Femmes et gens d'Eglise dans la France classique XVIIe-XVIIIe siecle (review)

If the historiography of ancien-régime France were carved on stone tablets, we would find, writ large, the axiom that this was a society that held its women in low esteem, even subjection; and furthermore, that the subjection was promoted by the Catholic Church, in keeping with Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Actually, as Bernos points out, the notion of female inferiority owed more to the Greeks than to the Bible; it was Aristotle, not Jesus Christ, who called woman "an imperfect male." But whatever the provenance, the belief endured. "Until recent times, the feminine condition, both in civil society and in the church community, was characterized by a submission which seemed to stem from 'nature'" (p. 36, my translation).

Did this constitute misogyny? It depends how the term is defined. According to Bernos, "there was no deliberate plot, just a permanent obsession. Women were the prisoners of a system of unquestioned prejudices, rather than being, directly, the target of an intentional, brutal, and organized repression" (p. 341, my translation). Indeed, they themselves helped to perpetuate the system in that "they totally internalized the masculine prejudices regarding their qualities and their failings" (p. 54, my translation). The entire society, save only a tiny handful of rebels, took female inferiority as much for granted as it did the air it breathed.

So, in a way, the first half of the statement carved in stone is fully defensible: women of the Ancien Régime were indeed regarded as having a different nature from men, one which fully justified the mesh of subjections in which they were held. The second half is more contentious. Was theology really the source from which misogyny arose? A string of pronouncements from clerical preachers and writers has been collected to make this case. Bernos counters with extensive documentation illustrating a more equitable theology according to which women had the same potential for good as men, the same penchant for evil, and the same hope of salvation. The much-repeated story of the second Council of Mâcon (585 A.D.) and its debate over whether women have souls is, he insists, a myth, propagated by the philosophes and perpetuated by people who want to believe it is true (pp. 33-35). As for the church of early modern France, its attitude toward women was more complicated than cruel. Its pastoral practices were surprisingly evenhanded, as evidenced by the many sermons, works of casuistry, and manuals of confession which made no distinction between the treatment of men and that of women. Its counsels were often fairer than those of society, as in its desire (fiercely contested by the courts) that children should not be forced into marriage or religion, and its teaching that adultery was as sinful for men as for women. "At the level of moral principles, the Church found itself in contradiction with 'profane' culture and even with the law" (p. 142, my translation). Yet in its many interventions in daily life, it bowed to the prevalent thinking: "In this domain, the clergy ratified the profane ideas that disparaged and subjected the 'second sex'" (p. 342, my translation).

Social attitudes are formed under many influences—political, juridical, and familial as well as religious. Nobody, then or now, escapes entirely from these influences. Thus, when "the quasi-totality of theologians and Christian moralists of the classic epoch accepted, without much discussion, the implicit anthropology of their times...." (loc. cit., my translation), they were not alone. Bernos notes that even after philosophes and revolutionaries sloughed off Catholicism, they retained the traditional prejudices against "the second sex."

The book is divided into three parts. The first looks at "the feminine question" as seen by Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The second part covers familiar territory: the various "states" of woman from childhood through marriage or religious life to...