Ebook: Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: Volume 2: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion

In this second volume of McManner's magnum opus, the author explores the relations of Church and State: the wealth of the clergy and their payment of taxation, and their role in the official life of the nation, in the Court at Versailles, in the army and navy, in collaboration with the police, and on the scaffold. He details throughout the tensions within the Church establishment and between clergy and laity, arriving at their denouement in the final description of the descent of the reign of Louis XVI towards the Revolution.