Échec d'une sensibilité baroque : les testaments rouennais au XVIIIe siècle

The Failure of a Baroque sensibility : Rouen wills in the 18th century. This article is concerned with the evolution of religious clauses in wills written in Rouen in the 18th century. Unlike Marseille and Paris, there were relatively few wills in Rouen. But the sample is compatible with the social composition of the city, and more so than elsewhere, it furnishes us with insight into attitudes among the lower orders. The temperament of the people of Rouen is original in that, right from the beginning of the century, it eschewed ostentatious burials. The evolution of religious clauses, on the other hand, is less unusual. In Rouen, as elsewhere it was in this century that the demand for masses to be sung after a death dwindled. The end of the period sees the emergence, as in Paris, of a pious minority (women and men), whose social contours are loosely defined, it contains representatives of all categories of society even if, by and large, the traditionalist behaviour of the nobility and the rentier bourgeoisie stands in opposition to the rejection of the world of commerce, crafts and wage-labour.Goujard Philippe. Échec d'une sensibilité baroque : les testaments rouennais au XVIIIe siècle. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 36ᵉ année, N. 1, 1981. pp. 26-43