Matériaux pour l'histoire religieuse du peuple français, XIXe-XXe siècles

This collection of studies, documents and maps drawn from the very rich Catholic diocesan archives illuminâtes the rôle of the religious factor during the last two centuries. This second volume confirms the discoveries announced in the first one. The Matériaux contribute to a renewal of major fields of knowledge of France's religious past : the présence of sharp and lasting géographie contrasts, and the changes more complex than commonly imagined. The régional différences in religious sensibility are strikingly demonstrated. The traveller going from Paris to Strasbourg goes through a strongly dechristianized Brie, then a Champagne generally indiffèrent in the 19th century but worked over by active Christian minorities in the 20th century, a French-speaking Lorraine attached to Catholicism but no clérical, and reaches a fervent and multiconfessionnal Alsace.