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² Regnier, Philippe, “L'enterrement du siècle,” in Compte-Sponville et at., Tombeau de Victor Hugo, 59–108.Google Scholar

³ See the exchange of letters published by Philippe Regnier in “L'art de mourir,” in Compte-Sponville et al., Tombeau de Victor Hugo, 28–29. 0010–4175/88/2654–2315 $5.00 © 1988 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

⁴ For the history of the Pantheon, see Ozouf, Mona, “Le Pantheon,” in Les lieux de memoire, Nora, , ed., 140–66Google Scholar; and Lalouette, Jacqueline, “Le Panthèon, un temple laïque,” in Compte-Sponville et al., Tombeau de Victor Hugo, 41–43.Google Scholar

⁵ Cited in Lalouette, “Le Panthéon,” 48–49.

⁶ For the controversy over the refusal of the last sacraments to Jansenists, see Godard, Philippe, La querelle des refus des sacrements (1730–1765) (Paris: Donat-Montchrestien, 1937)Google Scholar. Kley, Dale Van, in The Damiens Affair and the Unraveling of the Ancien Régime, 1750–1770 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), stresses the importance of the controversy in contributing to Damiens's attempt to assassinate Louis XV, and to antiroyalist sentiment in general.Google Scholar

⁷ In a “Note sur le refus de sacrements,” dated 1 July 1814, and filed in the Archives Nationales (cited hereafter as AN) F195504, there is a list of precedents for government intervention to protect the rights of those who desired the last sacraments, including references to the Jansenist controversy of the eighteenth century.

⁸ Gaudry, Joachim, Traité de la législation des cultes, 3 vols. (Paris: Durand, 1856), I, 204–10; II, 545–47.Google Scholar

⁹ Etlin, Richard, The Architecture of Death—The Transformation of the Cemetery in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), 246–48, 299–300.Google Scholar

¹⁰ The text of article 19, which was most frequently invoked during the funeral controversies, reads as follows: “Lorsque le ministre d'un culte, sous quelque pretexte que ce soit, se permettra de refuser son ministère pour l'inhumation d'un corps, l'autorité civile, soit d'office, soit sur la requisition de la famille, nommera un autre ministre de meme culte pour remplir ces fonctions; dans tous les cas, l'autorite civile est chargée de faire porter, présenter, déposer et inhumer le corps.” The text of the decree of 23 Prairial, along with other decrees and circulars on the question of the refusal of sacraments, can be found in AN F¹⁹5512 and F¹⁹5513. Many of the key texts are conveniently collected and printed in Rapport sur la municipilisation du service des Pompes funebres de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1905)Google Scholar, which can be found in AN F²2762. On the importance of the decree of 23 Prairial, see Ligou, Daniel, “L'evolution des cimetieres,” Archives de sciences sociales de religions, 39 (1975), 73–77.Google Scholar

¹¹ The issue of the mayor's right to present the body in the church after the clergy had refused a religious service was debated by the law students of Paris in 1830, who voted in support of the municipal authority. Their debate, along with several incidents in which mayors broke into churches, provoked an exchange in the Paris press. See Le moniteur, 21 and 26 February 1830, 2 March 1830; Le constitutionnel, 23 February 1830.

¹² See, for example, the circular letters from the minister of interior to the prefects of 8 Messidor, year XII; 26 Thermidor, year XII (AN F¹⁹5513). In a letter from the prefect of Seineet-Oise to the subprefects and mayors of his department, dated 24 September 1838, he noted “serious difficulties” between mayors and curés over the administration of the decree of 23 Prairial. Similar problems were addressed in a letter from the minister of cults to the bishops of 28 June 1838; a letter from the minister of justice and cults to the bishops of 16 December 1844; and a letter from the minister of justice and cults to the bishops and prefects of 25 June 1847 (AN F¹⁹5512). In general these administrative letters urged bishops and prefects to encourage a tolerant attitude in the clergy with regard to religious services for the dead. But they also discouraged municipal authorities from directly challenging clerical authority by forcing their way into churches when a refusal had taken place.

¹³ Singer, Barnet, Village Notables in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany: SUNY Press, 1983), 69.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Agulhon, Maurice, La Republique au village (Paris: Seuil, 1970), 183Google Scholar. Berenson, Edward, in Populist Religion and Left-Wing Politics in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 66–67Google Scholar, notes the evidence of Agulhon but distinguishes more clearly between irreligion and anticlericalism. For a position similar to Agulhon's, see Chaline, N. J., “Une image du diocèse de Rouen sous l'épiscopatde Mgr. DeGiray (1832–1844),” Revue d'histoire de l'Eglise de France, no. 160, 57 (1972), 59.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The following files include references to funeral conflicts in Maine-et-Loire: AN F¹⁹5514, F¹⁹5523, F¹⁹5530, F¹⁹5712; Archives Départementales de Maine-et-Loire (cited hereafter as ADML) 5V30, 5V34, 5V35, 5V36, 1M6; Archives d'Evêché d'Angers (cited hereafter as AEA): 6G1, O (parish files).

¹⁶ I have not included in my analysis two cases in which Protestants received a civil burial. Because the individuals involved made no claim for a Catholic service, and could make no claim, their situation does not seem comparable to those treated here. Documents on these cases can be found in AN F¹⁹5530. This is not to deny the importance of burial conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, particularly where there was a substantial Protestant community. See Wahl, Alfred, Confession et comportemem dans les campagnes d'Alsace et deBade, 1871–1939, 2 vols. (Metz: University of Metz, 1980), II, 695–717.Google Scholar

¹⁷ AEA, E. Parents of children who died before being baptized were not necessarily indifferent about the fate of the souls of these children. In many areas of France special sanctuaries, called a repit, were reputedly capable of bringing infants back to life briefly so that they could be baptized. See Gélis, Jacques, “La mort et le salut spirituel du nouveau-né. Essai d'analyse et d'interpretation du ‘sanctuaire à répit’ (XIVC-XIXC siecle),” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 31 (1984), 361–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rebouillat, Marguerite, “Les sanctuaires de Bourgogne dits ‘à répit,’” in La piétà nos jours, Actes du 99= congrès national de sociétés savantes (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1976), 173–92.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See documents on conflicts in Champigne and Longue in AN F¹⁹5514.

¹⁹ Letter of Mayor Guinebert of Longue to prefect of Maine-et-Loire, 15 April 1863, AN F¹⁹5514.

²⁰ See file on “Mort-nès” in AN F¹⁹5514.

²¹ Journal officiel, Chambre, Annexes, 703 1879, 1776–77.Google Scholar

²² This observation is based on visits made to cemeteries in Maine-et-Loire between 1984 and 1986. Good examples of the segregation of young children are found in St. Michel-et-Chanveaux and Beaufort-en-Vallée.

²³ Gennep, Arnold Van, Manuel de folklore franqais contemporain (Paris: Picard, 1943), I, 726–73, provides extensive details on the conduct of the convoi funebre.Google Scholar

²⁴ Letter of mayor of Varennes to subprefect of Saumur, 30 December 1828, ADML 5V30.

²⁵ Lebrun, Francois, Les hommes et la mort en Anjou aux 17^e et 18^e siécles (Paris: Mouton, 1971), 418.Google Scholar

²⁶ Juin, Abbé, Lettre an clergé français, ou conseils touchant les refus de sépulture (Paris: Leclerc, n.d.), 25–28.Google Scholar

²⁷ “Des suicides: Résumé de la législation ancienne et moderne sur l'inhumation des personnes qui se donnent volontairement la mort,” in file on “Suicides,” AN Fl 95514. Michael MacDonald has noted the popular resistance to burying suicides in consecrated ground in nineteenth-century England. See “The Secularization of Suicide in England, 1660–1800,” Past and Present, no. 111 (05 1980), 88.Google Scholar

²⁸ AEA, O (Champtoceaux).

²⁹ L'ami de la religion, 101 (1839), 246.Google Scholar

³⁰ Chesnais, Jean-Claude, Les morts violents en France depuis 1826—Comparisons internationales (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976), 42Google Scholar

³¹ ADML 1M6/63.

³² La patriote de I'ouest, 20 December 1881, clipping filed in AN F¹⁹5776.

³³ Le monde, 2 06 1971, p. 16.Google Scholar

³⁴ Gaudry, Traité de la législation des cultes, I, 204.

³⁵ AN F¹⁹5523.

³⁶ AN F¹⁹5523.

³⁷ Sauvigny, Guillaume de Better de, The Bourbon Restoration (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), 382–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁸ For the debate on the Montlosier affair in the French Chamber, see L'ami de la religion, 100 (1839), 18–20Google Scholar, 148, 156. For extensive citations from the newspaper coverage of the affair, see Vami de la religion, 99 (1838), 518Google Scholar, 529–30, 536–37, 550–52, 581–82; and 100 (1839), 247. Louis-Marie Cormenin, an important publicist whose pamphlets generally opposed the July Monarchy, defended the bishop of Clermont-Ferrand on the principle of the need to separate spiritual from temporal affairs. See his Défense de l'évêque de Clermont. traduit pour cause d'abus, devant les révérends Pères du Conseil d'Etat, 2d ed. (Paris: Pagnerre, 1839).Google Scholar

³⁹ The decision of the Conseil d'Etat can be found in AN F¹⁹6115.

⁴⁰ AN F¹⁹5523.

⁴¹ For material on the civil burial movement that developed in the 1860s and continued into the Third Republic, see Lalouette, Jacqueline, “Les enterrements civils dans les premieres decennies de la Troisieme Republique,” Ethnologie francaise, 13:2 (1983), 111–28Google Scholar; Pérouas, Louis, Refus d'une religion, religion d'un refus en Limousin rural, 1880–1940 (Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1985), 50–59, 178–86Google Scholar; Cholvy, Gerard, Religion et société au XlX^e siècle: Le diocèse de Montpellier, 2 vols. (Lille: Universite de Lille III, 1983), II, 1256–58Google Scholar; Isambert, Francois, Christianisme et classe ouvriere (Paris: Castermann, 1961), 88–114Google Scholar; Hutton, Patrick, The Cult of the Revolutionary Tradition: The Blanquists in Politics, 1864–1893 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 53–55.Google Scholar

⁴² AEA, O (Broc). Jean Barois, the protagonist in Roger Martin du Gard's novel, drew up a will with a similar goal, which included an elaborate justification for his rejection of the Church's assistance at his deathbed. In Barois' case, however, he did change his mind and receive the last sacraments and a Catholic service; his will was burned by his pious wife and her curè. See Gard, Roger Martin du, Jean Barois (1913; New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969).Google Scholar

⁴³ AEA, O (Gennes). For similar rituals, see Lalouette, “Les enterrements civils,” 111–14; Pérouas, Refus d'une religion, 180–81. The ceremonials used at civil burials in the Third Republic resemble those of the compagnons earlier in the century; see the descriptions in Agricol Perdiguier, Memoires d'un compagnon (Paris: Maspero, 1977), 193–95, 341–42. The compagnons did, however, insist on a church service as well.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ AEA, 6G1, file on “enterrements civils.” For similar conflicts, see Pérouas, Refus d'une religion, 178–79.

⁴⁵ For an overview of the debate on civil burials, see Caperan, Louis, Histoire contemporaine de la Laïcité française (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1961), III, 98–104Google Scholar. Victor Hugo reacted to the issue with a poem that was highly critical of the clergy, published as part of the “nouvelle serie” of La legende des siecles in 1877. For a recent edition of this poem, see La légende des siècles (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1967), II, 272–73.Google Scholar

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⁴⁷ For the passage of the final version of the law, see Journal officiel, Chambre Débats (29 10 1887), 1898, 1907.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ In the twentieth arrondissment of Paris, 41 percent of those who died in 1884 were buried with a civil ceremony; for statistics on the importance óf civil burials in working class Paris, see Isambert, Christianisme et classe ouvrière, 105–7. For Lyon, see McManners, John, “Death and the French Historians,” in Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, Whaley, Joachim, ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), 108. For civil burials in rural Limousin, see Pérouas, Refus d'une religion, 56–57.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ For an excellent summary of the standard meanings of secularization, see Wilson, Bryan, “Secularization: The Inherited Model,” in The Sacred in a Secular Age, Hammond, Philip E., ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 9–20.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Vemon Lidtke provides a good example of the inclusive manner in which historians define secularization. “By secularisation I mean a two-fold process whereby religious thinking, practice, and institutions lose social and personal significance and a new vocabulary is acquired which provides a medium for asking and answering questions about the meaning of life.” See his “Social Class and Secularisation in Imperial Germany—The Working Classes,” Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute, 25 (1980), 21–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Owen Chadwick's meaning is perhaps more typical of the ways in which historians use the term. After acknowledging its lack of clarity, Chadwick nevertheless insists on its value. “From these difficulties of definition it does not follow that the umbrella word is misused. It is often easier to be sure that a process is happening than to define precisely what the process contains and how it happens.… By the nature of historical science, vagueness, blurred edges, recognition of the unchartable mystery in human motives and attitudes and decisions, are no necessary obstacle to an authentic though broad judgment in history.” Thus a rhetorical flourish solves a conceptual problem. See Chadwick, , The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 2–3.Google Scholar

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