Overview

This, the first volume, begins with a Section on Church and State, the theology and political theory justifying their alliance, the wealth of the Clergy and their Assemblies voting taxation, their role in the official life of the nation, from the Court at Versailles to army barracks, warships, and prisons. Then comes a presentation of the complex structure of dioceses and parishes, and the vast variety of monastic institutions (where the enjoyment of misapplied wealth contrasted with the austere dedication which ensured the education of the children and the care of the sick throughout the land). There is an evocation of the life-style of the clergy from the palaces of the aristocratic bishops and the cathedral closes of comfortable canons to the humblest tumbledown nunnery, with a gallery of portraits analysing clerical motives and vocations. A multitude of lay folk come onto the scene, aristocrats battening on monastic revenues, lawyers threading the labyrinth of benefice law, estate managers, musicians, vergers and officials of every kind; many families' whole way of existence was postulated on the assumption of the availability of ecclesiastical offices for their children-the differential privileges of the classes in the hierarchy of society being reflected in an institution devoted to spiritual and unworldly ends.

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9780198269052

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Reviews

McManners has provided a compelling picture of the Protestant community. Huguenot Society Proceedings The author has read and evaluated almost everything which has been written on these large topics, from major books to articles in obscure provincial journals, and he is thus able to come close to an enormous range of archival sources which it would be impossible for a single scholar to consult at first hand. Huguenot Society Proceedings Professor McManners has produced an outstanding history of religion and its social context in the hundred years before the French Revolution. As his many admirers will have come to expect, it contains broad and challenging arguments, illustrated by vivid detailed examples, and is always eminently readable. Huguenot Society Proceedings It is rarely that a reviewer has the privilege of reviewing a book that can genuinely be described as a life's work ... a penetrating picture of the Church of the ancien regime ... In the tapestry Professor McManners provides there are many fascinating threads ... Behind McManner's rich narrative lies a wealth of research and reading, as the notes make clear. The judicious balancing of illustrative (and often amusing) anecdote and analysis makes this rounded picture of the Gallican Church of the ancien regime a study that is unlikely to be superseded. Geoffrey Rowell, Church Times Magisterial two-volume history of the church in eighteenth-century France ... Rarely has history been written with such ease and thoroughness. Professor McManners combines scholarly detachment with sympathy to produce a thoroughly readable history, one that will not be superseded for many a day. Contemporary Review This magisterial, synthetic, and exceptionally readable inquiry into the Christian church and French society during the eighteenth century is at once broadly encyclopedic and deeply perceptive. Church History French Ecclesiastic Society won a place in historical literature as a small masterpiece. Now Professor McManners has produced a large one, a grand tableau of the French Church during the last century of the Old Regime ... Use the index, jump around in the subsections of chapters; the book will satisfy your curiosity and whet your appetite for more. ... McManners has compressed a lifetime of reading into two tomes, which map every nook and cranny of a vast institutional landscape ... a fine book, a book to be pondered, not only for what it says about the Church in eighteenth-century France, but for what it says about history in general, history and the human condition. Robert Darnton, Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

Very big author. This is his magnum opus, the culmination of 40 years work.

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