If few historians of the French ancien régime and Revolution
entirely ignore the role of the Church, most treat it perfunctorily and many make crass errors
in writing about it. To start with examples of error, J. F. Bosher declared in his generally
admirable The French Revolution: ‘at least nine abbots wrote for the
Encyclopédie’. Actually, at least twenty-three abbés
did so, but no abbots. J. C. D. Clark, in his recent edition of Burke's Reflections,
attempts to explain Burke's discussion of French commendatory abbots by defining
commendam as it was used in England, which makes Burke's argument incomprehensible.
Until now it has not been easy to find a work, at any rate in English, which would settle such
matters authoritatively. McManners's Church and society in eighteenth-century France
will certainly do that. A delightful chapter deals with the vast majority of abbés
who were not abbots, that is, those who had taken the very first steps towards an ecclesiastical
career, probably to enhance their educational prospects, but never taken vows or significant
orders. To this group belonged such notorious philosophes as the
abbé Diderot and the abbé Raynal.