Religion and the Politics of Time

Religion and the Politics of Time is an extensive study of the changes in religious holidays in Old Regime and Revolutionary France. It highlights the importance of cultural and religious history in the transformations of French society that took place from the mid-seventeenth through the early nineteenth century and tells an important story of the development of a French national calendar of holidays. In Old Regime France, local bishops decided which holidays people living in their dioceses were required to observe. Even for non-Catholics, these were official holidays subject to the same regulations as Sundays, when most work was forbidden. In the seventeenth century, a diocese might have as few as 25 such days per year, or it might have as many as 45. Those numbers would decline significantly over the course of the eighteenth century in most of France as many holidays fell out of favor with most of society. Those changes, however, were only a prelude to the events of the French Revolution, when the revolutionaries attempted to do away with all traditional holidays and to institute a ten-day week. When Napoleon eliminated the republican calendar, he also took control over religious holidays from the church, while retaining only four holidays per year, and eliminating most legal prohibitions on Sunday work. ""Religion and the Politics of Time"" is the first full-length study of changes that affected how and when the people of France were expected to celebrate or to work. Beyond these issues, the book is about interactions between the population at large and the major institutions of French society. The changes in holidays also involved decisions as to who had the authority to make those changes - in other words, the right to tell people what they can do and when they can do it. This is a study of the rise of government intervention in the everyday life of French society.