Restoring Catholicism in Postrevolutionary France: Gender, Belief, and Secularization, 1801-1870

FAIN: FT-51704-03

Carol Harrison
University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC 29208-0001)

My project examines gender and the reconstitution of Catholicism in France after the Revolution. Challenging assumptions about the advance of secularization and the feminization of religion, I examine how women, men, and children practiced their faith, forming Catholic families that aspired to the regeneration of a Catholic France. This grant funds research in the archives of France's most prominent Catholic boys' secondary school, the Collège Stanislas. Stanislas pupils learned to be both Catholic husbands and fathers and political and economic leaders. The collège demonstrates that the male French elite did not abandon faith, but rather sought to reconcile Catholic belief with active engagement in the postrevolutionary world.