Ceremonial Splendor: Performing Priesthood in Early Modern France

By the end of France’s long seventeenth century, the seminary—trained, reform—minded Catholic priest had crystalized into a type recognizable by his clothing, gestures, and ceremonial skill. Although critics denounced these priests as hypocrites or models for Molière’s Tartuffe, seminaries associated the features of this priestly identity with the idea of the vray ecclésiastique, or true churchman.

Ceremonial Splendor examines the way France’s early seminaries promoted the emergence and cons...