This original and far-reaching study looks afresh at the involvement of the Catholic Church in the cultural life of France in the seventeenth century. Professor Phillips provides a comprehensive overview of art and literature, education, ideas and censorship, and he focuses on the Church as a reforming and reformed institution in the context of the Counter-Reformation. The strength of his synthesis, the first of its kind in English, lies in the breadth of its concerns and in its combination of social, religious and intellectual history.