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Religion and Superstition in Nineteenth-Century France

Part of: Historiographical Reviews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Eugen Weber
Eugen Weber
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Type
Historiographical Review
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 399 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 Mathiez, Albert, Contributions à l'histoire religieuse de la Révolution française (Paris, 1907), p. 32Google Scholar quoted in Garrett, Clarke, Respectable folly: millenarianism and the French Revolution in England and France (Baltimore, 1975), p. 17Google Scholar.

2 Not Vauxains, as Garrett has it.

3 Garrett, , Respectable folly, p. 29Google Scholar. For Bishop Pierre Pontard see Robert, A. and Cougny, G., Dictionnaire des parlementaires français (Paris, 1891), V. 18Google Scholar.

4 Muray, Philippe, Le ige siècle à travers les âges (Paris, 1984)Google Scholar, Viatte, Auguste, Les Sources occultes du romantisme. Illuminisme – théosophie (Paris, 1928)Google Scholar, and Victor Hugo et les illuminés de son temps (Ottawa, 1942)Google Scholar. For Webb, James see The flight from reason (London, 1971)Google Scholar, republished as The occult underground (La Salle, Illinois, 1974)Google Scholar.

5 Muray, , 19e siècle, p. 142Google Scholar.

6 Ibid. p. 244.

7 Garrett, , Respectable folly, p. 15Google Scholar.

8 Muray, , 19 e siècle, p. 53Google Scholar.

9 Ibid. p. 54.

10 Ibid. p. 13.

11 Reybaud, Louis, Férome Paturot à la recherche d'une position sociale (Paris, 1842), p. 40Google Scholar.

12 Muray, , 19 e siècle, p. 172Google Scholar. For Fourier, see Beecher, Jonathan, Fourier (Berkeley, 1986), p. 166Google Scholar.

13 Muray, , 19 e siècle, pp. 166–8 passimGoogle Scholar.

14 Ibid. p. 211.

15 Lévi, Eliphas, Histoire de la magie (Paris, 1860), pp. 522 ffGoogle Scholar.

16 De la vie future au point de vue socialiste (Marseille, 1850)Google Scholar.

17 See Viatte, , Victor Hugo, pp. 92 ffGoogle Scholar. and Constant, La Mère de Dieu (Paris, 1844)Google Scholar.

18 Muray, , 19e siècle, pp. 199, 180–1Google Scholar.

19 Grasset, , L'Occultisme hier et aujourd'hui, le merveilleux préscientifique (Montpellier, 1907)Google Scholar quoted in Muray, , 19e siècle, p. 157Google Scholar; Hugo, , Les Travailleurs de la mer (Paris, 1866), p. 40Google Scholar.

20 Bouvéry, J., Le Spiritisme et l'anarchie devant la science et la philosophie (Paris, 1897), p. 367Google Scholar.

21 Lucas, Alphonse, Les Clubs et les clubistes (Paris, 1851), p. 183Google Scholar.

22 Viatte, , Victor Hugo, p. 126Google Scholar.

23 Weber, Eugen, Satan franc-maçon (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar; Bricaud, Joanny, La Messe noire (Paris, 1924) PP. 50, 58Google Scholar.

24 Muray, , 19e siècle, p. 257Google Scholar.

25 Kselman, Thomas, Miracles and prophecies in nineteenth-century France (New Brunswick, 1983), pp. 138–9Google Scholar.

26 See Bois, Jules, Le Satanisme et la magie (Paris, 1895)Google Scholar; Waite, Arthur Edward, Devil-worship in France or the question of Lucifer (London, 1896)Google Scholar; Bricaud, Joanny, J.-K. Huysmans et le satanisme (Paris, 1913)Google Scholar and La Messe noire; Michelet, Victor-Emile, Les Compagnons de la hiérophanie (Paris, 1937)Google Scholar; Billy, André, Stanislas de Guaita (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar. For Vintras, see Quérard, J.-M., Les Supercheries littéraires dévoilées (Paris, 1869), III, 127–67Google Scholar.

27 Muray, , 19e siècle, p. 301Google Scholar.

28 Carroll, Michael P., The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Psychological origins (Princeton, 1986) p. 170Google Scholar.

29 See Cholvy, Gérard and Hilaire, Yves-Marie, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine (2 vols., Toulouse, 1985 1986), I, 280Google Scholar. One might add that a fervent believer like Catherine, plausibly affected by the feast of St Vincent on 19 July, could be equally impressed by sermons and ceremonies related to a whole series of feasts concerning the Virgin: 2 July, Visitation; 18 August, Assumption; 8 September, Nativity; 7 October, Rosary; 21 November, Presentation. Six out of eight annual fêtes of the Virgin Mary fell between her first and last visions. 25 November, two days before the Virgin's crucial command, was the feast of Catherine's own patron saint, St Catherine of Alexandria.

30 Kselman, , Miracles, pp. 62–6Google Scholar.

31 Carroll, , The Cult, p. 154Google Scholar.

32 See Weber, Eugen, ‘Fairies and hard facts: the reality of folk tales’, Journal of the History of Ideas (01 1981)Google Scholar.

33 At La Salette, too, a feast of the Virgin, her Nativity, had been celebrated ten days before her apparition.

34 See Stern, Jean, La Salette. Documents authentiques (Paris, 1980), I, 10–2 and passimGoogle Scholar.

35 Carroll, , The Cult, p. 202Google Scholar.

36 For Soeur Nativité see Kselman, , Miracles, pp. 70–1Google Scholar. And remember that Christ's baptism had been celebrated on 13 January; Candlemas was coming up shortly.

37 For normal peasant indifference see Howard, Michael, The Franco-Prussian war (New York, 1961), p. 256Google Scholar.

38 Michelet, Jules, La Sorcière (Paris, 1862Google Scholar; 1964 edn), p. 91.

39 Kselman, , Miracles, p. 147Google Scholar.

40 Ibid. p. 195.

41 Cholvy, and Hilaire, , Histoire religieuse, I, 163Google Scholar.

42 Devlin, Judith, The superstitious mind. French peasants and the supernatural in the nineteenth century (New Haven, 1987) p. xiiGoogle Scholar.

43 Devlin, p. 7.

44 Ibid. p. 182.

45 Ibid. p. 90.

46 Ibid. p. 51.

47 Ibid. pp. 9, 18, 19.

48 Ibid. p. 54.

49 Ibid. pp. 54, 57.

50 Ibid. pp. 101, 83.

51 Ibid. p. 77.

52 Ibid. p. 64. For confirmation, see Boutry, Philippe, Prêtres et paroisses dans le pays du curé d'Ars (Paris, 1986), p. 493Google Scholar; Weber, E., Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford, 1976), p. 344Google Scholar.

53 Devlin, , Superstitious mind, p. 71Google Scholar.

54 Ibid. pp. 57, 164, 153.

55 Ibid. p. 131.

56 Ibid. pp. 127, 136–8.

57 Ibid. p. 61.

58 Nisard, Charles, Histoire des livres populaires (Paris, 1864), II, 141Google Scholar. Also less feeble imaginations, like those of Huysmans and of Stanislas de Guaita.

59 Lorain, , Tableau de l'instruction primaire en France (Paris, 1837), pp. III, 330Google Scholar.

60 Devlin, , Superstitious mind, p. viiiGoogle Scholar.

61 Dave, Emil, Le Tirage au sort (Namur, 1934), p. 4 and passimGoogle Scholar.

62 Michelet, , La Sorcière, pp. 24, 27, 29, 89, 128, 137Google Scholar. See also Muray, , 19e siècle, p. 243Google Scholar.

63 Devlin, , Superstitious mind, p. 106Google Scholar.

64 Devlin, , Superstitious mind, pp. 169, 173Google Scholar. J.-K. Huysmans's chief reason for believing in contemporary Satanism was the theft of consecrated wafers. See Bricaud, , La Messe, pp. 55–6Google Scholar.

65 Ibid. p. 153.

66 Kselman, , Miracles, p. 25Google Scholar.

67 See Légendaire du Languedoc-Roussillon (Montpellier, 1972), pp. 5, 51Google Scholar; Rocal, Georges, Croquants du Périgord (Perigueux, 1934), p. 41Google Scholar; Lorain, , Tableau de l'instruction, p. 356Google Scholar.

68 Devlin, , Superstitious mind, p. 108Google Scholar. She would enjoy the story in Boutry, , Prêtres, p. 577Google Scholar: In 1867 the manager of a provincial factory, irritated by the priest's demands that his workers should be free on Sundays, breaks the friendship between his daughter and the priest: ‘Maman m'a dit que tu étais…un méchant, que tu faisais l'orage et tomber le tonnerre, qu'il ne fallait plus t'aimer.’

69 Devlin, , Superstitious mind, p. 215Google Scholar.

70 Ibid. p. 92.

71 Cholvy, and Hilaire, , Histoire religieuse, II, 238Google Scholar.

72 Ibid. I, 22.

73 See notice in Larousse, Pierre, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1866)Google Scholar.

74 Cholvy, and Hilaire, , Histoire religieuse, I, 117, II, 113Google Scholar; Kselman, , Miracles, p. 16Google Scholar.

75 Quoted by Cholvy, and Hilaire, , Histoire religieuse, I, 42Google Scholar.

76 See Boutry, , Prêtres, p. 205Google Scholar.

77 Desprez, Louis, Autour d'un clocher. Mœurs rurales (Bruxelles, 1884), pp. 66, 80Google Scholar; Sylvère, Antoine, Toinon (Paris, 1980), pp. 65–7Google Scholar.

78 Hamerton, P.G., Round my house (Boston, 1885), p. 262Google Scholar; Guillamin, , The life of a simple man (London, 1982), p. 156Google Scholar.

79 Cholvy, and Hilaire, , Histoire religieuse, II, 173Google Scholar.

80 Léonard, Jacques, Les Médecins der l'Ouest au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1978), III, 1320, 1303–4Google Scholar; Gazette des tribunaux, 5 Aug. 1891. See also Adam, Paul, La Force du mal (Paris, 1896), p. 159Google Scholar.

81 Gazette des tribunaux, 17 June 1883.

82 Noguès, Abbé Jules, Les mœurs d'autrefois en Saintonge et en Aunis (Saintes, 1891), p. 191Google Scholar.

83 Cholvy, and Hilaire, , Histoire religieuse, II, 36, 216Google Scholar; also I, 292.

84 Bensa, Alban, Les Saints guérisseurs du Perche-Gouët (Paris, 1978), pp. 40–3Google Scholar.

85 Ibid. pp. 187, 146–7.

86 Ibid. p. 37.

87 Ibid. p. 61.

88 Ibid. pp. 63, 140.

89 Ibid. pp. 141–2.

90 Ibid. pp. 111–2, 200.

91 Ibid. p. 207 ff.: a very important point.

92 Ibid. pp. 163, 80.

93 Ibid. pp. 173, 77.

94 Ibid. pp. 60–1.

95 Ibid. p. 232.

96 Ibid. pp. 76, 234.

97 Ibid. pp. 50, 76.

98 Boutry, , Prêtres, p. 506Google Scholar.

99 Bensa, , Les Saints, p. 217Google Scholar; de La Salle, Laisnel, Croyances et légendes du Centre de la France (Paris, 1875), p. xxivGoogle Scholar; Littré, Emile, De l'établissement de la 3e République (Paris, 1880), pp. 209, 211Google Scholar.