Urban Sociability In The Old Regime: Religion And Culture In Early Modern Toulouse. (volumes I And Ii) (france).

Abstract

Early Modern Toulouse was a city of 40,000 people. It was a provincial capital, seat of both an archbishop and a Parlement, and a regional entrepot for some of the richest grain-growing lands in France. By the sixteenth century the old medieval commune had long been superseded by a social structure that was increasingly beset by division and conflict. Yet throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries social relations in the city were still characterized by vertical ties and interactions, creating a web of associations between ruling elites and ordinary people. Moreover, cultural and religious forms expressed and reflected this pattern of association or sociability. Religious and cultural activities were aimed in large part toward the goals of protecting regional interests and reforming society. The character of associational life, religion and culture changed in Toulouse at the end of the seventeenth century. The introduction of a royal bureaucracy, led by the intendant, was the major cause of the change. No longer the crucial authorities they once were, local elites lost interest in social concerns and the affairs of their city. Vertical patterns of association disintegrated. Elites turned toward Paris and Versailles, casting culture in a more cosmopolitan mold: the stage was set for the Enlightenment.