Church, Society and Religious Change in France, 1580-1730

This wide-ranging and authoritative book is the first to fully synthesize the French experience of religious change in the period stretching between the Reformation and the early Enlightenment. The traumatic experiences of the wars of religion and the continuing challenge of Protestantism, made France an unusually potent site for significant religious upheavals and developments. The country was a crucible for theological doctrines and inventive practitioners, which generated considerable conflict but also stimulated religious reform and innovation. The dynamism of the French version of the Catholic Reformation surpassed anything elsewhere in Europe.Vividly rendering the religious history of France through its social, institutional and cultural contexts, Joseph Bergin explores the different agents, instruments and techniques employed to engineer religious transformations. Through a comprehensive examination of a huge volume of didactic religious literature, he shows how new religious ideas and practices were disseminated across French society in the hopes of shaping a new kind of devout Catholic. Assured, nuanced, and ground-breaking, this book illuminates the continually developing interaction between church and society in France, and uncovers the religiosity of the seventeenth century.

ISBN 0300150989   Pages 506 ISBN13 9780300150988 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Yale University Press   Weight (grammes) 998 Imprint Yale University Press   Published in New Haven Format Hardback   Height (mm) 234 Publication date 12 May 2009   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress 2008049837   Spine width (mm) 51 DEWEY 282.4409031   Academic level Tertiary education DEWEY edition DC22

		List of Maps
		List of Tables
		Prologue: the Fire and the Ashes		1
Pt. 1		Foundations
1		From Dioceses to Parishes: the Geography of the French Church		17
2		Wealth into Benefices		37
Pt. 2		Clerical Worlds in Context
3		Clerics and Clergy: the World of the Seculars		61
4		The Monastic Orders: Adjustment and Survival		84
5		From Mendicants to Congregations		105
6		A Silent Revolution: Women as Regulars		129
Pt. 3		A New Clergy?
7		Bishops: Adaptation and Action		155
8		Remaking the Secular Clergy		183
9		The Triumph of the Parish?		208
Pt. 4		Instruments of Religious Change
10		Saints and Shrines		229
11		Sacraments and Sinners		252
12		Religion Taught and Learned		277
13		The Forms and Uses of Spirituality		310
Pt. 5		Movers and Shakers
14		The Many Faces of the Confraternities		339
15		Devots: the Pious and the Militant		366
16		Jansenists: Dissidents but also Militants		394
		Conclusion		425
		Notes		433
		Bibliography		465
		Index		485

""Church, Society, and Religious Change" is nothing short of the first comprehensive work in English that sets out to analyse the myriad strands of Catholic reform and renewal in France in the seventeenth-century. . . . In short, this is likely to remain the best overall analysis of French Catholic reform for some time to come. Moreover, Bergin knows and has mastered all the Franceophone scholarship on the subject. . . . This is a very impressive book, which is even greater than the sums of its many parts. It is also very readable, making it the first book to turn to on the subject for academics and non-academics alike."--Mack P./i>--Mack P. Holt "Journal of Ecclesiastical History "

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