Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France (review)

In this book the author revisits thorny questions that historians of the Reformations have pondered ever since they occurred: What was the nature and depth of religious belief, and how effectively was religious knowledge disseminated over time? To answer these, at least regarding France, the author examines catechisms and rural primary schools (petites écoles), for her the fundamental vectors of this process of creating and transmitting Catholic practice and belief. Thus, they were the centerpieces of the Catholic Reform. For the author's period of scrutiny, 1650 to the Revolution, three large and diverse dioceses in northern France—Auxerre, Chalons-sur-Marne, and Reims—offer rich sources essential for this study. Beyond the hundreds of catechisms, she deeply and fruitfully mines the plentiful visitation records.

The first part of the book examines the many catechisms produced by various bishops of these dioceses, essentially as texts to prepare children for first Communion. Their objective was not to inform young Catholics of the theological complexities of doctrine, but rather to have them memorize basic tenets as guides to moral behavior that the Church expected of the laity. In the second part, on primary education, the author moves from viewing the Reform from an episcopal (and thus top-down) perspective to one that explores the active role of the parish clergy; schoolteachers; and, above all, the laity in the Reforming process. Bishops may have had clear prescriptions in their catechisms, but visitation records reveal that Catholic parents were insisting that their children attend the curé's classes. Indeed, during the eighteenth century the laity hounded bishops to assign more priests and vicars to the parishes at the same time that the number of petites écoles increased dramatically. The lay community (parents and village authorities), the author points out, shouldered the increased financial burden of more priests and more schoolteachers, for "if they had not wanted schools that taught religion and morals, they would not have paid for them" (p. 139).

The fact that neither the king nor the Church contributed any financial support for these primary schools prompts the author to question the confessionalization thesis in its classic form, which grants the state a central role in the institutionalization of the various reforming confessions. Yet, by "1789 the vast majority of children from all social levels—girls as well as boys—had access to primary education" (p. 182). The author's central thesis that the Catholic Reform cannot simply be understood as primarily a seventeenth-century development and as a "top-down process of institutional reform" (p. 4) is a compelling corrective to quietly accepted historiographical assumptions. Still, one cannot help but feel that the author slightly overstates her case. The vast majority of children may have had access to primary schools, but how many actually attended? The author herself undercuts the sweep of her assertions when she shows that "as many as one-fourth to one-half [of eligible children] did not attend the petites écoles at all, or only for a short amount of time" (p. 194). The main reasons were "neglect and poverty" (p. 195) so that "in reality the village schools could not reach the poorest children in the parish" (p. 197). That primary education was mostly the preserve of "middle class children" (p. 197), then, suggests that the laity driving the Reform "from below" were from a more specific socioeconomic group than suggested in this book, a point certainly worth exploring in the future.