Opening on the rites of coronation, the marker of Catholicism’s place at the heart of state ideology – at least until 1830, when Louis Philippe neglected to hold such a ritual. This, coming relatively soon after Charles X’s unapologetic Reims spectacle of 1825, marking in itself the conflict around the Church’s place in the politics and society of this era.
From there to a panorama of what it meant for the Church to be the First Estate of the Kingdom – in particular by the reign of Louis XVI the noble domination of high office, the ideological mission of preserving cultural hegemony, and the sheer scale of Church endowments and occupation of the landscape: notably in the cities, with neighbourhoods and districts gathered round churches, monasteries, abbeys and convents (and hospitals and schools). Penetration of religious authority into everyday life, and the presence of the Church in life-choices – from the education of peasant boys to the reception of foundlings, to the social role of nuns and lay sisterhoods against those of confraternities.
Against this the record of conflict over religion, the expulsion of the Jesuits seeming to mark a victory for dissident voices, with the long history of Jansenist resistance showing how arguments over the exercise of faith could animate both elites and popular support, and draw on official and street-level modes of dissemination.
Conflict within Catholicism leads onto conflict with other faiths, reviewing the position of the Protestant minority, their civic disabilities, and the continuing tensions that their presence caused, especially in the southeast; likewise with the Jewish population especially in the east. The changing attitudes that moved towards the relief of civil disabilities in the 1780s, which leads onto a discussion of the underlying trend of ‘enlightenment’ as far as it affected religious attitudes. The alternative ‘Voltairian’ and ‘Rousseauian’ responses to questions of faith and the supernatural, and the differing appeals of each.
Then we can examine the long history of arguments about religion’s connection to the Revolution, from Barruel to Van Kley…
Beyond such debates, the question of what revolutionary reform actually did to the structures of the Church, from village rectories to hospitals and schools, and thus offering some perspective on the rise of religious antagonism to the Revolution, with its sectarian aspects in the south, and the descent towards the horrors of the Vendée. Use Suzanne Desan’s work to gloss the survival of religious feeling and practice, compare with studies of Grégoire and other efforts to maintain a ‘constitutional’ Church.
The Church, institutionally, as a pillar of counter-revolution, and religion, culturally, as a marker of antirevolutionary allegiance – posing the question of how Napoleon was able to effect the Concordat, and whether it solved any real problems. The role of religion in Napoleonic and anti-Napoleonic propaganda, and the question of whether this affected domestic attitudes.
Restoration Church structures, successes and failures in turning back the revolutionary tide. Church role in helping to cultivate a conservative/reactionary movement – revival of confraternity/compagnonnage amongst artisans; development of missionary efforts within France, cultivation of ‘loyalist’ regional sentiments, the memory of the Vendée – J Margadant on the duchesse de Berry.
Evaluation of the continued implantation of Catholicism as practices and structures in the 1830s and 1840s – religion becoming less a dimension of a coherent [or incoherent] elite worldview, more a separate sphere [and a gendered one – Caroline Ford].
