ANU Gender Institute - Gender and History node 2015 seminar series

This article examines the Parisian convent of the Nouvelles catholiques (‘New Catholics’), established in 1634 for the conversion of Protestant girls and women to Catholicism. Focusing on the decades following the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes—which withdrew Protestants’ right to worship—it reconstructs the processes by which the French state and Catholic Church worked together to promote religious integration in France. Although such institutions also existed for boys, authorities targeted girls and young women for both their perceived vulnerability and influence within the home. Based on the convent’s ‘Entry book’, which records the details of every woman who passed through the institution, the article reveals that few women were open to conversion and shows that, as calls for religious toleration grew over the course of the eighteenth century, the number of women entering declined. It argues that the Nouvelles catholiques of Paris however fulfilled a need for church and state to be seen to be addressing the ongoing existence of religious division in France after the edict that was supposed to bring about its end. It also suggests that the convent provides unique insight into the impact for Protestant women of a growing acceptance of religious diversity that would find expression in the French Revolution’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

Further dates for the series are 12 March; 23 April; 21 May: 3:00-4:30. Gender Institute members interested in presenting at any of these meetings should contact node leader Hyaeweol Choi.