Although the French Revolution is associated with efforts to dechristianize the French state and citizens, it actually had long-term religious--even Christian--origins, claims Dale Van Kley in this controversial new book. Looking back at the two and a half centuries that preceded the revolution, Van Kley explores the diverse, often warring religious strands that influenced political events up to the revolution. Van Kley draws on a wealth of primary sources to show that French royal absolutism was first a product and then a casualty of religious conflict. On the one hand, the religious civil wars of the sixteenth century between the Calvinist and Catholic internationals gave rise to Bourbon divine-right absolutism in the seventeenth century. On the other hand, Jansenist-related religious conflicts in the eighteenth century helped to "desacralize" the monarchy and along with it the French Catholic clergy, which was closely identified with Bourbon absolutism. The religious conflicts of the eighteenth century also made a more direct contribution to the revolution, for they left a legacy of protopolitical and ideological parties (such as the Patriot party, a successor to the Jansenist party), whose rhetoric affected the content of revolutionary as well as counterrevolutionary political culture. Even in its dechristianizing phase, says Van Kley, revolutionary political culture was considerably more indebted to varieties of French Catholicism than it realized.

This microhistory investigates the famous and scandalous 1731 trial in which Catherine Cadière, a young woman in the south of France, accused her Jesuit confessor, Jean-Baptiste Girard, of seduction, heresy, abortion, and bewitchment. Generally considered to be the last witchcraft trial in early modern France, the Cadière affair was central to the volatile politics of 1730s France, a time when magistrates and lawyers were seeking to contain clerical power. Mita Choudhury’s examination of the trial sheds light on two important phenomena with broad historical implications: the questioning of traditional authority and the growing disquiet about the role of the sacred and divine in French society. Both contributed to the French people’s ever-increasing disenchantment with the church and the king. Choudhury builds her story through an extensive examination of archival material, including trial records, pamphlets, periodicals, and unpublished correspondence from witnesses. The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint offers new insights into how the eighteenth-century public interpreted the accusations and why the case consumed the public for years, developing from a local sex scandal to a referendum on religious authority and its place in French society and politics.

The forty-one years between the Society of Jesus’s papal suppression in 1773 and its eventual restoration in 1814 remain controversial, with new research and interpretations continually appearing. Shore’s narrative approaches these years, and the period preceding the suppression, from a new perspective that covers individuals not usually discussed in works dealing with this topic. As well as examining the contributions of former Jesuits to fields as diverse as ethnology—a term and concept pioneered by an ex-Jesuit—and library science, where Jesuits and ex-Jesuits laid the groundwork for the great advances of the nineteenth century, the essay also explores the period the exiled Society spent in the Russian Empire. It concludes with a discussion of the Society’s restoration in the broader context of world history.

This book offers the first comprehensive overview of the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe. It surveys the diversity of views about the structure and nature of the movement, pointing toward the possibilities for further research. The volume presents a series of comprehensive treatments on the process and interpretation of Catholic Enlightenment in France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, Malta, Italy and the Habsburg territories. An introductory overview explores the varied meanings of Catholic Enlightenment and situates them in a series of intellectual and social contexts. The topics covered in this book are crucial for a proper understanding of the role and place not only of Catholicism in the eighteenth century, but also for the social and religious history of Modern Europe.

James Melton examines the rise of the public in 18th-century Europe. A work of comparative synthesis focusing on England, France and the German-speaking territories, this a reassessment of what Habermas termed the bourgeois public sphere.

Expanded and updated for the new millennium. Covering the life of Christ, the election of Pope Benedict XVI, and everything in between, A Concise History of the Catholic Church has been one of the bestselling religious histories of the past two decades and a mainstay for scholars, students, and others looking for a definitive, accessible history of Catholicism. With a clarity that will appeal to any reader, Thomas Bokenkotter divides his study into five parts that correspond to the major historical and epochal developments in Catholicism. His authoritative, thorough approach takes readers from the Church’s triumph over paganism, through "the sound and fury of renewal," to a new section devoted to such topics as dissent and current developments in the ecumenical movement. Informative illustrations throughout the book, new to this edition, enrich the reader's experience, and the addition of a wide-ranging bibliography increases its value as a sourcebook.

The earliest known literary productions by women living in Europe were probably written by French writers. As early as the 12th century, women troubadours in the south of France were writing poems. French women continued writing through the ages, their number increasing as education became more available to women of all classes. And yet, of the great number of works by women writers who preceded the current feminist movement, very few have survived. A few writers such as Marie de France, George Sand, and Simone de Beauvoir became part of the canon. But critics, mostly male, had judged the works of only a few women writers worthy of recognition. As part of the feminist move to reclaim women writers and to rethink literary history, scholars in French literature began to take a new look at women writers who had been popular during their lifetimes but who had not been admitted into the canon. This reference book provides extensive information about French women writers and the world in which they lived. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries for authors; literary genres, such as the novel, poetry, and the short story; literary movements, such as classicism, realism, and surrealism; life-cycle events particular to women, such as menstruation and menopause; events and institutions which affected women differently than men, such as revolutions, wars, and laws on marriage, divorce, and education. The volume spans French literature from the Middle Ages to the present and covers those writers who lived and worked mainly in France. The entries are written by expert contributors and each includes bibliographical information. The entries focus on each writer's awareness of how her gender shaped her outlook and opportunities, on how categorizations, structures, and terms used to describe literary works have been defined for women, and the ways in which women writers have responded to these definitions. The volume begins with a feminist history of French literature and concludes with a selected, general bibliography and a chronology of women writers.