Catecismos políticos e instrucción política y moral de los ciudadanos (siglos XVIII y XIX)

Este articulo trata de la instruccion politica del pueblo que ofrecian los llamados catecismos politicos, cuya influencia ha sido estudiada sobre todo a partir de la Revolucion francesa. En Espana se ha hablado de distintos periodos de los catecismos civiles y politicos espanoles, hasta llegar al de “madurez” (Capitan Diaz, 1978) en el trienio liberal (1820-1823). Sin embargo, hay catecismos posteriores publicados con motivo de las demas Constituciones espanolas del siglo XIX. Por ello he optado por examinar sucesivamente catecismos politicos franceses y espanoles, como una primera aproximacion al estudio de sus diferencias o semejanzas. Tras la realizacion del estudio cabe deducir que existieron influencias francesas en los catecismos espanoles, pero a la vez todos ellos estaban muy sujetos a la realidad de cada momento y a la tradicion de cada pais. Abstract This paper focuses on the political instruction of common people offered by the so called political catechisms. Although their influence has been studied specially since the French Revolution, they existed before. In Spain, research (Capitan Diaz, 1978,) refers to different time periods concerning that influence until the mature time period in the liberal triennium (1820-1823). However, a few more catechisms were published later, on the occasion of the subsequent Constitutions in the XIX Century. For that reason I examined some of them in chronological order as a first approach to studying their similarities and differences. A real French influence was found in the Spanish political catechisms but, at the same time, all of them were related closely to the context of each moment and to the traditions of each country.