 Cf. Lachapelle. Investigating the Supernatural, 27–36; cf. also Félix Fabart. Histoire philosophique et politique de l’occulte (Paris: Flammarion, 1885), 118. 19 Cf. Sharp. Secular Spirituality, 142; cf. also David K. Nartonis. ‘The Rise of 19th-Century American Spiritualism, 1854–1873’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49.2 (2010): 363: ‘Across cultures, those whose natural voices have been suppressed have found speaking for the dead a powerful political tool because it derives authority “from direct individual spiritual contact or experience rather than from office, position, or training”’. 20 Cf. Lachapelle. Investigating the Supernatural, 57–58. 21 Lachapelle. Investigating the Supernatural, 58.

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Fig. 4. Papus Leaflet at the Eden in Antwerp, October 1896. (Courtesy: AMVC-Letterenhuis).

Occultism at the Music Hall By the time Alber published the metempsychosis mechanism, addressed to an audience of amateur-illusionists, a similar ‘hidden lantern’ illusion made its appearance in several Belgian music halls between October 1896 and January 1897.22 A so-called ‘Professeur Papus’ wrapped himself in 300 meter-long bandages, then drank a bottle of special liquor of ‘Ether and Laudanum’ before entering a ‘near-death’ state lasting for days in a coffin sealed with glass. Without food or drink, he finally woke up six to nine days later. In the meantime, visitors of the theater had been able to continuously observe his ‘nearly-dead’ state at the foyer of the theater. Although no newspaper mentioned the underlying mechanism involved in this illusion, a reference to different layers of glass in the ceiling of the coffin suggest that metempsychosis was also used here (Fig. 4).23 It is plausible that a light projector was at work, hidden from the spectators. Only this time, spectators were no longer immersed in a dark booth, but able to watch the reflection on glass in a music hall foyer. Again, no explanation was given to the audience with respect to the actual mechanics. They could only guess at how this wonder occurred. It is remarkable that the accompanying misdirection did not refer to French Spiritisme. This time, it invoked an authority of a more elitist spiritualist movement: Professor Papus, born Gérard Encausse, and the founder of the occult society, the Ordre Martiniste (Martinist Order) in 1889. This famous physician was convinced that scientific research would result in progress for all people as well as a synthesis of all secret knowledge, including a unifying spiritual renaissance using the teachings of ancient Egypt, Christianity, and reincarnation as central tenets.24 Papus’s spiritualist ideology was indebted to the French theosophical society,

22 Cf. La Meuse, 29 October 1896, 2; Gazette de Charleroi, 10 January 1897, 2; La Flandre Libérale, 26 November 1896, 2; L’Étoile belge, 12 December 1896, 2; Le Patriote, 14 December 1896, 2. 23 Le Patriote (14 December 1896): 2, stated: ‘The lid of the coffin consists of two glass plates about two centimeters apart’. (Author’s translation). 24 Cf. Lachapelle. Investigating the Supernatural, 50.

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which was the result of the attempt by Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophic Society to introduce Anglo-Saxon occultist notions into France in the mid 1880s. Theosophists hoped to attain truth and enlightenment on questions of life and death inspired by esoteric eastern traditions. Similar to Kardec’s spiritism, Papus’s occultist belief united Christianity and science with spirituality. The reference to a more elitist occultist philosophy can be seen as an anticipation of the experiences and interests of mainly liberal and affluent spectators attending the Belgian and French music halls.25 A similar taste for occultism could be traced in another ‘hidden lantern’ illusion of the fin-de-siècle music hall: the so-called ‘serpentine dance’. The American dancer Loïe Fuller achieved international fame for her patented interpretation of a skirt dance, in which she introduced novel lighting effects by lantern projectors hidden beneath, at the sides, and above the stage. These light projectors were hidden from spectators and beamed colored lights from several angles onto the dancer’s skirt, resulting in a colorful kaleidoscopic of moving images.26 When Fuller made her debut at the Folies-Bergère on 5 November 1892, she performed four original dances: ‘Serpentine’, ‘Violet’, ‘Butterfly’, and a dance that was later named ‘La danse blanche’. These dances simulated a trance, an effect that was described as resulting from a magical interplay between light, space, color, and fabric.27 The audience reacted with enthusiasm to the synesthetic use of color in motion. One Parisian reviewer wrote of her: ‘I know well that symbolism, occultism and neo-Catholicism are the fashion. They distract us at least from everyday life […] and I explain to myself the great success of Loïe Fuller by the feeling she gives visions of the infinite’.28 This quotation pinpoints the spiritual atmosphere in which Fuller’s attraction gained popularity. With her colorful dances she provided visions of the infinite, and these trance-like dances and ‘hidden lanterns’ offered the audience an escape from reality into a mystical vision.29 Again, this illusion referred to a fascination with the infinite that was very much en vogue in the late nineteenth century among Martinist scholars of Papus. They were educated in the principles of the infinite with studies of magic, divination, astrology, and alchemy.30 Although only a limited number of people were initiated, the ideas spread among a wider audience through occult journals such as L’Initiation (Initiation) and La Curiosité: Journal de l’occultisme scientifique (Curiosity: Journal of Scientific Occultism). Fuller was clearly inspired by occult phenomena in astrology, alchemy, and natural philosophy. This resulted in dances such as ‘La Nuit’ (‘Night’), ‘Le Feu’ (‘Fire’), ‘Le Firmament’ (‘Firmament’), or ‘Serpentine’ (‘Serpentine’), with the latter referring to a specific mineral,

25 Cf. Evelien Jonckheere. ‘In search of identities: “Foreigners” in fin-de-siècle Belgian café-concerts’, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 16.2 (2019): 384–403. 26 Cf. Ann Cooper Albright. Traces of Light, Absence and Presence in the Work of Loïe Fuller (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2007), 52–61. 27 Cf. Hopkins. Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, II and 342–44. 28 Quoted in Diana Holmes, and Carrie Tarr. A ‘Belle Époque’? Women in French Society and Culture, 1890–1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 117. 29 Cf. Caroline J. Kappel. Labyrinthine Depictions and Tempting Colors: The Synaesthetic Dances of Loïe Fuller as Symbolist Choreography (PhD thesis, University of Ohio, 2007), 25. 30 Cf. Lachapelle. Investigating the Supernatural, 55.

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representing samples of old oceanic crust which, when polished, uncovered beautiful colors. Some titles of Fuller’s dances, such as ‘Le Lys du Nil’ (‘The Lily of the Nile’), gave away her interest in orientalism.31 With trance-like movements she responded to the eastern rejection of the dualism of body and mind and matter and spirit, and this also resonated with the theosophic and Martinist doctrines. Similar to Papus, Fuller connected her spiritual fascination to modern science in her attractions. Moreover, she presented herself primarily as a scientist with a great interest in chemistry, physics, and biology. At the same time, she was a member of the French Astronomical Society, friends with the astronomer Camille Flammarion, and she investigated the physical properties of light. She even gained the admiration of Pierre and Marie Curie in her experiments with electric lighting and phosphorescent salts on stage.32 These elements illustrate the spiritual complexity in Fuller’s phantasmagoric dances which united both science and trance-like experience. It is obvious that the spiritual dimension of her dances was more than just a technique of misdirection; this self-proclaimed Fée d’électricité (Electricity fairy) was also a true occultist believer. Parody at the Cabaret Spirituality in ‘hidden lantern’ illusions was not limited to the fairground booths or music halls. It was similarly parodied in cabarets such as the famous French Cabaret du Néant (a.k.a. Tavern of the Dead), owned by Antonin Dorville, an illusionist who often acted in the films of Georges Méliès33 and located since 1892 on the Rue Cujas in the Parisian district of Montmartre.34 This confronted visitors in an ironic and amusing way with a crisis of faith visible as néant or nothingness. Every detail of the establishment’s decor was suggestive of death: coffins were used as tables, the waiters wore black cowls, and the aperitifs had such names as ‘arsenic’, ‘cholera’, ‘pestilence’, and ‘fresh sighs of the dying’. A scent reminiscent of dead bodies even pervaded the tavern.35 The highlight of any visit to the Cabaret du Néant was the disintegration room. Following the principle of misdirection, a ‘spectacle scientifico-magnético-spirites’ (‘scientifico-magnetico-spiritual spectacle’) could be witnessed, with its illusionary technique deceivingly represented as X-rays. In reality, this ‘hidden lantern’ illusion was based on the technique of metempsychosis. Dorville invited patrons with the words: ‘Come and experience a spasm at the scientifico-magnetico-spiritual spectacle; experience a sweet death in Dorville’s lair, he who created the cabarets of Death’36 (Fig. 5). The American art student William Chambers Murrow reported this encounter in his notes for Bohemian

31 Cf. Helen Thomas. Dance, Modernity and Culture: Explorations in the Sociology of Dance (London, New York: Routledge, 2003), 60. 32 Cf. Rhonda K. Garelick. Electric Salome: Loïe Fuller’s Performance of Modernism (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 7. 33 Cf. Simon During. Modern Enchantments (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2002), 147. 34 Cf. The Journal, 21 March 1896. 35 Cf. Susan McCosker. Representative Performances of Stage Magic, 1650–1900 (PhD thesis, New York University, 1982), 688; cf. also Hopkins. Magic Stage Illusions, 55. 36 Simon During. Modern Enchantments, 147.

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Fig. 5. Apparition at Cabaret du Néant in Brignogan, La Sorcellerie Amusante (Paris: Librairie Louis Chaux, 1898), 25.

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Paris of To-Day (1899): ‘The power is given to those who merit it, not only to return to life, but to return in any form and station preferred to the old. So return if thou deservedst and desirest. After these words, the bones of a dead body in a coffin, presented in the back of the room, became covered with flesh and cerements. There was the smiling young woman back again’.37 Le Cabaret du Néant mainly attracted artists and Bohemians with immersive experiences of ‘d’outre-tombe’ (‘from beyond the grave’), and the latest scientific innovations were presented with an ironic twist. This parody echoed an ‘aesthetics of diabolism’, in which decadent and symbolist artists found new consolation and ways to express their reaction against ‘the tendency of science to rob the world of Poetry’,38 and against the tendency of a deceiving religion and spirituality that robbed the world of faith, leaving only a world of néant or nothingness. Similar ‘aesthetics of diabolism’ were also clearly present in another ‘hidden-lantern’ illusion: the ombres chinoises or shadow plays of artistic cabarets such as the Parisian Chat Noir (1887) and the Brussels artistic cabaret Le Diable au Corps (1895) (Fig. 6). These artistic shadow plays were performed with a magic lantern, hidden behind the screen in order to conceal the technique of the illusion, which included mirrors and other optical effects. This resulted in shadows giving a ‘fantastic effect’:39 subtle dissolving views with countless moody dawns, sunsets, moonlight, fog, and movements of the sea. The combination of colored glass plates on top of each other made it possible to create endless color variations and nuanced shades in the background of the moving ‘shadows’, simulating settings such as sunrise and sunset. On top of that, effects were added, such as rain with sand, snow with foam, and lightning with burning nitrate-coated paper, inspired by theatrical stage management techniques.40 The refinement of these illusions combined watchmaking and optics and required that Le Diable au Corps, similar to the Chat Noir, had its own ‘chef machiniste’ (‘chief machinist’).41 These ‘hidden lantern’ illusions also revived spiritualist and religious mystery plays,42 sprinkled with parody, in a mysterious atmosphere stimulated by its mock-medieval interior. As such, the spectators were completely immersed in medieval mysticism at the cabaret, in contrast to the surrounding Haussmannian rational environment of fin-de-siècle cities such as Brussels and Paris.43 Nevertheless, this mysticism was again part of a technique of misdirection since the cabaret, similar to the Cabaret du Néant, also mocked spirituality and science with subtle acts of parody. A clear indication of a parody of Christian spirituality and modern science is present in ‘La Tentation de Saint-Antoine’ (‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony’)

37 William Chambers Murrow. Bohemian Paris of To-Day (Philadelphia, London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1900), 272–75. 38 Robert Ziegler. Satanism, Magic and Mysticism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 11, 196. 39 Jeanne. Les Théâtres d’Ombres à Montmartre, 19. 40 Cf. Jac Remise, Pascale Remise, and Régis van de Walle. Magie Lumineuse. Du théâtre d’ombres à la lanterne magique chinoises (Paris: Balland, 1979), 253, 309. 41 Cf. Louis-Philippe Mahre. Nos Théâtres (Bruxelles: Istace, 1897), 268. 42 Le Diable au Corps plays had titles such as La Tentation de Saint-Antoine (1896), La Légende de Saint-Guidon (1896), La Légende de Saint-Nicolas (1896), Une existence en Diable (1896), Saphura (1897), Ceinture de Vishnou (1897), Le Sabbat (1898), etc. 43 Cf. Jean d’Osta. Bruxelles Bonheur (Bruxelles: Rossel, 1980).

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Fig. 6. Program of Théâtre du Diable au Corps in Brussels, 1897. (Source: Prentenkabinet KBR II.18 590AC 12/317).

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performed by the Parisian Chat Noir in 188744 and copied by the Brussels Le Diable au Corps in 1896.45 In this story, the hermit Saint Anthony was tempted by the devil at his desolate retreat in Egypt, with visions of women, copious meals at Les Halles and gambling at La Bourse in Paris. Next, the devil tried to fascinate Anthony with the wonders of modern science and industry such as majestic ships and powerful locomotives. Finally, the devil tried to seduce Anthony with metaphysical temptations by offering him a glimpse of the mysteries of the infinite ocean and space. No less than three tableaux depicted a space odyssey of the devil and Anthony, creating an impression of a dark sky full of stars and ringed, circling planets. In addition, numerous gods and deities of various faiths and mythologies from around the world passed by in a long procession: Odin and the Valkyries accompanied by music from Wagner, Apollo, the muses, Egyptian gods, Vishnu, Buddha, and Japanese gods.46 This description illustrates how artistic shadow play mocked both spirituality and science by means of parody. Similar to the parody of the ‘spectacle scientifico-magnético-spirites’ at the Cabaret du Néant, the temptation of Saint Anthony in the Chat Noir and Le Diable au Corps criticized both the absurdity of modernity’s obsession with scientific innovation and spiritual excess. In this way, the artistic cabaret staged a satirical ode to the illusions of modernity. The limited size of the cabaret auditoria combined with the laborious efforts involved in carving the silhouettes and operating the complex machinery in front of the ‘hidden lantern’, mean that these artistic shadow plays and their audiences of non-believers were rather exclusive. Nevertheless, the cabaret’s artistic reputation resonates until the present-day. Conclusion Around 1900 a brochure listing toy lanterns by the Lapierre Brothers included a ‘Théâtre des apparitions’ (‘Theater of Apparitions’). For 30.5 fr. one could buy this device, weighing no less than nine kilos and producing six ‘changeable artistic views’.47 These artistic ‘transformations’ were the result of light projection combined with mirrors (‘jeux de glaces’), resulting in ‘apparitions, féeries, visions, métempsycose, diableries etc.’ (‘fairy apparitions, visions, metempsychosis, diableries, etc.’).48 This beautifully decorated theater was painted and provided with detailed sculptures of a demonic fool, elegantly draping a Manteau d’Arlequin (Harlequin’s coat) around the screen. This device gathered several fin-de-siècle ‘hidden lantern’ illusions in one mechanical, miniature living room version. The marketing of this device illustrates once again the 44 Cf. Madhuri Mukherjee. ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. Popular Performances of La Tentation de Saint Antoine and Sainte Geneviève de Paris at the Chat Noir Shadow Theater’, in Medieval Saints in late nineteenth-century French Culture, edited by Elizabeth Emery, and Laurie Postlewate ( Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2004), 31. 45 Cf. L’Art moderne 39 (1896): 311; La Meuse, 5 December 1896. 46 Cf. Mukherjee, ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’, 32–35. For a vision of the original prints of La Tentation de Saint-Antoine at the Chat Noir, cf. http://ombres-et-silhouettes.wifeo.com/saint-antoine-tentation.php; for lantern slides depicting this Chat Noir story, cf. http://artetsouvenir.canalblog.com/albums/images_ projetees__projections_pour_spectacles/photos/124101520-dsc_4166.html, [both accessed 8 November 2020]. 47 Lapierre. Manufacture d’Optique Lapierre Frères. Appareils Spéciaux pour Projections et Agrandissements Photographiques. Cinématographes. Catalogue N° 1 (Paris: Lapierre Frères, n.d.), 10 (https://www.collectionbinetruy.com/7042.html?&tx_jppageteaser_pi1[backId]=8100, [accessed 14 September 2020]). 48 Lapierre. Manufacture d’Optique Lapierre Frères, 10.

‘ H idden L an ter n s’ in fin- de- siècl e Fra nce a nd Belg ium

popularity and widespread fin-de-siècle fascination with phantasmagoric apparitions, which can be situated in a complex field of fin-de-siècle (dis)belief(s). Different strategies of misdirection and different levels of immersion uncovered a rich diversity of spectatorship in these ‘hidden lantern’ illusions. They were the vehicle for all sorts of (dis)belief such as Spiritisme at the fairground, occultism at the music hall, and nihilism at the cabarets. Consequently, we can conclude that serpentine dances, metempsychosis, and artistic shadow theater represented more than mere visual entertainment. They were at the same time thought-provoking, philosophical apparitions with allusions to scientific progress and spiritualism, bringing in extra-sensory topics such as the afterlife and the infinite in both serious and ironic fashion. As such, these fin-de-siècle phantasmagorias bear witness, at different levels of (dis)belief(s), to a crisis of faith. While Christian Catholicism reinforced its grip on believers with illustrated lantern lectures and mystic phenomena, a counterculture of spiritualism, occultism, and nihilism gained popularity during the fin-de-siècle, using phantasmagoric illusions by means of ‘hidden lanterns’ not only to entertain, but equally to communicate to spectators some of the complexities involved in belief.49 Bibliography Alber [ Jean Jacques Édouard Graves], Les théâtres d’ombres chinoises: renseignements complets et inédits sur la manière de fabriquer soi-même et d’employer un théâtre d’ombres et les personnages. (Paris: E. Mazo, 1896) Alber [ Jean Jacques Édouard Graves], and A. Hégé. Le Grand Manuel de projection. Guide de l’amateur (Paris: E. Mazo, 1897) Albright, Ann Cooper. Traces of Light, Absence and Presence in the Work of Loïe Fuller (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2007) D’Osta, Jean. Bruxelles Bonheur (Bruxelles: éd. Rossel, 1980) During, Simon. Modern Enchantments (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2002) Emery, Elizabeth, and Laurie Postlewate (eds). Medieval Saints in late nineteenth-century French Culture ( Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2004) Fabart, Félix. Histoire philosophique et politique de l’occulte (Paris: Flammarion, 1885) Fourtier, Hyacinthe P. La pratique des projections. Étude méthodique des appareils. Les accessoires. Usages et applications diverses des projections. Conduit des séances (Paris: Gauthier-Villars et fils, 1893) Garelick, Rhonda K. Electric Salome: Loïe Fuller’s Performance of Modernism (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007) Gunning, Tom. ‘Phantasmagoria and the Manufacturing of Illusions and Wonder: Towards a Cultural Optics of the Cinematic Apparatus’, in The Cinema: A new Technology of the 20th Century edited by André Gaudreault, Catherine Russell, and Pierre Véronneau (Lausanne: Payot, 2004)

49 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Holmes, Diane, and Carrie Tarr. A Belle Epoque? Women in French Society and Culture, 1890–1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006) Hopkins, Albert Allis. Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1897) Jeanne, Paul. Les Théâtres d’Ombres à Montmartre de 1887 à 1923 (Paris: Les Presses Modernes, 1937) Jonckheere, Evelien. ‘In search of identities: “Foreigners” in fin-de-siècle Belgian café-concerts’, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 16.2 (2019): 384–403 Jonckheere, Evelien, and Kurt Vanhoutte. ‘Métempsycose as attraction on the fairground: the migration of a ghost’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.3–4 (2019): 261–78 ——. ‘Spirits in the Fairgrounds: Métempsycose and its After-Images’, in The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting, edited by Martyn Jolly and Elisa DeCourcy (New York, London: Routledge, 2020) Kappel, Caroline J. Labyrinthine Depictions and Tempting Colors: The Synaesthetic Dances of Loïe Fuller as Symbolist Choreography (PhD thesis, University of Ohio, 2007) Lachapelle, Sofie. Investigating the Supernatural: From Spiritism & Occultism to Psychical Research & Metaphysics in France, 1853–1931 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2011) Lamont, Peter. Extraordinary Beliefs: A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) Lapierre. Manufacture d’Optique Lapierre Frères. Appareils Spéciaux pour Projections et Agrandissements Photographiques. Cinématographes. Catalogue No 1 (Paris: Lapierre Frères, n.d.) Le Roux, Hugues. Les Jeux du Cirque et la Vie Foraine (Paris: E. Plan, Nourrit et Cie, 1889) Mahre, Louis-Philippe. Nos Théâtres (Bruxelles: Istace, 1897) Mannoni, Laurent. ‘La lanterne magique du Boulevard du Crime. Henri Robin, fantasmagore et magicien’, Revue d’histoire du Cinéma 16 (1994): 5–26 ——. The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000) Mannoni, Laurent. ‘The Phantasmagoria’, Film History 8.4 (1996): 390–415 McCosker, Susan. Representative Performances of Stage Magic, 1650–1900 (PhD thesis, New York University, 1982) Morus, Iwan Rhys. ‘Illuminating illusions, or, the Victorian art of seeing things’, Early Popular Visual Culture 10.1 (2012): 37–50 Murrow, William Chambers. Bohemian Paris of To-Day (Philadelphia, London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1900) Remise, Jac, Pascale Remise, and Régis van de Walle. Magie Lumineuse. Du théâtre d’ombres à la lanterne magique chinoises (Paris: Balland, 1979) Sharp, Lynn L. Secular Spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2006) Thomas, Helen. Dance, Modernity and Culture: Explorations in the Sociology of Dance (London, New York: Routledge, 2003) Vandendriessche, Yana-Frauke. ‘Ne détruisez jamais un document. De collectie Vliegende Bladen van de Boekentoren’, Tijd-Schrift 1 (2018): 56–63 Ziegler, Robert. Satanism, Magic and Mysticism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

Sabine Lenk

Masonic Slide Cultures: Teaching, Meditation, Optimization

Fraternal organizations were quick to adopt the magic lantern.1 They were, however, not the first to use the projection lantern as a teaching tool as there were, to the best of our knowledge, religious predecessors.2 Nonetheless they promoted its use in the struggle to establish secular schools, especially in France and Belgium, where the Catholic Church dominated the education of children and the population as a whole.3 They fought to liberate the mind from the clerical dogmas and omnipresence of religion in virtually every subject taught in the schools. At the same time they started to use slides for the dissemination of their own spiritual and cultural traditions. Numerous lodges allowed their rituals to be supported by the optical lantern, as may be deduced from the fact that a whole industry sprung up to cater to them. In this contribution I will look briefly at the roots of the educational lantern favored by the Freemasons. I will then turn to the emergence of masonic lantern production, analyse the specificity of masonic slides and compare these pictures with those mainly used by the Catholic Church. As both groups aimed inducing betterment by the pedagogic use of slides (in the classroom, masonic temple, or church) it is necessary to understand the differences and parallels between them in order to appreciate each side’s efforts regarding the visual dissemination of their teachings.

1 Think, e.g. of the ‘ghost-raising’ Rosicrucian Johann Georg Schrepfer in the 1770s. Cf. Internetloge.de 2 Cf. Show People Painted. A Catalogue of 18th and 19th Century Paintings Depicting Magic Lantern and Peepshow Performers (Leeds (West Yorkshire): PMM Group, 2019), 7, 20; Frank Kessler, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2019): 101. 3 Cf., for example, Pierre Joye, and Rosine Lewin. L’Église et le mouvement ouvrier en Belgique (Brussels: Société populaire d’Éditions, 1967). I leave aside the Greek-Orthodox and the Protestants. Sabine Lenk • University of Antwerp/Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 241–258 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129106 This is an open access chapter made available under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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Some Preliminary Remarks on the Theory Behind and the Aims of the Masonic Use of the Educational Lantern It is not known whether the masonic and freethinking founders of the laicist Belgian and French Ligues de l’enseignement were (directly) inspired by the toy magic lanterns used for the (self-)education of children in the first half of the nineteenth century. This was the time when French companies such as Molteni, Aubert, and Lapierre started to sell slides (soon to be mass-produced) that made use of adaptations of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales, Jean de La Fontaine’s fables, popular songs, as well as works from the literary and theatrical canon, etc.4 The toy lantern can moreover be seen as a potential source of their inspiration as its slides familiarized the young generation with cultural heritage, allowed children to acquire general knowledge, to (self-)train their memories with the aid of images and text, to develop eloquence, performative qualities and the ability to compose a well-structured program and ‘sell’ a show to family and friends. Details in the painted scenes enchanted children, who generally love minutiae, and helped develop their talent for observation. The coloured drawings trained their aesthetic sense of pictorial composition and developed an understanding of how to narrate a long story by condensing it to just a few scenes containing the key (visual or textual) elements (cf. Fig. 1).5

Fig. 1. Three stories on one slide: ‘Fables de Jean de la Fontaine’ (‘Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables‘), probably by Lapierre, second half of the nineteenth century. (Courtesy: Robert Vrielynck collection, MuHKA, RV1_413).

Another influence may have come from educational shows for adults. In the second half of the nineteenth century popular events were organized by ‘projection-promotors’ such as the entertainer Henri Robin (Paris 1863),6 the French Jesuit François Napoléon Marie Moigno (Paris 1864, 1872–1882)7 and their counterparts at the Polytechnic Institution in London (1841)8 as well as the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers (1864) in Paris9 and later



4 Cf., for example, the drawings by Lefranc in ‘[Figures de lanterne magique]’. Special thanks to Patrice Guérin for pointing out this source to me. 5 The use of a toy lantern by a child combines elements echoing the didactic theories of Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel’s ‘Spielpädagogik’ (learning by playing) as well as ‘Tatanschauung’ (learning by doing) and Johann Friedrich Herbart’s self-learning scholar (however, still under the guidance of the teacher), which are all part of ‘Anschauungspädagogik’ (learning through experience) inspired by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s idea of the parallel education of ‘Kopf, Herz und Hand’ (head, heart and hand). If not stated otherwise, all translations are by the author. 6 Cf. Jacques Perriault. Mémoires de l’ombre et du son. Une archéologie de l’audio-visuel (Paris: Flammarion, 1981), 95. 7 Cf. Toledo, quoted in Perriault, Mémoires de l’ombre et du son, 95, 97. 8 Cf. Jeremy Brooker, The Temple of Minerva (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2013), 52. 9 Cf. Perriault, Mémoires de l’ombre et du son, 95.

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at the Urania in Berlin. They presented the latest scientific discoveries in their popularizing programs and explained in detail to the interested audience ‘how things work’. ‘The only efficient way of teaching is to display to the eyes, by experiment or brightly illuminated tableaux [tableaux vivement éclairés], all the facts of nature, science, industry and art’.10 In France, during the reign of the Freemason Louis XVI, the artist Comte de Peroy,11 with his slide-like drawings and his suggestion of using a magic lantern for the instruction of the dauphin, may have indeed played a minor role in these developments, who knows? Before photography became an important tool of the ‘lanternist’, what counted was the detailed painted image showing the object the way the teacher wanted it to be perceived and understood. The drawing, perhaps of a tulip or an ant, presented a condensation of its most important features. To give the impression of an ideal plant or the idea of a perfect animal12 was more important than the 1:1-reproduction of a specific flower or insect that became possible with the photo-camera and the dry-plate.13 The ‘scientific’ image was hand-made, often standing out by the artistic touch. Its efficiency in helping the mind to better understand the knowledge verbally transmitted from teacher to student was thus one of the important aspects of the promotion of the lantern as a teaching tool in the second half of the nineteenth century. A chemist-biologist and teacher at the Athénée in Brussels, Léon Roup, although he used photography and coloured glass plates himself, was still stressing this idea in the 1920s: ‘The reason why the reproductions of drawings in our classic books touch us more than the most beautiful photographs, is that the painter has carved out from the jumble of the things their essential character’.14 10 [Abbot Moigno], ‘Préface’, in Jules Girard, Photomicrographie en cent tableaux pour projection. Nouvelle série: Cours de science illustrée no 2 (Paris: Bureau du Journal ‘Les Mondes’, Gauthier-Villars, 1872), VI. 11 For more information on Jean-Philippe Gui Le Gentil, comte de Paroy, cf. the section ‘La lanterne du Dauphin’, in Laurent Mannoni. Le Grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre. Archéologie du cinéma (Paris: Nathan, 1994), 86–88. For more on the Freemason Louis XVI, cf. https://freimaurer-wiki.de/index.php/Ludwig_XVI, [accessed 27 August 2020]. For Paroy’s etchings cf. ’Plate with Ten Bacchanal Scenes’, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/ collection/search/385759, [accessed 27 August 2020]. It seems that he got inspired by Stéphanie-Félicité Du Crest, Comtesse de Genlis who worked from 1782 to 1790 as ‘gouvernante’ for the royal family. In her memories (Stéphanie-Félicité Du Crest, Comtesse de Genlis, Mémoires de Mme de Genlis (Paris: François Barrière, 1857), 193) she states that she had a Polish painter and ‘professeur de dessin, puis de l’Histoire’ (Ségolène Le Men. ‘Monsieur le Soleil et Madame la Lune…’, in Lanternes magiques, tableaux transparents, edited by Ségolène le Men (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1986, 29)) who made a lantern for her and slides for lectures in religion and history. Many thanks to Frank Kessler who shared the information taken from Jens Ruchatz’s book Licht und Wahrheit (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2003, 156) based on Le Men’s article. 12 Cf. the drawings in numerous zoological and biological encyclopedia such as, e.g. Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville. Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles, Planches. Zoologie (Paris: F. G. Levrault, 1816–1830), https://www. biodiversitylibrary.org/item/78647#page/7/mode/1up, [accessed 27 August 2020], which has a long tradition at least since Maria Sibylla Merian’s famous coloured natural illustrations. 13 Furthermore the silver in the photographic emulsion darkened coloured illustrations as it absorbed light. If the illustrator wanted bright colours s/he had to eliminate the emulsion where the colour had to be applied which eliminated the details of the photographically reproduced object. An anonymous photographic expert claims for biological and anatomical subjects: ‘Often it is the colour that is more important than the form, which is why hand-drawn and painted images are preferred to photograms for such things’. (Anonymous. ‘Zum Coloriren geeignete Laternbilder’, Laterna Magica 3 ( January 1881): 33). 14 Roup greatly welcomed pictures in the classroom and used photography which he coloured to guide the spectator’s eye ‘lost in the mix-up of details of the black picture’. However he rejected the medium, less for its technical imperfection which made that ‘this practice did not have all the success expected when used in natural sciences’; he just followed the traditional didactic concept in ‘anatomy, biology and zoology’ to concentrate on the characteristics as he stressed on five occasions. Cf. Léon Roup. ‘Plaques colorées par projection, facilitant

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Fig. 2. Slides showing masonic symbols such as the sword pointing to the naked heart, the sun, the moon and the stars, the light beam, and the All-seeing eye. (Courtesy: Collection Toverlantaarnmuseum Scheveningen).

Whereas toy and scientific slides addressed the intellect, spiritual and religious slides took another approach: they appealed to the emotions. As mass teaching with the lantern in churches and parish halls started after the introduction of the dry-plate, the bulk of the slides used by Belgian congregations and preserved at KADOC in Leuven are photographs. As such, they are naturally full of details, the scene that is represented, however, is clearly focused. Religious slides target the expressiveness of the image, its power to appeal to spirit and soul, eventually leading to a meditative state and a sense of being nearer to God. The photographic reproductions of paintings, showing Jesus, Mary, and an armada of saints, as well as prints from illustrated editions of the Bible, both in black and white but often hand-coloured by the congregation, were chosen to build an easy-to-follow narrative. The effectiveness of the slide was based on the impact of the depicted scene, repeating in this respect the strategy of bygone centuries when painters ‘received numerous ecclesiastical commands destined to elevate the faith of the believers and to give them examples to follow’.15 As for the specificity of masonic slides, they display a combination of efficiency in teaching the ability to understand and reproduce content and of effectiveness at inducing a meditative state and awakening spiritual thinking by the extensive use of specific symbols.16 These had to be learned by heart, recognized in daily life, and which, after a degree of training, helped the mind flow and feel a spiritual connection with that which is indirectly

l’enseignement des sciences naturelles, l’histoire, la Géométrie et l’Histoire de l’Art’, letter to the Ministère de l’industrie du travail et de la prévoyance sociale (probably 1 September 1926), kept at ULB’s archives. Thanks to Pascale Delbarre for sharing this with me. 15 Jacques Duquesne, and François Lebrette. La Vie des Saints à travers 100 chefs-d’œuvre de la peinture (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 2005), 5. 16 In the following, I will use the term ‘symbol’ to refer to the visual representations used to convey a non-literal signification and which were, in the case of the Freemasons, part of their esoteric knowledge.

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represented, ‘A reproduction implies if not identity, at least similitude, to the original, but a symbol only requires that it shall have certain features in common with the object represented so that, by its presence alone, it may evoke the conception of the latter […]’.17 Masonic and Catholic pedagogy share this automatism (cf. Fig. 2). Teaching Masonic Rituals with Slides: The Historic Context How did masonic lantern teaching start? The slides that can be found on the internet, in museums such as Museo del Cinema (Laura Minici Zotti collection, Padua) and in private collections show that the slides generally came from American producers. They were sometimes designed by well-known slide painters such as Joseph Boggs Beal or William H. Rau,18 but mostly the artists are unknown (cf. Fig. 3). Many were meant to serve as ‘Tracing Boards’19 for aspirants to a new grade, others were projected as spiritual entertainment. They were therefore not considered artistic and the signature was left out. Slide series were often ordered, such as for instance the ‘Evolution and Restoration of King Solomon’s Temple Magic Lantern Slide Show’, which was tailor-made in 1926 for the Grand Lodge of New York,20 or ‘Damon and Pythias’ by the Knights of Pythias21 and were subsequently mass-produced and offered in the catalogues of manufacturers and retailers.22 Masonic slide-making starts at the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865) with the intensification of industrialization. Hundreds of masonic lodges and ‘fraternal societies’23 (following rules like (ancient) orders) were founded in the US, among them numerous fraternal organizations that used slides, such as the Fraternal Order of the Knights of Pythias (1864, Washington, DC), the Ancient Order of United Workmen (AOUW, 1868, Meadville),24 the Independent Order of Good Templars (IOGT, 1851, Oriskany (Utica)), the Order of the Eastern Star (1874, Richland (Mississippi)), Knights of Malta a.k.a. Masonic Knights Templar, or the Order of Owls (OOO, 1904, South Bend (Indiana)). Some created lodges in Europe (e.g. Daughters of Rebekah, 1851, Baltimore (Maryland), established also in Denmark in

17 Goblet D’Alviella. The Migration of Symbols (Westminster: Archibald Constable and Co., 1894), 1. 18 Cf. Terry Borton, and Deborah Borton. Before the Movies. American Magic-Lantern Entertainment and the Nation’s First Great Screen Artist, Joseph Boggs Beale (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2014); cf. also the website of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum. 19 Cf., for example, https://srmmlonlineexhibitions.omeka.net/exhibits/show/the-secret-society-lantern-ma/ masonic-slides, [accessed 31 August 2020]. 20 Cf. https://nymasoniclibrary.org/event/rw-pierre-de-ravel-desclapon-lecture/and https://nymasoniclibrary. org/event/library-holiday-presentation-the-restoration-of-king-solomons-temple/#respond, [both accessed 31 August 2020]. 21 Cf. Borton, Borton. Before the Movies, 156–57. 22 Cf. Sabine Mödersheim. ‘Enthüllung und Geheimhaltung. Zur Bildsymbolik der Rosenkreuzer und Freimaurer’, in Deutsche Geheimgesellschaften. Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Jost Hermand, and Sabine Mödersheim (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag 2013), 128. 23 For the difference cf., e.g. Hermann Beigel. ‘Die Odd-Fellows’, Der Freimaurer: illustrierte Monatsschrift für die gesammte Freimaurerei 6 ( June 1876): 70; as both are organized in lodges and follow similar rules, I do not make a difference: ‘masonic’ stands here for fraternal symbolic and allegorical slides. 24 Cf. David Francis. ‘The AOUW or What Collecting Lantern Slides May Turn Up’, in Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 21st Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Mervin Heard, and Ine van Dooren (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 92.

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Fig. 3. Slide no. 3 ‘Steps Unto Heaven’ from the set ‘Nearer My God To Thee’, drawing by Joseph Boggs Beale (cf. Borton, Borton, Before the Movies, 120; depicting it inversed). This slide used by IOOF shows religious, spiritual, and entertaining elements. (Courtesy: Collection Toverlantaarnmuseum Scheveningen).

1881). Most influential was the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF, c. 1740, London) which disseminated its philosophy widely opening branches in New York City in 1806, Stuttgart in 1870, Zurich in 1871, Amsterdam in 1877, Copenhagen in 1878, and Antwerp in 1911. The IOGT twice opened a lodge in Brussels (1901; Les Bons Templiers socialistes ‘Égalité no. 1’, 1910).25 Most of the masonic or fraternal associations here and on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean kept abreast of their reciprocal activities by receiving each other’s journals or reading the ‘international news’ in their own periodicals (as did the clergy who read RISS,26 a ‘spy magazine’ for anti-masonic leagues). European members who wanted to teach with the optical lantern knew where to look for and buy slides. The slide producers were US companies such as the C. W. Briggs Company of Philadelphia, M. C. Lilley & Co. (Columbus, Ohio), De Moulin Brothers & Co. (Greenville, Illinois), Henderson & Ames Co. and Ihling Bros. Everard Co. (both Kalamazoo, Michigan), McIntosh Battery & Optical Co. and Moore, Hubbell & Co. (both Chicago, Illinois), Harry G. Healy and T. H. McAllister (both New York City), C. E. Ward Co. (New London, Ohio), Victor Animatograph Corporation (Davenport, Iowa) and the Pettibone Manufacturing Co. (Cincinnati, Ohio). The latter had its own series of lanterns27 and a 25 Cf., for example, Christopher Hodapp. Freimaurer für Dummies, translated by Hartmut Strahl (Weinheim: WILEY-VCH Verlag, 2017), 190; F. van Wering. Gedenkboek ter gelegenheid van het vijftigjarig bestaan der I.O.O.F. in Nederland, 19 Maart 1877–1927 (Amsterdam: Caiff & Meischke, 1927), 46; Borton, Borton. Before the Movies, 153–63. 26 RISS is the abbreviation of the monthly Revue Internationale des Sociétés Sécrètes (10, Place de Laborde, Paris, first number: January 1912); subscribers paid FF 20 per year in France and Belgium. 27 ‘We manufacture several styles of Sciopticon expressly for Lodge Room Work: The Paranon [sic], The Challenge, The Pettibone, The Champion, etc.’ (leaflet quoted by Henk De Roo on his website De Luikerwaal). For more on the Pettibone Co., cf. Crangle, Heard, Van Dooren. Realms of Light, 226–27. Cf. also https:// srmmlonlineexhibitions.omeka.net/exhibits/show/the-secret-society-lantern--ma/the-regalia-catalogue, [accessed 31 August 2020].

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Fig. 4. The ‘Challenge’ by the Pettibone Co. in the Robert Vrielynck collection at MuHKA with pictures from the ‘Damon and Pythias’-series, copyrighted in 1893 by W. L. Smith, member of the National Society of Lanternists. (Photograph by the author).

patented unique projection system: a ring of ten round glass plates fixed on a revolving disc resembling the erect tail of a peacock, allowing the lecture to be prepared beforehand, slides to be changed instantly and preventing errors in the viewing sequence of the slides (cf. Fig. 4). The full name of the supplier – The Pettibone Mfg. Co. Military & Society Goods – betrays the relation to the Civil War, with the supply of military goods being replaced by entertainment and instructional material. These companies were specialized in supplying lodges and associations as well as schools. Teaching Rituals with Slides in the Temple As the slides found in European collections do not refer to where, when and by whom they were projected, it is difficult to say how many lodges on the ‘old continent’ used the lantern. But as Freemasons in France and Belgium were among those who pushed the use of projection in school, and as the anti-masonic movement in both countries is known to have organized lantern shows directed against their ‘enemies’,28 it is more than probable that slides played a certain role, not only in fraternal societies, but also in masonic lodges. In England, Freemasons were already using slides in the 1870s, initially for entertainment 28 One of the driving forces was the Belgian Ligue de l’enseignement, founded at the end of 1864 in Brussels by Freemasons related to the free thinking circle La Libre Pensée with the active support of the future mayor of Brussels, Charles Buls, who in 1863 had studied the educational efforts of the Dutch association ‘Maatschappij tot nut van ’t algemeen’ in Amsterdam (cf. http://flandre.novopress.info/?p=663m, [accessed 29 August 2019]). The French Ligue de l’enseignement, founded by school director Jean Macé in 1866 in Beblenheim (Alsace), influenced

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and scientific talks at charity events, and subsequently probably also for instruction, as in 1885 there seems to have been a discussion on whether slides should be accepted for the Degree a.k.a. Memory or Temple Work.29 Elsewhere we see that in 1889 lantern producers such as W. H. Humphries & Co., J. Theobald & Co., and W. C. Hughes were advertising in the journal The Freemason. In many US lodges, in the 1920s, slides replaced the drawing on the tracing board as a projected slide was more attractive.30 Some Freemasons worried about revealing secret information should their slides be seen by others. That this was not the case, that a slide as such has no revelatory power, was explained by the American masonic publicist Carl H. Claudy in one of his famous ‘Old Tiler Talks’: ‘The lantern slide conceals no secret worth knowing, nor does the chart to which the lecturer points nor even the carpet laid down in the second degree. These are all but a means of putting a picture in your mind and it is the meaning of that picture which must be sacredly kept, not the means which put it there’.31 The slides served for the instruction of the three degrees all lodges shared (Aspirant/ Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason) and for other grades if the lodge followed e.g. the Scottish rite (thirty three degrees) or the York rite (up to ten or eleven). Each lodge had its own system of denominations, customs, gestures, etc., but most symbols were used by all and often identically decoded. As the next grade could only be reached when the one before had been successfully completed, the degrees were directly interrelated. Each degree was based on the preceding one and progression had to be completed in a predetermined order. The instruction given by the Master of Ceremony in charge of the initiation consisted of an explanation of the rites, rituals, symbols, etc. and their deeper meaning during Work. Therefore, the Master, when using slides to familiarize the neophyte with the symbols, had to pay attention to the correct order of the glass plates, as no slide of the set could be missed or replaced with another. In Temple Work, when the slides showed thematically related images, alone or assembled, the presenter had to know how to group them. Most of the preserved slides (normally wood-mounted and generally measuring 17 or 18 × 10 × 1 cm) bear the titles of the series, the number of the picture and often its title, which could indicate that an ordinary member acted as the projectionist. When, however, lodges showed an (allegorical) story, the order of the set was determined by the tale’s narrative logic which made it easier to project. In Freemasonry it was the pedagogic function of the lantern that was predominant, even when entertaining stories were told. One of the first principles that the apprentice had to learn was that ‘everything [in life] should be seen as a metaphor’.32 Sabine Mödersheim and David Francis have given examples of reading symbolic slides. Although I will not pursue this aspect here, I will nonetheless take a brief look at a set of allegorical slides entitled

29 30 31 32

herein by Charles Buls, was also supported by Freemasons (cf. https://memoires.laligue.org/chronologie/ appels-de-jean-mace-et-debut-de-la-ligue-de-lenseignement, [accessed 9 November 2020]). Both Ligues started to use slides early on. Cf. Kessler, Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy’, 101. Anonymous. ‘What next?’, The Freemason’s Chronicle (10 October 1885): 226. Anonymous. ‘Seeing’, Short Talk Bulletin IV.4 (April 1926). Carl Harry Claudy. Old Tiler Talks: On secrets [1924]. Daniel Bérèsniak. Symbols of Freemasonry (New York: Assouline Publishing, 2000), 8.

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Fig. 5. Slide from ‘Damon and Pythias’. (Courtesy: Collection Toverlantaarnmuseum Scheveningen).

‘Damon and Pythias’ that was sold by numerous producers in identical, albeit differently styled, scenes. The unmistakable message to the audience is that true friendship between men exists and will survive even the stiffest trials. The slides contain numerous iconic symbols that those admitted to the second grade could understand, while at the same time enjoying the narrative as such and, by watching it as part of a community, feel the power of identifying with the group.33 The glass plates of ‘Damon and Pythias’ show encrypted symbolic elements which would have been immediately recognized and understood by the initiated, while apprentices and outsiders may not even perceive these as such, as they appear simply as elements of the decor, e.g. checkered tiles can be read as the mosaic floor, two pillars in a landscape as Boaz and Jachin, leaves as the acacia branch on Hiram’s grave, their twisted position on the columns as the snake from the Bible, a carpet as metonym of the one in Salomon’s temple, Pythias’s sword as part of the ritual Temple Work. Also, Pythias’s uniform and sandals, the palm trees in the desert and the distant hills can be symbolically laden (cf. Fig. 5). Most of the elements mentioned refer not only to historical, biblical, or other aspects, they also have a deeper meaning in masonic symbolism and are thus double-layered,34 which makes learning them laborious. When, for example, a religious symbol such as God’s AllSeeing Eye was interpreted in the Work it was in the first place not to assume ‘a theological meaning, because as a rule they [Lodges] shrank from theology’.35 According to the masonic tradition it could of course be understood as ‘a symbol of the Divine Omniscience’ but 33 An effect also wanted by the church. 34 Cf. for this purpose the masonic encyclopedias on the internet, e.g. ‘Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its Kindred Sciences’ (http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/mackeys_encyclopedia/a.htm). 35 Cf. lemma ‘All-Seeing Eye’ in an interpretation of Albert Gallatin Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its kindred sciences (http://www.cedarcitylodge.org/books/Mackey,%20Albert%20G%20-%20The%20Complete%20 Encyclopedia%20of%20Freemasons%20(3,849%20pgs).pdf, [accessed 22 November 2020].

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also as ‘a symbol for what ought to be the Fraternity’s own omniscience […] in the sense that it never loses sight of a man once that man has become a member, not even if he does not attend Lodge [Work] […]’.36 Furthermore Freemasons communicate in colours, e.g. to mark the rank of a member. The Knights of Pythias have the following code: yellow for charity, red for benevolence, blue for friendship, which can be found several times in the set. In their eyes Damon and Pythias is an allegory of the brotherhood of men, everlasting friendship, and brotherly love which constitute basic principles of Freemasonry. The slide set and the narrative combined details in the picture, the special significance of which could only be deciphered by the initiated, and a spiritual and emotional dimension aimed at supporting the members of the lodge on their path towards moral perfection. Differences and Parallels in Lantern Teaching The lantern slides in the collection of KADOC or other archives conserving material with a formerly religious significance cannot be analysed without recalling their visual origins. Since the time of the construction of the cathedrals, glass windows, statues, reliefs, paintings, etc. were figurative to attract the eye of the beholders and, with frequent narrative scenes, to impress their minds.37 For the believer’s home, glass painters produced ‘cosmic, but also scholastic, moral, and allegorical topics’38 in beautiful colours according to the client’s wishes. Monochrome tiles presented scenes from the Bible.39 In the nineteenth century printed devotional images appeared, first in black and white, then in colour. Most of them gave only a little information: e.g. a passage from the Old Testament, a short prayer or a suffragium (intercessory prayer), catechetical instructions. There could also be some text on the back (although inaccessible to the illiterate). The pictures could be read as (part of) a story (e.g. chapters from the life of a saint) and/or stand for moral, ethical, religious, social, or human values (the saint’s life stood for faith, loyalty, sacrifice, love, etc.). When alone and faced by a devotional object, the faithful could project their feelings onto the picture or statue of a saint. With respect to the tradition of the pious image, Rosenbaum-Dondaine states, ‘what can be seen is less important than what the user sees in it’, and how deeply the view affects him/her.40 When the lantern business started to use photography around 1880, the slides were quickly coloured to increase readability, to accentuate details and to charm the beholder’s eye. Like the earlier imagery, slides presented dramatic scenes (mostly a person in a context) telling a narrative in a way that even those who did not know the Bible could feel the impact. With the optical lantern came the lecturers providing through their words a way through the flow of slides to keep the audience’s thoughts focused. The interpretation was 36 Idem. 37 Was it because the Holy Mass was for a long time in Latin? 38 Faszination durch Farbe – Licht – Glas. Europäische Glasmalerei, exposition catalogue (Augsburg: Verlag Josef Hannesschläger, n.d.), 22. 39 Cf. Adr. Huijg. De Bijbel op tegels (Boxtel, Brugge: Uitgeverij Emmaüs, 1978). 40 Cf. Catherine Rosenbaum-Dondaine. L’Image de piété en France 1814–1914 (Paris: Musée-Gallerie de la Seita, 1984), 43.

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now ‘under control’. The lecturer decided if a comet above a barn in Bethlehem would be read as a natural or a divine phenomenon (a guide for the three Magi). This was certainly a welcome development, as in 1853 a certain Abbé Sagette had complained about ‘the bad taste and the doctrinal weakness’ of the millions of distributed prints produced by ‘subaltern industries’ without clerical control,41 a view almost certainly held by others as well. A spiritual boost provided with the aid of an optical lantern was desired by both institutions although their methods differed. A masonic apprentice was trained in listening to the Worshipful Master, recognizing the object as a symbol on the slide and memorizing its meaning. Content was studied in dialogue with the Master of Ceremonies and on a rational level. A young Catholic Christian too would listen to the priest, and his/her instruction in religious matters was imparted in the form of training on an emotional, intuitive level aimed at developing his/her ‘intuition for the symbol or – symbolically said – the third eye’.42 Holy stories and pictures of saints were supposed to promote the connection with God. One important difference between the use of slides by the Church and other (secular) institutions was the text. In 1888 the French Ligue de l’enseignement (Education League) started to supply flyers, pamphlets, booklets, etc. to accompany the slide sets so that buyers or lenders might be able to understand the content of the picture although they would have needed a good general education and do some research themselves to present an interesting lecture.43 The Church also used handwritten and printed booklets.44 In one respect this allowed amateur lecturers such as nuns or monks to tell their audience stories from the Bible, gave evangelization ‘Crusaders’ a better basis for teaching catechism and liturgy, and helped missionaries to depict the customs of the foreign countries where they had taken the photographs used in their lantern talk. In the other respect when slides were to be used by numerous different teachers, the same words would be read, which not only assured a consistency of quality for the presentation, but also prevented the temptation to freely interpret image content, thus providing a degree of control over the message. As for the Freemasons, booklets may have existed, but I have yet to find them. In principle they were not necessary, as the Master of Ceremonies would have known everything by heart. Much of the content to be learned consisted of ritual phrases, definitions of concepts, and explanations of symbols, often unchanged for decades or even centuries. On the other hand discussions were initiated among the participants in the Work to express their thoughts and share their opinions on the topic, which transformed the session into a kind of seminar. A text was thus not merely unnecessary, it entailed the risk of the disclosure and exposure of the lodge’s ceremonies. This was regarded as undesirable as, separated from their context, the rituals would seem bizarre and ridiculous to the uninitiated.45 Even with 41 Sagette, quoted in Rosenbaum-Dondaine. L’Image de piété en France 1814–1914, 83. 42 Hubertus Halbfas. Das dritte Auge, fifth ed. (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1992), 128 f. 43 Cf. Johanna Natali, and Marco Mozzati. Le Fonds de vues sur verre du Musée Pédagogique. Premier inventaire des ‘notices explicatives’, type-script (Rouen: Musée Pédagogique, October 1978), 5, 7–8. 44 Cf. the notebooks of Gentse Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk in the KADOC collection at KU Leuven. 45 Claudy in his Old Tiler Talks also says: ‘Circumspection in speaking of the things of the lodge, as opposed to the spirit of a lodge, is necessary only that no false idea be given the outsider. If it were possible to photograph men receiving the first degree, the profane might laugh, unappreciative of the symbolism they saw’. Elitism, the feeling of belonging to a very special community, may also have played a certain role in the secrecy.

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a substantial general knowledge, the deeper meaning of many of the symbols and icons, formulas and gestures was inaccessible to outsiders and could lead to misinterpretations: ‘The harm done [by] leaving Masonic lantern slides where the profane may see them will come from the poor opinion the profane gets from the Masonic slide conception of charity and brotherly love and truth and relief ’.46 Symbolic Language in Slides In the course of almost 2000 years, the Catholic Church had developed a system of symbols, icons, and allegorical images. The Freemasons had either more or less time to do so, depending on when one situates the beginning of Freemasonry – i.e. with the construction of Solomon’s Temple (1000 bce) as some suggest, or with the foundation of the Grand Lodge in England in 1717. As to the para-masonic organizations such as the Order of Good Templars, they based their iconographic system on predecessors such as the homonymous group of knights (twelfth to fourteenth century). A discussion of the numerous symbols on masonic slides and their relation to Christianity47 goes beyond the scope of this article. Both groups share common points of reference such as Solomon’s Temple, moreover stonemasons built the cathedrals, and both communities trod the same path until the ‘transition’, when Freemasonry developed into a ‘society of philanthropic ideas’.48 Numerous Catholic priests were Freemasons until the anti-masonic papal bulls of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries took full effect, masonic iconography contains both Christian (and older) symbols, but specifically masonic ones do not seem to have been accepted into the Catholic system. Was it because the motto ‘extra ecclesiam nulla salus’ (outside the Church no salvation) was too strongly respected? Masonic orders and lodges employ a canon of symbols, as does the Church. Before slides came into use, the canon was widespread in both ecclesiastical (the windows, paintings, statues in churches referred to above) and domestic situations (e.g. the tradition of biblical scenes on tiles, devotional glass pictures, etc.) and people were largely familiar with it. These images reflected beliefs and were shared within communities as an expression of a spiritual attitude or religious thinking. Catholic slides which used the pictorial canon showed Jesus, Mary, the saints, popes, and other dignitaries, normally in their bodily appearance, sometimes represented by a symbol such as a heart in a halo. Freemasons concentrated on objects which had a significance often dating back to their first appearance in a historical context (e.g. the construction of Solomon’s Temple, the practical masonic work on cathedrals in the Middle Ages). Their iconography, used in secular rituals, served for personal improvement (e.g. character, knowledge, behaviour, moral insight). The masonic symbols invited reflection, sharpened observation, invoked positive attitudes to the daily routine and a conscientiousness in one’s actions. The images used in religious

46 Claudy, Old Tiler Talks. 47 Cf. here, e.g. the ‘Masonic Glossary’ (http://www.thedebhir.com/1013A0.html#Glos-RR) or ‘Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its Kindred Sciences’ (http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/mackeys_encyclopedia/a.htm) as well as picture encyclopedias for the bible. 48 Luc Nefontaine. La Franc-Maçonnerie, une fraternité révélée (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 25.

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teaching were also intended to uplift the believer’s heart and mind. General improvement or optimization was, however, not the aim. The persons depicted, often holy or saintly figures, represented an ideal to be reached: these long-gone humans, often martyred and imprisoned, had died for their Faith and their pertinacity in the face of their persecutors and torturers, or they had excelled in their lives by being extremely pious and agreeable to God (according to Vatican standards). Although the strategy, object, and method were different, the slides of both institutions used their respective canons to bring about a general spiritual boost. For one group the aim was to provide its members the tools needed for a process leading toward mental (and even spiritual) personal perfection, for the other to implant religious ideals in the mind of the beholder and the establishment of moral parameters to be observed by the believer. Although Freemasonry communicated through symbols or symbolic imagery49 (which could change in meaning), the Catholic Church seems to have been more reluctant to do so. Apart from the cross, only a limited number of cathedral windows seem to show the Lamb or the Sacred Heart, and strictly allegorical scenes (zodiac signs, seasons, the twelve months, the four elements, etc.)50 are very rare. Neither devotional pictures nor the ecclesiastical slides seem to have adopted allegories. The slides used for evangelization and missionary work generally had a content that was unsophisticated, instantly recognizable, and easily understood, even for the illiterate and the lowly. The projected images could, however, show foreign customs or Catholic rituals that required explanation by the missionary or priest. It seems that the ‘romantic taste for symbols’51 never really gained ground in devotional imagery. Masonic slides were esoteric and always needed decoding, as their meaning could not be grasped merely by looking at them, regardless of whether they showed symbols or a (fictional) scene. Their perusal was supposed to lead to self-recognition, self-evaluation, and self-advancement. Catholic slides used only a restricted number of symbols such as the dove for the Holy Spirit, the lamb for Jesus, the ray of light from Heaven, and the all-seeing eye for God. In most Catholic slides depicting God, a certain preference for a more human-shaped symbol can be detected: we see God the Father as an Old Man with a white beard floating in the clouds, although the Old Testimony (Exodus 20, 4) says, ‘You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above […]’.52 Can it be that the artists found a human form more suitable to be placed next to the figures of Mary and Jesus (the figures most represented in the collections I have studied)? Whatever the case the retention of only a limited number of symbols may

49 Symbol is defined by Mackey (A Lexicon of Freemasonry (London, Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Company, 1860), 333) as: ‘A sensible image used to express an occult but analogical signification’. Later Mackey (An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, vol. II (London, New York: The Masonic Company, 1916), 751) stated: ‘A symbol is defined to be a visible sign with which a spiritual feeling, emotion, or idea is connected’. (https:// grandlodgeofiowa.org/docs/Books/MackeyAG_Encylopediaof FreemasonryVols1and2.pdf, [accessed 22 November 2020]. I use ‘symbol’ in this sense: ‘A thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract’. (Oxford English Dictionary, https://www.lexico.com/definition/ symbol, [accessed 22 November 2020]). 50 Cf. Faszination durch Farbe, 22. 51 Rosenbaum-Dondaine, L’Image de piété en France, 61. 52 Version of New Heart English Bible (https://biblehub.com/exodus/20-4.htm, [accessed 20 August 2020]).

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have been better suited to the general purpose of the slides, namely to show role models to emulate. For the Catholic Church it was essential that a symbol ‘was not considered a secret text’,53 that a picture containing symbols was not a riddle. For this reason children learned what they meant in Sunday school, in class, when preparing First Communion, and so on. Their first initiation so to speak took place at the age of six or seven, whereas a profane would join a lodge as an adult and would spend several years learning the iconography in the process of passing through the degrees. Most religious slides are perfectly explicit as the Church wanted to transmit a clear message. They show pictures containing objects that are easily recognizable as the objects themselves and most refrain from representing complicated items with a symbolic or allegorical meaning. If the images used codes, as is the case with the saints and their attributes, the code had to remain constant and be easy to grasp. Catholic lantern slides used the pictorial tradition to combine the saints with the emblematic accessory that identifies them. For example the gridiron that Saint Lawrence is shown with still denotes the instrument of torture as such. Nowadays stained glass windows and statues in churches often have a caption explaining what is depicted to ensure correct identification, whereas in the past believers would have been familiar with the iconography. The Catholic Church in its adoption of the optical lantern wanted to win back the masses, as secularization and pillarization (in the case of Belgium) had led to the alienation of various sections of society. Those who had gone to secular schools were no longer familiar with the stories and needed at least some explanation if they were to understand them. Elsewhere slide producers such as Maison de la Bonne Presse or E. Mazo would reproduce classical paintings that might show a complex iconography that had to be interpreted by the lecturer. Here though the complexity was a product of the artist’s deliberate choice to use symbolic codes and also the result of the decline of the ability of an increasingly secular audience to read religious paintings.54 Conclusion Images projected by means of the optical lantern allowed instruction to be given in groups. For individual studies a Catholic or a Freemason respectively read their catechism or other texts. A slide projection accompanied by a lecture that supplied general information or a ritualized verbal exchange during initiation rituals was an appropriate teaching method, as Masons preferred the oral tradition of knowledge transfer, sharing an ancient reluctance to put instructions into writing in order to preserve them from the gaze of the profane. Catholics preferred representations of detailed scenes that look almost as if they had been posed on a stage, with an eye-catching centre surrounded by a space filled with detail.

53 Donat De Chapeaurouge. Einführung in die Geschichte der christlichen Symbole, fourth rev. ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeinschaft, 2001), 1. 54 By the end of the sixteenth century, the first ‘iconologies’ appeared specifying to artists how to code and decode allegories. Cf. Oskar Bätschmann, Einführung in die kunstgeschichtliche Hermeneutik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeinschaft, 1986), 39–40.

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This was a feature not only of reproductions of paintings but also of the life-model slides of Maison de la Bonne Presse. French and Belgian clergy relied on the Parisian publisher when they could or would not make transparencies themselves. Masonic slides for the ritual Work look austere.55 They showed one or more encoded items on a neutral (thus non-distracting) background, in which all the symbols were related to one other as they produced the knowledge required for advancement to a higher grade. Although fraternal societies and lodges differed in their rites and rituals, they probably shared large parts of the repertory offered by the slide makers. Catholic and masonic slides depicting objects could (also) be read as simply as depictions in themselves – the image was enjoyed in terms of its own aesthetic. When explanations were given in the religion instruction class, it was to counter any misinterpretation of the symbol and prevent the believer from projecting erroneous ideas on the image, which the Church was keen to avoid. Instruction in how to decode masonic pictures took place behind closed doors in the lodge. It was thought of as a kind of mnemonic training and as an intellectual as well as a spiritual exercise. Many manuals for Freemasons consulted on archive.org express this view (with slight variations) of the Work: ‘The Precious Jewels of a Fellow-craft are the Attentive Ear, the Instructive Tongue and the Faithful Breast. The Attentive Ear receives the sound from the Instructive Tongue, and the mysteries [secrets] of Freemasonry are safely lodged in the Depository [repository] of Faithful Breasts’. Does it not sound like a lesson with the lantern for this special audience?56 Acknowledgments My special thanks go to Laurent Aknin, Marc-Alain Genillard, Frank Kessler, Natalija Majsova for their critical reading of my contribution, and to the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen ( Jan de Vree) as well as Henk Boelmans Kranenburg from the Toverlantarenmuseum Scheveningen for allowing me to publish images from their collections. Bibliography Anonymous. ‘Zum Coloriren geeignete Laternbilder’, Laterna Magica 3 ( January 1881): 32–33 ——. ‘What next?’, The Freemason’s Chronicle (10 October 1885): 226 ——. ‘Seeing’, Short Talk Bulletin IV.4 (April 1926) (http://www.skirret.com/archive/stb/ stb1926-04.html, [accessed 30 August 2020]) Beigel, Hermann. ‘Die Odd-Fellows’, Der Freimaurer: illustrierte Monatsschrift für die gesammte Freimaurerei 6 ( June 1876): 70–73 Bérèsniak, Daniel. Symbols of Freemasonry (New York: Assouline Publishing, 2000) 55 They were also often self-made as Mödersheim, ‘Enthüllung und Geheimhaltung’, 138 states. 56 The article was written within the framework of the B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940), a project funded by FWO and FNRS under the Excellence of Science (EOS) project number 30802346. B-magic will write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. In doing so, it will provide an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography.

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Borton, Terry, and Deborah Borton. Before the Movies. American Magic-Lantern Entertainment and the Nation’s First Great Screen Artist, Joseph Boggs Beale (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2014) Brooker, Jeremy. The Temple of Minerva. Magic and the Magic Lantern at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, London 1837 – 1901 (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2013) Cedar City Lodge’s webside with numerous digitalised masonic books (http://www. cedarcitylodge.org/library.php, [accessed 31 August 2020]) Claudy, Carl Harry. Old Tiler Talks: On secrets [1924] (http://www.skirret.com/papers/claudy/ ott/onsecrets.html, [accessed 31 August 2020]) Crangle, Richard, Mervyn Heard, and Ine Van Dooren. Realms of Light: Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 21st Century (London: The Magic Lantern Society, 2005) D’Alviella, Goblet. The Migration of Symbols (Westminster: Archibald Constable and Co., 1894) De Chapeaurouge, Donat. Einführung in die Geschichte der christlichen Symbole, fourth rev. ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeinschaft, 2001) De Roo, Henk. Website De Luikerwaal, (https://www.luikerwaal.com/newframe_nl.htm?/ inh_lantaarns_nl.htm, [accessed 31 August 2020]) Ducrotay de Blainville, Henri Marie. Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles, Planches. Zoologie (Paris: F. G. Levrault, 1816–1830) (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/78647#page/7/ mode/1up, [accessed 27 August 2020]) Duquesne, Jacques, and François Lebrette. La Vie des Saints à travers 100 chefs-d’œuvre de la peinture (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 2005) Faszination durch Farbe – Licht – Glas. Europäische Glasmalerei, exposition catalogue (Augsburg: Verlag Josef Hannesschläger, n.d.) ‘[Figures de lanterne magique]’ (1844), Bibliothèque Nationale de France (https://gallica.bnf. fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8528574c, [accessed 31 August 2020]) Francis, David. ‘The AOUW or What Collecting Lantern Slides May Turn Up’, in Realms of Light. Uses and Perceptions of the Magic Lantern from the 17th to the 21st Century, edited by Richard Crangle, Mervin Heard, and Ine van Dooren (London: Magic Lantern Society, 2005), 92–96 Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité Du Crest, Comtesse de. Mémoires de Mme de Genlis (Paris: François Barrière, 1857) (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62275961/f. 221.item, [accessed 31 August 2020]) Halbfas, Hubertus. Das dritte Auge, fifth ed. (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1992) (https://www. bibelwissenschaft.de/wirelex/das-wissenschaftlich-religionspaedagogische-lexikon/wirelex/ sachwort/anzeigen/details/symboldidaktik/ch/077c0d71861f1124419272e47e482ca5/#h1, [accessed 31 August 2020]) Hodapp, Christopher. Freimaurer für Dummies, translated by Hartmut Strahl (Weinheim: WILEY-VCH Verlag, 2017) Huijg, Adr. De Bijbel op tegels (Boxtel, Brugge: Uitgeverij Emmaüs, 1978) Internetloge, http://www.internetloge.de/arstzei/lama_schrepfer.pdf, [accessed 31 August 2020] Jordan, Stefan, and Jürgen Müller (ed.). Grundbegriffe der Kunstgeschichte (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2018) Joye, Pierre, and Rosine Lewin. L’Église et le mouvement ouvrier en Belgique (Brussels: Société populaire d’Éditions, 1967)

m ason ic slide cultur es: teaching , meditation, optimization

Kessler, Frank, and Sabine Lenk. ‘Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured Against their Common Laic Enemies Before 1914’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17.1 (2019): 89–111 Le Men, Ségolène. ‘Monsieur le Soleil et Madame la Lune…’, in Lanternes magiques, tableaux transparents, edited by Ségolène le Men (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1986): 9–70 Mackey, Albert G. A Lexicon of Freemasonry; containing a definition of all its communicable terms, notices of its history, traditions, and antiquities, and an account of all the rites and mysteries of the ancient world, fifth English ed., reprint of the fifth American ed., revised by Donald Campbell (London, Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Company, 1860) (http://www.cedarcitylodge.org/ books/Mackey,%20Albert%20G%20-%20A%20Lexicon%20of%20Freemasonry%20(356%20 pgs).pdf, [accessed 31 August 2020]) ——. An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its kindred sciences comprising the whole range of arts, sciences and literature as connected with the institution, new and revised ed. by Edward L. Hawkins, and William J. Hughan (London, New York: The Masonic Company, vol. 1: 1914, vol. 2: 1916) (https://grandlodgeofiowa.org/docs/Books/MackeyAG_ Encylopediaof FreemasonryVols1and2.pdf, [accessed 31 August 2020]) Mannoni, Laurent. Le grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre. Archéologie du cinéma (Paris: Nathan, 1994) Masonic glossary, http://www.thedebhir.com/1013A0.html#Glos-SS, [accessed 31 August 2020] Mödersheim, Sabine. ‘Enthüllung und Geheimhaltung. Zur Bildsymbolik der Rosenkreuzer und Freimaurer’, in Deutsche Geheimgesellschaften. Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Jost Hermand, and Sabine Mödersheim (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag 2013), 121–40 [Moigno, Abbé], ‘Préface’, in Jules Girard, Photomicrographie en cent tableaux pour projection. Nouvelle série: Cours de science illustrée no 2 (Paris: Bureau du Journal ‘Les Mondes’, GauthierVillars, 1872) Natali, Johanna, and Marco Mozzati. Le Fonds de vues sur verre du Musée Pédagogique. Premier inventaire des ‘notices explicatives’, type-script (Rouen: Musée Pédagogique, October 1978) Nefontaine, Luc. La Franc-Maçonnerie, une fraternité révélée (Paris: Gallimard, 1994) Perriault, Jacques. Mémoires de l’ombre et du son. Une archéologie de l’audio-visuel (Paris: Flammarion, 1981) Phoenixmasonry Masonic Museum, http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/masonicmuseum/ Magic_Lantern_with_EA_FC_MM_Slides.htm, [accessed 31 August 2020] Rosenbaum-Dondaine, Catherine. L’Image de piété en France 1814–1914 (Paris: Musée-Gallerie de la Seita, 1984) Ruchatz, Jens. Licht und Wahrheit. Eine Mediumgeschichte der fotografischen Projektion (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2003) Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, https://www.srmml.org/collections/onlinecollections/ and https://srmmlonlineexhibitions.omeka.net/exhibits/show/the-secretsociety-lantern--ma/introduction-1, [accessed 31 August 2020] Smith, Mike. Show People Painted. A Catalogue of 18th and 19th Century Paintings Depicting Magic Lantern and Peepshow Performers (Leeds (West Yorkshire): PMM Group, 2019) Van Wering, F. Gedenkboek ter gelegenheid van het vijftigjarig bestaan der I.O.O.F. in Nederland, 19 Maart 1877–1927 (Amsterdam: Caiff & Meischke, 1927)

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Archive Material Léon Roup, ‘Plaques colorées par projection, facilitant l’enseignement des sciences naturelles, l’histoire, la Géométrie et l’Histoire de l’Art’, letter to the Ministère de l’industrie du travail et de la prévoyance sociale (probably 1 September 1926), kept at ULB’s Archives, Patrimoine et Réserve précieuse.

Section 4

Historical Articles on Slide Performances by the Church

Bou. ‘La Rédemption’, Journal de Roubaix, 30 December 1908, quoted in Anonymous. ‘Causerie du mois’, Le Rayon 1 ( January 1909): 2–4 (facsimile)

Two historical documents about a religious event complete this volume. The first, a description of a concert with slides organized by the members of a Catholic parish in Roubaix in the community hall, foregrounds the relation between the projected pious images and sacred music, selected specifically for this occasion. It evokes the atmosphere of the ceremony and demonstrates how this kind of religious show was structured and performed.

Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 261–265 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129107 This is an open access chapter made available under a Cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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Neue evangelische Garnisonskirche. ‘Lichtbilderpredigt über das Leben Jesu, I. Teil’, printed by Ernst Schimkönig, Berlin 1909 (facsimile)

The second historical document shows how a protestant community in Berlin celebrated the holy mass with the lantern and slides, and how the pious ceremony was organized inside the church, which was not ‘neutral ground’, in contrast to the Roubaix case presented by the previous facsimile. The text invited to listen, watch, read, and sing, that is, to participate actively. Both facsimiles are examples of relatively rare productions. The Protestants normally focus on words, the use of images in their religious tradition is not common. Conversely, Catholic journals mention priests that have chosen the ‘beam of light’ to celebrate faith with believers and potential devotees; however, a precise program is seldom given.

Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860–1940, ed. by Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, TECHNE-MPH, 7, (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 267–271 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.130438 This is an open access chapter made available under a Cc by-nc 4.0 International License.

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271

Index

Action catholique (Movement) 53, 75, 215, 219 Adam, Adolphe 131 Adams, Leontius (Father) 74 Aillaud, Georges (Abbot) 19, 24-25, 30, 35 Alber, see Graves, Jean Jacques Édouard Amis de l’éducation (Quebec) 50 Ancient Order of United Workmen (AOUW, Meadville) (Lodge) 245, 256 Anticlericalism 93, 94, 104, 106, 114 Antoine, André 162 Apparition 45, 193, 195, 200, 225, 228, 235, 238-39 Aquinas, Thomas (Father) 20, 155 Artistic Cabaret 32, 225, 228-29, 234-36, 238-39 Associations diocésaines de projectionnistes (France) 60 Athénée (Brussels) 243 Aubert (Paris) (Company) 47, 242 Augustine of Hippo (Bishop) 155 Augustinians of the Assumption (aka Assumptionists) (Religious Order) 11, 22, 25, 32, 40, 42-43, 45, 58, 60-63, 66 Bailly, see De Paul Bailly, Vincent Band of Hope (London) 158 Basile (Brother) 44 Baudrillart, Henri 126 Beal, Joseph Boggs 245-46, 256 Berlioz, Hector 132 Bernard, Henri 50, 54 Bertiau, Florent C. (Father) 205 Besson, Rémy 142, 153 Bijou Collection 14, 139-40, 141-53, 156, 160, 169-71, 173-74, 176-83 Blavatsky, Helena 233 Bonaventure, Saint 20

Bon Cinéma National, Le (Company) 50-51, 64 Bon Théâtre, Le 63, 66 Bons Templiers socialistes ‘Égalité no. 1’, Les (Brussels) (Lodge) 246 Bossuet, Jacques-Bènigne Lignel 125 Botrel, Théodore 132, 136-37 Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes, Jacques (Boucher de Perthes) 194 Braun, Henri (Abbot) 23, 33, 34, 36 Bresdin, Paul 64-65, 67 Brochet, Honoré Auguste (pseudonym Honoré Le Sablais) (Father) 23, 32, 4548, 51, 54, 59, 63-67 Broeders van de Christelijke Scholen (Religious Order) 132 Brothers of the Christian Schools, see Broeders van de Christelijke Scholen Buls, Charles 247-48 Busnach, William 164 C. E. Ward Co. (New London, Ohio) 246 C. W. Briggs Company of Philadelphia (Company) 246 Cabaret du Néant (Paris) 234-36, 238 Canonesses Regular of the Holy Sepulcher (aka Sepulchrine Canonesses) (Religious Order) 89, 95 Capellani, Albert 162-64, 168 Capuchins, see Order of Friars Minor, Capuchin Carrière, Louis 87, 96 Carton de Wiart, Henri 108 Catechism 9, 23, 26-27, 29-30, 34-35, 36-37, 40, 47, 58-59, 70, 72, 103, 105, 108, 125, 12930, 137, 139, 141-43, 145-53, 157-58, 160, 167, 169, 171-75, 177, 181, 183, 251, 254

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Catholic Committee of the Council on Public Education (Canada) 50 Catholic Documentation Centre, see Katholieke Documentatiecentrum Centrale voor Projektie-Onderwijs (C. P. O.) 210, 219-210 Cercle Artistique et Littéraire (Brussels) 109 Chamayou, Henri (Canon) 26, 36, 129 Chat Noir (Paris) 26, 32, 225, 236, 238 Chile 71, 74 China 69-70, 72-75, 81-82, 172 China Mission 73-75 Choux, Jean 48, 52 Cinéscopie, La, see Société Anonyme La Cinéscopie, La Claudy, Carl Harry 248, 251-52, 256 Coissac, Guillaume-Michel 26, 28, 30, 35-36, 40, 42-46, 49, 51, 54, 59-60, 62-64, 67, 87, 96, 129-30, 174, 182 Collective and Cultural Memory 156, 167, 169-171, 173, 175, 177-79, 181-83 Comic Strips 170, 177-78, 180-81, 183-84 Congo 71-74, 108, 111, 114-15, 121 Congo Mission 73-74, 108, 111 Conradt, Walter 124, 137 Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers (Paris) 20, 37, 242 Consortium des Bons Cinémas (Paris) 64 Couët, Thomas Cyrille (Father) 50, 54 Crémieux, Albert 213, 221 Cruikshank, George 156 Crystal Palace (London) 202 Cultural heritage 10-11, 13, 50, 54, 57, 65, 70, 93, 202, 242 Cultural series 161, 164, 170-71, 177, 179, 181 Cuvier, Georges 197-98, 203-204

De Baroncelli, Jacques 46, 52 De Fauchécour, Jacques (Abbot) 44 De la Fontaine, Jean 242 De l’Isle, Jean-Marie 45 De Moulin Brothers & Co. (Greenville, Illinois) (Company) 246 De Paul Bailly, Vincent (Father) 40, 54, 58-59, 67 De Philipsthal, Paul (pseudonym Paul Philidor) see Philidor, Paul De Roussel de Préville, Maximilien-Raoul (pseudonym R. P. de Préville) (Abbot) 144-45, 153, 157 De Saint-Victor, Paul 202 De Vos, Johan 69, 82 Delacroix, René 52 Delivery Technology 144-45, 147-49, 151-52, 173 Denis, Léon 231 Dercy, Henry 61 DeSève, Joseph-Alexandre 53 Dessain (Paris) (Company) 142-43 Diable au Corps, Le (Brussels) 236-38 Dierckx, François 112 Dispositif 13, 173, 182, 211-13, 216, 218, 220, 222, 228 Dominicans (aka Order of Preachers) (Religious Order) 58, 69 Donatien, E. B., see Wessbecher, Émile Charles Bernard Doré, Gustave 29, 37, 190-91, 206 Dorville, Antonin 234 Du Crest, Stéphanie-Félicité (Countess de Genlis) 21, 243, 256 Dupont, Pierre 131 Duvivier, Julien 47, 52

D’Alzon, Emmanuel (Father) 58 Damblans (pseudonym of Eugène Damblanc) 23 Danion, Joseph (Father) 48, 63 Darwin, Charles Robert 188, 196-97, 205-206 Daughters of Rebekah (Baltimore, Maryland) (Lodge) 245 Davidsfonds (Leuven) 75, 219, 221

E. Mazo (Paris) (Company) 29, 60-61, 90, 135, 225, 239, 254 Early Film 57, 155, 161-62 Early Visual Popular Culture 12, 14, 140, 181 Edification 11-12, 25, 48-49, 169-70, 175, 178, 180 Éditions catholiques de cinéma éducatif 52 Editorial Strategy 140-41, 143, 145, 147-49, 151-53, 169

index

Education (Through the Senses) 27, 30, 34, 124-25, 147, 169, 172, 174, 193 Éducation Nouvelle 209, 211, 222 Egyptian Hall (London) 200, 206 Elckerlyc Genootschap Publieksvereniging (Antwerp) 205 Elebaers, Karel 87, 96, 215, 222 Emotions 13, 20, 26, 28, 34-35, 69, 140, 15559, 163, 165-67, 244, 250-51, 253 Encausse, Gérard (pseudonym Professor Papus) 232-34 Epi(dia)scope 88, 92 Établissements Louis Aubert (Paris) (Company) 47, 242 Eucharistisch Catechistenwerk (Ghent) 72, 139, 141, 145, 149, 151, 157, 160, 174-76, 179, 251 Eurocentric Worldview 71 Europa Film (Company) 52 Extension Universitaire (Brussels) 109, 113 Fairground 27, 44, 149, 225-27, 229-231, 239-40 Fathers of Scheut, see Scheut Fathers Fauré, Gabriel Urbain 131 Fédération des œuvres diocésaines de Conférence et de Projection (France) 22 Féerie 193, 198, 205, 238 Félix, Joseph (Father) 203, 205 Féron-Vrau, Paul 35, 38, 43, 59, 174, 182 Fescourt, Henri 52 FiatFilm (Company) 52-53 Figuier, Louis 190, 192-98, 202-206 Film Censorship 39, 44, 46, 51, 53, 215 Film de Luxe (Company) 52 Film fixe 14, 28, 210-13, 215-16, 218-20, 222-23 Film microphote 213-14, 216 Filmstrip, see film fixe Fin-de-siècle 102, 116, 171, 225-29, 231, 233, 235-40 Firle, Walter 133 Flammarion, Nicolas Camille 203, 205, 234 Folies-Bergère 233 Fossier, M. 203 Fra Bartolomeo 23

Franciscaans Missiehalfuurtje 73 Franciscaanse Missiebond (Weert) 73 Franciscaanse Missiekelk 73 Franciscaanse Missies (Mortsel) 73 Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (Religious Order) 70 Franciscans, see Order of Friars Minor Fraternal Order of the Knights of Pythias (Washington, D.C.) (Lodge) 245, 250 Freemasons 12, 14, 49-50, 93, 214, 241, 244, 247-49, 251-52, 255 Frère-Orban, Hubert Joseph Walthère 106 Friars Minor, see Order of Friars Minor Fröbel, Friedrich Wilhelm August 242 Fuller, Marie Louise ‘Loïe’ 233-34, 239-40 Furetière, Antoine 21, 36 Gastineau, Octave 164 Gerbier, Marie-Léopold Théodermire (Canon) 59 GIS (Geographical Information System) 14, 102, 115-18, 120 Goldschmidt, Robert Benedict 213, 222-23 Gorlia, Joseph 88, 96, 216, 222 Goublier, Gustave 131 Gounod, Charles-François 131-32 Grand Lodge of New York (Lodge) 245 Granier, Jules 131 Graves, Jean Jacques Édouard (pseudonym Alber) 225, 230, 232, 239 Great Exhibition of 1851 (London) 202 Gregory I, aka Gregory the Great (Pope) 19, 128, 134 Griffith, David Wark 162, 164-65, 167 Guilbert & Coissac (Company) 64 Gymnase Polytechnique (Brussels) 200 Habermas, Jürgen 103, 119 Harry G. Healy (New York City) (Company) 246 Haton (Company) 142 Hawkins, Benjamin 202 Hégé, A. 225, 230, 239 Heilig Graf school (Turnhout) 85, 89-93, 95, 220

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Henderson & Ames Co. (Kalamazoo, Michigan) (Company) 246 Hepworth, Thomas Cradock 130, 137 Herbart, Johann Friedrich 83, 242 Hergé (alias Georges Prosper Remi) 170, 182 Hoffmann, Heinrich 133 Hoffmann, Paul 192, 206 Holmès, Augusta (Mary Anne) 131 Hume, David 155 Hungarian Children’s Work (Belgium) 113 Huot, Antonio (Abbott) 50, 54 Hyper-mediatization 115 Ichang Minor Seminary (Ichang) 74-79 IES Bárbara de Braganza (Badajoz) 189-93, 198, 203, 205 Ihling Bros. Everard Co. (Kalamazoo, Michigan) (Company) 246 Illusion 21, 32-34, 102, 132, 199, 225-26, 22930, 232-34 Illustrated Sermon 26, 129, 133, 137, 267-68 Imagetext 170, 173 Independent Order of Good Templars (IOGT, Oriskany, Utica) (Lodge) 24546, 252 Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF, London) (Lodge) 246 Intericonicity 14, 157, 169-70, 177 Intermediality 139-40, 142, 153, 161, 211 Intertextuality 139-40 Intuitive Teaching 85, 87, 96, 209, 216, 251 Isis Film (Company) 47, 48 Islam 94, 173, 183 J. Theobald & Co. (Company) 248 Jenkins, Henry 144, 146, 153, 173 Jesuits (aka Society of Jesus) (Religious Order) 20, 58, 69, 70, 108, 128, 205 Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne ( J. O. C.) 217, 219, 220 Joly, Henri 124, 130, 137 KADOC, see Katholieke Documentatiecentrum Kardec, Allan, see Rivail, Hippolyte Léon Denizard

Katholieke Documentatiecentrum (KADOC) (Leuven) 14, 69-70, 72, 74-75, 82, 113, 120, 129, 132, 139, 141, 145, 149, 151, 157, 160, 163, 165-66, 171, 174-76, 179, 183, 244, 250-51 Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding (KVHU) (Antwerp) 109, 112, 120-21 Kempis, Thomas a (Canon) 125, 137 Kircher, Athanasius 20-21, 36, 228 Kirchner, Albert (pseudonym Léar) 44 Knébel, Miklós (Priest) 113 Knights of Malta (aka Masonic Knights Templar) (Lodge) 245 Knights of Pythias, see Fraternal Order of the Knights of Pythias Kuwasseg, Karl Josef 191-92 Laflotte, Norbert Marie 90 Lalumière, Charles 52 Lanfranco, Giovanni Gaspare 28 Lapierre Frères (Paris) (Company) 147, 238, 240, 242, 247 Larose, Ludger 50 Latourelle, Télésphore 52 Le Bail, Gabriel (Father) 27, 34, 37, 128, 137 L’Ermite, Pierre, see Loutil, Eugène Edmond Le Fascinateur (Religious Journal) 22-23, 25-26, 28, 30, 32-33, 35-47, 49, 51-55, 57-61, 63-67, 87, 90, 96-98, 171, 214 Le Gentil, Jean Philippe Gui (Count de Paroy) 21, 243 Le Roux, Hugues 231, 240 Le Sablais, Honoré, see Brochet, Honoré Auguste Le Sueur, Eustache 28 League of Instruction (Quebec Province), see Ligue de l’enseignement (Montréal) League of Nations (Organization) 93 Léar, see Kirchner, Albert Lemieux, Albert-J. 50 Lemmens, Jos. (Abbot) 159 Lemoine, Alfred 125. 129, 137 Lemot, Achille 26, 32 Leo XIII (Pope) 27, 37, 107

index

Leopold II (King of Belgium) 114 Les Conférences (Religious Journal) 26, 34, 36, 41, 59, 61-62, 66 Letourneux, Matthieu 144, 146, 153 Letterenhuis (Antwerp) 205, 232 Libre Pensée, La (Brussels) (Lodge) 247 Lichtbilderpredigt, see Illustrated Sermon Ligue de l’enseignement (Beblenheim) 22, 39-40, 44-45, 49-50, 54-55, 59, 123, 135, 137, 179, 182, 242, 247-48, 251 Ligue de l’enseignement (Bruxelles) 242, 247-48 Ligue de l’enseignement (Montréal) 49-50, 54 Louis XVI (King of France) 243 Loutil, Eugène Edmond (pseudonym Pierre L’Ermite) (Father) 47-49, 51, 5354, 63, 67 Luini, Bernardino 177 Lulua-Katanga (Province, Vicariate) 73 Lumière (Lyon) (Company) 41, 59 Lumière, Louis 161 Luminous Sermon 13, 25, 35, 43, 172, 180 Luther, Martin 130 M. C. Lilley & Co. (Columbus, Ohio) (Company) 246 Maatschappij tot nut van ’t algemeen (Amsterdam) 247 Macé, Jean 22, 39, 49, 54, 247 Madame de Genlis, see Du Crest, Stéphanie-Félicité (Countess de Genlis) Maison de la Bonne Presse, La (Paris) (Company) 19, 22-23, 25-26, 28-29, 30--33, 36-55, 57-67, 90, 96-98, 125, 129-30, 132, 134-35, 137, 139, 142-43, 146, 157, 171-72, 219-20, 225, 254-55 Mâle, Émile 20, 36 Mantell, Gideon Algernon 191 Marie Antoinette (Queen of France) 194 Martin, John 191 Martinism 232-34 Masonic Knights Templar, see Knights of Malta Massenet, Jules 132 Mazo, Élie-Xavier 135, 225

McIntosh Battery & Optical Co. (Chicago, Illinois) (Company) 246 Méliès, Marie Georges Jean 161, 234 Melodrama 46-47, 140, 156-68, 175 177-78, 180-81 Memory Politics, Catholic 169-71, 177, 181-82 Mercier, Désiré Félicien François Joseph (Cardinal) 174 Merian, Maria Sibylla 243 Métempsycose 225-26, 229-32, 234, 238-39 Ministère de l’Industrie et du Travail (Brussels) 158 Ministry of Industry and Labour, see Ministère de l’Industrie et du Travail Missionaries 21, 69-73, 75, 82, 172, 211, 218, 251 Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Religious Order) 69 Mitchell, William John Thomas 170, 183, 190, 206 Mnemonic Functions 35, 140, 171, 173, 177, 255 Moigno, François Napoléon Marie (Abbot) 21, 24, 36-37, 40, 55, 149-50, 153, 201-02, 206, 242-43, 257 Molteni (Paris) (Company) 29, 180, 189, 198, 203, 242 Molteni, Alfred 21, 29, 37, 189, 206 Mongolia 71 Moore, Hubbell & Co. (Chicago, Illinois) (Company) 246 Multimedia Ecology 13-14, 140 Multimediality 124, 139, 141, 173 Multimodal Aesthetics of Emotion 6, 155, 165-66 Multimodality 14, 136, 155-56, 158, 166, 175 Multimodality of Experience 15, 139, 158 Murrow, William Chambers 234, 236, 240 Musée national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris) 197 Musée Pédagogique de l’État (aka Musée National de l’Éducation) (Paris, Rouen) 37, 59, 145, 251, 257 Museo del Cinema (Padua) 245 Music Hall 225-26, 228-29, 232-34, 239 Musser, Charles 101-02, 120

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i n dex

Nadal, Jérôme 34, 37 Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 43 Narrative Strategies 170, 193 National Society of Lanternists 247 Nicae Films (Company) 48 Niedermeyer, Abraham Louis 131 Nollet, Jean Antoine (Abbot) 21 Objectivity (in Photography) 84, 89, 95 Oblate Sisters of the Assumption (Religious Order) 62 Occultism 14, 229, 232-33, 239-40 Order of Friars Minor (aka Franciscans) (Religious Order) 69-70, 72-74, 82, 108 Order of Friars Minor, Capuchin (Religious Order) 69-74, 82, 108 Order of Owls (OOO, South Bend, Indiana) (Lodge) 245 Order of the Eastern Star (Richland, Mississippi) (Lodge) 245 Otlet, Paul 213, 222 Ouimet, Léo-Ernest 49 Owen, Richard 187 Paradis, Benjamin 50-51 Paradis, Jean-Baptiste 50-51 Parmentier, J. (Abbot) 23, 37, 129 Paroy, Count of, see Le Gentil, Jean Philippe Gui Passionists (aka Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ) (Religious Order) 69 Pathé, Charles 212 Pathé frères (Paris and Area) (Company) 52, 162, 167, 212 Pathéorama 211-13, 223 Pelez de Cordova (Abbot) 130 Pelland, Joseph Évariste Léon ‘Leo’ 51, 55 Pepper, Henri 225-26 Pepper’s Ghost 226, 230 Performance 9, 13, 72, 123-24, 128, 130, 132, 136, 139, 141, 148-51, 156, 161-64, 188-89, 192, 196-97, 199-203, 206-07, 228-30, 234, 238-40, 259 Perraud, Adolphe (Cardinal) 27 Perrault, Charles 242 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich 83, 242

Pettibone Manufacturing Co. (Cincinnati, Ohio) (Company) 246-47 Phantasmagoria 25, 86, 97, 119, 160, 167, 193, 225, 228-29, 231, 239-40 Philidor, Paul 225-26 Philip II (King of Spain) 93-94 Philippines 71 Photography 10, 60, 62, 71, 84, 105, 144, 161, 178, 202, 243, 250 Photoscope 213, 216 Photoscopie, La (Company) 210, 213-14, 216-17, 219-20, 222 Picard, François (Father) 58 Pillarization 102, 106-07, 109, 111, 114, 172, 254 Pirot, Jules-Joseph (Abbot) 49 Pius X (Pope) 26, 27, 172, 215 Pius XI (Pope) 210, 215, 222 Plasky, Elise 158, 167 Plockhorst, Bernhard 133 Polytechnic Institution (London) 242, 256 Poppe, Edward Joannes Maria (Priest) 141, 174 Préville, see De Roussel de Préville Prims, Florentinus (Floris) 113 Professor Papus, see Encausse, Gérard Proust, Marcel 21 Quenard, Gervais (Father) 59, 67 Radiguet & Massiot (Paris) (Company) 29, 61, 189, 203, 206 Raignier, Albert (Father) 205 Rau, William H. 245 Redemptorists (Religious Order) 70 Religious Heritage 70 Renaissance Films Distribution (Company) 53, 54 Reyner, Albert 30, 37 Ribot, Théodule-Armand 148, 153 Riou, Édouard 190, 192, 194, 203 Rivail, Hippolyte Léon Denizard (pseudonym Allan Kardec) 231, 233 Robert, Étienne-Gaspard (pseudonym Robertson) 225 Robertson, see Robert, Étienne-Gaspard Robin, Henri 199-202, 204-07, 228, 240, 242

index

Roup, Léon 243, 258 Rowntree, Benjamin Seebohm 106, 121 Royal Belgian Geographical Society, see Société Royale Belge de Géographie Ryder, Alexandre 47, 52 Sagette (Abbot) 251 Saint-Saëns, Camille 132 Salle Robin (London) 202 Sanderus, Nicolaus 27 Scheurenberg, Josef 133 Scheut Fathers (aka Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary) (Religious Order) 69, 70, 108 Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Julius 29-31, 33, 38 School War 86 Second Vatican Council 73 Secrétan, Édouard 202, 206 Secularist Movement (France) 84 Sermon lumineux, see Luminous Sermon Service des projections 28, 36, 57-67 Shadow Theatre 14, 225, 238-39 Simonet 139, 141-43, 146-47, 171-72 Sisters of the Holy Grave (aka Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, Turnhout) (Religious Order) 14, 89, 95 Société Anonyme La Cinéscopie, La 210, 214, 217-20, 222 Société Cinématographique des Auteurs et Gens de Lettres (SCAGL) (Paris) (Company) 163-64 Société de la Maison de la Bonne Presse, see Maison de la Bonne Presse, La Société Royale Belge de Géographie (Brussels) 109 Spiritualism 229, 231, 239 Stanard, Matthew G. 114, 121 Sténégry (pseudonym Professor Sténégry) 231 Stieglitz, Heinrich 174 T. H. McAllister (New York City) (Company) 246 Temperance 12, 31, 106, 113, 119, 140, 155-67, 170, 177-78, 180-81

Théâtre Robin (Paris) 200 Theosophic Society 233 Tissot, James 32, 38 Tolra, see Tolra-Simonet Tolra, Joseph 142 Tolra and Simonet, see Tolra-Simonet Tolra-Simonet (Paris) (Company) 26, 139, 141-48, 151-52, 156, 160, 171-72, 175-76, 178 Tolra/TolSim, see Tolra-Simonet Tol-Sim Light Projections (Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim) 19, 22, 23, 25, 27, 36, 37, 40, 53, 55, 57, 60, 65-67, 84, 97, 123, 128, 137, 141-50, 152-53, 216, 221-22 Toy Lantern 21, 238, 242 Unger, Franz 191, 206 Vachet, Claude ‘Aloysius’ (Abbot) 52, 53, 55 Van den Corput, Ferdinand 159, 168 Van der Werff, Adriaan 28 Van Humbéeck, Pierre 85 Van Remoortel, André 214, 216-18, 223 Van Rijn, Rembrandt Harmenszoon 133 Vatican 26, 35-36, 43, 58, 73, 129, 136, 253 Verne, Jules Gabriel 192, 207, 213, 222 Victor Animatograph Corporation (Davenport, Iowa) (Company) 246 Vignola, Amédée 32, 129 W. C. Hughes (Company) 248 W. H. Humphries & Co. (Company) 248 W. L. Smith (Company) 247 Wantz, Piatus (Father) 70, 72, 74-81 Werk der Lichtbeelden in het Onderwijs (Antwerp) 87 Wessbecher, Émile Charles Bernard 48 White Fathers (aka Missionaries of Africa) (Religious Order) 108 Williamson, James 161 World War I 9, 43, 58, 60, 86, 103, 111, 113, 120, 124, 133, 137, 158, 213, 215 World War II 72, 211 Zecca, Ferdinand Louis 46, 162-63 Zola, Émile Édouard Charles Antoine 155, 165, 179

279

The Authors

Margo Buelens-Terryn Margo Buelens-Terryn is a PhD candidate, connected to the Centre for Urban History at the University of Antwerp and the B-magic team. In her research, she maps the projection lantern infrastructure and its socio-political context in two Belgian cities, Antwerp and Brussels, in times of political democratisation and pillarization (c. 1860 – c. 1920). Greet de Neef Greet de Neef is a media archivist. For over thirty years, she worked hands-on with the media collections given to and preserved by KADOC. Her broad knowledge of Catholic traditions, clerical rules, Belgian congregations and their missionary work in the colonies made her a highly welcome guide for the B-magic team while it discovered and explored KADOC’s gigantic slide collection, and made it discover interesting facets of this precious cultural heritage. Wouter Egelmeers Wouter Egelmeers is a doctoral candidate in the B-magic project at KU Leuven. His research, entitled ‘Education through images. The magic lantern in Belgian schools, 1880–1940’ focuses on the impact of the magic lantern on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century education in Belgium. Sébastien Fevry Professor at the School of Communication in the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium), principal investigator of B-magic, and coordinator of the GIRCAM research group, Sébastien Fevry works in the field of memory studies, focusing especially on cinema and image. He has co-edited a collection of articles on nostalgia in media and contemporary culture (Septentrion, 2020). He is also the author of numerous articles in journals such as Image & Narrative, Espacestemps.net, Studies in French Cinema, Memory Studies and Intermédialités. Evelien Jonckheere Evelien Jonckheere is a postdoctoral researcher on the project B-magic at Antwerp University where she carries out research into magic lantern projections and adaptations

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in spectacular contexts such as fairground booths, circus, variety theater, and different kinds of café-culture. She completed her PhD, an investigation into the tensions between the Belgian café-concert, variety theater, and official theater, at Ghent University in 2014, and it was published by Leuven University Press in 2017. She has published several articles, book chapters, and books on popular entertainment and artistic practices in Belgium. Iason Jongepier Iason Jongepier, B-magic postdoctoral researcher from 2018–2020, is a 50%-tenure track professor in the research field of ‘Digital Historical Geography’ within the History Department at the University of Antwerp and a 50%-work leader at the State Archives of Belgium (Digitalisation and Valorisation – historical map collections). Both occupations are framed within the long-term FED-tWIN project ‘DIGHIMAPS: Digital Maps and Archives – Activating Cartographic Collections in a Digital World’ (https://www. uantwerpen.be/en/projects/dighimaps). Frank Kessler Frank Kessler (Universiteit Utrecht) is professor of media history and co-founder and co-editor of KINtop – Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des frühen Films. He is a former president of Domitor, an international association for research on early cinema. His research primarily concerns the period of the emergence of cinema and nineteenth-century visual culture. He currently leads a research project entitled ‘Projecting Knowledge: The Magic Lantern as a Tool for Mediated Science Communication in the Netherlands, 1880–1940’ and is also principal investigator within B-magic. Sabine Lenk Sabine Lenk (Universiteit van Antwerpen and Université libre de Bruxelles) is a film and media scholar. She has worked for film archives in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, UK and the Netherlands. As one of the co-authors of the EOS-research project B-magic, she conducts research on the educative role of the lantern in religious communities and spiritual circles. Together with Frank Kessler and Martin Loiperdinger she is a co-founder and co-editor of KINtop, KINtop Schriften and KINtop – Studies in Early Cinema. Natalija Majsova Natalija Majsova is an assistant professor of cultural studies at the University of Ljubljana. She was a postdoctoral researcher in the B-magic consortium (Université catholique de Louvain) between 2018 and 2020. She holds a PhD (2015) in cultural studies from the University of Ljubljana. Her research interests range from theories of culture and aesthetics, and memory studies to science fiction studies and (post-)Soviet film studies.

the authors

Philippe Marion Professor emeritus at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Philippe Marion is a visiting professor at the University of Neuchâtel and the UCL principal investigator for the research program EOS (Excellence of Science): B-magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1840). His research foci lie in the fields of media narratology and comparative analysis of media and media discourses. Bart G. Moens Bart G. Moens is a PhD candidate in film and media studies at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) working on the EOS B-magic project. He focuses on the interplay between the magic/optical lantern and the history of emotions. Dominique Nasta Dominique Nasta is full professor of film studies at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and principal investigator in the EOS B-magic project. She has published widely on the aesthetics of silent film melodramas, emotions, and music in films, and East-European cinema. Isabelle Saint-Martin Isabelle Saint-Martin is a professor at the École pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, PSL) in Paris, France. Her research focuses on education through images (Voir, savoir, croire. Catéchismes et pédagogie par l’image au XIXe siècle, 2003), and also more widely on relations between Christianity and visual arts for the contemporary period (amongst her publications, Art chrétien/art sacré. Regards du catholicisme sur l’art (France XIXe–XXe siècle), 2014). Nelleke Teughels Nelleke Teughels holds a PhD in art history and archaeology and is currently working as a cultural historian at the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven. Her current research as member of B-magic focuses on the projection lantern’s distinct contributions to and links with didactic practices and visual media use in schools. Ilja Van Damme Ilja Van Damme is associate professor of urban history at the University of Antwerp and principal investigator of  B-magic. He is the current academic director of the Centre for Urban History (CSG), and board member of the Urban Studies Institute (USI) of the University of Antwerp. His research interests relate to the late eighteenth and nineteenth-century city as lived and spatial environment. He has published on, and has a particular research interest in consumption and shopping history, and subjects related to the city as creative and socio-cultural environment.

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Kurt Vanhoutte Kurt Vanhoutte is professor of theatre studies at the University of Antwerp, where he coordinates a master’s programme in Theatre and Film Studies. He is the director of the Research Centre for Visual Poetics. Vanhoutte is spokesperson-coordinator of B-magic, a large-scale research project (EOS – Excellence of Science, 2018–2023) on the magic lantern and its impact as visual mass medium. His work has appeared in various books and journals, including Early Popular Visual Culture, Contemporary Theatre Review, and Foundations of Science. He is currently working on a book on ‘Scientific Fiction’, tracing the history, actuality, and prospect of a genre aimed at mediating scientific revolutions through performance. Pierre Véronneau Pierre Véronneau (1946–2020) was curator of Quebec and Canadian film and was in charge of film collections at the Cinémathèque québécoise for which he worked between 1973 and 2010 in various positions related to historical research, publications, programming, and conservation. He held a PhD in history and mainly conducted research on the history of film in Quebec and Canada. In addition to real and virtual exhibitions on cinema, he was the author of numerous publications including David Cronenberg: La Beauté du chaos (Corlet-Cerf 2003). He taught film courses at Concordia University and the Université de Montréal and supervised the master theses of many students. After a long illness he passed away on 30 November 2020 at the age of 74. Adeline Werry Adeline Werry is a PhD student at the Institut Langage et Communication (ILC) of the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium). She is a member of the EOS project B-magic. The magic lantern and its cultural impact as visual mass medium in Belgium (1830–1940). In the context of this project, she conducts research on glass plates and magic lanterns for children through a double narratological and intermedial approach.

Abstracts

Isabelle Saint-Martin, A Gospel by Lantern Slides: Christian Pedagogy and the Magic Lantern Preaching with the help of glass slide projections, an improved version of the old magic lantern promoted by the Jesuits, became popular at the end of the nineteenth century, even making its way to churches. Due to the different didactic, mnemonic, and emotional aspects that the Catholic tradition had associated with visual instruction, luminous projections became considered as a means of popular evangelization, particularly suited to Pope Leo XIII’s appeal to find ‘the people’ again, in a France increasingly inclined toward secularization. Even the ban on projections in churches in 1912 did not stop the vast movement promoting illustrated lectures, organized in the dioceses. In this article, numerous testimonies are brought forth, allowing us to analyze the content and methods of this practice, as well as the expected effects of the power of the luminous image. Pierre Véronneau, Le Fascinateur and Maison de la Bonne Presse: Catholic Media for Francophone Audiences Through a study of Maison de la Bonne Presse and its magazine Le Fascinateur (1903–1938), this paper sheds light on an unfamiliar aspect of France and Quebec’s intertwined cinematic traditions. Important questions are raised regarding Catholic cinema and the relationship between the Catholic Church and film. The Maison de la Bonne Presse actively participated in production (prints, magic lantern slides, films), marketing, and even in equipment manufacturing. All these activities faced competition from secular groups in France who were also involved in the film industry. The beliefs held by Maison de la Bonne Presse, as well as its productions, also existed in Quebec, where the Catholic Church was concerned with overpowering the Freemasons. As a result, the Québécois company Le Bon Cinéma National was founded in 1907. This company focused on the diffusion of moral or religious films, frequently distributing exactly the same programs as Maison de la Bonne Presse. Certain individuals demanded even stricter censorship. This paper demonstrates that within their cinematic histories, France and Quebec do indeed share a common destiny and parallel ambitions. (Abstract translated by the collective of the Leemeta Translation Agency from the original version published in 1895. Mille huit cent quatre-vingt quinze 40 (2003).) Bart G. Moens, New Light on Maison de la Bonne Presse and its Service des Projections The Catholic publisher and slide manufacturer Maison de la Bonne Presse strongly believed in the potential of the optical lantern for the Christian apostolate. Accordingly,

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the Parisian-based company contributed greatly to the technological environment in which projection materials and equipment were perfected during the first decades of the twentieth century. In the existing literature, the development and influence of this important French lantern slide producer has principally been addressed through Le Fascinateur, Maison de la Bonne Presse’s journal devoted to projection media. This chapter explores the history and organization of the company’s Service des projections by complementing a study of Maison de la Bonne Presse’s publications with archival documents and materials safeguarded in the archives of the congregation of Augustinians of the Assumption in Paris. Greet de Neef, Mission Projections: Glass Positives in the Archives of the Religious Institutes in KADOC This contribution introduces the rich slide collection preserved by the Katholieke Documentatie Centrum (KADOC) in Leuven. It discusses the way Belgian missionaries worked with the lantern which is demonstrated by a selection of pictures, showing working scenes in the Chinese town of Ichang, and their confrontation with comments by the lecturing Friar Minor brother Piatus Wantz. Wouter Egelmeers, Making Pupils See: The Use of Optical Lantern Slides in Catholic Geography Teaching in Belgium Scholars addressing the use of the optical lantern in nineteenth and early twentieth-century education have often stressed the importance of the apparent objectivity of photographic slides for those who used the instrument in their teaching. Little attention has been paid to the application of the medium during lessons, the visual narratives that teachers created, and the influence of religious convictions on educational lantern use. This contribution firstly considers the debate on lantern use amongst Catholic Belgian educators and goes on to offer an initial exploration and analysis of a number of educational slide series used in the Catholic Heilig Graf school in Turnhout, which were made up of slides originating from a wide range of sources. Together with the accompanying notes, these slides show not only how teachers’ worldviews influenced the narratives that they constructed for their lessons, but also how the flexibility offered by the medium was a decisive argument for its use in religious educational institutions. Margo Buelens-Terryn, Iason Jongepier, and Ilja Van Damme, Shine a Light: Catholic Media Use, Transformations in the Public Sphere, and the Voice of the Urban Masses (Antwerp and Brussels, c. 1880 – c. 1920) This chapter questions the appropriation of the projection lantern by Catholics in Belgium at the start of the twentieth century. On the basis of an extensive study of early twentieth-century Belgian newspapers, this contribution will illustrate how a boom in lantern use in Belgium can be more properly tied to the rise of universal suffrage and the ideological compartmentalization (‘verzuiling’ or ‘pillarization’) of Belgian society at the end of the nineteenth century. Challenged to adapt and respond creatively to a series of important societal challenges, and eager to maintain, and even strengthen social control

a bstracts

over the urban masses, the lantern became an effective tool for Belgian Catholic politicians and the Catholic civil society to reach a much wider audience as before about a much broader spectrum of issues. The lantern, literally, ‘enlightened’ an increasingly segmented and pluralistic Belgian society and showed Belgian Catholics the way forward in the vagaries of modern times. Through the projection lantern the Belgian masses were led out of the darkest problems of nineteenth century society and set onto a ‘righteous path’ of Catholic living and voting in the twentieth century. Frank Kessler, and Sabine Lenk, Teaching Faith with the Lantern: Audio-Visual Lantern Performances by the Clergy in France and Belgium Around 1900 This contribution first discusses the age-old practice of the multi-sensory address of churchgoers in the Catholic tradition. Visual representations played a particularly important but not uncontroversial role. The introduction of the projected image by the Catholic clergy in Belgium and France was advocated with explicit reference to this tradition. The optical lantern was used for religious lectures as well as for illustrated sermons. Several examples of audio-visual performances combining the projected image with music and chants are discussed as a particular practice that also allowed the active participation of the audience or congregation. Natalija Majsova, The Bijou Collection: A Multimedial Constellation for Multimodal Experiences Introduction to the three following chapters. Adeline Werry, and Sébastien Fevry, The Editorial Strategy of the Bijou Collection: When Media Diversification Reinforces an Edifying Ambition This chapter investigates the editorial strategy of Tolra and Simonet religious publisher through the analyse of two of their productions: the Bijou collection and the ‘Projections lumineuses Tol-Sim’. These productions convey the same stories and images, but using different devices: illustrated booklets and glass plates. The authors explore the main differences and continuities between these two media sets and precise the specific contribution of each of them in order to meet the edifying purposes of the publisher. Using an intermedial approach they study the media ecosystem in which the religious publisher Tolra and Simonet operated. Dominique Nasta, and Bart G. Moens, Religious Temperance Propaganda and Multimodal Aesthetics of Emotion: The Lantern Slide Set ‘Un poison mortel’ and Early Film Adaptations of Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir This contribution explores the expressive qualities of the lantern medium through a close examination of the emotional communication and aesthetics in religious temperance propaganda. By relating a temperance lantern slide set and its text, produced by the Catholic publisher Tolra, to early melodramatic temperance films based on adaptations of Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir, the authors subsequently aim to place these lantern practices in a broader

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media historical context. Accordingly, they discuss the role that the melodramatic mode of expression holds in anti-alcohol campaigns by means of these primary sources that have not been interconnected before. An analysis of the case-studies confirms that eliciting emotional experiences is central in religious temperance propaganda, and the multimodal expressive qualities of both the lantern and film medium are employed as an effective vehicle for conviction in temperance propaganda and education. Through emotional communication and attraction the same kind of dramatization of alcoholism as a narrative fiction remained engaging, even if repeated time and time again through different media. It is precisely the connection between the social issue and the melodramatic mode of expression with its overt emotions and clear-cut representations, present in various media, which served the propagandistic aims of the anti-alcohol societies to reassert the virtue of temperance. Natalija Majsova, and Philippe Marion, The Edifying Structures of the Bijou Imaginary: An Investigation into Images, Rhetoric, Memory, and Politics This chapter analyses the Bijou collection of catechist lantern slides, catechists’ notebooks, and editors’ booklets from the interrelated perspectives of image rhetoric and memory politics. The contribution aims to contextualize the rhetorical power held by the Bijou slide projections in relation to the mnemonic strategies used by established Catholic publishing houses and educators in the early twentieth century. Taking two Bijou stories as case studies, the authors investigate the rhetorical devices at work in both individual images and their sequences, pointing out the underlying structures of the edifying world of the Bijou projections. They demonstrate how and to what effect Bijou stories that drew inspiration from various sources, like national, social, and biblical history, were constructed to bring the hypothetical audience up in the Catholic faith. This analysis considers the context of Catholic memory politics and the idea of ‘education through the senses’, as well as other graphic and pictorial traditions at work in the intericonicity of the given time period. Kurt Vanhoutte, Deep Time Through the Lens of the Magic Lantern: Genesis and Geology Since the second half of the nineteenth century a specific spectacle was drawing a lot of attention: Earth Before the Deluge, a performance of lantern slides picturing the world from the formation of the solar system to the destiny of humankind. These shows were sparked by new geologic evidence of planetary time extending much further back than orthodox Christian chronology. For the first time in history, prehistoric animals walked the stage in idealized landscapes. The imaginative repertoire of those who designed these scenes brought into conjunction natural history illustration with aesthetic iconography and biblical tradition. A case in point is a magnificent sequence of slides taken from La Terre avant le déluge, a book published in 1863 by the French populariser of science Louis Figuier (1819–1894). The scenes were initially drawn by Édouard Riou (1833–1900), a young illustrator and former student of the French printmaker Gustave Doré, one of the most prolific and successful illustrators of the nineteenth century. Riou’s canonical sequence of scenes was purposely designed to bring home the scientific argument in a time when orthodox religious belief had to be reconciled with new empiric findings. The magic lantern performance, the author argues in this chapter, moreover perfectly matched

a bstracts

this demand for an integrated vision of prehistory. The specific quality of the medium in regard to structure, experience, and perception helped the new knowledge to feed back into a coherent story. The lantern thus inherently possessed the capacity to set up the negotiation of science and religion, to effect ‘movement’ in thought and to allow new objects of knowledge to emerge. Nelleke Teughels, Films fixes, the Forgotten Medium of the Catholic Battle Against Secularization in Interwar Belgium From its first appearance in the early nineteen-twenties, Catholics were quick to embrace the opportunities offered by ‘film fixe’, a spooled roll of 35 mm (sometimes also 30 mm) positive film on which between twenty and fifty images were reproduced back to back in sequential order. These images were to be projected one by one on a large screen, with the lecturer providing the necessary commentary. At the time, the Church was trying hard to maintain its influence in Belgian society, as it was seeing its position threatened by an ever-growing number of secular organizations, spreading their ‘corrupting’ messages using illustrated lectures and motion pictures. The Catholics’ ambiguous attitude towards visual media would lead them to explore and experiment with various modern media in a bid to maintain moral and educational control over image consumption by youngsters. By studying producers’ and the Catholic discourse on the introduction and use of film fixe projection in religious teaching and evangelization in interwar Belgium, this article investigates how and why film fixe became an important pedagogical tool for Belgian Catholic teachers, priests, and organizations. This paper draws on the concept of dispositif, which will allow to better understand the intermedial relationships between various types of light projection and why some images were seen as trustworthy and others were not. Evelien Jonckheere, ‘Hidden Lanterns’ in fin-de-siècle France and Belgium: (Dis)Belief in Spiritualist Apparitions at the Fairground, Music-hall, and Artistic Cabaret By focusing on three popular fin-de-siècle ‘apparitions’, metempsychosis, serpentine dances, and ombres chinoises, this contribution unveils the complexity of fin-de-siècle illusionist spectacle in Belgium and France. By analyzing their ‘hidden lantern’ technology and iconography in relation to its historical context and reception, a complex ‘crisis of faith’ will be demonstrated. Even though Catholicism was by far the most popular religion in Belgium and France, spiritualism and occultist societies gained considerable popularity during the fin-de-siècle. By analyzing fin-de-siècle ‘phantasmagoric illusions’ performed by ‘hidden lanterns’ at various locations such as the fairground, theater, cabaret, and even the living room, this contribution demonstrates the complexity of spectatorship and (dis)belief(s). Sabine Lenk, Masonic Slide Cultures: Teaching, Meditation, Optimization Fraternal organizations used the lantern as a teaching tool, as did the Catholic Church. Both aimed at bringing their audiences to a higher spiritual state through lantern lectures. This paper compares the strategies that were used to achieve their respective goals. It also examines the role played by the composition of the images and the choice of topics for the illustrations.

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Techne

Media Performance Histories

This series focuses on the intersections between media developments and performative culture since the early nineteenth century. The modern era witnessed a proliferation of media performances and exhibitions, encouraged by the burgeoning rise of science and technology, and supported by changes in transportation, communication, education, and social mobility. These popular events were part of nascent culture industries that took root in learning environments and lecture halls but also in theatre and opera houses, spilling out into public space, the boulevards, and the fairgrounds. Academics and science enthusiasts but also illusionists, artists, and amateur savants, all shared a knack for understanding what would entice different audiences, coupled with a delicate balance between scientific demonstration and sensational entertainment. While relying on international networks, media performances contributed to the circulation of knowledge, technologies, and visual culture between European cities and across the Atlantic. Media Performance Histories explores the ways in which cultural change, new forms of knowledge, science, and technology were turned into modern spectacles that addressed different audiences and produced different modes of reception. It provides readers with a unique guide to how transnational performance created a culturally shared repertoire of signs and shaped modern Western culture. The books in this series offer accounts that cut across disciplinary and geographical boundaries, while being sensitive to how specific historical contexts and institutional circumstances constituted media and performance cultures. By also considering the interplay between present-day media performances and the archaeological traces that they carry, the series moreover aims to unearth previously overlooked but resurgent prehistories of so-called “new” media. The series is situated at the intersection of performance studies, media studies, and the history of science. It welcomes edited collections and monographs on issues including (but not limited to) the interaction between media (archaeology) and performance; the role of theatre and performance in the circulation of knowledge; the way (early) media and technologies are staged; the agency of human observers as part of intermedial interactions or as part of viewing strategies. Edited by Frank Kessler, Sabine Lenk, Kurt Vanhoutte, and Nele Wynants