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This microhistory investigates the famous and scandalous 1731 trial in which Catherine Cadière, a young woman in the south of France, accused her Jesuit confessor, Jean-Baptiste Girard, of seduction, heresy, abortion, and bewitchment. Generally considered to be the last witchcraft trial in early modern France, the Cadière affair was central to the volatile politics of 1730s France, a time when magistrates and lawyers were seeking to contain clerical power. Mita Choudhury’s examination of the trial sheds light on two important phenomena with broad historical implications: the questioning of traditional authority and the growing disquiet about the role of the sacred and divine in French society. Both contributed to the French people’s ever-increasing disenchantment with the church and the king. Choudhury builds her story through an extensive examination of archival material, including trial records, pamphlets, periodicals, and unpublished correspondence from witnesses. The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint offers new insights into how the eighteenth-century public interpreted the accusations and why the case consumed the public for years, developing from a local sex scandal to a referendum on religious authority and its place in French society and politics.
Mita Choudhury is Professor of History at Vassar College.
ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe Girard/Cadière Relationship1A Community of Faith2The Meeting of Two Souls3Unraveling and BetrayalThe Trial4Becoming a Cause Célèbre5Arguing the Case6Before the CourtsBeyond the Grand’Chambre7Public Opinion and the Story of the Wanton Jesuit8The AftermathEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndex
“Choudhury is a reliable guide to this often difficult material. She knows the world of eighteenth-century French Catholicism well, and has deftly untangled the case’s legal complexities.”—David A. Bell London Review of Books
