The religious education of children represents a critical component of the Catholic Reformation that has often been overlooked by historians of early modern Europe. In "Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France," Karen E. Carter examines rural schooling in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the period when community-supported primary education began--and brings to light a significant element of the early modern period.

Carter scrutinizes Catholic religious education in rural parishes in France through its two leading forms: the explosion...