Review

Author(s): Jack R. Censer

Review by: Jack R. Censer
Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 5 (Dec., 1989), pp. 1396-1397
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1906437
Accessed: 11-06-2015 19:22 UTC

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1396

Reviews of Books

Aubert never doubted the truth of Christianity;

this irenicist believed that the unfettered use of
reason and the dismissal of unessential dogmas
would bring Christians together. In fact, it was
Christianity that concerned him more than toleration, for he did not grant toleration to atheists.
He allowed the individual the right to follow a free
and erring conscience, but only so far. Reason was
historians.
J. MICHAEL HAYDEN
to buttress faith, even varying ones, but not to go
Universityof Saskatchewan against all faiths.
Aubert distinguished between civil toleration,
the government's obligation to tolerate different
PAULJ. MORMAN. NIel Aubertde Verse:A Studyin the
religions as long as they did not threaten the state,
Conceptof Toleration.(Texts and Studies in Reli- and ecclesiastical tolerance, the need for Chrisgion, number 32.) Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen. tians to tolerate all who
accepted the fundamentals
1987. Pp. 282. $49.95.
of Christianity, even if they disagreed on peripheral religious beliefs. Aubert had a problem with
One valuable approach in intellectual history is the civil
toleration, because the state had to decide
study of minor thinkers in an attempt to under- when a religion became dangerous. The example
stand better the climate of opinion of an age. This of the revocation illustrated the weakness of a
is what Paul J. Morman has done in his biography theory of toleration that relied on a sovereign's
of Noel Aubert de Verse (1645-1714), a French right to determine whether a religion posed a
controversialist involved in the important issues of threat. But Morman is careful to present Aubert's
the 1680s. Aubert seemed to have his hands in the limitations and significance; he avoids the pitfall of
great matters of public debate, taking on Spinoza, some biographers who claim too much for their
the Cartesians, Bossuet, Jurieu, and Louis XIV.
subjects. Thus, Morman explains that Aubert anThere is some consistency in Aubert's beliefs, ticipated but did not influence the philosophes
but one would not know this from his professions with his critical reasoning, anticlericalism, and
of faith. Born a Catholic in Le Mans, in 1662 he theory of toleration. Aubert was representative of
converted to Calvinism, apparently out of convic- a group of prolific controversialists in a premier
tion. Defrocked as a minister, primarily owing to a age of controversy, one mired in conflict among
too liberal theology, Aubert returned to the Ro- different faiths and between faith and reason. He
man church in 1670. A pension might have made was far beneath Bayle, Jurieu, Arnauld, Bossuet,
the transition attractive, though Aubert did be- and Nicole but worthy of a full-length study.
lieve by this time that the Gallican church was best Morman's monograph will interest specialists in
able to reunite Christendom. Scandal seemed to the decade of the 1680s.
dog Aubert, and in 1679 he fled to the United
RICHARD M. GOLDEN
Provinces. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes
ClemsonUniversity
dashed his hopes that the French church would
unify Christianity, so he became Protestant once
more. Alas, he had little luck finding a secure ROGER CHARTIER. The CulturalUsesof Print in Early
position in either the United Provinces or in ModernFrance. Translated by LYDIA G. COCHRANE.
Germany; in 1690 he returned to France, recon- Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1987. Pp.
verted again, and soon obtained a pension. This xi, 354. $35.00.
religious odyssey raises questions about the nature
of seventeenth-century conversions, but it does For some time specialists in the history of Old
not appear to have done much damage to Aubert's Regime France have delighted in the many monopsyche. Morman points out that Aubert believed graphs and articles flowing from the very prolific
almost any Christian denomination could lead one Roger Chartier. This author has published widely
to salvation. Unlike the overwhelming majority of on education, the history of the book, the history
his coreligionists, Catholic and Calvinist, Aubert of political ideas, cultural history, and other topics.
did not consider membership in any particular
Yet, in the United States, Chartier's work has
sect to be crucial. Rather, he reduced the essence received far less attention than it deserves. Many
of Christianity to charity and brotherly love, find- of his essays have been almost impossible to find
ing them in the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Com- on this side of the Atlantic. And almost none of his
mandments, and the Lord's Prayer. On this foun- work has been accessible to those who do not read
dation, Aubert constructed a theory of toleration French. Consequently, this translation of eight
that found new admirers in his era.
articles will introduce the considerable abilities of
level. Work remains to be done on the 1640s and
1650s, in particular. Work by others that ties the
history of prices to government income and expense has not been followed up. Above all, someone needs to consider the findings of all historians
of the French government's taxation policies in
the light of recent work by early modern French

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1397

Modern Europe
Roger Chartier to many. Furthermore, because he
has researched in several different schools of history whose techniques are not yet well known
here, this selection will make available to North
Americans a variety of new approaches.
The material presented in this volume, though
not representative of all aspects of Chartier's
work, does provide a fair selection of his research
on the history of ideas. Among the articles are
three that trace concepts over a long period. The
subjects include transformations of festivals, of the
art of dying, and of the term civilite. These articles
reveal Chartier's interest in an intellectual history
that concentrates on widely held beliefs instead of
the perceptions of intellectuals. His selection of
topics is innovative, borrowed in part from a new
wave of research. And, in examining these social
views from the eighteenth century, Chartier remains very sensitive throughout the volume to the
way that different groups and individuals held
various understandings of similar situations. Such
a perspective enriches Chartier's analysis.
Four of the articles in this book explore the
reading habits of the French in the early modern
era. Chartier examines publishing strategies, contents of popular works, and the possibilities for the
circulation and consumption of books in cities.
Although these articles do not cohere exactly,
some very useful generalizations do emerge.
Chartier shares the view of many scholars that a
wide spectrum of the population was acquainted
with those works that historians originally believed
were designed only for the poor. Yet, if social
cleavages seem to diminish in this work, gaps
between city and country seem to yawn ever wider.
The growing distribution of books apparently
increased the urban reader's advantage.
One other article concerns the grievances compiled by the French in 1789 as part of the electoral
process for the Estates General. This piece very
carefully and cautiously mines these documents
for the state of public opinion on the eve of the
revolution. Throughout the volume but especially
in this work, Chartier skillfully weaves original
research with an extraordinary mastery of the
scholarship of others. This technique leads to
fascinating conclusions, particularly regarding the
rapid radicalization of opinion in the closing
months of the Old Regime. This article also emphasizes the relationship between elites and peasants and thus is somewhat linked to his other
articles that address social divisions. The connections between any of the pieces, however, are on
the whole rather limited. Indeed, the strength of
the volume is not found in any overall substantive
conclusions but in the discovery and presentation

of Roger Chartier's talent to an American audience.

JACK R. CENSER

George Mason University

L. W. B. BROCKLISS. FrenchHigher Educationin the
Seventeenthand EighteenthCenturies:A CulturalHistory.New York: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press. 1987. Pp. xiii, 544. $92.00.

In a work of masterful synthesis and breadth,

L. W. B. Brockliss examines teaching and student
life in early modern French collegesand universities, a subject with intellectual, class, and political
implications. Brockliss is attentive to nuance in
analyzing the content of courses that developed
over a period of two hundred years; he treats all of
France, provincial and Parisian. As a result, this
study is a complex and subtle history of ideas.
Brockliss argues that, although educational institutions were coopted in seventeenth-century
France by the political and religious power structures, universities unintentionally prepared students for the Enlightenment by exposing them to
intellectual controversy. He both confirms and
challenges standard opinions about the early modern educational establishment. Professors did indeed teach received knowledge rather than develop new ideas in the classroom. In general, the
courses in theology, law, and moral philosophy
tried to conform to the interests of church and
state by inculcating students with traditional and
absolutist precepts. Interestingly, law students
tended more than others to be truant and rowdy,
and Brockliss hypothesizes that such low morale
reflected their conviction that the law course was
"largely pointless" (p. 281). But many professors
did take account of new ideas, sometimes defending them, more often including them in eclectic
theories or arguing against them. Cartesianism
was incorporated systematically into the two-year
course in philosophy that the collegesoffered after
1670. Such exposure was important, but a still
more decisive influence came from the teaching of
the sciences.
Beginning in the 1670s professors in physics,
mathematics, and medicine reflected recent developments in their teaching. Additionally, physics,
which all university students studied, introduced
the principles of reason, utility, and empiricism
and encouraged an appreciation for innovation
and argument. In Brockliss's view, French higher
education was crucial to the acceptance and then
rejection of absolutist political theory, to the dissemination of methods and controversies of the
scientific revolution, and ultimately to the open-

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