The Body or the Soul? Religion and Culture in a Quebec Parish, 1736–1901 by Frank A. Abbott (review)

Issues related to the role of the Roman Catholic Church in French-Canadian society have loomed large in Quebec historical writing for well over a century. In the early twentieth century, Quebec's leading academic historians, Thomas Chapais and Abbe Lionel Groulx, though they disagreed on the impact of the British conquest on Quebec, nevertheless agreed that French Canada was a pre-eminently Catholic society and that French Canadians were vested with a divine mission. Their successors at Universite Laval and the Universite de Montreal rejected the providentialism that had characterized earlier work on religion in Quebec, but they agreed however that Catholicism was a structuring element in French-Canadian history and culture. Writing in the 1950s and 1960s, the Laval and Montreal historians argued that Catholicism had impeded Quebec's development, though they diverged on whether the British conquest of New France was to blame for the province's apparently rampant clericalism. These ideas would be challenged in the 1970s and 1980s by academics who sought instead to minimize Catholicism's role in Quebec society. Revisionist historians like PaulAndre Linteau and Brian Young argued that Quebec was a 'normal'society that had experienced the secularizing effects of industrialization and urbanization since the mid-nineteenth century, and they insisted that material forces, not spiritual ones, had structured Quebec's development.

Recent historical writing has tended to challenge the materialist assumptions that have underpinned revisionist history in the late twentieth century. Catholicism and religious culture have been the object of increasing scholarly attention, and historians have tended to approach religion as a defining aspect of French-Canadian society rather than as a sort of false consciousness. Frank Abbott's work fits well into this new current of historical writing. In his excellent monograph, the author examines religion and culture in nineteenth-century Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, a rural parish southeast of Quebec City. He insists on the strength of Catholic values within the parish, while also noting the limits of clerical influence and the extent to which the church's authority rested on mediation and compromise: 'Ultimately, the cure's power over his parish relied on the will of the majority of his flock.' Abbott examines various widespread practices, including drinking, that met with clerical admonishment, and he presents popular religion as a means of resistance to official clerical discourse, but he also notes that 'the informal but equally powerful popular discourse reinforced the Church's teachings on subjects such as sexual morality and the rules of ethical conduct.'

This detailed and sympathetic study of Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce allows its author to make larger inferences regarding religion and culture in nineteenth-century Quebec. Saint-Joseph, Abbott argues, was a preeminently Catholic parish in the heart of a pre-eminently Catholic region. Certainly, the census figures bear this out – the Saint-Joseph's Protestant and English-speaking population has long been statistically negligible – but the parish also lies in the heart of a region reputed for its contrarian political culture and its close relations with northern Maine – a region where, in 1775, the local population welcomed the invading American rebels and caused the local seigneur to seek refuge with the British forces at Quebec.

Still, in spite of the distinctive aspects of Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce's experience, Abbot's basic arguments mesh with current historical research and can be extended to much of nineteenth-century Quebec. Catholicism was not imposed on ordinary French Canadians; rather, it expressed the core values of their culture. Church doctrine and authority were questioned on certain issues, to be sure, which led to compromise and sometimes to abstention and resistance, but, for the most part, French Canadians agreed with Catholic teachings and looked to the clergy for guidance.