The French community and the Moscow Catholic Church at the end of the eighteenth century

Numerous reasons led to the creation in Moscow of a well-organized and structures French-speaking community. The creation of this community was symbolized by the foundation of a French parish which the French priests and the community's influential families wanted to reserve exclusively for French nationals. This article describes the fierce battle that went on between the priests and managers of Moscow's two catholic parishes - the French Saint-Louis-des-Francais and the older Saints-Pierre-et-Paul. However, this battle can only be understood in the light of the social and demographic processes going on at the time and the assimilation strategies that the French community was subjected to at the end of the eighteenth century. Our aim in the present article is to bring these processes to light by looking at analyses of demographic data, at the exchange of correspondence between the priests of both churches and at the history of the Delesalle, the most prominent family of the community at the time.