The Social Dimension of Piety: Associative Life and Devotional Change in the Penitent Confraternities of Marseilles.

During the period covered by this book, Marseilles had fourteen confraternities of penitents, omitting three which had an ephemeral existence during the Religious Wars. (The list with historical details in the appendix seems to include only thirteen, but this is because a separate heading is not given to the breakaway group from the Penitents Bleus de Notre-Dame de Pitie of the parish of Saint Martin, which allied itself to the Carmelites, though separate from the group founded by the friars themselves in 1621.) These numerous associations are studied by Andrew Barnes with an exhaustive use of the evidence as analysed by computer and in the light of modern sociological and psychological theories concerning human behaviour in groups and co-operative ventures. He explains the …