- Title Pages
- Abbreviations
- 22 From Baptism to the Requiescat in Pace
- 23 Liturgical Worship
- 24 Sermons
- 25 The Curé's Prône and Parish Missions
- 26 Religious Practice
- 27 On the Margins of Official Religion
- 28 Confraternities
- 29 Popular Religion and Clerical Reformers
- 30 The Dark Side of the Supernatural
- 31 The Confessional
- 32 Commercial Loans and Lotteries
- 33 Sexual Passion
- 34 The Theatre
- 35 The Jansenist Quarrel
- 36 Unigenitus
- 37 The Appeal to a General Council
- 38 From the Regent to Fleury
- 39 The Changing Face of Jansenism
- 40 Fleury's Repression and the Interventions of the Parlement
- 41 The Mid‐Century Crisis
- 42 The Jesuits of France
- 43 The Fall of the Jesuits
- 44 The Huguenots: The Great Persecution
- 45 Cruelty and Compromise, 1700–1774
- 46 Lutherans and Jews: Routine Intolerance
- 47 Towards a Grudging Toleration, 1774–1789
- 48 The Twilight of Jansenism
- 49 The Political Role of the Bishops
- 50 The Revolt of the Curés
- General Index
The Theatre
The Theatre
- Chapter:
- (p.312) 34 The Theatre
- Source:
- Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France Volume 2: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion
- Author(s):
John McManners
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Clerics, following the lead of Bossuet in Louis XIV's reign, continued their attacks on the wickedness of the theatre throughout the eighteenth century, but the rigidity and harshness laid down in theory was generally evaded by the laity and sections of the clergy alike. The theatre‐going public, including the court and the higher aristocracy, ignored clerical fulminations, while within the Church, the Jesuits in particular, who used the theatre for didactic purposes in their schools, were in an ambiguous position. In practice, the Church viewed the theatre as neither a Satanic invention encouraging sexual desire nor as a potentially educative institution, but as ‘an inevitable evil to be regulated as far as possible’. The harshness of official policy varied from diocese to diocese, while attempts to deny Christian burial to actors, as members of an immoral profession, were unpopular and contributed to anti‐clericalism.
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- Title Pages
- Abbreviations
- 22 From Baptism to the Requiescat in Pace
- 23 Liturgical Worship
- 24 Sermons
- 25 The Curé's Prône and Parish Missions
- 26 Religious Practice
- 27 On the Margins of Official Religion
- 28 Confraternities
- 29 Popular Religion and Clerical Reformers
- 30 The Dark Side of the Supernatural
- 31 The Confessional
- 32 Commercial Loans and Lotteries
- 33 Sexual Passion
- 34 The Theatre
- 35 The Jansenist Quarrel
- 36 Unigenitus
- 37 The Appeal to a General Council
- 38 From the Regent to Fleury
- 39 The Changing Face of Jansenism
- 40 Fleury's Repression and the Interventions of the Parlement
- 41 The Mid‐Century Crisis
- 42 The Jesuits of France
- 43 The Fall of the Jesuits
- 44 The Huguenots: The Great Persecution
- 45 Cruelty and Compromise, 1700–1774
- 46 Lutherans and Jews: Routine Intolerance
- 47 Towards a Grudging Toleration, 1774–1789
- 48 The Twilight of Jansenism
- 49 The Political Role of the Bishops
- 50 The Revolt of the Curés
- General Index
