The Learn Tracker
...life-long learning: structured, organized, searchable...
924
Lectures Watched
Since January 1, 2014
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:
Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:

VIEW ARCHIVE

Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info
Notes on video lecture:
18th Century French Clergy and Nobility
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on July 23, 2014 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
scattered, France, pray, curates, onerous, church, Paris, Voltaire, boredom, fight, three, medieval, courts, reciprocal, faith, obedient, sign, Strasbourg, obey, monks, 1000, communication, social, winter, hell, generations, private, decorated, exacerbated, sin, gratuit, Versailles, education, secular, visual, sword, edifices, armies
•
18th century France was a society based on a                  conception of            estates (orders):
•
1. clergy
•
duty was to          and worship
•
2. nobility
•
duty was to            and protect
•
3. commons
•
duty was to          and work
•
the privileged orders were the clergy and nobility
•
1. clergy
•
140,000 people
•
0.5% of the total population
•
regular clergy
•
26,000           
•
55,000 nuns
•
secular clergy
•
40,000 priests
•
19,000               
•
job was to take care of the needs of                society, hence their name
•
church
•
a privileged corporation
•
privileged comes from "               law", i.e. the church was self-governing
•
wealthy
•
had tax exemptions on lands that it owned
•
made a regular voluntary gift called a "don               "
•
drew a tithe from common French people
•
8%-12% of harvests went to upkeep of             
•
8% of France was in the hands of the church
•
in            it was higher, near 40%
•
social divisions
•
bishops
•
men from the nobility
•
dominated church in terms of power and wealth
•
cathedrals were commonly run by bishops
•
power went beyond spiritual power
•
in                     , Cardinal de Rohan, enjoyed          times what a country curate would have earned in a year
•
spent a good part of the year at                     
•
incurred scorn of the "philosophes" such as                 
•
in small villages such as Corbières, priests earned only 300 livres per year
•
not much more than an average peasant household
•
some of the great abbeys often were landholders and feudal lords in their own rights
•
if ordinary people in France received an                   , it was at the hands of the church
•
during              months when there wasn't much farm work that children went to school
•
a majority of boys and a quarter of girls were able to          the marriage register when they married
•
education was in large part to educate people of the dangers of       
•
purgatory and          were terrible prospects that were placed in the minds of the faithful
•
the power of the church came not only from this threat, but also from the power demonstrated by the great ecclesiastical                  that dominated so many towns and villages across the land of France
•
once the peasants went into the church, the message was not only in the words of the priests but also in the way the churches were                   
•
this was a society in which the most important method of communication was the spoken word supported by              representation
•
stained glass windows portrayed stories of the happy afterlife that awaited them if they obeyed properly, and the life of dread that awaited them if they were not duly                  and observed the sacraments
•
church was also marked by regional contrasts, felt in the French revolution
•
Brittany
•
characterized by a bocage landscape
•
essentially a                    population
•
hamlets and farmsteads
•
most people lived outside of the village but came into the village on Sundays to hear the word of God and to see other people
•
parish priests were local people from respected families
•
Provence
•
people lived in the village itself
•
church was not needed to provide a center of                            as it did in western and northern France
•
church was not the              hub so much
•
church was losing some of its social authority
•
The Second Estate: Nobility
•
125,000 (0.5% of total population),
•
same as clergy
•
variety of forms of wealthy
•
owned 30% of land in             
•
has a range of taxation exemptions, pays some taxes but avoids the most               
•
the role was a preparation to fight for the            and the king in times of need
•
exercised its power in physical demonstrations of ostentation, authority, and intimidation across the landscape
•
two kinds of nobles
•
nobless d'épée
•
"nobles of the           "
•
traced their noble heritage back many                       
•
noblesse de robe
•
"nobles of the robe"
•
through devotion and money were able to become nobles
•
nobles spent most of their time in royal             
•
to stay in a small village would be a sentence of               
•
where the clergy has a                      role (commoners were learning how to save their souls in return for their work and obedience), this was not so evident with the nobility who seemed to be more of an "absent extracting presence", a one way relationship
•
this tension was                        by the fact that the military had been gradually concentrated in the state over the past decades and centuries, whereas the great noble families of France no longer have private             
•
the question arose then: if the task of protecting the country rests now with the king, what is the purpose of the nobility and how does it justify the privileges which it enjoys?

Vocabulary:

curate, n. a cleric, especially one who has charge of a parish ⇒ "18th century France had approximately 40,000 priests and 19,000 curates"
bocage, n. [BOH-kahzh] a Norman word which has entered both the French and English languages meaning a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture, with fields and winding country lanes sunken between narrow low ridges and banks surmounted by tall thick hedgerows that break the wind but also limit visibility ornamentation. ⇒ "Whereas 18th century Brittany was characterized by a bocage landscape, in the south of France people mostly lived in the cities themselves."
seigneurial, adj. of or pertaining to the lord of a manor, manorial, vested with large powers, independent ⇒ "The Second Estate in 18th century France collected seigneurial and feudal dues particularly at harvest time."
Tridentine Mass, n. the form of the Roman Rite Mass contained in the typical editions of the Roman Missal that were published from 1570 to 1962, it was the most widely celebrated Mass liturgy in the world until the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI in December 1969 ⇒ "The Tridentine Mass is the old form of Mass that was authorized for use throughout the Roman Catholic Church from 1570 until it was replaced following the second Vatican Council in the 1960s."

Spelling Corrections:

priveleged ⇒ privileged
eclesiastical ⇒ ecclesiastical
edifaces ⇒ edifices
sacrements ⇒ sacraments
Britanny ⇒ Brittany
An Introduction to the French Revolution
The Essentials of 18th Century France
18th Century French Clergy and Nobility
The Importance of Regionalism and Locality in 18th Century France
The Contribution of the Philosophes to the French Revolution
What were People of 18th Century France Reading?
The Atlantic Democratic Revolution and the Republic of Letters
1780s France Financial Crisis and its Repercussions
The Third Estate in Revolt
The Peasantry in Revolt
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
The October Days
1789-91: Making the New Nation
Unresolved Issues of the Revolution
The Turning Point in Church Reform