Introduction: Spiritual Friendship and Rigorist Devotional Culture

Summary

Visitors to Paris in the early seventeenth century were apparently struck by the pervasiveness of the dévot. Dressed soberly and shrouded in long black capes, these figures even walked with a distinctively modest gait and were thus instantly recognizable to observers. Later parodied as hypocrites by Molière in Tartuffe, throughout the early decades of the century, dévots were au courant. These were lay men and women who dedicated their lives to God, leading lives of piety in the world amidst the belated arrival of the Catholic Reformation in France. The reception of the Council of Trent (1545–63) was marked formally in 1615, when the Assembly of Clergy officially recognized the Tridentine decrees on the condition of Gallican independence from the Roman See. The ensuing Catholic revival was spearheaded by the dévots, many of whom had been inspired by the zeal of the Catholic Leaguers during the turbulent final stages of the Wars of Religion which ended with the Edict of Nantes in 1598.

During the past two decades, historians have begun to investigate the lay, female contribution to the Catholic Reformation in this context. Barbara Diefendorf, one of the key proponents of this new historiography, charted the shift from penitential spirituality to charity among the Parisian female pious elite and highlighted their part in the first waves of spiritual rejuvenation in France.