The Church and the Clergy in the Diocese

The Wars of Religion, the harsh mountain climate, and neglect had left the Church's material condition in the diocese in a shambles, and all obstructed efforts toward reform.^[86] Many of the lands that had provided the revenues to finance Church functions were either uncultivated, subject to disputes over ownership, or lost. Décimateurs , those who owned the tithes of parishes and who were therefore obligated to

[85] On the medieval calendar, see Bligny, ed., Grenoble , p. 89; for Le Camus's, see his Recueil des ordonnances , pp. 302-304.

[86] For accounts of the Wars of Religion in the Dauphiné, see Bligny, ed., Grenoble , chap. 5; Bligny, ed., Histoire du Dauphiné , chap. 9; Chomel, ed., Histoire de Grenoble , chap. 5; and Arnaud, Histoire des protestants , vol. 1.

maintain church choirs, often failed to do so. Impoverished communities, heavily in debt from the religious wars, could not easily raise the funds necessary for refurbishing the naves and the ornaments. Possessing private family chapels, local nobles often refused to contribute their share. And patrons of parish chapels, whether nobles, village notables, or entire communities, let buildings and ornaments fall into ruin.^[87]

The demoralized and depleted clergy made the situation even bleaker. The problems started at the top. Grenoble's bishops during the first half of the seventeenth century were not equal to the task of reconstructing the Church in the diocese. The first two were high-ranking magistrates from prominent Dauphinois families who were quickly ordained for their episcopal appointments. François Fléhard, a former premier président of the Chambre des comptes, held the seat from 1575 to 1606 during the heat of the religious conflict and was deeply involved with the Ligue and political intrigue.^[88] Jean de la Croix de Chevriéres, who served from 1607 to 1619, had been premier président of the Parlement and took up religious life after becoming a widower at age fifty-two. He did strive to introduce Tridentine reforms into local synods but apparently took no major steps to carry the Counter-Reformation to the countryside.^[89] His successor and relative, Alphonse de la Croix de Chevriéres, served only a year.

In 1620 Pierre Scarron succeeded to the episcopal seat. He held it for forty-seven years, a long episcopate and one that for better or worse left its mark on diocesan administration for a major part of the century. Scarron has always suffered in comparison to his successor, Le Camus. The comparison may be unfair, but he was an ineffective reformer. He was most noted for speeches he made to Louis XIII during his early years as bishop, defending the three estates of the province against the encroachments of royal officers and revenue demands.^[90] He also loved to pontificate before the Parlement (in his role as honorary conseiller ) and before the provincial estates, where he once suffered the humilia-

[87] This abbreviated description is drawn from the works cited in note 22, esp. Bligny, ed., Grenoble , p. 122. See also incomplete pastoral visits from the period, ADI 4G.267-269.

[88] On Fléhard, see Avezou, "La vie religieuse," p. 23; Bligny, ed., Grenoble , p. 110; and the fragmentary pastoral visit of 1600, ADI 4G.267.

[89] We know of only one pastoral visit he performed, in 1609; even that tour was incomplete (Avezou, "La vie religieuse," p. 35; Bligny, ed., Grenoble , p. 110; and ADI 4G.267). On his role as a lawyer for the noblesse de robe in the procès des tailles , see Hickey, Coming of French Absolutism , p. 111.

[90] P. Scarron, Recueil des harangues faites par Messire Pierre Scarron, évêque et prince de Grenoble, conseiller du roy en ses conseils d'état et privé et président perpetuel des estats du Dauphiné (Paris, 1634), pp. 12-112. He gave these speeches on 26 November 1622, 14 February 1629, and 12 July 1632.

tion of forgetting his speech. As an administrator of the diocese he was, at best, inconsistent and, especially in his later years, preferred the solitude of the library in his country estate at Herbeys to the daily chores of the episcopal palace. His pastoral visits were infrequent and incomplete; he managed to visit only sixteen of the over three hundred parishes in the diocese in 1624, forty-four in 1637, and another twelve in 1652. He delegated his single complete visit, carried out between 1665 and 1667, to his vicaire-général , Joseph de la Poype Saint-Jullin.^[91] High absenteeism marked his synods. In addition, he mismanaged the funds and properties of the diocese and even his own personal residences, which Le Camus found in a state of disrepair. But Scarron did not totally neglect his duties. He organized retreats for ordinands in 1660, and in 1664 he tried to establish a seminary based on the revenues of the Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier shrine near Vinay.^[92]

Scarron might claim credit for the efflorescence of new religious orders in the towns of the diocese, but it was Grenoble's lay elite that generally took the initiative in founding the houses.^[93] The remarkable seventeenth-century growth of religious orders was constructed on meager medieval foundations. At the end of the Wars of Religion, Grenoble and its environs had fewer than ten religious establishments.^[94] But eighteen more had taken root within the city by 1666, and another four by the end of the century.^[95] The Franciscan orders were the first to arrive. The Recollets founded their Grenoble home in 1605 and then opened another within the diocese, at Bourg-d'Oisans, in 1654. The Capuchins followed by opening Grenoble houses in 1606 and 1611 and then pursued the fight against Protestantism south to la Mure in 1643. Grenoble was also one of the first places to receive Francis de Sales's and Jane de Chantal's groups. The Visitandines establishes themselves there in 1618 and opened a second house in 1648; the Bernadines arrived in 1624. The teaching order of the Ursulines opened its Grenoble house in 1607 and then moved to Tullins, Moirans, and Vif in the 1630s. The

[91] For Scarron's visits see ADI 4G.268-270. As with the records of earlier visits, their fragmentary state may owe more to the hazards of survival than to Scarron's failure to fulfill his duties. But there are no indications that he carried out more numerous or complete visits. This sketch comes largely from Bordier, "La compagnie," p. 119-131.

[92] The attempt involved him in legal battles, and the seminary did not outlast his episcopate (Bligny, ed., Grenoble , p. 140).

[93] Bernard Dompnier makes this point in showing that parlementaires were active in the foundation of Capuchin houses ("Activités et méthodes pastorales des capucins au XVIIe siècle, l'exemple grenoblois," Cahiers d'histoire 12 [1977]: 235, 237).

[94] The number depends on whether suburban houses, such as the Dominican convent at Montfleury or even the Grande-Chartreuse in its mountain isolation, are included.

[95] Pierre-Henri Bordier, "Le diocèse à l'arrivée de Le Camus," in Le cardinal des montagnes: Etienne Le Camus , ed. Jean Godel (Grenoble, 1974), pp. 163-170, esp. 165.

Dominicans set up a school in Grenoble in 1606. Their rival educators, the Jesuits, established a residence in the city in 1623. Numerous other orders followed these.^[96]

Because the city of Grenoble lacked a large secular clerical establishment—only three understaffed parishes to serve some 15,000 to 20,000 people—the regular clergy assumed a major role in the city's religious life.^[97] Their effect on the countryside is more difficult to assess. Scarron looked to new orders, especially the Jesuits and Capuchins, not only to propagate the faith among Protestants but to reinforce it among Catholics. It was for this reason that, in 1643 and 1645, he sought permission for the Capuchins to receive confessions in their houses, and he asked that the friars treat his entire diocese as a pays de mission.^[98] But Capuchin missionaries, and the Jesuits as well, concentrated their efforts in Protestant areas outside the diocese.^[99] Examples of missionary work by other groups are hard to find. The strongest missionary effort came with Le Camus, who promoted missions in conjunction with his pastoral visits. Despite his misgivings about the behavior of religious orders and the emotionally charged religiosity they encouraged, he used groups like the Capuchins to hear confessions, to regulate rural confraternities, and to preach Lenten sermons.^[100]

Hostility marked Le Camus's relations with some of the other orders. He had a running conflict with the Jesuits throughout the years of his episcopate. He felt that they challenged his authority, and they in turn accused him of Jansenism. Because of his contacts with Port-Royal, the bishop had some difficulty in extricating himself from this charge. The dispute eventually involved the courts of both Versailles and Turin (the Jesuits were particularly influential in Chambéry) as well as the Curia. In the end, he allowed the Jesuits little room to operate in his diocese.^[101]

[96] The Cistercian nuns, long entrenched near Grenoble in the abbey des Ayes, expanded to Voiron. The Annonciades célestes came to Grenoble and l'Albenc. The sisters of the Verbe incarné (who cared for poor girls) arrived, as did the hospital orders of the Pénitentes de Sainte-Madeleine, the brothers of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, and the sisters of Saint-Augustin. During Le Camus's episcopate the number of teaching, hospital, and missionary orders continued to increase (list compiled from Bligny, ed., Grenoble , pp. 127-131; Avezou, "La vie religieuse," pp. 35-36; and Bordier, "La compagnie," pp. 102-110).

[97] Bligny, ed., Grenoble , p. 165; Norberg, Rich and Poor , pp. 16-17.

[98] Dompnier, "Activités et méthodes," p. 244.

[99] Such as in the Pragelas valley where Jesuits replaced Capuchins (Bordier, "La compagnie," p. 110).

[100] In his work on rural missions in the Dauphiné, Bernard Dompnier comes to similar conclusions for the diocese of Grenoble ("L'activité missionaire en Dauphiné au XVIIe siècle" (Doctorat de 3e cycle, Université de Paris I, 1981), pp. 240-278.

[101] Godel, ed., Le cardinal , pp. 91-121, 171-177. Le Camus's problems with Jesuits and accusations of Jansenism are recorded throughout his correspondence (Lettres , ed. Ingold, and Lettres inédites , ed. Faure).

But the older orders and houses provided the most serious pastoral problem. Many of the numerous priories that dotted the landscape were either defunct or close to it, sometimes surviving merely because they contained a couple of clerics living off the priory's land and fighting over its revenue. The spiritual influence of these houses on nearby parishes was nil, but their presence was still felt because of the interminable financial disputes they provoked.^[102] Convents also did little to promote spiritual life, sometimes because they were too busy directing social life. The old Dominican house at Montfleury near Grenoble was a home for the daughters of the city's elite families. The nuns ignored even the slightest hint of a cloistered existence. Instead they sponsored receptions and concerts for friends and relatives. Le Camus was shocked; however, he had to be circumspect in his actions because of the convent's ties to Grenoble's elite, a group that never warmed to the austere bishop. Even new houses could quickly leave their original aspirations behind. Such was the case with the Ursuline convent at Vif where the nuns accused their superior of being despotic, of carrying on love affairs with monks from nearby monasteries, and of using the convent's choir as a theater in which to stage productions of Tartuffe .^[103]

The worst of the regular clergy were those unattached to any house. Often exiles from other dioceses, they wandered the Grenoble bishopric searching for ecclesiastical posts. The example of the new shrine of Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier shows what happened when they obtained one.^[104] The heavily frequented shrine came under the control of two wayward "missionaries"—one a former Augustinian and the other a former Carmelite—soon after its foundation in the late 1650s. They used their position to amass a small fortune by charging exorbitant rates for their services, by stealing candles from the chapel for resale, and even possibly by counterfeiting. They also found time to harass women pilgrims, terrorize local villagers, and fight with soldiers in taverns. The contrast between the new shrine attracting pilgrims from

[102] Bligny, ed., Grenoble , pp. 77, 126-127. The priories were mostly Benedictine or Augustinian and often owned the tithes of nearby parishes.

[103] ADI 4G.272, p. 1055; Bligny, ed., Grenoble , p. 126; Jacques Solé, "La crise morale du clergé du diocèse," in Le cardinal des montagnes: Etienne Le Camus , ed. Jean Godel (Grenoble, 1974), pp. 179-209, esp. 200. Convent theatrical productions were not unusual and served spiritual as well as recreational purposes (Elissa Weaver, "Spiritual Fun: A Study of Sixteenth-Century Tuscan Convent Theater," in Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance , ed. Mary Beth Rose [Syracuse, 1986], pp. 173-205). A Catholic reformer would not have approved of this use of a church, especially given the specific play.

[104] Solé, "La crise morale," pp. 180-184.

thoughout the province and the two monks who, at least temporarily, were able to exploit it is at once a tribute to the vitality of religious life in the area and a sad comment on the condition of diocesan leadership and institutions.

The reliance of bishops, prior to Le Camus, on regular clergy to make up for the scarcity of good parish priests only underscores these weaknesses. The most basic problem facing parish priests in the first half of the seventeenth century was material insecurity. Those curés who had surrendered their incomes in favor of the portion congrue (which was supposed to be two hundred livres a year as of 1632) often had difficulty in getting the décimateurs to pay the full amount.^[105] The dilapidation of Church-owned buildings ensured that many did not have maisons curiales in which to live. Because of the negligence of episcopal administration, refugee priests expelled by other dioceses found posts in the diocese of Grenoble, further diluting the incomes of local clergy.^[106] Since clerical careers in the diocese offered no great attraction, the parish clergy suffered from a lack of good recruits.^[107]

Le Camus found a very troubled situation during his first visit. He took careful note of the parishioners' complaints about their curés through the first half of the parishes he toured. By that point he was so scandalized that he ceased recording this information in the procès-verbal of the visit and began a secret register, which has since been lost. After the visit Le Camus wrote to a friend that, of the approximately three hundred curés in the diocese, he had found only ten who were not corrupted.^[108] He exaggerated the problem, but not by much. Le Camus recorded information on 142 priests from both the eastern mountain areas and the larger river valleys of the diocese. Of these only about twenty received a good mention, and only eight passed inspection without reservation. Among the others the bishop found eighty-five cases of sexual misconduct ranging from concubinage through promiscuity to

[105] Bligny, ed., Grenoble , p. 123. The décimateurs were often members of the higher clergy or local priors.

[106] Bordier, "La compagnie," p. 97.

[107] Vital Chomel's study of ordinations (summarized in his chapter in Bligny, ed., Grenoble , pp. 112-115) reveals that from 1570 to 1579 fifty-five priests were ordained, seventy-nine from 1580 to 1589, eighty-one from 1590 to 1599, forty-nine from 1604 to 1609, and 104 from 1610 to 1619. But many joined religious orders rather than the corps of parish clergy. For instance, of the eighty-one men ordained in the 1590s approximately forty entered orders, twenty went to the Grande-Chartreuse, ten became Franciscans of various sorts, and another ten scattered among other groups.

[108] Letter cited in Avezou, "La vie religieuse," p. 26. For this section on the curés, I have relied on Solé, "La crise morale," and on the pastoral visit of 1672-1673, ADI 4G.272.

outright polygamy. Some of these priests consorted with women of "mauvaise vie." Others terrorized and raped younger women from their parishes. Sixty-six curés were "avaricious"; they overcharged for religious services such as marriages and funeral masses, or they had more enthusiasm for speculating in land and livestock than for their curial functions. Sixty priests were alcoholics. Numerous curés were too old or illiterate, or they spent too much time gambling, hunting, and socializing with the local Huguenots to perform their duties. Many absented themselves frequently from their parishes. Others stayed at home but alienated their flocks by acting as coqs de village or, in Le Camus's word, tartuffes . And some had no conception of what it meant to be a priest. When Le Camus arrived in the village of Engelas, he asked the curé if he had a New Testament. The priest replied no, and Le Camus showed him one. The man responded by saying that he had not even known that there was such a book. The secretary recording the visit was quick to add that these were the priest's exact words so that no one would fail to believe his account.^[109]

Although the situation may have been especially severe in the diocese of Grenoble, the problems of all parish clergy before the Counter-Reformation were essentially the same. Recent studies of other seventeenth-century dioceses have shown that reforming bishops found mediocre curés everywhere in France.^[110] But it is necessary to approach the criticisms of curés with caution and with a sense of the priests' position in rural society. Curés could be caught between several competing interests. Bishops wanted priests who shared their Counter-Reformation conceptions of religion, men who would be their representatives in parishes. Seigneurs might be interested in sheltering a friend and agent from the prelate's or parishioners' wrath. I have found only one case in which Le Camus suggested that villagers, from Autrans, were afraid to complain about their curé because a nobleman, the powerful duke of Lesdiguières, was protecting him.^[111] But it is certain that relations be-

[109] ADI 4G.272, pp. 153-169; Solé, "La crise morale," p. 195.

[110] The most complete studies of the parish clergy are Hoffman, Church and Community , chap. 2; and Robert Sauzet, Les visites pastorales dans le diocese de Chartres pendant la première moitie du XVIIe siècle (Rome, 1975), pp. 126-143. See also Pérouas, La Rochelle , pp. 196-205; Sauzet, Contre-réforme , pp. 91-93; Soulet, Traditions et réformes , pp. 56-57; and Ferté, La vie religieuse , pp. 170-186.

[111] ADI 4G.272, p. 1200. Sauzet notes that villagers in numerous Chartrain parishes uttered not a single complaint about their curés to the visitor even though the priests were eventually hauled before the diocesan court and imprisoned. Villagers were reticent, he suggests, because the priest intimidated them or had the local seigneur's protection or because parishioners colluded with the priest, perhaps in using tithe money to pay taxes. They might also have been suspicious of the visitor and might have differed with him about what was acceptable behavior in village life (Sauzet, Visites pastorales . . . Chartres , pp. 101-113).

tween priests and local nobles, even if they were Protestants, were often close.

And yet, as is evident from Le Camus's catalogue of complaints about curés, few parishes in the diocese were intimidated by either seigneur or priest. After all, a visitor's investigation of a curé could not proceed without the information provided by parishioners. Villagers had their own concerns regarding their pastor's behavior. They, too, had certain expectations about how he should conduct himself and perform his duties. Animosity between individual parishioners and curés may have led to accusations of sexual impropriety or financial duplicity. But the sheer volume of complaints suggests that more than personal grievance was at work. Parishioners and bishops alike expected priests to be able to perform all necessary religious functions: the mass, confession, marriage, baptisms, funerals, processions, and so forth. Bishops, however, stressed the curé's role as an instructor, spiritual guide, and moral policeman; parishioners looked for a willing clerical functionary who did not overcharge for his services in village ceremonies. When the priest could not meet these expectations because of age, illiteracy, or drunkenness, parishioners were as quick to criticize him as was a bishop. And when he transgressed community sexual norms through promiscuity, adultery, or rape, villagers needed little prompting to turn him over to a prelate's punishment.

We cannot, therefore, consider the accusations against curés merely the result of a new ideal of the priesthood propagated by the reformers. Before priests met the new strict standards of behavior set down by the Counter-Reformation Church, they had to meet the standards of their flocks. They had to live in the community in a manner that villagers found acceptable, and they had to ensure the functioning of village religion. The curés of the diocese of Grenoble could fulfill neither the expectations of their own parishioners nor those of their new bishop.^[112] Hampered by the personnel shortage, Le Camus could not levy sanctions against all the priests he found wanting. Still the turnover was impressive. After the first decade of Le Camus's episcopate, for example, in twenty-five parishes of the Chartreuse and Oisans, twenty had new curés.^[113] These seminary-trained priests would be more to their bishop's liking, but relations with parishioners may not have improved.

[112] One might have expected such complaints to surface during Saint-Jullin's visit in 1665, but the vicaire-général was concerned mostly with material conditions.

[113] Bligny, ed., Grenoble , p. 139.

The former curés had been incapable of discharging their functions in village religion; the new ones, imbued with the spirituality of the Counter-Reformation, would not always be willing to do so.^[114] They may have ended up more isolated from their flocks than their predecessors, or else they found allies among village notables interested in putting the new curès to their own uses.

Beyond the internal problems, reformers in the diocese of Grenoble perceived another obstacle to their plans—Protestantism. But in fact they greatly exaggerated the strength of the Huguenot community in the midseventeenth century.^[115] The proportion of Huguenots in the population of the diocese, never as large as that of the nearby diocese of Die, declined considerably over the course of the seventeenth century. Only about four thousand Protestants lived in the diocese of Grenoble in the 1670s, grouped mostly into four areas. The city of Grenoble had between four and five hundred; Pont-en-Royans at the far western edge of the diocese had about the same; another thousand lived at the southern edge of the diocese centered on the town of la Mure; and approximately fifteen hundred lived in the high mountains of the Oisans in the eastern part of the diocese. In these areas, Protestants might form the majority or even the entirety of a village's population. But overall, the Protestant population was falling. In the Grésivaudan valley north of Grenoble, for instance, several Huguenot communities totally disappeared during the 1660s and 1670s.^[116] Nevertheless, Catholics felt that Protestants represented a threat far beyond what their actual numbers warranted.

The two religious communities had lived in an uneasy coexistence during the early decades of the century. Huguenots were protected by the Chambre de l'Edit in the Parlement set up specifically to hear cases involving them. In mountain villages after the end of the religious wars, Protestants and Catholics achieved a modus vivendi, though a precarious one. The end of hostilities did not mean an end to disputes. The two sides argued over the obligation of all members of the community to contribute to the maintenance of the parish church, and rival cler-

[114] No study in this diocese has examined relations between the new priests, agents of the Counter-Reformation, and their parishioners as Hoffman has for Lyon. Drawing on lawsuits against new priests, he suggests that relations were troubled (Church and Community , chap. 5).

[115] The work of Eugène Arnaud provides the general outline of Protestant history in the province; Pierre Bolle, with his colleagues, gives us excellent in-depth studies of Dauphinois Protestant communities. Their concern is not the diocese of Grenoble but the communities of Mens-en-Trièves, Gap, and Die (Arnaud, Histoire des protestants ; Pierre Bolle, ed., Le protestantisme en Dauphiné au XVIIe siècle [Poët-Laval, 1983]).

[116] Pierre Bolle, "Le Camus et les protestants," pp. 145-148.

gymen held debates in some areas.^[117] After the 1640s, coexistence gave way to increasing tension. Pressure on Protestants to convert came in part from a series of edicts from the Parlement restricting their activities and from the work of Grenoble's Company of the Blessed Sacrament and Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.^[118] The situation deteriorated steadily until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, when the Huguenots were forced into conversion or into flight toward the Savoyard border. Those who were caught attempting to flee were thrown into Grenoble's prisons and their children were abducted into the orphanage run by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.^[119] Le Camus employed both encouragement and coercion to gain conversions, and he reported huge successes in the immediate aftermath of the edict's revocation. By the 1690s, he realized how limited these successes were: the Catholic campaign never eliminated Protestantism but instead drove it underground until the next century. A more complete examination of the Protestants in the diocese would require a separate study, but they will not be absent here. They will appear mostly as they affected the concerns of reformers, changes in the cult of saints, and the life of the case-study community.

This, then, was the diocese Le Camus set out to visit and to change in 1672. It had a rough landscape and bitter climate. Some villages were isolated and others more open to the world. The bishop inherited a troubled institution, but he faced rural parishes with lively religious lives. In each village, religion provided the means for people to manipulate a difficult environment and to shape their social world. Through its beliefs and practices, villagers could construct their relations both with divine powers and their neighbors. Village religion also helped them adapt to pressures from the outside. The Counter-Reformation was one such, and its impact depended in large part on the villagers' desire to alter their relations with one another and with the world outside the village.

[117] See chapter 6.

[118] For a discussion of the midcentury increase in tension, see Avezou, "La vie religieuse," p. 40. On the anti-Protestant campaign, see Norberg, Rich and Poor , chaps. 3-4.

[119] Norberg, Rich and Poor , p. 76.