CROIX, LA

CROIX, LA , French Catholic daily newspaper, founded in 1883 by Father Bailly and sponsored by the Assumptionist Fathers. The newspaper was a success from its start and acquired considerable popular influence. Its daily circulation rose to 11,000 in 1889, 140,000 in 1890, and 180,000 in 1893 – more than double that of Le Figaro. By 1894 there also were 104 provincial supplements, and 2,000,000 copies of various La Croix publications were printed weekly. Always anti-democratic, La Croix also became violently antisemitic. In 1886 La Croix was the first newspaper to praise La France Juive and its author E. *Drumont. By 1890 it had become as vociferous as Drumont's Libre Parole in its daily attacks against Jew's, Protestants, and Masons, and after Alfred *Dreyfus' arrest in 1894 it became even more intemperate. Following the partially successful appeal of Dreyfus (1899) and the dissolution of the Assumptionist congregation (1900), La Croix withdrew from the political scene and returned to essentially religious tasks. La Croix continued to be published in Limoges during the German occupation in World War ii although its provincial supplements disappeared. Now an evening newspaper published in Paris, La Croix, which remains the principal organ of the French Catholic press, avoids antisemitism.

bibliography:

P. Sorlin, "La Croix" et les Juifs (1880–1899) (1967); F.R. Byrnes, Anti-semitism in Modern France, 1 (1950), 194–8; G. Hourdin, La Presse Catholique (1957).