Purgatory and Piety in Brittany 1480–1720 by Elizabeth C. Tingle (review)

Nowadays it is hard to remember the excitement provoked in their time by the pioneering researches of French historians like Philippe Ariès, Michel Vovelle, François Lebrun, and Pierre Chaunu on attitudes—and the practices to which they gave rise—toward death and the afterlife during the 1960s and 1970s. Their methods and vocabulary have given way to different questions and approaches, but as so often, such historiographical turns leave many loose ends when the newest fashion takes over. Elizabeth C. Tingle’s new book on purgatory and piety in early-modern Brittany reconsiders those early works with fairness and economy, and incorporates their findings within the framework of a study that is much more wide-ranging and interesting than its title alone would suggest.

Her book focuses on three dioceses (Nantes, Vannes, and Saint-Pol-de-Léon) in western Brittany, rather than on the eastern or central parts of the province, which Bruno Restif studied a few years ago. A key point here is the reputation of west Brittany in particular as a haven for highly distinctive and barely Christianized Celtic customs concerning death and the dead, complete with their accompanying rituals and—lurking in the background—the strange skeletal figure of Ankou. Such an obsession with the dead as a threatening presence among the living helped to produce distinctive images in churches and burial practices. Tingle sets out to question such accepted views by a systematic study of the place of purgatory within the religious culture—as well as the wider social and ecclesiastical structure—of Breton society through the upheavals of the Reformation and Catholic Reformation. Her book is based primarily on the printed and especially archival materials that were often destroyed over the centuries and survive only in uneven quantities.

The subject of the place of purgatory in late-medieval and early-modern Christianity is itself a problematic one, given its outright rejection by Protestantism and its qualified defense by Catholicism, as needing to be defined and regulated. Tingle provides a succinct analysis of how the doctrine and its practical implications were reworked over the centuries and, above all, how new spiritualities arose that emphasized living a good, virtuous life rather than relying on a good death and/or the accumulated treasure of “merit” of the Church to attain salvation. Understanding of purgatory and its function had direct consequences for the behavior of “ordinary” Christians when settling their accounts with God, as is so evident in the postmortem Masses and other provisions commonly found in their wills and other key documents. For the great majority, perpetual foundations were too expensive, but they could fall back on confraternities and indulgences. But attitudes gradually shifted, and by the eighteenth century the mostly town-based élites were less likely to rely on or found intercessory Masses for themselves or for the departed as they had in the past, whereas rural parishes moved more slowly. Along the way, the role of purgatory in the economy of salvation produced a veritable superstructure, with its own financial base, within Catholicism. Entire categories of lesser secular clergy made a living from saying Masses and attending funerals; they founded endowments for Masses themselves, which sustained the next generation of clergy. But this superstructure was hard hit by King Louis XIV’s taxes and virtually ruined by the crash of John Law’s financial policies in 1720.

It is also to Tingle’s credit that she makes a systematic effort to examine Breton religious history and its supposed peculiarities in the context of the wider French and European patterns of the period she studies. This is not merely historiographical road-mapping, but is a key thread in this book—namely, that even west Brittany was far more receptive to outside influences than usually imagined. It was not a remote island, and over the two centuries or so considered here its saints...