Religion and the Politics of t ime Religion and the Politics of time Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon noah shusteRman The Catholic University of America Press Washington, D.C. copyright © 2010 the catholic University of america Press all rights reserved the paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of american national standards for information science—Permanence of Paper for Printed library materials, ansi Z39.48-1984. ∞ library of congress cataloging-in-Publication data shusterman, noah. Religion and the politics of time : holidays in france from louis XiV through napoleon / noah shusterman. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. isBn 978-0-8132-1725-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. calendar—Political aspects— france—history. 2. church calendar—france—history. 3. holidays—france—history. 4. time—Political aspects— france—history. 5. church and state—france—history. 6. Political culture—france—history. 7. france—Politics and government— 1643–1715. 8. france—Politics and government— 1715–1774. 9. france—Politics and government—1774–1793. 10. france—Politics and government—1789–1815. i. title. ce61.f8s56 2010 944�.033—dc22 2009030747 contents list of maps and figures vii acknowledgments ix abbreviations xiii introduction 1 1. Religious holidays and temporal authority in old Regime france 12 2. Politics of time and the Politics of the times, 1642–1695 38 3. centralization without the state: Religious holidays in the eighteenth century 67 4. Which time for the future? Utility, anti-clericalism, and the calendar 98 5. seeing like a church: Religious time and Republican Politics, 1789–Vi 116 6. Reluctant missionaries: enforcement of the Republican calendar, Vi–Vii 161 7. Une Loi de l’Eglise et de l’Etat: napoleon and the central administration of Religious life, 1800–1815 206 conclusion 237 appendix a. estimating the number of Religious holidays in old Regime france 247 appendix B. the Republican calendar 265 Bibliography 267 index 293 list of maPs and figURes Map 1. the dioceses of old Regime france xv Map 2. calendar Reforms, 1642–1695 44 Map 3. the ecclesiastical Provinces of Rouen and tours 79 Map 4. calendar Reforms, 1695–1759 259 Map 5. calendar Reforms, 1760–1789 260 Figure 1. average number of Potential Workdays, 1642–1789 252 Figure 2. Weekday holidays by diocese in the seventeenth century 254 Figure 3. incidence of Fêtes in the seventeenth century 257 Figure 4. Weekday holidays in the late eighteenth century 261 Figure 5. incidence of Fêtes in the late eighteenth century 263 vii acknoWledgments in late december 1999, on the eve of the millennium, i was on a plane headed back to Paris. three months earlier i had begun full-time re- search into my dissertation, which was at that time going to be a ge- nealogy of leisure as a modern category—a topic about which i had managed to write a passable proposal, but had never quite figured out. the whole world was focused on the calendar then. the “19”s were about to disappear. People were ready to celebrate the coming of the new millennium. i was about to turn thirty. and the world was about to end, with the arrival of the Y2k bug. While i was not con- vinced that the most dire of predictions would come true, i had nev- ertheless made sure that all of my flights would be before the calen- dar changed. it was on that flight that i made up my mind to jettison most of my project on leisure, take the one chapter i had planned on the calendar, and expand it into a whole dissertation. that disserta- tion would eventually become this book. i had been aware of my interest in calendars and in the reforms of religious holidays for several years at that point. my first contact with the issues involved in the history of religious holidays came dur- ing a summer research trip to Paris in 1997. it was then that i came across faiguet de Villeneuve’s article on christian holidays, the abbé thiers’s book on the right of bishops to eliminate holidays, and the 1778 pastoral letter from the archbishop of Paris eliminating the ob- ix x acknowledgments servation of roughly one-third of the religious holidays in his dio- cese. those documents fascinated me in a way i could not under- stand then. it took some digging before i found out that those sources were just the tip of the iceberg, that there was other related material out there. But the point when i realized that there was enough there to support an entire dissertation only came when i realized that reli- gious holidays would again become an issue under napoleon, albeit a very different one. this realization highlighted the way that the his- tory of the republican calendar was part of a much longer story. the resulting project was risky; it was uncharted waters in many ways, not least because of its 175-year time span. But once the project had got its hooks into me, i knew that it was a risk i was going to take. any project this long in the making arrives only with the help of countless people. my first thanks go to my advisor, Peter sahlins, for his help with both practical and intellectual matters. his advice, and the standards to which he held my work, made my dissertation and this book far stronger than they would have otherwise been. as a mas- ter’s student at the University of chicago i profited greatly from the presence of dale Van kley and his seminar on Jansenism and the en- lightenment. William sewell was a constant source of inspiration, and the workshops on modern france and on social theory provided an intense intellectual environment. at Berkeley i was lucky enough to study with tom Brady and martin Jay, both of whom provided consis- tent support and encouragement. at temple University my colleagues in the intellectual heritage program and at the center for the human- ities have been consistently supportive of my work, as different as it is from theirs. Richard immerman, dan tompkins, and Peter logan have all been valuable mentors to me. Rick libowitz has been more than i could have hoped for in an officemate and colleague. kathy Bid- dick and the rest of the pre-modern colloquium have given invaluable analysis and encouragement. audra Wolfe, along with reading over much of the manuscript in various states of preparedness, was more than generous with her advice about all facets of the writing process.