Diocesan

In January 1877, the priest of the village Grigoryevka, Kherson Governorate, reported to the diocesan authorities that in his village Baptists cry, sing and kiss the floor during their prayers.

Diocesan bureaucracies were both symptom and cause of this.

The bishop of Chartres indignantly informed the king that his diocesans were dying like flies and eating grass like sheep, and indeed both the king and Fleury got a fright when their coaches were stopped in the Paris countryside by peasants crying out ‘Famine! Bread!’ rather than ‘Vive le Roi!’