Quelques formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse dans la France rurale (fin XVIIIe et XIXe siècles)

Some Elementary Forms of Religious Life in Rural France (Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries). P. M. Jones. This article explores the process of community formation at village level during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary decades. Emphasis is placed upon the role of collective religions worship inpromoting the sentiment of belonging, but it issuggested that the social discipline of church or chapel attendance meant more to peasants than religions dogmas or doctrines. The point is illustrated by examining in turn two little known and little understood facets of popular religions culture: lay worship and collective conversion. Lay worship developed during the Revolution, perhaps as a pragmatic solution to the scarcity of priests, but it persisted long after the shortage of clergy had been mode good. The phenomenon of collective conversion appeared in the 1830s and 1840s when entire villages proceeded to switch their allegiance from catholicism to protestantism. The civil and ecclesiastical authorities detected a variety of motivations behind these sudden conversions. However, the author argues that the two phenomena are inter-related. They betray a desire to use and manipulate formal religion as a means of forging the social and cultural identity of the human group.Jones Peter M. Quelques formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse dans la France rurale (fin XVIIIe et XIXe siècles). In: Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations. 42ᵉ année, N. 1, 1987. pp. 91-115