ASPROCLER

The ASPROCLER project aims to find, analyse and make available to researchers all the documentation produced by the Provincial Assemblies of the Clergy, convened in France between 1579 and 1788 to prepare for the General Assemblies. Their powers – nomination of agents general, appointment of deputies, management of local ecclesiastical affairs – made them privileged intermediaries between the dioceses and the court. Approximately a thousand minutes of deliberations were drawn up by these ecclesiastical assemblies, along with various manuscripts: convocations, proxies, lists of grievances and wishes, memoirs, etc. These sources, which have never been published before, bear witness to an original form of democracy. They shed light on many aspects of religious, political and social life in the French provinces under the Ancien Régime.