The Body or the Soul?

Religion and Culture in a Quebec Parish, 1736-1901

Frank A. Abbott

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780773547117
• eBook ISBN: 9780773599178
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: North American History

In the two centuries before the Quiet Revolution, the people of Quebec exercised a higher degree of independence from the Catholic Church than is often presumed. Investigating rural Quebec from the mid-eighteenth century to the turn of the twentieth, Frank Abbott argues convincingly that the obligations and priorities of the Church did not unswervingly rule the lives of its parishioners.

The Body or the Soul? is a history of religious and cultural life in the parish of St-Joseph-de-Beauce. Drawing from their pastors' detailed annual reports to the archbishops of Quebec, St-Joseph’s parish registers, contemporary accounts, government censuses, and the largely unexplored oral testimony on rural life and culture found in the Archives de folklore et ethnologie at Université Laval, Abbott assesses the nature and degree of influence and control that the church exerted over the everyday lives of a rural Quebec community. He examines the telling details found in church building projects, the relationships between clergy and parishioners, attendance at Sunday mass and catechism classes, reception of communion, the persistence of what the Church termed “superstition,” traditional customs of sociability, and the degree of control that the Church exerted over the community’s social and sexual behaviour.

Rich with primary sources, The Body or the Soul? reveals the tensions between Catholicism’s place in people’s lives and the independent spirit of a vigorous popular culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Habitants and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Québec
• 2 Development and Transformation: St-Joseph-de-Beauce, 1736–1901
• 3 Render unto God: Buildings and Belief
• 4 Ministering to a Rural Parish: The Curés of St-Joseph, 1761–1901
• 5 “Holy Water and Candles”: Catholicism in St-Joseph
• 6 Beliefs, Superstitions, and Popular Spirituality
• 7 Holy Water versus Fire Water: Habitant Sociability and the Curés
• 8 Sociability and Sexuality: “On danse pour le plaisir de danser”
• Conclusion The Body and the Soul
• APPENDIX “Questions, Rapports des Paroisses”
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index