Social History of French Catholicism, 1789-1914

168 Pages·1989·15.618 MB·English

by  Ralph Gibson

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I
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© 1989 Ralph Gibson
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permission in writing from the publishers.
List of illustrations
Vlll
Bniish Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Preface IX
Gibson, Ralph, 1943-
A social history of French Catholicism 1 Catholicism under the ancien regime 1
1789-1914. The warning lights of dechristianization 3
1. France. Catholicism, 1789-1914 Differentiating factors in French catholicism 8
I. Title The causes of dechristianization 14
282' .44
ISBN 0-415-01619-3 2 The Revolution 30
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Revolution in the west of France 49
The consequences of the Revolution 51
Gibson, Ralph, 1943-
A social history of French Catholicism, 1789-1914/Ralph Gibson. 3 The secular clergy 57
p. em. -(Christianity and society in the modern world). A clerical and hierarchical church 57
Bibliography: p.
The bishops 61
Includes index.
ISBN 0-415-01619-3 The parish clergy: recruitment 63
1. Catholic Church-FrancL~History-19th century. 2. France The parish clergy: social origins and motivation 68
Church history-19th century. 3. FrancL~Rcligious life and customs. The parish clergy: standard of living 76
I. Title. II. Series. L 'espn·t de domination 78
BX1530.G45 1989
The clergy and intellectual enquiry 80
282'. 44-dc 19 88-28652
CIP Clerical values 87
The clergy and 'the world' 90
The clergy and sexuality 92
The clergy and modernity 94
the cure d'Ars 100
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century clergy 102
4 The regular clergy 104
Female religious orders 105
01~5850
Vl A Social HZ:rtory ofF rench Catholicism 1789-1914 Contents vu
Male religious orders 107 Notes 274
Geography and social class 111 Guide to fitrther reading 305
Reasons for growth 117 Index 312
Anticlerical hostility to the orders 127
Reasons for hostility 130
5 Popular religion 134
The clerical recuperation of popular religion 138
The upsurge of Marian devotion 145
Relics 151
Embourgeoisement and feminization of popular
religion 152
Popular religious art 154
6 Religious practice: region, gender, and age 158
Region 170
Town and countryside 178
Gender 180
Age 190
7 The Church and social class 193
The nobility 193
The bourgeoisie: early hostility to catholicism 195
The clericalization of the bourgeoisie after 1848 199
Problems between the bourgeoisie and the Church 207
The Church and the working class 212
Reasons for the irreligion of the working class 218
8 Dechristianization and rechristianization: from a God of
fear to a God of love 227
The evolution of religious practice 227
Anticatholic forces 233
An unattractive and inappropriate religion? 241
Forces favouring catholicism: post-Revolutionary
reconstruction 248
Forces favouring catholicism: from a God of fear to a
God of love 251
The decline of hell and damnation 253
Marian devotion 254
Eucharistic devotion 256
Liguorism 260
Ultramontane piety 265
9 Conclusion 268
Preface
List of illustrations
How it came to pass that an Australian, son of a Unitarian minister and
The dioceses of France in the 1860s Xll
of atheistic tendencies, should try and write a social history of French
Ordinations to the priesthood ( 1800-1913) 66
catholicism would take too long to explain. It does need pointing out at
74
Ordinations to the priesthood, 1875-1886 the beginning, however, that this book is not written by a Catholic. I
112
Male and female religious orders, 1861
am far from being unsympathetic to catholicism - or indeed to any
171
La carte Boulard attempt to give meaning to a human existence which appears to me
172
Religious vitality of French dioceses in 1877
ultimately absurd. I do not, however, have a Catholic culture (nor even
a French one. except such as I have acquired second-hand and late in
life), and that defect will be evident in much of what I write. One
might hope that an outsider's view would have at least the advantage of
a certain objectivity. The writing of history is, however, always a
comment on the present in terms of the past, quite as much as it is an
attempt objectively to understand that past. It is thus always informed
by the values of the present day, and specifically by the values of the
writer. I cannot therefore help judging the past, being sympathetic to
some aspects of it and not to others. It will soon become apparent to
any reader that I am largely out of sympathy with the Tridentine model
of catholicism (which I attempt to evoke in chapter 1). While admiring
the spiritual heights achieved by many of its practitioners, I find myself
irredeemably hostile to its devaluation of the world, its Manichaean
distinction between the soul and the body, its cultivation of an
obsessive sense of guilt and sin (what Jean Delumeau has called the
hyper-culpabilization of the west), and its use of the weapon of fear to
get the mass of ordinary people to accept a model of catholicism origin
ally developed for a spiritual elite. Hence I am led to conclude that
many of the problems confronted by the French Church in the later
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries sprang from the rebarbative form
of the religion that it was purveying - and that its biggest successes
x A Social History ofF rench Catholicism 1789-1914
in the later nineteenth century came from having begun to throw it off.
Conversely, however, I find myself much in sympathy with ordinary
and limited people who struggled to give meaning to their own lives
and to help others to find such meaning - perhaps all the more because
I suspect that the quest is ultimately futile. Men and women will always
try and make sense of their existence, even if it is ultimately absurd;
religions basically consist of that attempt. It is thus with sympathy,
indeed with admiration, that I have tried to chronicle the religious
experience of French men and women, both clergy and laity. In so
doing, I make no claim to capture the will-o' -the-wisp of objective
history. The best I can do is spell out dearly at the beginning where my
sympathies lie, such that a reader may the more easily judge how they
distort my perceptions.
I would never have written any book without the kindness of the
University of Lancaster Humanities Research Grant Committee, which
provided a replacement for my teaching duties for two terms. I am
particularly grateful to Dick Geary for his role in this matter, as for his
friendship and support in general - even if, as an unreconstructed
anticlerical, he will probably never read a word of the book, and would
soon be horrified if he did. I am also grateful to Alan Forrest for reading
a draft of the chapter on the Revolution to weed out the more egregious
factual errors, and to Austin Gough (the great stylist of French religious
history) for his encouragement and advice. A particular mention is due
for Thelma Goodman and all the staff of inter-library loans at the
University of Lancaster; most of the sources for this book have passed
through their office, and their help has been both tolerant and
unfailing. My greatest professional and intellectual debts are to my
maitres in France,Jacques Gadille and Yves-Marie Hilaire, and latterly
Gerard Cholvy (the latter two's new Histoire religieuse de Ia France
contemporaine is a far more knowledgeable and complete treatment of
the subject than I would dare to attempt). Above all, I want to record a
personal debt to Jean Briquet, Vicar-General of Perigueux, whose
unfailing welcome to a foreign researcher (and slightly despairing
concern for my spiritual state) has enabled me to spend numberless
happy hours in the archives, and to acquire a sympathy for French
catholicism even if I cannot accept it as my personal faith.
Xll A Social History ofF rench Catholicism 1789-1914 Map Xlll
Diocese Map ref Corresponding department The dioceses of France in the 1860s
Agen Fll Lot et Garonne
Ai re D12 Landes
AIX K13 Bouches du Rh6ne (less arrondt:rsement of Marseille) AI BI cI DI EI FI GI HI II< MI NI
Aiaccio N14 Corse
ALB! H12 Tarn
Amiens I-!2 Somme 1- -1
Angers E6 Maine et Loire
Angouleme F9 Charente 2- -2
Annecy LS Haute Savoie
Arras HI Pas de Calais
AUCH F12 Gers 3- -3
Autun Ks Sa6ne et Loire
AVIGNON KI2 Vaucluse 4- -4
Baycux E4 Calvados
Bayonne D13 Basses Pyrenees
Beauvais H3 Oisc 5- -5
Belley K9 Ai n
BESAN<;:ON L6 Doubs +Haute Sa6ne
Blois G6 Loir etCher 6- -6
BORDEAUX Ell Gironde
BOURGES I-!7 Cher + Indre 7- -7
Cahors Gil Lot
CAMBRA! )2 Nord
Carcassonne HI3 Au de 8- -8
Ch:1lons )4 Marne (less arrondissement of Reims)
CI-IAMBERY L9 arrondissement of Chambery (Savoie)
9-
Chartres G5 Eure et Lair
Clermont 19 Puy de D6me
Coutances D4 Manche 10- -10
Digne L12 Basses Alpes
Dijon K6 C6te d'Or
Evreux G4 Eure 11- -11
Frejus Ml3 Var ( +arrondissement of Grasse, Alpes Maritimes)
Gap Lll 1-lautes Alpes 12- -12
Grenoble KIO !sere (+canton ofVilleurbanne, Rh6ne)
Lang res K5 Haute Marne
La Rochelle E9 Charcnte Inferieure 13- -13
Laval E5 Mayennc
Le Mans F5 Sarthe
-14
Le Puy )!0 Haute Loire 14-
Limoges G9 Haute Viennc + Creuse
Lu~on Ds Vendee 15- -15
LYON )9 Rh6ne (less canton of Villeurbanne) +Loire
Marseille Ll3 arrondissement of Marseille (Bouches du Rh6ne) I I I I I I I I I I I I
Maurienne (S. Jean de) MIO arrondissement of S. Jean de Maurie nne (Savoie) A B c D E F G H K L M N
Meaux 15 Seine et Marne
Mende Ill Lozere Archbishoprics arc shown in capital letters. The dotted lines arc departmental boundaries
Metz L3 Moselle which did not correspond to those of a diocese.
Montauban G!2 Tarn ct Garonnc
Montpellicr 113 Herault
Moulins 18 Allier
Nancy L4 Meurthe
xtv A Social History ofFrench Catholicism 1789-1914
Dr'oceJe Map ref Corre.rponding department
Nantes D6 Loire Inferieure
Nevers 17 Nievre 1
Nice Nl2 Alpes Maritimes (less arrondissement of Grasse)
N1mes )12 Gard
Orleans H6 Loiret Catholicism under the ancien regime
Pamiers Gl4 Aricge
PARIS Gl4 Seine
Perigueux FlO Dordogne
Perpignan Hl4 Pyrenees Orientales
Poi tiers F8 Vienne +Deux Sevres
Quimper A5 Finistcre
REIMS )3 arrondis.rement ofReims (Marne)+ Ardennes
RENNES D5 Ille et Vilaine .
Rodez Hl2 Aveyron
Rouen G3 Seine Inferieure
Saint Bricuc C5 Cotes du Nord
Saint Claude L8 Jura
Saint Die L5 Vosges The vast majority of French men and women in the eighteenth century
Saint Flour HlO Cantal were Catholic almost from the moment they were born. Within
Sees F4 Orne
twenty-four hours. or three days at the very outside, they would be
SENS 16 Y onne
Soissons 13 Aisne baptized, and thus acquire legal existence as well as entering the bosom
Strasbourg N5 Bas Rhin + Haut Rhin of the Church. In their early teens, they would make their first com
Tarbes E13 Hautes Pyrenees munion; they would continue to take communion every Easter (rarely
Tarentaise (Moutiers en) M9 arrondissement of Albertville (Savoie)
at other times) until they died. On most Sundays and on the numerous
TOULOUSE Gl3 Haute Garonne
TOURS F7 Indre ct Loire feast days, they would attend mass and probably vespers. When they
Troyes )5 Aube married, the ceremony would be conducted by a priest, who not only
Tulle GlO Correze administered the sacrament of holy matrimony but by so doing made
Valence Kll Drome
the marriage a binding legal contract. When death was near, they
Vannes C6 Morbihan
Verdun K4 Meuse would be desperately keen for a priest to be present to administer the
Versailles H4 Seine et Oise last rites, and they would know that he would accompany them on their
Viviers Jll Ardeche
last journey.
Some of this was pretty well unavoidable: the priest kept the parish
register, and one had no legal existence or valid marriage, nor indeed
was one legally dead, until he had scribbled the archaic formula in his
duplicate notebooks. But there was no effective legal obligation to take
Easter communion or go to church on Sundays; the vast majority of
French men and women just did. It was not the secular arm that com
pelled them, but rather a mixture (in unknowable proportions) of
religious faith and of social pressure so immense that any other pattern
of behaviour was difficult to conceive of. Thus, in some 4,000 eight
eenth-century rural parishes studied by Gabriel LeBras and his fol
lowers, in less than sixty did more than a tenth of the inhabitants fail
regularly to practise the Catholic religion. Most of those who did
abstain were socially marginal anyway: itinerant workers, soldiers.
prostitutes - or public sinners such as adulterers or usurers, who knew
2 A Social History ofF rench Catholicism 1789-1914 Catholicism tmder the ancien regime 3
they would not get the absolution without which communion was im warned, in a passage that may well serve as an awful warning for much
possible. Dissidents were rather more common in towns, but for that 82 of the rest of this book:
per cent of French men and women who lived in the countryside the
practice of the Catholic religion was a central and unquestioned part of The apprehension of religious mentalities is full of pitfalls. In often
their existence. The only important exception was the Protestants, relying on statistics of church attendance, vocations to the priest
rather less than 2 per cent of the population, theoretically forbidden hood, confraternities, altarpieces, etc., can the historian really claim
since 1685 from practising their religion but in fact openly doing so in that he is quantifying faith? One can admit the necessity for quanti
the decades before the Revolution. fication in religious history, and still hold that faith and love will
The Church that controlled this near-universal religious practice was always retain a certain preternumeral quality. At best, one measures
immensely numerous, wealthy, and powerful. The clergy comprised signs of faith and of collective attitudes, not the state of the soul. 2
about 170,000 men and women: just under 60,000 in the parish clergy
(39,000 cures and 20,500 vicaires), 26,500 monks, and 55,000 nuns, Thus many of the indices that historians have used to identify and
and a varied assortment of other clerics without cure of souls. The quantify a process of dechristianization in the second half of the eight
Church as a whole - mostly in the form of its great monastic orders - eenth century are more or less contestable. There is, however, a striking
owned between 6 per cent and 10 per cent of the surface area of coincidence between many of these indices, suggesting that in the
France. It was intimately tied up with State power: the king ruled by second half of the century the Church was beginning to lose its grip.
divine right, and the clergy had an important role in government and
in maintaining social order. Primary education was almost wholly
The warning lights of dechristianization
under clerical control, and the rudimentary social services very largely
so. More generally, everyday life was dominated by the physical and In the first place, there were scattered signs of a decline in church
spiritual presence of catholicism. Each village and town was domi attendance, and particularly in the taking of Easter communion (the
nated by its church steeple, far higher than any other building - a major external obligation placed on Catholics at the time). In the
physical presence difficult now to reconstruct in the mind, but marvel southern diocese of Montpellier, at the beginning of the century,
lously preserved in some of the relief plans in the mttsee des plans almost everybody (except forcibly converted Protestants) took Easter
reliefs now shared between Lille and the Invalides. The steeple was, communion; by the 1740s, however, there was a nucleus of refractaires,
however, merely the outward and visible sign of a spiritual and mental and by the 1770s a sample of fifty-seven parishes showed an abstention
domination that was truly hegemonic. As Bernard Groethuysen wrote rate of 11.4 per cent. The real problem for the Church in most dioceses,
long ago: 'The Church created a whole universe for the believer, a however, was not so much that religious practice was significantly in
universe which ... called on all his faculties and surrounded him decline (it wasn't), as that it represented merely what GabrielLe Bras
completely.' 1 used to call a 'sheep-like conformism'. We need therefore to look at
We thus seem to be looking, in the eighteenth century, at a other indices to see if the influence of catholicism over the mass of the
Catholic Church which was rich, powerful, served by a numerous population was in decline.
clergy, and exerting a kind of hegemonic control over the lives of One such index is provided by the evolution of vocations to the priest
French men and women. If this picture were wholly accurate, however, hood. Timothy Tackett's analysis of the figures for fourteen dioceses for
it would be difficult to understand the misfortunes of the Church which fairly complete statistics are available shows that entries to the
during the Revolution, and in fact historians have recently been secular clergy reached a peak in the late 1740s; a rapid decline then set
scanning the eighteenth century in great detail for signs that the in, accelerating in the 1760s, and a temporary revival in the late 1770s
Church· s control over the hearts and minds of at least some French was followed by a renewed fall until the Revolution. A few dioceses
men and women was slipping well before 1789. The exercise is not (particularly Breton ones) presented a steady upward trend from the
without its dangers, because it means looking at the exterior manifes mid-eighteenth century until the Revolution; others (particularly those
tations of religious life, and trying to deduce from them something with large urban centres) a steady downward one, without even the
about states of mind, and even of the spirit. As Jean Delumeau brief revival of the late 1770s. Overall, in a period of forty years,
lliiEtcnil Unft-ve;;reflll!G,!I
Lil.mtr:l
4 A Social History ofFrench Catholicism 1789-1914 CatholiCZ:rm under the ancien regime 5
vocations to the priesthood declined by 23 per cent.3 There were no grounds for unwanted daughters of the wealthy: Diderot's Religieuse
doubt some extraneous reasons for this: the ecclesiastical profession was was not an invention, and she might(with better fortune) have finished
clearly overcrowded. and its financial rewards were known to be declin up in the abbey ofRonceray at Angers, which was 'part of a system of
ing. But the temptation remains to conclude that in the second half of luxurious outdoor relief which the Church had been obliged to provide
the eighteenth century fewer and fewer Frenchmen had that extra for the surplus daughters of the nobility of France' - though there is no
dimension of faith that would lead them to devote their lives to the evidence in this case that vocations were forced, and the creme de Ia
service of God. creme of Ronceray seem on the whole to have enjoyed themselves.6
This was even more strikingly true of the religious orders: male Most nuns, however, manifested a sincere piety which anticlerical
monasticism was in vertiginous decline. Between 1770 and 1790. the historians can easily underestimate. When their history is written from
numbers of the Benedictine Order fell from 6,434 to 4,300, those of internal sources, they appear not so much to be victims of a social order
the Augustinians from 2,599 to 1,765, and of the Franciscans from as to have taken vows in defiance of their family, and to have led lives of
9.820 to 6,064. Disaffection festered within the cloister: in 1765, dedicated fanaticism, rejoicing in physical privation - to the dubious
twenty-eight Benedictines of the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Pres extent of insisting on wearing only the other nuns' dirty underwear. 7
had petitioned against their rule, declaring that night services and The most fashionable way of measuring dechristianization in France
fasting kept them from useful work, that their costume made them in the second half of the eighteenth century is to look at wills. and in
ridiculous in the streets, and that they wished to be known as scholars particular at the clauses requesting masses for the soul. 8 Michel Vovelle,
rather than monks. They were disavowed by a majority within their the inventor of this procedure, applied it to Provence: he discovered
monastery, and forced to retract by the archbishop. but their action was that the proportion of testators making such provision rose slightly in
symptomatic of a wider malaise. The following year, a decree by Louis the eighteenth century to a maximum of over 80 per cent in the 1750s,
XV established a Commission des reguliers, chaired by the worldly and then fell sharply to about 50 per cent by the Revolution; a decline
Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, to inquire into the in the average number of masses requested was evident between the
abuses of the monastic world. It made some desultory gestures, and 1710s and the 1730s, and again from the 1760s to the 1770s. Local
effectively closed 458 establishments which totalled only 509 religious circumstances could affect the timing and the extent of this decline.
between them. There may have been a minor revival of fervour in the but there is no gainsaying that it happened, and that it could affect
monasteries thereafter, and even a revival of recruitment: the most social groups. Pierre Chaunu then master-minded a massive
Oratorians (a teaching order) and the Lazarists (a preaching order), and group enquiry into Parisian wills. The capital manifested the same
even the contemplative Carthusians, saw their numbers rise; Bernard decline, from the 1760s to the Revolution. in the percentage of tes
Plongeron, indeed, claims to have identified 'an important new lease tators requesting masses for their souls; the proportion of their wealth
of life in the years immediately before the Revolution' .4 But on the that they were prepared to devote to such masses began to decline
whole the monks remained as John McManners has portrayed those of sharply from the 1720s. Chaunu thus concludes that what happened in
Angers: 'moderately learned and moderately indolent', and monastic Paris simply preceded what happened in Marseilles by a decade or so.
ism provided 'a secure existence in agreeable surroundings' .5 Further studies have shown much the same picture. In Grenoble, the
The female religious orders were a rather different story. It is true proportion requiring masses declined from 74 per cent in the 1740s to
that their recruitment was also in sharp decline, from 2,080 a year in 53 per cent in the 1780s; the average sum devoted to them declined
the 1740s to 1,170 a year in the 1780s (with the same slight recovery in steadily from the 1720s to the Revolution (with a brief revival in the
the late 1770s that was evident for the male secular clergy). It is interest 1760s). In the Rouen region, the proportion fell from 54 per cent in the
ing to note, however, that the minority who were technically 'congre early eighteenth century, to 26-30 per cent in the period 1720-50, to
ganistes' rather than 'religieuses' (i.e., in effect, non-cloistered nuns 16 per cent in the 1780s. The conclusion seems inescapable that tes
engaged in charitable and educational work) were actually increasing tators were, if not less concerned for their immortal soul, at least less
their recruitment, foreshadowing their staggering success in the nine convinced that masses were necessary to alleviate its stay in purgatory.
teenth century. Even the others usually retained a certain religious There are some problems, however, about whether this should be
vitality. Some convents were certainly little more than dumping read as another index of dechristianization. In the first place, an
6 A Social History a/French Catholicism 1789-1914 Catholicism under the ancien regime 7
admittedly rather slender study has shown that in a highly religious confraternity known as 'penitents'. They usually had their own organ
area like Anjou the proportion of those requesting masses for their soul ization, separate from the parish, and their own chapel (either in the
was actually increasing throughout the eighteenth century, More im parish church or as a separate building), and they had their own com
portantly, what are we to make of a declining concern for masses for the munal life of corporate religious observance and rather more profane
soul anyway? It could simply mean a declining belief in purgatory - feasting. Their chief public function was to accompany funeral pro
although altars dedicated to the souls in purgatory were simultaneously cessions, for which they dressed up in robes and cagoules, contriving to
on the increase. It could - as both Aries and Chaunu have argued - look remarkably like the Ku-Klux-Klan. They have been extensively
merely indicate an increasing reliance on one's family to take care of studied, in their Proven~:;al manifestation, by Maurice Agulhon. He
such matters. It could, finally, reflect more of a change of taste and of shows that in the second half of the eighteenth century they tended to
style than of belief: the 'baroque' attitude to death that expressed itself undergo a 'deviation profane', whereby the social aspect of their
in rich ceremony was under attack from eighteenth-century taste, activities increasingly took precedence over the devotional and chari
which preferred a less extravagant treatment of death. Thus in the table side. Furthermore, the local elite that had dominated their
Perigord the cttres themselves cut back, after the 1770s, on the amount membership began to prefer other forms of sociability, particularly
they bequeathed for requiem masses for their own souls; are we to masonic lodges; more and more. the penitents' ranks were drawn from
conclude that their faith was in decline, or simply that their taste was artisans and even from wealthier peasants. Agulhon is nervous about
changing? Vovelle himself, though he rejects Aries's argument about seeing this as another sign of dechristianization, but the 'deviation
increasingly tight-knit families, is almost (not quite) prepared to admit profane' of Provenc;:al penitents seems to coincide quite closely with
that what one is looking at is 'a mutation of collective sensibility', other indices, such as the declining religious element in wills.10
rather than dechristianization. One final index of the declining hold that the Catholic Church had
Not everybody made a will. Even fewer people bought books; for over French men and women is often found in the area of sexual
those who did, however, their choice may tell us something about their morality: rising illegitimacy and bridal pregnancy, and the first signs of
faith. In principle, books were subject to government authorization; systematic contraception within marriage. Illegitimacy and bridal
the proportion of religious titles in the authorization lists fell from a pregnancy were certainly rising in the course of the eighteenth century:
third in the 1720s to a fifth in the 1750s, and a tenth on the eve of the detailed village studies have been amalgamated to show that the
Revolution. At Rouen, the third most important centre of book pro proportion of illegitimate births rose from 2. 9 per cent in the first half
duction in France, the proportion of religious books among those of the century to 4. 1 per cent in the second, and bridal pregnancies
printed oscillated around 35 per cent in the first half of the century; in from 6.2 per cent to 10.1 per cent. The figures for towns, always much
the 1750s this figure was nearly halved, and in the 1780s it fell again, to higher, were similarly rising. Furthermore, there was an increasing
12 per cent. In nine towns of the west, Jean Queniart's analysis of number of abandoned children, of which an incalculable but large
inventories after death shows that the proportion of religious books in proportion were illegitimate. It seems that in the early eighteenth
private libraries dedined from 44 per cent in the late seventeenth century the Catholic Church had been quite staggeringly successful in
century to 30 per cent in the late eighteenth; the absolute number of imposing its restrictive sexual morality on the mass of men and women,
religious books increased, but other categories increased faster, particu but that in the second half of the century the young took less and less
larly those of literature, science, and the arts. These statistics no doubt notice of the objurgations of the clergy. This rather limited degree of
exaggerate the phenomenon: permissions accorded to the commonest sexual liberalization may be an index of declining faith; it seems more
books, which were distributed widely in the provinces. showed 63 per likely to have a socio-economic explanation, but the precise nature of
cent of religious titles in the 1780s. It seems, however, quite clear that such an explanation is far from clear. 11
during the second half of the eighteenth century the educated lay The case of contraception within marriage is a rather different one. It
(male) elite lost its taste for religious literature; novels, plays, and first has to be demonstrated that it actually occurred, to a significant
political works began to take over. 9 extent, before the Revolution. The real take-off into birth control in
Some parts of France, and in particular the extreme south-east (Prov France happens in the 1790s; there are signs of it before that, especially
ence), were marked by the existence of a particular kind of religious in advanced areas like the Paris basin, but it can be argued that this