Description
Book SynopsisCreating Catholics examines the study of catechisms in rural schooling in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when community-supported primary education began.
Trade Review“Karen Carter examines catechisms and visitation records from multiple dioceses to explore why, by the time of the French Revolution, French Catholics knew—and zealously embraced—‘the doctrines and behaviors of their religion.’ . . . contributes significantly to our understanding of early modern history and offers a model for effective catechesis today.” —First Things
“Aside from the impressive amount of research that underpins this book, Carter should be commended for its engaging style and organization . . . . [It is] a broad ranging and original piece of research that transforms our understanding of primary education in France and the dynamic process that underpinned the dissemination of the Catholic Reformation into rural communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” —H-France Review
“The author’s central thesis that the Catholic Reform cannot simply be understood as primarily a seventeenth-century development and as a ‘top-down process of institutional reform’ is a compelling corrective to quietly accepted historiographical assumptions.” —The Catholic Historical Review
“In convincingly demonstrating the agency of both lay and clerical Catholics in this domain, Carter adds to the growing body of evidence that discounts the definition of confessionalisation as a process of social disciplining imposed by the institutional authority of the Church and the State.” —Ecclesiastical History
“By using an impressive number of catechisms and parish records, Carter is able to argue that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Catholic educational practice, seen in its own context, was neither backward nor reactionary but engaged with contemporary understandings of hierarchy and social order, and organized its teaching to respond to the needs and expectations of both lay people and clergy. . . . Creating Catholics offers readers a valuable, detailed, and well-written inquiry into early-modern catechesis and education.” —American Historical Review
“This is a very enriching book for any student both of the period of French History between the Religious Wars and the French Revolution as well as for any mission historian of the French Missionary Movement of the 19th century.” —Missiology: An International Review
“Carter’s insightful book explores the evolution of primary education in rural France across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. . . . While the book addresses the historical debates on reformation and education, scholars of rural life, education, childhood, and family life will also find it of great interest.” —Religious Studies Review
"Carter's tale is fundamentally about the advancement of catechetical education in the French Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. . . . it is in Carter's exploration of early modern primary education in Auxerre, Chalons-sur-Marne, and Reims, that she makes her most provocative claims." —New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century
“Elegantly written and persuasively argued, Creating Catholics is divided into two main parts. The first examines diocesan catechisms used throughout seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, while the second, somewhat lengthier part analyzes primary education in the three dioceses under investigation. The author thus situates her discussion in dialogue both with historians of early modern religion and with historians of education.” —The Journal of Modern History
"[Creating Catholics] is well-written, carefully argued, clearly organised, is steeped in its documentary sources and it has a substantial bibliography. For scholars it offers an important nuancing of our understanding of how a central discipline of the Catholic Reformation played out locally in France up to the period of the French Revolution." —The Heythrop Journal
