2025/10/22 by Frode Ulvund · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Central European national history #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society #Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/03468755.2025.2570532
openalex publication_date 2025/10/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/16
In this article, I examine how the Catholic bishop Johannes Baptiste Fallize (1844–1933) disseminated antisemitic ideas in Norway through the Catholic journal St. Olaf, from its founding in 1889 until the outbreak of the First World War. The article situates Fallize’s antisemitism within the broader context of modern (Catholic) antisemitism in Europe following Jewish emancipation, demonstrating that he underwent a radicalization on the ‘Jewish question’ during the 1870s. This shift was influenced by his studies in Rome amid the fall of the Papal States and subsequent anticlerical policies. Prior to his arrival in Norway as apostolic prefect in 1887, and his later appointment as bishop, Fallize had been an active and polemical journalist and politician in Luxembourg, where he articulated pronounced antisemitic views in several Catholic newspapers, conflating religiously grounded animosity towards Jews with modern conspiracy theories. The virulent antisemitism of St. Olaf thus represented a perpetuation of Fallize’s antisemitic activities in Luxembourg. The article contends that Fallize acted as an ‘antisemitic multiplier’, especially in Norway, where outspoken antisemitism was, at that time, relatively uncommon.