Catholic Piety and Religious Practice in France

Abstract

This article describes the basic elements of Catholic piety and religious practice in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It focuses especially on the liturgy and the sacraments; images, books, and sacred places; and changes to piety and religious practice brought by the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. Piety can be defined as the cultivation of habits of reverence and fidelity. Religious practice comprised the gestures, prayers, and rites through which people expressed their faith. Both were deeply entangled in social life. Religious practice also made intensive use of the material world, incorporating objects such as altar vessels, water, blessed oil, images, books, and sacred spaces. By attending liturgical or worship services, people expressed belief in God and the saints, and implicitly showed faith in the Catholic Church, their parish, the clergy, and religious orders. They also strengthened bonds with kin, neighbors, and fellow community members. Priests, bishops, and teachers claimed a defining role in shaping religious life. Yet much of religion escaped the authorities’ control. Catholicism was an inheritance passed down from one’s ancestors, a life of faith that was profoundly shaped by custom. The quest for eternal salvation was at the heart of Christian life. Christianity is by definition intercessory, because Christians believed that Christ interceded with God the father, allowing himself to be crucified for the salvation of humanity. By the late Middle Ages, intercession had developed into a complex system of exchange and reciprocity. Two of the system’s defining features were purgatory and devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints. The eternal souls of the departed who were deemed neither quite deserving of a heavenly reward nor evil enough to be condemned to hell were believed to go to purgatory. There they suffered for their sins, and awaited help from the living faithful in the form of prayers that would allow them entrance into heaven. Also available to help both the living and the souls in purgatory were the saints, deceased men and women who by their virtuous lives had earned a place in heaven and thus could intercede with God on behalf of others. The most formal religious practices were liturgical and sacramental, formulated by the church over centuries of debate and tradition. Christians in the late Middle Ages and Catholics in the early modern period believed that the liturgy and the sacraments—rites of collective or public worship—were the principal means through which God granted his grace and assistance to humanity. The Eucharist was the most important sacrament, and the Mass was the most essential rite of the faith. Because the Sunday parish Mass gathered an entire community together in a shared rite of sacrifice, prayer, hymns, communion, and almsgiving, it was also central to collective religious experience. Early modern Catholicism was intensely material. The ceremony of sacraments included water, oil, altar vessels and crucifixes, and church furnishings such as altars and baptismal fonts. Most religious practices engaged in some way with images, books, and sacred places. People prayed before images of saints, read and recited prayers from books, lighted candles upon altars in churches and knelt before them, and visited pilgrim shrines. The Protestant and Catholic Reformations transformed some aspects of Catholic religious practice. Examining piety and religious practice over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and understanding how deeply embedded they were in the social world, helps us to understand why differences over religion could erode old social bonds and create new ones. We can also see how religious change could create rifts in families, communities, and institutions. In 1700, following the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, religious practice had experienced some change. But Catholicism remained entangled in community and materiality.