Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France

Conclusion

Conclusion i In 1695 a peasant boy named Valentin Jamerey-Duval was born and baptized in the village of Arthonnay, in what is today the department of the Yonne. Valentin spent the early years of his life in abject poverty—his mother, a widow, could barely eke out a living for her family, and when she remarried, her new husband mistreated Valentin so badly that he left home at the age of thirteen. Despite his difficult beginning, Valentin eventually managed to get an education, and he became a popular example used by the philosophes to demonstrate the fact that peasants could indeed learn to read and write. As an adult Jamerey-Duval wrote a memoir of his experiences, in which he described the education he had received in his earliest years: 227 My education consisted of learning the Our Father, in Latin and in bad French, along with some other prayers that were explained to me in various elegant translations en patois. The catechism was taught in the same way, by repeating bits of it to me, I came, in a fashion, to know that there was a God, a Church and sacraments. I also learned that there was a pope, the visible head of the Church, priests and monks; I was taught to respect them and even to fear them, and that’s what I do still.1 Even this boy, from the very poorest level of society, learned at least part of his catechism. One of the most important tasks of the Catholic Reformation was to educate the laity, and if a poor boy like Valentin Jamerey-Duval learned about God and the sacraments, church reformers were doing something right. By the eighteenth century in France, catechism had become a routine part of childhood. For the majority of Catholic children, catechism was the first and most essential part of an entire program of religious education espoused by bishops and curés but generally accepted by parents and most members of the village community. The Catholic Reformation was not a one-sided affair, carried out on an unwilling lay population; both clergymen and the laity worked together to carry out religious reforms in the eighteenth century. Historians of the Catholic Reformation era often assume that the clergy and the laity were on opposite sides of every issue, but on the subject of primary education, they generally agreed. Parish priests, village notables, and parents alike wanted children to spend a few seasons in a schoolroom, learning to behave like proper French Catholics instead of like the animals that they had to tend when they were not in school. Catholicism was not just about doctrines; it was an entire way of living—a code of behavior that had to be maintained in order to keep society running. Thus, children learned their catechism at church from their curés, as well as from schoolmasters and schoolmistresses in the petites écoles. They were instructed in all of the Catholic Church’s basic doctrines: the existence of God and Jesus Christ, the importance of the institutional church, and the necessity of prayer and the sacraments. At the same time, they learned proper respect for the church and its priests, how to participate 228 CREATING CATHOLICS in the sacraments, and codes of moral and ethical behavior that applied in both religious and secular settings. As a result of this education, Catholics in the dioceses of Reims, Châlons-sur-Marne, and Auxerre did conform, for the most part, to the standards of religious behavior that their curés and bishops expected. They attended Mass every Sunday and feast day. They satisfied their “Easter duty” faithfully, taking communion at least once during the two-week Easter period. They participated in all of the sacraments regularly and often went to great lengths to make sure that they had quali- fied priests in their villages to perform those sacraments for them. Of course, just because people went to church and took part in the sacraments does not mean that they did everything right. One of the main goals of the Catholic Reformation was the separation of the sacred and the profane. The clergy believed that they could eventually stamp out all of the profane aspects of the laity’s lives, leaving only the sacred. The laity, however, took the injunction literally; they often only separated the profane from the sacred and continued with behavior that...