Through the eyes of rural notaries: business, community and confessional divisions in seventeenth-century poitou

Historians have often reflected upon the relations between Catholicsand Protestants in the small towns of seventeenth-century France.Using the recorded information on the lives and business dealingsof notaries, this article looks at how they integrated intoand dealt with both confessional groups in the small Poitoutown of Chef-Boutonne. Of the twenty-one men who listed themselvesas notaries in the parish registers, seven left records of theacts they drew up. Using their papers as well as parish registersthe article follows up on these men, their religious affiliation,families, marriages, training as notaries, business dealingsand their selection as godparents for town children. It thenreflects back upon the role of these men and their respectiveconfessional groups in the crucial years between the end ofthe Wars of Religion and the lead-up to the revocation of theEdict of Nantes.