The French Revolution was one of the greatest events in world history, filled with remarkable characters and dramatic events. From its beginning in 1789 to the Reign of Terror in 1793–94, and through the ups and downs of the Directory era that followed, the Revolution showed humanity at its optimistic best and its violent worst; it transformed the lives of all who experienced it. The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics offers a fresh treatment of this perennially popular and hugely significant topic, introducing a bold interpretation of the Revolution that highlights the key role that religion and sexuality played in determining the shape of the Revolution. These were issues that occupied the minds and helped shape the actions of women and men; from the pornographic pamphlets about queen Marie-Antoinette to the puritanical morality of revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre, from the revolutionary catechisms that children learned and to the anathemas hurled on the Revolution from clandestine priests in the countryside. The people who lived through the French Revolution were surrounded by messages about gender, sex, religion and faith, concerns which did not exist outside of the events of the Revolution. This book is an essential resource for students of the French Revolution, History of Catholicism and Women and Gender.

In 1988, the year of the commemoration of the Glorious Revolution, it was fitting that the fourth Anglo-Dutch Church History colloquium should have as its central theme the Church and Revolution and be held at the University of Exeter. In the course of its almost two thousands year's history the Church has been no stranger to reformation, political change and revolution. Set in the world it could not but be affected by the world, nor could it itself, given its nature, fail to exert a variety of influences on social and political as well as on ecclesiastical events. Its life has been profoundly affected and the course of its history directed all of the great revolutions in the Western world, while the Church has itself brought to bear on every period of change its own distinctive and often determinative contribution. Aspects of these twin features blend together in the essays that make up this record of Anglo-Dutch academic exchange and cooperation.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.