J. Michael Hayden. The Catholicisms of Coutances: Varieties of Religion in Early Modern France, 1350–1789.

Abstract

As J. Michael Hayden states in the preface, The Catholicisms of Coutances is in many ways a companion volume to 600 Years of Reform: Bishops and the French Church, 1190–1789 (2005), coauthored with Malcolm Greenshields. Whereas the earlier volume addressed the entirety of the French church, this book has as its subject the Norman diocese of Coutances from 1350 to 1789. The stated aim of the book is to provide “a history of the changes in religious beliefs and practices of the people living in [the] diocese during the early modern period” (p. 3). The goal, therefore, is not a history of institutional religion, nor of “popular” religion in its manifold forms, but of the interplay between the two. To that end, and to escape the error that early modern Catholicism operated in only a single mode, the author employs the concept of “catholicisms” in his description and analysis of the varied forms of religious belief and practice.