Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France

Divided Families: The Confessional Boundary in the Household

DIVIDED FAMILIES The Confessional Boundary in the Household s THE COMMUNITY’S SACRED SPACES were one arena in which Catholics and Protestants constructed and contested the confessional boundary. But there was another even more fundamental to early -modern conceptions of social order, political organization, and spiritual life: the family and its household. For political and religious authorities, the proper functioning of families was essential to collective harmony, political stability, and the spiritual development of its members, as well as to their social and economic betterment. Royal power drew one its most effective metaphorical justifications from the ideal of the properly ordered family, and through its legislation and jurisprudence the state sought to impose its model of political authority on the individual household. This concern allied it with propertied families preoccupied with the transmission of inheritances and social ascension. The monarchy supported what Sarah Hanley has aptly titled the “family-state compact,” which promoted a “family model of socioeconomic authority under patriarchal hegemony .”1 Families were placed under the firm control of husbands and fathers,  1. Sarah Hanley, “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies 16, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 4–27, see esp. 15. Hanley has also described the construction and operation of the compact in “Family and State in Early Modern France: The Marriage Pact,” in Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World 1500 to the Present, edited by Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert (New York, 1987), 53–63; “Women in the Body Politic of Early Modern France,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 16 (1989): 408–14; and “Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Lawsuits, Civil Rights, and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500–1800,” American Historical Review 102, no. 1 (February 1987): 27–52. whose governance of their wives’ property and activities, their children’s marriage choices, and the distribution of family wealth was strengthened. Royal law and policy thus sought to preserve both the patrimonial lineage ’s financial capital (property and offices) and its symbolic capital (honor and status).2 The pursuit of these aims could set families in opposition to the churches that also exercised great influence over how they functioned. It sometimes led them to make marriage alliances for their offspring across the confessional divide. An advantageous marriage was an advantageous marriage, even if it transgressed the religious boundary. Families of the lower ranks found their marriage markets likely to be geographically restricted , which might make the choice of spouses from the rival faith a necessity . Such matches were important to cement local social and political positions, to accumulate needed capital, or simply to survive. Aristocratic and bourgeois families made mixed marriages for reasons of social ascension , political alliance, and economic improvement.3 These incentives for cross-confessional matches were powerful and appealed even to stalwarts of the faith. Take, for example, the Huguenot Marie de La Tour d’Auvergne , duchesse de La Trémoille, whom her coreligionists considered a heroic defender of the Reformed Church. According to her granddaughter ’s memoir, the duchess considered a marriage between her daughter Marie-Charlotte and the “extremely rich” Duc de Meilleraye. But the    2. To be sure, the family-state model did not necessarily dictate how all families behaved . As Hanley and others have shown, wives retained some independence in matters of work and the disposition of family property. In addition to Hanley’s work cited above, see Gayle K. Brunelle, “Dangerous Liaisons: Mésalliance and Early Modern French Noblewomen,” French Historical Studies 19, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 75–103; Carol L. Loats, “Gender, Guilds, and Work Identity: Perspectives from Sixteenth Century Paris,” French Historical Studies 20, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 15–30; Julie Hardwick, “Seeking Separations: Gender, Marriages, and Household Economies in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies 21, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 157–80, and The Practice of Patriarchy : Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park, Pa., 1998). 3. On the social imperatives behind intermarriage, see Barbara Diefendorf, “Houses Divided: Religious Schism in Sixteenth-Century Parisian Families,” in Urban Life in the Renaissance, edited by Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman (Newark, Del., 1989), 85; Labrousse, “Une foi, une loi, un roi,” 83; Dompnier, Venin de l’hérésie, 157; Benoist, “Catholiques et protestants,” 328, Bertheau, “Consistoire .l.l. du MoyenPoitou ,” 4:522–23; and Debon, “Religion et vie quotidienne à Gap,” 141. [18.221.165...