Impetuous in France, quiet in Quebec: The revolution, a shared progeny of Catholicism?
One commonality between France and Quebec is the strong influence of the Catholic Church, in France up to 1789 and in Quebec up to 1960. This makes it legitimate to compare the French Revolution and the Quebec “Quiet” Revolution, despite the distance in time and space of these two political and religious ruptures. This article shows the key and founding moments in the conquest of autonomy of each of these nations, including the assent or even the collaboration of Catholic actors, whether the conquest involved conflict, as in France, or occurred less explicitly, as in Quebec. The analysis, which underlines the distinction between the magisterial and matricial function of the Church, also allows us to understand the strongly differentiated management of the religious effects of the revolutions.