Originally published in 1971. In the 1970s, social historians of seventeenth-century France began examining the social changes in the ancien régime in an effort to reconstruct the events leading up to the French Revolution. Thomas Sheppard examines Lourmarin, a mainly Protestant village with a small textile industry. He seeks to answer a series of questions posed at the outset of the book: What was daily life like in an eighteenth-century French village? How was village government organized? To what extent did community leaders regulate village political life? What effect did the Revolution have on life in the village? Sheppard answers these questions with his archival work in Lourmarin. He concludes his work with an investigation of the effects of the Revolution on life in Lourmarin following 1789.

This second volume begins with a Section on the religion of the people. The clergy offered the liturgical services, sermons, evangelistic missions, and the offices sanctifying birth, marriage, and death; distinctions are made between what they intended and how their ministrations were popularly interpreted and incorporated into the social order. Statistical soundings concerning the extent of religious practice and the degree of conviction involved are evaluated. Further chapters deal with processions, pilgrimages, and popular practices and superstitions, with hermits and confraternities, with the impact of reading the Bible and other edifying literature in an age of increasing literacy. Finally comes a view of the twilight world of magic and sorcery. Throughout this Section the comments of theologians and thinkers of the Enlightenment are recorded, whether in coincidence or contradiction. The next section deals with the efficacy of the confessional and the role of the casuistry of the Church in attempting to mould sexual mores, business practices, and in the world of the theatre. In the next two Sections, the role of religious issues in political affairs is detailed. An overview of the Jansenist quarrel and of the activities of the Jesuits brings in the story of the struggle between Crown and Parlement, while an extended portrayal of the life of the Protestant and Jewish communities leads to the history of the debate on toleration, involving the Gallican Church in political interventions and controversy. Throughout the two volumes the rising forces of anticlericalism and the tensions within the ecclesiastical establishment have been recorded, and these themes come to their climax in a final section on the role played by churchmen in the coming of the Revolution.

For 1st and 2nd year undergraduate courses in Modern European History in departments of history. Also, higher level courses on enlightenment.This book provides a wide-ranging account and discussion of the history of Europe from 1713-1789. As well as political events, problems and institutions, it looks at the economic life of the continent, social structures and problems and intellectual and religious life. It also covers all aspects of Europe's relations with the rest of the world during a key period in European history.

This new edition of this highly successful and influential work includes two entirely new chapters - on Europe and the wider world and on the Revolutionary crisis - and is extensively revised throughout. It offers a wide-ranging thematic account of the century, that explores social, cultural and economic topics, as well as giving a clear analysis of the political events. Filled with fascinating detail and unusual examples, this absorbing history of eighteenth-century Europe will bring the period alive to students and teachers alike.