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"Carnal Quietism": Embodying Anti-Jesuit Polemics in the Catherine Cadiere Affair, 1731
- Eighteenth-Century Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 39, Number 2, Winter 2006
- pp. 173-186
- 10.1353/ecs.2005.0058
- Article
- Additional Information
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In 1731 the public throughout France and Europe followed the scandal involving twenty-three year old Catherine Cadière who accused her confessor, the Jesuit Jean Baptiste Girard, of seduction, "spiritual incest," witchcraft, and the heretical doctrine of Quietism. This essay argues that the affair reveals how contemporary anxieties about spiritual integrity and clerical power were mapped onto Cadière's body. In the aftermath of the controversial papal bull Unigenitus, Girard's domination of Cadière encapsulated fears of the Jesuit order as a foreign body penetrating the Gallican church and the Crown. The Jesuit's efforts to silence Cadière violated Cadière's and the public's rights as subjects.