After a path-breaking book Paris City Councillors in the Sixteenth Century: The Politics of Patrimony (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), Barbara Diefendorf turned to a more general study of religion, politics, and civil wars in Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). She then delved deeper still into religious history in From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and also in the work under review here, which consists of a dozen or so case studies of male and female religious communities. Exercising her rare talent for selecting among the numerous (and almost innumerable) communities in Paris, Pontoise, Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier, and Toulouse, she enables readers to perceive a world made up of hundreds of communities across the realm. The social and financial conditions affecting the survival of both older and newly founded communities varied of course, but they all faced competition when it came to raising financial support and recruiting novices. The qualities and characteristics of leadership also varied, but the need to build consensus and to inspire the conduct of not only the religious but also that of potential donors-protectors. Were there continuities of support? This reviewer regrets the absence of information about the donors’ social ranks and their relations to the institutions they supported. Except for dons d’éclat, the sources may be lacking. The more austere and ascetic a community, and the closer the community conformed to its rule, the easier it was to recruit novices. This correlation between austerity and recruitment put pressure on older communities to reform or to die out.
Not only is the number of communities uncertain, but the number of members in each house is also uncertain over the decades. Many communities had only two novices at a time. Inevitably, great attention to folds in a wimple or to the knots of a rope belt manifested specific identities. Investment and new saintly names satisfied the yearning for whatever would deepen devotional experiences.
“Planting the cross” was not just a metaphor: it consisted of (does it still?) the creation of a new community presence, a presence whose unique identity was expressed in the name, in devotional practices, and often in the physical presence of collective practices and, sometimes, an amazingly modest chapel and residential buildings. Often very tall and heavy, these foundational crosses would be carried in solemn procession from the cathedral, or from another prestigious sacred center, followed by prelates and priests, to the site of the new community. City fathers and other worthies followed. The ceremonies varied depending on the austerity of the new religious and their attitude toward music. Diefendorf provides numbers for some of the orders she presents. The Minims went from 38 houses in 1600 to 112 houses in 1623. There were only 400 Capuchins in 1596, but there were 5,000 in 1643. The Recollects increased from a single house in the 1580s to 220 houses and 2,500 members by the later seventeenth century. Only 6 Discalced Carmelites arrived from Spain in 1604 but they had 59 houses by 1650. Founded in 1610, the Visitandines counted 87 houses by 1641. By 1700, there were 5,000 Ursulines, most of them teaching girls.
The Jesuits having been excluded from France in 1594 by an act of Parlement that was based on false grounds, to the effect that the Society supported a theory of regicide, Henry iv authorized their return in 1604. He also helped found the prestigious collège of La Flèche (Sarthe) and would will that his heart be kept there in perpetuity. Diefendorf finds that in the end the often-converted first Bourbon king strongly supported Catholic religious communities.
The decades of religious controversy and civil war had brought steep declines in the membership of religious communities. Convents had been physically destroyed. The Huguenots of Montpellier scorned, harassed, and overtly attacked their Catholic neighbors as the latter tried to rebuild. Repairing a Catholic building signaled defeat. Revenues from fields and vines had almost totally ceased. It was fashionable for elite families to visit convents, sometimes shopping with a daughter in tow. Enclosure—that is, cloistering members and restricting visits by potential donors took a lot of time. Did Tartuffe visit convents in order to ogle the nuns, as Retz was wont to do?
For the older communities, reform meant, in principle, going back to the rules set down by the order’s founder and obeying them strictly. Indeed, reform meant increased mortification and fasting—for example, abstaining from meat—although the initial rules were rarely completely obeyed. Squabbles between older religious and new members tested a leadership that was already overworked by administrative activities and by the often-delicate relations with the leaders of other communities belonging to that same order. The Parisian Carmelites looked down on their less socially prestigious sisters at Pontoise. The Pontoise Carmelites survived the Revolution. So did their condescending Parisian sisters, albeit in a less prestigious way. The paintings of the singular actions in the Pontoise convent have not been sold to some rich Texan: they still hang on the convent walls, sources of inspiration and pride. Like the chronicles and “the veritable histories” of the different religious communities, just about all of the instruments of identity-consolidation are present and attest to their religious and cultural vitality. In addition to establishing hours of private prayer and pursuit of spiritual interiorization, the newly founded communities lived according to the rules of their new order; but for the Carmelites, devotions became less Spanish.
After the conversion of King Henri iv to Catholicism, and a quite rapid change of mood in the capital, the Feuillants continued their League-inspired evangelical activism. The Parisian Feuillants had adopted what can almost be called a direct popular democracy, much to the distress of their prior, who sought to moderate their powers. Revolt and death from excessive fasting led to appeals to the pope—and to near extinction.
Continuing their founding vocation of buying Christians who had been enslaved by Muslims, the Trinitarians responded to the new devotional climate by inviting a Jesuit to preach to them and teach them Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. Although known for centuries for their learning, the Dominicans of Toulouse likewise brought in Jesuit help.
In the end, however, the reform and revival of the old houses are remarkable for their authenticity and humanity. The trials that Marie d’Icard and Blanche de Castillon underwent in order to restore the convents of Sainte-Catherine and Saint Guilhem in Montpellier, capture the mean atmosphere that prevailed. It nuances the triumphalism that often characterizes accounts of the lives of the religious during the Catholic Reformation. Diefendorf’s attentiveness to details makes all the difference: our hearts reach out to them.
