Popular culture and Elite culture in France (1400-1750) [1 ed.] 0807112186

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in

Translated by Lydia Cochrane

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France 1400—17$0 Robert Muchembled Translated by Lydia Cochrane

Prior to the age of the Counter-Reformation, an array of dynamic, localized microcultures existed in the countryside and

towns of France. These subgroups of society formed a popular culture that was a buffer between man and a harsh environment that

he could not yet tame with technology; it helped him to explain and adapt to a cruel social world dominated by rampant disease, famine, and war. This culture blended Christian and pagan elements, and its main preoccupations were the practice of sorcery, encouragement of fertility, appeasement of

- death, unleashing of pent-up sexuality, and assurance of a bountiful harvest. In Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400-1750, Robert Muchembled uses a wide range of sources and archival materials to investigate

the mind-set of the people—especially the young and the women—who forged this popular culture.

With the advent of the early modern period, increasing forces of centralization began to effect a homogenization and change in these subgroups. The elites of French so-

ciety viewed the popular culture as a threat to their status and power. Between the six-

teenth century and the French Revolution there was widespread subjection of souls and bodies in the interest of church, state,

and economy. This subjection was manifested in witch hunts, the repression of deviant be_ havior, the torture of criminals, the substi-

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France 1400 — I7$0

i

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France 1400 —1750

Robert Muchembled Translated by Lydia Cochrane

Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge and London

To my son, Renaud

Originally published in France as Culture Populair e et Culture des Elites dans la France Moderne (XV:-X VIIT: siècles), © Flammarion, 1078

English translation copyright © 1985 by Louisiana State University Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America Typeface: Linotron Galliard Typesetter: G&S Typesetters, Inc. Printer and Binder: Edwards Brothers, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Muchembled, Robert, 1944— Popular culture and elite culture in France, 1400~1750.

Translation of: Culture populaire et culture des élites dans la France moderne.

Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. France—Popular culture—History. 2: France—Social life and CUSTOMS—1328— 1600. 3. France—Social life and customs—17th—r1 DC33.M8813

1985

ISBN O-8071-1218-6

8th century.

306'.4 0044

84-25078

I. Title.

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE: The Resurgence of Popular Culture NOTE

ON

SOURCES

AND

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Part I: Popular Culture in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries INTRODUCTION:

Problems of Sources and Method

CHAPTER 1: À World of Insecurity and Fears CHAPTER 2: Rural Culture and Popular Customs CHAPTER 3: Urban Popular Culture Conclusion to Part I

Part IL: The Repression ofPopular Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries INTRODUCTION:

Culture and Power

183

CHAPTER 4: The Constraint of Bodies and the Submission of Souls: New Mechanisms of Power

187

CHAPTER 5: The Repression of Witchcraft and the Acculturation

of the Rural World CHAPTER 6: From Popular Culture to a “Mass” Culture

Conclusion: Popular Culture and the Archaeology of the Centralizing Power

312

INDEX

321

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ABBREVIATIONS

A.D. Nord

Archives Départementales du Nord (Lille)

A.D. Seine-Maritime

Archives Départmentales de Seine-Maritime (Rouen)

AHL

Archives historiques et littéraires du nord de la France et du midi de la Belgique (published from 1829 to 1857 in Valenciennes, Nord)

A.M. Arras

Archives Municipales d’Arras (Pas-de-Calais)

Annales ESC

Annales Economies —Sociétés —Civilizations (Paris)

B.M. Arras

Bibliothèque Municipale d’Arras (Pas-de-Calais)

B.M. Lille

Bibliothèque Municipale de Lille (Nord)

BSAM

Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de la Morinie (published in Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais, from 1852; the

society was founded in 1831 and is still active) BSEPC

Bulletin de la Société d'Etudes de la Province de Cambrai (published in Cambrai, Nord, from 1899 until recently)

RBPH

Revue belge de Philologte et d'Histoire (Brussels, founded in 1922)

RHMC

Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine (Paris)

SFW

Souvenirs de la Flandre-Wallonne (published in Douai,

Nord, from 1861 to 1880; after that date a new series appeared intermittently)

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PREFACE

The Resurgence ofPopular Culture

HE culture of the popular masses is a recent invention. It was not improvised by historians scouting for an original subject; it was the discovery of an unknown Atlantis. Popular culture is one of history’s losers: shattered by the far-reaching cultural revolution between the end of the Middle Ages and the contemporary age, like all losers, it has left few traces. Moreover, the few traces it did leave were often distorted or mutilated by the triumphant winners, much as the Roman emperor Augustus systematically tarnished the glory of Antony, his hapless rival. This mutilation was easily accomplished, what is more, since popular

culture was essentially oral, and its adversaries wielded the formidable weapon of writing. This is not the full explanation of why popular culture remained buried in history’s darkest dungeons until the last few decades, however. After all, Antony is fairly well known to scholars in spite of Augustus’ efforts. A profound disrepute or a total disinterest must have been added to the intrinsic difficulty of the subject. Comprehension of this little mystery perhaps lies in the idea, banal as it is, that history is the offspring ofits times—that is, history chooses its objects more with regard to problems of the present than of the past. As it happens, from the age of the Sun King, if not earlier, through

the glorification

of French

civilization

of the Enlightenment,

through the bourgeois nineteenth century to our own day, one movement dominated the life of France, the movement ofcentralizing power, whatever the regime. For more than three hundred years both events and ideas have supported the absolutist monarchs in their struggle against the forces of disorder, anarchy, and feudalism. Historiography, particularly in the nine-

teenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, emphasized this trend toward unity, and in general it studied French civilization and French cul-

2

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

ture from this point of view alone, for the most part neglecting the infinite diversity of the popular worlds and regional cultures. Historians, in reality, simply reflected the attitude of the governing classes and the literate in western Europe, proud of their superior civilization. Judged by this standard, the peoples of the world cut a sorry figure. Colonial expansion led to increasing contact with them, however, and to studying them, sometimes

with a touch of commiseration. Gordon W. Hewes’s attempt to classify the human groups that inhabited the earth around 1500 to my mind clearly exemplifies this Europe-centered attitude. Hewes distinguishes seventy-six types, ranging from “primitive” groups through the “cultures” that represent incomplete civilization to true civilizations (see Pierre Chaunu, Conquête et exploitation des nouveaux mondes, Paris, 1969, 364—69). An ethno-

graphic approach of this sort was obviously inapplicable to the description of acountry like France. France (and its “evolved” neighbors) provided the model, the standard of reference. It would have been out of the question to

cheapen this model by pointing to the enormous differences that existed between the life of the masses and that of the elites. Furthermore, scholars found little to attract them in an evocation of this popular world, a world to which they generally did not belong in their hearts or their minds, by their origins, or by their culture. Change in this domain, as in many others, came out of the great cultural upheaval that followed the two world wars. We could say, pushing sche-

matization to its limits, that the rapid evolution of the western world, par-

ticularly since the middle of the twentieth century, shattered many a certitude. World-wide economic crises, decolonialization, the establishment of communism over part of the globe, the rise to the international scene of the third world countries—our epoch is indeed one of basic redefinitions. In historical writing, interest quite naturally shifted from a description of moments of equilibrium—the century of French classicism, for example— to that of moments ofcrisis and change. The humble folk of the past invaded the stage, anonymously at first, in economists’ and then demograph ers’ graphs. The social sciences became aware of differences. Sociology and ethnology, in particular, took up the formerly silent majorities and the socalled “primitive” peoples, but now respecting the problems these groups raised by attempting to understand them from within. The schematic con-

cept of “civilization” gave way to one of levels of culture. Scholars clearly

realized that even in the century of Voltaire and Rousseau cultural strata and cultural conflicts had existed within an entity like France. Popular culture

was born (as were other areas of investigation) because at long last it became an object of study, after the repression and the great silence that had befallen it in the age of triumphant centralization. After all, epochs write

Preface

3

the history they deserve. Our own, in the gigantic confusion of what may be an end to civilization, is seeing the reappearance of what had been repressed. In this sense, the end of the twentieth century 1s compara ble—all things being equal, since history does not repeat itself—to the age of the Reformation, of Humanism, and of the Great Discoveries. Is this perhaps

precisely because the solutions that were applied for centuries to stifle what was a great crisis in Christian Europe are no longer valid today? Far be it from me to predict the future from the mists of the past! Iam simply noting the reappearance, in totally new forms, of the principal problems posed by the contemporaries of Luther, Erasmus, and Francis I: regionalist demands , a crisis in established values, a crisis of faith, a crisis of the family, the problem of power, and many other questions bring us closer to these vanished

men—even the new doctrine of worker-management (Pautogestion) which

in a wholly different form was the life experience of the largely peasant populations of the end of the Middle Ages, before the growth of state power. In short, the social sciences’ new fields of investigation show proof of a curiosity that is far from disinterested, whether or not scholars are aware of the fact. No historian, in my opinion, is a simple observer of the past. His own times impose choices and topics on him. His objectivity is limited to exhuming the sources he uses and presenting them honestly. Then follows his eminently subjective interpretation,

which

he makes

in accordance

with

his personal equation, but also in relation to problems ofthe present, of his own present. The aim of the present work can be defined in light of these remarks: the attempt to recount the cultural revolution that in four centuries repressed and debased the vision of the world of the popular masses is born of a desire to rehabilitate that vision and to understand on its own terms how it operated. Conversely, we will also need to speak of the mechanisms that led to the repression ofthis vision of the world and that formed the underpinnings and the foundations ofabsolutist and centralizing power. This double orientation will undoubtedly be severely criticized by the very people who refuse to allow the prestigious civilization of the elites, with its remarkable

artistic and literary accomplishments, to be put on the same level of observation as popular culture. Haven’t recent scholarly debates questioned whether popular culture even exists? I intend to avoid these heated polemics and to state that popular culture does exist, offering the present book as proof. From the start, however, I need to offer a series of restrictions to what I

have to say. The first is of a certain importance, since what I am trying to do is to give new life to a vision of the world that was transmitted orally and that therefore left no direct written traces. Thus, essentially, we have to ask

4

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

repression to recount the history of what it is repressing. It follows that an exhaustive and totally objective understanding of the matter is not yet possible, and may never be so. Although innumerable sources speak incidentally of popular culture, as we shall see, the present work must be considered as an essat, as a first attempt to reconstitute a certain past. In the second place, the description of the popular vision of the world ought to be backed up by homogeneous information concerning the many regions that make up France. This is obviously not the case, since the collection of materials has barely begun. This will lead me to emphasize the Picard linguistic area, the region between the Belgian frontier and the borders of Normandy, between the sea and Champagne, on which my own research has concentrated. I could be accused, then, of seeing popular culture from the standpoint of Flanders, Artois, and Picardy. Quite the contrary: the study of oppression here, although not exhaustive, will be easier to carry along the roads that stretched throughout the vast extent of France. The third and last point is that the term “popular culture” is vague enough to require a restrictive definition, organized around two fundamental axes: thought and action. We will have to look both at the internal coherence of the popular vision of the world and at specific types of collective behavior in response to life’s problems. The dearth of documentation, however, will prevent me from describing at length certain group phenomena

that deserve more attention, such as dance or music. As for the material aspects of existence, the trades, for example, or costume, they would require entire volumes oftheir own and more specialized knowledge than I possess. The present work, granted these restrictions, is organized in two stages and around a central idea—a thesis, to use a grandiose word—of a very profound but slow, scarcely discernible change in popular culture in France between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the Revolution. A breaking point was reached around the middle of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century, at the latest. During the one hundred fifty or two hundred years that preceded this break (the period discussed in the first part of this book) a living, active, dynamic popular culture existed everywhere in France. This culture was in reality a system of survival, for the world was full of dangers, both real and imaginary, which neither the state nor the Church could combat ethcaciously. The first chapter describes this world, highly segmented spatially and full of fears and anxieties, and the attempts of human groups to find a relative security by surrounding themselves—in the towns and cities and rural areas alike—wi th multiple familial and social ties and by endowing themselves with a vision of the world that enabled them to comprehend and ward off the many dangers. In the village, as chapter 2 will show, this vision of the world was based on a

Preface

$

particular perception of time, space, and their rhythms, and it was expressed in a system ofrites and taboos aimed at reconciling the innumera ble

forces that inhabit the universe, at acting upon them through sorcery, at

warding off death in all its many forms, and at assuring the fertility of lands and women. In the last analysis everything was sacred and everything was dangerous, and this gave meaning to all the actions of human life, to festive occasions, and to a less than orthodox popular religion. Townspeople and city folk, the subject of chapter 3, shared this perception of the universe, to be sure, but conditions specific to the urban atmosphere gave even more importance than in the country to popular festivities, games, and play of all sorts. These were supervised with increasing intensity by city authorities

fearful of excessive violence (soon seconded by the state and the Church).

The repression of popular culture began in the cities, where it worked to depreciate popular culture, to regiment the various corporate bodies into which the population divided, to define a frontier between the secular and the sacred. Part Two outlines this effort of repression, which became systematic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The newly established mechanisms of power

(analyzed in chapter 4) constrained souls and subjected

bodies. This increasingly dramatic struggle reached its maximum intensity with the persecution of witches, the various waves and the effects of which

are described in chapter s. Popular sorcery changed in its personality and its function, as far as the authorities were concerned, and became a satanic reli-

gion. One of the main pillars of popular culture collapsed when “superstitions” (of which witchcraft was just the most visible aspect) had to be abandoned or concealed. This did not happen without a desperate resistance from humble folk, however, notably through certain forms of popular revolt. Finally, chapter 6 concerns a new and extraordinarily alienating popular culture that the elites offered to the masses to satisfy their supposed need for the fantastic, but in fact to distract their attention from real problems

and to avoid the proliferation of social tensions and revolts. In the eighteenth century the popular vision of the world lost the coherence it had known at the end of the Middle Ages. Repression and fear had led to the disappearance or the waning of a number of “superstitions.” A far-reaching cultural revolution had taken place. But are there no remnants of these times gone by? This question will invite us, in conclusion, to return to our own present day.

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). item: before the inn of the Horned Cat, by the Greater Marketplace, a certain master Enguerrand and his varlet Go-Tell-Them. Item, before the church of the Magdalen, by the Greater Marketplace, were the Seven Sleeping Men. Item: on the corner before the inn of the Whale, by the Lesser Market, Captain Tournament. Item: before the inn of the Dragon, the Great Virgin [Joan of Arc], and around the tower, armed men, and at the entry was Danger. Item: before the Golden Bar Inn was Piercehedge. Item: [standing] between two lepers, the Great Huntmaster with his dogs. Item: behind the

Rose Inn, the Hermit of the Church. Item: at the Ronville gate was Re-

nard the Fox. And others in other places. And people talked much about

them here.)?

This was how the Arrageois of 1434 denied winter’s rigors and laughed at the cold, against which they were almost totally unprotected, as noted in chapter 1, above. Theirs was a typical evasive move to deny the inhuman aspect of snow and ice and transform them into objects of a ritual celebration. In Lille, 1 January 1600, ilfist une st forte gelée que Von fit du feu, sur la rivière de la Basse-Deñle, derrière le chateau, qu'on y à brûlé un porc sur la glace, ou estorent présens plus de cinquante personne (there was such a hard freeze that 42. Ibid., BB 7, fol. 78v.

Urban Popular Culture

I3I

a fire was built on the lower Deule river, behind the château, and a pig was roasted on the ice, for which more than fifty persons were present). In April of 1603, in the same city, se fit une si rude gelée pendant huit ou neuf Jours que toutes les fontaines de la ville furent engelées; la fontaine au Change étant st fort engelée que vingt hommes ont dansé dessus et fait un feu de paille sur la glace pour rôtir un porc (there was such a hard freeze for eight or nine days that all the fountains in the city froze; the fountain at the Change [commodities market] was frozen so hard than twenty men danced on it and built a fire of staw on the ice to roast a pig).

These were indeed spontaneous celebrations. They were also intended to send the dangers of winter packing through joy, dance, fire, and an impromptu feast. But in Arras in 1434 there was more to it. The snowmen

crystallized fragments of popular thought, as well as other bits and pieces of learned culture. The Four Sons of Aimon belong to the learned tradition, as do the Seven Sleeping Men of Ephesus and Samson on his Lion, who guard the doorway of Jean Wallois, an échevin enriched by selling tapestries to the Duke of Burgundy.* Popular thought, on the other hand, explodes in joyous derision and in a translation of urban topography. The men and women standing before the steam baths recall that these were, in fact, the

site of debauchery. Frére Galopin, the Danse Macabre, and the Ermite express a certain popular anticlericalism and the idea that all are equal before death. Death itself was present in obsessive fashion in the city as in the snowmen: the sesqneur de Courte-Vie, the Grand Veneur between two lepers, the Grande Puchelle that figured Joan of Arc, burned at the stake in 1431.

Other themes appear with the group of the Passe-Route couple, Phomme sauvage, the capitaine du Tournoi, Perchehaye, and Renouard: a giant couple, like those that arose in the urban folklore of the time; a wild couple, which

would be recalled by Breughel a century later; tales of tournaments and chivalry, Renard and the satire—literary, to be sure—of feudal society. A pinch of impertinence was added: toward the “king,” who also trembled from the cold; toward the hierarchy, represented by maitre Enguerrand, saddled with a valet named Va-Lu1-Dire, and so forth. All in all, this spontaneous snow festival was a way to expel real fears— the fear of cold and of death, in particular—as well as fears born of subjection to authorities, to the king, and to the Church. As in the contemporary

Dance Macabre in the cemetery of the Innocents in Paris, official values, which stressed obedience to these powers, were criticized by connecting the great and powerful to death, the great leveler of social status, but also 43. Leclair, “Faits divers.” 97 and 99. 44. J. Lestocquoy, Arras au temps jadis (re-ed. Arras, 1971), 46—47.

132

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

through derision and irony, through laughter, which “overcomes fear.” Furthermore, we should not forget that these snowmen coincided with the Carnival and Lenten festivities, given that in 1435 the cold lasted almost until Easter. We might see in them an original, noncodified formulation of the

festivities of this cycle. Carnival and Lent, as we shall see, took on a primordial importance in the cities and towns, and for this reason its festivities were increasingly closely supervised by the authorities. The sexual “festivals” that gathered a relatively restricted number of people, spontaneously and at any moment in the year, in the pleasure spots and the bordeaux of the city also attracted the attention of the authorities. In such places the search for sexual pleasure was set in a joyous atmosphere and was accompanied by feasting and dancing—it was, that is, a sort of minor féte. The public steam baths in particular rang with the noise of this sort of revelry. Not only did people bathe there, but above all they came to seek the company of loose women and pick-up companions. In Arras in 1455, the furnishings of the Jérusalem baths included a dozen beds, with attendant bed linens. In 1450 the échevins of the city forbade

spending the night in the baths with a woman: In 1485, they limited themselves to ordering that men and their concubines dont Pun soit marrié (one of whom was married) not be received in these places. The proprieto rs of the baths of the Soleil, the Paon, the Gaughier, and the Ymage de Saint

Michel were ordered 4 January 1492 to cease to tenir bordeaux (keep a bor-

dello) or face a fine of one hundred livres. The baths of Glay were closed for fifteen days, 11 April 1550, for avoir souffert les josnes garchons avec les filles le Bon Vendredi durant le saint service divin (having permitted young men [to be] with girls on Good Friday during the holy office).# All this indicates that people seized the least occasion to proclaim a holiday. It does not seem that it was only the drifters and the lowlife who took to this sort of revels. Men in general frequented dissolute places, or more simply the cabarets, and found there friends and partner s for a wide range of games. A ban in Lille of 27 January 1422 forbade fifteen different types of

games tant en cabines, cabarets (in public houses, taverns), and so forth+

Up to the end of the sixteenth century, in spite of prohibitions of this sort, men generally spent their Sundays far from the church es and in a festive atmosphere.

4s. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans.

H. Iswolsky (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 90. 46. B.M. Arras, MS. 1885. fiches “Etuves ,” September 1455 and 17 April 1550; A.M. Arras, BB 38, fols. torr, 141, 136v. 47. B.M. Arras, MS. 1885, fiches “Ferme des jeux,” 27 January 1422 (new style).

Urban Popular Culture —2

133

—

Wedding parties and banquets to some extent resembled the precedi ng type of popular festivities, particularly in their excesses, which drew the attention of the authorities just as the others did. Each familial rite of passage

Was an occasion for a great feast, which served to resolder family cohesion.

The cities of the North imitated the example of the extravagant dukes of Burgundy ofthe fifteenth century and oftheir extraordinary banquets, such

as the banquet of the Pheasant in Lille in 1454. According to a local adage, “you don’t age at table,’ and when financial means permitt ed, feasts abounded. Everyone used childbirths, baptisms, marriages, and burials as

an Opportunity to feast to the full and beyond. To drink to excess as well: in 1614 One author speaks of the Flemings’ penchant for wine and beer, Moreover, the celebration took place among dozens of guests, even a hundred or more. Charles V, then ruler of Flanders and Artois, attempted on 7 October

1531 to bring a higher moral tone to feast days and Sundays. He also specified that family festivities be limited to prochains parens et amis (close relatives and friends) for a maximum of twenty persons and that the party end by noon ofthe following day at the latest. This indicates that banquets were usually extraordinarily long and that they welcomed neighbors, friends, and distant relatives. The edict had little effect in transforming popular mores in this regard. Cities also tried to limit excesses of the sort, as did Lille in 1549,

or Saint-Omer in May 1606, which fixed the number of guests at wedding banquets at twenty couples, the newlyweds included, and limited the number of meals to three. This was a waste of breath: a new edict was issued in October 1613 by Albert and Isabelle, rulers of the Low Countries, limiting the number of the guests at wedding spreads to thirty couples and forbidding the prolongation of the festivities for more than two days. Burial feasts were prohibited as well. Once again, the passive resistance of the masses prevented these measures from being applied effectively. In the nineteenth century, for example, croquer la tête du mort (munch on the dead person’s head) was still said in the region in connection with funeral

banquets.‘ The people refused to change their convivial habits, essentially because

these events provided rare moments of joy in a difficult existence. Above all, they rekindled a consciousness of belonging to a group among the population at large. Such occasions offered pleasure in a context of renewed secu48. A. Dinaux, “Habitudes conviviales . . . de la Flandre,” AHL, 2nd ser., II (1838), 504—36. See also A.M. Arras, (police ordinances) BB 40, fol. 126r, for example, the ordinance of 1610.

134.

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

rity: these were also traits of corporative and confraternal festivities and of

neighborhood gatherings.

ae Every structured trade guild organized its feast day. The rich wine merchants of Arras gathered, from 1430 on at least, pour Pentretènement et à Pexsaltacion, union et commodité d’icelle marchandise (for the entertainment,

exaltation, union and comfort of such merchandise) at a banquet to which they invited the city Magistrat and merchants and important personages outside of their guild. The festivities began on the first day of Lent, avec ménestrez et grande joyeuseté et mélodyes (with musicians and great rejoicing and song) and continued for three entire days, under the tutelage of the prince of the wine merchants. In 1474, however. they requested authorization to change their festival to Jeudi Gras (the Thursday of Carnival weck), probably to avoid further contamination of Lent by their profane amusements. Guilds among the common people had their own celebrations as well. usually the feast day of their patron saint. They also took part in the major city festivities, and this gives us an Opportunity to grasp their role as “joyous societies.” In Douai in 1530, on the occasion of a magnificent procession, each guild was responsible for putting on an histoire (mummers? play). In 1531 in that city, the cayereurs (chair-makers) and the mandelliers (wicker-workers) were to make, at their own expense, a giant named Gayant

that they exhibited at the fête Sunday, 18 June, of that year. In 1565, the

Géande of the fruit vendors appeared (the name became Cagenon in the seventeenth century). As in Valenciennes, in Maubeuge, and in Cambrai, the giants of Douai, which arose perhaps around 1480, attracted the ire of

the Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which reproached

them of smacking of Le paganisme ou le théâtres The religious and civil authorities showed a similar mistrust of the activities of religious brotherhoods and fraternities. These fraternities, “one of the characteristic institutions of medieval popular religion,” had recruited a majority of the population before the Reformation, and they played an extremely important role in the expulsion of social tensions through their ritual festivities, in the cities as in the countryside.*! These festivities were

both sacred and secular in nature, and they took place at several times dur-

ing the year; in May, for example, or on the patron saint’s day, or with a 49. A. Guesnon, Inventaire, 275—76; 221—22 for the festivities in 1430. 50. F. Brassart, “Fêtes communales de Douai. ..” SFW, IX (1869), 10$—11. st. J. Bossy, “The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe,” Past and Present (May 1970), s8—s9

and 60—61.

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13$ on ducasse. Confréries dedicated to a saint—for example, that of Saint Nicholas in Laon, the statutes of which date from 1382—w ere pious, half-gastronomic associations.”? The archers ’,

then indeed “half. crossbowmen’s, and

cannoneers’ fraternities, on the other hand, organized competitions. As a canon of the church of Saint-Pierre in Lille wrote in disgust in 1587: Pusage

est que, tous les ans, celui qui a abattu le papegat ou Poiseau en bois fixé au haut de la perche, celui-là durant toute Pannée est roi ou chefde la confréri e (the custom is that every year the man who shoots down the wooden parrot or bird afhxed to the top of the stick, during the entire year is king or leader of the brotherhood). Indeed, when the more strictly religious exercises were over, the games began. Like companies ofthe sort from other commun ities came to participate, and they ended in a distribution of prizes, follow ed by a banquet and the return home of the winners en prais triomphateurs, à grand renfort de chars et de chevaux (like real conquerers, escorted by quantit ies of

wagons and horses). Ces fadaises (this nonsense), the irritabl e canon adds,

costs unthinkable sums.*#

The same sort of contests took place in Péronne, Arras, Béthune, and so forth. At Estaires (Nord, arr. Dunkerque), the confraternity statutes (their

date is undetermined) forbade the brothers from blaspheming or speaking

of the devil, of bren (excrement), of the gibbet, or of rabies while they

watched the competition. They were not permitted to play games, and no one was to faire reuppes de sa bouche (belch).54This was the least you ask of such an association! All seems to indicate that these dainty manners had not in the least disappeared in the sixteenth century, whereas the later statutes of such confraternities gave religious activities primacy over the secular and were placed under the strict supervision of the local curé and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.5

= Neighborhood and street festivities were often similar to wedding banquets, which they imitated on a larger scale. They seem to have been more

numerous at the end of the Middle Ages than in the sixteenth century. They show a high degree of sociability but also of a neighborhood chauvinism that often led to brawls between people of different gwartiers similar to clashes between villages. Because of this, and also to prevent them from holding back the growing sentiment of belonging to the urban community 52. R. Vaultier, Le folklore pendant la guerre de Cent ans .. . (Paris, 1965), 157—61. 53. Floris Van der Haer, De Initits tumultuum Belgicorum (Douai, 1587), cited in “Ducasses, kermesses et fêtes dans les Flandres,” SFW, V (1865), 119-22. 54. De La Fons-Mélicocq, “Les archers . . . ,” AHL, 3rd ser. I (1850), 502. ss. J. Ferté, La vie religieuse dans les campagnes parisiennes (1622-1695) (Paris, 1962), 75ft., 3361.

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as a whole, the city authorities soon attempted to channel or limit such festivities. The notion of voisinage, of close neighborliness, that was the source of

these topographically limited festivities, was not easy to eradicate. A ban in Lille in 1382 forbidding assambleez de parrosche contre autre (assemblies of one parish against another), or r#e contre autre (street against street), or

prohibiting the planting of trees on the street for the purpose of meeting there proves the existence of these festivities. They reappear at Valenciennes in 1547. At that date the authorities prohibited the celebration of Saint Christopher’s Day because débauchemens, folies, noises et plusieurs choses mal séantes

(debauchery,

madness,

aggressions,

and many

improper

things)

went on during the public banquets organized in the streets, day and night, by the ruaiges (sections of the city). Bands of light-headed women met together on these occasions: cela est frivoleux et fort inutil (this is frivolous and totally without purpose), the text continues, and it leads to dérision, bien souvent, de notre sainte relgion (derision, quite often, of our holy religion) .°°

In spite of this, the Le Sauch quartier of the same city organized a fes-

tival in 1520 on the occasion of Charles V’s return to Brussels. All of the

heads of ruages were invited to come, with their followers, to the rue Le Sauch, where both joyous and more serious activities took place. Each chef de quartier wore the crest of his ruage and was given a title: sénéchal of Le Sauch, grand-bailli, mayeur, bailli, Roy de la beste a deux dos, maire, capitaine,

soubdan, prince, amiral, souverain, marquis, châtelain, comte. These fourteen titles, representing the fourteen sections of the city, Were in jocund imitation of noble dignities, particularly of the order of the Golden Fleece. Noël

Le Boucq, a burgher in the city and organizer of the feast, thus expressed his admiration for the aristocratic and princely life. But popular parodic ideas were also introduced into the ceremonies, as in the snow sculptures in

Arras in 1434. A certain gauloiserte as well, with the title of King of the Beast

with Two Backs and with many boisterous jokes during the revelry. This neighborhood festival disappeared after 1566.57

Did the authorities become sensitive to its impertinence toward the powerful of this world? Or was it that they preferred to emphasize the great Principautés de Plaisance (to be discussed

later)? In any event, neighbor-

hood and street festivals seem to be eclipsed in the sixteenth century by celebrations offered to the urban population as a whole. The banners of the quartiers, however, like those of guilds and confraternities, continue d to fly during the great feasts, one of the functions of which was precisely to at56. F. Brassart, “Fêtes populaires au xvr: siècle dans les villes du nord de la France,” SEW, XI (1871), 58-60 and 73. 57. F. Brassart, “L’order du chapelet de N.D. de Le Sauch,” SEW, XII (1873), 158—70.

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137

tenuate differences in the heart of the city. Ducasses and fairs, to begin with, belong to this category of celebrations.

as According to the chronicler Guichardin, writing around 1560, ducasses and

kermesses—the celebration of the anniversary ofachurch’s founding—lasted eight full days in the north of France. They attracted people from thirty, thirty-five, or forty miles around. A procession in and around the church, complete with floats and histoires (mummers? plays) took place on the first

morning. Then came banquets, plays, games and competitions organized

by the guilds and confraternities, and exercises of rhetoric. The latter were the amusements qu’on préférait à tout autre (that everyone liked best) in these parts, but the censors accused them of accustoming le vulgaire à parler sans raison des points capitaux de la religion, des affaires de l'Etat et surtout des devoirs du souverain (the people to speak senselessly on the capital points of religion, affairs of state, and particularly on the sovereign’s responsibilities), and even of propagating new religions.** Singing, dancing, and many sports and games should be added to this list. At Arras the games mentioned are barres, billes, blanc roster, boule, bri-

quet, cache, choule, dés, loterie, paume, portelettes, cartes, anette, and so on.

(team wrestling, a croquet-like team ball game, darts, bowls, a squash-l ike

ball game, /a soule [soccer or lacrosse], dicing, lottery, an ancestor oftennis, card games, and throwing a pitchfork at a hanging goose).* In short, the

pleasures of sports and games, of revelry, and of drinking and banquet ing

were freely indulged in, while the original religious aspect of the ceremonies dimmed. The ducasse became one popular feast among others. The central authority reacted in 1531. Charles V tried (without success)

to limit these fairs, dedications, and kermesses to one day. Philippe II ordered on 2 September 1588 that the parish dedications take place on the same day (Sunday, 7 July, or the Sunday following that date) throughout Artois. His aim was to limit the violence, the fights, and the homicides that sullied festivities of the sort throughout the year, since people were apt to travel from one dedication to another, bringing violence with them. These efforts, which were repeated in 1601 in an edict of the archdukes forbidding

jeux de moralité, farches, sonnetz, dictiers, refrains, ballades, and so on (morality plays, farces, impromptu poetizing and talespinning, songs and ballads) in the Low Countries, show proof of the progress being made by the Catholic Counter Reformation, but reform was difficult to impose on the 58. “Ducasses, kermesses et fêtes,” 117-18, 122—23. 59. B.M. Arras, MS. 1885, fiches “Jeux divers.”

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masses. Also in the seventeenth century, religious authorities strongly disapproved of the fair of Saint Fiacre at Bezons, in the Paris region, which was held on the Sunday after 30 August (the saints feast day).5° There is no doubt that city fairs in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries throughout France, like the ducasses of the North, were marked by a

mixture of religious and secular activities. The gravity of daily life in the cities, the fears, and the multiple tensions that existed there demanded—

even more than in the country—a liberation of accumulated energies. Religious celebrations took on this liberating function, following the model of all public rejoicings at the time, since before the Counter Reformation, men in western Europe made no clear distinction between the sacred and the secular. With the exception of a few gloomy souls, no one was horrified, no

one cried profanation at dancing in the cemeteries, at the fêtes des Fous in the churches, or at the license that reigned at dedications and fairs. For a day, sometimes for weeks, these dedications and these fairs transformed the city, in spite of its increasing xenophobia, into a place of welcome and of Joy. In Douai, banished criminals had the right to return to join in the festivities of the August fair of Saint Peter (31 July—1 August), and particularly for Saint Rémi’s Day (a fair created in 1344 and abolished in 1791). A large

and handsome

tree called the Bannibau

(the tree of the banished) was

planted on the Grand Place on 21 September and uprooted 1 October, a material symbol of the dispensation that the banished enjoyed during this period.f! Space became more welcoming, time more fluid during the fairs and ducasses. The humble folk’s dreams of happiness were realized for a short moment, renewing their courage to affront the dangers and the problems of their life in a more joyful city—and to accept their subjection more readily. = Os

Popular participation in other religious ceremonies and in celebrations in the honor ofthe prince or some other important personage reinforc ed this subjection even further, even as it gave the masses models to imitate and food for irony. It is to no purpose to discuss this type of festivity at length, as it is well known. A few remarks and an example or two should suffice. In the first place, the people participated in various religious processi ons as spectators; they enjoyed the “ambulant theater of the clergy.”® ? This the60. Ferté, La vie religieuse, 291-93. 61. Brassart, “Fétes communales de Douai,” 80~83, 95—98. 62. J. Heers, Fétes, Jeux et joutes dans les sociétés d'Occident à la fin du Moyen Age (Montreal and Paris, 1971), 71. j : F

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ater frequently mixed with Christian liturgy. parade on Rogations houpettes et fanonchiaux

139

the secular with the sacred and popular credences Didn’t the canons of church of Saint-Amé in Douai Sunday carrying a green silk dragon with a tail; (pompoms on his head and at his jowls), a cloquette

de métal (metal bell) at his neck, and little bells on his tail? There is mention of this dragon in the accounts for 1377—1378, and in 1540—1541 it was carried

by a priest or by a child. To be sure, Rogations was “one of the oldest agrarian ceremonies in Europe” and the little bells were designe d, as was the dragon, to chase away evil forces and assure the fertility of the fields.** Processions in the fifteenth century often mixed secular and religious

elements in long corteges in which priests and laity, men, women, and chil-

dren, walked side by side, interspersed with istoires— both pantomimed and spoken—some of which were more “edifying” than others. This was how the procession of Saint-Maurand, held every year on 16 June in Douai, must have appeared to onlookers, from its creation in 1480 to its suppres sion by a bishop in 1770.‘ Princely entries, the arrival of important personages, events in the family life of the sovereign, peace treaties, and many other occasions offered the

people remarkable spectacles as well. When these occurred, cities were dec-

orated to litter and Branches churches.

look their best, after being spruced sometimes expelling troups ofpigs, and leaves were spread in the streets All precautions were taken to light

up a bit by sweeping up the even vagabonds and beggars. and decorated the houses and the city at night and to avoid

surprise attack from possible enemies. Then the festivites took place, with all the pomp and display we have read about, to the marvel of the populace ,

while local “joyous companies” of mummers put on histoires, pantomime or with dialogue, jeux de rimes, and jeux de personnages. The people found amusements

at their own

level, flooding the city with laughter, music,

dance, and banqueting—and with the inevitable brawls. The popular component of such sort offestivities was only marginal and accessory, however. The people had the crumbs from the great feast of the governing classes. The two last forms of festivity, on the other hand, the Feasts of

Fools and the great merrymakings cycle of Carnival and Lent were, at least initially, more clearly popular in character.

63. “Inventaire du Trésor . . . Saint-Amé de Douai, 1382 à 1627,” SFW, V (1865), 161—62. 64. À. van Gennep, Manuel de folklore français contemporain (Paris, 1949), I, pt. 4, PP. 1637

and 1646. 65. Brassart, “Fêtes communales de Douai,” 99-104. 66. Biehn, Les fêtes d'Europe; A.M. Arras (see above, n. 11).

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== The burlesque fétes—the feasts of the Innocents, the Anes, the Fous, the Sots,

and so on—belong to the cycle of the Twelve Days, the cycle of Christmas and the dead of the winter. Some authors claim that these festivities were of purely clerical origin and that they at first portrayed the fragility of human life, becoming later, around 1300, more contestatory and overflowing the

framework of the parish church to become “great popular holidays.”#7 All scholars, in fact, have been struck by the attitudes of the priests, in the churches, between Christmas and Epiphany. Masked, their faces daubed,

sometimes wearing female dress, they danced in the choir of the church during mass, singing obscene couplets; they ate head cheese or sausages at the altar, under the nose of the officiating priest; they played cards or diced; they put pieces of old slippers in the censer to send out nauseating odors. After the mass, young clerics ran, jumped, and danced throughout the church, some of them even stripping naked. Then they went through the streets riding on carts loaded with garbage, with which they “asperged” the crowds, while posturing lasciviously and spouting obscenities.® In real-

ity, such acts can be better understood if we refer to the ritual and magical aspects of the great peasant festivities I have described. The young clerics were accomplishing a fertility rite here at least as much as they were “setting the world topsy-turvy.” In the last analysis, the origin of these festivities is of little importance.

At the epoch that concerns us, they had become common

and common-

place in their popular form in France. We can see them in Reims in 1479, in

Noyon, according to a “very ancient custom,” in Paris in 1444 or in 1460. The Church attempted to suppress them after the Council of Basel in 1435.

The Provincial Council of Rouen in 1445 forbade jeux des fous in the

churches and the cemeteries, and the synodal statutes of Orléans in 1525 and

1587 prohibited dances, nonreligious songs, plays, and spectacles in those same places. The Aguilanneuf (from the New Year’s greeting, Au Gui l'An Neuf) was abolished in Angers in 1595, and again in 1668, as was the féte des Fous in areas under the jurisdiction of the Dion Parlement on 19 January

1553.

Essentially, these burlesque festivals rested on the shoulders of the“joyous

companies,” under the direction ofa Bishop of Fools, Dunces, or Asses or 67. Heers, ‘Fêtes, Jeux et joutes, 121-29. Du Tilliot, Mémoires pour servirà l’histoire de la fête des

foux .. . (Lausanne and Geneva, 1751), 7—8 had already proposed a similar explanation. k 68. Ibid., 7f¥. 69. Ibid., 17—76.

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LA4I

by a Prince with some similar qualifier. The prelate or prince for the occasion exercised a tyrannical but ephemeral empire on the city, the quartier, or the church that he governed. Sometimes, but not necessa rily, this personage Was a priest or a monk, chosen from among the youngest and the most recently frocked. The canons of the church of Saint-Amé in Douai kept for the occasion, in 1470, une mitre servans à |évesque des Innocens, . . . estoffée de fil d’or et d'argent (a mitre to be used by the bishop of the Innocents . . . embroidered with gold and silver thread), and a copper crozier . In 1395 they owned a vermelle cappe despareillée qui sert à Pévesque des Asnes (an unmatching red cape used for the bishop of Asses) and une laye là où reposent les bulles des Asnes, et comment on doibt faire le preélit, et pluseurs lettres faisant mencion de chil qui est par dessous Pévesque des Anes, et obéir à ses commandemens (a box containing the bulls [to proclaim] the Asses, and how to proceed to name

the prelate, and several letters mentioning the persons who are under the

bishop of Asses and obey his commands).7 The feast of the Asses took place on 1 January in Douai. The day before, everyone went to receive his /iéloires (New Year’s gifts). The morning of the feast, the celebration began with a float parade in the market square. In front of the market hall, from ten to noon, coq-a-Vane (burlesque, satirical plays) were presented. The players then rode through the city on wagons

while banquet tables were set up here and there. The actors, who formed in

societies called Jeunes-Enfants (young children), Enfants-Sans-S oucy (chil-

dren without a care), and so on, regaled the spectators with various sorts of shows. A Capitaine du Pénon led the local youth, at least from 1493 on. Usu-

ally chosen from among the upper bourgeoisie, he held court on 2 January

and gave a large banquet.” As we can see, even if the clergy Participated in

these festivities, it is difficult to qualify them as religious.

In like fashion, the feast of the Innocents on 28 December took on a

secular tone. In Lille around 1552 and around 1556, boys and young people,

en halts incogneuz (in disguises), ran through the streets throwing ashes at

one another, singing dissolute songs, and hitting people, young girls in particular. Just as in Lyon, where the synodal statutes forbade plays in the

churches on the Day of the Innocents in 1566 and 1577, in Lille repeated prohibitions attempted to suppress these unbridled pastimes, and they did indeed stop after 1564. Royal ordinances in 1559, 1573, and 1601 extended this

repression to the whole of the Low Countries. The young people and the “joyous companies” had long been reproached with attacking presque tou70. “Inventaire du Trésor . . . Saint-Amé de Douai,” 163—64. 71. Brassart, “Fêtes communales de Douai,” 84—809.

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jours à la vie privée (private life almost exclusively), revealing domestic troubles (like the rural abbayes de jeunesse), holding dansses et assamblées de sottes ou de belles compaigmies (dances and assemblies of low or fair company) to donner chappeaulx (award garlands or wreaths)—all things that the échevins of Lille had already attempted to prohibit in 1382, in 1397, in 1428, in 1483, and so forth. To summarize, the feast of the Innocents emphasized the ritual role of

the local youth, who were charged with criticizing society on this occasion, just as in rural festivities. Greater pressure was exerted in the city than in the village, however, as we can see by various attempts to limit excesses, already cited. Lille offers another example ofthis in 1514 and again in 1544, when all were forbidden to farser (mock) the princes, or in 1520, when the children

of Lille were forbidden to faire de procession avant la ville (parade before the city).” Youth groups lost their specifically young character and were increasingly dominated by adults, in Douai in 1493 with its Capitaine du Pénon as in other parts of France. The new mental climate in the cities was unable to accommodate the strongly sexual nature of the burlesque festivals, which were survivals of peasant magical ceremonies designed to assure the fertility of the earth and the women. Thus we can see the Innocents in Lille promising young girls marriage within the year by whipping them and throwing ashes and refuse at them.” The cities finally found a way to parry these excesses—before the central power of the monarchy intervened—by institutionalizing the “joyous companies” and placing them under the supervision of trustworthy burghers, obliging them to follow the example of the hierarchical structure that existed in the guilds, corporations, and the various other corporate bodies organized among the population. Thus it is often difficult to distinguish the “joyous companies” from youth groups. They all bear the same names. This absence of specificity, in the sixteenth and occasionally as early as the fifteenth century, reveals a fusion of social groups that was more advanced in

the cities than in the villages. Or at least it betrays the predominance in the cities of cascading imitations that we might call a sense of belonging to the city and that finds its most complete expression in the complex festivities of the cycles of Carnival and Lent and of the month of May.

72. De La Fons-Mélicocq, “Les sociétés dramatiques du Nord” AHL,

5—38.

3rd ser., VI (1857),

73. N. Z. Davis, “The Reasons of Misrule” in her Soctety and Culture, 111 and 113. 74. À. Van Gennep, Le folklore de la Flandre et du Hainaut Français . . . (Paris, 1935), I, 264—66 analyzes the feast of the Innocents in Lille in this manner.

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143

is

Arnold van Gennep noted the importance of the Carnival and Lenten festivities in the cities of northern

France.

There were, more generally, a

number of French and other European cities that spent this typical period of license in splendid celebrations, as witnessed by the Roman Carnival or the Carnival in Venice in more recent centuries.” According to a Provincia l Council at Reims in 1456, such elaborate celebrations had become abus hon-

teux in the churches ofthat city and of Amiens, Soissons, Laon, Senlis, and so on.” Moreover, the revelry skipped over the period of Easter, which seems to have been more strictly religious, particularly in the cities, and began again in May. The Féte de la Mére Folle in Dyon, celebrated at least as early as 1454, is

probably one of the best known of the Carnival cycle. A company of five hundred persons de toute qualité (of all social classes) was charged with conducting it. The members of the company, disguised as wine growers, paraded through the city on floats, performing satires qui étoient comme la censure publique des moeurs de ce temps-la (which were like a public censure of the mores of those days). Up to 1630, when this company was abolished, it welcomed

important personages, such as the Prince de Condé in 1626 or

the bishop of Langres. The city of Chalon-sur-Saône had its own Mère Folle company, abolished by the city council on 31 January 1626.78 At Saint-Quentin (Aisne) a course au chapels, a race, the prizes for which

were flowered, ribbon-decked hats, took place during Carnival. There is a description of this occasion that dates from 1586, but it was certainly of ear-

lier origin. A Compagnie de la Jeunesse, organized in military fashion and directed by capitaines under the leadership of a Roi de la jeunesse, directed the merrymaking. Long before the race itself, this company held cavalcades

and fancy dress occasions, particularly on Sundays, starting the eve of the Jour des Rois

(Epiphany). Then Mardi Gras arrived. Trumpets and carillons

rang out at dawn. La Jeunesse went to mass in procession, and the Roi supervised the priest’s blessing of the chapels. The cortège, accompanied by beggars crying for largesse, continued to the walls of the city, outside of which

the race took place. The winner was declared roi des chapels for the following year, and he

returned to the city with all due pomp, like a true prince. He paraded 75. Ibid., 1, 1440—41. 76. Van Gennep, Manuel (Paris, 1947), I, pt. 3, 881—83 in particular. 77. L. Lecat, Deux siècles d'histoire en Picardie (1300-1498) (Amiens, 1971), 142—43. 78. See Du Tilliot, Mémoires à servir . . . fête des foux, 80-181 for a detailed description with interesting iconography.

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through all the streets, flanked by the kings of the two preceding years, and preceded by the captains, lieutenants, and members of the Jeunesse. The

échevins of the city invited the new prince to a banquet in the great Council Hall. This festival ended here, but the Jeunesse was active on other occasions: running /a bague (a ring) on the first Sunday of Lent, offering a candle at the chapel of Notre-Dame de Sissy on Annunciation Day, and so forth. It is interesting to note that such festivities become less frequent in Saint-Quentin after 1618, acquiring a more religious and more moral tone before they disappeared completely in the middle of the eighteenth century.” On Monday, 4 February 14.94, the beginning of the week that ended with dimanche Gras, aquatic jousts were held at Aire-sur-la-Lys (Pas-de-Calais). The games were organized by the Abbé de Liesse (Abbot of Joy) of that city, in cooperation with the Prince de Jonesse, the Roi des Grises Barbes, the Abbé de Jonesse, and the Légat de Oultre PEawe (Prince of Youth, King of the Greybeards, Abbot of Youth, Legate from Over the Eawe) of Aire and the nearby town of Thérouanne. The play on the Holy Sacrament was given à Pavant disner, à la pourcession, par signes, et à Paprès disner par parolles (before dinner, during the procession, in pantomime, and after dinner with words).*° Another Abbé de Liesse reigned in Arras, as documents from 1431 to 1534

attest. This personage was elected by the lieutenant of the city, the procureur of Artois, the mayor, the échevins and the leading burghers. He received a sizable subsidy from the city authorities—130 /ivres in 1494, 100 livres in 1505 *!—to pay the expenses of the festivities he was to organize and to pay his company’s traveling expenses when they were invited to attend similar festivities in other cities. He went to the fête of the Roi des Soz (King of Dunces) in Lille in 1497, to those of Béthune and Lille in I$OI, to that of the

Prince de Jonesse (Prince of Youth) in Béthune the second Sunday of May in

1510, to that of the Prince de Plaisance (Prince of Pleasure) in Valenciennes in

May 1521, and so forth. In return, he was expected to provide a banquet for the “joyous companies” from the outside when they participat ed in festivities in Arras. Other such organizations existed in Arras, what is more,

since a local Prince d'Amour (Prince of Love) was delegated in 1510 to head

the Plaisance group of Valenciennes, and during the same year replaced the

Abbé de Liesse, who was ill, at the festivities in Tournai. In short, Arras had

institutionalized and taken over popular festivities.

79. C. Gomart, “La course aux Chapels à Saint-Quentin,” AHL, 2nd ser., IV (1842), 431-54. 80. B.M. Arras, MS. 1885, fiches “Jeux scénique s,” 4 February 1494 (new style). 81. To give a comparison, all of the furnishi ngs of an étuve (steam baths) in Arras were sold for twenty livres in 1455, and the least refined

1476.

bread was worth two deniers (1/120 livre) in January

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The Abbé de Liesse was no more than a sort of official charged with particular responsibilities for the city’s activities. Furthermore, in order to take on his many duties he had to be rich, in spite of the indemnities he enjoyed, since it was principally he who organized the city’s festivities. The Prince

d'Amour, who headed another festive association, had much less prestige: he received from the city only fifteen livres in 1510, and he replaced the Abbé

de Liesse at the last minute to go to Tournai. The Abbé de Liesse wore chapel et crosse (a hat and a crozier) of gilded silver, struck with the seal of the city and the écusson de Liesse (seal of Joy). He was flanked by compaignons, moines et confrères (companions, monks, and brothers), elected as well, probably elected in the same manner as he, and preceded by a herald in cotte d’armes de damas violet (purple damask surcoat). His principal duty was to organize the festivities on the Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of Carnival week, which continued on the following Sunday and in 1490 even lasted to the mid-Lenten break of mi-Caréme. The festivities consisted particularly of jeux de personnages, jousts, and dramatic scenes sur cars (on wagons). The échevins of the city and the officers of the king took the opportunity to dine and sup together—at the city’s expense, of course—all of which involved immense sums. The atmosphere was one of free enjoyment, even of license, to the point where the sergents du chatelain (in 1490, for example) were prohibited from arresting people dur-

ing the festival. There were police regulations that attempted to curb excesses, however.

In 1494 the order was given to all outsiders who had come to the festivities

of Carnival Sunday to leave their arms with their hotel keeper; climbing to the ramparts was prohibited; and vagabonds were ordered to leave the city or be hanged. In reality, these ordinances prove that Carnival was indeed

marked by excesses, and further proof is given by the various sorts of violence committed at this time and dutifully noted in the registers of criminal sentences. Could it have been otherwise? The city’s joyous inhabitants thronged everywhere, but there were also the banished, who returned for

the occasion, and deviants of all stripe who profited from the impunity that came of exceptional circumstances. Moreover, the representatives of law and

order would have had a good deal of difficulty maintaining discipline, for the city was invaded by crowds of outsiders, of peasants and of invited guests from other cities. Disguises and masks impeded the least attempt at surveillance. Violence and undisciplined conduct was the rule, to the point where in 1494 the échevins found it necessary to set down the order of

march of the joyous band that was to meet the invited guests from other cities. Fortunately so, for this provides us with a description of the many “joyous companies” of Arras that assembled for this purpose.

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At the head of the procession came the company of the Abbé de Liesse, followed by those of the Prince de Bon Voloir (Prince of Good Will) and the Prince de Saint-Jacques (Prince of Saint James), who were charged with greeting the groups from Cambrai. The Roy des Lours (King of Leisure) and the Prince de Malespargne (Prince Spendthrift) were to greet the companies from Douai, while visitors from Saint-Pol and the episcopal city of Arras were greeted by the same Prince de Malespargne and the Prince d'Honneur (Prince of Honor). Groups from Béthune and Lille were to be welcomed by the Prince des Locquebaux (Prince of Sticks), the Prince du Bas d'Argent (Prince Silverstocking), the Admiral de Malleduchon (Admiral of Misbehavior), and the Maieur des Génois (Mayor of Genoans). Should the guests from these two cities arrive at the same time, these groups were to form two bands, sans noise, murmure et esclande (without fighting, noise-

making, and tumult), to receive them. Thus Arras had at least ten “joyous companies” in 1494, just as Lyon, which reached sixty thousand inhabitants in the sixteenth century, had twenty or so. These “abbeys” no longer much resembled the rural bachellertes, for their members were not uniquely unmarried men. Furthermore, they were increasingly supervised by the authorities, who encouraged them, as a text of 1533 in Arras says, à entretenir les anchiennes et bonnes

amitiés des villes prochaines et communication des marchands et autres gens de bien fréquentans en ceste ville (to maintain the old and good friendship of nearby cities and contacts with the merchants and other people of substance frequenting that city). The function of these companies shifted from the organization of popular festivals to the establishment of good economic

relations with neighboring cities. In this connection, the last festival of the Abbaye de Liesse held in Arras, in 1534, 1s typical. The order of march as the

cortège went to hear mass on the Monday of Carnival Week was as follows, in increasing order of importance: =

. Prévosts des Coquins

(Provost of Knaves)

of Cambrai

and Arras,

together. 2. Prince des porteurs au sac (Prince of the sack porters) of Cambrai . 3. Prince du Bas d’Argent (Prince Silverstocking) of Arras.

4. Admiral des Machons (Admiral of the Masons) of Cambrai . 5.5 Admiral de Malleduchon (Admiral of Misbehavior) of Arras. 6-

Prince de Sens Legier (Prince Lighthead) of Cambrai, Maire des Hideux (Mayor of the Hideous), and Prince de Jonesse (Prince of Youth) of Arras.

7. Prince des Bouchers (Prince of the Butchers) of Cambrai.

8. Prince des Bouchers, or Loquebaux (Prince of the Butchers or Sticks), of Arras.

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Prince Prince Prince Prince Prince

147

de Saint-Jacques of Cambrai. de Saint-Jacques of Arras. des Amours of Arras (the sayetteurs, serge wool cloth workers). de PEstrille (Prince of the Currycomb) of Douai. d'Honneur of Arras (the drapiers, wool cloth workers).

Prince de Hénin-Liétard (a town now in the département of Pas-de-

Calais, arrondissement Lens). 1s. Prince de Franche Vollunté (Prince of Free Will) of the City of Arras.

16. 17. 18. 19.

Roy des Lours (King of Leisure) of Arras. Cappitaine du Pignon (Captain Highgable) of Douai. Abbé de PEscache Prouffit (Abbot Moneypockets) of Cambrai. Abbé de Liesse of Arras.

The Prince d'Amours, who was scheduled to march between the Prince de

Franche Vollunté and the Roy des Lours but who wanted to march beside the Abbé de Liesse, before the Cappitaine Pignon from Douai, backed out, 1nsulted, and went home. The order established gives the places of greatest importance to the companies specifically dedicated to “joyous” activities in Arras, Cambrai, and Douai, which entered the church last. The first sixteen

groups are secondary companies, guild-based in particular. A few youth organizations, which did not enjoy the same importance in the city that they maintained

in village life and village festivities, figure in sixth position.

Moreover, quarrels over precedence do appear. Such an organization became extremely complicated and very costly. Adam Barbet, the last of the Abbots ofLiesse in Arras, elected 20 December

1533, was obliged to pay for the costumes of ses paiges, lagais, trompettes et

tambours (his pages, footmen, trumpeters and drummers) out of his own pocket, as well as his own expenses for trips to Douai and to Cambrai. He

soon gave up this ruinous responsibility, and no one accepted it after him. The city Magistrat evidently had other ways to maintain its economic relations with neighboring cities and thus was probably none too unhappy to see the disappearance of festivities that generated public disturbances and had come to be denounced by Church and royal edicts alike.* Another aspect of the cycle of Carnival and Lent was the killing of Carnival. In Valenciennes, an effigy representing Mardi Gras was drowned by the brouteux (cart men), who had founded a corporation in 1522-1523. Had

this rite formerly been the responsibility of the youth organizations, as Arnold van Gennep supposes? Gigantic figures were carted through the city in Douai, Valenciennes, Maubeuge, and Cambrai. Animal sacrifices 82. See B.M. Arras, MS. 1885, “Jeux scéniques” for this study on the Abbé de Liesse in general; A.M. Arras, BB 38, fols. 144r-145r (4 January 1494, new style).

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occasionally took place. Ypres, after 1475, held a cat fair on the second Wednesday of Lent. Pots, each of which contained a beribboned feline,

were strung on ropes across the Place d’Armes. Jousters riding in carts attempted to break the pots with their fists, then had to remove the ribbons from the terrified, sharp-clawed animals. Finally, the ropes were cut and the local urchins, armed with sticks, chased the cats.*% When we compare them to these rites, don’t the major feast days and

holidays constitute a warped urban version of the magical ceremonies of the rural cycle of Carnival and Lent in rural areas? Giants, bonfires, and animal sacrifices served to redefine the community, just as in the country. But the

magic had been drained out of the major urban festivites, to the profit of a magnificent spectacle organized (and this says all that need be said) by the authorities. Popular spontaneity no longer created the entire phenomenon, and it could find expression only within an imposed context. Not everything was possible under these conditions. The license that reigned was tolerated as a necessary evil; it was not an autonomous manifestation of the popular vision of the world. Occasionally play and ceremonial revelry that sprung out of thecommon fund of activities of urban festivals entered into the paschal celebrations. Dancing, for example, took place up to 1563 on Easter Sunday in the church of Provins and in the cathedral of Sens. There were also alimentary and sexual prohibitions, such as the rite in northern France in which the wife beat

her husband the second day after Easter, while the husband took his turn the third day.“ Still, the paschal season does not seem to have been one of the chief periods of urban popular festivity. The Church seems to have succeeded in getting rid of a number of magical practices, fertility festivals in particular, which still existed in sixteenth century England.’ The bits and pieces of Eastertide revelry that survived were clearly connected to this sort of ceremony. Didn’t couples who whipped each other, for example, do so to assure their prosperity—the fecundity of the wife, first and foremost—for the year to come, which often was counted as beginning at Easter? Furthermore, secular festivities did not blossom during the Easter season because

two periods particularly dedicated to rejoicing were too close to it: Carnival festivities often continued during Lent, as we have seen, and other important feasts began in May. 83. Van Gennep, Le folklore de la Flandre, 1, 140—91; A. Dinaux, “La foire aux chats, à Ypres,” AHL, 2nd ser., VI (1847), 529—30. 84. Van Gennep, Manuel (Paris, 1947), I, pt. 3, 1381; van Gennep, Lefolklore de la Flandre, I, 203—I0.

85. G. R. Taylor, Sex in History (New York, 1973), 155. See also K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971) concerning popular religion in England.

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The cities celebrated the month of May just as much as the villages, and probably in identical ways at the start. However, the city authorities quite

soon took fright and limited these activities, which customarily were directed by the local Jeunesse groups. Thus the échevin s of Lille 17 April 1382

(eleven days after Easter) forbade dramatic representation s de personnage and de rime, assambleez de parrosche contre autre or de rue aucune contre autre (competitions between parishes or streets). They prohibited the planting of arbre ou arbres aucunz en le caucié pour assamblée faire en aucune manière en

ceste ville, ne dedens les murs et clos de ladite ville (any tree or trees in the public

ways for the purposes of assembly in any manner in this city, nor within the walls and enclosures of the said city), under threat of a fine of Sixty sous, from that date until Saint Rémi’s Day on 1 October. A ban publis hed 23 June of the same year forbade assemblies and caroles (dancing) around the fires que on fera au lieu acoustumet les Jours saint Jehan et saint Pierre (that will be built at the usual places on Saint John’s Day and Saint Peter’s Day).% In this particular instance, the popular festivities of springtime, summer , and the beginning of autumn were abolished. These festivities were suppressed, both because the authorities lacked enthusiasm for them and because these largely agrarian festivities were poorly adapted to the urban setting. Cities of the late Middle Ages thus saw the disappearance or the decline of celebrations that marked the stages in the half of the year most important to rural folk. Following this logic, that the festivities of the month of May resisted undoubtedly proves the great age and the vitality of this cycle. Like the Carnival festivities, they

were distorted, as the urban patriciates did their utmost to expel all traces of

violence from these occasions and exercised tight surveillance over the games and merrymaking. In the north of France, the urban celebrations of the month ot May took place during the course of the month rather than at its beginning. This was the case in Béthune and Valenciennes. In these two cities, probably in imita-

tion of one another, the féte took place on the second Sunday after Ascension, thus demonstrating both the resistance of the ancient May ceremonies and an attempted Christianization by assimilation. (Ascension Day, which depends on the date of Easter, is necessarily celebrated between 1 May, at the earliest, and 4 June, at the latest.) In most years, then, the Principautés

de Plaisance in Béthune and Valenciennes took place in May—that is, when the traditional festivities of this cycle occurred—but at the same time they show the attraction of an important christological feast day. We can see here 86. B.M. Arras, MS. 1885, fiches “Jeux scéniques,” 17 April and 23 June 1382.

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the Church’s traditional method for Christianizing pagan or suspect festivities without suppressing them brutally. In Valenciennes, then, beginning at least in 1510, a grandiose Principauté de Plaisance was held in May. The most important inhabitants of the city vied to take part, grouped in corps de plaisir, each with its own motto and standard and placed under the authority of leaders given such titles as Prévot des Coquins, Prince de la Plume, Capitaine de la Joyeuse Entente, Chef des Hubins, Gardien de Dame Oiseuse, and so forth (Prévôt of Knaves, Prince of

the Feather, Captain of Joyous Accord, Chief of theMerry Beggars, Keeper

of Lady Leisure). We have every indication that these “joyous companies”

were in fact guilds or bodies specialized in the preparation of the festivities, and not strictly Abbayes de Jeunesse. It was a costly undertaking to participate in these festivities, and the authorities dictated their order—two characteristics that contradict the broad membership and spontaneous nature of the youth groups that operated at the same epoch in the rural milieu. Nonetheless, the holidays that were organized still had a number of popular traits

that were qualified as “excesses” in contemporary descriptions. We can see this in the Principauté de Plaisance that took place 12 to 14 May 1548 in Valenciennes. On Saturday, 12 May, the burlesque “crowned heads” from other cities arrived in the city to be welcomed to the sound of bells and carillons by a cortége from Valenciennes, resplendent in silks and gold, on foot or on horseback and respecting a predetermined order. The welcoming group, on foot and on horseback, set out in the same order at

each arrival of a guest company. First came the attendants of the Prévét des Coquins, the Rot des Porteurs au sac, and the Prince de PEstrille, followed bya troop of ninety city horsemen and the Prince de Plaisance himself, who was in turn followed by an honor guard of twenty-seven archers of the Confrérie de smnte Christine. At the edge of the banlieu this brilliant procession welcomed the outsiders at the city walls and accompanied them into the city and then returned to meet other arriving guests. The first to arrive at the city gates was the group from Condé, followed a half-hour later by the eighty-six horsemen of the Tost Tournez (Soon Turned) of the village of Hasnon, then by a group from the village of Raismes, all three of which were near Valenciennes. The Lille conting ent arrived next: thirteen serge workers, thirty-eight sack porters, twentyone butch-

ers, seventeen knights of the Estrille, marching before their Prince d'amour and his forty-eight men. The Prince d'Amour from Tournai arrived next,

immediately followed by the Abbé des Pan Pourvus (Abbot of the Laden Wine Stakes) from Ath, dressed in episcopal costume bearing the motto /a liqueur de la vigne nous maintient en liesse (the liqueur of the wine keeps us in joy) and accompanied by his twenty-five monks. The seventy-two Etourdis

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(Giddyheads) of Bouchain entered next, on horseback, followe d by the

Cornuyaulx (“Horned

Fools”) from the nearby village of Douchy, under

the leadership of their youthful seigneur. A Prince from Denain, the Abbé du Plat d'Argent (Abbot of the Silver Dish) from Quesnoy, and twenty knights from Reims were the last to enter the city. | They spent the evening watching plays and various sorts of sketches. which were often satirical and bitingly critical of the mighty of the age. The squares and the streets were thronged until around two o’clock in the morning, when, as all over Flanders, only the night watchman could be heard in the night: Réveillez-vous, gens qui dormez

Priez Dieu pour les Trépassés (Wake up, you who sleep Pray to God for the Dead). The following morning, around nine o'clock, the bells called all to mass,

each company proceeding in proper order, to one of the churches of Valenciennes. After a great banquet they could admire the moralités par personnages that were performed opposite the City Hall and before the houses of the most important burghers. That evening, a formal supper brought together 562 guests in the Wool Hall to dine to the music of fifty musicians. The Prince de Plaisance, after a ceremonial washing of hands, took his place on a throne and placed around him in order of seniority the Princes from other localities and the chief citizens, burghers, and nobles of Valenciennes.

Finally, he accepted gifts from his counterparts from the other towns. On Monday, 14 May, the revelry and laughter continued in sporadic burlesque ceremonies. The Abbot of the Pau Pourvus of Ath, for example, performed a farcical blessing of a well behind the wheat market hall. Finally,

each delegation was accompanied out of the city, in the same order as their order of arrival, tossing showers of silver pennies to shouts of largesse! largesse! as bells rang out and cannons roared. One author of the times notes that one could see des insolens commettre mesmement des ivrognertes et actes impudiques (insolent people commit even drunken and obscene acts), as well as de grands débordements (excessive de-

bauchery) during this principaulté des folz (kingdom of fools). He concludes that such abuses must be repressed. We should add that in at least one domain they must indeed have been limited. The festivities in 1548 included

nobles and bourgeois as well as the popular classes, but it totally excluded women.*” Was this a remembrance of the strictly masculine aspect of the 87. A. Dinaux, “Une fête . . . Principauté de Plaisance à Valenciennes (1548),” AHL, ist ser., III (1833), 313—38. The source was published in SFW, XI (1871), 61-74.

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Jeunesse societies? Or does it rather indicate the authorities’ conscious desire to keep out those by whom scandal might arrive? In any event, the year 1548

in Valenciennes might be considered as an important step in the history of festive occasions in that city and of urban fétes in general. Not only was the popular frenzy that usually greeted such occasions reined in, but the patriciate’s stranglehold on leisure and play activities began to crystallize. The festivities of 1548 embraced two clearly distinct elements. The occasion gave the masses the illusion that it totally belonged to them, but it was

really designed for popular consumption, as we might now say. It was actually profoundly oligarchical and patrician. The festivities imitated point by point the triumphal entry into Valenciennes of the emperor Charles V in 1540, as we can see by the processions that welcomed the “foreigners” and the attitude of the Prince de Plaisance at the banquet of 13 May. The banquet was open only to the notables of the city and to the “joyous companies,” membership in which, incidentally, also followed criteria of money and respectability. Furthermore, the fête had been reorganized in 1547, after several interruptions in its yearly occurrence, on the initiative of the governing classes of the city. Like groups in Lille and Tournai followed suit, establishing, respectively, a festival of the Prince des Fols, 2 July, and one of the Prince d'Amour, 9 July 1547.

Cities of the time, then, sought to reinforce their relations by the use of “popular” holidays that were declining: the Rois de PEspinette had ceased to exist in Lille in 1487 and their fête was only intermittently celebrated, until

its disappearance in 1596. The Abbée de Liesse in Arras disappeared in like fashion in 1534. Moreover, the resurgence of celebrations such as these—in many regards detached from their former context, disciplined, supervised, and, as in Valenciennes, coupled with important religious feast days—was

not to last. Their meaning was soon clouded, since they occurred at a date different from the original one and their content had changed. What is

more, in spite of their bastardized form, the authorities, and particularly the

Church of the Counter Reformation considered them increasingly dangerous. At the end, the age of the great urban popular festivities gradually ceded to an epoch of specifically religious processions. Indeed, urban civilization fundamentally changed. Centralized state power and the Church, more powerful than before, demanded new conformities. In one way or another, urban popular culture of the fifteenth century

had resisted domestication by thè patriciate and the munici pal authorities. In the sixteenth century this duel was transformed, when the State and the

Church came onto the scene, into an unequal combat between their com-

bined powers and urban popular “superstitions.” This is the perspective in which we must now set the problem. Are we capable of appreciating what

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survived of popular culture in the cities, even before it was struck by the

great, systematic repression ofthe seventeenth and the eighte enth centuries? 3. URBAN POPULAR CULTURE:

RESISTANCE AND MUTATION

The coherence of rural popular culture of the late Middle Ages lay, as we have seen, in an animist and magical vision of the world, for the most part transmitted by women, echoed by the local Jeunesse groups, and accepted by all. From one wave to another of progressively accumul ating tensions and joyous discharge of energy on feast days, the peasant lived at the rhythm of nature and the climate. The relative homogeneity of his community protected this system of beliefs, which served to explain everything, from abrupt or systematic contestation. Parish priests were still close to their flock in their ways of thinking, at least before the Reformation; the seigneurs shared the peasants’ way of life and their “superstitions,” kept to their chateaus, or did not live permanently on their lands; bourgeo is remained discreetly inconspicuous if they happened to buy lands in the village: no threat to modify this somewhat immobile rural world came from the surrounding society. In the cities and towns, en the other hand, space expanded, even if walls surrounded the city, and time accelerated. A sufficient number of nobles, ecclesiastics, and rich bourgeois resided in the cities to enable us to speak (as we see fit) of orders or classes of society. Moreover, contacts with the surrounding rural areas, with other cities, and with strangers increased enormously in the era of commercial capitalism. Under these conditions, cities formed a world that was perforce accessible to innovations. Dress,

mores, attitudes, and mentalities all give witness to this. This spirit of movement, already well established in the highly urbanized zones of northern France, increased during the sixteenth century. At the birth of cities, in the Middle Ages, their environment was massively rural, and they adopted, willy-nilly, many of the characteristics of the peasant world. Rural popular culture was also that ofthe city masses, which were in fact often made up of newly arrived country people, swelled periodically by rural emigration or by throngs of refugees during times of war. This meant that in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, when economic

structures evolved and the bourgeois lifestyle gained in force, every city carried in its bosom both the old and the new world systems. Revolts, frustrations, and new sorts of criminality were born of their inevitable clash. As we might suspect, the stronger won the day. As for the weaker—that is, for the popular masses—they simply had to adapt. Their vision of the world began to lose internal coherence, to fritter away. Popular “superstitions” fell

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under attack (only later to become systematic). This was only a prelude to subsequent and far-reaching changes, and it led, by means of an effort to regiment the various corps among the population, particularly the Jeunesse groups, to a new definition of the sacred—in other terms, to a vast cultural conquest of the masses. The Depreciation of Popular Culture

Urban popular culture, first of all, suffered from a depreciation of the rural world in general that was to continue and to grow until our own times. An unspoken, reciprocal hostility existed between peasants and city folk in sixteenth century France. The famous work of the Breton author, Noël du Fail, who wrote toward

the middle of the sixteenth century, transposes this antagonism to a literary level. His Propos rustiques and his Baliverneries dEutrapel contain a sociological vision that is obviously particular to the author, but that also reflect socioeconomic changes of the time. Gaél Milin has given us a remarkable definition of this vision of society, which disparages the bourgeoisie and the clergy and lauds the rural nobility and the past. In this point of view, the peasant’s characteristics are ambiguous, but not strictly negative. Noél du Fail presents the peasant as a coarse being, in comparison to the local seigneur, but also as the repository of positive values, in comparison to the

urban and ecclesiastical world.** Indeed, du Fail, who was seigneur of la Hérissaye, preaches in favor of his own parish and against the new forces that promised to be more dynamic than the lesser nobility. In doing so, however, he gives expression to a certain scorn, which was true of nobles and bourgeois alike, of all that was rustic.

There are other indications of this city-dweller’s scorn of rusticity. The peasant who came to the market or to the urban fêtes had occasion to see this for himself. He was frequently the butt of jokes, and city folk of all social categories manifest their sense of superiority. Three butchers in Arras in April 1541 address an homme de village who has come to sell a calf at the

city’s lesser marketplace. They quarrel with him over the asking price. One

of the butchers threatens the rustic with a knife, slaps him, then, in a fit of

anger, cuts the tail off the calf. In the same city, during the night of Pâques

communaulx in 1547, a drunken serge-carder finds his way to the basses rues

and demands entry into the house of a prostitute in which three compat-

gnons de village are drinking with the proprietor of the house and two other women. Finding the door closed, they hurl threats at these men, who do 88. Gaël Milin, “Modèles idéologiques et modèles culturels dans Poeuvre narrative de Noël

du Fail,” Annales de Bretagne 1 (1974), 65-104.

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not dare to come out. We could add to these examples the fact that fiftyfour of the seventy-one victims of cutpurses judged by the échevins of Arras from 1528 to 1549 were women, most of them femmes de village . The peasant who risked going to the city arrived in a world that was in all ways foreign to him and even hostile. Rural folk were the favorite targets of thieves, for they were disoriented and less suspicious than city folk. Since they felt ill at ease, they did not always dare to defend themsel ves, even when they outnumbered a drunk three to one. Out of ninety murders

judged in Arras from 1528 to 1549, Only two victims and one accused man

are specifically designated as peasants, whereas the profession of the accused

is known in 68 percent of the cases and that of the victims in 56 percent of

the cases. This underrepresentation of peasants comes from the fact that murder was specifically an outlet for internal tensions within Arras, but, given the general hostility toward peasants, it probably also comes of their refusal to let themselves be involved in brawls, which the échevins punishe d with severity. There was an extraordinary amount of peasant violence in the rural setting at the time, however. If it is so little represented in the urban setting, this must be due—unless Arras is an exception—to an inferiority complex that paralyzed the peasants who came, frequently and in great numbers, to the city. In short, the depreciation of the peasant is probably already clearly discernible. Furthermore, wasn’t the peasant an easy prey to brigands? The city gave its inhabitants a sense of security, which served to accentuate their idea of the inferiority of the peasants, since the countryside was overrun with brigands vivant à Padvantaige—that is, practicing the same brutal techniques as the chauffeurs of the nineteenth century. One band of this sort took advantage of Lent in 1543 to invade an isolated Artois farm. The farmer and his

wife were thrown to the ground and threatened. Then the bandits ont descauchié les saulliers desdits censsier et sa femme, mis leurs piedz dedens le feu (took the shoes off the said farmer and his wife, put their feet in the fire),

before they forced them to drink laveures de pourcheaulx (pig water) to force them to tell where their savings were hidden. Insults and blows continued,

to them and to their servants. Their coffers were opened, and all their clothes and best belongings were carried off.” Scenes like these, which were frequent at the time both in Artois and

elsewhere, could not help but accentuate the cleavage between city and country. The city’s way of life was increasingly particular as commerce and industry developed, while the country seemed the keeper of the past. 89. A.M. Arras, FF 3, fols. 1o2r-103v, 16sr-v, for example. 90. Ibid., FF 3, fols. 131r—v (trial of 5s March 1544).

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Rural “superstitions” were regarded ironically by cultivated townspeople, which contributed to a weakening of their impact on the urban popular masses. This irony did not prevent the city’s petit peuple from continuing to share the vision of an animist and magical world with rural folk or from having the same sort of recourse to witches, healers, and popular medical lore. It

was an irony that penetrated slowly into the common consciousness, however, and that erected a barrier between learned culture and popular cul-

ture. It also prepared the terrain for the spiritual reconquest—or conquest—of the masses nascent within the city walls. The farcical prescription of an anonymous cleric for a remedy to combat the grant mortalité of November and December 1433 in France (which he

notes he sent to the Pope) is evidence of this irony:

Primes, prendez le fiel et Pentraille de Paymant, et le pomon d’un marbre, le nez d’un pillier de pierre, le chervelle d’une teste d’une cuignié, le moulle d’un barrel de fer, du sain de sablon, les mamelles d’un

pinche. ..

tout broyé ensemble en ung mortier de voire, d’un pestel

d’achier bien fort, et puis le destemprez de lait de nourriche qui oncques

n'ait vessy, et le ferés boulir en ung vaissel de glaiche, au feu de grofil, et aprez le portés reftroidir en un thamis, dedens un chauffour, et puis le

mettez en ung voire de cuir boully bien cler, et au vespre, quant vous serez couchié, gardez que vous soiiez couvert de rost ou d’esteulle, pour

vous garder de le pleuve qui vient aprez le vent de minuit, et ne vous esveillez point en dormant, mais le buvez tout à une alaine; et sachiez, se ainsi le ferés, vous vous trouverez, se vous n’estes perdus, sains ou sainte. . . . Che fu esprouvé par nuit sans candaille, en sonjant; et ne say pour qui, et fu donné sans retollir à pis, au mois d’aoust, le jour de Noël,

au matin à nonne, trois heures aprez jour faillant, par un compaignon gallant

(First, take bile and the entrails ofa magnet, and the lungs of a piece of

marble, the nose of a stone pillar, the brain from a wedge of an iron barrel, blood from sand, tongs’ breasts . . . gether in a glass mortar with a pestle of very strong steel, milk from a nurse who has never broken wind, and boil

head, the head all ground toand then stir in it in a clay pot

on a grumbling fire, and after let it cool in a sieve, inside an oven, and

then put it in a leather glass boiled until very clear, and at vespers, when you are in bed, be careful to be covered with burning heat or with straw,

to keep you from the rain that comes after the midnight wind, and do

not wake as you sleep, but drink it at one breath; and know that if you do this you will find yourself, if you are not lost, healthy. . . . Which was

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tried one candleless night, in a dream; and we know not by whom; and Was given without worse exchange, in the month of August, Christmas

Day, in the morning at nones, three hours after twilight, by a lusty, merry fellow).°! The author of this text undoubtedly had popular medicin e in mind, but

he also makes a passing gibe at a great many cultivated people of the time who believed in the efficacy of such remedies, even at doctors whose rudimentary knowledge was not far superior to the prejudices of the people. The humor does not lie in the structure of this document, which is modeled faithfully on remedies in use at the time. After all. a healer, a witch in partic-

ular, would have been capable of just such a discourse based on specific rites

to be performed at night and at certain privileged times during the year. The irony appears only in the totally aberrant connections between terms:

tools and stones are gifted with human life (that is, with a soul); some remarks make no sense whatever; heat is cooled by heat; time is measure d in

totally incoherent ways, and so forth.

We should add, though, that these connections are more illogical for us

than for the author’s contemporaries. Basically, he is speaking of relations between the human microcosm and inanimate things, of a nonrational

logic, of the magical principle that like annuls like—or attracts it—of privi-

leged moments of the year and of the day: all things that we have seen at work in rural popular culture. His discourse is thus perfectly in tune with the fundamental principles of the popular vision of the world. Simply, by pushing these principles to the limit, by upsetting the internal coherence of

the system they found, our author uses irony to exorcise a way of thinking that he is well acquainted with and that he rejects. He speaks to us of a clash between two cultures, but also, and unwittingly, of the vitality of the system that he is denouncing. We might add that what he has to say found many echoes in the urban environment,

at the court, or among the clergy, but

that a concerted and widespread offensive against popular culture had not yet been launched. The combat against popular culture was already severe, but its adversaries were still scattered. For some time now the most virulent enemies of popular culture had been the preachers, the preaching friars in particular, whose field of action

was above all urban. The superstitions and the sins of the people were their favorite topics. The Carmelite Thomas Connecte, for example, preached throughout Flanders and Hainaut, traveling on muleback, in 1428 and 1429. At Douai, 91. A.M. Arras, BB 7, fols. 74v-75r.

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where he celebrated midnight mass on Christmas Eve, 1428, he attacked the

drunkenness of the bourgeoisie and the coquetry of women. In February 1429, at Valenciennes, he organized an auto da fé of female finery, particu-

larly hennins (high, conical headdresses), of the exaggeratedly pointed shoes known as à la poulaine, and of cards, dice, and other table games.” In Arras during the same month, he said mass from a sort of scaffold and preached sermons that lasted four or five hours. A crowd of 30,000 to 40,000 people gathered every time he preached, and the documents add: par sa remon-

strance les dames et demotselles mirent jus les grans cornes que lors portoient, et en y ot plusieurs qui les bailloient pour ardotr; furent arses à la porte de Cité, devant le boucherie, et sy furent ars grant cantité de tabliers, et en fu le peupple très content (as a result of his remonstrances, the ladies, married and unmarried, took off the high coifs [sennins] they wore at the time, and there were some who threw them to be burned; they were burned at the gate to the Cité, in front of the butcher shops, and a great quantity of table games were burned as well, and the people were very glad of this).°3 Luxurious apparel, immoral behavior, and games were the chief targets in this crusade, which touched Cambrai, Tournai, Thérouanne, and other

cities. Thomas Connecte preached, for the most part, during the fêtes des Fous and the Carnival and Lenten celebrations. For the moment, his efforts bore fruit. As in all the cities of France during the same epoch, however, the masses soon fell into the same “errors” as before—until another preacher appeared. Legislation in Lille in 1459 notes that Ja plus saine partie du Caréme se passoit en joustes et esbatemens, partie en Lille, partie en Bruges, Valenciennes, Ipres, Tournay et aultres lieux selon que Poccasion s’offroit (the better

part of Lent was spent in jousts and distractions, partly in Lille and partly in Bruges, Valenciennes, Ypres, Tournai, and other places as occasion arose).°*

This was barely one generation after Thomas Connecte’s “crusade” in the same region.

A great many impassioned preachers paraded through the fifteenth century, and their zeal was matched only by the mores and the habits that they attacked. The ocean ebbed before the divine word, only to flood back after the

French cities of the resistance of of superstition departure of the

men of God. It is undeniable, however, that the preacher s’ efforts at least

contributed to widening the gap between learned culture and popular culture. Religious discourse, directed to fear of God and fear of a Devil omnipresent in the world, for the moment infused the people with a sense of 92. Douet @Areq, ed., La chronique d'Enque rrand de Monstrelet (1400 -1444) (Paris, 1857—62 ),

II, 39.

93. A.M. Arras, BB 7, fol. 23r (February 1429, new style), 94. B.M. Lille, MS. 440, fol. rsov.

|

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guilt and created traumatisms that other preachers later rekindle d. It proposed a model of holiness that common mortals found so difficult to achieve that they were left suspended, as it were, between an orthodox ideal

and a day-to-day practice that was magical and animist. The connect ions between the Christianity of the elites and the Christianity-magic-an imism of the masses became more and more tenuous. Morever, with the Reforma tion and the Counter Reformation, Christianity undertook the destruct ion of this religion of the masses. Sermons, missions, and other ecclesiastical activities became increasingly frequent during the sixteenth and particularly the seventeenth centuries, and the most prominent features of popular culture retreated under their attack.

This is another tale, however, and a cultural break that will be narrated in

the second part of this work. Before the Church took on this immense,

well-coordinated, and unceasing operation, preachers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who were working toward similar goals, had a difficult task on their hands. Their impact on the urban masses ought not to be judged by either their lyricism or their virulence. It may well be that these preachers prepared the terrain for the great final battle, but the violence of their sermons, their aggressiveness, even their crudity, are evidence of the

strength of the resistances that they encountered. Philippe Bosquier, a Franciscan who was born in Mons in Hainaut in 1561 and who died in 1636, published in 1600 in Paris Sermons sur la parabole

du prodigue évangélique (Sermons on the Gospel Parable of the Prodigal Sen), which contains a violent indictment of women and of fêtes, those two primordial elements in popular culture. He calls women ces primprenelles, prayes clystéres de bourses, vrayes harpyes et sangsues, vous rongeant ces folastres et Pauvres muguets jusques aux os et les réduisant jusques à la caymanderie, jusques à la chemise nouée sur le dos (pimpernels, true clysters [to drain] purses, true harpies and leeches, who gnaw giddy and unlucky gallants right down to the bone, reducing them to beggary, to the shirt laced onto their backs). When he speaks of the festivals of classical antiquity, Father Bosquier seems to be describing certain popular wintertime celebrations that he may have observed: L’idolâtrie était pure paillardise en ses fêtes et sacrifices comme en ses dieux et déesses, desquels je n’en trouve nuls qui ne furent ou putiers ou putains. . . . Je woseroye déboucher en vulgaire les impudicitez des festes de Faunus, ny des festes saturnales et florales, solemnisées par putains toutes nues et par hommes enfarinez de mesme.. . (Idolatry was pure ribaldry it its festivities and sacrifices, as in its gods and goddesses, of whom I find none who are

not whoremongers or whores. . . . I would not dare write in the vulgar tongue of the indecencies of the festivities of Faunus, nor of the saturnalia

and floralia, celebrated by stark naked whores and by men

in similar

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[un]dress).°° The least we can say is that the fêtes des Fous and the Carnival

celebrations must not have been popular with this Franciscan humanist. As with the fétes as a whole, popular customs and popular superstitions had become more and more suspect in the eyes of the urban patriciates, who were affected much more deeply than the other townspeople by the moral and religious lessons to which they had been subjected. City authorities—and the patriciate that they represented—had every reason to listen to these erudite lessons. Before Henry IV launched a serious attempt to curb the power of cities, they belonged, body and soul, to an oligarchy eager to impose respect for order—its own order—and its interests. Although the labor market and normal social life were well supervised by the exercise of justice, by the organization ofthe entire population into disciplined corps, and by expelling deviants and dangerous individuals or keeping them at a distance, this was not always true of festive occasions, and it was even less true concerning individual mentalities. There were individuals who balked at some of the more thoroughgoing forms of regimentation. The modification of superstitions and credences—in a word, changing the popular vision of the world—was not an easy task. The most that could be done was to attack attitudes, both collective and individual. This was exactly what the city and the royal authorities did, with varying success. As far as individual attitudes were concerned, they attempted an increased surveillance of mores, of both bodies and souls, which was to bear

fruit only slowly, and did not become systematized until between the sixteenth century and the Revolution. For this reason, this question will be reserved for a later chapter. Collective popular attitudes, on the other hand, offered a better grip to supervision and repression. The various types of festivity that we have ex-

amined were the object of prohibitions and various sorts of restrictions,

some of which had the desired effect as early as the end of the fifteenth century, and in any event generally proved effective by the sixteenth century. One entire segment of popular culture collapsed or was modified under the blows of the authorities, who relayed preachers in their task of attacking exces and abus. This phenomenon seems to have been more marked in northern France than elsewhere, for the cities of the North were often in the hands of highly powerful patriciates and under the rulers of the region—Spanish at the time—developed a triumphant Counter Reformation as early as the sixteenth century, to be established in the kingdom ofFrance, strictly speaking, at a later date. Several repressive traits have already appeared in the description of 95. G. Brunet, “Les sermons du Père Bosquier,” AHL, 3rd ser., IV (1854), 460—61.

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popular festivities. What we need now is to clarify the chronol ogical development ofthis repression. It is not of great importance that a proclamation in Lille in 1382 forbade games and theatrical representations, parish gatherings, the planting of mais, and dancing around the bonfires of Saint John’s

Eve, since the prohibition had no real effect. In fact, it had to be renewed, clarified, and amended in 1397, in 1428, In 1483, In 1514, in 1520, in 1544, in 1552, IN 1559, in 1573, in 1585, and in 1601.% On the other hand, the frequent

reiteration of such prohibitions, above all during the sixteenth century, shows the tenacity of the Magistrat of Lille, backed up at first and then, after 1559, supplanted by the monarchy, in its desire to gain tight control of the people’s leisure time activities. Control over them, but not their total elimination, for the patricians knew full well that festive occasions acted as an outlet for accumulated tensions and that their action on the body social was therapeutic. Didn’t they distract the attention of the masses from reality and from their material difficulties? Didn’t they give release to a violence that otherwise might accumulate and be turned to open revolt against the authorities but that was instead diffused throughout the body social? The problem was that this very violence found expression in brawls, murders,

rapes, drunkenness, verbal exchanges, and vulgar behavior. The

city authorities were quite evidently caught between the need to keep festive periods and a desire to avoid the excessive violence they engendered. Their reactions varied according to circumstances, at least in the fifteenth

century. This dilemma became less keen only with the development of a new climate of religiosity and the increasing intervention of the monarch in urban life. For both the Tridentine Church and the king—who claimed to be absolute—feast days and holidays were without exception periods of disorder and excess that must be forbidden or closely integrated within frameworks of orthodoxy and obedience. The Church put its confidence in its host of priests, the king, in his officers and his representatives, to bring the masses

into line and impose a respect for order and discipline on them. With this firm support to back them up, city authorities gradually agreed that the fétes were useless or dangerous and must first and foremost be Christian. The tolerance that had existed concerning popular merrymaking, formerly considered as a means to govern the city, shattered during the course of the sixteenth century. Spontaneous celebrations became more infrequent. Regulation of family banquets increased, as did the regulation of the ducasses and of festivities involving one street or one quartier. Religion increasingly took over confraternity meetings. The burlesque festivals 96. De La Fons-Mélicocq, “Les sociétés dramatiques du Nord,” s—38.

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were totally forbidden. Finally, the major urban festivities, once tied to the

principal seasonal festive cycles, lost most of their specific character and became transformed into spectacles for the populace instead of actively involving entire population. This systematic change was particularly precocious in the cities of northern France, for Charles V and Philip II, the successive Spanish rulers of the

region, imposed severely repressive measures to combat the Protestant heresy, and kept a keen eye on urban society for this reason. Moreover, we

can note the birth, after 1525, of a central agency for assistance to the poor,”

which was but one of the forms of a new regimentation ofcities and towns. An imperial edict as early as 1531 limited ducasses to one day and wedding festivities to a day and a half (with a maximum of twenty participants), forbade the naming of godparents pour en avoir ou recevoir présent ou prouffit (for the purpose of having or receiving gifts or profit), prohibited the creation or continued existence of cabarets outside cities or away from inhabited places, obliged wineshops to close on Sundays or feast days at the hours of high mass and vespers, and denied drunkards access to public office. The cities took this opportunity to publish local regulations aimed at the same and other “excesses” and “abuses,” as we have noted. But force of habit and the passive resistance of the masses prevented these measures from being carried out completely. Philip IT tried again in 1560 with an ordinance forbidding any and all to chanter, ou Jouer, faire divulquer, chanter, ou jouer publicquement, en compaignie, ou en secret, aulcunes farces, ballades,

chansons, comédies, refrains, ou aultres semblables escriptz, de quelque matière ou en quelque langaige que ce soit, tant vieulx que nouveaulx, esquelz sovent meslées

aulcunes questions, propositions ou faitz concernant nostre religion, ou les personnes ecclésiasticques (sing, or play, or cause to be divulged, sung, or played publicly, in company, Or in private, any farces, ballads, songs, comedies, re-

frains, or other similar writings on any subject or in any language what-

soever, old or new, in which there be mixed any questions , propositions, or

facts concerning our religion or ecclesiastical persons). As for moralités and aultres choses, qui se font, ou jouent, à l'honneur de Dieu ou de ses Sainctz, ou pour réjouyssance et récréation honneste du peuple (morality plays and other things that are produced or played in honor of God or his saints, or for the delight and honest recreation of the people), they had to obtain previous approval from the principal curé, officier ou ma-

Sistrat du lieu (principal priest, chief official. or the magistr ate of the place). Morality plays were expressly prohibited if they contain ed chose quy puist schandaliser, les jeux muetz, que Von appelle remonstrances ou représentations par 97. J.-P. Gutton, La société et les Pauvres en Europe (xv1*-xviité siècles) (Paris, 1974), 103—105.

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Personnaiges (anything scandalous [or] mummers’ plays, which are called remonstrances Or representations by personages). Taken literally, this ordinance would have had the effect of making the burlesque festivals disappear completely and of profoundly modifying popular celebrations on all other occasions. The text also contains the principal reason for the promulgation of this ordinance, which was to prevent the common people from being mal édiffié, séduict et déceu ...

; et, pour aultant que par cy-devant n’estant le monde si corrompu, ne les erreurs si grans qu'ilz sont présentement, Pon wa prins de si près

regard à yceulx jeux, farces, chansons, refrains, ballades et dictiers, comme le convient au temps présent, ouquel les mauvaises et damnables sectes, de jour en jour, pullulent et Saccroissent davantaige (wrongly instructed, seduced, and deceived...

; and, the world never before being as corrupt, nor errors so

great, as they are at the present time, a close look has not been taken at these

plays, farces, songs, refrains, ballads, and tales, as is appropriate today, when the evil and damnable sects, day by day, are burgeoning and further

increasing). It would be difficult to formulate the aim of this new legislation better or in clearer terms. Clearly, it did not succeed in changing inveterate popular customs either abruptly or totally. But its obstinate application, although this varied a good deal from place to place and was even interrupted for a time, was to pay in the long run. Those found guilty risked heavy fines or public humiliation. In 1563, seven men accused of having performed in public Le jeu du veau d’or (a play on the Golden Calf) without official permission were led, bareheaded and

barefoot, in their shirtsleeves, carrying a lighted six-pound candle, to the church of Saint-Etienne in Lille, where they had to kneel and ask pardon for their errors. They were then returned to prison until the following Sunday, when they repeated their honorable amends. Is it surprising, under such conditions, that the race of the Day of the Innocents, for example, disappeared in Lille after 1564?°* Popular theater declined in favor of perfor-

mances by the Jesuits’ students. An atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and spy denunciations invaded the cities. The townsman, like Rabelais at the end of his life, watched the horizon darken, and he slowly learned to conform, as

far as leasure time and play activities were concerned, to the will of the mighty. At the end of the sixteenth century, this evolution was much advanced in the cities of northern France. Repressive ordinances proliferated. In Arras it was forbidden to all, in 1597, to walk in the marketplaces on Sundays and feast days while divine service was in progress, at the risk of a fine of sixty 98. Texts in A. Dinaux, “Habitudes conviviales,” sos—16 and De La Fons-Mélicocq, “Les sociétés dramatiques,” 29—3r, 35.

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sous. The échevins of that city forbade in 1593 de ne danser du soir, à chanson ny

aultrement, par les rues (dancing in the streets in the evening, to songs or otherwise), at the risk ofa fine of ten sous, to be paid by the parents or the

masters if the guilty parties were underage or servants. The fine was raised to sixty sous in 1598, with the prohibition de faire danses, esbatz, masquerades

et assamblés publicques avant les rues, tant de jour que de nuict, et que chascun ait à se comporter en toute modestie (holding dances, diversions, masquerades

and public gatherings in the streets, day or night, and everyone must behave with all modesty). Probably this ordinance refers to the preparations for a procession, but in 1610 the prohibition of masks reappears, going in

the streets without a light après la cloche lachée (after the bell has sounded) was forbidden, and wineshop owners were instructed to shut up shop at

nine o’clock. Children’s dramatic productions were also prohibited in Arras at the end of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, spectators risked the same fine as those found guilty of playing jus de biquetz, battes ou croches (various games of paddle and ball) or amusing themselves aux noix ny aux semblable Jeux à Pargent (playing nut toss or similar gambling games). The authorities chased all sorts of gamesters from the streets, the squares, the marketplaces, and the ramparts, where they formerly had amused themselves. Now everyone’s leisure activities were supervised carefully. Still, in Arras, French actors were granted the right in 1602, after some priests had examined their plays, to donner quelque relâche au peuple, de quelques honnestes récréations, pour peu de jours, à certaines heures (give some relaxation to the people, [consisting] of some honest recreations, for a few days, at specific hours). Their pertormances ran from 24 to 27 July 1602, which were week days, from three to five o’clock, when divine service was not being celebrated. Again, on 22

September 1604 the students of the Jesuits in Arras interpreted Mucius Scaevola on the occasion of the entry into the city of the new governer of Artois.” An old world was slowly unraveling; the popular féte was slowly fading. Indeed, a movement for the constraint of bodies and the submissi on of

souls had begun, and it would accelerate in the Age of Reason and the En-

lightenment. As the sixteenth century came to a close, all French cities followed the model of the cities of the North, and it was difficult to laugh and to play in any town setting. The offensive was in preparat ion everywhere, even though the disorders of the age of the Wars of Religion prevented the king and the Church from joining their efforts as efficacio usly as in the Spanish Netherlands. 99. B.M. Arras, MS. 1885, fiches “Jeux scéniques”; A.M. Arras, BB 40, fols. 104r (1593), 106r (1597), 108r (1598), 1ror (end of the sixteenth century), and 126r (1610).

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This can be seen in the synodal statutes of Lyon, around 1566— 1577, which prohibit, under threat of excommunic ation, és jours de fête des Inno-

cens et aultres, Von ne souffre ès églises jouer jeux, tragédi es, farces et exhiber spectacles ridicules avec Masques, Armes et tambou rins (on the feast of the Inno-

cents and other feast days, anyone from performing in the churches plays, tragedies, farces, and ridiculous spectacles with maske d players, arms, and

drums).

Is there anything surprising about this? The way for the Catholic church to take control cf the masses lay in the subjection ofthe cities to religious orthodoxy. As for the king, if he wanted to be an absolu te monarch, he had to turn townspeople into obedient subjects. The city authorities had no interest in defending the masses, which they feared, against a centralization

that nonetheless was not always to their liking. A multif orm depreciation of popular culture had been going on for some time, attack ing, among other things, popular festivals, games, and merrymaking. These attacks simply coalesced beginning with the middle of the sixteenth centur y. New definitions of man, as a submissive subject and a good Cathol ic who repressed his impulses, led to scorn for the outcast and the poor and ushere d in a systematic regimentation of every individual, of every social group. This phenomenon occurred in cities earlier than rural areas. In the city,

popular culture was hemmed in and operated under the eyes of its dominators, and even urban popular culture became an object of scorn, even of horror, for the most religious minds. The hour of its decline had sounded on Tridentine, absolutist, and patrician clocks. Festive occasions and play disappeared piece by piece as this depreciation set in. These were only the visible aspects of a “deconstruction” of the popular vision of the world, however. Socially, the way to regiment the masses necessarily lay in attacking the role of women and, above all, the role of the Jeunesse societies.

The Decline of Women and Youth Groups There should be no need to insist on the low status of the female condition in France before quite recent times. The clergy was prejudiced against women, and this prejudice increased during the Renaissance in spite of the highly literary feminism that appeared in French cities toward the middle of the sixteenth century. Moreover, women in the city seem to have had even less status than their rural counterparts, whose social condition was still far from brilliant, as we have seen. This was because the townswoman was the

object of unceasing attacks on the part of preachers who saw her as the source of all sins. Brother Thomas Connecte, who attacked female finery, 100. Cited in De La Fons-Mélicocq, “Les sociétés dramatiques,” 20.

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and Father Bosquier, whose prose is peppered with invective concerning women, were by no means exceptions. The theme of the frivolity of women was the delight of pious Tridentine ecclesiastics. One anecdote from Antwerp could have sprung from any city of the Catholic world. On 27 May 1582, a rich young lady of Antwerp who was given to pleasures of dress and of the flesh had a fit of temper when she found her collars were improperly starched just when she was dressing to attend a wedding. She swore to God that she would rather have the Devil carry her off than go to the wedding feast improperly dressed. The Devil arrived, disguised as a lover carrying beautifully starched ruffs; then he strangled her. Six strong men were unable to lift the dead woman’s coffin,

out of which jumped a black cat. Mesdames, seek moderation in your luxurious clothing! For it is designed only to tromper, piper et émouvoir à la volupté la plus grande part des hommes (deceive, cheat, and move most men to lascivity) Many men at least took this little social catechism to heart. Hence the moral status of the city woman fell slowly. It is true that primary schools were open to her (beginning in the sixteenth century in the North). A strict segregation of sexes ruled in them, however, and aside from rudimentary training in reading and writing—which varied enormously from one region to another—education generally was not open to women. Thus a deep gap opened between the male sex, an elite of which monopolized written culture, and the female sex, restricted to primers and to oral culture, while

the scorn shown to women increased even more in the urban environment.

As one monk from Clairvaux wrote in 1544, woman is de cueur et voulloir vain, terrestre, charnel et mondain (in her heart and in her will vain, earthly,

fleshly, and tied to this world).!°? There is nothing new under the sun, it seems. One of the chief consequences of this sort of disparagement, echoed by the priests, by the authorities, by judges, and by schoolmasters, was to cut off urban popular culture from its roots. The fundamental role of the woman, who collected and transmitted this culture, declined. To be more precise, this culture itself was contaminated by the degradation of women’s status. Could their old wives’ tales really be taken seriously by sons, husbands, and fathers? And even if they could, could one admit to this publicly

without being exposed to derision, practical jokes, or punitive violence? It was in this sense that an accelerated discrediting of women was one of the principal means used in early modern times—it makes little difference whether consciously or not—to weaken urban popular culture. tor. “Discours miraculeux . . . ” AHL, 2nd ser., III (1841), §36—41,. 102. B.M. Lille, MS. 161, fol. 4v.

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Social structures in the city even supported such a deterio ration. Life

was lived outside of the family for the most part, in contact with the many

corps into which the population was organized and which often excluded

women. The influence of women was more distant, more diffuse, and more

contested than in the country. Street festivals and fêtes de quartier were

equivalent to the rural veillées, to be sure, but, precisely, the authorit ies put

limitations on distractions ofthis sort. As for the major feast days, they did not allow female influence to take root, for they were addressed to too large a throng, they were increasingly becoming spectacles, and they occasio nally

even excluded women,

as in Valenciennes in 1548. Women

were left with

neighborly relations and the ultimate outlet of purely female revolts. One

example of these revolts, which occurred with some frequen cy in sixteenth-

century cities and towns, is the émotions that took place during wheat short-

ages, when women gathered, raided the grain storage bins, then rapidly dispersed. Townswomen played a large role, on the other hand, in the religiou s

revolts of the epoch, both Catholic and Protestant. They appeared to be

acting in random fashion, but in reality, didn’t their attitude arise out of a distorted memory of their former purifying, ritual role—in short, of their

cultural role? Side by side with the women in these riots were boys of ten to twelve years of age, also acting as the “conscience of the community in matters of domestic discord.”19 City adolescents, like the women, no longer had any more than an infinitesimal part of their previous cultural role. In rural areas during the same epoch the importance of the royaumes de Jeunesse—called bachelleries in the West and abbayes de Jeunesse in the Midi and in Burgundy—was increasingly well established. At first sight it seems as though similar institutions survived in the cities, although profoundly modified in their structure and their functions to imitate other corps, confraternities and trade guilds in particular. This means that at times it is extremely difficult to distinguish urban youth groups from other organizations. Even Arnold van Gennep, misled by his sources, cites as youth organizations in what are now the dé-

partements of the Nord and the Pas-de-Calais associations that specialized in the preparation of holidays (the Abbé de Liesse of Arras or the Prince de Plaisance of Valenciennes) or guilds (the serge-workers’ Prince d'Amour or the drapers’ Prince d'Honneur in Arras).!™ As for the genuine Jeunesse organizations, they did indeed gather to-

gether the adolescents of the cities, but not exclusively, as older unmarried and even married men also joined their ranks. Above all, these organiza103. See N. Z. Davis, “The Rites of Violence,” in her Society and Culture, 182—84. 104. Van Gennep, Manuel (Paris, 1943), I, pt. 1, 205—206. Compare this list with those I propose in part 2 of this chapter.

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tions were structured according to the military model furnished by the companies of archers and cannoneers that existed in every city. We have already encountered the Capitaine du Pénon of Douai in 1493 or the Roi des Chapels of Saint-Quentin in 1586, who clearly belong to this category of corps dominated by adults and even by rich burghers. Youth obviously had its part in the burlesque festivities of the Innocents or the Fools and in the celebration of major feast days in the cities, notably during Carnival. Nevertheless, in the greater part of the examples that I have cited, youth groups did not play a motivating role, nor an autonomous role. This permits us to juxtapose van Gennep’s hypothesis and Natalie Zemon Davis’s remarks. Van Gennep emphasizes the absence of youth in Easter celebrations (a state of affairs that had long been true), and he suggests that the clergy may possibly have eliminated this age group from Participation in the paschal cycle. Davis speaks of the ornamental function of urban organizations of young males in this epoch and of their complexity, as compared to the rural Abbayes. According to her, this complexity corresponded to a recent inclusion of adults into these groups, in response to the needs of a society in which marriage was more and more delayed. Hence the youth groups had a new role in the cities between the fifteenth and the seven-

teenth centuries: that of “socializing” the adolescent (outside of the family

circle, for the most part). The loss of a specific role attributed to this age group, its domination by adults, and the multiplication of Jeunesse groups— twenty in Lyon in the sixteenth century, if indeed they are all Abbayes de

Jeunesse—thus becomes more comprehensible. What we have before us, in this view, is the application of new ideas, ideas expressed by Gerson, then

by the Jesuits and by the Protestants: to reform the Church one must begin with the children.’ If we combine the ideas of our two authors, we can arrive at a global, chronological explanation of the modifications to which

urban Jeunesse groups were subjected.

There is nothing to prevent us from supposing that decades or centurie s carlier such groups had the same forms and the same functions as in rural areas. The growth of cities at the end of the Middle Ages and in the sixteenth century changed all that by detaching the urban populati on from certain seasonal rural festivities and by causing the gradual disappea rance of the magical and fertility-oriented aspects of the festivities that remained . As the gap between city and country grew, summer and autumn celebrations lost vigor in the cities, as they were too intimately connecte d with agri105. Van Gennep, Manuel (Paris, 1947), I, pt. 3, 1394. 106. Davis, “The Reasons of Misrule,.” in her Soctety and Culture, 109—22;

Davis, “Some

Tasks and Themes,” in Trinkaus and Oberman (eds.), The Pursuit ofHoliness, 318—26.

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cultural labors. Winter and spring festivities, roughly those from All Saints’

Day through May, resisted this erosion better because they corres ponded to the distant and magical preparation of the moments of major agricultural labors, rather than to those periods themselves. Townspeople lost sight of

the ceremonial aims of these festivities, however, and kept a ritual that was

essentially detached from its context or restricted in scope. The “Inno-

cents,” for example, still tried to seduce women,

but their actions may no

longer have been viewed in relation to fecundity and bringing the dead earth to rebirth. In any event, city folk had unwittingly broken the completeness of the cycle of rural magical festivities. The more enlightened townspeople, moreover, lived in a space that was

less compartmentalized than that of rural folk, and in a time that was ofa

different quality. Since their vision of the world differed greatly from that of the peasants, they could not help but consider certain “excesses” —during the burlesque festivals in particular—as gratuitous and morally dangerous acts. This explains the campaign that cities led, not very systematically at first, against such acts. Young people, as we have noted more than once,

played a fundamental role in most rural fétes. Thus the urban authorities gave a high priority to the task of disciplining the young in order to put a stop to what they felt were “abuses.” At first, of course, youth societies were eliminated from the most important feast day of the year, Easter. Next, the inopportune dynamism of youth was the object of more general prohibitions: the échevins of Arras ordered on 8 July 1476: Adfin de obvier aux noises et débas qui souvent adviennent a cause des danses et assemblées des jones gens, que plusieurs desdits jones gens vont armez et embastonnez de jour et de nuit, . . . qu’on ne face plus desdites danses et assemblées par tamburins ne aultrement, se n’est pas sollempnitez de noces (In order to avoid quarrels and altercations which often arise because ofdances and gatherings of young people, and since some of said young people go about armed and provided with sticks day and night [we order] that the said dances and gatherings with tambourines no longer be held, unless for wedding celebrations).!°’ Finally, the definitive solution was found: young people in these groups were to be flanked by adults, who were also members of those professional, confraternal, or neighborhood groups that en| sured obedience and discipline throughout society. Most probably this solution was discovered unconsciously, by simple imitation of structures normal to urban society. Young males, who had already lost contact with the popular vision of the world as a whole, and who par107. A.M. Arras, BB 38, fol. 109v.

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ticipated, through habit, in rites the full significance of which they did not

comprehend, were thus definitively cut off from this vision of the world. When they became members of groups that resembled, trait for trait, the confraternities, the “sporting” associations, or the guilds of their city, they restricted themselves from that moment on to the ritual allowed these groups. The sixteenth century still saw a few clashes in which the voung braved the authorities (who in turn were becoming increasingly severe, moralizing, and of strict Catholic obedience). Then, as one “excess” after

another disappeared, as one “abuse” after another was uprooted, these organizations became religious confraternities and nothing more, like the En-

fants de la ville in Rouen in 1587 or the Confrérie des in Paris under Louis XIIL.!°®

Enfants des Petites Ecoles

Like women, adolescents in the cities and towns lost the essence of their

role in popular culture. By segregating the sexes and by imposing conformity on everyone in structurally identical corps involving the entire population urban society annihilated the dynamism of the popular vision of the world. Women and adolescents had been the channels for transmitting this vision, and /a Jeunesse had given it reality and constant renewal. From this moment on, ifthis vision survived at all in the cities, it was in the form of practical lore, superstitions, rites, and taboos cut off from their roots and

fast atrophying. This of course only increased the scorn that members ofthe elite and representatives of learned culture felt toward a superstitious populace. In the end, the day would come when this credulity would facilitate

further alienation of the masses and when they would be offered an ersatz for popular culture that would in fact convey the values of the governing classes. A New Definition of the Sacred

The urban world arrived at a breaking point toward the middle of the sixteenth or, at the latest, the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the depreciation of popular culture and the loss of status of women and Jeunesse groups converged. The game was not over, however, for collective mentalities do not change in one generation, or even in several. The only things that must have changed at this point were attitudes, particularly concerning festive occasions. What remained was to transform mindsets—mentalités— and to penetrate into every body and every soul. This was a long, drawnout battle, and one that the Church, the state, and the governing classes fought for centuries. This battle started from the postulate that any deviance from the norm is to be condemned. But the norm needed to be de108. Davis, “Some Tasks and Themes,” in Trinkaus and Oberman (eds.), The Pursuit of Holiness, 319.

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fined clearly. The Church took on this task, separa ting “superstition” from orthodoxy like the damned from the blessed in a Last Judgment. It imposed the new definition of the sacred in order to stigmatize what deviated from it. Before the Reformation, Catholicism did not fail to condemn its deviants, the Albigensians, for example, and the Waldenses. In doing so, it defined the sacred, so to speak. But the situation of the lower clergy was such, before the 1520s, that there was no clear border line, in the rural parish and the urban parish alike, between the sacred and the secular. Actually, everything was in the first category, from the celebr ation of Easter to the flogging ofsaints’ statues or suppers in the cemeteries. Parish priests generally lived under the same conditions as their flocks, wore the same clothes as they, and occasionally kept a concubine and raised a family. The Reformation and the Counter Reformation made profou nd changes in this state of affairs. The sacred was defined as a separat e category, no longer to be sullied by the mundane. The Catholic orthod oxy of the literature began to be applied in the real world. Separating the two was not an

easy task, however.

It relied on teaching, newly risen in status, on

the

preaching of a better-prepared clergy, and on repression. Improp er religious opinion for the first time (in minor matters) became a punishable

offense. Jean Catoire of Douai, for example, had undertaken a pilgrimage

to Saint-Laurent d’Aix, a nearby shrine, to be cured of pains in his leg, and he threatened to throw ung caillou en la teste et Pabattre de Pautel (a stone at the [saints] head and knock him off the altar) if his prayers were not answered. He had also been heard to say that it was false that Notre-Dame du

Miracle Saint-Pierre, in Douai, resuscitated dead children brought there,

but that the devil sometimes performed such acts. He was sentenced on 20

June 1555 to making honorable amends, bareheaded, to having a mass said at

both of the churches in question, and to giving each church an altar cloth worth ten florins and bearing the image of the Virgin. This man, who had always vécu catholicquement (lived as a good Catholic)!” was by no means a heretic. A few decades earlier his statements and his acts would have caused hardly any disturbance, for they were commonplace popular credences. His error lay in calling attention to himself at a time in which thesacred and the secular were beginning to be clearly distinguished. The Church’s efforts in this domain were backed up by the civil authorities, city authorities especially, who gave particular attention to acts of violence in one way or another involving religion. From 1528 to 1549, the

échevins of Arras judged fifty-seven persons, or 10 percent of all criminal 109. F. Brassart, “Procès d’hérésie . . . Douai...

(1545—1555),” SFW, VIII (1868), 131—32.

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sentences passed during that period, for crimes against the Church and

crimes against morality. This list includes a father guilty of incestuous relations with his daughter (he was condemned to death), three rapists, and seven married men accused of frequenting the filles de joie (condemned to sentences that ranged from three to ten years of banishment, according to their reputation). There were also sentences for pimping and for acts of violence toward women and girls. One divorced woman who had abandoned the child she had conceived of her lover, a priest, was flogged and banished for ten years.!1° Obviously, such sentences had occasionally been given during the Middle Ages. What was new in the sixteenth century was that the punishment of these “crimes” was both more systematic and more severe. One or two generations earlier, frequentation of prostitutes by married men or concubinage among priests was condemned by law, but fairly well tolerated in reality. The sixteenth century saw a concerted effort at moralization. Judges became more sensitive to the sacredness of marriage, which the Council of

Trent was to affirm with force in 1563. They energetically condemned celebrations, individual or collective, that might contaminate the principal events in religious life—the Easter celebrations to begin with, which they attempted to keep unsullied. One man was sentenced to pay a stiff fine on 4 May 1537 in Arras for carnal knowledge of his servant on Bon Vendredi et

nuit de Paques (Good Friday and on Easter night). The cabaret du Glay in the same city was closed for fifteen days in April of 1550 for having enter-

tained youths and filles de joie who had come to drink Le Bon Viendredy durant le saint service divin (on Good Friday during holy divine service). And we have seen that at the end ofthe sixteenth century taverns were obliged to remain closed on feast days and Sundays in response to increasingly urgent proclamations.!"! The moralizing of urban society was accelerating. Minuscule details show proof of this as well as veritable sociological mutations. One minute but symptomatic detail is the stipulation that the échevins of Arras newly elected 31 October 1580 were obliged to dress de noir chacun selon sa qualité (in black, each according to his station) to take part in ceremonies and pro-

cessions and to perpétuer the honor of the law. Moreover, they were forbidden to attend meetings of their confraternities while they held office, with

the exception of the mayor, who headed the company of the crossbows-

men." These two stipulations were aimed at establishing a clear distinction between the municipal magistrates and the rest of the population, in partic110. A.M. Arras, FF 3. mt. B.M. Arras, MS. 1885, fiches “police religieuse.” 112. A.M. Arras, BB 15, fols. 12v—113r (31 October 1580).

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ular the confraternities, suspected of profane exaggerations in their saint’s day celebrations. The Magistrat would thus win increased respect and obedience from all. This recalls the atmosphere that reigned in Calvin’s Geneva, where black clothing predominated and behavior was austere and hostile to pleasures and profane distractions, Sweeping changes can be seen in another domain as well, as popular fêtes Bave way to processions, which were ideal occasi ons for the precise defini-

tion of a new sense of the sacred. In Arras, once more, we can trace this

evolution during the last third of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, and a comparison of these later police regulations with those of the fifteenth century can help to clarify the transformation. It is not that processions were absent from the city in the Middle Ages; far from it. But then they always ended in some sort of popula r festivity in

which the crowd mixed with the clergy. In the later period, on the other

hand, it was forbidden to se mesler avecq les gens d’Eglise (to mix in with the churchmen). The prohibition was not totally respected, since it had to be reiterated in 1596, in 1598, and in 1609. At this last date, 17 April (Good Fri-

day), on ordonne à tous bourgeois, manans et habitans de ceste ville de faire

dresser autelz aux lieux accoustumez, ramonner et nectote r les rues, tendre tapis,

espandre verdeure et parcquetz au devant de leur héritaiges; deffen dant aussy à tous bourgeois se mesler aux gens d’Eglise et aux femmes et fillette s de marcher derrière lesdites processions (all burghers, laborers, and inhabitants of this city

are ordered to erect altars in the usual places, to sweep and clean the streets, to display rugs, spread branches and reeds before their houses ; forbidding

also all burghers to mix with the church people and women and girls to march behind the said processions). There were a good many processions for exceptional occasions: to celebrate the peace of 1597 and 1598, the Dominicans’ Provincial Chapter in 1599,

a treaty with England in 1604, and so forth. There were also annual pro-

cessions. In 1615, for example, there was the procession of the Holy Sacrament on Sunday, 29 January; on 5 February, that of Candlem as, on 22 April,

that of the Wednesday of Easter Week, on 31 May, that of the Holy Sacrament ofthe parish of Sainte-Croix, on Sunday, 17 June, another procession of the Holy Sacrament, followed 24 June by that of the Holy Candle. Was

there also an annual procession in November, like the one held 9 Novemb er

1608? !13 In any given city, processions that so frequently followed the same itinerary could not help but leave their mark on the population, now reduced to Participation as spectators alone. The people’s more active role was re113. I[bid., BB 40, fols. 103r—137v (1595—1615).

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stricted to cleaning and adorning the streets, hanging up tapestries or pictures, in some cases lighting feux de joie at night. We can imagine these crowds gathered along the route of the cortége, immobile except for occasional groups of women and children that attempted to follow along after. Before them passed the pomp and splendor of the Tridentine Church: it was a grandiose spectacle, with brilliantly-colored vestments, the gold of the reliquaries, canopies, and candles, with church bells ringing out, at

times even covering the music and the chanting. The secular world was on one side, the sacred on the other. A frontier had been drawn between them.

Undoubtedly, religion emerged enhanced, but the masses had become immobile bodies—ears, eyes, and noses perceiving a magnificent spectacle. The liturgical year almost totally took the place of previous popular festivities. The effort to place processions during the cycle of winter and of spring attests to this: Weren’t these periods precisely the times that had been reserved to the great urban popular fêtes, particularly Carnival and the month of May? Was there any room left in Arras in 1615 for the excés of the

earlier gregarious revelry? The Church, backed up by the civil authorities, substituted processions

for these festivals and, more generally, set up a clear frontier between religion and daily life. Everywhere in France during the seventeenth century an offensive of this sort was taking place in the cities and towns. Its timing differed from place to place, but the results were identical. Religious feast days were turned into moments of piety and not of pleasure. In this sense, Lille evolved more slowly than Arras, for processions there still mingled the sacred and the burlesque at the end ofthe sixteenth century. The drama of Darius recevant des baffes (Darius beaten) was given there and on 7 January 1598 we can still find societies headed by the Pape des Guingans, the Abbé de Tout-y-Faut, the Roi des Testus, the Roi des Crochus, and the Roi des A-M itant, and so forth. (Pope of the Oglers, Abbot of All’s Lacking, King of the Stubborn, King of the Hooked Men, King of the Half-Mad).!'* Anachronistic vestiges of the feasts of the Innocents. The age of true processions had arrived. This new age ushered in a new mental equilibrium in cities and towns. Festive occasions had had the function of purifying the local community through magical rites, through violent play, and through the discharg e of energies. The transition to an exclusively Christian definition of the sacred eliminated the therapeutic function of popular festivities. Urban violence increased. The sacred swung wildly between its former secular pole of attraction and its new religious pole. Only an official violence could respond 114. “Les processions ou cortèges de Lille” AHL, and ser. I (1850), 252— 57

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to this situation of cultural transition. The values on which the social community was founded needed to be stated clearly: the concept of labor and that of marginality were necessary complements to the new definition. of the sacred. The phenomenon of marginality arose, at the dawn of the early modern period, not only because economic and structural phenom ena clashed dramatically,"5 but also because ofa profound cultural mutatio n. If social service and the repression of vagabondage gained a new importa nce, it was because the governing classes’ hold on the cities strictly depend ed upon them. The popular vision of the world died. Popular festivals died. Hence the earlier equilibrium between the life of labor and the life of leisure activities died. The spectacle of the sacred was not enough to establis h a new sort of equilibrium, particularly since the Christian ideal propose d to

the masses was inaccessible, or at the least difficult to attain. Thus the new

society had to be founded on a philosophy of work and of social integration. All poverty legislation was, in practical terms, just an indirect definition of work as a social norm. In Lille these notions were expressed as early as 1527, in an ordinance that

leads off with the idea that begging leads à Poiseuse, quy est mère de tous

maulx (to idleness, mother of all ills) and above all to criminality. A fund for

paupers was created. It was to benefit only the truly poor, residents of the city for a minimum of two years, a list of whom was to be drawn up by five solid citizens, taken from the five parishes of the city. Truans, brimbeurs, brimberesses, gens wiseux et aultres (Outlaws, vagabonds, male and female, idlers, and others)—that is, all the rootless and marginal people who did

not fulfill their conditions—were to leave Lille within three days. The following year, 4 January 1528, a mark was instituted to enable the citizens to

distinguish the paupers receiving aid from the others: une fleur de lys de drap rouge sur leur manches (a lily of red woolen cloth [the seal of the city] on their sleeves) in plain sight. That same year, 8 April, any and all were forbid-

den to beg sur rue, églises, chimentières et aultres lieux (on the streets, in churches, in cemeteries and other places) during the Easter season. Other

texts make it clear that only the true poor had the right to beg. In 1541 these were defined as gens débiles et non puissans de gaignier leur vie (weak persons, unable to earn their living). Only those unable to work found grace in the magistrates’ eyes. As for hale and hearty vagabonds, they now appeared to present a serious danger and were driven out, sentenced to forced labor, or

sent to the galleys. The cities closed their gates to jobless strangers, including refugees from areas devastated by the war. Lille still welcomed some poures gens honnestes (honest poor people) who came from Artois, aians perus. Geremek, “Criminalité, vagabondage, paupérisme,” 371-72.

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dus leurs biens par fortune de guerre (having lost their goods due to the fortunes of war) and furnished them a subsistence in 1528. In contrast, the éche-

vins of Lille decreed in 1556 that refugees guy ne averont résidence ne polront couchier, de jour, du soir, ne de nuit, ès chimentières ne rues de ladite ville, à péril

de fustigation de verghes et bannissement (who have no residence will not be able to sleep, by day, evening, or night, in the cemeteries or the streets of

the said city, under threat of flogging with sticks and banishment).!'¢ Pauperism became a problem of public order in the sixteenth century throughout Europe.” Rejecting strangers in general and physically valid beggars from elsewhere in particular; aiding the least favored of the city;

defining labor as an absolute value: wasn’t this the way to reinforce a spirit of community and prevent revolts from breaking out? These new procedures aimed at the restoration ofan internal equilibrium that was breaking up. Instead of play and festivity, the urban patriciates gave bread to the “honest” poor, work to the masses, and sacred spectacles to all. They themselves defined the limits of the community by means of harsh legislation, whereas it had been the population that formerly had taken on that task, through magic and on festive occasions. The patriciates furnished scapegoats to the growing violence in the form of vagabond strangers, heretics, and—already—witches. They answered the ambient brutality with the violence of their sentences and with the execution of criminals. The sacred, defined in terms of good Catholic orthodoxy, and labor, im-

posed as a fundamental value, were the two pillars of the new urban equilibrium. An old world was collapsing, a world that had mingled laughter and religion and work and merrymaking, because the fête in all its multiple forms and throughout the year had given city life its underlying pulse. *

*

*

Urban popular culture grew increasingly different from the culture of the

rural masses during the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This

occurred in response to pressure from the rest of urban society, for the city

formed a unique world, hemmed in, saturated with violence, vast, and difficult to police. There were three stages to this evolution. In the first stage, during the fifteenth century, the lack of centralized civil

and ecclesiastical powers obliged city authorities to rely on their own forces

alone to assure order and peace within their walls. The rise, spontane ous at

first, of a multiplicity of associative bodies permitted the regimentation of 116. Texts published in De La Fons-Mélicocq, “Ordonnances pour les pauvres de Lille (1527—1556),” Bulletin du comité de la langue, de l’histoire et des arts de la France, XII (1855—56) (Paris, 1857), 700—10. 117. Gutton, La soctété et les pauvres, 93-121.

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society and the diffusion of the values of authority and obedience. Still, there existed in the cities a popular culture that was very much alive and close to the popular culture of rural areas. The various bourgeoisies were obliged to recognize the reality of this culture and the masses need for play and magic that found expression in it. This led urban authori ties to tolerate

superstitions and, above all, popular celebrations, for they saw in them a

means of governing. This means proved unsure and ambigu ous, however, since the merrymaking populace soon overstepped the limits of the permissible, and subversion frequently broke out, particularly in the course of burlesque festivals. This led the governing classes ofthe cities to attempt, in the second stage of this evolution, to rid the city of such dangers, in the fifteenth century by a somewhat

disorganized repressive legislation, then, between the end of

the fifteenth and the mid-sixteenth centuries, by more subtle procedu res. Festivities were infiltrated, usurped, and transformed into magnifi cent mass spectacles, as in Valenciennes in 1548. The boisterous youth societie s were led and supervised by wealthy bourgeois. The superficial characteristics of the celebrations were respected, but the meaning and the functio n of the

fêtes had already been totally warped. In the end, festivities became a means of rooting social conformity, of gathering together and mingling rich and poor, of accentuating a consciousness of belonging, each and every person,

to the vast urban whole. This, to the detriment of what we now would call

class consciousness. People of that age obviously did not perceive things in those terms. Still, wasn’t it true that the powerful expressed intense fear of the populace and its revolts? As for the masses, they felt keenly the difference that existed between themselves and the patricians, and on occasion they were capable of expressing an unfocussed hostility toward the dominant groups, or of joining together for short-lived seditious gestures. The social climate was quite evidently changing. It changed so much that urban popular culture reached a third stage at some point between the mid-sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, depending on the local situation. A large-scale cultural con-

quest began at that time, pursued jointly by a regenerated Church, a state on its way to absolutism, and oligarchies that held total sway over their cities. Each one of these powers now dedicated a renewed attention to the establishment of order, peace, and urban prosperity. Each one of them desired the institution of a purified religion and of an almost mystical view of labor. This exceptional conjunction of interests came in response to exceptional surges in the realms of religion, economics and society, even of politics, surges that bore the names of Reformation and Counter Reformation, of capitalism and proletarization of the urban masses, of absolutism, and of

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various revolts. All of this was translated into practical terms in the cities by a degradation of festive occasions and opportunities for play, by a decline in the status of women and youth groups, by a new definition of the sacred and of work, and, through its many associative bodies, by a growing regimentation of the population. Never before had popular culture been the object of such systematic repression. For two centuries after the great break of the years 1550—1600,

country folk, like city-dwellers, were to receive its full brunt.

Conclusion to Part I

HE continuing survival of fêtes and of popular culture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was linked to a certain type of highly decentralized—indeed, atomized— power. Cities and villages were cells within the body of a State that, given the slow means of communication and transportation ofthe age, was extraordinarily vast. The reality of power operated at that local level more than on a national or even a regional scale. Custom in all its infinite diversity dominated daily life, whereas “the law,” both as the one, unique source of rights and as a factor in political unification, had to wait for the course of the sixteenth century, and above all for the following centuries, to be imposed definitively. Men lived collectively, within solidarities of family, clan, village, or

feudal relationships that were all necessarily of limited spatial extension. Men also lived in an essentially rural environment and in such a climate of insecurity and fears, real and imaginary, that they needed to reinforce these solidarities, these ties to survival groups, on a constant basis. The law, individualism, the State, and official religion were unable to assure security. Is it any wonder that such a humanity, fragmented and frightened, sought in a magical and animist vision of the world a prop, a hope, and an explanation of the universe that established institutions failed to bring him? This explanation of the world pertained everywhere, but it was essentially adapted to the narrow framework of the village and of agricultural life. On a local scale it Was a way to act upon all that one could not understand, and primarily upon those phenomena of life and death, of physical nature and of man,

that the age could not conceive as “natural.” We might be tempted to call this vision of the world a bundle of superstitions, good twentieth century rationalists that we are. And superstitions they were, to be sure, for the new forces that we have seen at work in the 179

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cities. But for the overwhelming majority of peasants and for most of the urban masses, this vision was at once a religion, a moral code, a philosophy, and also a means to action in all the events, normal or exceptional, of exis-

tence. In short, it was a system of the world that had its own internal coherence and that should be judged—as Lucien Febvre would say—in relation to this coherence and not according to the pejorative formulas of its enemies of the early modern period or of our own day. One could say that this system of the world was assassinated simply because it was the system ofa nearly exclusively rural and fragmented civilization, whereas the future belonged to the cities, to the dynamism ofcapitalism, to centralization and to absolutism, and to the established Church. The repression of popular culture began in the cities and towns, as we have seen.

In reality, a millennial equilibrium was changing: the classical age of the peasants, between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries, prepared the crisis of the rural world of the nineteenth century. Even ifcities counted for only about 15 percent of the population of France in 1798, they had become of considerable importance in the life of the country. They had secreted Cartesian

rationalism,

science, and technology,

and had weighed

heavily in the evolution of both state and Church. Because of the cities, it became glaringly evident that the popular vision of the world, of peasant origin, was poorly suited to accelerated transformations in civilization. The

road to progress, dear to the hearts of the philosophes of the eighteenth century, had to be prepared by cultural change, since the system of the popular world was based on perennial stability and on resistance to all change. What had permitted rural society to survive in nearly total immobility for a thousand years—in spite of the adventure of widespread land clearance—proved totally ill-adapted to the new conditions. This explains the effort to suppress popular culture: in the last analysis it was just the foam on the crest of a wave of profound change in western European society. In the seventeenth and the eighteenth centurie s, the repression of popular culture, which was accomplished consciou sly in the name of religious and political values, nevertheless prepared the victory of

the cities, of progress, of science, and of learned culture. In the long term

and in this perspective, the last two centuries of the Ancien Régime constituted an epoch of transition between feudalism and capitali sm triumphant, between a rural civilization and a civilization that was to become predominantly urban during the second half of the nineteenth century. What remains to be accomplished during the second part of the present

work is to describe the ways, the means, and the effects of this slow but

violent cultural revolution.

PART II

The Repression ofPopular Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

f

INTRODUCTION

Culture and Power Power and knowledge directly imply one another. FOUCAULT, Discipline and Punish: The Birth ofthe Prison, tr. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977). 27.

MICHEL

Politics are not limited to parties, unions, electoral campaigns , manifestos, and

marchers waving signs. Politics are deeply embedded in everyone’s gut and go

back in time farther than any philosophy. PIERRE-JAKEZ

abr. J. Guicharnaud

HÉLIAS, (New

The Horse ofPride: Life in a Breton Village, tr. and

Haven and London, 1978), 329.

HE repression of popular culture in France in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries was not the result of a plan, duly elaborated and systematically put into effect by the governing classes or by authorities of any sort. To look for traces of a deliberate intention ofthe sort would be vain and illusory. In reality, the cultural revolution described in the second part of this work arose from the very evolu-

tion of society during the Ancien Régime.

France underwent a slow and profound change between the Wars of Re-

ligion and the Revolution. I do not need to insist on the development of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, on the progress of urbanization, on the ac-

centuation of tensions and social contrasts, and so forth. More important for our purposes is the modification of the power structure. The absolute

State, backed up by a regenerated Church, sent tendrils into all the body social, which formerly had been highly fragmented. Political centralization grew. It was based in a sense of nation born or reinforced during the Wars of Religion, in a language that had become stabilized and was extending its

influence, in the establishment of definitive frontiers as a result of foreign wars, in internal peace, established in spite of the Fronde or in spite of popular revolts, and in the Law of the sovereign, imposed on everyone.

Above all, centralization showed in the development of vertical ties that

183

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connected every subject, every associative body, to the central authority. It did not destroy the old institutions, nor even the horizontal ties that united men within the framework of subgroups in society, but it did profoundly modify the previous political equilibrium. The relative independence previously enjoyed by the segments of the body social, rural and urban community organizations in particular, disappeared. Now it was the absolute State that guaranteed the security of all. The success of this movement came in part from the fact that the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries had been marked by a great crisis of insecurity, particularly by the search for new religious dogmas. Subsequently, many contemporaries undoubtedly looked to the state as a providential institution that offered stability in a dangerous and changing world. In exchange, however, the state demanded ofits subjects heavier taxes and above

all a greater social conformity. Social conformity, in fact, was completely transformed in the epoch of the absolute kings. It was no longer a matter of each person respecting, essentially, the norms of the population group to which he belonged, but of bowing to a general model, valid everywhere and for everyone. The crux of

cultural repression lay here. Court society, the lettered, the nobility, and the well-to-do townspeople—in short, the privileged minorities—worked out a new cultural model, that of the honnéte homme of the seventeenth century and of the homme éclairé of the eighteenth. This ideal, obviously, was inac-

cessible to the popular masses, but it was nonetheless proposed to them as a

model. This was, first, because it haunted the minds of those whose respon-

sibility it was to teach the people submission and respect for authority. Next, because centralization and absolutism necessarily engendered a move toward cultural unification. With the passing of generations, from Flanders to the Midi, from Brittany to Alsace, in Paris as in the smallest hamlet, offi-

cials and priests, soon spelled by those they had persuaded, infused their

millions of contemporaries with the new values born of triumphant centralization. This movement for the acculturation of the masses quite naturally came into conflict with popular culture, which held totally different values and existed in a decentralized and particulate world. | Need we insist that the adversaries of popular culture did not conside r it a philosophy of existence? The scorn shown by members of the various elites for all that was connected with the world of gens vils et mécaniques (lowborn and working people) should suffice to explain this incomprehension. Furthermore, the governing classes probably were less and less conscious, as the decades passed, of attacking a cultural entity. From their point of view there was but one civilization: their own. Outside of that reigned

Introduction to Part II

185

ignorance, superstitions, and “abuses”—that is, deviance s from the one and

only norm. These deviances had to be corrected if all were to adhere to the same values and if social order was to be assured stability and perennia lity. This is why historians would be wrong to search in the archives for some coherent plan for the destruction of the popular vision of the world. Such a document would suppose that its author recognized the operation of another system of world besides his own. Such an idea was far from enterin g the minds ofthe elites of the Ancien Régime. There is many a record, on the other hand, of their efforts to impose the dominant cultural model on the masses—that is, to assure that the centralized, absolute power gained tight control over this overly fragmented world. It is hardly surprising that the principal sources for this question are judicial archives, both ecclesiastical and lay. A good deal of data can also be

gleaned from other sources: central or local administrations, archival sources

of the Church in general, and so forth. Finally, a cultural system is always connected to a precise form of power.

The existence of popular culture at the end of the Middle Ages and the be-

ginning ofthe sixteenth century cannot be understood without reference to a very decentralized political life. Similarly, triumphant absolutism secreted a cultural model that sought to impose unity to the detriment of all diver-

sity. This could not be achieved without the submission of individuals, and the way to submission, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, lay in

the constraint of bodies and the subjection of souls, as we shall see in chapter 4. This assured the operation of the new mechanisms of power, but it

did not occur without resistance, passive and violent, on the part of the humble. Thus scapegoats had to be found: witches, whose long martyrdom is described in chapter 5. When they were burned—or so it was thought—

the flames also consumed the symbols and the last vestiges of“abuses,” “excesses,” and “superstitions”—all that the twentieth-century historian calls

popular culture.

Better still, the seventeenth century saw the emergence of a peddler’s literature that purveyed a surrogate of popular culture. Indeed, the Bibliothèque

bleue from Troyes and its counterparts could only alienate the masses further and cut them off from the living roots of their traditional vision of the world. These publications of learned origin introduced a uniform ideological model everywhere. In the eighteenth century in particular they reduced to a system the fabrication of consent we have described above. Chapter 6 is devoted to this veritable and subtle acculturation of the popular levels of society. This acculturation continued, what is more, into the nineteenth and

the twentieth centuries: thus the question that will be posed in conclusion

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will be that of the protraction into our own times of elements in the cultural revolution studied in Part Two. Are we not witnessing today a disorganized resurgence of themes and attitudes that arise—in profoundly modified forms, to be sure—out of this popular culture that was slowly stifled in the age of the absolute kings?

CHAPTER 4

The Constraint ofBodies and the Submission ofSouls: New Mechanisms ofPower

T would be false to claim that the popular masses were not subjugated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the first place, they were slaves to the elements, to sickness, and to omnipresent death. They were subjected to men: to the king, to the seigneurs, and to the ecclesiastical authorities, all of whom extracted taxes and demanded services and unfailing obedience when need arose. But the common people were relatively free to make use of their bodies as they saw fit and were not required constantly to rein in their sexual or emotional impulses. Roman Ca-

tholicism, furthermore, demanded of them that they perform the gestures of religion, but it lacked the means to penetrate profoundly into their souls, which remained for the most part dominated by magic and by “superstition.” All in all, the masses were neither totally alienated nor very tightly supervised. As long as order and the established values were not questioned, they enjoyed a relative autonomy, particularly in cultural matters, as I have shown in the preceding chapters. This situation changed radically with the establishment of a truly absolute royal power. The epoch of Louis XIII and Louis XIV was for the masses a century of duress. Not only because taxes increased enormously, because war, famines, and epidemics raged, yielding the zigzagging demo-

graphic data that Pierre Goubert has so admirably analyzed, but also because of a tightened ideological domination. The monarchy, supported by a minority of the privileged and by the Church, undertook the task of regimenting the masses, working people and idlers alike. The strictly institutional history of this grandiose effort is well known. It is symbolized by the creation of intendants, the eyes of the king in the provinces, and by a politi187

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cal activity that it would be difficult to summarize in even an entire volume. The hidden face of this phenomenon, however, has to my knowledge not yet been the object of any systematic study. I mean by that the fabrication of consent or even the fabrication of simple submission. The multiplication of royal agents or the progress of centralization cannot alone explain why more than 90 percent of the population accepted, practically without revolt after 1675, a yoke more severe and an exploitation more systematic than in the past. In truth, the real base of the new political domination was the

social conformity of each individual, and this was accomplished by a joint subjection of body and soul. The absolutist State discovered and used, with the aid of the Church and of the social elites, a “political technology of the body,” and it learned to make use of the soul, “the prison of the body,” as

“the effect and instrument of a political anatomy.”! The end result was a diffusion throughout society of a model of vertical political relations that was organized around the notion of total obedience to the king, himself the image and servant of God on earth. 1. THE CONSTRAINT OF BODIES

I will borrow Michel Foucault’s excellent definition of a “political technology of the body” used by the monarchy and its henchmen during the two last centuries of the Ancien Régime: “the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body.” The first condition had long been realized in France. The second would soon come to be realized as well, through a “knowledge” of the body, through a “microphysics of power” that was not expressed in systematic discourse, but was rather “a multiform instrumentation.”? In other words, the constraint of the body did indeed proceed from a strategy of power, designed to obtain the most perfect obedience possible on the part of the subjects, but it in no way constituted a coherent and systematic plan. Bodies would be constrained because the logic of absolutism and ofcentralization demanded it and led in

that direction; there was no need to reflect on the impact or the validity of

this fact. Bodies would be constrained in several ways: by sexual repression, by training in bodily control on all occasions, by judiciary mutilation and by torture, all of which marked the social limits beyond which each individual could no longer make use of his own body as he saw fit. 1. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth ofthe Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York, 1977), 26, 30. 2. Ibid., 26.

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Sexual Repression

“Tt has been demonstrated time and again that the attitudes and the way of life of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries were pro-sexual,” Jos Van

Ussel wrote not too long ago in a sociological and historical monograph.’

Indeed, as we have seen, both peasants and city-dwellers showed little hesi-

tation or sense of guilt about the exercise of lower body functions. Sexual

repression started around 1500, and it continues into our own times, with a particularly strong surge between 1550 and 1700.4

A widespread change in behavior was behind this repression. New rules of proper conduct developed. As early as the end of the Middle Ages there were “Babees’ Books” that circulated in western Europe and offered a new civility to the children of the governing classes. Mores evolved. The bedroom came into being, first as a separated area and then, in the eighteenth century, as a room set apart from the other rooms in the house. The bed, which had welcomed adults and children pell-mell in the sixteenth century, as the descriptions of Noél du Fail attest, gradually lost occupants, in the upper classes of society at least. The habit of sleeping nude disappeared, and in the sixteenth century underwear came into use, at first as a Way to pre-

vent indecent contact. Nudity even became taboo, whereas people frequently washed and dressed in public in the sixteenth century and even under Louis XIV. Entire families no longer went nude or partially nude to the étuves (steam baths). Modesty increased. Sexual brutality as Noël du Fail describes it among the peasants and as Brantôme describes it among the nobility gave way to more restrained sexual behavior. The sexual vocabulary that had been so very rich at the time of Rabelais shrank and was transformed. Cruder, more symbolic words came to be used to speak of parts of the human body that had become taboo. Barbarous instruments were invented to prevent children from masturbating, and so forth. In a general way, everything connected with excretion or with sexuality came to make up a sphere of individual intimacy. People learned to blow their noses, to spit, to sleep, and in general to comport themselves with

civility. They learned to control their bodies and avoid impropriety. The lower body became a world apart, to the point that it seemed not to exist for the Précieuses of the seventeenth century, or even for the cultivated man of the time. On the other hand, it is certain that the popular masses re-

flected this change only slowly and partially, and this accentuated the gap 3. J. Van Ussel, Histoire de la répression sexuelle (French trans., Paris, 1972), 39. 4. Ibid. The literary examples that follow are taken from this source and from N. Elias, The Civilizing Process, trans. E. Jephcott (first German ed. 1939, New York, 1978).

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between their mores and those of the dominant circles. The elites found all the more reason to scorn the common people: weren’t humble folk dirty, smelly, ugly, vulgar, coarse, and oafish, according to the canons of the new

urbanity? Even though the villages and the popular districts of cities and towns did not take to the mores of the elites, the discrediting of sexuality that was one of the principal aspects of these new mores was imposed on the masses. Demographic data show this at a glance, and even literary sources before 1$$0—1600 give us a preliminary impression of a fair amount of sexual permissiveness in the popular world. One of the few works of historical demography concerning the sixteenth century insists on the fact that illegitimacy, in the Nantes region, oscillated between 3.9 percent and 0.3 percent of all births in urban parishes, and between 4.6 percent and o.1 percent in rural communities. Furthermore, 50 percent of the parents of illegitimate

children whose family situation is known lived in concubinage, and 8.5 percent had had children adulterously.5 We cannot speak of generalized license in this connection, but neither can we interpret these data in terms of evi-

dent sexual inhibition. In contrast, the seventeenth century quite certainly

shows efficient repression in this domain. At a time when mass means of contraception were nonexistent, the rural illegitimacy rates now hardly ever rise beyond 1 percent. They are even 0.5 percent in the Beauvais region between 1600 and 1730. Illegitimate births, more numerous in the larger cities than in the village, show a tendency to decrease everywhere in the seventeenth century, and sometimes up to the middle of the eighteenth century, before they rise quite sharply after 17601770. Prenuptial conceptions also rose everywhere beginning with the middle of the eighteenth century, and

sometimes even beginning in the 16505.° These data are obviously difficult to interpret. Globally , they indicate,

according to current interpretation, that sexual repression was at work in

France between 1600 and 1750, whereas the preceding and the following pe-

riods saw a greater liberty in this domain. Some scholars conside r that the

Church had succeeded, between 1600 and 1750, in imposing almost total

chastity outside of marriage (and marriage came late at the time and was even more delayed during the Ancien Régime). Girls were seldom wed be-

fore they reached the age of 25, and boys married at around 27 and even 30

years of age. Taking into account the brevity of average life expectancy, a 5. A. Croix, Nantes et le pays

nantais au XN1° siècle: Etude démographiqu e (Paris, 1974), 94— 97. 6. À. Armengaud, La famille et Penfant en France et en Angleterre du XV1° au xviti¢ siècle: Aspects démographiques (Paris, 1976). See also J.-L. Flandrin, Les amours paysannes: Amour et sexualité dans les campag

nes de l’ancienne France (XV1°-Xx1x° siècle) (Paris, 1975), 178—70, 233—34; J.-L. Flandrin, Familles: Parenté, maison, sexualité dans |ancienne société (Paris, 1976). an

Constraint ofBodies and Submission of Souls

IQI

great many unmarried men and women must have died without ever having known the delights of the flesh. This seems aberrant to other historians, who prefer to raise questions concerning possible forms of sexual expression that escape demographers’ counts, notably the practice of masturbation.” Let us say, without attempting to settle the question, that popular sexual behavior seems to have been dominated between 1600 and 1750 bya

respect for the norms imposed by the Church. Even if individual appetites were less restrained than it might be thought, it is certain that it was no longer possible to dispose of one’s own body as freely as during the preceding centuries. At least, anyone who failed to be circumspect and to avoid overly free expression of desires ran the risk of being dragged before the tribunals, since a great many types of crimes against morality were on the books at the time. The officialités —that is, the ecclesiastical tribunals—repressed sexual deviance among

flock and shepherds alike. In the seventeenth century, the

archdiocesan offictalité of Cambrai judged 142 moral offenses involving rural priests, and 664 sexual offenses among the laity, in the majority rural. Carnal relations between unmarried young people make up 38 percent of the lay crimes; adulteries, sometimes involving incest as well, 32 percent; and simple incest 11 percent. Moral offenses among the clergy, which were few between 1600 and 1630, rise sharply from 1630 to 1650, return to their previous level between 1650 and 1670, then reach new heights between 1670 and

1700. Trials of the laity, numerous from 1644 to 1664, disappear almost entrely from 1664 to 1674, then increase during the last quarter of the century. Furthermore, when we look beyond the rise and fall of punished offenses,

we can see that the court showed a quite clear absence of rigor at all times, toward priests and laity alike. Women, however, generally received harsher

sentences than men.* These data show, on the one hand, that sexual repression intensified in the Cambrésis, particularly toward the middle and the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and, on the other, that the sexual conduct of villagers

and of many priests remained fairly free. Indeed, the high number of trials and the relative indulgence of the judges indicate that the Church was far from having won the day in this region. There is no doubt, however, that in the long run the behavior of the masses and of their pastors was indeed modified. In the eighteenth century, the same officialité in Cambrai judged 7. Armengaud, Lafamille et Penfant, 31-33, 96—97; Flandrin, Les amours paysannes, 160-65.

8. J.-M. Baheux and G. Deregnaucourt, Affaires de moeurs laïques et ecclésiastiques et mentalités populaires au xvit° siècle (1594-1706), d’après les archives de lOfficralité métropolitaine de Cambrai, unpublished mémoire

de maîtrise, directors P. Deyon and A. Lottin (Lille, 1972), 338 pages

typewritten (pp. 79, 82, 204—206, 210, 212, 215, 217, 261—63).

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46 cases of defloration,

105 cases of adultery—26 of them incestuous—

and 20 acts of incest committed by laity.’ Even if there are lacunae in the documentation, we are far from the two hundred and more cases of adultery and the 73 cases of incest of the seventeenth century. However, 90 per-

cent of the sexual crimes in the eighteenth century concern peasants, which leads us to think that sexual repression was less widespread in the countryside than in the cities. As for priests, they surely become more and more

virtuous. The officialité of Troyes, for example, judged only two priests for fornication between 1685 and 1722, and two parish priests were reproached only with having taken too young a servant.! That the Church undertook the surveillance of morality and that it met with success is hardly surprising. But it was not alone in the effort to establish a “moral order” by infusing sexuality with a sense of guilt and by repressing sexual deviance: lay courts did their share. Hadn’t the king set the example by publishing in 1556 “one of the most terroristic edicts in previous

French legislation,” punishing with death any woman found guilty of “having murdered her child”?! In reality, all the king did was to make this particular case conform to the evolution of repressive practice in the sexual domain. This evolution is clear in the city of Arras. During the Middle Ages, moral offenses do not seem to have attracted the judges’ attention to any great extent.'? In Antwerp, to pick a point of comparison, they represented less than 1 percent of all crimes from 1358 to 1387.15 In Arras between 1528 and 1549, on the other hand, the échevins brought forty-two persons to trial,

including ten women and two adolescents: twelve for procuration, three for rape, seven (married men) for the frequentation of prostitutes, ten for vio-

lence against women or girls, one for incest, two for child abandonment, and so forth. On the whole, these crimes represent nearly 8 percent of all people brought to trial for the period. More important, the accused were

women in 24 percent of the cases involving moral offenses, whereas females in general averaged only 15 percent ofall criminals.'* Sexual repression increased even further in later periods in Arras and in Artois, as the jurist Pierre Desmasures (who was procureur général for the 9. A. Lottin et al., La désunion du couple sous VAncien Régime: Lexemple du Nord (Lille, 197s),

97-112.

10. Flandrin, Les amours paysannes, 215. 11. Ibid., 203-204. e

12. See A. Laurence, “Les comptes du bailli d'Arras au x1v¢ siècle. Source du droit criminel et pénal,” in Positions des thèses . . . de PEcole des Chartes (Paris, 1967), 57-64; Comptes d’Arras,

A.D. Nord, B 13893 (1401-1402) ff, heading “Exploits de justice.”

13. J. A. Goris, “Zeden en criminaliteit te Antwerpen . . . van 1358 tot 1387, RBPH table between pages 204-205. 14. A.M. Arras, FF 3.

(1927),

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

193

comté d'Artois) informs us in his Remarques et observations . . . sur la Cou-

tume générale d'Artois, written before 1638. According to him, adultery did not usually involve the death penalty, but honorable reparati on and amends,

if the guilty parties were of condition honneste (well-to-do) and flogging and banishment if they were personnes viles et alyectes (lowborn, abject persons) .

Compliant husbands were exposed in public with distaffs or banished, after

having made honorable amends, and their wives were exposed and flogged.

Incest in the direct line (between father and daughter) bore the death penalty, but not incest committed en ligne transversale—initiated by a

brother, for example. As to incest in the broader definition, it merited no

more than banishment, after flogging and honorable amends. Unless there were

aggravating circumstances: Gilles, known as Joly Filiot, was hanged in Béthune 19 March 1584 for carnal knowledge of two sisters, one of them

thirteen years of age. These girls were first cousins of his wife. He had induced them to drink breuvaiges empeschans la conception (contraceptive potions), and they had lived for some time with him and his wife. In cases of stupre—seduction of a virgin—the guilty party might be forced to dower the victim or marry her. This crime was not often pursued in Artois, our author tells us. Bestiality led to death by fire. Thus Oghuet from Sainte Marguerite perished in Béthune, in spite ofhis grande simplicité (mental retardation) and his youth. His mare was executed on the same

spot. The author notes than in France the trial records were burned with the condemned person to erase all trace of the crime. Masturbation was not considered with as much severity, and sa recherche west ni usitée ni pratiquée (it is not usually sought out tried) in Artois. Abnormal forms of intercourse were judged with “indulgence” when the wife had submitted to them against her will: the échevins of Bapaume simply burned a chapeau d’estouppes (literally, a burlap hat) on the head of a wife guilty of such sodomy. Simple fornication outside of marriage involving widows or girls was not prosecuted, but couples living in concubinage à pot et à feu, comme Von dict (by the pot and by the fire, as it is said) were sent packing by the courts ifthe pastor or the neighbors requested it. Prostitutes were tolerated only in the public bordeaux. Otherwise, they were obliged to leave the city, by simple decision of the échevins and without judgment (in the particular case of the city of Arras). In this provincial capital there existed, before the Council of Trent, public bordellos tolerated and

supervised by the Rot des Ribauds. They were later abolished.'5 These remarks on judiciary practice in Artois are corroborated by an anonymous jurist in a collection of sentences copied down around 1630 and 15. B.M. Lille, MS. sro (eighteenth century copy), title XI, fols. 2449r—2481Vv.

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concerning the preceding hundred years or so. We find here twenty-two examples of condemnations for adultery in Arras between forms also noted by Desmasures. He notes that incest, was often punished en dessous de la mort (with less than in the direct line. For example, on 9 May 1573 a married

1562 and 1613 in the on the other hand, death), even incest man who had got-

ten his daughter-in-law pregnant was flogged and banished from Artois for ten years. The Parlement of Dole, to give a comparison, on 7 March 1600 sentenced a villager guilty of incest with his widowed sister-in-law to perpetual banishment after he was flogged and branded with a hot iron. Our anonymous author also differs somewhat from Desmasures’s judgment concerning sodomy and bestiality. He says the punishment was severe, but I have found no death sentence. Otherwise the two documents by and large agree, but the anonymous jurist offers some supplementary information. He describes thirteen sentences of married men who had frequented prostitutes between 1533 and

1578 who were obliged to make honorable reparation, to pay a fine, and to spend three days and three nights in prison on bread and water or who were banished for a maximum offive years. He notes ten examples of polygamy between 1555 and 1593. Pierre le Clercq, a brewer, was decapitated on 15 January 1557 for having married three women, one of them from Arras; an-

other man was sent to the galleys for life; and still others were humiliated, whipped, flogged, banished, and so forth. Finally, infanticide is represented

by seven sentences given between 1530 and 1634, three of which, in 1530,

concerned a father and his two daughters. All of the accused were executed, with the exception ofone girl proclaimed innocent and one widow flogged and banished for ten years. Quite obviously, lay judiciary practice closely followed the religious moral code of the Counter Reformation. The anonymous jurist we have cited, and who belonged to the Conseil d’Artois, notes in connection with this last instance that célibat n’est estat favorable sil west suivy d’un voeu simple

de chasteté (celibacy is not a favorable estate ifit is not pursued with a simple

vow of chastity). His manuscript is embellished with formulas such as:

L’amour charnelle est très dangereuse . . . elle abestit, abrutit toute la SAG ESSE,

résolution, prudence (carnal love is very dangerous . . . it lowers [man] to the

level of beasts, dulls all wisdom, resolution, prudence). Or: le plaisir charnel

mest pas convenable à la nature des hommes (carnal pleasure is not proper to the nature of man).!”

|

All the courts became avid defenders of Christian moralit y. The supervision of morals was one of the principal functions of the échevins of Arras at 16. B.M. Lille, MS. 380, at the various headings cited. 17. Ibid., pp. 254, 178, 185.

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195

the end of the seventeenth century. Out of 232 sentences that they passed between 1694 and 1717, 102 concern moral offenses and 92 of these—nearly 40 percent—concern /ibertinage, that is, prostitution in all forms, 3 concern

rapes, 4 concubinage, 2 the abandonment of children, and 1 polygamy.’

Undoubtedly, the échevins by this time had lost a part of their jurisdic-

tion Over more serious crimes, which would make moral offenses proportionally higher in relation to total crimes. Still, these figures indicate an extremely high degree of sexual repression, and, in particular, an active struggle against urban prostitution. Out of 130 dossiers on moral offenses in

Arras for the period 1674-1701 studied by André Cornette, 93 concern questions of prostitution and 11 concern procuration. The sentences were

often severe: there were 104 banishments, 60 percent of which were for life, with one or several additional punishments, such as honorable amends, ex-

posure with the carcan, flogging, branding with a hot iron. There are few bourgeois among the condemned. On the other hand, 60 percent of the accused were not citizens, but vagrants or, in many cases, sixteen to twentytwo-year-old /ibertines of modest origins, camp followers to the soldiers garrisoned in the city.!° During the eighteenth century sexual repression became less severe. In Bordeaux from 1768 to 1777, moral oftenses that came before the jurats—the local equivalent of the northern écherins—were no more than incidental. Kidnapping seductions make up the greater part of them, while prostitu-

tion was tolerated unless there were complaints from the neighbors. In Paris during the second half of the eighteenth century, moral offenses repre-

sented only 1.6 percent of the cases presented before the criminal court of the Chatelet. Only bigamy and particularly rape were pursued. Prostitution and adultery now “fell under the jurisdiction of gossip alone.””° Sexual repression, which for the most part was concentrated in the period from 1ss0—1600

to 1700—1750,

is thus attested by literary, demo-

graphic, and judiciary sources. It was more than a systematic struggle on the part of the Church alone: the authorities and the members of the governing classes joined to promote a new type ofcivilization in a new type of state. In this sense, the surveillance of everyone’s sexuality, through the establishment of laws and taboos, was aimed at subjecting people’s bodies,

and in particular the bodies of the popular masses, in order to obtain the 18. A.M. Arras, FF 4. 19. A. Cornette, “La police des moeurs à la fin du xv1i¢ siècle,” Plein-Nord (8—9 May 1974), IO—I2. 20. D. Vié, “La criminalité à Bordeaux de 1768 41777. . . ,” in Positions des thèses . . . de PEcole des Chartes (Paris, 1971), 193—99; P. Petrovitch, “Recherches sur la criminalité à Paris dans la seconde moitié du xviri: siècle,” in A. Abbiateci et al., Crimes et criminalité en France, XVII¢-XVIII¢ siècles (Paris, 1971), 21$—16.

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highest possible level of obedience. Rules of proper conduct and modesty and obligatory continence

outside of marriage, which

came

late in life,

were social norms imposed on all. So was the obligation to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh only with moderation, within the authorized limits, and within the confines of marriage. Ecclesiastical and lay justice alike defined the boundaries of the permissible, the possible, and the forbidden to every-

one’s conscience. By different channels, each individual learned that his body did not completely belong to him. In twentieth-century terms, he was persuaded that sexuality was a social function and not an erotic or individual function. But there was more: he was also taught to control his entire body in order to put it to the service of society. Social Control over the Body

Both Protestant and Jesuit pedagogues had understood, as early as the sixteenth century, that the best way to form good Christians was to concentrate on the education of children. More generally, along the same lines, childhood became in the Ancien Régime the principal area for the efforts of a “political technology of the body”—childhood, but also adolescence, and even the married state if the married man remained dependent on his father. Up to twenty-five or thirty years of age, sometimes even longer, people now learned to control their bodies. From birth, and this was true long before the age we are considering, the infant willy-nilly learned to control his body. Since he was tightly swaddled until he was old enough to walk, the search for autonomy that psychologists consider so important for babies was totally impossible. Buffon, in his Histoire naturelle, published from 1749 to 1782, notes that this “want of

exercise naturally retards the growth of the limbs, and diminishes the strength of the body” (tr. Kendrick, 1775, I, 22) and took his stand against swaddling.

More recently, David Hunt, studying the childhood of Louis XIII, has stated that French children of the seventeenth century labored under a serious complex, due to the frustration of their search for physical autonomy during early childhood. The dauphin Louis was weaned at twenty-five months (whereas the prescriptive literature usually recommended weaning at cighteen to twenty-four months). His guardians showed little attention to his personal cleanliness and they purged him frequently, depriving him of control over his own bowels. After a stage of total liberty and of sexual games permitted or provoked by-his nurses, at the age of three he began to be “broken” by regular whippings. Hunts description speaks of this as an inhibition of desires for autonomy accompanied by training in total obedience to a highly authoritarian father. The image of the “good” Henry IV loses some of its shine. Was this princely education somewhat atypical? Per-

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

197

haps, but a strong hand was used in all of French society of the time to inculcate respect for parents or superiors in children. Childhood, Hunt adds, was considered by adults as “a kind of infirmity,” as a danger, as long

as the little being had not learned to conform to the desires of adults—that is, until six or seven years of age.”! After that age and up to the age of fourteen or fifteen came the second stage of childhood, which was the period oftraining for a trade or an office. Children ofall social levels generally left their families to live under the rod and suffer the corporal punishments of a master previously unknown to them. In the eighteenth century, however, only the nobles and the artisans continued to place their offspring to apprentice for later functions. The collége, for its part, took in a social elite: there were fewer than fifty thousand

students in these schools in all of France in i789. This “great confinement” of children in schools usually involved frequent corporal punishment. Finally, an extremely long adolescence permitted the sons and daughters of the popular masses to earn enough, slowly, to enable them to become established independently and to marry.” All in all, the child and the adolescent alike underwent a paternal tu-

telage that became heavier and heavier during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Daughters of the well-to-do were often promised to the convent against their will or forced into marriage to prevent them from dipping too much into the capital that would come to their brothers. Noble and particularly bourgeois boys were confined, disciplined, and supervised in the collèges. They were taught to conduct themselves as honnêtes hommes. They were cut off from death and from sexuality, in short, from the adult world. They too were married as their family—their father in particular— wished, for paternal authority was backed by legislation that permitted, by means of a lettre de cachet, the imprisonment of a rebellious child. At the

end of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century measures were to be taken against arbitrary parental powers in this connection but with no modification of their essence, which was to avoid possible misalliance by preventing an adolescent from marrying as he wished.” Paternal power was just as strong among the popular masses, particularly in parts of France under Roman law. In Languedoc around 1690—1730, the

father could exercise total justice over his children. Thus one peasant at21. D. Hunt, Parents and Children in History: The Psychology of Family Life in Early Modern France (New York, 1970), 190. See also E. Marvick, “The Character of Louis XIII: The Role of His Physician,” Journal ofInterdisciplinary History, IV, 3 (1974), 347-74.

22. See P. Ariés, Centurtes ofChildhood:A Social History of Family Life, trans. R. Baldick (New York, 1962); F. Lebrun, La rie conjugale sous PAncien Régime (Paris, 1975). 23. G. Snyders, La pédagogie en France aux XV11° et XVIII °siècles (Paris, 1965), 255-56.

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tached his twelve-year-old son to a stake for an entire day for having run away and committed a theft. Quarrels and murders were not infrequent in the bosom of the family, since the father would favor the eldest to the detri-

ment of the younger children and a strict and heavy-handed respect for hierarchies of age, work skills, and sex ruled over domestic relations. Yves

Castan, speaking of Languedoc between 1730 and 1790, even compares the son’s passivity before his father to the obedience “that the modern citizen grants the military or political leader, and that he considers as an evident opportunity to disengage himself from responsibility.” ** The family, then, was founded in the power of the father. It was a power reinforced, on all levels of society, by the will of religious and political authorities. The absolute authority of the father, who stood at the peak of the familial hierarchy, guaranteed and reflected the immutable order of the world willed by God. Every father was also a small-scale king—that is, one of the millions of docile and unwitting agents for establishing centralizing absolutism. In Alsace under Louis XIV, family members

learned the ges-

tures of submission to the king in their daily contact with their father. Every gesture was connected to authoritarian and hierarchical concepts: “The master of the house [sat] at the head of the table, his wife at his right, his sons to his left, his daughters beside his wife, then the servants.” At mealtime, the father drank his wine first, then passed the glass to the eldest of

the males present, before other males could drink, in order of age and prestige.* Restif de la Bretonne, in the eighteenth century, describes his own father, a wealthy Burgundian peasant, as a domestic tyrant who whipped his son for flirting with some young lady without paternal permission and who ruled over the women, children, and servants. A true “priest” in a cult of authority, Restif’s father demanded submission from all his household,

as did all fathers and family heads of his epoch. The chastity of Burgundian girls was thus “built on the rigor of fathers.” ° The child’s body, from birth to marriage, was trained in the gestures of submission and passive obedience to his parents, his father in particular. Obviously, the father did not have life and death power over his offspring,

but with that exception, he wielded truly absolute power over his sons and even more so over his daughters as he also did over his domestic servants or 24. N. Castan, “La criminalité familiale dans le ressort du Parlement de Toulouse (1690—1730),” in Abbiateci et al., Crimes et criminalité, 91-107; Y. Castan, “Mentalités rurales et urbaines . . . dans le ressort du Parlement de Toulouse . . . (1730—1790),” ibid. 141. 25. M.-N. Denis, “La salle commune et son évolution dans la plaine d’Alsace,” Ethnologie française 3—4 (1972), 299-302.

26. E. Le Roy Ladurie, “Ethnographie rurale du xvrrr: siècle: Rétif, à la Bretonne,” Eth-

nologie française 3—4 (1972), 233—41, 247—48.

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

199 his apprentices. By this fact he worked to ensure his children’s social conformity in a physical sense. We have seen that he decided their future, their

marriage, even their sexuality. He was quick to use corporal punishment or

force to impose his will on them. He remained enthroned in the place of honor when his married son lived with him. Moreover, through daily rites of interaction he gradually infused obedience into all of his offspring. The history of this interaction ritual remains largely to be written, for these were minor behaviors that occurred between one or more individuals and that served as signals to determine their behavior.” The gesture of taking off one’s hat before a stranger or greeting him with a slight smile, for example, belongs to this sociology of behavior. My hypothesis is that this interaction ritual evolved during the Ancien Régime in the direction of a permanent training in the values of authority and hierarchy within the family. The relations between parents and children at that time seem to bow before a ceremonial that accentuated discipline and diminished intimacy (except among the bourgeoisie, where a change in the opposite direction pertained). Thus it was with the strictly hierarchical relationships around the Alsacian peasant’s table or with the peasant in Burgundy or Languedoc. A complex network of ritual gestures defined according to sex, age, skills, and local conditions set the place of each person in relation to the master of the house. The literate, who mirrored a society of hierarchy and privilege, were instrumental in this evolution. In a more insidious fashion, the law courts defined gestures of submission to parents,

for grave disobedience on the part of children was judged as a crime in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as several examples from Arras will demonstrate. In 1561, a son accused of having killed a cow that belonged to his mother and of having committed plusiewres molestes, indignités et menaches contre icelle,

Penchassé de sa maison avec violence ad cause que sadite mère estoit de trop longue vie (several offenses, indignities, and threats against her, chased her from her

house with violence because she had lived too long) was sentenced to make honorable reparation, to go to prison, then on the next Sunday to repeat his public penance after high mass in the parish church. One woman who had beaten

and insulted

her mother-in-law

was

sentenced

in 1572 to make

honorable amends avecq torse sans lumière (carrying an unlighted candle), after which she was banished from Artois for three years. In 1594,

ason who

had differed with his father concerning money and who had called him garcon, belistre et larron (lackey, beggar, and thief) paid a fine of twelve florins 27. E. Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (New York, 1967, 1982).

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and was ordered to behave en toutte modestie et révérance allencontre de sondict père (with all humility and reverence toward his said father) or face banishment. It was not infrequent to see these honorable amends carried on in public: a drunken shoemaker who had beaten his father and blasphemed paid his penalty by wearing a placard on his breast proclaiming: remté Dieu et bastus son père (denied God and beat his father), after which he spent a month in prison. Justice thus came to the aid ofan offended father or mother, dramatizing

the deference due parents by the sanctions imposed on the guilty children. The spectators undoubtedly saw in this the solemn reaffirmation of interaction ritual. They also could read in it the lesson that maternity, and even

more paternity, Was sacred, and this notion lay at the foundation of all life in society. Judges condemned with utmost rigor incestuous fathers, who throw the normal order of things into question. Overly indulgent fathers were recalled to reason as well, such as one man in Arras in 1593 who was

forced to watch the flogging of his daughter, condemned for her vie lubricque et dépravée (lascivious, depraved life), since he should have avoided this state of affairs by supervising her better. Cuckolded husbands were banished for the same reasons. As for the crime of adultery, it was considered énorme et chose horrible, pour ce qu’il destruit toute la société humaine, corrompt les familles, pervertit les républicques (a heinous and horrible thing because it destroys all human society, corrupts families, perverts republics). Justice defined parental functions clearly. Men and women guilty of negligence in the death of a child were condemned, in Arras, to expiatory pilgrimages or honorable reparations. In addition they were ordered to porter plus grand soing à leurs enffants (pay better attention to their children). On the other hand, the law defended parents against outsiders who interfered in their family life, even when it was as unsettled as that of Michel Lagnerel,

a burgher of Arras and an iron merchant. His daughter and wife fled from his puissance with the aid of Noël Boussemart, a lawyer at the Conseil d’Artois and suitor for the daughter’s hand whom the father had refused. The échevins sentenced Boussemart on 15 October 1697 to ask Lagnerel’s pardon and pay a fine of twenty livres. Furthermore, they forbade him to frequent the

daughter without the authorization of the father. On appeal, the Conseil

@ Artois confirmed the better part of this judgment on 9 January 1698.2°

In these various sentences the law presents us with an ideal model of the father, who supervises his wife and his children carefully, who avoids sexual

deviation himself and forbids such to them, and who has a nearly unlimited

28. B.M. Lille, MS. 380, 143-44, 215 10. 29. Ibid., 265—74, 225—28, 188, 145; A.M. Arras, FF 4, fols. s6v—sov (the Boussemart case).

Constraint ofBodies and Submission of Souls

201 authority over his family. The law guaranteed this authority, probably more firmly from the eighteenth century on than before. The model of the ideal good son or good daughter, according to the same sources, was one of obedience, submission, and filial respect. Jean-Baptiste Greuze gives us a picture of this moralization of family life in the eighteenth century in his La Malédiction paterne lle and his Lefils puni. The first of these paintings shows a libertine son who has just joined the army and is bidding his family farewell. The father, held back by a daughter, is cursing him, while the mother and a small child hang on him to prevent his departure. The Revolution was not far off, and the subjection of children to parents was less total than two or three generations earlier. Nevertheless, the cursed son is having some difficulty in getting his body out of the clutches of his family. Isn’t this a perfect symbol for bodies under the social control of the family and of the father—bodies that were not to be freed until the very end of the Ancien Régime? Once again, the period from 1550 or 1600 to 1750 differs greatly from the preceding and the subsequent periods. Just as sexuality was represse d, so bodies were subjected to a total obedience to the will of the paterfam ilias. Finally, from birth to their late marriage, boys and girls both were constantly taught to leave decisions concerning their destiny to their families , to remain in their places, and to show deference and obedience to their parents. Everyone thus underwent a training for social conformity and respect for authorities and hierarchies. It might be said that this enhancement ofparental authority existed be-

fore the triumph of absolutism. This is quite possible. In any event, there

Was certainly ingly delayed families until pectancy was

an element of novelty in the fact that adolescence and increasmarriage led children to remain under the tutelage of their they were almost thirty years old, in an age in which life exlow. Furthermore, pedagogical and moralizing manuals in-

sisted on the image of the virtuous and terrible father, reflection of a venge-

ful God or of an all-powerful king who dominated the world. Let us thus admit the idea that the father figure grew in stature but reserve the right to look closely at regional and local variation and to correct this image, as the

central Pyrenees or Breton-speaking Brittany granted greater importance to the woman and mother than other regions of France. The father was, from this point of view, an agent essential to the cen-

tralization and the ongoing stability of society to the extent that millions of agents had a clear and unswerving perception of the political system. Institutions and officials were insufficient to define legality and social norms. Quite naturally, it was the law that took on this task, impressing these values

into the bruised bodies of the tortured and into the thought of the spectators.

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Torture of the Body

Michel Foucault has recently opened the way to a political study of the “body of the condemned” by suggesting that in the eighteenth century and before, torture had a juridical and political function. In torture, for Foucault,

“a momentarily injured sovereignty” was reconstituted through “an emphatic affirmation of power and of its intrinsic superiority.” The condemned man, Foucault adds, represents “the symmetrical, inverted figure of

the king.” His tortured body allowed the action of justice to be “displayed for all to see.” Indeed, the people thronged to witness executions, not so

much to watch torture as to be spectators “of apower that was recharged in the ritual display of its reality as “super-power.’”*° What I intend to prove, following the general line of these ideas, is that the body of the tortured was an important political object in the Ancien Régime, up to the time when punishment began to become secret at the end of the eighteenth century. In contrast to Michel Foucault, however, it is the birth of thisphenomenon that interests me more than its disappearance, and J intend to show that its rise was closely connected with the triumph of absolutism. Physical punishment was by no means an invention of the Ancien Régime. There were in the Middle Ages, to go back no farther than that time, counterfeiters boiled alive and thieves buried alive, various mutilations, the pillory, and other sundry tortures. With the exception of executions, how-

ever, extreme corporal punishment counted for only a small part of all sentences. I have found little trace of it in Arras in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Similarly, the authorities in Ghent rarely gave sentences of mutilation in the fourteenth century. In Antwerp only 3 cases of essorillement (the cutting off of one or both ears) can be found from 1358 to 1387, out of a total of 1,501 cases that included 84 death sentences.*!

In the sixteenth century extreme corporal punishment shows an increase.’ In particular, there is a rise in visible signs of infamy: an ear cut off, branding with a hot iron, exposition at the pillory, public honorable amends. Thieves and vagabonds increasingly showed their condition. In Arras from 1528 to 1549, a total of 168 individuals were judged for theft, representing 30.2 percent of all sentences. Only 4 of them were hanged, because of aggravating circumstances, while 149 thieves were banished, the greater part 30. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 3—72 (particularly 29, 48, 49, 50, 57). 31. D. M. Nicholas, “Crime and Punishment in Fourteenth- century Ghent,” RBPH 27—28; Goris, “Zeden en criminaliteit te Antw erpen,” table between 204—205.

32. B. Geremek, “Criminalité, MSN

modernes,” RHMC (1974), 368—70

(1970),

paupérisme: La marginalité à l'aube des temps

Constraint ofBodies and Submission of Souls

203 of them for a specific period. Additional and humiliating punishments were applied to some of them: 9 women and 52 men or young boys were flogged,

for the most part in public; $ men lost their right ear, 5 others their left EAP, and 3 both ears, and 2 women had their left ear cut off. Almost all were

repeating offenders, as anyone could readily see: the left ear was cut off only when the right one was missing, so the degree of guilt could be seen at a glance. In one case, the échevins even had the two already mutilat ed ears of

one particularly hardened “criminal” recut par en bas (from the bottom up). All in all, 9 percent of thieves had their ears cut and nearly a third were

flogged, over and above other, harsher punishments. We should add that at least 22 percent of those condemned for theft were young boys, and that 90

percent of those judged guilty whose birthplace is known— 133 out of 168—

were outsiders to the city. This group of criminals was subjected, globally speaking, to the same sentences as vagabonds: the same justice and the same sociology, for vagrancy was an offense punishable by banishment for a term of one year, three years, or five years. Furthermore, 3 of the 19 sentenced for vagrancy had already lost both ears, and one even had lost his

hair oultre les oreilles (as well as his ears), all of which indicates their relation s

with the world of theft.

Most other common

crimes led to exposure at the stake (la mise au

pilori), sometimes wearing an iron collar and chain (la mise au carcan), to

being trundled around the city on a cart and flogged at the principal street

crossings, to branding with a hot iron (Arras used the figure of the rat, sym-

bol of the city), and to making honorable amends in public. The latter was

carried out in shirtsleeves, bareheaded and barefoot, with a torch or candle in hand, sometimes burning, sometimes unlit. Often the sentence included

kneeling before the victim and asking his pardon as well as asking forgiveness à Dieu, au roi et à justice (of God, the king, and the court), then

carrying the torch to a nearby chapel and repeating the gestures and words of penance. And the prisoner could think himself lucky if the échevins had not also imposed a long and costly expiatory pilgrimage to some far-off shrine.#3 Up to and through the eighteenth century, the courts supplied a sort of judiciary drama in which the bodies of the tortured filled the stage. The inhabitants of Arras, a city of medium size, had an opportunity to witness the solemn exercise of justice some ten times a year. Mutilations in particular were frequent in the sixteenth century before being replaced in the following age by public exposure and flogging. In Artois, in general, hands

were still being cut off at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Ear mutila33. A.M. Arras, FF 3.

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

204

tion was abundantly practiced during the whole of the sixteenth century as a punishment for thieves and prostitutes. In 1592, and again in 1613, a blas-

phemer had his tongue pierced. Eyes put out were more exceptional: one

sheep thief underwent this torture in Lens around 1524—1525. Thieves and

vagrants were branded with a hot iron bearing the arms of the city—and later, those of the king of France—throughout the Ancien Régime. Hair was burned off or cut off now and then, but more frequently in the case of heretics, whose heads were burned by being wrapped with flaming rags (the chapeau Wetoupe).** Thus it was that power put its stamp on the body. Even suicides were punished by being hung ignominiously from the gallows. In Lille during the reign of Louis XIV the bodies of suicides were dragged from their house, face to the ground, before being brought to trial with due form.

Every man’s body, as a formula for honorable amends from Arras put it, belongs to God, to the king, and to the law, even before its possessor can

dispose of it. In the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, however, mutilations

gradually gave way to punishment by marks of infamy, also designed to prove that every man’s body belonged to the collectivity that judged it. From 1694 to 1717, the échevins of Arras were still imposing sentences of

branding with a hot iron on those guilty of infant kidnappings and on thieves, who were sent to the galleys as well. On the other hand, perjury was punished by the cheval de bois (wooden horse), concubinage or prostitution by being obliged to walk through the city wearing a barrel (tonneau), and abandonment of children or moral offenses by the carcan. Amends and banishment were added to one of these punishments or to a combination of them for several sorts of offense. A polygamist in 1716 was sentenced first to make honorable amends, then was put in the carcan for one hour on market day next to two distaffs and with an escriteau devant luy où sera escrit le mot poligame (a sign before him on which will be written the word polygamist). Then he was led through the entire city in this state, and finally he was banished for nine years and fined thirty livres and costs. The most common sentences in Arras from 1674 to 1701, in 130 dossiers concerning moral offenses, are banishment (104 cases), honorable amends (10 cases), flogging (20 cases), branding with a hot iron (3 cases), sometimes

also in combination.** Justice marked bodies less cruelly and less definitively than during the 34. B.M. Arras, MS. 1854, fiches “Justice criminelle.” 35. A.M. Arras, FF 4 (fols. 242v—24sr for the case of polygamy in 1716); Cornette, “La police des moeurs.” 10—11.

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

205 sixteenth century, but essentially it retained its exemplary intent. It presented the multitudes with the drama of social infamy made visible in exposed bodies, and, with increasing frequency, also explained by written

placards. The offender was also forced to accomplish terrifying rites,

like kissing the gibbet, to heighten his own fear and that of the spectators. The crowd had plenty to make it tremble when execu tions occurred. In Artois

in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fires roared to roast the bodies, living or previously strangled, of hereti cs, witches, arsonists, infanticides,

and highway robbers. Decapitated heads rolled from the bodies of rapists,

homicides, rioters, and those condemned

for crimes of high treason. The

hanged cadavers of thieves, traitors, cutpurses, “Egyptians” (Gypsies), and heretics twisted in the wind, along with the other criminals of “inferior condition” to whom death by hanging was reserved. Then, around 1562 at the latest, the galleys made their appearance,* for in this province as in all of France, torture evolved. In the eighteenth century, French courts used older and newer sorts of punishment concurrently. In Bordeaux theft (which repres ented 25 percent

ofthe crimes tried between 1768 and 1777) led to banish ment, to the carcan,

to branding, to flogging, to the galleys, or to hanging. In Paris during the latter half of the eighteenth century, 87 percent of all crimina ls were thieves. Only repeat offenders were branded, whereas 10 percent of those judged guilty were executed and 14 percent sent to prison. By this time there was some hesitation about hanging or harsh physical punishment for women, but they were just as likely to be broken on the wheel or burned as in the past. Had criminality changed, however? Historians have shown great ingenuity in proving that mores became less violent and that “clever” crimes increased under the Ancien Régime.” I would tend to reverse the terms of the problem and say that justice changed because the procedures of political domination changed, because the Ancien Régime was in crisis and was moving toward the Revolution. Michel Foucault has insisted on the fact that “the gloomy festival of punishment was dying out” by the end of the eighteenth century and that the punishment of criminals began to operate in secret.** To my mind, urban criminality had changed very little indeed in two or three centuries, exceptional instances and the case of Paris excluded.

The échevins of Arras, for example, condemned to death between 1528 and 1549 30 percent of the thieves tried, as compared to 16 percent of the 36. B.M. Arras, MS. 1854, “Justice criminelle.” 37. Vié, “La criminalité à Bordeaux,” 195; Petrovitch, “Recherches sur la criminalité,” 231—

33, 258.

38. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 8.

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murderers and 14 percent of those judged guilty of crimes of violence. Is this so different from the case of Bordeaux from 1768 to 1777? If we accept this as accurate, and if we look to the political utility of extreme corporal punishment, the only important change we might note 1s a certain dilution,

or some incoherencies and hesitations on the part of pre-Revolutionary absolute and centralizing power. The monarchy and its justice seem less tightly interdependent than before. Judges continued to render a “class justice,” but because of their own social origin they “are found to protect bourgeois values above all.” As is common knowledge, these same values coincided less and less with those of a monarchy in its declining days. Hence repression shifted more naturally to the crime of theft. The judges had an interest in setting up property as an untouchable dogma and in putting those who would attack it out of harm’s way. In contrast, they no longer felt themselves directly concerned by the defense of the “body of the king” through extreme corporal punishment. They continued, thanks to a certain degree ofinertia in the law, to sentence

certain sorts of criminals to branding or marks of infamy—those symbols of a nearly total and quasi-divine power of the angered sovereign that were left on the bodies of rebels against his authority and, in a more general way, on the bodies of all of his subjects. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, in France as in other absolute states, the sovereign had imposed his law onto the whole of society through the bruised, mutilated, or destroyed bodies of criminals. What is truly characteristic of this period is perhaps less a barbaric cruelty than the systematization of tortures that had been invented in the Middle Ages or before. Every tortured man or woman bore to the scaffold the message of a reinforced royal authority. Every mutilated body reminded contemporaries that their bodies too belonged to the king, as they did to God. Constantly, laboriously, the courts trained all subjects of the monarch to conform to

social norms and to rein in their passions. Tortures were also symbolic: the thief lost a part of his body, the murderer had his body taken away from him, the witch burned in the fires of hell, the idle vagabond was sent to

forced labor in the galleys, the author of an unheard of crime against the royal person suffered a thousand deaths. 4 The meting out of justice, in a word, defined the limits of liberty, both individual and collective. These limits were singularly narrow since such things as showing disobedience-to father or mother or insulting them, the

frequenting of prostitutes (on the part of married men), merrymaking during the hours of divine office in the local church, committing suicide, even 39. Petrovitch, “Recherches sur la criminalité,” 233.

Constraint ofBodies and Submission of Souls

207 after an excruciatingly painful illness, the simple fact of traveling in search of work, or the using of certain blasphemous words were all considered “crimes.” If we are seeking the principal procedure used by the monarchy to solidify its hold on society and to eliminate popul ar culture, we must look to the “political technology ofthe body.” The body was fundamental to the popular vision of the world. Before this repression, the masses suffered no psychological damage when they made use of their sexuality, of urine, of Ja

matière joyeuse (feces). Dominated but not alienated, they were in contac

t with nature—a difficult nature, to be sure, and dangerous—through their lower body. This led to a multitude of rites, which I have already described, and to a magical and animist conception of the universe. The common people did indeed put their strength to the servic e of the powerful, but their bodies were subjected only to the mysterious forces whose presence they imagined everywhere. From the sixteenth century on, however, this situation changed abruptly. The authorities wanted subjects whose productivity and whose willingness

were in direct relation to their subjection. The domination of the human

body was undertaken through an immense effort of all members of the

privileged categories of society, and it was soon to reinforce the tight hold

of an elite on all of social and political life. There was no plot; there was no carefully matured strategy at the origin of this change. It was merely the extension of observable procedures for the domination of amass of people by a small number. It was also the result of a “civilization of behavi or” that began at the court and on the upper levels of urban society. Henceforth civilized people proscribed nudity, bestial sexuality, violent appetit es, and excessive passions. They imposed on the masses a sexual repress ion that they had first imposed on themselves, along with the “taboo” concer ning the lower body. The logic of the political system, what is more, based on a terrible and

paternal God whose image on Earth was the king, did much to enhance the authority of the father and paterfamilias, who unwittingly became the best agent for the transmission of notions of respect, obedience, hierarchy, and

authority. Nobles and peasants alike practiced the new familial virtues that enabled absolutism to take root more readily than it would have by the efforts of the intendants alone. In contrast, as far as the law was concerned, a clear difference in treat-

ment was established between those who enjoyed privilege and those who did not. The privileged were seldom suspected of wanting to shatter a so-

cial order that favored them. And when this did occur, the powerful, the wealthy, and the noble were accorded a treatment less humiliating than that

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reserved to the common people. An aristocrat was not hanged like any ruffian, but had the right to be decapitated. Moreover, the body of someone of the privileged classes was rarely subjected to mutilation or supplementary punishment. It would have been inappropriate to make him the inverted image ofthe king. It served no purpose to spell out all the horror of his crime. Absolute power itself would have been weakened if it had tortured and mutilated those who were charged with founding its stability and its legality. The same was not true of the popular masses, who were subjected to a class justice. The bodies of common criminals—brutalized, exposed, mutilated, burned, hanged, cut to pieces, broken, and branded—had the unen-

viable privilege of reinforcing the power of the monarchy. They delimited the permissible for all to see. They proved that the king had these limits constantly under his surveillance. They demonstrated the existence of the total, cruelly superhuman authority of the sovereign. They terrorized the

masses, who tended to identify with them. They stamped the notions of hierarchy and obedience in the minds of all. They allowed the privileged to feel themselves safe, defended by the terrible hand of the prince. The view of the gallows, the smell of ashes, an encounter with an earless man spoke to all five senses of men of the time of the need to respect the established order. Lest anyone should forget, punishment set an example, refounded a

legality. In the last analysis, and above all as far as the popular masses were con-

cerned, the bodies of the men and the women of the Ancien Régime fell

beyond the control of their legitimate owners. Their bodies belonged to the king, thanks to complex mechanisms for the repression of passions, for the surveillance of bodies, and for their torture when the norms were transgressed. Constrained bodies were intended to assure submissive men—on the condition, to be sure, that these men could not take refuge in passive

resistance by reserving a hidden corner of ill will inaccessible to pure force. This would have been hard to do, to say the least, for there was also in operation a sort of political technology of the soul. 2. THE SUBJECTION OF SOULS

The conquest of souls is much better known than that of the body. It has inspired historians of religion for many years now, so we need recall only its principal characteristics. The task at hand is not to define what was specific to the religious phenomenon, but only to consider what impact this phenomenon had on popular culture and what it did to subject souls. In this sense, even if the missionaries had truly Christian aims, they nonetheless

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solidified the grip absolute power had on each and every one of its subjects.

Over and above the truths of the Gospels, priests and monks taught sub-

mission to the king as to God. They purveyed a religious morality, but it was a political morality as well. In combatting what were considered superstitions, abuses, and excesses—

that is, popular culture—the Church destroyed a politically fragmented world to the benefit of a centralized State that was, incidentally, progressing

at the same pace as the Counter Reformation. Roman Catholicism, from the middle of the sixteenth century on, built a Church more hierarchical

than in the past; a Church whose presence was felt everywhere, the structure of which fitted very well indeed with the structure of an equally hierarchical and authoritarian absolutism. It was not by chance that Protestantism was born in the more decentralized countries and that it later dominated states in which absolutism had not succeeded in becomi ng definitively established, or was established imperfectly. In France, the Church aided the State in the subjection of souls by an increased surveillance of all of society, by an active struggle against “superstitions,” and by the definition of amorality that was based on total obedience to God and to the king. The Surveillance of Society

Jean Delumeau speaks of “efforts to remodel the religious life of the faithful” that were carried on between the middle of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth essentially by the missions, by the corps of parish priests, and by the petites écoles.* The Counter Reformation was really a silent revolution. It undertook to modify an equilibrium that had lasted nearly a millennium, and it managed to transform “collective Christians into individual ones.”*! The popular masses in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, as we have seen, really practiced a group Christianity within the framework of multiple and interconnecting solidarities. In the family, in the medieval fraternities above all, within each age group, and in the guilds and corporations, a Christian cult found expression, often, as John Bossy says,

“in a crude and materialistic form.” This collective cult became a social mechanism of great importance during the many feast days and holidays that I have described, as it permitted the community to rid itself of its accumulated tensions.

In point of fact, the post-Tridentine Church considered that this sort of 40. J. Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the CounterReformation, intro. J. Bossy (London and Philadelphia, 1977), 179-202. 41. J. Bossy, “The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe,” Past and Present 47 (May 1970), 62 (a highly important and most suggestive article).

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Christianity tinged with paganism must disappear. On the initiative of Carlo Borromeo,

archbishop of Milan from 1564 to 1584, the dioceses of

Europe became “well organized armies, which have their generals, colonels, and captains.”# The medieval fraternities were brought together within each diocese to form a hierarchy of “archiconfraternities.” Lay initiative in the matter was poorly received. Thus the powerful Compagnie du très-saint Sacrement, organized under Louis XIII, disappeared. The regenerated Church had no desire for centers of religious practice that might enter into competition with the parish. In the end, fraternities disappeared and religious confraternities fell under the direct supervision of the local parish priest.* In like manner,

the Council of Trent elaborated and imposed a

matrimonial code that permitted a strict surveillance of the family, considered to be a source for the propagation of subversion. From the cradle to the tomb, the individual was now directly supervised by priests or by missionaries. Baptism was obligatory within the first few days after birth. The status of marriage was enhanced, while trial engagements met with stiff opposition and unwedded couples were harassed. To be joined in holy wedlock, a couple had to publish banns, produce charac-

ter witnesses, and procure certificates from their parish priests. The parish priest also controlled burial in hallowed ground and could refuse it to bad Christians. The Counter Reformation also invented a good many efficacious means of surveillance. Parish records—registres de catholicitée—generally carefully maintained from the end of the sixteenth century, kept a tight check on baptisms, marriages, and deaths. Individual confession was invented, tak-

ing the place of the previous practice of public confession. The catechism was created and along with the “primary schools” and other Sunday classes, often led by the curé, it served to indoctrinate children in the Christian faith

and teach them its reflexes. (This is one more instance of the mistrust of

the family: it was not to be counted on for the in-depth Christianization of society.)

The subjection of souls could become effective only if a society apparently Christian but fundamentally superstitious could be made to toe the line. The men of the Counter Reformation understood that an increase in the number of missions, an improved preparation for priests, and the zeal of

the hierarchy would not be enough to change this situation. In fact, they

launched a veritable social and political battle. In order to Christianize the 42. Ibid. so, citing the words of Carlo Borromeo. 43. [bid., so—60; J. Ferté, La pie religieuse dans les campagnes parisiennes (1622-1605)

1962), 75—76.

(Paris,

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

2H masses, the Church made every effort to destroy family and clan solidarities, artificial kinships, and the innumerable ties that bound each person to all others within the narrow framework of the neigh borhood or the village. It undertook to replace these crisscrossing horizo ntal ties with one,

unique, vertical relationship that was to link each Christian with the di-

vinity through the mediation of the ecclesiastical hierarc hy. All of the Church’s efforts aimed at the individualization of religious sentiment. Man may thus have become a better and more sincere Christian, but he lost con-

tact with the solidarities that once had given him securit y, and found him-

self alone face to face with a terrible and unforgiving God. What he was offered was a “religion of fear.”# His every move was supervised. The parish priest, like the Breton recteur of the beginning of the twentieth century, watched over both the religious orthodoxy and the morality of the community. He thundered at deviants from the pulpit and denounc ed them before the village or the town. Through confession he knew everyOne’s opinions and everyone’s sins. In addition, he was an active politica l agent. He informed his parishioners of events, local or distant, of wars, and

of royal decisions. He gave advice of all sorts, ranging from the problems of conjugal life to the proper attitude to take when soldiers arrived to be garrisoned in the town. He showed how to handle the new taxes. His influence had become primordial. This was all the more true since the curé ofthe seventeenth century was better prepared and better educated than his counterpart of earlier epochs, and he stood out from the crowd ofhis fellow towns-

men by both his clothing and his attitudes. He embodied a sacredness that now only rarely mixed with the secularity of daily life.# In short, the curé’s role, just like that of the father and head of household, was to relay absolutism. Like the father, the parish priest watched

over his flock in the physical as well as the moral sense. He imposed rules of Christian practice that few would dare violate. He demonstrated on a day by day basis the virtues of authority, discipline, and humility. He inculcated submission to God, to be sure, but also to the king and to those who wielded power. Between 1550 and 1700, then, the Church managed to impose, at least in

appearance, religious individualism and obedience to power. In this sense, the dechristianization of the eighteenth century* shows that the Counter Reformation was directly connected to a type of centralizing and absolutist

44. Delumeau, Catholicism. This work gives a summary and a bibliography useful for what I have related above. | | 45. See H. Platelle, Journal d'un curé de campagne au xXv11* siècle (Paris, 1965). 46. M. Vovelle, Piété baroque et déchristianisation en Provence au xvitt¢ siècle (Paris, 1973); Delumeau, Catholicism, 203—31.

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political system that was then weakening and on its way to a brutal reckoning. “From the parish register to the primary school [the bishops of the Tridentine Church] were laying many of the foundations of the modern state.”*”The destinies of the sceptre and of the bishop’s crozier were ineluctably linked. If the clergy was smitten with the rage to pursue “superstitions,” it was in view of establishing the true faith, but also to permit the

triumph of the absolute king. The War on “Superstitions”

During the sixteenth century, efforts to repress popular culture had already begun in cities and towns: Jeunesse groups and women declined in importance, popular festivities were restricted in various ways, and Christianity eventually reached a new definition of the sacred clearly distinguishing it from the secular. During the two latter centuries ofthe Ancien Régime, the

only truly new thing to occur was the systematization ofthis process, which struck the rural world with full force. All forms of authority, following the example of the Church, pooled their strength to destroy paganism, animism, and the magical orientation of the masses forever. A few examples, which could be multiplied, should suffice to demonstrate this.

It goes without saying that fétes were often prohibited, particularly the festivities during great calendar feast days and the burlesque revels. We might add to the examples cited by Jean Delumeau*

the prohibition of

charivaris in the country areas around Paris in the seventeenth century and again in 1750, by decree of the Parlement de Paris. The number of obligatory

feast days in that region passed from fifty-five in the beginning ofthe seventeenth century to twenty-one in 1666, while the forbidding of dancing on Sundays and feast days was frequently reiterated, for example, 3 September

1667.”

In 1700, the Conseil d’Artois received a request from the monks of Mont Saint-Eloi, near Arras, who announced that the abbey’s dependents were to

gather on 30 May at the Gueulle des Alleux and choose lots to send eight men to patrol the abbey’s woods that night in order to prevent the young men of the neighboring villages from cutting mays for their festivities. Their intention to veiller le may indicates both a repression of the fête and its survival.® The month of May was the object of careful attentions on the part of the authorities who were anxious to purge it of its aspect of a great 47. Bossy, “The Counter-Reformation,” 70. 48. Delumeau, Catholicism, 175—77. 49. Ferté, La vie religieuse, 267—68, 292, 327. » 32

50. Cardevacque, L'abbaye du Mont Saint-Eloi (Arras, 1859), 110. (My thanks to Bernard Del-

maire, University of Lille II, for this reference.)

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213

Pagan spring festival. The consecration of the month to the Virgin, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, can probably be seen as an attempt to give the masses an orthodox explanation of the prohibitions attached to that time of the year. Marriages, for example, were avoided during May, henceforth through respect for the “month of Mary. ” Consequently, the connection between this prohibition and the magica l practices to consecrate the reborn earth in spring disappeared. These remarks lead us to another aspect of the battle against popular credences and popular rejoicing. The authorities realized that pure force and prohibition had little effect to change millennial custom s. The Church used a more subtle method by covering certain great feast days with the veil of orthodoxy and establishing rules for their celebration. The Saint John’s

fires were supervised, sanctified, and Christianized, notably by a Popular In-

struction Of 1665.5! Similarly, the clergy continued to take charge of certain “superstitions” that had resisted repression. In the Paris area priests led processions to assure increase of herds and good harvest in the eighte enth century just as they had two centuries earlier. Recourse to patron saints was also tolerated by a great many local curés. Nevertheless, the clergy was now keeping careful watch over popular piety, avoiding excessive distort ions, and attempting to channel faith toward the cult of Mary or toward christo logical devotions, which had blossomed in the seventeenth century and which fostered a strict orthodoxy. In Burgundy in the eighteenth century, accord ing

to the works ofPierre de Saint-Jacob, blessings of the harvest and the exor-

cism of harmful animals were still being practiced. Thus a great many “superstitions” survived, as was also demonstrated by the thick catalogue drawn up by the abbé Thiers for the Chartres area during the last quarter of the seventeenth century.°* To weaken the attraction of these “superstitions” and turn the attention of the multitudes to other things, the clergy increased the number of the rich and beautiful processions that offered the spectacle of a purged Catholicism. The entire seventeenth century was punctuated with the solemn transfer of saints? relics, the creation of devotional chapels to celebrate some miracle, and ceremonious deambulation of the clergy through the cities and in the countryside. In Douai in 1662 the order of the Récollets received the body of Saint Prosper martyr. The Minims having welcomed the remains of Saints Guy and Quintilian to their church in 1652, the Récollets had applied to Rome, where Saint Prosper had been buried, and had obtained the transference of st. Delumeau, Catholicism, 178. 52. Ferté, La vie religieuse, 336—69. 53. Abbé J.-B. Thiers, Traité des superstitions . . . (Paris, 1679).

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his holy remains. On Sunday, 3 September 1662, an immense cortége, preceded by young virgins, boys dressed as martyrs, and actors dressed as ty-

rants, tortured apostles, or hangmen went in convoy to carry the saint’s relics from Lambres to Douai. The body received military honors at the gates to the city. Then the procession entered within the walls, chanting. Mystery

plays were performed, dramatizing horrible details of the martyrdoms that struck everyone’s imagination. An immense bonfire ended the evening. On the morning of 4 September the procession began anew, moving from the abbey to the church, with edifying dramas performed on either side. The youth of Douai put on a Jugement et supplice de saint Prosper, played by eighty-four actors. Finally, the reliquary arrived at the church of the Récollets, where it was placed on a decorated altar. That night there was an-

other bonfire. For eight days the relics were displayed, each time followed by a sermon. A pontifical brief accorded a forty-day plenary indulgence to all those who had taken part in the procession.** If we think back to the description of the popular festivities of the beginning of the sixteenth century, we can readily see how different these ceremonies were. All over France in the age ofclassicism, religious celebrations oftered the crowds sacred spectacles that in reality taught Catholic doctrine even better than the sermons and homilies. Secular rejoicing could take place on such an occasion, but not easily and not wholeheartedly. The youth groups took part in the sacred theatricals like all the inhabitants of the city, particularly since it was a way to earn indulgences. Relics, processions, and miracles® not only promoted Catholic teaching and the efficient supervision of the faithful, they distilled religious and social conformity everywhere. It was nearly impossible to refrain from a display of Catholicism, even if, as it is probable, a large part of the population

secretly kept its attachment to the old “superstitions.”

All the authorities, ecclesiastical and lay, coordinated their efforts to im-

pose this conformity. In 1713 in Lille a council of war judged four soldiers accused ofsacrilege. One of them had received the host, had spit it out into his hat, and had carried it off in order to practice des choses diaboliques et

abominables (diabolical and abominable things). The thief was condemned

to be burned at the stake, after having his tongue torn out and his hand cut

off. An accomplice, who had held the host in his hand, had his hand cut

off as well and was also burned alive. One lesser figure in this drama was strangled and his body thrown into the fire and another was shot on 19 August 1713. The following Sunday a solemn procession came to make honor-

54. A. Dinaux, “Une féte religieuse à Douai au xvii siècle . . . ” AHL, 2nd ser., II (1838),

38—66.

5s. H. Platelle, Les chrétiens face au miracle: Lille au xvui¢ siècle (Paris, 1968).

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215

able reparation in front of the barracks. An annual ceremo ny of expiation was instituted for the third Sunday in August and was organized by a confraternity created for this purpose. In 1763, the fiftieth anniver sary of the sacrilege, a general procession took place on 21 August.5 An exigent morality brought the battle against “superstitions ” into daily life as well. One complaint in 1678 concerning a cabaret situated next to the cemetery of Saint-Cande-le-Jeune, in Rouen, gives evidenc e to this:

Journellement, dans les heures indues et pendant le service divin, il Sy

faisait des clameurs de personnes qui sinjurioient les unes les autres, dancoient avec grand bruit, chantoient des chansons dissolues , faisoient

jouer des violons et violes, troubloient le service divin et empesch oient

les processions, de sorte que l’on a esté obligé d'interrompre les processions qui se devoient faire autour du cimitiére, les jours de dimanches et festes solennelles, pour éviter au grand scandalle, jusque-là mesme que, lors que lon porte le Sainct Sacrement aux malades et que lon est

obligé de passer dans le dit cimetière, par devant la dite porte, ces sortes

de clameurs ne cessent point, quoique lon ne manque jamais de sonner

la grosse cloche pour advertir le peuple, et que le clerc qui précède le

Sainct Sacrement fasse incessament sonner la clochette qu'il tient en main. (Every day, at inopportune hours and during divine service, there were

loud noises of persons who were insulting one another, dancing with great noise, singing dissolute songs, playing violins and viols, [and who] were disturbing divine service and making processions impossible, to such an extent that we have been obliged to stop the processions that should take place around the cemetery on Sunday and solemn feast days, to avoid great scandal, even to the point that when we carry the holy sacrament to sick people and are obliged to pass through the said cemetery, before the said door, these sorts of loud noises do not in the least

cease, although we never fail to ring the big bell to notify the people, and although the priest who precedes the Holy Sacrament incessantly rings the little bell he holds in his hand.)*”

The indignation of the writer of the complaint is caused by the juxtaposition, which he judges to be inadmissible, of secular enjoyments and

the Catholic worship. Cemeteries increasingly became supervised and silent places, before they were relegated to the edge of the cities beginning with the eighteenth century. The games and amusements, the meals, and the 56. A. Dinaux, “Sacrilége à Lille, en 1713,” AHL, 2nd ser., V (1844), 82—85. 57. A.D. Seine-Maritime, G 6325. (My thanks to Philip Benedict, University of Maryland, for communicating this extract.)

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laughter that had taken place there at the end of the Middle Ages had disappeared. Here the proximity of a noisy tavern is considered a scandal and even a sacrilege, especially since dances, music, and songs were viewed with

a jaundiced eye by the ecclesiastical authorities, particularly when they took place during divine service. “Catholic French culture in the seventeenth century is imbued with severity and pessimism.” The obsessions of the age were

indeed “sin, the flesh, perdition, the sacraments,

and salvation.”**

These obsessions led to an enhancement of the sacred, to the detriment of day-to-day experience. The person of the priest, the cemetery, and the church became isolated and were offered as models for the respect and the devotion owed to God. The curé of Merbes-le-Chateau (Belgium, Hainaut) expressed this clearly in 1677, speaking about the harm done by war: Ladicte église n’estoit de nulle manière en estat dy pouvoir faire sacrifice, estante toutte à fait en désordre . . . aussy À cause dune puanteur insupportable et saleté . . . si bien que s’auroit esté tout à fait contre le respect et la révérance que nous debvons à sa majesté divine que de luy offrir cest agneau immaculé dans une place comme dit est (The said church was in no way in a state to permit [holy] sacrifice in it, being utterly in disorder . . . also because of an insupportable stink and filth . . . so that it would have been completely counter to the respect and the reverence that we owe his divine majesty to offer him this immaculate lamb in a place such as has been said).*? Much had changed since the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, since places of worship were then also the scene of a daily life that readily became brutal, boisterous, and messy, without pushing either the people or the priest to cry sacrilege. In order to uproot “superstitions” once and for all, however, the agents and procedures for the transmission of popular culture had to be attacked directly. Woman was the first target. The growing misogyny of the clergy has been well established and the cultivated laity imitated the attitude of the churchmen. One anonymous Artois jurist wrote around 1630 that the seduction of young girls was a most serious affair, for it took from them the prétieux joyaux et trésor de leur pudicité et virginité (the precious jewel and treasure of their modesty and virginity). He added: although les mariages soient bons et institué de Dieu mesme, touttesfois la continence et la virginité est plus noble et excellente (marriages are good and instituted by God himself, nevertheless continence and virginity are nobler and most excellent). s8. P. Deyon, “A propos du paupérisme au milieu du xvrr: siècle: Peinture et charité chré-

tienne,” Annales ESC (January February 1967), 150—5r.

59. Baheux and Deregnaucourt, Affaires de moeurs, 306.

60. B.M. Lille, MS. 380, 252.

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

217 Surveillance of girls and women was not relaxe d in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries—far from it. Wasn’t it true that among the people all women were to some extent witches? This is what is implicit in the statements of the curé of Gasny (Eure, canton of Ecos), in the doyenné of Baudemont, who responded to an archepiscopal quest ionnaire in 1687 in the following terms: Un des plus grands abus qui sont dans cette parois se et qu’on a toujours tâché de détruire, ce sont certaines veilleries et assemblées de filles et femmes dans des caves, en hyver, pour filler jusque presque à trois heures

aprez minuit, et dans ces assemblées publiques se rendent les garçons et

la jeunesse du pais, qui randent le long des nuits à picorer , se battre, et commettre cent insolences. On appelle ces sortes d’asse mblées nocturnes les bureaux de diables. MM. les prédicateurs y ont perdu toutes leurs parolles. (One of the greatest abuses found in this parish and which [we] have always attempted to destroy are certain nighttime gatherings and assemblies of girls and women in the cellars during the winter to spin until nearly three hours after midnight, and boys and young men of the village join in these public gatherings spend the entire night in maraud ing, quarrelling, and committing a hundred insolent acts. This sort of noctural assembly is called the devils’ offices. The preachers’ words are

wasted on them.)

The parish priest of Boisemont, in the same doyenné, complained in 1688—1690 of similar veilleries, to which young men et mesme des joueurs de

violons (and even fiddlers) came. He threatened to withdraw the sacramen ts

from all who attended these gatherings if the disorderly conduct continued and if men were not excluded from them.‘ Undoubtedly virtuous condemnations of the sort could be exhumed from archives all over France. The

veulées were seen as bureaux des diables for several reasons. In the first place,

girls and boys met there, at night, far from the eyes of the curé, who would have liked to demand of all social gatherings the sexual segregation that he

imposed in the primary school and often in the church. Next, those who

attended these gatherings enjoyed themselves, danced, fought; in other words, they went beyond the limits of what was permitted in daily life. Finally, although the texts do not say so in so many words, “superstitions” were passed on during these gatherings: legends were repeated and stories told, all the things that perpetuated “pagan” beliefs among the peasants. 61. A.D. Seine-Maritime, G 1718 and G 1720 (communicated by Philip Benedict).

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The veillée was thus considered diabolical. In fact, it served as a model, as we shall see in the following chapter, for the repeated descriptions of

witches’ sabbaths that were the joy of judges and demonologists. The local priest, in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, com-

batted “superstitions” energetically, thus undermining the popular vision of the world. He also acted as the eyes of the bishop in each community, just as the imtendant was the eyes of the king. One of the curé’s principal tasks was to prevent his flock from crying miracle too easily. Magical thought certainly had not totally disappeared, in the countryside in particular, and the masses tended to interpret exceptional events as either miraculous or diabolical. Although the Church saw the Devil prowling everywhere it remained circumspect concerning the supposed interventions of the divinity. It charged the curé with the responsibility of notifying the hierarchy, which then would organize a meticulous and serious investigation. In 1720 the official of Cambrai, at the instigation of a doyen de chrétienté and parish priest of Elouges (Belgium, Hainaut), examined the case of Jacques Damme, a young villager qui auroit subitement recouvert la veue dont il étoit privé depuis plusieurs années, et ce en faisant sa prière au devant de certaine image représentant Notre Seigneur après la flagellation, située au bord du village dudit Elouge, vers le midy (who was supposed to have suddenly recovered his sight, of which he had been deprived for several years, and this while praying before a certain image representing Our Lord after the flagellation, situated at the edge ofthe said village of Elouge, around midday). A visit to the chapel was ordered. Then the official heard the man who had been the object of the miracle and ten witnesses, all priests from the area or medical doctors. For, as one curé said, le recouvrement de sa veue est regardé

par les peuples comme un miracle, qui Pont toujours veu aveugle depuis sondit retour (the recovery of his sight is regarded by the people as a miracle, [they] who have always seen him blind since his aforementioned return). We do not know the outcome of this affair, but we can see that the Church redoubled its prudence concerning possible miracles tied to devotional sites and more generally to the very ancient cult of healing saints. It was also important to unmask impostors who abused popular credulity, like one Charles Legrand, born in Lille, who posted notices in that city in 1723 stating that he possessed relics of Saint Hubert and that for a modest

fee he could cure rabies. Or pamphlet for sale in Cambrai miracle) that had occurred in préservez du tonnerre, de mort 62. A.D. Nord, 5 G 558, Elouges.

like one guidam (individual) who offered a in 1740 telling ofaprétendu miracle (supposed Marseille, containing des superstitions pour estre subite, de la rage, de mort sans confession et de

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

219

tout mal (superstitions for being saved from lightning, from sudden death, from rabies, from death without confession, and from all ill). It also offered,

avec certaines cérémonies, ce qu’il appelle “répis,? pour préserv er de la rage et empécher qu'on soit mordu par les animaux qui sont dans ce mal (with certain formulas, what he calls “respites” to preserve from rabies and ward off being bitten by animals who are in this unhappy state). These respite s were good for forty days or ninety-nine years, according to the purcha ser’s means. On September 29, 1740, the official of Cambrai had this person age brought be-

fore him and ordered the confiscation of his Abel, for on peut, sans douter de

la toute-puissance de Dien, révoquer en doute des miracle s qui ne sont annonces que par un inconnu, et quoy que persuadé des choses qui se font à l’abbaye de Saint-Hubert par Vintercession de ce saint, on ne peut pas souffri r que le même inconnu sans aveu fasse des opérations semblables sans authori té et au scandale du peuple de cette ville (one can, without doubting the infinite power of God, cast in doubt miracles which are announced by an unknown [person] alone,

and although persuaded of the things that take place at the abbey of Saint Hubert by the intercession ofthat saint, it cannot be allowed that the same unscrupulous unknown [person] carry on such Operations without authorization and to the scandal of the people ofthis city).% The ecclesiastics’ suspicion regarding supposed miracles greatly increased during the eighteenth century, for superstitions and less than orthodox atti-

tudes resurfaced at that time. Witchcraft increased somewhat, for it was no

longer considered a serious crime involving the death penalty. Furthermore, the spiritual movement that arose in the seventeenth century was running its course, whereas the established Church had found fierce advers-

aries in the philosophes. Dechristianization, at least in certain provinces, had gotten a good start well before the Revolution. In other regions, the

Catholic Reformation had been slow and limited.®* All in all, the Church was losing its means for the submission of souls. In the eighteenth century a priest occasionally found himself faced with strong-minded individuals who took advantage of the weakening of religious sentiment to transgress social norms. The curé of Viesly (Nord, arrondissement of Cambrai, canton of Solesmes) was brought to trial in 1752, before the official of Cambrai, by one of his parishioners, one Marie-Anne

Denisse, whose marriage he had refused to bless. The young lady had conceived an illegitimate child. She had been unable to marry for twenty-one months because she had been confined to her bed with an espèce de lan63. A.D. Nord, 5 G 1723, 1740. 64. Vovell, Piété baroque et déchristianisation. 65. J.-F. Soulet, Tradition et réformes religieuses dans les Pyrénées centrales au xvii¢

1974). (Diocese of Tarbes.)

siècle (Pau,

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

gueure (sort of languor) that she imputed to a magic spell. The curé had refused to marry her, claiming that she had committed a number of scan-

dalous acts. She had taxé publiquement deux personnes du lien, homme et femme, de Pavoir ensorcelé. Elle a fait venir des bergers pour ôter le sort, des chyrurgiens de différens lieux pour la visiter, et le sort est enfin tombé par le moyen dun accouchement, qui cependant ne l’a point empêché de divulquer toujours le même fait et d’aggresser les prétendus sorciers au sortir de l’église, au grand scandale de toute la paroisse (publicly taxed two persons of the place, a man and a woman, with having bewitched her. She called shepherds to remove the spell, doctors from various places to examine her, and the spell finally fell by means of childbirth, which however did not stop her from continuing to talk about this same occurrence, nor from attacking the supposed sorcerers as they came out of the church, to the great scandal of the entire parish).

She refused to repent. Better still, she attacked the curé before the ecclesiastical judges and accused him of various wrongdoings.® The outcome of the affair is not given, but the testimony should suffice to give an idea ofthe evolution of the local priests’ hold on the community. The curé of Viesly was undoubtedly an intransigent man where morality was concerned: he stigmatized the sexual misconduct of the young woman. In fact, however, the epoch had already turned to a relative indulgence in

this domain that followed from a clearly observable relaxation of mores: illegitimacy, prenuptial conceptions, and infant abandonments show a clear increase. As for Marie-Anne, she seems to have been quite sure of herself. She dared to appear before the ecclesiastical court in spite of her “error.” To be sure, she imputed it to a spell, thus disengaging herself from responsibility. However, she had no fear ofa public appeal to healing shepherds. The

priest was reduced, somewhat ridiculously, to vindicating the couple she

called sorcerers, whereas an accusation of the sort would easily have led

them to the stake a century earlier, and the curé would have urged their condemnation. A certain number of “superstitions” against which the Church was not all-powerful do seem to reappear, particularly in the country. Even if MarieAnne’s disobedience is somewhat exceptional, we are led to conclude that the submission of souls was not as total in the eighteenth century as during

the seventeenth.

The moral rigor of priests, Jansenists included, was im-

posed with less ease in a society in full evolution. Only specific and regional studies would permit us to flesh out this idea, for it is clear that “the religious physiognomy of our country was one of great diversit y.” But, from a global point of view, the vise of Christian supervision loosened because 66. A.D. Nord, 5 G 558, Viesly.

67. Soulet, Tradition et réformes religieuses, 355.

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

221 religious conformity weakened, particularly after 1750. In fact, as Jean Delumeau says, the revolt against Christianity, in the eightee nth century and after, was mainly “a rejection of the ‘cruel God?” that had been pro-

posed to the adoration of the multitudes.** This rejection became possible

with the weakening ofthe principle of obedience that the Catholic Church had taught since the Council of Trent. The Principle of Obedience

The regimentation ofsociety and the fight against “superstitions” could only have been conducted on such a vast scale by means of a radical modification of the relationship between the Church and the faithful. Post-Tridentine Catholicism was more centralized and more hierarchical than it had ever been before. It succeeded in imposing, at all levels of society, notions of hierarchy, authority, and discipline. Its model for this was the Society of

Jesus, created in 1534 and approved in 1540 by a pontifical bull. Can one

imagine a more hierarchical organization? Lainez, who succeeded Ignatius of Loyola at the head of the Society, made it into a veritable militia of Catholicism, organized in military fashion. At its head was a general who obeyed no one but the Pope. This model epitomizes all Catholicism of the Counter Reformation, even if the internal organization of other religious orders was rarely this structured. The seriousness of the religious crisis of the sixteenth century required radical and efficacious solutions: what was needed was a clear reaffirmation of Catholicism and above all its diffusion among the masses. The problem, in a word, was one of education, in the

larger sense. Millions of often superstitious and ignorant individuals had to be led to live and to think according to the Gospels. The very existence of awidespread movement for Christianization was a denial of the relative autonomy in which the cities and above all the villages of the sixteenth century had lived. Priests and missionaries of uniform training took an identical message everywhere. They worked for the religious unification of France, just as the monarchy worked to unify it politically. They faced a multiplicity of local beliefs, and their task was not an easy one— particularly because the masses believed simultaneously in the Christian God, interceding saints, the Devil, and innumerable obscure forces that

could be beneficent or malefic, depending on man’s ability to dominate them. To extirpate this paganism and these “superstitions,” the men of the Counter Reformation offered a simplified and constantly reiterated vision of the divine. They attempted, with unequal success, to weaken the prestige 68. Delumeau, particular).

Catholicism, 230 (on conformity and superstitions see 214fF. and 225—27 in

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of healing and intercessory saints to the profit of a divine hierarchy headed by God the Father. All they really did was to explain the order of Creation just as the learned had described it for some time: God, Christ, the Virgin, the angels, the saints, man, woman—imperfect. because born of Adams

rib—and so on. This was still a change in the common peoples perception,

since they tended to put God’s intervention in their daily lives on the same plane as that of the saints. Now hierarchy was imposed on the divine world, and in like fashion sermons, missions, and witchcraft trials joined to pres-

ent a hell that was just as hierarchical, ranging from the Devil through his lieutenants to the infernal legions. These notions penetrated the population slowly. Religious discourse gave the masses an image of a new topography of the world, one that preTridentine priests, in rural areas at any event, had never been able to im-

pose. The popular culture that was dominant at that time, as we have seen, valued the lower body. It rooted man into this earth. Heaven and hell were not very clearly located: they were part of one entity that was the universe. This universe, neither totally good nor totally bad, was entirely peopled with ambivalent forces, the final action of which could be oriented, captured, or warded off by magic. In the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, on the other hand, a tirelessly reiterated Christian Manichaeism

changed these conceptions. A Catholic pessimism proposed, as it had long done in the cities and in the dominant levels of society, that man turn away from the vale of tears that was this earth to look toward heaven, toward Paradise. The good Christian would be enthroned on high, at the right hand of God. The sinner, on the other hand, would be rejected to the left

hand of the Eternal Father, then thrown down to hell. The Christian model now proposed to all was vertical and dualistic in structure. This structure replaced or strongly weakened the horizontal and ambivalent vision of the world that lay at the center of popular culture. Henceforth, the lower part of the body belonged to hell and to the Devil, like the left side, which had become much more “sinister” for the bulk of

the people than it was at the end of the Middle Ages. This vertical structure was also a hierarchy based on proximity to God. Wasn’t the king God’s lieutenant on earth? Thus he obviously occupied a place of honor in the Christian paradise. This way religious hierarchy and social hierarchy met. Catholicism transmitted notions of authority, of hierarchy, and of obedience. Obedience to God, who had created an immutable universe in which each thing, each being was in its place until it could attain a happiness that was not of this world. Obedience to the king, God’s representative on earth, to whom total submission was due. To revolt against the

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

2232]

king was to question the harmony of Creation, to revolt against God, said

clergy and scholars alike. The principle of obedience obviously was not to be applied to the humble alone. The pedagogy ofthe time, which was essentia lly in the hands of religious orders, the Jesuits in particular, echoed this principl e among the governing classes and certain fringe sectors of the third estate who sent their children to the collèges. The aim of these establishments “was not in the least to make studies an instrument of social promotion; they were, to the contrary, to contribute to keeping each person in his rank and his condi-

tion.” The Catholic Church was in perfect agreement with “this profound desire for social stability in which the son was to reproduce the father. ” When all was said and done, what religion proposed to all, elites and masses alike, was to live as respectful and obedient sons in a great holy family governed by God the Father. Nothing could nor should change, since each individual’s destiny was totally determined in advance and his place in society was established from all eternity. Souls were forced into conformity, from the middle of the sixteenth to

the middle of the eighteenth century, by immense efforts on the part of the Catholic Church. A strict supervision of both multitudes and individuals and an energetic battle against “superstitions” brought about the Christianization and the moralization of society, but they also led to the imposition of total obedience to divine wishes. As it happened, God willed order and social stability. In this sense, the post-Tridentine Church played a role of primordial importance in the creation of submission to royal authority. Perhaps the impregnation of the masses by this triumphant Catholicism in part explains the nearly total disappearance of great popular revolts after 1675 and particularly after 1707. At that epoch, the subjects of the Most Christian King were reduced to subjected souls and constrained bodies. As such, they proved eminently receptive to the operation of the new mechanisms of government that were imposed on them. 3. NEW MECHANISMS

OF POWER

The history of the triumph ofabsolutism and centralization in France is not my subject, strictly speaking. There have been excellent works to narrate this evolution,” and we are still undergoing its consequences today. Simi69. R. Chartier, M.-M. Compère, D. Julia, L'éducation en France du xvi au xviii siècle (Paris, 1976), 206. 70. D. Richet, La France moderne: Lesprit des institutions (Paris, 1973); P. Goubert, L’Ancien

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larly, the ideological bases of this new type of power are relatively well Known. There seems to have been less interest, however, in investigating the means other than force by which this basic ideology was diffused through» out society as a whole—that is, in investigating the political bases, in the broad sense of the term, for the acculturation of the popular masses, Start ing trom this perspective, we can describe a collective psychology of authority, beginning with the image of the King, which will permit us to detine a structure fundamental to the whole of society—paternal authority— and a governing procedure—the refusal of ditterences and of autonomy,

A Calletive Probelaay ofAuthority: The Imaae ofthe Kina Royal power enjoyed nearly continual progress in the seventeenth century i Spite Of Wo regencies, Many popular revolts before 167s, and the Fronde, Louts XTV emboxtes the apogee of this dominion that was founded in pow ers that had become arbitrary and in an administrative tutelage of the whole of the country, Orders and corporate bodies within the population had become instruments of action for the King and his agents, Power was strongly concentrated, The number of government officials had tn all probability increased tenfold since the beginning of the seventeenth century! The principal consequence—or perhaps the cause—of the rise of this

centraltaimg absolutism was à profound change in the image of the king, who had had hetle stature at the time of the Wars of Religion. Henry TV, both through his skillful propaganda and thanks to his personal popularity, had begun to restore tts luster, and in spite of the regencies, in spite of the unprepossessing personality of Louis XITL the figure of the king had come wmto focus during the course of the seventeenth century, For the literate, the king had long been the lord of lords, the elder son of the Church, and the emperor in his domain. For the We he was “giver of justice, saint, God, and great wizard all at once . .. and one wonders whether what is showi ing

through, along with the image of the Father, is not the image | of the male, even of the ‘supermale,’ at least for some monarchs.” These various images organtee around three fundamental notions: authority, the sacred, and the father figure, and these three notions show a distinct evolution duri ing the

seventeenth CENEUEV.

Royal authority was alwayy feudal, and it was to remain so until the end Reese, LL: Les pean (Paris, rors), 242

Régume)

4

|

(an the suevival af the institutions af the Ancien

ne R. Mouxmier, La Plmsmnr, la Samesillt ot de Marteau: Pnchimtiont ot woke en Ehuncr. de Mover

Age à da Rewedamur (Pans, rere), axt— 05 in particular 72 Goubert, Dime R@sme, LL: Les puma, 28

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

22$

of the Ancien Régime. But it was also sovere ign, more and more so, Louis XIV alone, or nearly so, made decisions in many domains. Although he did

not completely succeed in subduing an immense land, he nevertheless had at his disposal a new and vertical political organization . Instead of passing

through various and complex relay mechanisms , the intendants passed on his orders in the provinces directly, and they had control over almost everything and were responsible only to the royal Counci l. Rural community organizations, and the cities even more, which formerly had possessed relatively great autonomy, were supervised by the imtendant and reduced to strict obedience. Similarly, the old organs of local government continued to exist, but they lost much of their importance. In short, both the older horizontal power structures, which had provided a guaran tee for particularisms,

and the heavy feudal pyramid that theoretically ended up at the king were

replaced by a vertical structure that was both authoritaria n and efficient.

The sacred aspect of the royal person was affirmed by the king himself.

Louis XIV speaks in 1667 of some of the royal functions où tenant, pour ainsi

dire la place de Dieu, nous semblons être Participant de sa connaissance aussi bien que de son autorité (in which holding, so to speak, the place of God, we seem to participate in his knowledge as well as his authority).” An analysis of the image of the king in fifty histories of France of the seventeenth century confirms this trait. These authors, who certainly represented the “enlightened” public opinion of their age, define the history of the country “as the guardian of a religious order of which the king is the

sacred center.” In addition, emphasis was placed “more and more on God”

as the century went on. The model of the perfect king evolved: Philip Au-

gustus was replaced by Saint Louis, who continued, from the end of the

seventeenth century on, “to inspire for some time to come the most perfect portrait of the sovereign that France had ever known.””! The development of the Catholic Reformation had much to do with this

increased sacralization of the king, and the fact that Church and State were henceforth intimately connected also played its part. The Church was in the State and vice versa, in Pierre Goubert’s formula.” The direct consequence

of all this was to further enhance the saintliness of the royal function and to reinforce the idea of an all-powerful monarch. The king’s justice, in short, was God’s justice. This goes far to explain the increase in extreme corporal punishment: the guilty, who had rebelled against the laws—that is, against 73. Cited among the documents in ibid., 34.

74. M. Tyvaert, “L'image du roi: Légitimité et moralité royales dans les histoires de France

au XVII* siècle,” RHMC (October— December 1974), 543, 545-46. 75. Goubert, L’Ancien Régime, I: Les Pouvoirs, 164—88.

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the king—thus committed a veritable crime of high treason toward God. They questioned the harmony of Creation, which the king was charged to defend. The view of the king as a paternal figure seems to have emerged during the seventeenth century. Perhaps this was simply because the image of a paternal God, generally presented as “cruel,” became more clearly defined. There were few who, like the abbé of Chaulieu, defined God as a “beneficent” and “merciful” father.” The king, in the image of God, was a “father

of the people.” The idea was quite certainly an old one, since Louis XII had been honored with the same sobriquet. But Louis XI was a “good king” who liked, according to Michel de PHospital, writing in 1561, to disguise

himself and mix with the people pour soi amender et corriger (to amend and correct himself). He was a father close to his children. Louis XIV, on the other hand, who cared more about etiquette and the majesty of his function, offered a more distant, more imperious, and more awe-inspiring pa-

ternal model. It was a model that closely followed that of the “cruel God” that then dominated religion. Without falling into the interpretive exaggeration of speaking of “the murder of the father” in connection with the execution of Louis XVI, we should note the importance of this image of the king as father. It can be found in the cahiers de doléances of 1789.7 The seventeenth-century authors of histories of France allude to this image, in connection with Louis XI, whom they judge somewhat ambiguously. They admit almost all of his qualities as a politician, but they impute to him the defects of a “bad son, bad father, bad husband, bad relative, bad master.”78 Who would guarantee the family and paternal authority if the king himself contested them? Further investigation would be needed for a still clearer picture of the image of the king, but it is undeniable that it lay at the base of the political system. It provided the model for all authority, an authority that was appreciably strengthened during the course of the seventeenth century: Louis XIV disposed of an absolute power, at least in theory, and the means to make it respected, thanks to the development of a large bureaucra cy and

to the creation of a corps of agents who carried his orders directly into the provinces. The internal coherence of this political system came from the principle of total obedience owed to the king, who represented God the Father on earth, and who was therefore the “father” of his subjects. Any rebellion, any opposition, any deviation from the sovereign’s laws was a crime against the divinity. This principle spread throughout French society: 76. See Delumeau, Catholicism, 230. 77. Goubert, L’A ncien Régime, I: Les Pouvoirs, 30.

78. Tyvaert, “L'image du roi,” 545.

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls millions of willing agents now

applied it within their own

even greater efficiency than the king’s men.

227 families with

The Growth of Paternal Authority

The prestige of the father, in the seventeenth century, “had a share in the power and almost in the brilliance ofroyalty,” according to Georges Snyders’

remarkable treatment of the subject.” The father wielded a veritable political power over his family. He acted in the interests of the monarchy, which would have found it difficult indeed to invade each and every conjugal unit. As Tocqueville says, “the father is the natural and necessary tie between the past and the present.”*° He stabilizes, or even, at the limit, immobilizes so-

ciety by teaching his children respect for authority and hierarchy, which he

represents. Meals among peasant families in the seventeenth century, already discussed, saw everyone placed in relation to the father, according to

sex, age, and so forth. In more general terms, the father taught submission to the laws. A royal declaration of 26 November 1639 clearly states: La

naturelle révérence des enfants envers leurs parents est le lien de la légitime obéis-

sance des sujets envers leurs souverains (the natural reverence of children for their parents is the tie of legitimate obedience of subjects toward their sovereigns). Moreover, this text was aimed at the reinforcement of parents’

right to punish their children.*! It is possible that the enhancement of paternal authority in the seventeenth century also found a source in the pressure the nobility exerted, from the middle of the sixteenth century on, to reinforce parental authority over children in order to oblige them to marry without imperiling the family estate. Marriage, far from losing importance during the sixteenth century and after, became a crucial problem to an aristocracy suffering under an unfavorable conjoncture. If the estate was to avoid being split up (and given that birth control was unknown), the father needed fuller authority

to facilitate his imposition ofmarriage by constraint or the convent by force on his heirs, male and female.*? The monarchy, the aristocracy, and fathers themselves, in other words,

all had an interest in developing paternal power. Bossuet’s dictum should be reversed, however: On a fait les rois sur le modèle des pères (kings have been made on the model offathers). ** In reality, absolute kings had created pater79. Snyders, La pédagogie en France, 261. 80. Cited in tbid., 260. (A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America |New York, 1954], 204.) 81. Cited in 1hid., 261.

82. R. Muchembled, “Famille, amour et mariage: Mentalités et comportements des nobles artésiens à l’époque de Philippe II,” RHMC

(April—June 1975), 25s—61.

83. Cited in Snyders, La pédagogie en France, 262.

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nal power on the model of their own authority, which was itself imitated from God’s power. This means that the father disposed of a sanctified authority that came in direct line from God, as Etienne Pasquier claimed in the sixteenth century, Bossuet in the seventeenth, and Malebranche in the eighteenth. Father Pouget’s catechism of1705 declares: Tous les supérieurs sont compris sous le nom de pères et mères, parce qu'ils doivent aimer leurs inférieurs comme leurs enfants, et parce que les inférieurs, de leur côté, doivent aimer, craindre, respecter leurs supérieurs comme leurs pères (All superiors are included in the terms fathers and mothers, because they must love their inferiors as their children, and because the inferiors, for their part, must love, fear, and

respect their superiors as their fathers). And this was his explanation of the fourth commandment! * We can now understand better how these notions were diffused. Men of letters and ecclesiastics formulated them in their books. The régents taught them to tens of thousands of students who attended their colléges. One textbook of Latin themes from the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century invited provengal students to translate, among other passages, sentences relating to paternal authority: Attendés vous que vostre père aura toujours la même complaisance pour vous . . . ? Ne craignés vous point que vostre père ne se mette en colère contre vous . . . ? J'espère qu’il employera tous les moyens que son amour et sa sévérité pourront Luy inspirer pour vous corriger . . - (Do you expect your father always to have the same indulgence toward

you? Do you not fear that your father become angry with you? I hope that he will use all the means that his love and his severity may inspire in him to correct you). As for the children of the popular masses, they learned these notions at the primary school, when there was one, in catechism class, or

from sermons, along with their parents. They also learned them on the oc-

casion of religious or civil ceremonies, which helped them to visualize concepts of authority, hierarchy, solemnity, and obedience. All life in society, in a word, diffused royal authority, divine authority, and paternal authority. The various hierarchies backed one another up, and in all domains: “The father’s domination ofhis children sends us back to the King’s domination ofhis subjects—and also to the domination of God over these creatures.” Furthermore, “This domination has an internal model within each one of us,” which is no other than reason winning over the passions and in this way founding the beneficial virtue of authority .$ It would be difficult not to accept Georges Snyders’ analysis as a global expla84. Ibid., 262—64. 85. Archives et documents pour Phistoire moderne, provençales (Aix-en-Provence, 1974), fiche 23. 86. Snyders, La pédagogie en France, 264.

xv1°, XVII‘, XVIII siècles. Série I. Sources

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

229

nation for a powerful movement of centralizati on and of hierarchization that was taking place in all aspects of life in society. We can symbolize this movement in the following manner: God

God

King

King

!

y

|

1,

God

\ King J

God

|

King

|

Officers

en

me

Father

Subjects

Inferiors

Students

Family

J

Father

Mother Children

Servants

This system operated without serious hindrance until the middle of the eighteenth century when there arrived what Pierre Goubert calls “a certain

divorce between society and the State,” a prelud e to the Revolution.*”? No-

tions of hierarchy and absolute authority began to be contested. The Parlement de Paris, reacting against this evolution in its conde mnation of Jean-

Jacques Rousseau’s Emile in a decree of 9 June 1762, gives us a definition to

summarize this dying Ancien Régime. The book, the decree says, expresses Propositions qui tendent à donner un charactère faux et odieux à Pautorité souveraine, à détruire le principe de Pobéissance qui lui est due, à affaiblir le respect et l'amour des peuples pour leurs rois . . . Que seraient d’ailleurs des sujets élevés par de pareilles maximes , sinon des hommes

préoccupés du scepticisme et de la tolérance, abandonnés à leurs pas-

sions, livrés aux plaisirs des sens, concentrés en eux-mêmes par Pamourpropre, qui ne connaitraient d’autres voix que celles de la nature, et qui,

au noble désir de la solide gloire, substitueraient la pernicieuse manie de

la singularité?

(propositions tending to give a false and odious character to sovereig n authority, to destroy the principle of the obedience due it, to weaken the

respect and the love of peoples for their kings . . . What would be, furthermore, subjects raised by such maxims, if not men preoccupied with skepticism and tolerance, abandoned to their Passions, given over to pleasures of the senses, concentrated on themselves through self-love, who would know no other voices than those of nature, and who, for the

noble desire for solid glory, would substitute the pernicious mania for singularity?) *

87. Goubert, L’Ancien Régime, Il: Les Pouvoirs, 189-241. 88. Cited in J. Palméro, Histoire des institutions et des doctrines pédagogiques par les textes (Paris,

1958), 235.

230

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

Authority, obedience, and respect are indeed the key words to the absolutist epoch, which had attempted to construct a type of man who believed in God, intolerant, master of his passions and in particular of his sexual im-

pulses—above all, a sort of person who would work for the collectivity and not cultivate his “singularity.” For two hundred years every effort had been made

to refuse differences, eliminate particularism, and destroy popular

culture.

The Dental of Differences In the seventeenth century, “inexorably, the mantle on all of society and on humble folk in particular.* In confinement of the poor” and the exclusion of the more in society permitted the monarchy and the Church to

of the Church fell” the cities the “great dangerous elements subject the popular

masses, thus purged, to a constant surveillance. Molding them into the conformity to which the Parlement de Paris gave new expression in the 1762

condemnation of Emile became easier and more effective once the popular masses were more “homogeneous” than they had been in the past and less affected by the presence and the spectacle of the “dangerous classes.” The monarchy began to infiltrate at the village level beginning with the middle of the seventeenth century. The declaration of 7 June 1659 judged

rural community assemblies henceforth mineures (minor). By the end of the seventeenth century a number of edicts led to a constant and tyrannical interference of the intendant in village affairs, while the representatives who had formerly been elected by the community became simple administrative agents dependent on the royal “commissioner.” In spite of protests in the eighteenth century, the rural community in France, unlike its English counterpart, was unable to continue to govern itself, as had widely been the case

during the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries.” Generally speaking, the epoch of Louis XIV was marked by the penetration of royal authority into each and every village. Not that this penetration did not meet with resistance, active or passive, and was not hampered by the distances to be covered and by the slowness and unwieldiness of administrative machinery. Nevertheless, beginning in 1689, when the last intendant was installed in Brittany, relations between the power structures and the masses had evolved profoundly. The mosaic of traditional jurisdictions and local and regional authorities persisted, but the intendant and his dele-

gates made each subject truly aware of the authority of an absolute king. 89. Richet, La France moderne, 119.

90. H. Babeau, Les assemblées générales de communautés d'habitants en France 206-10.

… . (Paris, 1893),

Constraint ofBodies and Submission of Souls

231

The mission of these officials was, as their commis sions reveal, to assure

the observance of royal ordinances concerning justice, police et finance, et tenir la main à ce qu'il ne sy Passe aucun abus (justice, police, and finance, and keep a firm hand [to assure] that no abuse [of justice] takes place). The intendant, the direct representative of the monarch and the “eve of Versailles” in the provinces, symbolized the new mechanisms of power, although he did not embody all of them. He was “commissione d” to keep a tight rein on particularisms at least as much as he was to administer wisely. Lamoignon de Basville, the intendant of Languedoc, describes these very

tasks in his Mémoires secrets. What was important, in these far-flung provinces, once proud of their prerogatives, was to supervi se the various corps

among the population, particularly the provincial Etats, guarantors of the region’s privileges, so that il ne sy passe rien contre les intéréts du Roi. La grande règle est que les Etats ne peuvent rien faire qui ne soit autoris é par S.M. (nothing occurs there against the king interests. The greatest rule is that the Estates can do nothing that is not authorized by His Majesty).” This was the philosophy ofthe restructured central power: to abolish, as much as possible, the particularisms and the regional or local differences capable of impeding the march of absolutism. Administrators close to the royal power were resolutely hostile to difference. What was important was to apply the same law everywhere. In order to do this, force was sometimes necessary, as on the occasion of the révolte du papier timbré in Brittany in 1675.”* In most instances, procedures were more subtle, slower, but just as

efficacious. They consisted in excluding the once-powerful particularist

bodies—Parlements, provincial Estates, assemblies of notable citizens, and

so On—from participation in governing activities by not convoking them. A redistribution of power took place to the detriment of the many institutions that had shared power in preabsolutist France, but to the advantage of the monarchy and of the clienteles of nobles, judges, and financiers that

formed around the monarchy.

Under these conditions, how could one avoid attempting to establish

one unique, unified cultural reality as well? This dominant culture was modeled on the “court civilization” and the new civility that had appeared in Paris and in the larger cities, and it was to work for the gradual weakening and devaluation of minority languages and patois, of all that was origi91. Mousnier, La Plume, la Faucille et le Marteau, 212. (Commission pour lIntendance d'Auvergne, 15 January 1656.) 92. Cited in F. Billacois et al., Documents d'histoire moderne (Paris, 1970), I, 184—86. 93. Y. Garlan and C. Niéres, Les révoltes bretonnes de 1675 (Paris, 1975). 94. Richet, La France moderne, 103—104; Mousnier, La Plume, la Faucille et le Marteau, 248fT.

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

nal in provincial society, and, in particular, of popular culture, born in the

rural world and now mingled in with the more general and increasing scorn for all that seemed rough or crude, in a word, “peasant-like.” The road to the affirmation of the State and of the Nation led through a true “cultural centralism” that has lasted, what is more, up to our own times: “The merg-

ing of national identity and cultural tradition has been a trait specific to French society.”*> And from as early as the time of Louis XIV. This means that during the two latter centuries of the Ancien Régime the popular masses lost the essence of what was particular to their culture. Just as the child lost his ability to declare his independence or his autonomy from his father and his family. Just as a “great confinement” of madmen, paupers, and beggars purged society of contact with them. Just as woman’s dependence increased, and so forth. Power was concentrated in the hands of the king, the new notables, the zmtendants, and the fathers and paterfamilias.

Furthermore, this concentration took place everywhere. In the villages, the rural community organization was slowly reduced to the members of the sanior pars—that is, to the wealthiest and the most powerful.% It is im-

portant to note that these individuals no longer belonged on the popular level culturally. They could often read and write; sometimes, if they had attended a collége that accepted the sons of wealthy peasants, they had had some brush with literary culture. Restif de la Bretonne gives us a description of just such a political and cultural cleavage in Sacy, in Burgundy, in the eighteenth century. A new type of peasant had appeared in the villages, “already cultivated, his rough edges smoothed, who knows his alphabet,” and who is capable of

reading the volumes of the Bibliothèque bleue that set a “national sensitivity to vibrating.””” In this sense, the new mechanisms of power and culture had succeeded perfectly. Wealthy and relatively cultivated peasants—they generally were totally unaware of what we call the Enlightenment, however— became distinct from the mass of their fellow citizens, and they took their part, on their level, in furthering absolute power and its aims for acculturation. As we will soon see, they had become witch hunters, enemies to “superstitions” and to the old popular culture. They too refused differences the

right to exist, in the name of the “national sentiment” in which they shared, 95. D. Schnapper, “Centralisme et fédéralisme culturels: Les émigrés italiens en France

et aux Etats-Unis,” Annales ESC (September—October 1974), 1159. | 96. P. de Saint-Jacob, Documents relatifs à la communa uté villageoise en Bourgogne, du milieu du XVIIe siècle à la Révolution (Paris, 1962), xxiii-xxv ; Babeau, Les assemblées générales, 54. JANLE

Roy Ladurie, “Ethnographie rurale,” 242—s1 (reprin ted in G. Duby and A. Wallon

gen. eds., Histoire de la France rurale | Paris, 1975], I, s88—89).

;

|

Constraint of Bodies and Submission of Souls

233 and above all in the name of their own interests, which were built on a profoundly nonegalitarian social system that they were eager to preserve. *

*

*#

“The human being in early childhood learns to conside r one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is no culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop , by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”# This judgment on the part of the American psychologist Erik H. Erikson refers us back to the notion of the “political technology of the body” defined at the beginning of this chapter. Indeed, the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries witness ed the fine tuning, by the State, by the Church, and by the governing orders in society,

of anew procedure for the creation of consent, based on increasing individ-

ual sense ofguilt. This process began in sexuality, for the popular masses of the end of the Middle Ages readily gave in to their sexual impulse s. At the most, such impulses were only vaguely curbed by the teachings of the Church, and the only limits were in the form of taboos and prohibi tions that operated, essentially, on the very local level. In like fashion, the French

of 1500 were often guided by their passions in all domains. The Catholic Counter Reformation and the absolute State, between 1550 and 1750 for the most part, pooled all their efforts to construct a new type of man, who

would subordinate his appetites and his desires to reason and thus accept authority all the more readily. Pure force was not sufficient to the successful imposition of these new virtues, the guarantors of order and social stability. The clergy itself and the various elites had to be changed first. This was accomplished, and the end product was the honnéte homme of the seven-

teenth century, master ofhis passions as of the universe. As far as the masses were concerned, the task was more arduous and slower. The State and the Church achieved the submission of bodies and souls conjointly. Each individual learned that his body did not totally belong to him and that he was dependent on his parents first, then on the king and on God. Sexuality was supervised and its exaggerated expression was punished. Parental tutelage increased over the bodies of adolescents whose adulthood came increasingly late. The king and God took care to indicate the punishments that awaited the disobedient body. Restricted, mastered, or mutilated, bodies carried within them the social norms of the epoch.

The conquest of souls was accomplished by a Christian and juridical 98. E. H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York, 1950), 406.

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regimentation of society, by the fight against popular “superstitions,” and by a constant reaffirmation of the principle of an obedience that linked every human being to God. Religious orthodoxy excluded all happiness from this world, thus facilitating the blocking of passions, bodily passions in particular. Orthodoxy portrayed an immutable universe, willed by God, in which God’s representatives were to be obeyed. This meant the king, first and foremost, but also all superiors, among whom

fathers held an emi-

nently sacred position, particularly since paternal authority gave the monarchy millions of unsalaried but active agents for surveillance who were as efficient on the family level as the intendants were on the provincial. Thus an authoritarian and hierarchical system was perpetuated, founded on an increased emphasis on the paternal attributes of an unforgiving God, and it lasted until around 1750. This model of the powerful and terrible father trickled down in successive stages from the king to the paterfamilias, and for the two hundred years that this submission grew within society, the

monarchy and the privileged orders were able more and more to exploit the gens vils et mécaniques (humble working people), who dared risk open revolt less and less. , “Human childhood,” Erikson says, “provides a most fundamental basis

for human exploitation.” Children during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were undeniably the object of a surveillance that resembles the “great confinement of the poor” of the same epoch. And the popular masses, in many ways, were terrorized and reduced to a childlike state, which made them all the more submissive. This childlike state was induced by the diffusion of a new mass culture, alienating and extremely different from their traditional vision of the world. Terror was induced by the innumerable fires that were lit both to burn witches and to consume popular culture.

90. Ibid., 418.

CHAPTER 5

The Repression of Witchcraft and the Acculturation of the Rural World

RANCE,

like nearly all of Europe, underwent a veritable epi-

demic of the persecution of witches, female for the most part, at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the sevente enth centuries. 'Two totally contrary approaches can help us to understand this phenomenon. The 4rst, recently illustrated by Robert Mandrou, explains the disappearance of massive persecutions at the end of the seventeenth century by presuming a “more reasoned conception of existen ce” on

the part of the judges. The crime of witchcraft, Mandrou states, ceased to be

prosecuted because the jurists no longer believed in it. For them as for the cultural elites of the times, “God and Satan cease to intervene on a daily basis in the natural course of events and in the ordinary life of men.”? How-

ever, this thesis takes only a limited interest in “that essential, that is, in real-

ity, rural sorcery.” Nor does it help us to understand why the persecution began. A second way of grasping the problem consists in seeing it “from the inside, from the point of view of the peasants, among whom witches proliferated,”* and in asking why trials should have multiplied precisely after eb le Re Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (New York, 1969).

2. R. Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers en France au xvii siècle: Une analyse de psychologie histo-

rique (Paris, 1968), 540, 561. 3. P. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers au xvrre siècle,” Annales ESC ( July— August 1969), 808. 4. E. W. Monter, “Trois historiens actuels de la sorcellerie,” Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance (1969), 207. See also E. W. Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands During the Reformation (Ithaca and London, 1976); Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers,” 901; R. Muchembled, “Sorciéres du Cambrésis: L’acculturation du monde rural aux xvi¢ et

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the middle of the sixteenth century. Superstitious and magical practices were widespread in rural areas in France at the end of the Middle Ages, as

we have seen (see chapter 2). They had not given rise to many trials, however. Does this mean that the ranks of Satan’s adepts grew immeasurably or that they were increasingly menacing between 1580 and 1680? In my opinion, the contrary is true: sorcery, properly speaking, did not evolve at all

during this period. The only thing that changed was the way the judges, and the cultural elites in general, considered it. Witchcraft from this time on became the symbol for the popular superstitions against which the agents of royal power and the missionaries fought. In order to accomplish the submission of souls and bodies, in order to achieve the acculturation of rural areas, magical beliefs and practices had to be suppressed. Whether the mag-

istrates were aware of it or not, the stake and the pyre enabled a dynamic and learned culture to reject and weaken a popular culture that was very ancient and nearly immobile, but that nevertheless met all change with enormously strong resistance. Except for the demonic possessions that affected the convents, which belong on a different level than the history of the popular masses, the repres-

sion of witchcraft was carried out essentially within the rural world. A general overview will help us to determine the geographical and sociological limits of this persecution and see its timing, first in Europe and then in France. Then we will need to describe the characteristics of the “crime” of witchcraft, according to the judges, but also according to the witnesses in the trials. Contrary to an idea currently accepted, the magistrate and the witch were not the only roles in the drama of persecution. Repression did not begin only from above. It was relayed, at times desired, by some of the villagers themselves. The ultimate explanation of the witch-hunt will thus have to be sought on two levels: The first is the level of the rural world. The rural world was at the time going through a socioeconomic crisis and was showing the effects of a far-reaching acculturation. Furthermore, in certain cases the struggle for power on the lower level was becoming acute. Secondly, we will have to look to the level of the surrounding society, which

carried out this cultural conquest of the countryside and had much to do with the generalized crisis that it was undergoing. 1. THE PERSECUTION OF RURAL WITCHCRAFT

The great witch-hunt that left its mark on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not a uniquely French phenomenon. We need to survey the XVII siècles,” in M.-S. Dupont-Bouchat, W. Frijhoff, R. Muchembled, Prophètes et Sorciers dans

les Pays-Bas (xvi*-xvu1t¢ siècles) (Paris, 1978).

The Repression of Witchcraft

237 European situation briefly before we define the characteristics of the witchcraft epidemic in France.

The Europe of the Sorcerers The crime of witchcraft was pursued from time to time as early as the end of the Middle Ages. Trials were usually individual affairs, such as the condemnation

of Gilles de Rais in Nantes

in 1440.

Demoniacal

epidemics

affected only limited regions at that time: the Pyrene es, the Alps, the city of Arras. In the French and Italian Alps, the Inquis ition persecuted the Waldenses—that is, heretics, accused in addition of casting magical spells.

In Arras from 1459 to 1461 thirty-two sorce rers—who were called vaudois

even though they had little to do with the Alpine Walde nses—were brought to trial and eighteen of them executed. Persecution, which continued in the Alps, the Apennines, and the Pyrenees, scarcely touch ed other regions before the middle ofthe sixteenth century.® At about that time a great witch-hunt was launched in several countries of Europe. The southwestern part of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire, disputed between Protestants and Catholics, saw an extraor dinary flare-up

of persecutions from 1560 to 1670: 480 trials resulte d in the execution of 2,953 persons. The period of 1570-1630 alone was marked by 363 trials and 2,471 deaths. Protestants and Catholics alike set up stakes and lit the fires. The Protestants’ severity toward the accused tended to decline after 1600,

but the Catholic judges redoubled their intransigence.° In the Spanish Netherlands another ferocious witch-hunt became organized, particularly

after 1590. In the county of Namur, 337 women and 29 men were tried between 1509 and 1646. In what is now the département du Nord, which

became French only in the seventeenth century, 178 of the 294 persons

brought to trial between 1371 and 1783 were tried between 1550 and 1650.7

In France, persecutions peaked between 1580 and 1610, particularly in the Pyrenees and in Lorraine. A second great wave of trials invaded Burgundy,

Champagne,

the Franche-Comté,

and Languedoc

around

1640. Around

1670, Normandy and the provinces of Béarn and Guyenne were the epicenters of a third wave of persecution.* Judges in England were particularly

active between 1570 and 1620, then again around 1645. In Essex county, 229

villages out of 426 were connected in one way or another with the persecu5. J. Palou, La sorcellerie (Paris, 1971), s4—62: H. R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze.

6. H. C. E. Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684 (Stanford, 1972),

2—33. ; : E. Brouette, “La sorcellerie dans le comté de Namur au début de l'époque moderne

(1509—1646).,” Annales de la Société archéologique deNamur (1954), 359—420: Muchembled, “Sorcières du Cambrésis,” in Dupont-Bouchat, Frijhoff, Muchembled, Prophètes et Sorciers, table 2. 8. Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers, 133-37, 372—83, 439-43.

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

tion of witches and 314 persons were judged for witchcraft from 1560 to

1680. Alan Macfarlane estimates the total of those who appeared before the assize courts of England between 1560 and 1706 at 2,000 persons, 300 of whom were probably executed.’ In the part of the Jura made up of the Swiss canton of Neuchatel and the Bishopric of Basel “at least five hundred people were put to death for witchcraft” from 1570 to 1670. Practically every village produced a trial or two.!° The number of the accused was high in the neighboring regions as well: 214 in Geneva from 1573 to 1662; 163 in FrancheComté from 1599 to 1668.!!

In contrast, witches were less frequently and less systematically prosecuted in other countries. In Italy only the Venetian Inquisition showed any degree of severity: its archives show 549 persons suspected of witchcraft during the period 1552-1722.

Between

1575 and 1650, there were

several

dozen trials of benandanti, protagonists in an agrarian cult in the Venetian

province of Friuli. The Holy Office, which never used torture in its dealing with these “wayfarers for good,” gradually succeeded in persuading them that they were sorcerers and in getting them to admit to their “crimes.”” Spain, although it was the land of the Inquisition, saw hardly any repression of sorcery, except in the Basque country.'’ Sweden had only one epidemic of sorcery and at a late date, toward 1670. To end the list, the famous

witches of the Salem trials set all New England talking at the end of the seventeenth century. '# All in all, the Europe of the witches was particularly Germany, what is now Switzerland, the Spanish Netherlands, England, and France. Lands to

the east, as well as Nordic and Mediterranean lands, were in general spared and were the scenes of only an unsystematic and limited persecution. Moreover, the principal flare-ups of witch hunting occurred everywhere between 1560 and 1630. As it happens, that epoch was one ofcrisis in Europe. Each

one of the countries cited was also an arena for wars of religion and for

major political troubles: there was the aftermath of the Reformation in Germany and in Switzerland, followed by the Thirty Years’ War; the revolt of

the Low Countries against Spain; the definitive establishment of the An9. A. D. J. Macfarlane,

Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1970), 23, 62, 251.

10. E. W. Monter, “Patterns of Witcheraft in the Jura,” Journal ofSocial History (1971), s, 7. (These figures and those that follow were revised upward in Monter, Witchcraft in France and

Switzerland, 208—28.) 1. Monter, “Patterns of Witchcraft,” 14.

12. Lbtd., 14: C. Ginzburg, The N ight Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, trans. A. and J. Tedeschi (Baltimore, 1983).

13. J. Caro Baroja, The World of Witches, trans. O. N. V. Glendinning (Chicago, 1964).

14. Palou, La sorcellerie, 70—71, 85—88. 15. T. Aston, ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560 —1660 (New York, 1967),

The Repression of Witchcraft

239 glican Reformation, then the Glorious Revolution in England; the Wars of Religion and a number of popular revolts leading up to the Fronde in France. Thus we might well ask whether the phobia of witchcraft in those countries was primarily due, as Robert Mandrou seems to suggest concerning France, to excessive legal procedure, caused in turn by a new attitude on the part of the magistrates regarding this sort of crime. In reality, wasn’t persecution at least as much the result of what the various populat ions felt was a breakdown ofmagical procedures in a troubled social context ? To put it in other terms, wasn’t sorcery rejected both by the judges and by certain ele-

ments

in the popular masses

that, even while they continued to believe

firmly in it, blamed it for no longer being adapted to the new conditions of their times? This refusal, in this case, would strangely resemble the fear of sorcery that was manifested in 1925 by the Lala people of northern Rho-

desia in the Mwana Lesa (“son of God”) movement.'* To answer this ques-

tion, we need to define the most prominent characteristics of the witchhunt in France. The Persecution of Witchcraft in France

Sorcery, as I have described it in chapter 2 of the present work, was an element fundamental to the equilibrium of magical thought, hence fundamental to the rural world of the end of the Middle Ages. It is highly likely that everywhere in France there existed diviner-healers and village sorcerers who were doctors both of the soul and ofthe body. Consequently, witch-hunts ought to have reached into all regions of the land. Nothing of the sort happened. The geography ofthe persecution turns out to be quite particular, as does the sociological portrait of the accused. The sorcery that was persecuted, to begin with, was above all rural. City judiciary archives do indeed show such trials, but they frequently concern rural folk brought to trial before the city tribunals. Few of the French provinces saw the frenetic persecutions typical of southwest Germany. In general, in any given region, trials in France can be counted more by the hun-

dreds, even by the tens, than by the thousands between the middle of the sixteenth century and the end of the seventeenth. Lorraine is the one exception, if we accept the figure of three thousand victims sent to the stake by Nicolas Rémy from 1576 to 1612.'7 This bloodthirsty judge is supposed to 16. T. O. Ranger, in T. O. Ranger and J. Weller, Themes in the Christian History of Central Africa

(London,

1975).

(My

attention.) 17. Palou, La sorcellerie, 64.

thanks

to J.-P. Chrétien

for having called this study to my

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

have had more people executed, by his efforts alone, than all of the courts of

southwest Germany in an entire century, which seems unlikely. In any event, Lorraine was one of the epicenters of repression. Generally speaking, the North and the East were favored regions for witch hunting, as were Languedoc, the Southwest, and later Normandy. Pierre Chaunu has concluded from this that “witchcraft flourished on the edges, .. . on the borders of Christianity.” He even adds that the woods, the moors, the mountains, the swamps, and the forests, that is, zones

of relatively dispersed population, were more likely to produce witches. Witches were “implanted at the periphery of the agricultural world.” These remarks are undoubtedly judicious, as is an explanation of the phenomenon of witchcraft by the reaction of the populations of these marginal areas to the efforts of a Church “awkwardly missionary on the fringes that traditionally resisted it.” This would explain the existence of a north-south line stretching from Lorraine to the Alps, one of the main axes of the fight against witchcraft, and which continued into Languedoc, the heretical tra-

ditions of which are well known. Witchcraft in Flanders, Artois, even in Champagne, on the other hand, does not exactly correspond to this schema. Flanders, in fact, was densely populated, nearly 45 percent urbanized, and was a prosperous and dynamic agricultural region. Similarly, the Southwest and Normandy only imperfectly corresponded to the model Pierre Chaunu had proposed. Or should we allow that the Catholic front passed within all French rural areas at the epoch of the Christianization in depth of the rural world? But in this case, how can we explain that Brittany, which received the full force of this Christianization in the seventeenth century, was not dotted with witch burnings? The geography of witchcraft poses a sizable problem, then. Persecution settled in for the most part at the frontiers of France, on the edges of a circle that would isolate and exclude Brittany. Other witchcraft trials, outside this

circle, show on the map as dots or isolated points. As it happens, this circle corresponds to the provinces that were the most recently conquered , the

most particularist, and the most reticent toward absolutist centralization. In

the East, they were Catholic edge zones touching countries affected by the Reformation. But has it ever been remarked that the South, the Southwest,

and Normandy were the principal zones in which most of the great peasant revolts took place up to the Fronde: the revolt of the Pitauds in Guvenne in 1548, of the Croquants in Aquitaine between 1594 and 1637, of the Norman 18. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers,” 903—904.

The Repression of Witchcraft

241

Nu-Pieds of 1639, of the Audijos in the Landes in 1663? !° Couldn’t we Say, given this fact, that there is à correlation between revolts and the witches’

pyres? Normandy, in revolt in 1639, turned to witchcraft a generation later, around 1670. As for Brittany, the safety valve of amajor revolt in 1675 perhaps enabled it to avoid a witch-hunt. In fact, it is possible that the peasants

of the Southwest and of Normandy, crush ed after a revolt, gave themselves

Over to diabolical practices in despair, as an insidious resistance to the authorities, after violence had failed. Anyone who finds it impossible to believe in the reality of sorcery will choose another explanation: the representatives of royal authority and of the Church, their suspicions aroused regarding a region in which a revolt had recently broken out, increased their surveillance for some years, even for several decades. In this view, the leaden mantle of the Church provoked a sullen resistance, since brutal contestation hardly ever pays. Adults and children alike learned this “great refusal of the humbl e. After a certain

length of time, the authorities, when they wanted to shatter this latent op-

position by terrifying examples, chose presumed witche s who would thus be charged with a symbolic reestablishment of obedience to the will of the governors. In Brittany, moreover, late revolts indicate that the region had remained frondeur up to 1675, in a surrounding ocean of apparent submission to the absolute king. Under these conditions, the author ities in Brittany would not have had an easy time of carrying on a ferocious witch-hunt before that date. And later, even though political centralizati on and religious surveillance operated under the same conditions as in Norma ndy after 1639, the repression of witchcraft was no longer possible on a grand

scale, simply because the “crime” was no longer systematically pursue d after the royal ordinance of 1682. In Europe as in France, the chronology and the geography of the witch-

craft trials indicate, as Pierre Chaunu has clearly seen, the existence of an effort to acculturate the rural world. This combat developed, from the

middle of the sixteenth century, on the two closely connected fronts of religion and politics, working to constrain bodies and to subject souls and to substitute a total adherence to the will of God and of the king for “surface conformities.”? In the last analysis, the origin of the frenzied persecution of witches in France was not exclusively religious; it was politico-religious. The problem was one ofthe assimilation, on the part of both the Church

and the state, of outlying and in every way overly independent provinces. 19. See Y.-M. Bercé, Croguants et Nu-Pieds (Paris, 1974), Map p. 55. 20. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers,” 906.

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

These were also the provinces in which Protestantism had taken root: the East, the southern slopes of the Massif Central, Béarn, Guyenne,

Nor-

mandy, and so on. But, precisely, the Reformation had flourished there both for spiritual reasons and because of the spirit of independence of these distant provinces.”! Many of these regions, what is more, still showed proof of a tradition of indocility toward governmental wishes in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries—in the southwest part of France, for example,

and its reactions against fiscal policy in the nineteenth century. There 1s nothing surprising in the fact that witches were exterminated in these outlying regions between 1580 and 1610 in particular, with new outbreaks around 1640 and 1670. The timing and the place of these outbreaks follow the implantation of the new powers in the zones farthest away from the centers of decision. The witches thus brought down on their heads the accumulated crimes of heresy and passive or violent resistance to the hierarchies’ decisions. Their punishment was contemporary to the repression of the great popular revolts and to the monarchy’s more muted battle, after the Edict of Nantes, to weaken Protestantism. The Church and the state saw in the witch a prototype of total rebellion, a member of a well-organized and diabolical church and a subject of a well-organized demoniacal kingdom. Thus the witch was a deviant, but a deviant who was not totally isolated. The vagabond, the madman, the beggar, or the truly marginal person of this era only imperfectly corresponded to the image of the adept of Satan that the judges were looking for. To be sure, the lawless and disquieting characteristics of the vagabond, for example, occasionally led him before the courts to answer to the crime of witchcraft. However, the interest of the magistrates was limited, in this event, by the fact that such a person, who was usually solitary, could not lead them to the identification of asubversive Church and state. It is not rare, in the Cambrai region at least, to see the court show a certain indulgence toward this sort of defendant. The typical witch, on the other hand, was a member of a rural community. What is more, he (or she) had a particular sort of sociological profile. Michelet had already noted that women were more often suspected of witchcraft than men.In fact, the percentage of men accused oscillates around 20 percent, both in France and elsewhere in Europe. It reaches a minimum of 5 percent in certain regions of the Jura: the bailliage of Ajoie 21. E. G. Léonard, A History ofProtestantism, ed. H. H. Rowley, trans. J. M. H. Reid (2 vols.:

London,

1965).

;

22. Bercé, Croquants et Nu-Pieds, Maps pp. 209, 210. 23. See Muchembled, “Sorcières du Cambrésis.” in Dupont-Bo uchat, Frijhoff, Muchem-

bled, Prophètes et Sorciers, for data concerning the Cambrésis and the north of France.

The Repression of Witchcraft

243

(1574—1659) or the Franches-Montagnes (1571-1 670). At the most, this percentage reaches 25 percent in Franche-Comté (1599—1668) or 28 percent in the Sarre (1575—1632).24 In the north of France between 1351 and 1790,

women make up 82 percent of the total number of person s accused. We can note, however, that persecution of women increased in the seventeenth century, where women represent 86.5 percent of cases judged , as against 72.5 percent in the sixteenth century. It was especially older women who were accused, widows for the most part, who because of this lived outside the norms of a society that gave a primordial importance to relatio ns with other

people. However,

in the Jura as in the north of France, those accuse d of

witchcraft were not all poor, obscure, and weak. In the same regions, it would be false to claim that being brough t to trial obligatorily led to a death sentence. The proportion of executi ons in relation to accusations was about 68 percent in the principality of Neuchatel from 1568 to 1660. It was only 40 percent in Franche-Comt é between 1599

and 1667,”° and it reached 49 percent in the north of France for all trials during the period 1371-1783. In this latter case, what is more, the severity of the judges was greater regarding the men, since 60 percent of them were put to death as opposed to 46 percent of the women. This means that a man was less often accused of sorcery than a woman, but that his chance of escaping death was slimmer in this region when judiciary procedure did catch up with him. One last typical trait deserves mention: the judges considered witchcraft to be hereditary. One example, chosen among many others, should suffice

to demonstrate this. In 1612 the seigneur of Bouchain (Nord, arrondisse -

ment of Valenciennes) brought to the notice of the sovereign court of Mons, which had jurisdiction over the city, the many child witches of seven to nine years of age in his châtellenie. He asked permission to send those over eight years old to be executed.” The sociology of the persecution of witchcraft, in an overall view, poses

the problem ofthe choice of the victims. Why, between 1560 and 1680, with a paroxysm from 1580 to 1610, were so many hundreds of witches burned?

(Voltaire even speaks of ahundred thousand pyres.) Why did the choice fall particularly on women, on the rural poor but not truly indigent, and on settled residents rather than wanderers? Why, furthermore, was the periph-

ery of France the principal zone of persecution? The search for causes can

24. Monter, “Patterns of Witchcraft,” table p. 14; Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland, 119-20. | a

2s. Monter, “Patterns of Witchcraft,” 12-16. (These percentages are slightly modified in his Witchcraft in France and Switzerland.) 26. E. de Moreau, Histoire de l'Eglise en Belgique (Brussels, 1952), V, 368—69.

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begin with “the spiritual conquest of the countryside” and with “the more efficacious presence of the State” in these areas. However, the real situation was much more complex, for it supposes, as Pierre Chaunu says, “a mini-

mum ofcomplicity between the judge and his victim.”? Between the judge, his victim, and the entire village, Iwould be tempted to add. For the repres-

sion of witchcraft, in my opinion, came out of a crisis of the rural world, which in turn resulted from a crisis in the relations between this nearly immobile world and the religious and political dynamism of the surrounding society. To explain the repression of witchcraft as the motive force in the acculturation of the rural areas, we need to look at both of these two phases.

2. JUDGES, WITCHES, AND VILLAGERS

Most studies on witch-hunts consider only two actors in the drama: the judges and their victims. There are generally a good number of witnesses who appear at the trials, however, and their role proves to be highly important. They know the “witch” well and they know his or her supposed “crimes.” They belong to the same village or to a neighboring community. They are the voices of public opinion at the time, though of a public opinion that is in no way neutral. On the one hand, they claimed to have been the object of acts of witchcraft (maleficia); on the other hand, they were speaking before representatives of learned culture, and they needed to take care not to be compromised along with the witches. They came from the same world as the witches, and they found themselves in a situation of cul-

tural inferiority when they confronted the magistrates, who were apt to regard them with suspicion or with the scornful attitudes that the elites adopted toward all “rustics.” In this three-part structure, the witches were the point of intersection of two discourses completely foreign to one another. The judges speak for their own purposes of an organized satanic religion, of astructured, diabolical church. The witnesses tell of popular sorcery and do their best to mark their distance from it. Beyond this double level of language the participation of the witnesses in the persecution of witches, spontaneous or not, in-

vites us to study the relations between the accused and the inhabitants of his or her village of origin. Didn’t repression sometimes begin at that level? The Sorcery of the Judges Ever since the publication of the great manuals

for the persecution

of

witches at the end of the Middle Ages, magistrates all over France sought 27. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers,” 906—907.

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245

the traces of a well-organized antireligion that was an exactly reversed projection of the Christian religion. All sentences decreeing the death of the

accused contain identical references to this satanic church. Thus in 1679 Madelaine Allard, the wife of Jean-Baptist e Gilles, a resident of Fourmies,

was condemned for the crime of casting spells by the grand bailli de la pairie

d'Avesnes (Nord, arr. Avesnes-sur-Helpe). She was convicted

d'avoir depuis huit ans encha renonchée à son baptes me, d’avoir esté plusieures fois de nuit dans les assemblées des sorciers, d’avoir habité charnellement avec le diable, d’en avoir receu de la graisse pour faire des maléfices et d’en avoir engraissé des pommes et des poires qu’elle a donné à Marie Boulenger et à Marie Rousseau pour les maléfic ier. Et pour réparation de quoy elle a esté condemnée à estre délivré entre les mains de Pexécuteur de la haulte justice, pour estre par luy condui tte au devant de l'église de la Maladrie, banlieu de laditte terre d’Avesnes, et là, à genoux,

pieds et bras nus, en chemise, la corde au col, tenant e une torche ardente

du poids de deux livres, dire et déclarer que témérairemen t et meschament. . . [et] qu’elle se repentoit et demandoit pardon à Dieu, au Roy et

a la Justice, et ce fait d’estre estranglé a un potteau quy seroit a cet effet

dressé au lieu désigné par ledit Juge, et à mesme tems son corps brûlé et

ses cendres jetté au vent.

(of having eight vears ago renounced her baptism, of having been several times at night at witches’ gatherings, of having lived carnally with the

devil, of having received from him grease for malefic purposes and of

having greased apples and pears that she gave to Marie Boulenger and Marie Rousseau to do them evil. And in reparation for which she has been condemned to be delivered in to the hands of the executioner of high justice, to be conducted by him before the church of la Maladrie,

suburb of the aforementioned town of Avesnes, and there, on her knees, barefoot and bare-armed, in a chemise, the rope around her neck, hold-

ing a burning candle weighing two pounds, to say and declare that boldly and evilly . . . [the list of crimes given below follows], and that

she repents and asks pardon of God, of the King, and of the Law, and when this is done, to be strangled from a pole to be erected for that pur-

pose at the place designated by the said judge, and at the same time her

body burned and her ashes to be thrown to the wind. )?8

In this example, and according to the judges in general, witchcraft was constituted by a given individual’s joining the satanic sect. First, the future disciple is initiated, by the Devil directly or by one ofhis henchmen, or by 28. A.D. Nord, VIII B 761, 2nd ser., fols. 37r—v (1679).

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the fact of coming from a line of witches. Second, the new adept frequents the sabbath, which is held at night, away from the inhabited world. De-

scriptions ofthese nocturnal gatherings are numberless. They insist on the celebration of a parodic mass and on a rampant sexuality. Third and last,

each witch receives a malefic powder or grease so that he or she can spread as much evil as possible. Sorcery as thus defined constituted an exact ethical inverse of Christianity and of Catholic moral conduct based on the notion of Good. It was the image of the kingdom of the Devil and of his church in this world, constructed, essentially, by theologians and judges when they confronted rural paganism and the magical thought of the peasants. That the cultural elites were totally persuaded ofthis vision of things is beyond doubt. Didn’t even Jean Bodin, great thinker that he was, state in the sixteenth century that all those who did not believe in sorcery should be burned? The purpose of this construction, however, was to offer the population an intensified image ofa

pure Catholicism. Indeed, just as the missions aimed at focussing the divine images for multitudes who were in fact polytheist, witch-hunts crystallized the opposing figure of the Devil. We might say that the God of the Counter Reformation needed a clearly defined evil counterpart to be more readily imposed on the masses, for in the last analysis, the positive Christian ideal demanded such enormous efforts and constraints that it was hardly accessible to any but the saints. Everyone could understand the insistence on the constant presence of the Demon on this earth, on the other hand. People could be infused with a sense of guilt, and thus would make at least some effort to avoid sin, even if they were unable to reach true sanctity. The Catholic offensive used the mechanism of fear to Christianize the rural multitudes, and they may possibly have gradually come to believe in the reality of demonic sorcery and sabbaths. Does this mean that there really were individuals who gathered at night to call up the Devil? No sure proof has yet been discovered. Thus I would have to consider with skepticism the notion that “magic culture, animist culture, which refused to abdicate, sought to save itself through the diabolic pact.”?# To my mind, the only reality in the phenomenon was that of belief. Could certain individuals have actually attempted to call the Devil to their aid? Any judgment of their success or their failure depends solely on whether the historian who is speaking about it believes or does not believe in the action of the devil in this world. The Church of Satan can thus be considered to have been an invention of the theologians, the clergy, and the judges—an invention based on the 29. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers.” 907.

The Repression of Witchcraft

247 observation of real elements in the daily life of the masses and on the spectacle of superstitious peasant behaviors, as we will see below; an invention that was reaffirmed and imposed on all the spectators to the solemn execution of the witches, One primordial fact, and one that proves that diabol

ical sorcery was indeed a construction of the demon ologists, is that all trials took place in three stages: a preparatory gathering of information and the heari ng of witnesses; the interrogation of the suspect, with or without

torture; sentencing and the execution of the senten ce. As it happens, satanic religion almost never appears in the testimonies of witnesses. It invades the scene during the two following stages. The judges , in other words, imposed on the accused, either by force or by persuasion, their conception of sorcery, whereas the witnesses spoke of a totally differ ent reality. The Sorcery of the Masses

In the north of France, witnesses in witchcraft trials never describe the antireligion that the judges were looking for. They played their role in a drama that usually had only three “characters”: the judge, the witch, and the witness for the prosecution, since the lawyer for the defens e and witnesses for the defense appear only rarely and only in an urban milieu. The witnesses were heard either on the occasion of a preliminary gather ing of information, following denunciation of a supposed witch, or during the trial itself. They confronted the accused after their deposition had been heard. The schema of the deposition is always the same: first the witnes s states that he or she knows the suspect well and that his or her reputation for evil-doing is well-established. Then specific accusations are made concerning the harm that the witch is supposed to have caused to biens (property), récoltes (harvests) in particular, to bétes (animals), and to gens (people).*° In 1599 in Bazuel (Nord, arrondissement of Cambrai) six witnesse s ap-

peared before the échevins of the city to accuse Reyne Percheval, the widow

of Estienne Billon, one of their fellow citizens, of sorcery. The death of a

cow and the birth of an abnormal calf sans chaire ny sans peau (with neither flesh nor skin) were imputed to her. She was also accused ofhaving caused the death of her own granddaughter and of having cast a spell on the entire

household of Jean Parmentier, an échevin and a local notable. Her sexual

behavior came in for criticism as well: one female witness states that a vauldots (a sorcerer) who lived in the neighboring village of Saint-Souplet came often to see her, mesmes que Von disoit qu’il y couchait aucunefois (and people even said that he slept there sometimes). There is no trace of any sabbath nor any direct trace of the Devil in the discourse of these peasants. 30. Muchembled,

“Sorciéres

Prophètes et Sorciers, 288.

en Cambrésis.” in Dupont-Bouchat,

Frijhoff, Muchembled,

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Reyne Percheval, put to torture on 13 September 1599, confessed to all of her “crimes,” which she said she had committed with the help of a malefic

powder. From this moment on, it seems as if the magistrates were impressing the answers to their questions onto the mind of the defendant. The Devil appears at last. His name is Nicolas Rigaut. He has had carnal knowledge of Reyne, whom he has named Marghot and on whom he has left his mark, after having made her renounce cresme et baptemme (confirmation and baptism) and give her soul to him. The sabbath, or dansse, is described, at the request of the judges, as well as the maleficia that brought the witch, according to her own testimony, one gros per beast or per person.*! There is a clear structural difference between the testimony of the witnesses and the “confession” of the accused. The witnesses relate the superstitious beliefs of rural folk of the epoch, as they have been described in chapter 2 of this book. Reyne’s responses to the judges mix these same beliefs with the antireligion defined by the demonologists. It is obvious that the witnesses could not bring up the sabbath without admitting to their own participation in such a gathering or without being accused of having hidden the fact of its occurrence from.the law until the day of their testimony. They could not have been unaware of its characteristics, moreover, since the mechanism of the trials, the public reading of the sentences

when sorcerers were executed, and ecclesiastical homilies described them ceaselessly. The fact that they remained silent about something that the judges were seeking frantically can certainly be explained by their fear of being bracketed with the adepts of Satan. Might it also have been true that they refused to speak a language foreign to them that did not correspond to the realities of the rural world? Peasants were occupied primarily with problems of the harvest, of the increase of their herds, and of sickness and death among people and animals. Since they were summoned and asked to define the action of the Devil in this world, they do so by accentuating what is the most “disastrous” for them in daily life, but taking care to avoid mention of satanism, strictly speaking, which they knew readily led to the stake. In their testimony these peasants are both naive and crafty. They are na-

ive, for they deprecate popular beliefs before the tribunal, but at the same

time admit they hold them: Jean Parmentier, the enchanted échevin of Ba-

zuel, went with his family to a healer woman of the nearby village of Bertry,

laquelle leur avoit baillié quelque bruvaige et esté ghary (who gave them some potion and [he] was cured). They were crafty, however, for they made the 31. A.D. Nord, 8 H 312 (1599).

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249 witch a scapegoat, and they avoided Speak ing to the judges of apparitions of the Devil or of sabbaths, which would have been signs of sorcery. These characteristics remained unchanged in this region up to the end of the witch-hunts. In 1679 Jeanne Marchant, who lived sur le maret (by the duck pond) of the small town of Seclin (Nord , arr. Lille), was accused

of using maleficia. One witness claims that she had poisoned one ofhis pigs. He is sure of it, he says, for he gave the animal un peu d’eau de fonts (a little spring water) and the pig fell roid mort (stone dead). When he opened up the pig, he found une beste noire, de la forme d'un petit poisson ressemblant à un broceton, ayant une teste de cette forme, qui étoit attaché sur les poulmons dudit porcq (a black animal in the form of a small fish like a pike, having the same sort of head, which was attached to the lungs of the said pig). A sec-

ond witness relates that he had surprised the witch, in 1667, milking one of his cows and that he flew into a rage. Since, sa vache a venu à tarir et seicher,

quoy qu'elle donnast très bien du lait et du beurre aupar avant (his cow dried up, although she gave good milk and butter before). Furth ermore, in 1678 one of his children died at the age of two or three month s after Jeanne Marchant had come to see him and said: Hé bien, vraime nt, il y at icy un nouveau fruict et ne Vay pas encore vu! (So, truly, here is a new fruit and I haven’t seen him yet!) One woman blames Jeanne for her son’s illness be-

cause Jeanne, her neighbor, had come to borrow a pot of butter on 21 September 1678. Soon after, the child fell sick: il se plaign oit comme s'il auroit eu

de la raison (he was complaining as if he had had reason [as if he could talk]). His eyes filmed over and he died blind, even though his mother carried him to the church of Saint-Blaise de Houplin, not far from Seclin , because she had been told qw’il pouvoit estre malade de la maladie de saint Blaise

(that he might have had Saint Blaise’s disease). Others who appea r before the judges speak of the death of animals, horses in particular.*? We could cite many examples of this sort, but what is important is simply that the witnesses speak of evil spells but not of a satanic religion, and that in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries they continue to seek the protection of healing saints or to practice magical gestures themselves, for example, by using holy water. We should also note that social fears find expression in the testimony against Jeanne Marchant: the witch seems to be poor and lives on small “loans” from her neighbors. In addition, she was accused by persons who possessed more than she, and even by people with enough wealth to own horses, which were costly. We shall have more to say of this socioeconomic aspect of the phenomenon. 32. A.D. Nord, B 19817 (1679).

250

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France In the north ofFrance, in any event, there was a clear difference between

what the witnesses, on the one hand, and the judges, on the other, meant

by sorcellerie. | have found dozens of mentions of trials in Artois, a region that seemed little affected by witch-hunts. Most of them fall after the royal ordinances of 1592 and 1595, which attracted the attention of magistrates to this problem.*? Independently of their date, however, these trials contain

many references to the two types of sorcery we have defined. One example is the arraignment of Jeanne Petit, called Nisette, before the court of Wail-lés-Hesdin (Pas-de-Calais, arr. Arras) in 1573. Jeanne was

fifty-four years old and married to a fourth husband. She was the village cowherd and was paid ten sous per year per animal. She could neither read nor write. Thirteen witnesses appear before the local bail, all complaining of the loss of animals. Not one speaks of the antireligion of the demonologists. One of them claims that Nisette had caused the death of his wife. Tortured on 8 and 9 June 1573, Nisette confessed that the Devil appeared to

her in the form of awhite butterfly, that she had gone to the sabbath, that she had coupled with the Demon, who gave her some grain to kill animals. She denounced two diabolical companions: But she retracted, or so it seems, for she was sentenced on 22 June only to flogging and perpetual

banishment, after making honorable public amends and having her head

flamed with a chapeau d’étoupe. A commission of Artois jurists confirmed this sentence, given la fragilité et imbécilité du sexe féminin (the fragility and imbecility of the female sex), because there was insufficient proof of the death of men or animals.% Even if the law was primarily interested in the diabolic church, it did occasionally attack popular sorcery directly in the Spanish Netherlands, of

which Flanders and the Artois were a part. The Gouvernance d'Arras, on 19 October

1585, fined a censier (wealthy farmer)

ten livres because

he had

turned to wn estranger (an outsider) to learn the name of the person à qui il imputoit la morte de ses chevaux et luy donner remède pour empescher à ladvenir .. . la morte ou maladie Wiceulx bestiaux (to whom he imputed the death of

his horses, and to [have him] give him a remedy to prevent in the future. . . the death or the sickness of those animals). Moreover, he had also been

present when this outsider carried out spells avec superstitions illicites (comporting illicit superstitions). Better still, a royal decree dated 20 July 1592 enjoined priests to warn

their flocks against the use of magical healing practices. Another decree of 8 August 1608 threatened with banishment anyone who told fortunes or 33. B.M. Lille, MS. 380, 31-37.

34. P. Bertin, “Une affaire de sorcellerie dans un village d'Artois au xvr: siècle,” BSAM

(June—September 1957), 609-17.

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251

offered to prédire et révéler les choses secrètes (predi ct and reveal secret things), or even those who consulted such specialists in destiny . During the same epoch, royal ordinances threatened banishment, honora ble amends, or flogging, at the judges discretion, to noweurs @aiguillette —people who hin-

dered the consummation of marriage by making the husband impotent— Or to donneurs et porteurs de haultnoms—persons who sold or wore magical talismans.** To be sure, both the law and the civil authorities drew a clear theoretical

distinction between superstitions, which were punishe d with relatively light

sentences, and sorcery with evil intent, which was to be uprooted by pyre and stake. The point is, however, that the judges did everyth ing in their power to prove that all who were accused of witchcraft had made a pact with the Devil. It was enough to be a healer or to practice a bit of magic and be denounced to the courts to become the target of long interro gations and end up, under the effects of torture, by confessing to whateve r was suggested. In this sense, repression created satanical witches as the adepts of an organized religion. It did so by using the beliefs unanimously accepted in the rural world: belief in diviner-healers, in village sorcerers, in individuals capable of dominating the magical forces that were distributed everywhere in

the universe. The witnesses prove, consciously or not, that some of their

fellow citizens practiced such superstitions. The magistrates, imbued with

the idea that such superstitions could come only from the action of Satan, took it on themselves to go back to the source and prove that a diabolical pact had given the “witch” the powers that the witnesses spoke of. The relations between witnesses and magistrates were thus ambiguous. Two very different languages converged to destroy sorcery. This is certain as far as the north of France is concerned, but was this region perhaps an exception? Although historical studies have for the most part amalgamated the witnesses’ testimony and the witches’ confessions in an attempt to draw a clearer “profile” of the latter, it is possible to find elsewhere the double model of sorcery that we have described. This is the case, for example, concerning the village of Quingey, in FrancheComté. The witnesses speak essentially of the death of children, adults, or animals, of various sorts of harm caused to people and property, and of the bad reputation of the witches. Public rumor in the village plays an extremely large role in the fate of the accused. But the strictly demoniacal sorcery that is described by the demonologists appears, as in the North, only with the interrogations of the suspect. 35. B.M. Lille, MS. 380, 30-34; MS sro, fols. 2372r—v.

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With one exception, however: the judges sought out children as witnesses, such as those who claimed that Marguerite Touret fut de tous les sab-

bats depuis environ trois ans (took part in all sabbaths for the last three years).*° We should add that children, brought. up in a climate of witch hunting, spectators at capital executions, catechized

and infused with a

sense of guilt by the local priest, were well acquainted with the judges’ sort of sorcery and had no hesitation to speak of the sabbath. They were not as conscious as adults of the danger of being grouped with the accused. Jehan and Françoise Bucquet, aged ten and eight years respectively, were sentenced in 1612, on the request of the officers of the barony of Inchy (Pas-deCalais, arr. Arras), to be present at the execution of their parents (for the use of spells), to be flogged, then locked up in a house acquired at their village’s expense, and souvent catéchisez (catechised often). Wasn’t this a fine preparation for one day being excellent witnesses at another trial for witchcraft? Rarely does testimony refer to the diabolical church, as do the child witnesses of Quingey or a seventy year old shepherd, who declares in 1601 at Bazuel that he had seen, near a wood, une femme à cheveulx espars, quy danssott en tournoyant (a woman with her hair loosened who was dancing, twisting and turning). Such a description must have evoked in the magistrates’ minds the image of the “nocturnal dance”—that is, of the sabbath. But this shepherd and one sixty year old workman who confirms his statements are the only ones to make such declarations among thirty-two witnesses who appeared before village trials of four witches in 1599, 1601, 1621,

and 1627.%8

In short, according to the examples from the Nord and Franche-Comté,

and if the hypothesis is accurate for all of the regions of France in which witch-hunts arose, the judges and the witnesses spoke of sorcery in different languages. The judges, who were carrying out the policies of religious and lay authorities, defined a process of the mental conquest of the rural world. While claiming to fell the diabolical church and the diabolical state. they installed the Counter Reformation and absolutism. They loosed such terror among the villagers that the latter tended increasingly to accept the security proposed to them by God’s Church and by the centralizing state, at the price of the subjection of their bodies and of their souls. The witnesses, 36. F. Bavoux, La sorcellerie au pays de Quingey (Besançon, 1947), 128 (for testimony see for example 112—13, 122—23, 126, 150-51, 154—55). 37. B.M. Lille, MS. sto, fols. 2370r—v. 38. Muchembled, “Sorcières en Cambrésis®

Prophètes et Sorcters;, A.D. Nord, 8 H 312 (1601).

in Dupont-Bouchat,

Frijhoff, Muchembled,

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253

on the other hand, describe à sorce ry that aims to do harm, but that is exactly

like the sorcery that their ancestors both dreaded and utilized. They are evidently aware of the characteristics of the antireligion evoked by the cultural elites, but they generally avoid refer ence to it, in order to ensure that they too would not be suspected of satani c witchcraft. Why, however, do they deprecate and attack superstitious belief s and practices, even while they occasionally admit, naively, that they adhere to them and make use of them? Is it simply to avoid being bracketed with the accused? That explanation is only partially valid, for there were a good number of witnesses who appeared spontaneously before the law courts . Certain rural communities even demanded the persecution of witches. This persecution usually was initiated at the high end of the social scale, but it became extraordinarily widespread at the turn of the century because it was relayed to the very heart of the village s. When the magical equilibrium that the witch or sorcerer had previously guaranteed no longer existed, she became the victim not only of the judges but also of her fellow citizens, or at least of some among them, who burde ned her with all the sins of Israel. Witches and Villagers

French historians have generally considered witchcraft as an autonomous intellectual phenomenon, whether they admitted the existen ce of sabbaths or not. This means that little precise attention has ever been paid to the relations between the witch, those who attacked her, the village that produced her, the witnesses, and sometimes the judges as well. Some recent remarks on the part of specialists in witchcraft in England incite us to attempt this microsociology, this microanthropology of the repress ion of sorcery. The north of France—the only French region that has yet been studied from this point of view, to my knowledge—ofters an opportunity to analyze village hostility toward witches. The example of England, to begin with, suggests that the problem of witch-hunts should be posed in a new way. Keith Thomas has recently writ-

ten, in substance, that on the continent persecution was aimed at a sect of

worshipers of the Devil, and necessarily began from on high. In England, to the contrary, it was the result of afear of maleficia (evil spells). “It there-

fore emanated from below.”*’ Alan Macfarlane, a disciple of Thomas, dem-

onstrated that witch hunting in Essex county was in direct relation with the evolution of rural society during a period of profound economic, social, 39. K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline ofMagic (London, 1971), 499.

254.

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religious, and political change. For him, the problems of poverty and old age were fundamental to an explanation of the witch-hunt. The question was not one of true paupers, Macfarlane declares, who could be flogged

and chased out of the village, but of agroup of “poorer villagers whose ties to their slightly wealthier neighbors became more tenuous.” He further suggests that witchcraft might have developed in regions in which anxiety was widespread among the population.* In sum, these two authors invited a reconsideration of witchcraft at the strictly village level. They thus suggested that witch-hunts, in England, could give an index to a social change taking place at the heart of country areas and to a struggle for power in the villages. As it happens, an examination of trials in the north of France demonstrates the existence in this region of an identical “model” of rural witchcraft.f! Five witchcraft trials took place in the small village (already mentioned) of Bazuel, near Cambrai, in 1599, 1601, 1621 (two instances), and 1627. Four

women

were brought to trial (one of them, Pasquette Barra, was tried in

1621, released, and retried in 1627). The trials took place before the local échevins, who then submitted the sentence to be approved by the judges of the abbey of Saint-André du Cateau (Nord, arr. Cambrai), of which the village was a dependence. All in all, thirty-two witnesses were heard: two from Le Cateau, four from Landrecies (Nord, arr. Avesnes-sur-Helpe), and

twenty-six from Bazuel. The average age of those who appeared before the court was forty-six, although information is lacking for twelve of them. Only three witnesses were young (twenty-two, twenty-five, and thirty years old) and seven others were fifty years of age or older. Women made up 31 percent of the total: four widows, aged thirty-eight, forty, forty-one, and

fifty-six years; five married women, and one girl of twenty-two. The profession of these women is given in only one case: one hostesse (tavernkeeper’s wife) from Landrecies. Among the men there were three échevins from Bazuel, one sergent, one censier (farmer), one mulequinier (linen worker), and

a series of humbler professions: day laborer, shepherd, ouvrier de mulquinerie (day laborer in the linen shops), and so on.

Generally speaking, the witnesses were all relatively “old,” but not as old as the witches, among whom the average age was about sixty. A generation, more or less, separated the accused and the witnesses. The ratio of men to women is marked, among the witnesses, by the predominance of men: 69 percent are men, as opposed to 31 percent women, whereas the accused 40. Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 20s, 246-49. 41. See Muchembled, “Sorciéres en Cambrésis,” in Dupont-Bouchat, Frijhoff, Muchembled,

Prophètes et Sorciers for details concerning what follows.

The Repression of Witchcraft

255 were all women in this particular instance, and in the region under consideration women accounted for 82 percent of all suspect s. Finally, the witnesses and the accused did not belong to the same socioeconomic stratum.

Three of the four witches were widows, and all seem to have lived in tight circumstances, if not in abject poverty. Several witnesses, on the other hand,

were at the top of the village hierarchy, and three of the échevins of the village were among the plaintiffs. Moreover, if we compare the names of the

witnesses to the list of the village échevins, we can see that several plaintifts

were related to the families of the judges or cited as victims of witchcraft

people allied to these families. We can also note that some witnes ses were in the employ ofthese same families, or exercised professions that made them dependent on the wealthier inhabitants of Bazuel. The complaints lodged against the “witches” always concern sickness, in all forms, or the endangering ofthe property of people wealthy enough, for example, to own several horses. Very often the witch is suspect ed of having cast a spell because someone had refused to give her something, or because someone had taken something that she considered to be her propert y. In this way, Aldegonde de Rue, who was brought to trial in 1601, was accused of having said to one person that he would be sorry for having picked a quarrel with her concerning a manure pile, for it wasn’t right de prendre les biens des poures gens sans les payer (to take poor people’s property without paying them). Another plantiff claims that Marie Lanechin, tried in 1621, had taken revenge on her, causing the death of her daughter, because she had refused her some grains de purge (purgative seeds). The “witch” was thus the focus of a social hostility. She was typically an old woman, fairly poor, and without solid family backing. The hostility that she suffered came from people somewhat younger than she, who could

have been her children: men, for the most part, sometimes noticeably wealthier and more powerful than she; or else they were people who be-

longed at her own socioeconomic level but who may have been clients of the wealthy villagers. In this sense, the witch was certainly no social rebel.

She seems to undergo her fate passively and not to understand exactly what people reproach her for. The case of Bazuel is not exceptional in the Cambrésis. A reading of the testimony of a number of isolated trials or of the trials of the six witches of Rieux (1650-1652) and the seventeen witches, male and female, of Fressies and of Hem-Lenglet (1609—1649) helps us establish a socioeconomic dividing line between the witnesses and the accused. As in Essex, the witches

seem indeed to have been poorer than their victims and than the witnesses,

who sometimes belonged to wealthy and influential families. However, as

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in Essex, the witches were not necessarily the most poverty-stricken inhabitants of the community, and they lived side by side with those who testified against them before the judges.* The explanation for witch-hunts must be sought, to a large extent, in the village itself, if we can judge by what occurred in the Cambrésis. But this hypothesis needs to be verified for other regions, since a thorough study of the testimony and of the relations between the accused and their villages has rarely been attempted. There is at least one other example (mentioned previously in another context) that concerns Artois. In Wail-lés-Hesdin (Pas-de-Calais, arr. Arras), Jeanne Petit, called Nisette, lived with her fourth husband, Jean Ternisien, who was born in Esquerdes, on a holding owned by the priory of

Saint-Georges. She was fifty-four years old, could neither read nor write, and was the village cowherd. The bailli of this locality heard thirteen witnesses who accused Nisette of witchcraft. Those who appeared before the court, one after the other, were two shepherds (one the owner ofhis flock, the other a valet), seven independent farmers, including Nisette’s stepson,

two inhabitants of the neighboring village of Humières who had formerly lived in Wail, the parish priest, and a local seigneur. The first shepherd owed

money to Nisette and was forced to pay it when she had brought suit against him. Furthermore, five witnesses out of thirteen sign their deposi-

tion. They accuse Nisette of having caused the death of her stepson’s wife and of several animals, but not of diabolism. This affair could serve as a model for the study of the sociocultural characteristics of the persecution of witchcraft. Nisette is an almost pertect stereotype of the accused witch: she was old, poor, illiterate, a sexual deviate (since she had already “consumed” three husbands), and a social deviate through her fourth marriage with a “foreigner.” She was also marked by misfortune, as she had lost a twenty year old son about 1570. She admitted under torture that from that date onward she had felt herself detested and

feared in Wail, and she confessed that she désespéra (lost ail hope), to the point that she ceded to the devil, that she had sexual intercourse with the

devil, and that she went to the sabbath.# All that she lacks to be the perfectly typical witch would be to be widowed once more. Her confession contains allusions to the fact that she feared solitude and knew that she could not count on any kin or any friend after the death of her son. Her stepson, whom she had raised from the age of fourteen, was, moreover, one

of her fiercest enemies. In face to face confrontation she cries out to him:

42. [bid.; Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 150-51, 155, 164, 176, 196— 07. 43. Bertin, “Une affaire de sorcellerie” 609—17.

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257

Jehan, Jehan, ne m'as-tu Pas cognue pour ta mère, femme de bien? (Jehan,

Jehan, haven’t you known me as your mother and a good woman?) She adds that she would not be listening to his reproaches if she had given him viande mauvaise (poisoned meat) or if she had thrown him to the ground when he was a child. Was this young man putting a distanc e between them for fear of being accused himself, or was he taking reveng e on a detested stepmother? The testimony of one of the shepherds, on the other hand, shows that his resentment toward the “witch” resulted from an affair involvi ng financial interest. The seven farmers belonged to the higher econom ic echelon of

the village, since in Artois the term laboureur implied ownership of a plow and horses. The curé, the local seigneur, and three other witnesses represent

learned culture as they were able to sign their depositions. Even though the last three were only peasants with a rough smattering of culture, an enormous gap separated them from the illiterate Nisette. Nisette escaped death, but she was banished forever, which was as good as being sentenced to a lingering death: she became a penniless vagabond , deprived of all sources of aid and support. In addition, she was sentenced to make public honorable amends, was flogged, and had a chapeau d’étoupe burned on her head. The village of Wail had broken its spell. In choosing this type of “witch,” hadn’t it given symbolic expression to the victory

of the powerful, the wealthy, and the more cultivated over a more or less

poverty-stricken mass that participated in an oral culture alone? Over a dominated mass, yes, but one which suffering, drunkenness, or simply a refusal to support its condition any longer could push to violence. Wasn’t Nisette to some extent sacrificed to release underlying social tensions and wasn't the example she provided intended to push the less fortunate into submission? Social clashes were far from rare in the villages of Artois under the Ancien Régime. Paul Fauqueux, manouvrier—that is, an agricultural day laborer—on

22 July 1655, drunk and armed with a gun, accosted Anselme

Vryon, un des principaux laboureurs (one of the most important farmers) of Lambres

(Pas-de-Calais, arr. Béthune). Fauqueux ordered him to take his

animals back to the stable. Vryon refused, and Fauqueux is reported as telling him: aujourd'hui, nous serons votre maître et les y mettrons malgré vous (from today on, we will be your master and will put them there whether you like it or not). Then as Fauqueux left he added: Mordieu, j'ai un coup de fusil pour toi. Va-t-en chercher ton fusil. Quelqu'un me le paiera aujourd'hui! (S’death, I have a shot for you. Go get your gun. Someone is going to pay me for it today!)

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He then attacked Charles Duvivier, clerc (clerk, official) and tax collecter, who killed him with a fourche (a pronged pike) that he was carrying à cause

de son office de compteur (because of his position as tax collector).# The farm hand, emboldened by drink, had attacked two of the most powerful village

personages. Without the letter of pardon accorded to his murderer, the name and the frustrations of this unhappy man would have remained unknown, just like untold numbers of internal conflicts, family quarrels, and social hatreds that existed in the rural areas of Artois or in France in general. The persecution of witchcraft, seen from this point of view, is a sign of particularly serious social tensions. The witch, who was powerless to do anything about these tensions, was just the scapegoat in this situation. She paid with her life or her sufferings the consolidation ofthe notables’ stranglehold on certain villages. The spectacle of her execution provided all of her fellow citizens an opportunity for an atrocious release, and she stood as an example of what lay in wait for rebels, restive individuals, and people who lived humbly and tried to escape the influence of the powerful. The witch, even if she had no desire to be so, was a female without ties who,

from this very fact, did not adapt to the common law and could not be controlled by the interplay of clienteles. She was often a pauper, but not a beggar: a woman living on meager resources, who aroused the fear of property owners. She was accused with being able to destroy living beings and to take all of men’s wealth from them. Isn’t this the worst fear of every man, and in particular of anyone who has more property than others? When the social situation took a turn for the worse, the fear of the witch was connected, in the minds of those who had the most to lose, with their

obsessive fear of revolts and of the violence of the have-nots. When a witch was burned, the fear of amore general uprising was alleviated, at least for the time being. It is in this sense that it seems to me that we should interpret the idea that “witchcraft . . . readily flourishes . . . on a class front.” The witch was rarely a conscious social rebel. Events moved too fast for her: this was the crime for which she was executed. In reality, her persecutors in the village indistinctly felt that their power was being threatened by the muffled hatred of those who lived in poverty and lived lives of mediocrity— that is, of those who resembled the witch like a brother or a sister. | Persecution did not come uniquely from on high. It was frequently the

affair of local judges, as in Bazuel from 1s99 to 1627. Even better, it was

sometimes set loose by rural communities, which thus anticipated the de-

sires of the Church and the higher judges. Was this perhaps the case in re44. A.D. Nord, B 1823 (1659). 45. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers.” 904.

The Repression of Witchcraft

259 gions other than the north of France? Since other studies on the question are lacking, we have no choice but to take our exampl es from this area. Village pressures were demonstrated in two ways. On the one hand,

when witches from outside a given village ventured there, they risked set-

ting off full-scale public outcry. This is what occurred in Ors (Nord, arron-

dissement of Cambrai)

in 1601 or in the Lille area in 1679. On the other

hand, the witches within any given village were occasionally the object ofa persecution that was organized, but of more limited social scope. On 15 July 1609 the twenty members of the rural community of Hem-Le nglet (Nord, arrondissement of Cambrai) demanded that aucunes personn es demourantes audit Hem . . . soient appréhendés par la justice supérieur (certain persons living in the said Hem. . . be apprehended by the high court) for the crime of witchcraft. They promised to pay part of the court costs. The signers included the mayor, the échevins, and four members of the Lamand in family. Almost all of these were men and they belonged to the more well-to -do circles of the village The community of Carniéres (Nord, arrond issement of Cambrai) drew up a similar act in 1627 and offered to pay hal offthe court costs. Forty-three signatures authenticate the document. Most ofthe sign-

ers are men, and some families are represented by several signatu res. Similarly, on 7 November 1611, the mayor, four échevins, and two fief-holders in the village of Dechy (Nord, arrondissement of Douai) wrote to the abbot

of Saint-Amand, of which the village was a dependency, that they would like to have local witches prosecuted, beginning with two of them who had already confessed. These notables offer to pay forty florins carolus per banishment or execution as their part of the court costs. Village authorities, acting alone or backed up by a certain number of heads of family, sometimes decided to persecute witches themselves in spite

of the very high costs involved: in Hem-Lenglet, in 1623—1624, trials cost an

average of one hundred florins, a large part of which was paid by the inhabitants of the village. It is legitimate to suppose that a number of rural community organizations, particularly if they remained open to all of the heads of family instead of being dominated by the wealthiest villagers, as in Hem-

Lenglet, hesitated at taking on such expenses, which meant depleting their wealth and perhaps going into debt. Moreover, at Rieux (Nord, arrondissement of Cambrai), where six trials took place in 1650—1652, a copyist noted that some of the witches had been known for a long time, but that they had

not been prosecuted pour la pauvreté du village (because of the poverty of the village). They would have been burned more rapidly sy les commodités du vilagey eussent estez (if the resources of the village had permitted).* It is true 46. Muchembled,

Prophètes et Sorciers.

“Sorciéres en Cambrésis,” in Dupont-Bouchat,

Frijhoft, Muchembled,

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that witch hunting cost a good deal. The trial of three women in Flines (Nord, arr. Douai) came to more than a thousand livres in 1599. The same year, 15 October, the bailli’s lieutenant and the échevins levied a tax of six

hundred florins on the inhabitants of Flines so they could pay their part of the expenses. Nevertheless, the échevins declared themselves ready to appréhender d'aultres pour pareillement faire leurs procès pour le meisme crime (apprehend other [witches] to try them as well for the same crime). This was done in April 1600, when eight women were brought to trial.*” In certain cases, socioeconomic and sociocultural tensions within the village shaped an attitude favoring the persecution of witches. As in the département du Nord

and Essex county, this attitude seems

to have been ex-

clusive to the wealthiest families and the most powerful men. Poor peasants, or less wealthy peasants, frequently testified against the witch, however, even though she resembled them in many ways and belonged to the same socioeconomic stratum as they. Did they do so to dissociate themselves from her? Were they genuinely terrorized by the diabolical aura that surrounded the suspect? Were they motivated by the many ties of clientage that bound them to the wealthier neighbors? All of these explanations may be valid. In any event, the rural masses occasionally joined in the persecutions directly, and willy-nilly, they had to pay part of the expense of the trials when their own community was involved. The principal problem, however, is still what caused peasant participation in this highly costly persecution. Even if the northern model is valid for other regions of France, the fact remains that many parishes, in Flanders and in the Cambrésis as elsewhere, refrained from persecuting witches. We need to attempt a general explanation, keeping in mind social relations within the village, to be sure, but looking at the surrounding society as well, which up to now has remained in the shadows. Weren’t witches funda-

mentally the victims of a great cultural, economic, and political upheaval,

the shock waves of which arrived in different parts of the rural world in France at different moments between 1560 and 1680?

3. WITCHCRAFT AND THE ACCULTURATION

OF RURAL AREAS

The proliferation of witchcraft trials at the end of the sixteenth and during the seventeenth centuries gives the impression of an increase in the phenomenon of magic. In reality, to my opinion, witches and sorcerers were neither more numerous than before nor different from their forebears . The only thing that changed was their ongoing relations with the village, on 47. F. Brassart, “Comptes de dépenses d’un procès de sorcellerie en 1599,” SEW, IX (1869),

39—41.

The Repression of Witchcraft

261 the one hand, and the surrounding society, on the other, They remained the Passive toys of achange that they themselves did not understand. Far from attempting to save their culture and their world “through the diabolical pact,”**they were the victims of a process of acculturation in rural areas. They symbolize a popular culture that the gover ning elites and the judges sought to destroy, aided and abetted by a minori ty ofrural folk who broke with their traditional vision of the world. The example of the north of France can help us first to analyze this situation in detail, then to propose a

general model for the persecution of witches, based on the definition ofa

crisis in the rural world and on a description of the ebb and flow of acculturation in postmedieval France. One Example: Acculturation in Rural Areas of the North

The persecution of witchcraft in what is now the Départ ement du Nord

reached two peaks, one between 1580 and 1630 and the other between 1650

and 1680.* The second period corresponds to the end of a long war between Spain, which owned these territories, and France, which succeeded in conquering them. The trials of the years from 1670 to 1680 in particular are evidence both that the agents of the Sun King were taking hold of these regions and ofthe perturbations that the change of regime involve d. As for the first period, it is exactly contemporary to the great waves of the persecution of witchcraft in France. The point of departure for persecu tion was

political and religious, but economic, social, and intellec tual factors enable

us to understand why it lasted halfa century. These territories, which belonged to the king of Spain, had revolted and had only been reconquered by the armies of Alessandro Farnese after

1579-1585. As it happened, the king promulgated ordinances specifically aimed at witches in 1592 and 1595. He was imitated by the archduke s, his successors, in 1606, 1608, and so on. This effort indicates a desire to keep

tighter, more

efficacious control of regions that had been profoundly

affected, in the decades from 1560 to 1580, by the Calvinist heresy, which was then pushed toward the north, toward the future United Province s. The

prince reaffirmed his absolutist claims, which had been at the origin of the revolt, and effectively introduced the Counter Reformation in his states. Surveillance and regimentation of the popular masses accelerated with the creation of Sunday schools—which were obligatory in the province of Cambrai, for example—with the establishment of seminaries and the Chris-

tianization in depth of the country areas, with the active surveillance of the 48. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers,” 907. 49. See Muchembled, “Sorciéres en Cambrésis,” in Dupont-Bouchat,

bled, Prophétes et Sorciers for this entire section.

Frijhoff, Muchem-

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mores of laity and clergy alike, with the fight against public festivities, and

with “the sanctification of Sunday and feast days.” In short, an “atmosphere imbued with religion” developed that was extremely hostile to superstitious practices and to sorcery, just at the time that the authorities clearly designated witches as legitimate targets for the judges’ vindication of public morality. Some country folk joined the judges: literacy was making progress, more clearly than ever before separating out from the illiterate mass an increasing number, though still a minority, of peasants who knew how to read and

write. Because written culture was the vehicle for religious verities and for the notion of submission to God and to the king—as it was for a hatred of uncouth superstitious practices—a gap slowly widened between these two categories of villagers, particularly since the “cultivated” rustics were generally also the most powerful and the wealthiest. One fact of primordial importance is that the demographic and economic structure of rural areas was changing during the same time. In the Cambrésis, according to the works of Hugues Neveux, the population skyrocketed from 1450 to 1575, thanks to an increase in life expectancy for adults

and to a rise in the number of births per family. Economic malaise set in, however, during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, when the production of grain stagnated at a level lower than that of1520. Social antagonisms

grew more acute. Villages tended to close in within themselves, as “demographic expansion [made] every scrap of land more precious and every new arrival less desired.” This malaise was further aggravated by the “surprising mobility of the population” that characterized the sixteenth century and by farm help traveling in search of work. Men reacted more violently to threats to property under these conditions and were more readily pushed to crime. One investigation of criminality in the southern part of the Low Countries from 1610 to 1660 shows that 15 percent of the crimes among manouvriers (farm day laborers) and so percent of those involving fermiers (farmers with

large holdings) and /abourenrs (independent plowmen)—that is, the wealthiest peasants—were conflicts that involved financial interest. Thus a reservoir of tensions accumulated in the villages of the Cambrésis at the end of the

sixteenth century. After the interruption of the war in 159s, those who had

fled the villages returned, further increasing social pressure on these communities, even though the economic crisis, strictly speaking, had levelled off. Everything conspired, from 1575 to the beginning ofthe seventeenth century, to heighten internal tensions in the villages. As it happened, the au-

thorities designated a peerless enemy, in 1592 as in 1606: the witch. As we have seen, the witch was accused by her fellow citizens precisely of endangering the goods or the life of men or animals. How could the wealthier or

The Repression of Witchcraft

263

simply the well-to-do peasants who belonged more and more to the sphere of written culture have failed to become sensitized to this double message? The authorities and the preachers all added to their sense of guilt as they spoke to them of the ire de Dieu courroucé contre son peuple (wrath of an angry God against his people) and invited them to reject all superstition, pointing to someone guiltier than they in the person of the witch. On the

other hand, the tense economic

and social situation led these wealthier

peasants to fear for their lives and for their goods because ofthe existence of a dreaded mass of destitute or needy people, among whom the witches fell.

Although the exercise of such a justice was a costly affair, the stake, erected in good conscience by people better off than the suspects, by the haves, burned away both their religious terror and their social fears. But how can we explain the fact that persecution touched only a limited number ofvillages in the Nord and not all communities? The expense ofthe trials is a first part of the answer. Probable differences in the degree of acculturation of rural areas, which would have to be demonstrated by more detailed analysis, might be added: the subjection of souls and bodies undoubtedly was not accomplished at the same rate everywhere. In the third place, differences in economic evolution also played a role. There are indications that places in which rural industry developed precociously—/a mulquinerie (fine linen cloth manufacturing), for example—were also focal points for the repression ofsorcery. Did the older mental structures perhaps resist better in villages that remained more traditional from this point of view? Was it perhaps, on the contrary, that both the penetration of slight economic improvements and the acculturation process contributed to the disarticulation of family, clan, and fraternal relations that had had so much importance a century earlier? To answer these questions more pertinently every parish that persecuted witches would have to be studied from this point of view. A fourth element in an explanation lies in the existence of mechanisms of release that contributed to the lowering of tension in a given community. Brigandage,

verbal violence,

the émotions— popular

revolts—and

crimi-

nality in general operated as safety valves that spared the community costly witchcraft trials. Violence, when it found expression, made the sacrifice of a

scapegoat witch less necessary. The connection between sexual repression and witchcraft offers a fifth explanation. The study of 142 morals offenses involving members of the clergy and of 664 sexual offenses involving the laity judged by the officialité of Cambrai in the seventeenth century shows that these crimes diminished as trials for witchcraft increased, and vice versa. Furthermore, 40 percent of

lay offenses of the sort took place in the southern part of the archdiocese—

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that is, the area of a higher concentration of witch burnings. In short, when direct pressure on mores was relaxed, executions of witches increased, par-

ticularly in the region closest to the archepiscopal seat and under its tighter surveillance.

One

mechanism

for sexual censure,

initiated by the eccle-

siastical authorities and relayed by the local judges, found expression in the witch-hunt. The witch-hunt, moreover, was undeniably “universally steeped in sexual components.” °° The magistrates, for example, forced the witch to

admit to satanic copulations or to confess that she had given the devil #n poil de ses parties honteuse (a pubic hair). In conclusion, when the centers of control were at a certain distance, both sexual repression and the persecu-

tion of witches seem to have been weaker, whereas proximity to these centers led to witchcraft only when the ecclesiastical court’s supervision of mores relaxed somewhat. For the moment, this is the most we can say. Witchcraft as it was persecuted in what is now the département du Nord was indeed to be found at the heart of the village and not at its fringes. The witch was in no way a deviant. She was, to the contrary, the by-product of a sociocultural situation in evolution and the passive toy of achange of which she remained unaware. The witch, like the Devil, did not know that she existed. A profound crisis in the rural world demanded that she appear, par-

ticularly since the mechanisms working toward the acculturation of rural areas etched her portrait in reverse. Witchcraft and Crisis in the Rural World in France

The case of the Nord might appear to be an exception. Artois, and Flanders even more, belonged to an area of dynamic rural civilization, an area of high population density and solid community constraints in which many agricultural improvements had been achieved before the eighteenth century.*! It might be that witchcraft took root there in a quite particular manner and arose from a unique social situation. Thus we need to survey briefly the whole of France, keeping this example in mind. The most recent studies on the rural world in France emphasize that in spite of agood many regional shades ofdifference, a “slow degradation” of peasant life occurred between 1560 and 1700. As it happens, popular revolts, just like the repression of witchcraft, were lodged at the heart of this century and a half. Popular revolts give active evidence ofa general malaise that pushed the masses to despair. Witchcraft was not the prolongation of these rebellions, but an exactly. inverse phenomenon: persecution was to so. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers.” 906.

st. See G. Lefebvre, Les paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française (re-ed.; Paris, 1972).

$2. J. Jacquart, “Immobilisme et catastrophes,” in G. Duby and A. Wallon, gen. eds., Histoire

de la France rurale (Paris, 1975), IL, 185.

The Repression of Witchcraft

265 have helped to heal the malaise and attenuate the social tensions. The witch was the ideal example of the predictable failure of all revolts. She was brought to trial by those who feared social movements. She was executed to stand as an example and to release and recha nnel the passions that had accumulated in a rural world in crisis. Around 1560 the period of the “lean kine” began. The worst periods in agriculture came between 1580 and 1610, between 1640 and 1665, and

between 1690 and 1710. By coincidence, witch hunting reached its highest peaks at just those dates, with the shepherds of Brie and Normandy of 1687—1691 bringing up the rear, for after that date witchcraft was no longer really taken seriously. In addition, the Years 1560, 1640, and 1680 correspond roughly to the endpoint of periods of demographi c high, when rural areas were full of men soon to be decimated by frightful crises. Moreover, prices

were rising: very rapidly around 1560-1590, at a more leisurely pace from

the beginning of the seventeenth century to 1630, brutal ly just before the Fronde. After 1660 price curves underwent unpromisin g oscillations. Once again, the high points in witch-hunting correspond fairly closely to a crucial phenomenon: a higher number of men were living worse. Bread cost

three or four times more

in 1590 than in 1554, for example. The period

1600—I615 Was a relative happy interval for rural areas, before the afflictions of the years 1630—1660. Finally, we should note that the launc hing of each major epidemic of witch-hunting was contemporary to a turni ng point in the short-term economic conjuncture, to periods of high prices , and to moments of maximum population. This is as far as we can go in this direction since attempts to relate these persecutions to the economic situat ion in the very short term or on an annual basis have been unsuccessful. From a social point of view, the peaks in the persecution of witchcraft

coincided with an overcrowded rural world in which life was made very difficult indeed by higher prices—that is, they coincided with a “conjunctural” impoverishment of the peasant masses. This impoverishment was felt all the more keenly during these periods because it was an intensification of a centuries-long process of “real pauperization of the rural mass” and of “growing parcellization” of agricultural holdings. Nonetheless, two

different models of evolution existed in France, according to Jean Jacquart. The first, characteristic of the great silt plains of the north and areas of

large-scale agriculture, “places a small group of wealthy farmers at the sum-

mit ofthe rural scale ofwealth and rural hierarchies,” while the middle group

of smaller independent farmers was whittled down and the pauperization of the peasant mass accelerated. The second model, “probably the more frequent,” was dominated, in the absence of real cogs de village (village “big shots”), by “a solid group of middling farmers.” In this case, “the rich were

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less rich, the poor, less poor,” and “the village kept its diversified equilibrium for a longer time.”** According to the example of the Nord, the first model would be more likely to lead to witch-hunts than the second. In certain cases, however, per-

secution resulted from the presence of an itinerant judge or from a decision that initiated from on high, and it thus could have had little relation with

the socioeconomic structure of the village concerned. Let us say that villages that reflected the first model seem to have been more apt than those that fitted the second to relay the fury of the judges and the demonologists and that the first model seems to explain the length and the complexity of certain supposedly demoniacal epidemics. On a less general level of analysis, two additional elements enter into the picture. On the one hand, regions farther from the center or more recently conquered or pacified than the others offered excellent terrain for the repression of sorcery, as we have seen. The authorities, who found surveillance more difficult in these provinces, were sensitive to the resistance they encountered there. Their intervention in the affairs of community organizations tended to be more heavy-handed, and they tended to make use of already existent social cleavages as a means to governing. This could set off a witch-hunt, subsequently taken up for their own reasons by the village leaders and the local men of means. This was undoubtedly the case in Flanders and the Cambrésis after 1670. Was it also true for Normandy at the same epoch? On the other hand, the internal evolution of the rural community assembly, which necessarily differed from region to region, had a good deal of direct influence on witch hunting. Generally speaking, the rural community organization weakened between 1550 and 1700. It “destroyed itself from the

inside as well, by the slow dissociation of its elements, by the slow crumbling of aconsciousness ofcollective interest.” It was already meaningless in the Ile-de-France and in Picardy, regions of open fields, grain culture, big farmholds, and massive pauperization.* As it happens, there was no persecution of witchcraft, and no major peasant revolts took place in these two

regions. The proximity of the monarchy, the presence of big merchantfarmers favorable to the established system, and a peasant poverty less atrocious than elsewhere explain this for the Ile-de-France. This means that the domination of the cogs de village was uncontested and needed no burnings at the stake in its support. In other cases, however, the rural community

organization resisted better and still included heads of family of more moderate wealth and lesser proprietors. Tensions in the assembly were less in 53. [bid., 187, 191-93, 201-202, 275, 307—308. 54. Ibid., 297—98, 300.

The Repression of Witchcraft

267

this case, especially in regions without cogs de village , which belonged to the

second model defined by Jean Jacquart. Here, since there was little in the interplay of internal social rivalries to teed it, the hatred of witches could come only from above, from authorities outsid e the village. Popular revolts,

on the other hand, were certainly possible in this context, since they were aimed at external enemies. There was, finally, a third case. There were commun ities that were evoly-

ing and slowly passing into the hands of the more powerf ul peasants. Their power was less stable than in the Ile-de-France, so village social tensions were more acute. The witch-hunt would be a means of channeling those tensions. This was the situation in the Cambrésis and in the Nord in general from 1580 to 1630, in Burgundy, and in Champagne. The beginning of the seventeenth century in Champagne saw a “progressive bourge ois take-over of lands,” an alienation of communal organizations, a flight of peasants to

the cities, and a rebirth of insecurity after 1610. Social hatreds intensified,

particularly against domestic servants and above all against the poor, who elicited “a mixture of fear and scorn.” In Burgundy the village community

assembly disintegrated between 1550 and 1650 because of a similar penetra-

tion of the middle class into the rural world. This “struck the rural group in its precious property and in its rights,” and “social disequilibri um increased.”* There is no doubt that in this troubled social context the struggle for domination of the village was increasingly bitter. Didn’t the powerful use the burning ofwitches, consciously or unconsciously, as a way to impose their will on the masses, still attached to the older commu nal “democracy” and more resistant to change than in the Ile-de-France? Finally, we will know the full story of the persecution of witchcraft only when we can relate it to the total history of each region, of each village. In the last analysis, the explanation of the phenomenon is inseparable from that of the internal equilibrium of rural community assemblies. On the level of amicroethnology, we would have to define interpersonal relationships in the village—that is, all of the solidarities that bound men one to another and all that set them apart. Specialists are still far from being able to do this. We can state, however, that the absolutist State and even more the Counter Reformation contributed to the relaxation of these horizontal ties in order to substitute vertical relations between the peasant and the various hierarchies leading to God and to the king. Private wars diminished or became more hidden, which indicates a weakening in ties of lineage. Increased value ss. Y. Durand, Cahiers de doléances des paroisses du bailliage de Troves pour les Etats généraux de

1614 (Paris, 1966), 31—34, 38—39, 63.

7

56. P. de Saint-Jacob, Documents relatifs a la communauté villageoise en Bourgogne du milieu du

XVII siècle à la Révolution (Paris, 1962), xxiii-xxv.

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was accorded to the immediate family, which was more easily kept in check.

Organizations like the confraternities, fraternities, and Jeunesse groups lost importance, to an unequal degree in the various regions, to be sure. In short, bonds of solidarity, which previously had been so numerous, slackened, and

God and the prince could reach the individual more directly. The first thing that the individual felt was the gradual crumbling of the structures that gave security to his universe. He was forbidden to be superstitious. He was obliged to give himself totally into the hands of the divinity and the prince. Wasn'’t it normal for him to feel a certain amount of anxiety at this obligatory adaptation? Added to this, if he were well-to-do, was an increase in social fears, for the gap between the rich and the poor was deepening. At the same time, a muffled struggle for domination of the

village was becoming more acute in regions in which social difterences were great but the village notables had not yet monopolized power in the community assembly. The more active role played by royal agents, missionaries, and bourgeois who bought up land further accentuated village disequilibrium. And since the authorities designated a victim who, moreover, had

the characteristics of the pauperized masses, the village échevins and the wealthiest peasants threw themselves with relief and good conscience into the persecution of witchcraft. They demonstrated their social conformity and their attachment to the dominant values, and at the same time they succeeded in imposing their law, increasing their hold on the village, and in striking terror into the hearts of those who might on other occasions have been tempted to resist them. This overall schema imputes a high degree of responsibility for the occurrence of witch-hunts to certain social groups in certain villages in certain regions. It in no way explains the origins ofthe persecution, nor the innumerable stakes set up by judges like Boguet, Rémy, and De Lancre. Neither does it explain the deeper causes of change in the rural world or its crises, which need to be related to problems of demography and of subsistence, to increases in land rents and taxes, to the exploitation of amass of people by a privileged minority, and so forth. On the other hand, it does enable us to grasp the echoing response that persecution found in country areas and the causes

for its disappearance

around

1680-1690.

“Furthermore,

the

monarchy favored the notables” in the seventeenth century, Jean Jacquard writes.®” It aided the cogs de village to take control of their community organization. Hadn’t they given guarantees of their conduct by bringing witches to trial and more generally by their defense of social order? But even while it used these local leaders “to maintain its domination over the country 57. Jacquart, “Immobilisme et catastrophes,” 299.

The Repression of Witchcraft

269

areas and to exploit them for its own profit ,” the monarchy— and all of the

world beyond—scorned them just as much as the other country folk.5s In any event, the struggle against witchcraft that well-to-do peasants and the governing elites carried on in common can be explained by their concordant interests. Furthermore, although the persec utions disappeared at the end of the seventeenth century, it was not only because the judges’ mentality had changed. Witch-hunting was no longer useful to the creation of submission. At the end of the reign of Louis XIV pauperization was generalized and the misery of the peasants was at its peak, but the peasan try had been subjected: “it remained reactionless.” The great popular revolts had ceased. The privileged, like the rural notables, had definitively established their power over broken, alienated, and resigned masses, which were occupied with little more than their difficult survival5 Thus the persec ution of witchcraft no longer had any reason for being, and the State lost interes t in it, as did the peasant elites, now definitively reassured of their power. In England, to cite a comparison, persecutions also died down because the most influential peasants no longer saw any need for it. What remains to be done now is to return to the origin of this persecutory folly to describe the rhythms of acculturation and to ascertain its effects. We know why the surrounding society reached into the very heart of the village, but we do not yet know how it happened that a civilization that had lasted a millennium was conquered in one century. The Rhythms and the Effects ofAcculturation Witch-hunting, as we have seen in connection with what is now the dépar-

tement du Nord, was tied to the widespread movement for the accultura tion of rural areas that took place in France from the middle of the sixteent h century on. Representatives of the Church, the king, and the governing orders of society directed all their efforts to the constraint of bodies and the submission of souls and to the imposition of total obedience to the absolute king and to God. This overall movement, which persisted up to the great

changes that preceded the Revolution, in the middle of the eighteenth cen-

tury, was not uniform, however. It had peaks and troughs that become evi-

dent when we study the fluctuations of witch-hunting. The beginning of

these persecutions, around 1580, corresponded to the discovery on the part

of the various elites—and first of all, by the missionaries—of an ocean of superstitions and of practices they considered abominable. The violence of 58. Ibid., 307. 59. Ibid., 352—53 (a remarkable summary).

60. Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 206.

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the clash between traditional popular rural culture and regenerate Christianity, with its global conception of the City of God, explains the proliferation of witchcraft trials from 1580 to 1610.

The principal method for the acculturation of rural areas was frontal and violent clash, for the implantation of schools and seminaries was only at its beginnings, and ecclesiastics and agents of the king were only starting to infiltrate the land. The only way to modify the traditional intellectual framework of the peasant world was through the new generations, and even then

the task was so immense that the results were imperfect. Around 1610, when the first wave of the persecution of witches was drawing to a close, only one generation could have been affected by this cultural conquest, and this to a varying degree from one region and one social category to another. In Wissous (Essonne) around 1600, twenty-five out of one hundred villagers knew how to sign their names. All the rural notables, a fourth of the wine growers, and nine independent farmers out of fifteen could do so, which

indicates that the embryonic elementary instruction organized during the Wars of Religion concerned the upper levels of the rural world alone. In Languedoc at the same epoch “nine agricultural proletarians out of ten remained spiritually estranged from civilizations of writing,” but 10 percent of the independent farmers could sign their names, one fourth of them could sign their initials, and two thirds used just a mark.°! For one generation the persecution of witches slowed somewhat, however, after which it underwent a new general upsurge, only slightly less intense than the first, around 16401660. Christianization, literacy, and political control all showed progress in rural areas during this half century. But spiritual conquest, strictly speaking, was not yet widespread. Around 1640, when the stakes and the pyres multiplied once more, there remained old peasants and old village women still attached to their traditional mindsets. Their sons and their grandsons had not all been enrolled by the missionaries, by more learned priests, or by schools, which were still sparse. The many popular revolts of the first half ofthe seventeenth century contributed to the insecurity of the times, and they worked against the efforts of the Church and the servants of the king. Was the exasperation felt by the cultural elites and the clergy, now increasingly well prepared, when they con-

sidered the mental inertia of the peasant world at least in part responsible for setting off the second wave of persecution? The agents of God and the State must surely have sensed. more

distinctly the gap between the new

ideas and the reality of life among the people. The missionary enthusiasm born in the middle of the sixteenth century continued, but the passive resis61. Jacquart, “Immobilisme et catastrophes,” 309,

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271

tance of the superstitions was becoming apparent. Saint Vincent de Paul, among many others, lucidly observed that the villagers fell back into error after the missionaries had left, and that to avoid this danger the missions should return regularly to each community. The battle against popular culture that had been engaged could only become more inflamed in this somewhat discouraging context and at a time of great insecurity. The witches paid for this because they were considered criminals but also because they were held responsible for the perpetuation of a magical and superstitious thought. In addition, the slow but growing acculturation of fringes of the rural world added to tensions within the villages, inciting the more literate peasants, who were also the most powerfu l and the wealthiest, to refuse existence to the witches. One thing that urged them to this, aside from the phenomenon of social and political struggl e that has already been discussed, was an intense sense of guilt earned throug h their contact with the dominant culture. The two principal epochs of witch hunting need to be seen in relation to the timing of acculturation and Christianization in the rural world. In both periods, the proliferation of trials originated in a situation of conflict. Witches were burned, for the most part, when passions were at their height,

in a combat to the death against tenacious superstitions. Beginning with

the reign of Louis XIV, on the contrary, when “the real fruits of the Catho-

lic Reformation appear more clearly and more generally,” persecution died down. The conflict turned slowly to the advantage of the Church and the State. The new generations were increasingly well regimented and more and more cut off from the roots of popular culture. Almost all of those whose experience went back before the cultural conquest ofthe countryside were dead. A few of these relics of the past were still being burned, in the person ofwitches, male and female, of great age. Obviously, some susperstitions survived, transmitted from mouth to mouth, but they were no longer expressed openly. Fear of the Devil, of hell, and of the stake dominated the

minds of peasants who in appearance were totally subjugated. The terrorist

repression, as Yves Bercé has called it, carried out during the reign of

Louis XIV had dried up the sources of revolt and spread fear everywhere. Procedures for domination were now so well established that witch burnings to further accentuate that fear became useless. Furthermore, the cul-

tural elites had the impression of having vanquished, if not all superstitions, at least the most widespread ones. If a witch was still burned at the end of the seventeenth century, it was no more than an exceptional phenomenon, 62. Ibid., 323, 324. 63. Bercé, Croguants et Nu-Pieds, 52.

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and no longer the result of converging procedures for taking control of rural areas. The stereotype of the witch proves that popular culture was the target of persecution, for this stereotype was a total fabrication of the judges and the demonologists. It tells us more about the mentality of the prosecutors than about the reality of witchcraft. It presents an ethical inversion of the values that were then dominant in society. In this sense, the theme of the “world upside down” or the “topsy-turvy world,” which was used in the seventeenth century just as well as in the twentieth to describe witchcraft, does not refer to any sort of phenomenon of subversion, but it does define the

anxieties and the fears, and thus by antithesis, the ideals of representatives of the governing orders of society. This definition can be found as early as the end of the Middle Ages. The Hammer

of Witchcraft, for example, which was published in 1486/1487 in

Strasbourg, presents woman as “an evil of nature, painted with fair colours.” This is because the daughters of Eve were on an average judged guilty of the crime of witchcraft four times more often than men, as we have seen. In general they were old women (more rarely, young girls), and more or less destitute, but a strong sexual dimension always surfaced in the course of the trials. These considerations relate directly to the sociocultural values that the Church and state were trying to implant into the minds of rural folk. A more general repression ofsexuality was expressed through a persecution of women. The missionaries of the Catholic Reformation combatted the relative liberty of mores that existed in rural areas before 1550. They imposed

effective “sexual brakes” on the peasant world.®* The “confessions” extorted from the supposed witches can be interpreted in relation to this very real puritanical struggle. Copulation with Satan or with demons recalls the survival within the rural world of the “trial engagements” and concubinages that the authorities were attempting to uproot. The sabbath, that “sacrilegious feast,” was just a diabolical transposition of the many popular festivities that we have studied, which often ended up, with the aid of drunkenness, in sexual excesses, as in the fétes des Fous or the harvest festivals. In reality, the many sins imputed to the witches were the result of the missionaries’ profound dissatisfaction when peasant sexual conduct continued to conform insufficiently well to the theoretical mold urged by the Counter Reformation. Evil seemed to be everywhere. The witchcraft trials, 64. The Malleus maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Springer, trans. M. Summers (New York, 1971), 43; on women, 41—47. 6s. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers,” 906—907; see also chapter 4 above.

The Repression of Witchcraft

273 in this context, created a sense of guilt among the people by linking extramarital sex with the Devil. Could the fall in the numbe r of illegitimate children and in prenuptial conceptions in the seventeenth century be the result, at least in part, of the existence of this mechanism? The witch, in any event, stood as an example of an extreme form of censurable behaviors, but also of the victory of the new sexual norms. These new norms took root slowly, however, and with a good deal of

variation from region to region. They could not function fully unless they had been infused into a certain number of villagers and above all unless the local curé adhered to them wholeheartedly and kept a careful watch over the morality of his parishioners. If the priest, for example, contin ued to behave like his predecessors of the end of the Middle Ages, this infusio n of culpability could not occur in the village. This was perhaps the case in one parish

of the Cambrésis in which the curé, around 1626, declare d that a spell had

been cast on a twenty year old parishioner on whom he was paying a call and offered to sleep with her to cure her of it.‘ In short, witch hunting was to find a more favorable terrain in communities in which the pastor kept a careful check on his own mores and those of his parishioners and in which sexual repression had affected at least part of the population. It is probable that the more recently they had gained a sense of culpability, the more intensely they desired persecution. Or could it be that the villagers and the priests who were most affected by the religiou s renewal but whose own behavior was not without stain in the lights of the new norms were the most active in casting this guilt on others? This was probably frequently the case just about everywhere in France before 1660— that is, before Christianization had become more intense and before most

rural priests had become truly better prepared and more conscious of their moral duties. We should remember that nearly 150 recorded moral offenses—and undoubtedly many others, trace of which has been lost—were imputed to

priests in the Cambrésis in the seventeenth century. Toward the middle of

the reign of Louis XIV, however, the model of a curé of more rigid spirit,

of irreproachable conduct, more cultivated and of more thorough spiritual formation

than before, became the rule. Alexandre Dubois, curé of

Rumegies, near Saint-Amand (Nord) is a typical example.” Although he still believed in the Devil and in witchcraft, his view of the problem was

most probably different from that of his predecessors. He condemned the 66. Muchembled,

Prophétes et Sorciers.

“Sorciéres en Cambrésis,” in Dupont-Bouchat,

67. H. Platelle, Journal dun curé de campagne au xvi1°

Frijhoff, Muchembled,

siècle (Paris, 1965).

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sins of his parishioners, but he had no need to project on them and on the

witch a personal feeling of guilt. One of the mechanisms that had led to the proliferation of trials instituted by the villagers had disappeared. The sexual repression carried out in rural areas during the seventeenth century channeled the diabolic obsessions of the governing orders of society, of locaK priests, and of wealthy and acculturated peasants toward woman. But why should they have attacked old and poor women, often widows, more than any other representatives of the female sex? Because they were more vulnerable and socially less dangerous, first of all. Their weak or nonexistent family and social ties gave them a marginal situation in the village. An attack on them ran less risk of setting off family wars, clan battles, or group confrontations—that is, of aggravating the internal ten-

sions of the community still further. They were, moreover, the object of a general suspicion on the part of all who could imagine their own survival only within the multiple solidarities inaccessible to them. These women sometimes inspired silent reprobation, for example, when they had “gone through” several husbands. They were often accused of their husbands’ death, and in fact the aggresstveness they encountered came

from the fact that they had abused their rights in the matrimonial market. Didn’t the charivari of the Jewnesse groups express the same hostility toward widowers who remarried? Besides, these old women, or others who resembled them, were the principal agents for the transmission of supersti-

tions and magical beliefs, chiefly by means of the veillées. They spread popular culture, we would say in twentieth-century terms. Furthermore, “the female sex is normally the conserver and the privileged transmitter of cultural wealth.” ** They could count on the hostility of the clergy, judges, representatives of learned culture, and rustics who had acquired even a small veneer of book learning. Because of their advanced age, they represented the capacity for survival and resistance of ancient village ways of thinking. Didn’t they generally confess that the sabbath was spent in reciting a parody of the general confession before the Devil? As it happens, the Counter Reformation, following the example of Carlo Borromeo, tried precisely to replace the medieval public confession, evoked in this parody, by individual auricular confession. In general, these old women were told that they belonged to the old order

of things, to the magical world that was the world of their forebears in the village. The women believed in the possibility of acting upon this world by

rites, words, and acts that the judges qualified as diabolical. And diabolical they were, since the magistrates interpreted in a new and dualistic vision of 68. Chaunu, “Sur la fin des sorciers.” 906.

The Repression of Witchcraft

275 the universe what was only a peasant means ofsurvival in a difficult world. Thus they condemned, in the name of a struggle against an antireligion, sorcerers who had had the misfortune to cling to their old beliefs and who were unable to understand why such hatred was shown them; sorcerers, in

sum, who were poor, but not totally destitute.

This part of the stereotype was probably not created by the presiding judges alone. In all likelihood, it came partly from the persecuting villagers’ choice ofvictim: members of the peasant masses who lived in the village but were on the road to pauperization and who could not have remaine d insensitive to the spectacle of the opulence of some of their fellow citizens . The villagers were stifling any temptation to revolt and warning the poor that nonconformity did not pay. They proved to them that there existed and would continue to exist a large economic and social gap betwee n the powerful and the humble. They also demonstrated that they themselves belonged to the world of the masters and of learned culture. The execution of an old and poor sorcerer served to consolidate their power over the peasant masses and to prove their own dependability to the surrounding society; they echoed the fundamentally hierarchical and inegalitarian aspects of that society while they used these aspects for their own benefit. Various other elements that do not belong specifically within the phenomenon of the acculturation of the countryside would need to be taken into consideration for a complete description of the repression of sorcery:

the role of wars, the evolution of learned culture itself, the evolution of the

judges’ mindset, for example.‘ This is not my concern here. What interests me is that this repression finally reached the “monstrous doubles” of the majority of the peasants of the time, “emissary victims” who were chosen both by society at large and by their own communities. These victims had many traits in common with the peasants who watched them burn, but were set apart from them by their sex, female in the majority, by their advanced age, and by their relative social isolation. They served to turn the villagers away from the crimes with which they had been charged and from an attachment to a popular vision of the world. The victims were sufficiently different from the spectators so that the latter did not fear that the same fate awaited them, on the condition, of course, that they

avoid this demoniacal model for the rest of their lives. Wasn’t it natural for peasants to feel a desire renewed with each execution to follow the straight and narrow path traced by the persecutors—and first of all to denounce any who strayed from it—in order to guarantee a degree of security of mind 69. See the books and articles already cited of R. Mandrou, Monter, P. Chaunu, A. D. J. Macfarlane, for example.

H. R. Trevor-Roper,

E. W.

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and to shift the frightening attention of the magistrates away from themselves and other informers? Thus the epidemic fed on itself as long as the sacred was turbulently unsettled, as long as the village needed expiatory victims whose sacrifice “protects the community from that same violence,” ” as long as a process of cultural stabilization had not yet taken shape. Somewhere between 1670 and 1680 this process had been completed. Witchcraft became useless. All essential social and intellectual reclassifications had been made. The witches’ villages once again found a certain cohesion under the uncontested authority of the local notables. In other regions, witchcraft had never been such a widespread phenomenon because the internal tensions of the community were less well defined: then only the destructive hatred of an itinerant judge could set off trials. Often, from another point of view, acculturation penetrated only slowly and quite imperfectly. Occasionally it conquered the terrain fairly rapidly, in regions close to Paris, for example. Conditions in both of these instances were unfavorable

to outbursts of persecution madness. Then, around 1680, acculturation occurred in slower and less invisible ways—the Bibliothéque bleue of Troyes, for example. It no longer needed a frontal clash with a rural world that it considered domesticated. Then the great rage for the persecution ofwitches that had swept through many a French province during the century of Reason ceased. *

*

*

Witchcraft was not totally extinguished in 1680. It survives to this day: on 29 February 1976 Jean Camus, rebouteux (bone-setter, country doctor) was

found assassinated in his own house in Héloup (Orne). Two brothers ad-

mitted to having committed the crime, following the death of their older brother and the disappearance of several of their farm animals and a dog. Their mother accused Jean Camus of being a sorcerer. He “was the Devil. He gave cancer to all who laughed at him.” One of her own sons, she added, had attempted to cure a well-known victim of his by his “fortunate gifts. . . but the other one was too strong. So he had to kill him.””! Witch-hunting in France, on the other hand, was limited to the period 1s80—1680, and it affected the peripheral areas of the land in particular. Within these same areas, unlike Essex county in England or southwest Germany, it generally concerned only a limited number of villages. We can indeed speak of hundreds

or thousands of executions,

but the hundred

thousand burnings at the stake that Voltaire speaks of are certainly an exag70. R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. P. Gregory (Baltimore, 1977), 93. 71. Le Monde, 5 March 1976, p. 11. (See also Le Nouvel Observate ur, 15—21 March 1976, 48—so concerning this affair.)

The Repression of Witchcraft

27 geration. Persecution generally initiated from on high. It was the result ofa widespread effort for the cultural conquest of rural areas. Counter Reformation priests, judges, and agents of the king were the shock troops of this

combat. The front in this war was Catho lic and absolutist, and it prove

d more difficult to establish on the edges of the country than in the Bassin parisien. Furthermore, this struggle was quite intense at the beginning and in the middle of the double process of the Christiani zation of country areas and their subjection to royal authority, that is, around 1580-1610 and around 1640-1660, whereas it weakened and then totally disappeared during the epoch of Louis XIV, when the rural world seemed to have been definitively brought into line and its acculturation seeme d complete. The stake and pyre served to impose on all a respec t for a regenerated religion and an all-powerful king. They destroyed, symbolically, the tradi-

tional popular vision of the world, its magica l aspect, and its capacities for

resistance and for transmission by women. They installed a fear of God, summit and model for all human authority, by means of fear of the devil, whom the trials claimed was omnipresent in the world. They presented the peasantry with a Christian dualism that was supposed to stifle and destroy beliefs in the existence of a multiplicity of ambivalent forces —that is, the old attachment ofthe popular masses to a sort of de facto polyth eism. They helped to burden the multitudes, already affected by a complex process of bodily constraint and the subjugation of souls, with a sense of guilt (see

chapter 4).

The witchcraft epidemic took on its full meaning and its full weight, however, only when some of the peasants adhered to the new values and Participated in the persecution of witches. This adherence came about through the efforts of the Church and by means of amore thorough regimentation on the parish level, a better preparation for priests, and the penetration into people’s souls of the message of the Catholic Reformation. It was an adherence that also resulted in a socioeconomic change in the rural world, the internal equilibrium of which was modified. The poor got poorer and the rich got richer between 1560 and 1700. Tensions occasionally became acute in the village before the rural notables, with the help of the monarchy, reached a point at which they could easily dominate their com-

munity. Revolts, social malaise of various sorts, hatreds, jealousies, and ri-

valries mark the first half of the seventeenth century more than the second in the villages. And when the most powerful peasants had to face such dangers, they sometimes seized the occasion of a witch-hunt initiated by the judges to strike terror into the hearts of the humble and impose their will on them. These various

elements

explain why the persecution

of witches

de-

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pended on two long-range phenomena: the cultural, religious, and political conquest of the countryside, on the one hand, and their socioeconomic

evolution, on the other. This persecution took on its full importance, how-

ever, only when these two phenomena met dramatically in a given region or a given village. Since this coincidence was relatively exceptional, the majority of French villages experienced no major persecution of witches. In others, however, repression was atrocious. In this event it was an indication ofa

global malaise in the place in question and even in the province of which it was a part. The persecution of witches must be studied in its context. It took place at a meeting point of demographic, economic, social, political, religious, and cultural history. To understand it really well, we would need to carrv out veritable monographic studies of the villages concerned, then review

these studies in relation to the general phenomena we have been discussing. One thing is certain: the repression of witchcraft alone does not summarize the acculturation of the rural world in the early modern period. On the other hand, part of the baggage that the offensive to civilize rural areas nec-

essarily brought with it was the witch-hunt, or at least the stereotypes that permitted the carrying on of a witch-hunt when the occasion offered. A hegemonic learned culture that stifled popular culture found support among country people who had broken with the past of their own civilization and wanted to participate in a small way, content with the crumbs from the table, in the great feast that a minority of privileged persons had prepared for themselves. The rural mass, pauperized, crushed by taxes, subjected, and incapable of reaction at the end ofthe seventeenth century, were

the ones who set the table. What was in store for them was to undergo one last form of alienation—the diffusion of a culture made to measure for them. This was not a learned culture, which the country people could never have assimilated entirely nor wholly appreciated, as the social elites scornfully thought, but a new “popular culture” that was diffused, among other

ways, by a “devitalizing” and “tranquilizing” literature sold at low cost by peddlers.”

72. Jacquart, “Immobilisme et catastrophes,” 316-17.

CHAPTER 6

From Popular Culture to a Mass” Culture

OPULAR culture, rural as well as urban, underwent a nearly total eclipse during the reign of the Sun King. Its internal coherence disappeared forever. It could no longer be a system of survival, nor a philosophy of existence. There was no place in the France of Reason or later in the France of the Enlightenment for any conception of the world and of life other than that of the court and of the city elites—the conception purveyed by intellectual culture. The triumph of French civilization was based on an immense effort to reduce diversit y to unity, as seen in the campaign to subject bodies and souls and the merciles s repression

of popular

revolts,

deviant

behavior,

heterodox

beliefs, and

witchcraft. Nevertheless, neither brute force nor persuasion was enough to effect a radical and definitive transformation in popular mentality and popular mores, deep-rooted for centuries. In point of fact, learned culture, strictly

speaking, diverged more and more from the realities of the lives of the

working populations,

and in particular from the realities of peasant life.

The ideological void that opened up between the elites and the masses was soon filled: toward the middle of the seventeenth century, conditions com-

bined to permit the birth of a“mass” culture. This “mass” culture, spread by popular imagery and by peddlers’ literature, constituted a sort of intermediary language between the language of letters and that of the humble, a language that borrowed part of its vocabulary from popular culture, but that owed its syntax to learned culture. In other words, this cultural level popularized the dominant ideological mod-

els, on which the continued stability of society was founded. Popular culture was not destined to disappear totally under the Ancien Régime: hidden here and there, shamefacedly, bits of the traditional popular culture 279

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

survived. It underwent a sort of resurgence between the middle of the eighteenth century and the Revolution, to continue to our own day in profoundly modified forms and with a fortune that has varied from one age to another. 1. PRECONDITIONS

Writers around 1550 did not hesitate to dig deep into the fund of popular culture, as we can see from the works of Rabelais or Noél du Fail. This state

of affairs disappeared slowly during the two following centuries. A wider and wider gap separated the lack of culture imputed to the popular masses and the civilization that was represented by the Court, the aristocracy, and the various bourgeoisies. A remarkable work by Norbert Elias outlines the process by which the elites became increasingly different from the humble by adopting a new “civility” and an art of “proper conduct” based on a more and more refined sense of delicacy, on a refusal of vulgarity, on an attention to manners

and social behavior, on taboos concerning sexuality

and violence, and so forth.! We can divide this evolution into two stages, however. Until the middle of the seventeenth

century, representatives of learned culture brutally at-

tacked the behaviors and the beliefs of the masses. Their violence can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that often they were still personally involved in the superstitions they claimed to hate. Indeed, society was in no Way spatially compartmentalized at that time. Both bourgeois and nobles frequently spent part of the year living in the country. In the city, before the wealthy became increasingly isolated in neighborhoods reserved to them, there was daily contact between members of all strata of society. Furthermore, hadn’t a great many aristocrats, burghers, and judges who later proved to be ferocious witch hunters also had intimate contact with the popular vision of the world when they sucked the milk of a peasant wet nurse in their earliest infancy? In short, cultural relations had not been abolished, even if by this time they were profoundly marked by the scorn that the honnéte homme displayed for the lack of culture and the coarseness of the common people. These ambiguities could, on occasion, lead the privileged to a sense of

guilt, or at least to a certain malaise. Wasn’t Nicolas Rémy (1530—1612), the

great persecutor of witches in Lorraine, obsessed by sexualit y and even more deeply by his intimate and personal acquaintance with the “crimes” that he combatted and that he thus expelled from his own mind? How 1. N. Elias, The Civilizing Process, trans. E. Jephcott (New York, 1978).

From Popular Culture to a Mass” Culture

281

many other demonologists were there who were active between 1580 and 1610, at the time of the principal upsurge of the persecution of witches, for whom this was the case? More simply, Pierre de PEstoile (1540-1611) adopted

an attitude typical of the governing orders ofsocie ty of the end of the sixteenth century. Although he spent weeks at a time in the country, he makes

no allusion in his Journal du régne de Henri IV to peasants or to rural life.

He does, however, show himself to be of an “extre me credulity concerning anything supernatural, the minute it is not a part of the official liturgy,” and

he takes pleasure in describing cases of possession or witchc raft and writes at length about the superstitions of his time—all things that he observed in Paris? Might not his total lack of interest in village phenomena come of a profound cultural scorn for people too unlike those he habitually frequented? The second stage began around 1660. The break between the learning of the elites and the lore of the humble was consecrated. Artists and writers judged severely an author like Rabelais, guilty, according to La Bruyére

writing in 1690, d’avoir semé Vordure (of having sown filth) in his writings. This repulsion shown to a work that represented “the wild and barbaric sixteenth century” became even stronger in the age of the Enlight enment.’ The mixing of genres was no longer possible because the tastes of the members of the upper levels of society no longer permitted it. To a certain ex-

tent, the privileged seceded to their own neighborhood, their houses, or to

the court, and they no longer brooked more than a superficial contact with

the working population. The life style, the language, the fashions , and the

attitudes of the elites reflect this growing scorn, fed by an obscure fear of

revolt, individual or collective.

Artists and writers who still took an interest in the daily life of the

people were rare. Louis Le Nain (1593—1648) dared to brave this taboo in

his time, but although his style was dubbed “realistic,” he portrayed peasants who were idealized, too corpulent and too well-to-do to be anything but village notables.* The Perrault brothers, in their youth, were also sensitive to the mores, the superstitions, and the language of the people, which

they translated, notably in their Enéide burlesque of 1647. Intimidated by the Fronde, they rallied to the king’s cause and they later disdained popular themes, just as the bourgeoisie hastened to “deny its popular sympathies,” fleetingly displayed in 1647—1649.5 2. P. de L’Estoile, Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous Henri IV, ed. F. Billacois (Paris, 1964), XU-Xill, XVII, 14—19, 30, 120, 188—80. 3. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 116.

4. See Louis Le Nain, Repas de paysans (Musée du Louvre).

5. M. Soriano, “Burlesque et langage populaire de 1647 à 1653: Sur deux poèmes de jeunesse des frères Perrault,” Annales ESC (July—August 1969), 949-575.

282

Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France The reign of Louis XIV marks the apogee of this process of cultural

differentiation. As Marc Soriano emphasizes, the peasantry of the end of

the seventeenth century “cannot have a completely autonomous culture.” A frontier, situated “at the level of the scatological and of reference to sexuality” now separated the low from the vulgar®’—that is, what belonged to French civilization and what came from popular “barbarity.” Already the tales of Perrault, like the pictures of Le Nain, had been created and appreci-

ated only because they disguised the reality that the privileged refused to see, and thus they could be “consumed” by the privileged without harm. This cultural reclassification, which instituted a French civilization that

was ideally unique and that rejected to the hell of scorn and disgust all that touched the people, created an ideological void between the elites and the masses. The dominant society refused all that came from the lower classes— excluding taxes and material goods, of course—but it could not claim, nor did it even envisage, to diffuse everywhere and for all the totality of the brilliant cultural model that it had elaborated. This void was partially filled by the procedures for the submission of souls and bodies that were ceaselessly being reinforced starting at the end of the sixteenth century, as we have seen. Humble folk learned the Christian virtues of work, obedience, and sexual continence outside of marriage. Furthermore, they learned them through many channels: from sermons, by the example of the exercise of justice, through the role played by the father and head of family or the local curé, through religious confraternities, and so forth. Still, the diversity and the fragmentation of these procedures of control limited their impact. Quite naturally, without requiring any specific attempt at organization, it became clear that the dominant values needed more general diffusion. The petites écoles took care ofthis. It was by no means a coincidence that the Jansenists and the Brothers of the Christian Schools took an active interest in

the problem of what we now call primary education, that Démia created his free schools in Lyon in 1666, and that Jean-Baptiste de la Salle followed his example in Reims in 1679. The end of the seventeenth century was marked by a redoubling of efforts in this domain. “An apprenticeship in sociability, the petite école molded docile bodies and Christian hearts rather than awaking minds.” It created “mechanisms preliminary to an entry into productive life.” The statistics on literacy (see table) show how much was accomplished . There is no need to enter here into the erudite discussions that have taken place over the validity of these percentages and over the various prob6. M. Soriano, Les contes de Perrault

: Culture savante et traditions populaires (Paris, 1968), 94; Soriano, “Burlesque et langage populaire,” o6r. 7. R. Chartier, M.-M. Compère, D. Julia, L'éducat ion en France du XV1° au xvrrr siècle (Paris

1976), 295.

|

From Popular Culture to a Mass” Culture

283

Literacy in France (17th—18th Centuries) 1686 —1690

Men

Women

1786—1790

Men

Women

44%

71%

44%

Southern France

17%

27%

12%

TOTAL

29%

47%

27%

North/Northeast France

14%

lems of interpretation that they pose. Let us say to simplify things that knowing one’s letters indicates some degree of “access to the verities of the faith” and some ability to read.* We can thus take it that this phenomenon gives a measure, albeit a very approximate one, of the acculturation of the popular masses, since the dominant religion and the dominant morality penetrated into souls by the intermediary of the institu tion of the school. One thing that the state of literacy at the end of the sevente enth century enables us to understand is why the revolts, the protest moveme nts, and in certain ways witchcraft were often more widespread in the South than in

the northern half of the country, where nearly one man out of two had al-

ready undergone some subjection to conformity by his contact with the world of the written word. On the eve of the Revolution, on the other hand, one Frenchman out of two and one French woman out of four were probably able to read. This proportion was in reality much higher to the north of an imaginary line drawn from Saint-Malo to Geneva. As it happened, a low-cost literature, distributed by peddlers, had appeared in Troyes

and had developed, beginning with the last decades of the sevente enth cen-

tury, in the northern half of France, taking advantage of agrowing number of potential readers in that region. Basically, this Bibliothéque bleue from Troyes was made possible by the

all-conquering dynamism of the written culture, by the definitive break between the mores and the ideals of the dominant, on the one hand, and the dominated, on the other, and by progress in social enrollment and literacy.

Its emergence and its role were the result of along process. It filled an ideological gap between learned culture in its pure form and what remained of popular culture. In popularizing the ideals of the elites for the masses, as we will see below, it worked insidiously to bring to perfection the system of

submission that was already in operation. It was a product of this system, 8. [bid., 87-109 (a useful summary of current knowledge on the subject).

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

but it was also the veil that hid its coherence, for it seemed to speak to the

people in their own language. In reality, though, this literature that was called popular presented a discourse on the validity of the dominant system. Engravings played the same role on the visual level. The function of both was identical to that of the collége for the governing elites: to root “that profound desire for social stability in which the son must reproduce the father.”° When it proved impossible to supervise all preadolescent children of the humble within the framework ofthe school, the Ancien Régime palli-

ated this lack with a sort of “mass” culture. This culture was copied piece by piece from the educative strategies of the time. As the collège replaced the family in “an apprenticeship in manners and learning,” the print and the peddler’s book substituted for the harmful influence of superstitious parents. From this point of view, we need not look in the archives, for example, for the name of some Machiavellian inventor of a devitalizing, tranquilizing, and alienating literature. All we

need do is refer to the educative desiderata of the Church and the state, clearly expressed by the pedagogues, to find the model for the message diffused by the engravers and the writers of thedittle blue books from Troyes. To be sure, this sort of “mass” pedagogy was not free of contradictions, obscurities, and divergences. The Bibliothèque bleue, in particular, was a literature of bits and pieces. But all in all, although we cannot speak of a concerted plan for acculturation, nevertheless we have before us a convergence on the ideological level of the many procedures for regimentation then at work within society. All in all, the engravings and the small blue books arose neither spontaneously nor by the concerted will of one or several individuals. They reflected the way in which the dominant society viewed the masses, under its

firm direction for some time now. They were the crystallization of stereotypes that had come from above, mixed with bits of true popular culture. They increased this domination as they furnished their consumers with fallacious outlets. This is the point of view from which the themes they embody should be analyzed. 2. THE BIRTH OF A “MASS” CULTURE

Popular imagery and the peddlers’ literature were both addressed to a very large public, but they both originated in learned culture. Their parallel development changed the physiognomy ofcultural levels and of cultural conflicts, thereby changing the cultural situation as a whole. 9. [bid., 206. 10, Ibid., 295.

From Popular Culture to a “Mass” Culture

285

The Functions of Popular I magery Imagery was an exclusively urban art. Its theme s seem to have derived directly “from models of learned artists,” even when peasant personages and accessories were depicted, as in the famous engraving entitled Le monde à Penver s. Its clientele, however, was divided betwe en the rural and the urban milieux. In short, this product was most probably destined for the masses,

but it did not come “entirely from the soul of the people.” What is more, although images were in distri bution as early as the Middle Ages, particularly in the form of enseignes de pèlerinage (pilgrimage Souvenirs) the image only reached its full developmen t in France between 1550 and 1590 in Paris, with the woodcuts made in the shops of rue Mon-

torgueil, then with copper engravings from rue Saint-Jacques. Around 1640, Paris once again dominated

the field, and its production remained

high up to the end of the seventeenth century. À numbe r of gifted artists appeared between 1700 and 1720, however, in many of the principal provin-

cial cities: Chartres, Avignon, Le Mans, Orléan s, Epinal, and so forth. Imagiers had existed before in most of these cities, but they had not demon-

strated any particular talent. In the eighteenth century fine local artists, perhaps originally from Lyon and above all Paris, took over the production of woodcuts when it declined in Paris. This chronology is strangely similar to that of the cultural conquest of the popular masses, and even to that of the repression of sorcery in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The geographical breakup of this production in the beginning of the eighteenth century leads us to surmise that imagery closely followed the progress of political and religious centralism and left Paris in order to spread more effectively in the provinces. Sales originally had taken place at the printer’s and through stationary or itinerant retailers. During the century of the Enlightenment, the engravi ngs could more readily saturate the provincial capitals and from there infiltrat e more deeply than before into even the most remote country areas. The image had various functions, but for the most part these engravings were intended to educate the population religiously and politically. Three quarters of the prints still extant treated religious subjects. Some depicted great events in Christianity. The Crucifixion, one of the most frequent sub-

jects, was placed in bedrooms, and it reminded the viewer that man’s difh-

cult life was nothing in comparison to the life of Christ: it was, “consequently, an image of resignation.” Others showed miracles of the Virgin and were tied to the vogue of Marian pilgrimages: the Cabinet des Estampes of the Louvre has a collection of three hundred such pieces dating from the eighteenth century. Still others were “preservation images” that hung in

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

the house, in clotheschests, and in coffers, which represented protecting saints—that is, they continued in orthodox fashion the old popular cult of

the innumerable intercessory saints. Confraternity images, on the other hand, were given to the members each year or were used as publicity to encourage new memberships. In Paris the most numerous of these were those of the companies of the Holy Sacrament. Finally, moralizing images,

which were rarer, insisted on fear of death and on the need to prepare for a “good death.” Imagery also had a role in political “conditioning.” In 1670, Colbert or-

dered prints to commemorate the victories of Louis XIV. The various factions made use of them, during the Wars of Religion, to diffuse their ideas and their propaganda. In a general fashion, they served the same purposes

as the canards and the occasionnels of the time. These little pamphlets, broadsides, and gazettes told of extraordinary events. From 1631 on, they became frankly popular, choosing the events they portrayed for their emotive charge and their power of suggestion. The printers and the authors used stock tales and images that lay easily at hand, which they adapted to the circumstances, and which spoke to the massés of anything rather than reality: the soldier’s return or the wild child, legends, monsters, prodigies, and so on. In the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the image was also used for publicity purposes, to wrap the product whose qualities it lauded or to sing the praises of a shopkeeper. It was not until the nineteenth century, however, that it was addressed to children.

The many themes of these images, which it would take too long to analyze in detail, were for the most part a vehicle for the values of the society and the system in function. Occasionally contestatory ideas or burlesque or grotesque descriptions appeared, but they were exceptions to the rule. As a whole, this imagery operated as a “mass” education. It was of course addressed to the consumer’s vision, although the pictures were accompanied by a text cut into the wood block or even printed separately. Streetcorn er singers would on occasion interpret these texts for idlers, using a stick to point out the figures represented in the print.!! From this point of view,

these images were perfectly adapted to a civilization that was still for the most part oral in 1789, and even more so a century earlier. They established

11. For this description as a whole see the remarkable catalog of the exposition at the Musée national des Arts et Traditions populaires (Paris) 2 February —30 April 1973: Cing siècles d’imagerie française (Paris, 1973), particularly the contributions of G.-H. Rivière and J. Adhémar and

PP: XIV, XIX, XXI, I, 5, 48, 309. (French Popular Imagery: Five Centuries ofPrints, catalog only trans. and adapted by P. S. Falla and S. Lambert [London, 1974].)

From Popular Culture to a Mass” Culture

287

a primordial means of mediation between the people and learned culture. Given that three images out of four reflected Catholic orthodoxy, this technique was for the masses a substitute for books that were often inaccessible to them, sacred books in particular. They were a prolongation of a contemplation available to all in scenes sculpted on capitals or on the tympanum of the churches, or in church paintings and tapestries. The sacred

penetrated insidiously everywhere: the shop, the bedroom, the house, and

the village square were invaded by these scattered fragments of religion, which priests and missionaries took it on themselves to coordinate through their liturgical activities. These engravings were an uninterrupted echo and a permanent reminder of such Christian verities as resignation, humility, and respect for work, which were in turn anchored in the values of the dominant society. Although consumed by the people, images were not really of popular origin, and they contributed to the subjection of bodies and souls to the benefit of society’s elites. Economic evolution in the eighteenth century and the emergence of abourgeois ideology caused an evolution in some of the functions of the image, however. The bourgeois did not contest the established system as a whole; they did want to install themselves in positions of command in the state, however. Moreover, they were open to the notion of success and social betterment, which contradicted the principle of permanence, and even of immobilism, that the Church and the central powers had

defended in the age of Louis XIV. Imagery partially adapted to this new situation. Wasn’t the print a product of the city, hence sensitive to mutations in urban milieux? The theme of the degrés de la vie (ages of life), for example, changed greatly in two centuries. Around 1630, one Parisian image of the grand escalier du monde (the world’s great stairway) showed existence as a rise in five stages from birth to the age of fifty, followed by a decline in five ten-year stages down to death. A Last Judgment was pictured under this stair. Symbols of life, to the right, opposed the very realistic symbols of death on the left.!* The same subject, however, treated at the end of the eighteenth century had become

secularized and had taken an ambiguous turn, as Alain

Charraud has demonstrated. The image, according to Charraud, had drawn away from the macabre of the seventeenth century and now possessed a “euphorizing function.” It offered the popular classes an opportunity to imitate middle class values and a middle class ideal, since it emphasized so-

cial betterment by portraying man’s step by step progress toward maturity 12. [bid., plate 33.

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

as a social rise. Nevertheless, the Christian depictions of death, although toned down and less terrifying than in 1630, recalled that all are equal before God and preached the uselessness of worldly goods. Charraud sees in this use of traditional Christian ideals an effort to “temper the acceptance of bourgeois values.” In his view, the masses could thus explain why the majority failed to have access to social success.!* This analysis is valid only if these prints really did represent genuinely popular thought. To the contrary, if we accept the idea that these images were created by artists who were above all open to learned culture, which they adapted for the humble, we will have to modify the terms of the description: the image in question would then translate, essentially, the dynamism of the new bourgeois ideals and the persistence of Christian values. It would lead to proposing, for the people’s dreams, a bourgeois paradise to take the place of the celestial paradise.'* But it would above all serve to implant in the mind of the populations the idea that social success, thus erected as a universal model, was inaccessible to most men. It would show

that the new urban elites wanted to get their “message” across and that they feared a populace capable of brutal revolts. In any event, whatever explanation we choose, the ideological function of the image seems to be clear. An

image, as Louis Marin emphasizes, always possesses a “structure” that we must interpret, in spite of its “apparent innocence” and its “illusory immediacy.” !§ In the eighteenth century, the so-called popular imagery always functioned as a discourse that mediated between the elites and the masses as it proposed both traditional and new themes to the masses. However, although the distribution of popular imagery increased continually, it paradoxically lost some of its importance, for the oral civilization that it Was its mission to rechannel was increasingly able to receive the written messages

of learned culture. This large-scale change had a powerful start, thanks in

particular to the peddlers’ literature, even though we must wait for the age of Jules Ferry and of more general literacy to see it triumph. Until then, this imagerie continued to enjoy great powers of persuasion. The Immobile World of Peddlers Literature Much has been written about the littérature de colport age.* Interpretation

13. À. Charraud, “Analyse de la représentation des ages de la vie humaine dans les estampes

populaires du x1x° siècle.” Ethnologie française 1 (1971), so—78 (illustrated) 14. [bid., 74.

15. Ibid., 76 (citing an article of L. Marin). 16. Among the most recent works on the subject: R. Mandrou, De la culture populaire aux XVII‘ et XVIIIe siècles: La bibliothèque bleue de Troyes (1964; rev. ed., Paris, 1975); G. Bollème, La

From Popular Culture to à “Mass” Culture

289 of its significance has given rise to polemics that still go on,” partly because it involves the relations between this literature and popular culture. Let us try to arrive at a clear definition of these relations, with the aid of published documents and without claiming to be exhaustive, and attempt to determine the functions of the Bibliothèque bleue. Peddlers’ books, like popular imagery, were born in the city. Nicolas

Oudot invented them in Troyes toward the beginning of the seventeenth century. They only became a success in the bookstores a hundred years later,

however, in Troyes, but also in Caen, Rouen, Lyon, Paris, and so forth.

During the eighteenth century, there were 150 printer -publishers engaged in this commerce, scattered in approximately 70 centers, particularly in the north of France, while the Southwest and Brittany seem to have been slow from this point of view. The diffusion of these books grew at a similar pace:

45 peddlers were authorized to sell them in 1611. There were so of them in

1635, and 120 in 1712. This geographical concentration is not surprising. It reminds us that the north and northeast portions of France had a higher literacy rate than the Midi, and that the persistence of the Occitan and Breton languages impeded the distribution of a literature for the most part

written in French. More important, this evolution follow ed exactly that of

popular imagery: they have the same urban origin, the same dramatic rise at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the same rapid spread after then. It is as if the peddlers’ literature accompanied its older sister, imager y, in its conquest of France during the age of the Enlightenment, as if the print had prepared the ground for the printed word and for its penetration into a civilization that still remained for the most part oral. For centuries, these small blue books furnished an “accepted, digested, assimilated culture” to popular milieux.” This is a fact beyond question. Stull, it would be a mistake to think that only the masses found food for

thought here. In the seventeenth century, the low number of peddlers and

the urban origin ofthis literature indicate that it too was sold where it was

produced, just like the images, and that thus it must have reached all levels

of urban society. Similarly, bourgeois or nobles occasionally bought images, both pious and other. On the other hand, the higher numbers of peddlers

and above all the proliferation of centers of production in the eighteenth

century resulted in a “popularization” of these two sous books, to be sure, bibliothèque bleue: La littérature populaire en France du xvi* au x1X° siècle (Paris, 1971); G. Bollème, La Bible bleue: Anthologie d’une littérature “populaire” (Paris, 1975) and many articles on the

subject.

17. Mandrou, De la culture populaire, 9 —18. 18. [bid., 36—42; Bolléme, La littérature populaire, 12-13.

19. Mandrou, De la culture populaire, 12.

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

but also in a growing scorn on the part of cultivated people of increasing refinement for this rough intellectual fodder. The chronology of this question merits study, for the examples chosen by one historian to illustrate the refusal of the elites to share “the pastime of the lowest populace” concern the eighteenth century alone,” and the contents of these little books, moreover, was not of popular origin. In reality, this “literature without authors” invented very little indeed. Most of its themes were borrowed from classical or learned sources, but they were recast and recomposed by the printers themselves or by scribblers charged with this task. Very few famous authors are listed under their own names in the catalog of the Bibliothèque bleue. But is this sufficient reason to deduce that this series in no way reflected the learned culture of the period? These booklets seem to have been the work of people of middling culture, perhaps former students of the collège who had assimilated its teaching with varying degrees of success. They were individuals, in any event, who were fairly well acquainted with the great artistic, literary, and religious works of their times, and who were also familiar with the taste of “popular”

publics. When we read their works we have. the impression that these authors were composing veritable potpourris with little plan to them. They popularized some of the intellectual innovations of the age, warping them sometimes, and pouring them into the mold of marvelous and strange tales. Wasn’t their technique somewhat like that of the authors of occasionnels. who dipped into stocks of ready-made themes as circumstances and their inspiration dictated? After all, the pedagogy ofthe time practiced this same technique to initiate collegians to the Latin theme, and it would be equally difficult to trace the names of all of the cultural authorities who inspired the

texts for Latin themes destined to Provencal students cited in a preceding

chapter. Such exercises, however, clearly originated in learned culture. This is also true of anumber of the little blue books that were popular only by their destination. It is difficult, for example, to speak of “popular sensitivity” concerning the burlesque funeral eulogies, one example of which, dating from the year 1731, Robert Mandrou cites,” for burlesque or satirical epitaphs were a liter-

ary genre in the sixteenth century. One plaquette published in 1542 in Paris by Adam Saulnier contains a curious work of this type in bilingual verse,

half-French

half-Latin,

concerning

nostre mestre a Cornibus,

alias Cera-

tinus.® Similarly, the primers destined for the popular masses were most 20. 21. 22. 23.

Ibid., 15. In contrast, see Bolléme, La bibliothèque bleue, 18—10. Ibid., 20—21; Mandrou, De la culture populaire, 17. Ibid., 235—30. F. P. H., Epitaphia honorandi magistri nostri Petri a Cornibus . . . (Paris, 1542); there is a

From Popular Culture to a “Mass” C ulture

291

probably simply adaptations of pedagogical treatises that one or two centuries earlier had been reserved for the cultural elites. The work of this sort cited by Robert Mandrou seems a close imitation of a book published in Paris in 1574.* It even happened that peddlers’ books reprod uced famous works exactly, like the Quatrains of Pibrac or the manual s of Civilité puérile

et honnête, 3,500 copies of which remained in the stocks of the elder Garnier

in 1781. A patient study of the sources of inspiration of the authors of these little blue books would enable us to give many more exampl es. Thus it becomes difficult to believe that this literature could be anything other than a disorderly popularization of the principal themes of learned culture, mixed with bits and pieces of traditional popular culture. Not all of this, consequently, would conform to the taste of the masses. Quite to the contrary: it would form this taste, it would educate these masses by giving them the impression that it spoke their language and took an interest in their problems. The Bibliothèque bleue, according to one historian, was more truly a “blue Bible,” since it spoke of everything. * Or at least of nearly everything, for its silences are highly revealing. According to a survey of 450 works, or approximately one tenth of the titles published in Troyes, the subject matter of the little blue books divided into piety (26 percent), daily life (18 percent), tales (15 percent), social life

and games (11 percent), history of France in mythological form (9 percent), love, death, and criminality (6 percent), and so forth.” Religion is strikingly less preponderant than in the case of popular imagery, but it still heads the list. These works taught obedience—such as the obedience that the saints

owe to God or that the wife practices toward her husband (Grisédélis) —or

humility and the best way to mourir saintement (have a saintly death).

Death is presented in its most terrifying aspects, which recalls the presence of death in the 1630 print of the ages of life mentioned above. Wasn’t this

the very philosophy of the Christianity of fear that reigned in France at the time? Fairy tales and other tales, on the other hand, proposed an “escape”

into a world of optimistic stories that corresponded poorly to the sufferings of French peasantry at the end of the seventeenth century, but that perhaps helped the reader to forget his troubles for a moment. copy

in the Bibliothèque

Nationale,

Manuscript

Department,

Rothschild

collection;

B.M.

Arras, MS. 186, fols. 72r—v. 24. Mandrou, De la culture populaire, 247—49: to be compared with Moyen de promptement . . . apprendre (Paris, 1574) which is described in Bulletin de la Commission Historique du a Département du Nord, XIV (1879), 82. 25. Chartier, Compére, Julia, L'éducation en France, 140— 42. See also Elias, The Civilizing

Process on “civility.” 26. Bolléme, La Bible bleue. 27. Mandrou, De la culture populaire, 43-49.

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Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France

The depictions of society, which are written, as Robert Mandrou says, “with a strange restraint,” emphasize the well-mannered man, faithful to his

family and his religion, honest in marriage and in friendship, who accepts to stay in his place and to respect social hierarchies. Noble virtues remained beyond discussion, even in the eighteenth century. Not the slightest complaint can be heard in this “popular” literature. Demands for social justice would have been out of place. Even the “practical” recommendations pertaining to everyday life speak more of ideals to be reached than they do of reality. Finally, the passions are strangely absent, at a time at which society was characterized by criminal violence, particularly in the seventeenth century, and, until 1750-1770 at least, by sexual repression, if we can believe the

demographers.?* In short, the life depicted in the little blue books was almost beautiful. On the condition that he practice a demanding Christian morality, respect the hierarchies, and not question a world that was and was to remain immo-

bile, and on the condition that he learn to comport himself and to die according to the laws dictated by the peddlers’ books, the common man could live relatively happily in the best of all possible worlds—in the least imperfect imaginable, at any event—under the care ofhis respected shepherds. In reality, these books were escapist. Like drugs, they tranquilized a popular

world that was alienated, crushed by taxes, and tempted by revolt. As the deplorable condition of the population, the peasants in particular, improved during the eighteenth century, these drugs were better and better tolerated by humble folk. They contributed heavily (as did popular imagery) to entrench resignation, after the great explosions of the revolts of the first part of the seventeenth century. A veritable Bible and a “mass” pedagogy, the Bibliothèque bleue of Troyes held back any attempt at making people conscious of social realities. It veiled the domination of the elites, and it took the mechanisms for the subjection of bodies and souls that the Church and state had undertaken and set them to echoing ceaselessly through society. A global and perfect fiction, it presented the image of a harmonious City of God on this earth. Excessive emotions, sexuality, and violence were excluded from its pages, or were inserted into edifying tales. Just as the honnête homme, in real life,

sought to rationalize and to purge his passions. Just as sexual comportm ent was becoming more and more austere within but particularly outside of

Marriage up to the middle of the eighteenth century. Just as criminal vio-

lence against persons seemed to decrease while the number of thefts and offenses against property rose.

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203

The peddlers’ literature was perhaps not an exact reflection of learned culture, in the strict sense of the term, for it did not speak clearly of the

principal intellectual innovations of the age, and it seemed to exist out of

time. It was, however, the immediate effect of the develo pment of the domi-

nant ideology—that is, of the Christianization of the masses and of the rise of centralizing absolutism between 1550 and about 1750. It accompanied and

abetted a concentrated effort for cultural and linguistic unification that intensified during the age of the Sun King. Did anyone have to invent it in order for it to exist? Certainly not, because it was the inevita ble by-product

ofa society’s mechanisms for survival. Without this literat ure, and without the many other mechanisms for the acculturation of the popular masses, the

domination and the exploitation ofthe majority by a minority could not be totally comprehensible. This takeover was so heavy-handed, at the end of the seventeenth century, that one would expect to see revolts occur on all sides. Nothing of the sort happened. Paradoxically, at first glance submission was even more total than before. The underlying reason for such a passivity lay in the establish ment of a new ideological superstructure that had been produced by the evolution of Ancien Régime society itself. At a time when the many segments that made up this society tended to unite more and more, a facilitating “language” was invented that made it possible to fill in the wide cultural and socioeconomic gulf that had opened up between the dominated and the dominant. This mediating language was what we might call a “mass”

culture, modeled on the culture of the elites but accessible to the people.

This is how it happened that French society was spared a true class struggle and a number of social conflicts until the pre-Revolutionary period. An active propaganda that was at one and the same time visual in popular imagery, written in the little blue books, and auditory in the mouths

of the

priests and royal agents built an ideal, immobile, and tranquilizing universe for the people. From this moment on, the culture of the elites and that of humbler folk could no longer be in direct contact, as had been the case at

the end of the Middle Ages. They were separated by an intermediary level that was to assure the slow but irresistible victory of the dominant ideology, to which it was directly connected, over the “barbarity” of the lowborn populace. Cultural Barriers and Cultural Levels

Toward the middle of the eighteenth century the words culture and civilization made their appearance in France. The first, which had existed before, took its particular sense of intellectual culture at that time. The second was

more strictly invented to designate “a worldly ideal of intellectual, tech-

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nological, moral, and social progress”: the Enlightenment, in other words. Its opposite was “barbarity,”*? which could be defined negatively, with the elder Mirabeau, around 1750, as a people’s inability to reach “the tempering

of behaviors, urbanity, manners”—in other words, “virtue.” Between the two poles there was no salvation. Reality, however, left more room for vari-

ety than this schema might make one think. To grasp this fact, we need to use twentieth-century terms to speak of the realities of the Ancien Régime: we need to speak of levels of culture. The first level was made up of the brilliant “civilization” of the social elites. The great intellectuals, their pupils, and part of the upper levels of urban society participated in this level, in a movement that there is no need to describe here. But the new ideas penetrated into the countryside practically not at all. The cahiers de doléances are proof of this, as is the example of the village of Sacy, in Burgundy, described by Restif de la Bretonne not long before the Revolution. At most, a learned curé or some “progressive”

aristocrat might have occasionally represented the Enlightenment on the village level. Is this to say that only a few tens of thousands of individuals—or even hundreds of thousands, if we extend the benefit of the intellectual innova-

tions to the wellborn and the fortunate who participated in it superficially— represented “civilization” against “barbarity”? A second and highly complex cultural level was in reality inserted between these extremes. On the upper end it touched the learned milieu. It could perhaps have included some of the fifty thousand students of the collèges of 1789—that is, middling, average people who with a good deal of difficulty assimilated the contents of the teaching ofthe colléges, to be used never or very little in their

later life. Lesser judges, notaries, landowners, all of whom

needed only a

“utilitarian level” of bookish culture, belong more or less to this group.*! Toward the lower end, this cultural stratum is difficult to disting uish from the “barbarity” of the masses. As for the foot soldiers in this army of middling culture, they were probably as diverse as the middle levels of urban and rural society, including the upper levels of village society. They had the common characteristic of belonging, with innumerable variations, to the world of a “mass” culture, though the term “mass” refers here to a statistical minority. It is impossible to define the exact contour s of this group, but it could not have represented more than 37 percent of the total popula29. F. Braudel, On History, trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago, 1980), 180.

30. E. Le Roy Ladurie, “Ethnologie rurale du xvrrr: siècle: Rétif, à la Bretonne.” Ethnologie

française 3—4 (1972), 251. 270.

31. P. Goubert, The Ancien Régime: French Society 1600 ~1750, trans. S. Cox (New York, 1974),

From Popular Culture to a “Mass” Culture

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tion. This is the total figure for literacy in France around 1786—1790, men and women together, and without correction for the enormous regional differences that existed. One third of the population around 1789, one fifth at the end of the seventeenth century, was at the most open to “mass” culture. This culture was diffused by the petite école more than by the collège, but these primary schools were in themselves just a branch of the local church. The content of the course of studies demonstrates this: Christian teachings and a morality of work and virtue disciplined and policed the individual, not to awaken his mind but to prepare him for “entry into productive life.” In the eighteenth century, the reluctance of the civil authorities, then of certain religious authorities, to allow the petite école to open its doors to the whole of the population# shows clearly that its instruction was aimed at a mass

but not at the masses.

In reality, what came into existence was a

sociocultural level that borrowed its ideas from the dominant culture but that concerned essentially those who functioned as indispensable mechanisms of transmission for the system in operation. Cultural selection took place by a progress through successive bottlenecks. Religion was addressed to all, but for various reasons only a part of the population passed through the one

represented

by the petite école.** Afterward,

many

children who

had learned to read and write would lose all contact with written culture. The others would reinforce their relations with written culture by the consumption of the peddlers’ literature, while popular imagery would continue to transmit the superior cultural and religious values to even the humblest villager. In short, everyone

benefited from a diffuse and somewhat

vague ac-

culturation, but the number of those reached by an ongoing cultural conquest was more limited. If this number increased during the eighteenth century, it was because the little blue books amplified the message repeated by

the school and by the society’s religious and political leaders. These procedures as a whole derived directly from the efforts of the Church and the state. We might say that popular imagery and the peddlers’ literature were copied trait for trait from the scholastic model that had been in full expansion from the mid- or later sixteenth century and that they echo the founding values of that society. These echoes, as they multiplied, enabled a large

fraction of the popular classes to lift themselves out of their traditional world. Is it any wonder that those whom this cultural level embraced were 32. Chartier, Compère, Julia, L’éducation en France, 295.

33. IU14 2738. 34. Ibid., 3—8s.

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more likely to be the city or country notables than proletarians? Wasn’t the Bibliothéque bleue above all aimed at the “already cultivated, roughly polished, literate peasant”? Like the school, but on another level, it created

a “common vibrating.*

market” for novelties and it set a “national sensitivity” to

From all points of view, “mass” culture thus defined was distinct from

traditional popular culture. It came out of cultural centralism and rejected provincialism and particularisms, which, however, were to reappear toward

the middle of the eighteenth century. It put a culture that was relatively uniform under its apparent diversities in the place of a popular transmission of knowledge and a popular education that previously had taken place through the imitation of gestures and the repetition of traditions, through ritual initiation into social roles, and through the child’s early introduction into the active life of adults. This “mass” culture avoided the dangers that the Church imputed to education in the bosom ofthe family by attaching the child, then the adult, to mechanisms of acculturation that channeled him

toward new institutions or new procedures—that is to say, toward the dominant ideology. : It also spread scorn for “superstitions” and for the traditional popular vision of the world. The rural elites in particular felt themselves separated, from this time on, from the “traditional folklore.” In Sacy, in Burgundy,

during the last third of the eighteenth century, the acculturated local notables demonstrated an “undeniable allergy” to the beliefs of the humble peasants, whereas the curé Fourdriat showed great indulgence in this regard, even though he was a partisan of the Lumières.% This is in no way paradoxical, if we admit that the intermediary cultural level distilled into its

members a double sense of superiority and guilt that followed from their adherence to values that frequently contradicted the realities of rural life. The “civilization” of the elites, on the other hand, which after the end of the seventeenth century no longer had any direct contact with the practices dubbed superstitious, had every reason to consider those practices with an indulgence tinged with irony or scorn. The true cultural barrier had shifted downward: it now was situated between the 20 or 30 percent of the French

who were truly acculturated and eventual defenders of the established order (on occasion, along with their prestige or their wealth) and the rest of the

population. The hostility of the acculturated toward the rest of the population be-

35. E. Le Roy Ladurie, “De la crise ultime à la vraie croissance,” in Duby and Wallon, gen. eds., Histoire de la France rurale (Paris, 1975), II, 580. (The same remarks can be found in Le Roy Ladurie, “Ethnologie rurale,” 250.) ; 36. Le Roy Ladurie, “Ethnologie rural,” 251.

From Popular Culture to a Mass” Culture

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came accentuated, obviously, from the end of the seventeenth century to 1789. Charlatans, self-proclaimed sorcerers, and swindlers took advantage of this intellectual gap to play on the credulity of the humble, who failed to keep up with this evolution.# When the stability of the rural ecosystem, which had remained immobile for more than three centuries, was threatened by economic growth during the eight eenth century, social equilibrium broke well before 1789. The contrast between the all-conquering cities and the countryside was becoming more acute, as was the contrast between the rural notables and the peasant masse s. At Longuenesse, in Artois, where the large, capitalistic farm was the rule, landowners reacted to threats to property during the eighteenth centu ry by maintaining a high rate of replacement for the day laborers on their lands, “preventing the formation of a solid and structured community” amon g them. Class conflict was born in this context, or at least social tensi ons increased within and at the heart of certain villages. We can understand why the middle orders of city society and the rural notables clung firmly to their privileges and accentuated the cultural cleavage that separated them from the masses. They clung all the tighter to the values diffused by accul turation and to their scorn for the “barbarity” of their fellow citizens—a scorn, moreover, that hid profound fears. Attacked on all sides, belittled by the priests and the wealthier villagers,

ridiculed by charlatans, the old popular culture seemed to die a lingering death. Two Frenchmen out of three, however, still subscr ibed secretly, with some anxiety and with feelings of guilt, to the bits and pieces of superstitions that their forebears had bequeathed them. One curé tells the tale in

1730 of a peasant of Cantin (Nord, arrondissement of Douai) who some

years before, in 1702, se croiant dur contre les coups de bales (thinking himself

impervious to bullets), had attacked with a pitchfo rk a soldier who was shooting his chickens. He was killed, which goes to prove, the curé says,

qu'on ne doit pas se fier au pact avec le père de mensonge, puis que pour avoir les gens, il ne les garantit pas. Exemple à d’autres! (that you mustn’ t trust a bargain with the father of lies [the Devil], because to get people, he doesn’t guarantee them. Let this serve as an example to others!)“ This anecdo te, like other accounts

from the pre-Revolutionary decades, soon to be dis-

37. R. Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers au xvx1° siècle: Une analyse de psychologie historique

(Paris, 1968), 487—537.

eos

38. Le Roy Ladurie, “De la crise ultime,” in Duby and Wallon (gen. eds.), Histoire de la

France rurale, IL, s90—91. | 39. E. Todd, “Mobilité géographique et cycle de vie en Artois et en Toscane au xvIIt¢ siècle, Annales ESC (July— August 1975), 726—44. LA | 40. B.M. Lille, MS. 475, Jacques Legroux, Mémoires pour servir à lhistoire universelle de

Flandres, IL 142.

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cussed, shows that the previous mental structures survived in the popular

masses to motivate behaviors that were judged aberrant or ridiculous by those who considered themselves “reasonable,” even if they still sincerely believed in the Devil, like our 1730 curé.

There were, then, at least three sociocultural strata in eighteenth-century French society. The first was made up of two antagonistic currents. A minority of men of letters, scholars, and philosophes who sprang from the ranks of the bourgeoisie or the liberal aristocracy affirmed a faith in Reason and Progress. But although this enlightenment—these Lumières —tinged all of the upper levels of urban society, it did not penetrate into the villages. Furthermore, it clashed with the ideology that had previously been dominant and that showed little inclination to open up to the new values of wealth or talent. Although religious superintendence and absolutist rigidity slowly weakened, those who were born to privilege, who represented a few hundred thousand individuals, cared deeply for the eternal perpetuation of

the established system, the defense of a world created by God to be and to remain immobile, and the respect for existing hierarchies. The collége was their primary arm in blocking sociocultural advance and in forming notables on the exact model of their predecessors.*! The Revolution issued from this major contradiction at the heart of learned culture, but that is

quite another story. The second sociocultural level concerned at the most one Frenchman out of three or four at the end of the eighteenth century. We should note, moreover, that only half as many women as men belonged to this category, on the average, and that important regional differences existed. The northern half of the country was in all probability two to three times more acculturated than the Midi, if we can judge by the literacy figures and by the geography of the peddlers’ literature. Although the term is ambiguous and vague, we can say that the “middle” classes in both urban and rural settings, plus a part of the lower orders of the population, belonged within the “mass” culture as we have defined it. This “mass” culture, diffused by the petites écoles, by popular imagery and by the little blue books, reproduced the ideology of the immobility of the world that was characteristic of the privileged but adapted it and popularized it. There is not the slightest trace of the Enlightenment in all this. Even in 1789 this cultural stratum lagged behind learned thought by several decades, even by a century. It had formed and continued to form local notables, petits-maitres who accepted the established order. Relay mechanisms for the aL

W. Frijhoff and D. Julia, Ecole et société dans la France @Ancien Régime (Paris, 1975), par-

ucularly p. 93.

|

From Popular Culture to à Mass” Culture

299

values of the classical Ancien Régime, they were to assure its posthumous survival up to the very beginning of our own times. Thanks in part to them, the northern half of France was to remain more Christian and more docile than the southern, at least until industrialization came to reshuffle the cards completely, since cultural and linguistic unific ation occurred more rapidly and more easily in the north

than in the south. Furthermore, the existe nce of large farmholds (at the limits of capitalism, as in Longuenesse, in Ar-

tois), marked

social distin

ctions in the villages, and urbanization all demanded increased efforts of surveillance in these areas to avoid clashes between nascent classes. Seen from this point of view, the level of culture characterized by the

peddlers’ literature was in no Way a countercultu re. It was merely a pastoriented and fading echo of the dominant ideology in the seventeenth century. It represented the outer limits of one, unique “civilization.” This culture was indeed addressed to the masses, but it did not come of them. In few words, it was the result of a conquest by pictur es and by books of an older oral civilization. Other times were to see this conquest reduced to a system by means of audio-visual techniques and to see a change in the content, obviously, of the procedures for the fabrication of consent that were born in the seventeenth century. A frontier made of scorn, aggressiveness, and brutal rejectio n separated “mass” culture from what remained ofthe popular vision of the world. The

popular vision, which constituted the third sociocultural level, was now de-

nied by several million individuals whose belligerence was sharpened by their intimate acquaintance with such “barbaric” and superst itious beliefs and customs and by their need to emphasize their separation from this culture. The all-invading city of the eighteenth century pushed back peasant beliefs in general. The village notables deserted them, joining forces against

them with rigorist curés, schoolmasters, and the local agents for the powers that be. Scattered elements of the old popular mindset survive d, however,

almost shamefacedly. These microcultures, whose mainsprings were bro-

ken, became an inflexible folklore that occasionally, between 1750 and our

own day, and under specific conditions took on a certain importance, particularly when cultural and political centralism temporarily weakened. 3. THE DESTINY OF POPULAR CULTURE: A REEMERGENCE?

Beginning with the eighteenth century, the history of popular culture is

one ofslow and inevitable decline. On the eve of the Revolution, however,

some customs and beliefs that had secretly resisted the efforts toward acculturation reemerged. These resurgences, which were more than a simple

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return to old ways, appeared as cracks began to show in the centralizing political and religious system. Afterward, when traces of the older popular vision of the world resurfaced, it was because they adapted to new conditions and took advantage of periods of weakness in the process of the unification of the country. The Survival and Resurgence of Popular Culture (Eighteenth Century)

For centuries, the multitudes secretly worshipped some sort of pagan divinity, whose cult was gradually losing coherence and whose temple the Church had replaced with a Christian edifice. Similarly, townspeople and particularly peasants continued to practice their forbidden superstitions either far from the eyes of the noninitiate or under the cover of orthodox religious ceremonies. The historian can continue to perceive these superstitious beliefs and practices only intermittently, which leads him to neglect them. They nonetheless persisted, even in an environment on the whole hostile to them, as was the case in the cities.

Around the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, the criminal records in Arras confirm this survival in a mediumsized provincial capital at least two hundred kilometers from Paris. Six men met by chance two Arras burghers on 25 June 1695 around three-thirty in the morning in the rue des Teinturiers. They insulted them, then attacked them. As it happened, this was Saint John’s Eve. The late hour, perhaps

compounded with drunkenness, indicates that festivities most probably had taken place. During the night between 1 and 2 November 1701, five jeunes hommes à marier (young bachelors) fought with the garde urbaine, wound-

ing a sergeant and a corporal. The event would be utterly banal if it did not concern adolescents wearing disguises (costumed as an apothecary, a harlequin, a grey-beard, a handball player, and so forth.) who had made merry and drunk the evening away: a feeble echo of the burlesque revelry of yesteryear, of the true féte that formerly characterized All Saints’ Day. In the sixteenth century the young had played an important role in the joyous ritual of the feast of the dead, which at that time often took place in the ceme-

teries. Besides, although the Compagnies de Jeunesse seem not to have continued to exist in Arras in the eighteenth century, or at least seem to have

been less well organized than two centuries earlier, adolescents still con-

tinued to some extent to play the ritual role that had formerly been theirs. During the night of 30—31 May 1702 a clerc and two accomplices threw

stones at the door of a potter, then tried to break the door down. Was this

some sort of charivari, as the date would seem to indicate? A jeune homme a

marier and two or three particuliers étrangers (outsiders) broke into a tavern

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on Sunday, 30 July 1702, not long after midni ght. On Sunday, 12 July 1705, a band of twenty or so young boys were taking the air outside the walls of Arras when they met some young girls, “committed violent acts,” and said “infamous words” to two of them.” The traditional roles of jeunesse groups quite obviously had weakened after the end of the Middle Ages, but the tensions these trials reveal indicate that the night time closing of taverns and an increasing* segregation of the sexes were not to the liking of adoles-

cents, in whom there persisted a group spirit inherited from the past,

particularly concerning the local young girls. The anecdote from Arras in some ways recalls matrimonial parades like the fotre aux filles that was held in Cambl ain-Chatelain (Pas-de-Calais, arrondisse ment of Béthune): up to

the last decades of the nineteenth century, hundreds of young girls came to that town from throughout the region at mi-caréme, the mid-Lenten break. They lined up on either side ofastrip of lawn situated outside the town or walked up and down in small groups while the local young men bid for the prettiest among them.“ The simple fact that the encounter outside the walls of Arras in 1705 led to nine young men being brought to trial proves, howeve r, that the authorities were keeping a close watch on the behavior of adoles cents, as indeed of all the citizens. Severe sentences were meted out for collective or individual departures from the norms of urbanity, politeness, and submissiveness of

body and soul. In 1715, the sacrilegious theft of a few altar cloths brought

the thief honorable amends, followed by banishment for nine years. Denounced by her parish priest, Marie Manicque was throw n into prison, on

2 January 1704, because she had received beggars, both men and women, in

her house after nightfall, contrary to royal ordinance, and she had not fait

ses Pâques (done her Easter duty) in 1703. She remain ed in prison until she

could produce a certificate to attest that she had received the sacrament of penitence.* Some traces of popular culture survived half hidden in the urban milieu, which had been an unfavorable climate for it at least since the mid-six teenth

century. In rural areas, on the other hand, popular fêtes, customs, and be-

liefs persisted more easily. The villages, unlike the cities, had been colonized culturally and religiously somewhat later. Furthermore, the popular vision of the world had been born there and had for centuries functioned to ex-

42. A.M. Arras, FF 4, fols. 20r—v (1695), 136V—140r (1701 and 1702), 135v-136r (1705). 43. J.-L. Flandrin, Les amours paysannes: Amour et sexualité dans les campagnes de l’ancienne

France (XVI