When I began this book several years ago, I thought it would be about the history of Jewish-Christian relations in modern France. Some of the research based on this original idea shows up in chapters 2 and 3, but in pursuing this topic I became fascinated with Jewish converts to Catholicism, as they struggled with themselves, their families, and their communities in the borderlands between two religions. The stories of these converts opened up a broader question, about how and why people make religious choices, and the contexts that both allow and constrain these decisions. As often happens with historical research, I did not plan the journey I ended up taking, as I moved from Jewish-Christian relations, to conversions, and eventually to religious liberty as my subject.
The freedom to choose a religious identity is for me a personal as well as a scholarly concern. Family bonds tie me to both Catholicism and Judaism, but I stand at the margins of both traditions, regarding them with a combination of affection, respect, and skepticism. Writing this book has allowed me to study a time and a place where the religious liberty available to me and others in the West emerged in ways that continue to resonate in the modern world. I hope that the story I tell here will add to our knowledge of French history, but also to our understanding of the complex ways in which religious liberty in the modern world challenges individuals, families, and communities to adopt tolerant and open-hearted approaches toward religious differences.
Many people have helped me along the way. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the colleagues who have participated in the modern European reading group of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at Notre Dame. Over the past several years members of the group have read and commented on all of the chapters, providing insight from a variety of disciplines and, perhaps just as important, setting deadlines for circulating texts that I might otherwise still be revising. Thanks to Julia Douthwaite, who founded and led us for many years, and to Tobias Boes, John Deak, Robert Fishman, Lauren Holland, Alex Martin, Ian Newman, Pierpaolo Polinzetti, Yasmin Solomenescu, and Lesley Walker. I have also benefited from the support of colleagues in the history department, who have listened to me talk about this project in departmental seminars, but also in friendly conversations in Decio Hall. I especially thank my department chairs, John McGreevy, Tom Noble, and Pat Griffin, who were generous, confident, and patient as they waited for me to finish a book that kept changing shape over the last several years. The seminars sponsored by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, led by Timothy Matovina and now by Kathleen Cummings, have been a stimulating forum for me and other scholars to discuss broad issues relating to the place of religion in the modern world. From outside Notre Dame a number of colleagues offered comments on chapters that took me into their own areas of expertise: Dominque Avon, Tatyana Bakhmetyeva, Sarah Cramsey, Rob Priest, Ron Schechter, and David Troyansky. I have profited from the opportunity to present material from this book to panels at the American Historical Association, the American Catholic Historical Association, and the Western Society for French History. In conversations at conferences and dinners I have learned much from Guillaume Cuchet, Sarah Curtis, Jean--Dominique Durand, Frédéric Gugelot, Ray Jonas, Jacqueline Lalouette, Claude Langlois, John Merriman, Florian Michel, Jean-Pierre Moisset, Jason Neidleman, and Tim Tackett. My former students Sean Phillips and Sheila Nowinski did some valuable digging for me on the history of toleration and religious liberty in Old Regime France. Thanks are due as well to the universities where I’ve given talks that allowed me to develop many of the stories and ideas that evolved into this book: the University of Bordeaux, the University of Chicago, Holy Cross University, the University of Louvain, Texas Tech University, and Yale University. In the final stages I was fortunate to have responses from two anonymous readers for Yale University Press who combined enthusiasm for the project with some trenchant suggestions for improving it. Some of the material in chapter 3 appeared in a different form in “The Bautain Circle and Catholic-Jewish Relations in Modern France,” Catholic Historical Review 92 (2006): 177–196, and “Turbulent Souls in Modern France: Jewish Conversion and the Terquem Affair,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 32 (2006): 83–104.
A number of institutions provided crucial financial support for this project. In the earliest stages of the research the Lucius Littauer Foundation provided a grant that got me started on Jewish-Christian relations. The Nanovic Institute at Notre Dame, led by Jim McAdams and Anthony Monta, never turned down a request on my part for funds to support work in France during the summer months. The Department of History provided sabbatical leaves and travel funds on several occasions. A grant from Notre Dame’s Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts covered the costs of the index. I am grateful to Phil Nord and Jan Goldstein, for supporting my application for a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and to the Endowment, which provided a grant that allowed me to spend a year of research and writing in 2008–2009.
All of the staff I encountered at the archives where I worked were friendly, professional, and efficient, but I want to single out Father Robert Bonfils, S.J., the archivist at the Jesuit archives in Vanves, and his successor, Barbara Baudry, for helping me with the sources on Alphonse Ratisbonne and Ivan Gagarin. Céline Hirsch Poynard, the archivist for the Sisters of Notre-Dame de Sion, went out of her way to help me find conversion narratives from the members of the congregation and caught some mistakes in my chapter on the Ratisbonne brothers. Thanks are also due to Marie-Claude Sabouret, who directs the archive at the Musée de la Vie Romantique, for her help in identifying valuable sources, and for stimulating conversations about Ernest Renan. I have never met Louis Le Guillou, Jean Balcou, or Georges Lubin, but this book could not have been written without their monumental achievements, multivolume editions of the correspondence of Félicité Lamennais, Ernest Renan, and George Sand. Over the past few months I have enjoyed working with Heather Gold, my editor at Yale University Press, a model of friendly efficiency in finding readers and moving the manuscript along through the publication process.
On a personal level, my time in Paris has been enriched by the friendship and hospitality of Claude and Ann Langlois and of Florian Michel and Séverine Blenner-Michel. Over the last few years I have been subjected to some good-humored teasing from my family about this book, which seemed always just one more year away. Behind the jokes I always felt their love and support, so thanks to my children, Dan, Joseph, and Julie, and to their spouses, Clara, Cristeen, and Conor. Claudia Kselman has read Conscience and Conversion in all its versions and responded thoughtfully and patiently when our conversation turned to converts, religious identity, and religious liberty. This book is dedicated to Claudia, who has meant everything to me for over forty years.