Sensitive but Sane: Male Visionaries and their Emotional Display in Interwar Belgium

When a wave of Marian apparitions swept over Belgium in 1932-1935 many ‘visionaries’ (c. 200), among them a remarkably high number of men, claimed to encounter the divine. Focusing on these male visionaries and their emotional expressivity, this article aims not only at contributing to a better understanding of Catholic constructions of masculinity, it also accords with the increased attention for the historicity of emotions and, more specifically, for men’s emotional comportment. The male visionaries present a particularly interesting case since they had to live up to multiple expectations ab... Mehr ...