¹ This combination is confirmed by Yann Raison du Cleuziou, in ‘Penser les images de dévotion à partir des hypothèses de Serge Bonnet sur le catholicisme populaire’, in Dominique Lerch et al., eds, Les Images de dévotion en Europe XVIe–XXIe siècle. Une Précieuse Histoire (Paris, 2021), 87–111, at 94. The greater part of this article was written before the publication of Lerch's volume, which deals with many categories of devotional religious images and has no specific chapter about communion cards. Communion cards are only a subcategory of a much larger genre. Lerch discusses many possible approaches to the production, publication, dissemination, history, ideology, iconography and diversity of these small religious images, not only in France, but also in other continental countries.

² This last example, given to a young woman in the 1960s, was provided in an e-mail from Brigitte Friant-Kessler, dated 28 February 2021.

³ The original owners of the cards, and the names of communicants, are anonymized throughout the article. Dates given are of when cards were used, rather than of publication.

⁴ Michel Albaric estimates that the collection held by this Dominican library amounts to perhaps 200,000 or 250,000 items: ‘La Collection d'images de piété de la Bibliothèque du Saulchoir’, in Lerch et al., eds, Les Images de dévotion, 45–62, at 50. I am very grateful to the staff of the library for their assistance. At a crucial stage in the research for this article, Isabelle Séruzier provided extremely helpful information.

⁵ The Bibliothèque nationale holds deposit copies of ‘almost 20,000 small images’ produced between 1830 and the Second World War: C[atherine]. R[osenbaum].-[Dondaine], ‘L'Imagerie de piété du XIXe siècle au Département des Estampes de la Bibliothèque Nationale’, in Michel Albaric, Catherine Rosenbaum-Dondaine and Jean-Pierre Seguin, eds, L'Image de piété en France, 1814–1914. Musée-galerie de la SEITA (Paris, 1984), 179–82, at 179. The chronological order in which they have been catalogued highlights production issues, and reveals how manufacturing processes, as well as religious and aesthetic taste, changed over time.

⁶ For many young Protestants, confirmation is the rite of passage that holds a significance comparable to the ‘first communion’ or ‘solemn communion’ in Roman Catholic families. For the history of confirmation, see Freddy Sarg, La Confirmation en Alsace (Strasbourg, 1981). The Musée de l'image populaire in Pfaffenhoffen (Alsace) holds an archive of commemorative confirmation images that could be paralleled with their Catholic equivalents: see online at <https://commune-valdemoder.fr/culture-loisirs/musee-de-l-image-populaire>, last accessed 22 September 2021. I owe this information to Brigitte Friant-Kessler. On small Protestant commemorative confirmation images, see also Gustave Koch, ‘Y a-t-il une Image de dévotion protestante? Les Petites Images bibliques protestantes’, in Lerch et al., eds, Les Images de dévotion, 317–26. The confirmation souvenirs analysed by Dominique Lerch are much larger documents (200 x 250 mm), similar to the certificates sometimes received by Roman Catholic youngsters after their first communion: ‘Un Aspect de l'activité pastorale. Les Souvenirs de confirmation aux XIXe et XXe siècles’, Bulletin de la Société d'histoire du protestantisme français (1978), 67–83.

⁷ Jean-Claude Schmitt comments that he has not come across any holy card for marriage: ‘Conclusion’, in Lerch et al., eds, Les Images de dévotion, 521–9, at 527.

⁸ At least one souvenir of first confession prior to private communion is known to have existed elsewhere: Michel Mallèvre, ‘Trois Générations de missels et leurs images’, in ibid. 113–29, at 126.

⁹ The Religions et traditions populaires exhibition by the Musée national des arts et traditions populaires (Paris) in 1979–80 was a pioneer in this respect: see the sections on ‘Les Images de dévotion’ and ‘La Communion solennelle’ in the eponymous exhibition catalogue: ed. Jean Cuisenier, Françoise Lautman and Josselyne Chamarrat (Paris, 1979), 181–6, 217–22 respectively.

¹⁰ Delumeau, Jean, ed., La Première Communion. Quatre Siècles d'histoire (Paris, 1987), 9–10Google Scholar.

¹¹ Andrieux, Louis, La Première Communion. Histoire et discipline. Textes et documents. Des Origines au XXe siècle (Paris, 1911), 282Google Scholar.

¹² Andrieux, La Première Communion, 288.

¹³ Pope Pius X, Decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Discipline of the Sacraments on First Communion (1910), online at: <https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius10/p10quam.htm>, last accessed 18 July 2021.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ In the early twentieth century, there was already a considerable drop-off in church attendance after the first communion. The trend continued throughout the period under review. A 1967 opinion poll, quoted in Serge Bonnet and Augustin Cottin, La Communion solennelle. Folklore païen ou fête chrétienne (Paris, 1969), 244, revealed that one third of the sample said that after their first or solemn communion they immediately stopped going to church; one third continued to attend mass for a few years; and only one third continued to practise their religion regularly and longer term.

¹⁶ Bonnet and Cottin, La Communion solennelle, 247.

¹⁷ Lerch, Dominique, Imagerie populaire en Alsace et dans l'Est de la France (Nancy, 1992), 234Google Scholar.

¹⁸ de La Baumelle, Sylvie, ‘[L’Éducation religieuse des catholiques] Résultats d'ensemble’, Sondages. Revue française de l'opinion publique 29/2 (1967), 19–40Google Scholar, at 19, 32.

¹⁹ Arnold van Gennep, Les Rites de passage. Étude systématique des rites de la porte et du seuil, de l'hospitalité[,] de l'adoption, de la grossesse et de l'accouchement[,] de la naissance, de l'enfance, de la puberté[,] de l'initiation, de l'ordination, du couronnement[,] des fiançailles et du mariage[,] des funérailles, des saisons, etc. (Paris, 1909).

²⁰ Turner, Victor and Turner, Edith, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford, 1978), 2–4Google Scholar.

²¹ ‘Je crois … ma démonstration suffisante, et prie le lecteur de s'en assurer en appliquant le Schéma des Rites de Passage aux faits de son domaine personnel d'étude’ (‘I believe that my demonstration is sufficient, and I invite the reader to check it by applying the Scheme of the Rites of Passage to data in his / her own field of study’): Van Gennep, Rites de passage, ii.

²² In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, children were catechized several times a week during Lent: Andrieux, La Première Communion, 285. Since the nineteenth century, the ‘first communion’ or the ‘solemn communion’ (or ‘profession of faith’) has been the culmination of three years of weekly catechism classes.

²³ Sylviane Grésillon, ‘De la Communion solennelle aux fêtes de la foi’, in Delumeau, ed., La Première Communion, 217–53, at 234. There would be no auricular confession among Protestants, but Sarg identifies similar stages in the preparation for Protestant confirmation (catechism classes, examination, retreat and the ceremony itself), to which he explicitly applies the Gennepian scheme: La Confirmation en Alsace, 9. However, he also underlines the fact that there have been many variations within this broad outline: ibid. 17.

²⁴ Jean Mellot, ‘Rite de passage et fête familiale. Rapprochements’, in Delumeau, ed., La Première Communion, 171–96, at 174.

²⁵ The practice and custom of three days of ‘pious exercises’, far from being specific to France, was encouraged in Italy, the USA and South America from 1855, 1866 and 1899 respectively: Jean Pirotte, Images des vivants et des morts. La Vision du monde propagée par l'imagerie de dévotion dans le Namurois 1840–1965 (Bruxelles, 1987), 149 n. 2; Andrieux, La Première Communion, 283–4. On longer retreats, see Mellot, ‘Rite de passage et fête familiale’, 174.

²⁶ Paris, Bibliothèque du Saulchoir, box VI 2–8, ‘Communion des enfants’, n° 5, ‘Communion (Documents Paroisses)’.

²⁷ ‘Le but de la retraite e[s]t la communion ou la vie chrétienne qui commence plus personnellement’: Private collection.

²⁸ I have never found an adequate English translation for this word, but ‘secularism’ is one possibility.

²⁹ Bonnet and Cottin, La Communion solennelle, 197.

³⁰ ‘La retraite va durer trois jours pleins. Trois jours sans école: les enfants sont radieux, ils ont l'impression d’être en vacances et surtout de vivre ensemble …“autrement”, ce qui n'arrive quasiment jamais’ (‘The retreat will last for three full days. Three days without school: the children are beaming with joy, they have a feeling that they are on holiday and especially that they are living together … “differently”, which hardly ever happens’): Bernard Alexandre, Le Horsain. Vivre et survivre en Pays de Caux (Paris, 1988), 358.

³¹ For instance, the menu for Jacques F.'s communion in 1934, headed with a picture similar to many a first communion card, included seven or eight courses. Three years later, the menu for Jean B.'s communion ended with the traditional pyramid of choux pastry at the top of which stood the small figure of a male communicant that has been kept to this day. Cf. Cuisenier, Lautman and Chamarrat, eds, ‘La Communion solennelle’, in Religions et traditions populaires, 217–22, at 221, according to whom neither the lavishness of the meal, nor the care with which the menu was kept, were exceptional.

³² ‘[M]esse à 10 heures, vêpres à 16 heures (il faut bien compter quatre heures pour le repas)’ (‘mass at 10 a.m., vespers at 4 p.m. [you must allow a good four hours for the meal]’): Alexandre, Le Horsain, 358.

³³ Not only was there a significant fall in religious practice after first or solemn communion, as mentioned above – hence the clergy's recurrent emphasis on the need to ‘persevere’ – but even regular churchgoers rarely partook of the eucharist; frequent communion was only encouraged from the 1960s: see Delumeau, ed., La Première Communion, 240.

³⁴ Zola, Émile, L'Assommoir, transl. Townsend, Atwood H. (New York, 1962), 359Google Scholar. This is given in the original as ‘elles devaient désormais savoir faire la cuisine, raccommoder des chaussettes, conduire une maison’ (Émile Zola, L'Assommoir [Paris, 1964; first publ. 1877], 369). A few lines earlier, the English translation for ‘Nana et Pauline étaient des femmes, maintenant qu'elles avaient communié’ (369) reads ‘Nana and Pauline were women now that they had been confirmed’ (transl. Townsend, 359), implicitly comparing the significance of the Roman Catholic rite with that of confirmation in Protestant communities, and acknowledging the difficulty of finding an equivalent for ‘first communion’ or ‘solemn communion’ in the British context.

³⁵ Zola, L'Assommoir, 368 (transl. Townsend, 359).

³⁶ ‘L'acte religieux garde encore ici un impact social. Après sa communion, Jean pourra se servir à table, comme les grands’ (‘The religious rite still has a social impact here. After making his communion, Jean will be allowed to serve himself at table, like the grown-ups’): Alexandre, Le Horsain, 143 Mellot and Delumeau mention many other activities that would become accessible to the youngsters after their ‘first communion’ or ‘solemn communion’.

³⁷ Dominique Lerch's claim that from the 1960s biblical quotations appeared and replaced mawkish prayers needs qualification: Imagerie populaire en Alsace, 234.

³⁸ The market was huge. Lerch reckons that in Alsace alone, in the year 1962, with a population of approximately one million Roman Catholics, there would have been about fifty thousand communicants at ‘first communion’ and ‘solemn communion’ in total; at the rate of a dozen or more commemorative images per child, the figure could well have been near the one million mark for that year alone: ibid. 236.

³⁹ Lerch has found that, through both Roman Catholic and Protestant imagery, Leonardo's painting has become the standard reference for the Last Supper: ‘Un Aspect de l'activité pastorale’, 77.

⁴⁰ ‘PRENDRE MARIE POUR GUIDE et pour protectrice. ACTE DE CONSÉCRATION A LA SAINTE VIERGE: Très Sainte Vierge …, les enfants que vous voyez ici … viennent réclamer votre maternelle protection. Nous vous offrons notre cœur; … avec votre protection nous persévérerons dans l'amour de Dieu’ (‘TAKE MARY AS YOUR GUIDE and protector. ACT OF CONSECRATION TO THE HOLY VIRGIN: Most Holy Virgin …, the children you see here … come to claim your motherly protection. We offer you our hearts … with your protection we will persevere in the love of God’): Église catholique, Missel pour les jeunes et pour tous ceux qui veulent prier ensemble (Sèvres, 1953; first publ. 1946), 237 Andrieux (born in 1877) seemed to consider that this prayer had become standard, but noted that in the mid-eighteenth century it had not yet been included in the celebration: La Première Communion, 302.

⁴¹ ‘Les grands jours de ma vie: BAPTÊME le 6 mai 1947 — COMMUNION PRIVÉE le 13 avril 1952 — Profession de foi Chrétienne et Confirmation le 1^er mai 1958.’

⁴² ‘Nana dansait de joie en pensant à la robe blanche. Les Lorilleux, comme parrain et marraine, avaient promis la robe, un cadeau dont ils parlaient dans toute la maison; Mme Lerat devait donner le voile et le bonnet, Virginie la bourse, Lantier le paroissien; de façon que les Coupeau attendaient la cérémonie sans trop s'inquiéter’: Zola, L'Assommoir, 364 (transl. Townsend, 354).

⁴³ Grésillon draws an interesting parallel between the widespread adoption of affordable solemn communion albs from the 1950s and the development of ready-to-wear fashion: ‘De la Communion solennelle aux fêtes de la foi’, 240.

⁴⁴ Rosenbaum-Dondaine and Seguin, eds, L'Image de piété en France, 166.

⁴⁵ I am greatly indebted to Marie-Madeleine Martinet for all her technical explanations in this respect.

⁴⁶ In a smaller collection of 65 twentieth-century images used in Alsace (1914–54), more than half represent Jesus wearing clerical vestments when distributing communion to youngsters: Lerch, Imagerie populaire en Alsace, 234.

⁴⁷ Henri Denzinger and Adolf Schönmetzer, eds, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 32nd edn (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1963; first publ. 1854), 335, §698: ‘sacerdos … in persona Christi loquens hoc conficit sacramentum’ (translated as ‘The priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament’, in Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols [Washington DC, 1990], 1: 546). In contrast, Gervais Dumeige translates the term in persona Christi as ‘au nom du Christ’ (‘in the name of Christ’): La Foi catholique. Textes doctrinaux du magistère de l’Église (Paris, 1961), 407, §732. Thanks are due to Laurent Chauvin for drawing my attention to this doctrine.

⁴⁸ Elisabeth Oberson, ‘La Grâce d’être humain: un savoir du cœur. Essai de dialogue avec le corpus d'images de piété Saint-sulpiciennes de la maison Desgodets-Lorthioir’, 3 vols (PhD thesis, Institut catholique de Paris, 2001), 1: 231. I am grateful to Isabelle Séruzier for drawing my attention to this work. Compare also Les évêques de France, Catéchisme pour adultes. L'Alliance de Dieu avec les hommes (Paris, 1991), 253: ‘La présence de Jésus ainsi réalisée n'est pas celle des jours de sa vie sur la terre.’ (‘The presence of Jesus thus effected is not that of the days of his life on earth.’)

⁴⁹ This is the central theme of a rather spectacular image on a communion card used in 1960.

⁵⁰ Kempis, Thomas a, The Imitation of Christ (London and Toronto, 1916), 236Google Scholar; De Imitatione Christi, ed. Friedrich Eichler (Munich, 1966), 4.3.16: ‘Tu mihi dare vis caelestem cibum; et panem angelorum ad manducandum’.

⁵¹ I am indebted to Thomas O'Loughlin for this reference.

⁵² Hugh McLeod suggests that the period ‘between about 1958 and 1962’ might be termed ‘the early 1960s’: The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford, 2009), 60.

⁵³ Cf. the title of a book by Serge Bonnet and Augustin Cottin: La Communion solennelle. Folklore païen ou fête chrétienne (quoted above).

⁵⁴ Cuchet, Guillaume, Comment Notre Monde a cessé d’être chrétien. Anatomie d'un effondrement (Paris, 2018), 16Google Scholar. ‘Practising Catholics’ is to be understood in the strict sociological definition of believers attending Sunday mass every week, so the figure may be slightly exaggerated.

⁵⁵ Lerch, Imagerie populaire en Alsace, 10.

⁵⁶ Jouarre, Ateliers de l'Abbaye de Jouarre, image n° 454.

⁵⁷ ‘[I]l est r[e]ssuscité le CHRIST notre Espérance’: ibid., image n° 398.

⁵⁸ ‘[A]llez dire à tous vos frères, que Dieu existe et qu'il nous aime’: ibid., image n° 427.