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Nineteenth century France was a period of conflict between religious and political authorities. The tension between church and state particularly reflected in the realm of education- religious authorities viewed the expansion of Catholic schooling as an important spiritual mission while Republicans sought to reduce religious influence in the expansion of public schooling. This talk presents newly collected and digitized data on religiosity proxies in France and applies it to schooling outcomes between 1855 and 1876. These measures include clergy count, number of ordinations, and religious training at secondary ecclesiastical schools and seminaries. Williams will show they differ from the share of refractory clergy during the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which has been a main religiosity indicator used in recent literature. She applies these new measures to study their relationship with primary education financing, enrollment, and schools for public versus private education and religious versus secular education. She finds that a higher degree of religious supply is associated with higher enrollment and literacy rates, increased provision and take up of public schools and secular schools, and a shift towards centralized rather than local funding for primary schools. Findings indicate that secularization pushes by the state might outweigh local religious preferences when highly religious areas more heavily rely on centralized funding towards schooling.

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