As the best method of reading Balzac is to follow, through the course of several novels, the history of some one character, so possibly there is no better way of approaching the modern French novel as a whole than by a study of the Catholic priest as there portrayed. He has appealed to practically every writer of first rank, and, moreover, purely as a character of fiction, quite aside from any significance that he may possess as indicating the faith of the author, or as exhibiting the Church and the work of her clergy. It is, accordingly, exclusively from the point of view of his rôle in literature that he is here treated. I shall take up the main themes in the ecclesiastical novel in an endeavor to indicate their relationship and to discover their general trend—an aspect of the subject that is neglected by Paul Franche in his Le Prêtre dans le roman français. I shall also continue the examination by including novels published since 1902, the date of Franche's study.