Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France

Introduction

Introduction i One of the most interesting questions in the study of religion centers around belief: why do adherents of a particular religious confession believe what they believe? For the early modern period in France, this question has often led historians to matters of religious conversion. The Protestant Reformation in France was primarily an urban event, and by the time the religious wars began most towns and cities counted at least a few Huguenots among their numbers. Because the inhabitants of so many of France’s urban areas experienced violent conflicts over religious issues during the second half of the sixteenth century, a number of historians have attempted to uncover the reasons for this division by examining whether factors 1 like gender, profession, location, and class might account for confessional preference.1 These historians ultimately discovered that the reasons behind religious conversion defy simple explanations, but in their attempts to understand religious motivations and sensibilities they uncovered the fulcrum upon which the whole Reformation hinged: the ordinary lives and religious beliefs of France’s urban artisans, printers, and magistrates. On the other hand, the focus on urban Protestantism leaves out the masses of French peasants who remained Catholic through the upheavals of the religious wars and beyond. While that crucial moment of decision for a Huguenot or a member of the Catholic League makes for a dramatic symbol of the changes that the Reformation brought about in the second half of the sixteenth century, the long-term commitment of the French countryside to Catholicism stands out as an even more tantalizing—and axiomatic—characteristic of the early modern period. My initial question about the nature of religious belief, when placed in a rural context, leads to many additional questions that encompass not only belief itself but also the dissemination of religious knowledge and practices over time and space. Why did the peasant farmer attend Mass every Sunday and take communion at least once a year? Why did he insist on baptizing his children, and why did he and his wife dedicate even a small portion of their scant resources to the Catholic Church? Why did they believe in Catholicism, and why did their children and their children’s children continue to believe? There are, I believe, two elements of early modern Catholicism that can significantly advance the historian’s understanding of these particular questions: catechism and rural primary schools ( petites écoles). Although no historical document can fully explain why any individual or society chose to believe in and follow a given religion, the surviving documents surrounding catechisms and schools do provide unique details that allow us to contemplate the framework within which French Catholics constructed and understood religious belief and religious education. This framework was not always entirely orthodox, nor did it remain uniform from individual to individual. As a key element of early modern religious education, however, catechisms were an important step in a standardization process that could strengthen that framework and give it more stability. Reform-minded clergymen envisioned 2 CREATING CAT HOLICS a comprehensive program of religious education that would unify and systematize Catholic practices at both the parish and diocesan levels. They saw themselves as using catechisms and schools to create Catholics through the orthodox instructions provided for each new generation of believers. The bishops’ primary motivation for aiming their educational efforts at children rather than adults resulted from their conviction that the type of religious education children received would have a tremendous influence on what they believed—and how they demonstrated that belief—as adults. The archbishop of Reims, Alexandre-Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord (uncle of the Revolutionary churchman-turneddiplomat Talleyrand), emphasized in his late eighteenth-century rules for schoolteachers that the right sort of education could indeed make all the difference in ensuring the dissemination of orthodox Catholicism: Children are the most precious part of Christianity, the resources of the church and the state; it is in the cultivation of these young plants that a pastor can begin the renewal of his parish, and without attention to the children, the pastor will never complete this work. Scripture and experience confirm this truth, and teach us that the first impressions are the most lasting that a man has; he does not stray from the path that he entered in his youth even in old age. When he has received from his earliest years the principles...