Communities of Belief Cultural and Social Tension in Early Modern France [Paperback]

This book is about attitudes and behavior in early modern France, dealing particularly with the conflicts related to social and intellectual changes, and with the tensions between the elite and the common people. Topics discussed include witchcraft, popular belief and superstition, confession, the family, Church and State, and popular revolt. Briggs combines the methods of social history and of histoire de mentalit?s to produce an in-depth analysis of the changes and tensions which mark this period as one of vital development in all these areas. The book offers a lively critique of some current interpretations of seventeenth-century France, which have been the subject of much recent controversy.

Each of Robin Briggs's essays represents an admirable synthesis of original research and historiographical commentary, and his book provides an excellent survey of the current state of various questions concerning the history of French religion and society in theancien r?gime....The volume demonstrates Briggs's formidable range of expertise on a series of compelling and current historical issues and provides a crucial point of future reference for scholars of early modern religion and society. --American Historical Review

Communities of Belief...touches on popular as well as elite concerns. This welcome collection of essays....has avoided the usual monographic publications and concentrated instead on producing unusually learned interpretative essays. --Journal of Modern History

This collection of nine densely argued, consistently insightful essays deserves considerable attention from early modern French historians and indeed from anyone interested in a sophisticated treatment of European social and cultural history in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. --The Catholic Historical Review

A learned and important book. --Religious Studies Review