"the enemy is calling at the doors of the republic…": clergy’s strategies and initiatives against the liberal revolution in the archdiocese of quito (1895)

Within the conflict between church and state or clergy and liberals, the political realm usually attracts more attention than the religious one. The study of the political conflict at the beginning of 1895 and the subsequent civil war, as part of the Liberal Revolution in Ecuador, has not been the exception. This article pretends to address the strategies and initiatives of the clergy in the Archdiocese of Quito in order to stop the advance of the liberal army (montoneras) which were ascending from the Coast to the Capital. For that purpose, some printed sources and archives, that were rarely used, are analyzed. With those is possible to approach the ecclesial discourses and the religious practices which happened between June and August of 1895. In the junction between politics and religion, the discourses of the ecclesiastic authorities and priests about liberalism let appreciate the clergy’s concern about the development of secularization and the possible loss of its religious hegemony. Thus, the proposal is that clergy arranged economical resources, the pastoral relationship with the faithful and the massive religious acts, as the visit of Our Lady of El Quinche, to maintain the social monopoly and order that liberalism threatened.