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  • From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris
  • Elizabeth Rapley
From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. By Barbara B. Diefendorf. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2004. Pp. xii, 340.)

The era of the "Mystical Invasion," that time of extraordinary religious fervor in early seventeenth-century France, has been described often enough. The end [End Page 168] of the religious wars, the establishment of a strong monarchy, the inflowing of influence from the rest of Catholic Europe, the recovery of the economy—these tell us how a religious revival was able to take place. But they do not help us to comprehend it in all its intensity. Why did people turn in such numbers to prayer, penitence, and self-denial? Why did so many of them rush into religious life?

Barbara Diefendorf argues that the Catholic Reformation in France was shaped by the traumatic experience of the religious wars, when the possibility of losing the Church altogether became frighteningly real. To the faithful, the offenses caused to God during those years required expiation. A group of men and women, small in numbers but socially influential, responded by adopting lives of prayer and heroic asceticism. The authenticity of their faith made them role models for others, and thus "the devout life" spread contagiously.

The locus of Diefendorf's study is Paris. Her principal subjects are Parisian dévotes—women, many of them wealthy, almost all of them members of high society, influential in their own right but also because of whom they knew. These women combined an exemplary prayer life with good works among the poor, the sick, and the ignorant. More significantly, they gave their piety a lasting institutional form in the many religious houses that they founded or assisted. Not only did they provide funds for these communities; they secured privileges for them, they supervised the construction of their buildings, they made suggestions as to their rules, and, sometimes, they chose and formed their first entrants.

Many of the religious congregations adopted by the dévotes had originated elsewhere. Their establishment in Paris was frequently a calculated move: it was here at the center, rather than in the provinces, that they could gain patronage, funding, and stability. They often paid for these advantages with modifications to their original lifestyle. Where they had practised poverty in poor surroundings, they now had to practise it in grand, even opulent, buildings. Communities that had been kept small by design became large communities. Their clausura was penetrated by the visits of high-ranking ladies. Sometimes their practices were adjusted so as to be more congenial to the young women now flocking through their doors. In many different ways, they accepted the advice of their aristocratic patrons.

Thus retouched, the congregations would later spread out across the country. So it can be seen that the grandes dames of Paris played an active part in the regeneration of religious life in France, with a drive and creativity forged out of the chaos of the sixteenth-century wars. The new generation, driven now by different concerns, continued the creativity, but directed it toward a displaced and poverty-racked society.

That word "creativity" is a good one to end on. Throughout the book, Diefendorf argues for the enormously positive role of women during the formative years of the Catholic Reformation. She makes her case eloquently and [End Page 169] well. Without their collaboration, that Reformation would have been a much different thing.

Elizabeth Rapley
University of Ottawa
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