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RésuméCet article étudie un Reglement pour les écoles dominicales paru à Beauvais en 1673. S’appuyant sur plusieurs expériences contemporaines, ce projet apparemment sans lendemain envisage la mise en œuvre d’assemblées dominicales consacrées principalement à l’enseignement du catéchisme à des jeunes filles qui travaillent. Un lieu à la fois central et clos au sein de la ville, une maîtresse recrutée pour ses qualités morales, un contrôle clérical assez fort forment le cadre de ces cours. Ceux-ci doivent dispenser une instruction minimale mais ils visent surtout à moraliser la vie entière de jeunes filles amenées, par leurs activités, à subir les multiples tentations de la vie urbaine.

This article is concerned with a set of regulations for Sunday schools that was published in Beauvais in 1673. The project, which seems never to have been put into practice, took its inspiration from various contemporary experiments of the same kind in attempting to organise dominical congregations devoted largely to teaching working girls the catechism. The principal elements characterising these classes were to be a venue both central and enclosed within the city, a woman teacher selected on the basis of her high moral qualities, and relatively tight supervision by the clergy. These classes were naturally meant to offer a minimum of religious instruction, but their primary aim was to give general moral guidance to the girls, whose occupations brought them into contact with the multiple temptations of urban life.