Letters of Controversy: Religion, Publication, and the Public Sphere in Seventeenth-Century France

Abstract

This article attempts to bring together religious history and the history of the public sphere. It proposes to reinterpret the historical significance of doctrinal controversies by examining the relationship between a regime of publicity and an ecclesiastic regime. For instance, seventeenth-century French theological controversies were characterized by the frequent publication of letters, which indicates just how strongly the religious legitimacy of a given controversy was called into question. The publication of letters appears to have offered a means of responding to the destabilization of publishing practice caused by these controversies. It also attests to both the religious refusal to transform the church into a public sphere and how the ecclesiastic aspect of doctrinal controversies made them difficult to resolve. The relationship between publicity and religion thus appears particularly relevant for both historians of early modern Catholicism and historians of the public sphere.