This book is about attitudes and behavior in early modern France, dealing particularly with the conflicts related to social and intellectual changes, and with the tensions between the elite and the common people. Topics discussed include witchcraft, popular belief and superstition, confession, the family, Church and State, and popular revolt. Briggs combines the methods of social history and of "histoire de mentalités" to produce an in-depth analysis of the changes and tensions which mark this period as one of vital development in all these areas. The book offers a lively critique of some current interpretations of seventeenth-century France, which have been the subject of much recent controversy.