Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France

Chapter 3: The Cur

C H A P T E R T H R E E The Curé and the Catechism The Birth of a Childhood Ritual i When Bishop Félix Vialart de Herse of Châlons-sur-Marne issued a catechism for his diocese in 1660, he outlined his views of the Catholic Reformation in his introductory ordinance. He described the Catholic Church as a “bonne Mère” and the spouse of Christ, whose goal was the eternal salvation of her children. In order for them to be saved, the church, in its maternal incarnation, had to provide instructions to her children—instructions as important to believers’ souls as a mother’s milk is to her infant. Sadly, Vialart lamented, the ministers of the church had not always done their duty, and many had allowed their flocks to languish in profound ignorance, subject to dangerous vices. 101 The church had then been forced to take steps to correct this deplorable situation and attempted, through the reforms of the Council of Trent, to return to all of our Dioceses their former discipline, in its greatest strength, by commanding on the one hand the Curés to take great pains to fulfill their duties toward their flocks with faithfulness, and on the other hand asking Bishops to hold them to their duties, if they were to rebel against them, by the just fear of the most serious Censures.1 Bishop Vialart then detailed his own attempts at reform during his tenure in Châlons, citing his many ordinances and mandements dealing with proper ecclesiastical behavior, the synods and other meetings that he held, and the efforts that both he and his rural deans made to visit curés and set them on the right path. He concluded with joy that his parishes now contained capable and zealous pastors who were ready to teach their parishioners the doctrines and practices necessary for their salvation. He warned his curés that if they failed to correct and instruct the souls that Christ and his church had bound them to care for, they would one day be held accountable for the loss of those souls. In the eyes of early modern French bishops, the Catholic Reformation was a two-step process. The first step involved the reform of the Catholic clergy itself. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reforming bishops all over France used a variety of tools to ensure that they had educated, capable, and dedicated priests to care for the souls in their dioceses. Bishop Vialart was just one of many bishops who issued ordinances, held synods, and made regular parish visits in order to enforce church standards and ecclesiastical discipline. Bishops had to make sure that their curés were willing and able to work for the salvation of the souls in their parishes.2 Only then could the second step in the reform process—the religious education of the laity—begin. Seminarytrained curés who performed the ceremony of the Mass and administered the sacraments on a regular basis were now asked to fulfill another duty: teaching catechism. Bishops insisted that their curés teach catechism for at least an hour every Sunday and feast day, and when they 102 PRIMARY EDUCAT ION visited the parishes in their dioceses they expected to find both children and adults who could recite catechism lessons when asked. Furthermore, bishops indicated that parents should bear part of the responsibility for the religious education of their children by sending them to catechism class. Vialart included a text on the Christian education of children at the end of his catechism and told both parents and clergymen to apply its principles to their instructional efforts. Similarly , in the mandement to his catechism, Bishop Charles de Caylus of Auxerre reminded parents of their duty to make sure that their children were instructed: “We exhort Fathers, Mothers, Masters, Mistresses, and all Heads of Families to send their Children and Domestics to Catechism faithfully, and to attend class themselves, and to regard this religious exercise as one of the most useful for their salvation.”3 These mandements and ordinances were common in all types of catechisms; by the end of the seventeenth century bishops expected that their educated and zealous curés would hold catechism classes on a regular basis and that parents would send their children to those classes. Yet the most essential question we must ask about...