This book has been carefully planned to give a coherent account of the impact of religion in France over the last two hundred years. Most books in English dealing with the subject are now dated, and in any case concentrate on institutional questions of church-state relations rather than on the wider influence of religion throughout France. These essays summarise recent French research and provide a concise up-to-date introduction to the history of modern French Catholicism.

Now in its second edition, The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics has been updated to include a discussion about how the actions by soldiers and citizen-soldiers shaped the course of the Revolution, as well as the daily lives and concerns of everyday French people. Throughout the study, Shusterman highlights the crucial role that religion and sexuality played in determining the shape of the Revolution and examines key themes such as: the impact of the crown’s war debts on the fall of the Old Regime, the organization of citizen militias in 1789, and their eventual transformation into France’s National Guard. This edition has been revised to include a fresh analysis of classic nineteenth-century accounts of the Revolution, including those by Jules Michelet, Jean Jaurès, and Edgar Quinet. It also explores the lives of the people who lived through the French Revolution and uncovers the messages about gender, sex, religion, and faith which surrounded them, concerns which did not exist outside of the events of the Revolution. With a brief chronology of the Revolution and a guide to further reading, this book is an invaluable resource for students of the French Revolution, women and gender, and the history of Catholicism.

This volume examines the French Revolution’s relationship with and impact on religious communities and religion in a transnational perspective. It challenges the traditional secular narrative of the French Revolution, exploring religious experience and representation during the Revolution, as well as the religious legacies that spanned from the eighteenth century to the present. Contributors explore the myriad ways that individuals, communities, and nation-states reshaped religion in France, Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, and around the world.

The French Revolution, politics and the modern nation -- French and the civilizing mission -- Paris and magnetic appeal -- France stirs up the melting pot -- France hurtles into the future.

This book explores the responses of the Roman Catholic Church to the French Revolution beginning in 1789, to the liberal revolution in 1830, and particularly the democratic revolution of 1848 in France, and asks how these events were perceived and explained. Informed by the collective memory of the first revolution, how did the Church react to renewed ‘catastrophe’? How did it seek to influence political choice? Why did authoritarian government prove to be so attractive? This is a study of the impact of religion on political behaviour, as well as of the politicisation of religion. Roger Price employs the methodology of the social and cultural historian to explain the development and interaction of two key institutions, Church and State, during a period of political and social upheaval. Drawing on a wide range of archival and printed primary sources, as well as secondary literature, this book analyses the diverse perceptions of people with power and the impact of their decisions, and the responses, of a wide range of individuals and communities.

“The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789” is the French Revolution’s best known utterance. By 1789, to be sure, England looked proudly back to the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, and a bill of rights, and even the young American Declaration of Independence and the individual states’ various declarations and bills of rights preceded the French Declaration. But the French deputies of the National Assembly tried hard, in the words of one of their number, not to receive lessons from others but rather “to give them” to the rest of the world, to proclaim not the rights of Frenchmen, but those “for all times and nations.” The chapters in this book treat mainly the origins of the Declaration in the political thought and practice of the preceding three centuries that Tocqueville designated the “Old Regime.” Among the topics covered are privileged corporations; the events of the three months preceding the Declaration; blacks, Jews, and women; the Assembly’s debates on the Declaration; the influence of sixteenth-century notions of sovereignty and the separation of powers; the rights of the accused in legal practices and political trials from 1716 to 1789; the natural rights to freedom of religion; and the monarchy’s “feudal” exploitation of the royal domain.

This book provides a study of the manner in which the Roman Catholic Church in France responded to successive revolutions between 1789 and 1870 as well as to the cultural upheaval associated with accelerating socio-economic change. It focuses on the Church as an institution engaged in a dynamic process of (re)Christianization and determined, as the only repository of the true faith of Jesus Christ, to fortify belief , and to combat the ‘Satanic’ forces of moral corruption and revolutionary chaos and create a ‘counter society’, the société parfaite. Discussion of the Church as an institution in crisis, of the recruitment, instruction and mind-sets of its bishops, parish clergy, and the members of religious orders, of its hierarchical structures and internal discipline, and of the need to compensate for the losses suffered during a period of revolutionary upheaval, provides the basis for an exploration of its evolving doctrine(s) and sense of purpose; for an assessment of the pastoral care provided to parish communities; and of the leadership and moral qualities of the clergy; before final consideration of the reception of the religious message(s).