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Rural Seigneurs and the Counter Reformation: Parishes, Patrons, and Religious Reform in France, 1550–1700

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2018

Abstract

This article examines the role of lay seigneurs in religious change in the French countryside in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the Catholic Reformation and a period of socioeconomic change in land ownership and exploitation. The focus here is on middling and lesser lords—the rough equivalent of the English gentry, who held land in a single province or even pays and had a frequent presence in their parishes—rather than the great nobles who operated at a national level. Brittany is used as a case study, for it was a province rich in rural lords and because relatively good source material survives. It is argued that seigneurs were important patrons of religious innovation in the countryside, particularly in the parish church. They were rarely innovators themselves, but they lent support and resources to the introduction and maintenance of new devotional practices. Lords worked closely with clergy, sharing their aspirations and ideas. Four areas were particularly prominent in eliciting their support: appointment of clergy, support of missionaries, new devotional practices, and funding of building projects and liturgies in parish churches. These combined family strategies of enhancing social status and individual means to salvation which were indivisible in the world of the lay rural nobility. It was from a traditional understanding of lordship that patronage of religious reform stemmed.

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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2018 

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References

1 There are too many works on the counter-reformation in French dioceses to list here, but major studies include Châtellier, Louis, The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the Formation of Modern Catholicism c. 1500–c. 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Sauzet, Robert, Contre Réforme et Réforme catholique en Bas-Languedoc: Le diocèse de Nîmes au XVIIe siècle (Brussels: Nauwelaerts, 1979)Google Scholar; Brunet, Serge, “De l'Espagnol dedans le ventre!”: Les catholiques du Sud-Ouest de la France face à la réforme (vers 1540–1589) (Paris: H. Champion, 2007)Google Scholar; Croix, Alain, La Bretagne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: La vie–la mort–la foi, 2 vols. (Paris: Maloine, 1981)Google Scholar; Hoffman, P. T., Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon 1500–1789 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lemaitre, Nicole, Le Rouergue flamboyant: Le clergé et les fidèles du diocèse de Rodez 1417–1563 (Paris: Cerf, 1988)Google Scholar; Restif, Bruno, La Révolution des paroisses: Culture paroissiale et Réforme catholique en Haute-Bretagne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006)Google Scholar; Hayden, J. Michael, The Catholicisms of Coutances: Varieties of Religion in Early Modern France (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Goujard, Philippe, Un catholicisme bien tempéré: La vie religieuse dans les paroisses rurales de Normandie (Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1997)Google Scholar; Peyrous, Bernard, La Réforme catholique à Bordeaux 1600–1719: le renouveau d'un diocese, 2 vols. (Bordeaux: Fédération historique du Sud-Ouest, 1995)Google Scholar; and Martinazzo, Estelle, Toulouse au Grand Siècle: Le rayonnement de la Réforme catholique (1590–1710) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015)Google Scholar.

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32 Loyseau, Traité des seigneuries, 266.

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39 The primary text for the history of Protestantism in Brittany, written ca. 1683, is Noir, Pierre Le, Histoire ecclésiastique de Bretagne depuis la réformation jusqu’à l’édit de Nantes, ed. Vaurigaud, Benjamin (Paris: Grassart, 1851)Google Scholar; also Vaurigaud, Benjamin, Essai sur l'histoire des église reformées de Bretagne 1535–1808, 3 vols. (Paris: Joël Cherbuliez, 1870)Google Scholar. Volume 1 relates the history of the church in Brittany in the sixteenth century.

40 Episcopal Visitation, 1554, G 42, Archives Départementales de la Loire-Atlantique, Nantes, France (hereafter cited as ADLA).

41 Ibid.

42 Article 13, “Édit de janvier,” Éditions en ligne de l’École des chartes (hereafter cited as Élec), http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/editsdepacification/edit_01#art_01_13.

43 Article 1, “Édit d'Amboise,” Élec, http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/editsdepacification/edit_02#art_02_01.

44 There are many references to Protestant seigneurs in Canon Moreau's contemporary account of the Catholic League wars in western Brittany: Moreau, Jean, Histoire de ce qui s'est passé en Bretagne Durant les guerres de la ligue, et particulièrement dans le diocèse de Cornouaille (c. 1600) (Saint-Brieuc: Prud'homme, 1857)Google Scholar.

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64 Sarzeau, Foundations, 182 G 2, ADM.

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70 Bourg-Paul-Muzillac. Fondations, G 848, ADM.

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73 Boschet, Le parfait missionnaire, 20.

74 Ibid., 264.

75 Ibid., 220.

76 A useful website listing the advowsons of Rennes is “Les Bénéfices du diocese de Rennes,” InfoBretagne, accessed 31 August 2016, http://www.infobretagne.com/benefices_diocese_rennes.htm.

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90 Notaire Kermadec, Auray, 1583–1606, 6 E 2183, ADM.

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99 Ibid., 324.

100 Ibid., 214.

101 Ibid., 250.

102 Ibid., 368.

103 Lobineau, Les vies des saints, 4:294.

104 Bourg-des-Comptes, Foundations, 1679, 2 G 34/1 & 3, Archives Départementales d'Ille-et-Vilaine, quoted in Restif, La Révolution des paroisses, 221.

105 Gallet, La seigneurie bretonne, 158.

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110 Restif, La Révolution des paroisses, 220.

111 Notaire Charier de Nantes, 1582–1603, 4E2/487, ADLA.

112 Lesneven, Foundations, 122 G 79, ADF; La Boissière, Foundations, G 356, ADLA.

113 Ancenis, Foundations, G 346, ADLA.

114 Restif, La Révolution des paroisses, 116.

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116 Yates, Nigel, Liturgical Space: Christian Worship and Church Buildings in Western Europe 1500–2000 (Aldershot: Routledge, 2008), 15Google Scholar. Andrew Spicer emphasizes the importance of Carlo Borromeo's work in the dissemination of new ideas about chancels: they were to be enlarged, vaulted, and while the high altar continued to be placed against the east wall, modifications made it highly visible to the body of the church. Wide steps were constructed up to the altar, which was built on a platform so that it was in an elevated and visible position: Spicer, Andrew, “Sites of the Eucharist,” in A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation, ed. Palmer, Lee Wandel, Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 46, (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 357Google Scholar.

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118 Noblet, En perpétuelle mémoire, 33.

119 Gallet, La seigneurie bretonne, 459.

120 Restif, La Révolution des paroisses, 198.

121 Both examples given in Halgouët, “Droits honorifiques,” 21, 19, respectively.

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124 André, “Verrière et vitraux peints,” 338.

125 Couffon, Répertoire des églises et chapelles des diocèses de Saint-Brieuc et de Tréguier, 55.

126 Restif, La Révolution des paroisses, 250.

127 Lemarchand, “Journal d'un curé de campagne,” 79–80.

128 Morel, Emile, Saint-Pierre de Plesguen, 2 vols. (Rennes: Simon, 1976)Google Scholar, 1:105.

129 Couffon, René and Bars, Alfred Le, Répertoire des églises et chapelles des diocèses de Quimper & de Léon (Saint-Brieuc: Les Presses Bretonnes, 1959), 95Google Scholar.

130 Vanessa Harding, The Dead and the Living in Paris and London, 1500–1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

131 Bertrand, Régis, “Limites du rôle des confrèries dans le rayonnement des dévotions en Provence sous l'Ancien Régime,” in Confréries et dévotions dans la catholicité moderne (mi-XVe – début XIXe siècle), ed. Dompnier, Bernard and Vismara, Paula (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2008), 339354Google Scholar.

132 Roffey, Chantry Chapels, 147.

133 Prigent, Pouvoir ducal, 313.

134 Restif, La Révolution des paroisses, 194.

135 Bertrand, “Limites du rôle des confrèries,” 342–343.

136 Vern-sur-Seiche, Foundations, 9 G 47, ADIV.

137 Orgères, Foundations, 9 G 45, ADIV.

138 For details on Purgatory and post-mortem intercession, see Tingle, Purgatory and Piety.

139 Dudoret, Louis, Seigneurs et seigneuries au pays de Beffou XVe-XVIIIe siècles (Guingamp: Editions de la Plomée, 2000)Google Scholar, 43; and Family of Kerroué, 103 J 3, Archives Départementales des Côtes d'Armor, Saint-Brieuc, France.

140 Guégen, Louise, will dated 1664, reproduced in Croix, La Bretagne, 2:1383Google Scholar.

141 Piriac, Foundations, G 539, ADLA.

142 Diocese of Vannes, Insinuations, 42 G 4, ADM; and Couffon and Le Bars, Répertoire des églises et chapelles des diocèses de Quimper & de Léon, 64. The popularity of donations of ornaments is seen in other studies as well, such as Dontenwill, Une seigneurie sous l'ancien regime, 110.

143 Marshall, Peter, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.