His independent spirit and his already weakened faith found this conformism irritating.
The young cadet had to attend Mass each weekday and high Mass, Vespers, and catechism class on Sunday he had to receive Holy Communion bimonthly and go to confession monthly. In 1784 he transferred to a military school in Paris where the technical training was first class, but the religious formation revolved too much around external practices imposed by school discipline and reflected the 18th-century spirit that penetrated the institution. He remained attached to Father Charles, who prepared him for First Communion, but was much less edified by the other Minims who taught him and who celebrated Mass in 10 minutes, according to him. At the military school in Brienne, which he entered in April 1779, the boy was industrious and avid to learn, but quarrelsome and increasingly aloof. His great-uncle Lucien, an archdeacon, was more adept in conciliating wisdom with thrift than in preaching fervor. In 1780 Napoleon received chastisements from his mother when he refused to attend Mass, but this did not increase his devoutness. The maternal influence over the Christian upbringing of her unruly, taciturn son seems not to have been profound. His father was thriftless and fickle, but his mother was economical, orderly, morally austere, religious in the Corsican manner, and very severe. Napoleon was the son of Charles and Laetitia (Ramolino) Bonaparte.
