The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint: A Tale of Sex, Religion, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century France by Mita Choudhury (review)

"Oubliez-vous, laissez-faire." These words were at the center of a whirlwind court case which, from 1730 to 1731, tore through Provence, pulling the French public into its orbit with a scandal that deepened divides within Catholicism and rattled the foundations of the existing political and religious power structures. This is the narrative that Mita Choudhury presents in The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint, as she indicates the extent to which the affair of Father Jean-Baptiste Girard and his young penitent, Catherine Cadière, emerged as an important event in eighteenth-century French society and politics. Theirs is a tale of sex and sacrilege, of hypocrisy and deception, and a swirling mass of accusations involving false miracles, possession, rape, abortion, and abuse of clerical power. But, as Choudhury establishes, it is also the story of a protracted court case which fueled hostilities between Jesuits and Jansenists, pitted magistrates and powerful individuals against each other, and galvanized an engaged and invested public. This enthralling microhistory thus explores the ways in which the Girard-Cadière affair tore at the fabric of Old Regime society, weakening its "strong, sustaining threads of the sacred, of authority, of obedience" (9).

A key feature of the book lending to its efficacy is its splendidly simple structure. Divided into three parts, the chapters progress both thematically and chronologically, reflecting the development of the court case from a localized event to a matter of national and international interest. Each successive chapter adds to the reader's appreciation of the historical complexity of the case while maintaining remarkable clarity and coherence.

The book begins in the coastal town of Toulon, home of Catherine Cadière and her family. Tensions ran high between locals and outsiders in this community, and Father Girard, as a newcomer and a member of the powerful Society of Jesus, was certainly the latter. Yet his reputation as a gifted spiritual director preceded him, and the relationship that quickly developed between him and the burgeoning young mystic, Catherine Cadière, soon became the talk of the town. Under his direction, Catherine experienced daily ecstasies and visions and frequently received miraculous wounds. She was seemingly on the path to becoming Toulon's very own saint.

After Father Girard secured a place for Catherine in a convent in Ollioules, the bonds of trust and cooperation on which their relationship had been founded began to break down. Catherine left the convent and acquired a new confessor: a Discalced Carmelite priest named Nicolas Girieux who had made his reputation as a fierce critic of the Jesuits. Father Nicolas was the "linchpin" of the affair (57), as it was he who uncovered the alleged crimes of her former confessor and set the events of the trial in motion. He believed that Catherine's mystical experiences had been of diabolical rather than divine origin, caused by a puff of air that Father Girard had breathed into her mouth. Girard reportedly encouraged the mystical fits that ensued, as they allowed him to molest his penitent's unconscious body. His infamous command of "Oubliez-vous, laissez-faire," which seemingly carried quietist undertones, became a cultural shorthand for his alleged carnal and heretical crimes, and signaled a greater issue of Jesuit corruption and abuse of power.

While the salacious details of the affair are undeniably captivating—and here Choudhury does not disappoint—the true interest of the book lies in its dual treatment of the polemics surrounding the case and of the engagement of the public in its proceedings. In the two previous decades, the powerful Jesuits had spearheaded an anti-Jansenist campaign, producing the papal bull Unigenitus and pursuing suspected Jansenist clerics. In spite of significant opposition to the bull, most notably among a number of lawyers, the king declared Unigenitus the law of Church and State in...