VI

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The Jansenist bookseller of Paris, Hardy, relates in his Memoirs that in 1744, when Louis XV was dangerously ill, six thousand Masses for his recovery were ordered in the sacristy of Notre Dame; in 1757, after Damiens’ attempt upon his life, the number of Masses paid for on that account was six hundred; in 1774, when the King was at the point of death, the number ordered was only three. These figures are a thermometer which shows the rise and spread of infidelity in the capital, and the declining sense of affection for the Royal Family.

In Paris and many other places in France people talked of the glorious “Age of Reason” and the “Enlightened century”, which had begun since the sun of philosophy had put to flight the former state of intellectual nonage. Philosophy was hailed as the heir of religion. The ideas of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopaedists were advocated with an enthusiasm which savored of the religious fanaticism of former ages. The doctrine of the philosophers about la bonté originale spread far beyond the philosophic circle, supplanting the doctrine of original sin and the congenital corruption of man, which had formed the background to the seriousness of the Jansenists.

The Jansenistic paper, Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, complained that the young received no support against aggressive infidelity in the philosophical teaching of the University of Paris. On the threshold of the Revolution the Abbé Coyer wrote a “moral catechism” for boys of six or seven years of age, from which the citizens of the future were to learn virtue. In this catechism faith, hope, and love as “scholastic” virtues are superseded by the new trilogy, justice, beneficence, and courage; and great men are set up as patterns in the place of Christ. Children were, as another of the pedagogues of the period expressed it, “the hope of philosophy”; and by giving them an education such as “the Spartans, the Persians, and Telemachus” had received, it was expected that in a short time such men would be molded as religion could not match, and whom the Court could not corrupt.

Unhappily for France, the Church was at that time ill fitted to combat the terrible foe, which was advancing from every quarter. Formerly the French Church had possessed great orators who with their brilliant rhetoric were able to dazzle those whom they could not convince; now she was all but dumb. Ecclesiastical eloquence in the grand, classical style had gone to the grave with Massillon; only in Père Bridaine had there been a faint echo. After the middle of the eighteenth century the French bishops only became eloquent when the object was to attack Protestantism, and to point out the dangers which threatened France, if the Protestants were allowed religious liberty. In their pastoral letters high prelates were capable of flattering the Court in a manner that was nothing less than blasphemous. The Bishop of Saint Papoul spoke of the birth of the Duke of Normandy (Louis XVII) in terms which were taken from the Christmas Gospel. Episcopal speakers sometimes avoided using the name of Christ in the pulpit, speaking only of “the law-giver of the Christians”. Instead of fighting against that unbelief which raised its head everywhere both in literature and in the community, the French prelates were satisfied with rousing the King's suspicions against the “unbelieving” Maria Antoinette, who had caused the removal of the Duke of Aiguillon, and with complaining because a portfolio had been entrusted to the Protestant Necker.

Formerly, the French bishoprics had been open to all; under Louis XIV and XV, they were as good as always bestowed upon noblemen. These noble pastors seemed to have quite forgotten how the Council of Trent had reminded bishops of the duty of residence, and during their long winter sojourn at Paris and Versailles the grandeur and luxury in which they lived excited more indignation than admiration. A few of them, such as Cardinal Rohan, Archbishop of Strasburg, who gained such unhappy notoriety through the necklace affair, in spite of princely incomes, fell into bottomless debt. These noble bishops were often so ignorant in all ecclesiastical and theological questions that they could not write their own pastoral letters; and because of the Jansenistic sympathies of their theologians, they not infrequently expressed Jansenistic opinions which in reality were quite foreign to the minds of these great lords. Their self-indulgence and want of earnestness caused general indignation. Grégoire says in his Memoirs that the faithful only knew from hearsay what a bishop looked like, and that Confirmation was neglected to such an extent, that, according to a popular saying, the seven sacraments had been reduced to six.

The reports of brilliant fêtes, balls, and plays in bishops’ palaces and convents gave great offence to those who cared for the Church. The Abbot of Clairvaux, the ancient monastery of St Bernard, held quite a court. He drove four horses, and insisted upon his monks addressing him as Monseigneur. When Cardinal Rohan resided in his palace at Saverne, he had seven hundred beds, one hundred and eighty horses, and twenty-five valets for his numerous high-born guests. It was not talk of the kingdom of God which seasoned the luxurious feasts of these wealthy prelates. More than one of the French bishops in the days of Louis XVI were altogether unbelievers. A simple priest, it used to be said, ought to believe something, else he will be called a hypocrite; but if he is steadfast in the faith, he will be thought bigoted. A vicar-general can permit himself to smile at religion; a bishop can laugh at it; and a cardinal can make jokes about it. The smile of the vicar-general was seen, when the Abbé Bassinet of Cahors in 1767, in the chapel of the Louvre, delivered the customary oration in memory of St Louis, in which he described the Crusades as a mixture of folly, cruelty, and injustice; did not mention God nor any of the saints, nor quoted a single word of Scripture. A marked example of the bishops'’ mockery was given by Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, sometime Minister of State, who openly laughed at miracles and relics. When there was a question of making him Archbishop of Paris, Louis XVI raised the objection, that in that position there ought to be a man who believed in God. Brienne belonged to that group of French prelates, who had let dogma go in order only to lay stress on statesmanship; the bishops and abbots of this "new school" were called les prelats administrateurs.

When the state of the pastors and teachers of the Church was such, it was not wonderful that unbelief and immorality spread in the flock, and complaints were heard from all parts that Sundays and feast days were not kept, because indifference and doubt had taken the place of the ancient faith. France became more and more ripe for revolution, and at last the long foreseen day arrived, when, as Joseph de Maistre said, the giant who carries the world changed shoulders.

THE STATE OF THE CLERGY

At the beginning of the Revolution the French Church possessed three great privileges. In a religious sense the whole country was one. The Roman Church was not only the Church of the State, but also the dominant Church to such a degree that free exercise was not permitted to other confessions and religions. This ruling Church had the schools entirely in her power; and her great possessions were untaxed. It was especially the intolerance of the prelates, and the immunity of ecclesiastical property from taxation, which aroused indignation everywhere. When Louis XVI was anointed, Archbishop Brienne, in spite of his unbelief, admonished the King that it was reserved for him to give the death-blow to Calvinism in France; and in 1789 the Abbé de la Rochefoucauld spoke with contempt of the Protestants, as that sect which in the midst of its ruin had the effrontery to seek to appropriate to falsehood those privileges which belong only to truth.

Every concession to the Protestants was met with grudging resentment on the part of the priesthood. In 1788, when the Notables wished to extend taxation to lands belonging to the Church, the assembly of the clergy made vigorous protests against the proposal as an overthrow of all laws human and divine. The clergy had repeatedly shown that the Church was willing to give great free-will offerings for the good of the country; but after 1788 the prelates declared that honor and conscience alike forbade them to give their consent to turning a charitable contribution into a forced tax. The most religious of the bishops, as Talleyrand says, opposed the new taxation in order not to touch "the patrimony of the poor"; the prelates of high birth hated every form of change; and the rest said, that the Church in order to fulfill her great mission, and to maintain her high social position, was bound to retain the wealth with which ancestral piety had endowed her. This resistance on the part of the priesthood only caused irritation, and criticism fastened upon the large sums which went yearly to pay the prelates. It was said that France had too many bishops, and that they were too richly rewarded.

The eleven archbishops, and one hundred and twenty-three bishops had an annual income of nearly 8,500,000 francs. The incomes of the vicars-general and canons exceeded 13,000,000; seven hundred and fifteen abbeys in commendam brought their holders 9,000,000 a year, and seven hundred and three priors received nearly 1,500,000. And while some bishops and abbots, who did nothing, had 100,000 francs a year or even much more, there were over­worked priests, who received barely 700. Such circumstances caused ill-feeling, and when the Revolution broke out, not only the immunity of church property from taxation, but the church property itself was lost, religious unity was destroyed, and the power of the Church over the schools was broken.

In the first period of the Revolution, the alterations of the existing system aimed at forming a gentle transition to a new arrangement of ecclesiastical affairs. Church property was confiscated, but the State took over the duty of maintaining Divine service, of providing for the support of the clergy, and of relieving the poor. The convents and the religious orders were dissolved. It was determined that no one should be molested for his opinions—certainly not on the ground of his religious opinions—so long as he made no breach of the public order, established by law, in the course of propagating them. Freedom of worship was allowed; civil marriage was introduced; at one time there was talk of a separation of Church and State. But if this was to be carried through, the State must either take the church property without pledging itself to pay the clergy, or it must allow the Church a kind of freedom of action. The first of these alternatives would at that stage of the Revolution have been stamped as sacrilege; the other was rejected because it might give the Church a dangerous independence and make of it a State within the State. It was necessary to attach the clergy to the Revolution, and this was the purpose of the so-called "Civil Constitution", the composition of which was greatly influenced by the former Advocate-General of the clergy, the Jansenist Camus, who was one of the deputies of the third Estate.

THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION

By the Civil Constitution the French bishoprics were to be altered, and their number cut down, so that each of the new departments should form a diocese. Bishops and prelates were to have a smaller, but a fixed stipend, and to be chosen by the laity; the bishops by the electors to the council of the departments; the priests by the electors to the governing boards of the respective districts (l’assemblée administrative du district). Jews and Protestants had the rights of electors no less than Roman Catholics. This radical alteration of the ecclesiastical system, in which the faithful adherents of the Roman Church not unreasonably saw something more than a harmless "civil scheme for the clergy", met with strong opposition from most of the ministers of the Church; and even a man like Talleyrand was inclined at a later time to call the Civil Constitution the greatest political mistake of the National Assembly. It annulled at a stroke the Concordat of 1516, and excluded King and Pope from the selection of bishops and priests. The wrath of the French priesthood, however, soon took a lower key, when Mirabeau declared that if the priests made opposition, the nation might question whether they could ever prove useful citizens. The people, he said, would never allow the care of their souls to be entrusted to men who were enemies to the people’s welfare.

At Rome the adoption of the Civil Constitution aroused the greatest alarm—the more so as the National Assembly appeared to be inclined to take possession of Avignon and Venaissin, the inhabitants of which in May 1790 had declared themselves in favor of reunion with France. Cardinal Bernis, who was still the representative of France with the Holy See, saw in the Civil Constitution a subversion of the whole discipline and system of the Roman Church, and his strong language in a dispatch to the Foreign Minister of France made Louis XVI exceedingly reluctant to give his confirmation to the Civil Constitution.

When the news of the great event which had taken place in France reached Rome, Pius VI delivered a passionate address to the cardinals at a secret consistory on 29th March 1790, in which he complained, of the injustices inflicted upon the Church in France; and he told the princes of the Church that he only held his peace because he thought that the moment was not yet come to speak.

On 10th July he sent a letter to Louis XVI, in which he warned the King against leading his people into error, or provoking a schism, perhaps even a religious war, by confirming the impious Constitution, and he threatened to lift up his voice as supreme Pastor in case his warning was not taken.The threat made an impression upon Louis, but the will of the National Assembly was unmistakable. Two days after the receipt of the Pope's letter 28th June, Louis was compelled to promise to confirm the decree establishing the Civil Constitution, but on the condition that it should not be published until it had gained the approval either of the French bishops or of the visible Head of the Church.

The same day Louis sent a letter to Pius VI in which he assured him that he prized most highly his title of the Eldest Son of the Church. If he had considered it necessary to execute the decree, it was only because he hoped thereby to be able to ward off a disastrous breach, which would bring calamity, not only upon the French Church, but upon the Church at large. At the same time Bernis received instructions to induce Pius VI to agree to some particular points in the Constitution, amongst others the rearrangement of the bishoprics. The Cardinal at once perceived that this was impossible; the best that was attainable was the speedy issue of such a brief as might pacify men's minds and strengthen the King's position, by condemning the Constitution indeed, but letting one or two things in it pass as temporary concessions. Pius VI thought that he could not draw up such a brief without laying the case before a congregation of the cardinals. The cardinals had great sympathy with Louis XVI, but would on no account consent to acknowledge the Constitution in any way, because such a step might have serious results elsewhere. Before the cardinals had finished their deliberations, Pius VI received word that Louis, compelled by circumstances, had sanctioned the Constitution. On receiving this information, the Pope wrote him a confidential letter, containing a gentle reproof and a reference to a fuller communication to be sent later when the cardinals should have finished their deliberations.

JURORS AND NON-JURORS

But in France the current of events rushed on regardless of pope and cardinals. When at length, on the 27th of October, it had been settled in Rome that Louis was to be told that the new decree must be altogether rejected, the decree was actually being put in execution. The chapters were dissolved, and France had received the first bishop chosen in accordance with the Constitution— Expilly of Finisterre. In order to knit the priesthood the more closely to the Revolution it was determined on the 27th of November that every member of the clergy should take an oath, in which they not only promised obedience to the secular authorities and to the laws, but bound themselves to uphold the Civil Constitution to the best of their power. Once more the King delayed giving his signature, and on 3rd December he sent a fresh letter to Pius VI, in which, after describing the serious situation, he begged the successor of St Peter to put those alterations, which were inevitable, into canonical form. It was courageous of the King to put off signing, but he could not do so for long. Already on 26th December—some time before an answer could have arrived from Rome—he was obliged to put his name to the decree of 27th November, and the oath was at once demanded of all the French bishops and priests.

This question of the oath divided the French priesthood into two parts: the jurors and the non-jurors. On 27th December, closely watched by the National Assembly, the Abbé Grégoire swore fealty to the nation, the laws, the King, and the Civil Constitution, in the belief that it was a matter which only concerned the outward polity, not the doctrine of the Church, and in the conviction that the Pope would have excommunicated Bishop Expilly and condemned the Constitution, if it had been heresy to conform to it. Between thirty and forty thousand priests took the oath in the period which followed, but many other priests, and by far the greater part of the bishops, refused to do so. On 10th March and 13th April 1791, communications at length arrived from Rome, which showed that the non-jurors had rightly interpreted the silence of Pius VI.

Probably not many people were impressed by the heavy artillery of patristic and canonical learning displayed in these briefs; but the reference to the King's coronation oath made Louis very anxious, and the threat that the Pope thought of taking strong measures, like those which his predecessors had used on similar occasions, no doubt strengthened the non-juring bishops and priests and many laymen in their resistance to the Civil Constitution. In the eyes of most of the faithful laity, the non-juring priests were the only true pastors. Already, at Easter, in 1791, Louis desired to escape to Saint-Cloud in order to avoid performing his Easter duties under the direction of a confessor who had taken the oath. But his carriage was stopped at the entrance to the Champs-Elysées, and he was obliged to return to the Tuileries. When he afterwards went to Montmédy with all his family, it was not only to avoid the tyranny of the citizens, but possibly still more to be able to confess to a non-juring priest. Doubtless it was also the Civil Constitution, and the demand that he should swear to it, which drove the King to make his unfortunate attempt at flight; and his flight led to a fatal breach between the monarchy and those clergymen who had taken the oath. Grégoire had in March 1, 1791, been consecrated Bishop of Blois by Talleyrand, Gobel and Miroudot, the reading of the papal Bulls and the usual oath of allegiance to the successor of St Peter being omitted. When it became known that the King had fled, Grégoire sent a pastoral letter to his priests in which he spoke of this unfortunate step as a new storm, which would bring the ship of the State all the sooner into port. He hoped that Louis would stay-away for good, and would rather that the King had been sent on across the frontier, than brought back to Paris.

THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

About three months after the King's flight, the National Assembly was closed (30th September 1791), and the Legislative Assembly began its meetings. Instead of loudly proclaiming liberty of conscience, as might have been expected, it made itself a party to the religious struggle, and betrayed its antagonism to Christianity at every point. As early as 29th November it issued a decree that all non-juring priests should forfeit their stipends, and somewhat later, on 6th April 1792, at the instance of a former Court Chaplain, Anastase Torne, who had become constitutional Bishop of Bourges, priests and bishops were forbidden to wear clerical dress. This prohibition, however, as we shall see, was constantly ignored. On 27th May the Assembly permitted the authorities of the departments to banish any priest, who was accused by twenty citizens of being a perturbateur. When Louis XVI refused to sign the laws of 29th November 1791 and 27th May 1792, there was a violent outburst of popular fury against "Monsieur Veto." The King was first insulted on 20th June; then came the storming of the Tuileries on 10th August, and this led to the fall of the monarchy.

A few weeks later—26th August—a new law ordered all non-juring priests to leave the kingdom within fourteen days; but the people were just as capable of mocking the laws as the legislators were of making them. Many of those priests, who would not take the oath to the Constitution, chose rather to live in hiding in France than to emigrate. There were laymen, who considered the churches desecrated by the services of those priests who had taken the oath, and they met in the churchyards, or in old, long forsaken chapels and meeting-houses, where non-juring priests held services. At Amiens the churchyard of Saint Denys was crowded every Sunday and feast-day with faithful Catholics, who heard Mass there with the double satisfaction of having not only remained faithful to the Pope, but also of exposing themselves to being persecuted for their faith. There were non-juring priests all over France, who secretly baptized children and heard confessions. People often seized upon the most extraordinary means of meeting their religious wants. One lady gave a ball, and in a little chamber behind the ball-room a non-juring priest secretly heard the confessions of some of the guests.

The joy with which the dawn of the Revolution was greeted soon disappeared. An Englishwoman, who had seen the flush of victory in 1790, observed a great difference in 1792. The "honeymoon" was then over, and something like indifference was spreading to an alarming extent. The unwise policy which had made of religion the flag of a party began to bear very different fruits from what the revolutionists had expected. Many people, who had not thought much about religion before, became ardent Papists when the support of the chair of St Peter had become the mark of a certain political creed. And many simple people soon lost their feeling even about "Bastille day" when they discovered that the Revolution meant death to the Church. In 1792 the English lady traveler asked an apple woman, who brought fruit every day, but stayed at home on 14th July, whether she sided with the aristocrats. "Mon Dieu, no", answered the poor woman; "it is not because I am an aristocrat or a democrat, but because I am a Christian woman."

In the National Convention, which numbered among its members Grégoire and fifteen other bishops, who had taken; the oath, there was, to begin with, a strong opposition to that anti-christian spirit; and it found voice at once. Cambon, who was one of the deputies, introduced a motion to free the nation from paying the expenses of Divine service and of the maintenance of priests, which had been proposed in the Legislative Assembly. But this met with opposition both within the Convention and without. Daubermesnil, who was by no means an adherent of orthodox Roman Catholicism, maintained that priests were useful to the Republic, because they preached love of the laws and obedience to the authorities, and kept the fire of liberty burning in the hearts of their fellow-citizens. Catholic citizens of Paris petitioned the Convention to retain the budget for public worship, and Grégoire, who on 30th November for the fifteenth and last time sat in the presidential chair, still wearing his episcopal dress, guided the stormy proceedings so well, that the session ended by deciding that the maintenance of Divine" service, and of the clergy, should not be given up. But the waves ran high. Bazire declared that he would rather go to hell with Voltaire than to paradise with St Labre; La Planche, who himself had been a priest, said that next to kings priests were the most terrible scourges of mankind. Others, such as Danton, only wished to retain the priests until officiers de morale were obtained, who should instruct the people. But Philippe Druhle, who maintained that the clergy were in a position to spread the love of the Republic, was supported by Robespierre. In spite of the intrigues of the Paris Commune, and the threatening language of the revolutionary newspapers, the budget for public worship was not abolished that day; and when, on Christmas Eve 1792, at seven o'clock in the evening, after the lights in the churches were lighted, and the bells had begun to ring, the Council of the Commune gave orders that the places of worship were to be kept shut during Christmas night, there was a great uproar in the streets. The churches were besieged by crowds demanding that the priests should celebrate the solemn midnight Mass as usual.

Soon after having brought the budget for public worship happily through the purgatory of debate in the Convention, Grégoire went to Savoy and Nice to set in order church matters among the "Allobroges", who had likewise given themselves a Civil Constitution. When he returned to Paris in May 1793, he found the aspect of the National Convention quite altered. He, who was so good a republican that at first he could not sleep for joy at the thought of living in a republic, had always hoped "to Christianize the Revolution"; but now he saw with sorrow, how in the course of a few months the hatred of Christ had quite gained the upper hand. He found the "majestic" assembly, which to the sound of the thunder of the Prussian batteries had founded the Republic, changed into a club, a sort of adjunct to the Jacobin club, and beheld it governed by two or three hundred people, "who were to be called criminals, because the language did not contain a more expressive word to describe them". In March 1793 the Convention had issued a severe law against those priests, who after emigrating dared to come back again to France. Later on, it determined that all members of the clergy who had not taken the oath of liberty and equality, as well as all priests who were accused of incivisme by five citizens of their canton, should be transported to Guiana. Finally, a price was actually set upon the heads of those priests who dared to carry on their work in secret. Anyone who informed against such a priest was to receive a hundred francs, and the person against whom the information was laid was to lose his life.

Even before this last law was published, the head of Saint-Sulpice, the Abbé Emery, who was sixty-one years of age, had been imprisoned on information given by persons in his native place. His trial carries the mind back to the procedure of the heathen officials against the early Christians of Rome. But Christianity was not to be eradicated at this time any more than then. In prison the Abbé Emery continued to administer the sacrament of penance. One day Robespierre was told that in the conciergerie there was a highly-respected priest, who had heard the confessions of a great number of the prisoners. Instead of ordering him to the scaffold, Robespierre only answered: "Let him be! He shall not be condemned yet! He is a man who helps us; he gets people to go to their death without complaint. His day will come." So the Abbé Emery escaped the guillotine.

But these strict laws were often broken. A hundred and twenty priests, over sixty years of age, who had not taken the oath, and were imprisoned in Paris, with the connivance of their warders received frequent visits from the faithful, who sought consolation and religious aid from them. Religion had still power over the Parisians. On 9th May 1793 Dutard wrote to Garat: "This morning a priest in his canonical dress passed my door taking the holy sacrament to a sick person. You would have been astonished to see how the same people who persecute the ministers of the Church, both men and women, old and young, threw themselves upon their knees to worship". In spite of all the declamations of the members against Christianity, the Jacobin Club still did not venture to remove a wooden cross, which, in full sight of all, was fixed on one of the side galleries of their meeting-hall. In the country, where the Church was more deeply rooted, disobedience to the antireligious laws of the Convention and loyalty to religion were still more manifest. The rising in La Vendée was due, in the first place, to indignation at the treatment of the Church by the Revolution, and only in a secondary manner to devotion to the monarchy.

ATHEISM ESTABLISHED

But in the National Convention the anti-christian wave rose higher and higher. In September 1793, when the Terror had conquered all its opponents, Atheism was solemnly proclaimed, and religious persecution systematically employed. A few months earlier, the Convention had rejected the demand for religious liberty as being dangerous to the Republic, because, as Robespierre said, religious freedom might lead to the formation of an alliance between "Superstition" and despotism; and Danton had prophesied that a time would come when the worship of Liberty would be the only religion of all Frenchmen. That time was now come. At that particular moment it was intolerable even to hear the word "religious liberty" mentioned. To the advanced spirits in the Convention, the difference between priests who had taken the oath and priests who had not had disappeared. One provincial club-orator even held that the readiness with which the oath had been taken by some was disastrous for France; because if all priests had refused to take it, "Superstition" could not have done so much harm in the country. Still the champions of liberty in the Convention had some hesitation in resorting to dragonnades; they preferred to employ actors as priests of "Reason" and "Morality" as a means of combating religion.

Meantime the blind hatred of Christianity shown by the members of the Convention and the Clubs served to give greater power to the Counter-Revolution. Maury, then Archbishop of Nicaea in partibus, in a memorandum to the Pope of 23rd June, does not conceal his bright hopes that the supremacy of the laws would soon be restored. "The progress of the Counter-Revolution", he writes, "grows day by day with a rapidity that soon may be incalculable". The White Terror, however, for which Maury hoped, would have had no place for religious liberty. It can be seen from his expressions that it would only have been the philosophers, the Protestants, the Jansenists, and the Freemasons, who would have suffered for rebellion against the Church and the monarchy. But for the present the Red Terror was in power, and it stopped the mouths of the two and forty bishops and priests in the Convention who had taken the oath. One of them, however, Fauchet, dared to say that, fortunately for society, the extirpation of all religion is an absolute impossibility. As a punishment, he was made to mount the scaffold on 31st October 1793. Others of the forty-two were imprisoned; others again hid themselves, and at last Grégoire sat alone in the Convention, with his tonsure, and in a garb whose color showed that he was and would continue to be a bishop. When the Archbishop of Paris, Gobel, whose example was followed by several others, solemnly abjured his faith in order to show compliance with the will of the people, Grégoire rose and bore a Christian witness, which, in spite of the infernal howls that it called forth, really drew from the hearers greater respect than the coquetting of Archbishop Gobel with the red cap.

NEW CALENDAR AND NEW SERVICE 

Together with the old divine worship, the old calendar was abolished and France received a new republican calendar, which began with the equinox, 22nd September 1792, the day after the opening of the Convention. Decades were substituted for the weeks, and the place of the Christian festivals was taken by political, civil, and moral fetes that were to semer l’année de grands souvenirs and thereby attach the rising generation to the Revolution. The eighteenth century showed a great partiality for agriculture, the praise of which was spread abroad by its philosophers and its poets, and the new calendar was based upon la sainte agriculture, because, as Boissy d'Anglas explained, nature had made the French people a people specially adapted to farming.

Just as the new calendar was substituted for the old, a new form of worship was to supersede the Christian worship of God. In the choir of the church of Notre Dame, a temple was erected to Philosophy, and young girls in white sang Chénier's hymn, while an actress of light character sat on the altar as the "Goddess of Reason", decked with flowers. The provinces were not behindhand in this matter. In the course of twenty days, no fewer than 2, 346 French churches were transformed into "Temples of Reason", and when it was impossible to produce a "Goddess of Reason" on the spot, the members of the Convention for the locality supplied one, who by the help of theatrical garb and stage appointments was fitted up for "worship". Outside Paris also the attempt was often made at the festivals of the "Worship of Reason" to get some priest who, for the edification of his radical hearers, would denounce his faith and call Christianity a fraud. But it must be said, to the honor of the French clergy, that it was very difficult to procure such priestly renegades. As a rule, a layman had to be dressed up in priestly garb to enact the comedy of apostasy. As might be expected, the people quickly became tired of this new worship, and the real Sansculottes had many scruples about stepping over the threshold of a church. In the report of Anacharsis Clootz, which was printed by order of the Convention, we read: "We Sansculottes need no other speeches than the Rights of Man, no other doctrines than the commands of the Constitution, and no other churches than the Clubs ... The intolerance of Truth will someday even forbid the word 'Temple', because it is the root of the word 'fanaticism'." In December 1793 there were still in Paris two or three small chapels in which services were held, and for some months these were thronged by great crowds. But the "intolerance of Truth" could not allow the Catholics of Paris even this much, and the little churches were closed. Such services were in the eyes of the Convention only an attempt "under the pretext of religion to betray the cause of liberty."

Before six months had passed, France was already tired of the new worship, and after Chaumette, Gobel, Anacharsis Clootz, and other high priests of the new goddess, had been guillotined, Robespierre made an end of the "Worship of Reason" by declaring on the 7th of May 1794 that the French nation believed in the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The confession of the Savoyard priest became thereby the creed of France, and the place of atheism was taken by deism. The new festivals of "the Supreme Being" were celebrated in the open air, under the artistic conductorship of the famous David. The "temples" therefore were no longer of any use, and they were turned into storehouses, often after having been despoiled with barbarous violence. But the theatrical festivals of the Supreme Being also proved in the long run to be but poor substitutes for the old service, in spite of David's sense of color and talent for grouping, and one after another men turned away with contempt and disgust from the liturgical inventions of Robespierre. "You are beginning to tire us with your Supreme Being", said one of the members of the Convention, after one of the long festivals on the Champs de Mars; and in the tribune of the Convention Chenier confessed openly that a solid foundation for the nation's morals had not yet been found.

EFFORTS FOR FREEDOM OF WORSHIP 

The 9th of Thermidor (27th July 1794) made no great change as regards religion; the Thermidorians were in reality just as good Terrorists as Robespierre. Carrier declaimed against the priests as people "who had grown old in the vices of a parsonage, in luxury, effeminacy, or prejudices". A former priest, who had taken the oath, was condemned to death in Paris by the revolutionary tribunal, because he had distributed "fanatical and counter-revolutionary," that is, religious books. In spite of the persecution, however, a good many of the priests who had not taken the oath ventured to return to their country, some of them disguised as women; and the Convention was flooded with petitions for liberty of worship. The members of the Convention were informed in one of the petitions that crowds of harvesters, who in June 1794 were passing a church, had stopped outside to pray. Another petition, in which Cicero, Plutarch, Voltaire, and Rousseau are quoted, says: "To annihilate the Christian religion in France is the same thing as to deprive the whole nation of its dearest and holiest treasure ... Legislators! restore the Catholic worship in France; give back to the French nation, your comrades in arms, their temples and their altars!" The Convention had at that time sanctioned the freedom of the Press, and it was hoped that religious liberty also would be obtained.

There were in the Convention three bishops who had taken the oath, who escaped with their lives through the Reign of Terror without renouncing their faith—Grégoire of Blois, Royer of L'Ain, and Saurine of Landes. Royer had, it is true, been imprisoned for a long time, and Saurine had been obliged to hide himself to escape the guillotine. At the earliest moment possible, these three bishops joined with citizen Desbois de Rochefort, Bishop of Somme, whom the Committee of Public Safety had just let out of prison, to work for liberty of worship, the restoration of Divine service throughout the Republic, peace amongst the divided priesthood, and association with the Holy See and foreign Churches.

On 21st December 1794, Grégoire made a speech in the Convention in favor of freedom of worship. At first he was listened to with applause, afterwards his voice was drowned by shouts and hisses. He told the members of the Convention that there was religious liberty in Turkey but not in France, and he denied to his countrymen any right hereafter to speak scornfully of the Inquisition. He warned them against thinking it possible to have a Republic without religion, and claimed religious liberty as one of the rights of man; while he he also predicted that a continuous refusal of the liberty of worship would end in a counter-revolution, make democracy hated, and sow discord in the land. He concluded by proposing to secure to all citizens the free exercise of their religious services, so far as these did not violate order and the public peace.

The Convention did not hear Grégoire to the end, but passed on to the order of the day, and called loudly for the decades, and the festivals of Liberty, Prosperity, Stoicism, the Republic, Hatred of tyrants, and the rest. Since the liberty of the Press was greater than the liberty of the Tribune, the Moniteur and other papers were able to report fragments of Grégoire’ speech with or without comment. The Journal de Perlet wrote thus: "Would the war in Vendée have been so terrible, if more tolerance had been shown in the rest of the Republic and in that district? ... If you want peace in the land, you must treat all with justice, and allow everyone to exercise his legitimate rights". And in spite of the apparent defeat of Grégoire, his speech was a triumph for all religious Frenchmen. "Everybody is now talking", so writes the English lady-traveler on 23rd January 1795, "of the restoration of the churches and the reinstatement of the priests". When Grégoire had his speech printed, that all might read both what he had said and what he had wanted to say, he received thanks and congratulations by the hundred.

In its anger the Convention passed a new and still more severe decree against the non-juring priests who ventured to return. But the courageous action of Grégoire had so effectually mooted the question of religious liberty that it could no longer be hushed and stifled. Even extreme Republicans now wished for religious liberty, because they feared lest "an usurper capable of conceiving and carrying out great designs" should use liberty of worship as a formidable instrument; and they recommended that this dangerous weapon, that might so easily be lifted against the Republic and the Revolution, should be done away with. There were other Republicans, however, who were of opinion that if once the Sunday were reintroduced, the festival of the "Three Kings" and the Kings themselves would soon follow after, and that there was an inner connection between priesthood and kingship.

CHURCHES REOPENED

The Convention had at last to give way to public opinion, and to decree liberty of worship. The reformed philosopher, Boissy d'Anglas, induced it on 21st February 1795 to pass a decree, which laid down that, while the Republic would not subsidies any form of worship, nor supply places for religious assemblies or for clergy to live in, the exercise of worship ought not to be interfered with, inasmuch as religious liberty was a right of man. This decree was especially favorable to the priests who had not taken the oath, since they were as a rule connected with wealthy people, who were able both to find them their daily bread and to give them places to hold their services in. Afterwards a new decree of 8th June 1795 granted "temporarily" to the citizens and the communes the free use of the buildings, "that were originally intended for Divine worship"; but nobody could obtain permission to exercise any religious function without first promising to obey the laws of the Republic—a new "civil" oath, which gave rise to new troubles.

After the issue of the decree of 21st February, Grégoire on 12th March sent a courageous pastoral letter to his clergy with a request to have it read on the first Sunday after its receipt in all parishes of the diocese. This pastoral letter travelled much further than the diocese of Blois; and the peculiar mixture of definite Christian faith with civisme, found in it, as in the speeches of Grégoire, did not fail of its effect. In a comparatively short time Divine service was set on foot all over France, a proof of the great attachment to the ancient Church, which the persecutions of the Convention had been able to repress, but not to eradicate. On 1st May 1795 Saint Médard was thrown open, the first of the churches in the capital; after the decree of 8th June, twelve of their ancient churches were handed over to the Parisians for service; and, finally on 11th August the keys of Notre Dame were delivered over, so that Divine service could be held in the church on 15th August—the Feast of the Assumption. But many of the French churches were in great need of restoration after the vandalism of the Revolution. Notre Dame had been a storehouse for wine casks, and the wind blew through the many broken window-panes and the loosely joined planks, which served for doors. A band of Jansenists under the leadership of a barrister, Agier, formed meanwhile "a Catholic league", which among other things saw to the restoration of the churches, and joy at the re-opening of the sacred buildings manifested itself in great liberality amongst high and low.

Grégoire and his friends were now able to work for the carrying out of their plans with good hope of success; and the honor of setting up again the altars of France belongs in reality more to the assertmenté Bishop of Blois than to Bonaparte. Grégoire and his friends founded also, with sympathetic help from foreigners such as Scipione de' Ricci, a "Society for Christian Philosophy", which was to distribute useful books, and refute writings dangerous to the Christian faith. This society published several apologies, which were especially directed against the attacks on positive religion, by which Boissy d'Anglas had proved his philosophical republicanism, when he advocated the cause of religious liberty. A religious periodical was also published by Grégoire’s party, called the Annales de la religion, which soon gained 1800 subscribers. The decades very soon lost their importance, and were succeeded by the Sundays; and even philosophers such as Fourcroy began to see that philosophy was mistaken, when it believed in the possibility of such a spread of enlightenment as to extirpate religious prejudices. He was of opinion that the people ought to be allowed to keep their clergy, their altars, and their worship, because these were a source of comfort to the many persons who are unhappy.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CLERGY

Although the Civil Constitution had in 1793 been already suspended, it still cast its dark shadows over the regenerating work of Grégoire. He and the bishops who joined him exhorted all French Christians to avoid unprofitable strife, and to exert all their powers to edify and educate the people. But this exhortation was only followed in small degree. The different attitude in which those priests who had taken and those who had not taken the oath stood to the Civil Constitution pointed back to a deep political opposition, and at this critical moment, when an alliance of all good forces was so much needed, two religious parties were seen in sharp antagonism to each other, and religious fanatics condemned their opponents to eternal damnation. Those who had taken the oath, rallying round their bishops, had as their organ the Annales de la religion; those who had not taken the oath, formed a secret society, led by the vicars-general of the emigrated bishops, and the Annales Catholiques was the mouthpiece of their views.

Those who had taken the oath soon came to feel, like the German Old Catholics of our own days, that it is in the long run a doubtful advantage for a religious party to be helped by the State. The Civil Constitution was after all only a political, administrative measure, and the hand of the State soon proved itself a heavy hand. Behind those who had taken the oath there was a political power, which more and more betrayed its likeness to the Beast from the deep; behind the others was a pope, who at last was surrounded by the glory that radiates from martyrdom. Immediately after the bestowal of religious liberty, it became evident that the priests who had not taken the oath had more followers than the others. And no wonder. The French nation was at bottom more in sympathy with monarchy than the philosophers and Sansculottes of the capital had imagined; and it was only the altar of those who had not taken the oath that would support a throne. Amongst the assermentés there was always discernible, as in the pastoral letter of Grégoire, a republicanism and a civisme, that was not to everybody’s taste. It made an impression also upon many weaker souls, that the priests who had not taken the oath dared to attack so vehemently the work of the others, that they actually began to rebaptize and remarry those who had been christened and married by the constitutional ones. But this reckless attitude, and the Royalistic agitation, of which those who had not taken the oath were often guilty, stirred the wrath of the Convention, and in two new decrees precautions were taken against the non-juring clergy, who, as Grégoire wrote, everywhere preached rebellion against the laws of the Republic in the most disgraceful manner.

When, in October 1795, the National Convention was succeeded by the Directory, affairs were in a far better condition than when the Convention had succeeded the Legislative Assembly in the September of three years before. Mass was said in nearly 30,000 out of the 40,000 French parishes; the Civil Constitution was set aside, and the bishops who had taken the oath declared that they were willing to retire and to do all they could in order to promote religious peace. There are many letters from bishops and priests who had taken the oath, which prove that in 1795 the writers were hoping for a reconciliation with the see of St Peter, but only on the basis of the Gallican propositions of 1682.

The Directory seemed at first as if it would proceed still further in the path of tolerance upon which the National Convention had at last entered, but the awakening religious feeling, which everywhere manifested itself, roused the displeasure of the Directorial government, and led it to begin new persecutions. It soon became evident that too few churches had been handed over to the faithful, but instead of giving them anymore, the Directory, which needed money, sold churches and abbeys, mostly for demolition. No fewer than one hundred churches were sold in Paris, and pulled down; the church at Cluny was leveled with the ground, and the cathedrals of Blois and Chartres would have suffered the same fate if they had not been bought by those who had taken the oath. Many parsonages were likewise put up for sale, and those which were not sold, were placed at the disposal of the municipalities as schools: in which the children were to be educated in the tenets of the Revolution, without any religious influence. The Directory annoyed priests and congregations by forbidding the ringing of bells, by attempts to hinder the keeping of Sunday sacred, and by demanding strict observance of the new calendar.

THEOPHILANTHROPISM

To crown its ecclesiastical policy, the new government finally gave the Church a new rival in the so-called "Theophilanthropists", the "Friends of God and Man", whose apostle, Lareveillère-Lépeaux, was a member of the Directory. This new religion was a clumsy and stupid attempt to win religious Frenchmen to a new form of Divine worship on the basis of the deism of Rousseau. It was easy to see that the French nation needed religion and religious institutions, and in order to supply this want, Lareveillère-Lépeaux, or rather Valentin Hauy, with the naiveté of the time of the Revolution, wished to invent a new philanthropic religion, just as the Abbé Sieyes in his days had invented a constitution.

The Theophilanthropists "honored" a Supreme Being who rewards virtue and punishes vice. In praise of this Being, hymns were sung, and addresses were given at the Theophilanthropic meetings, which taught the duties of the man and the citizen. A sort of civil baptism was also introduced, which was a novelty in philanthropism as compared with Robespierre's festivals of the Supreme Being, and there were sponsors of both sexes who promised to educate the new citizen in the teachings of Theophilanthropism. A blessing on the flower-bedecked wedding couple was also introduced, and the wedding ceremony concluded with a hymn in praise of marriage as opposed to a "restless celibacy." And when death came, the Theophilanthropists gathered together in the "temple" round a painting, under which was written: "Death is the beginning of eternity", while the head of the family, who, as in the ancient North, was essentially the priest, gave utterance to reflexions on the shortness of life, and the immortality of the soul.

It was not difficult for the Directory by violence and persecutions to bring Christian Frenchmen once more into a time like that of the catacombs, but its favor could not breathe life into the still-born Theophilanthropism. At the very introduction of the Theophilanthropic worship into Paris, it was reported: "The meetings are not well attended. The new cult does not seem destined to have a long career. The attention demanded is tiring; the workman needs diverting, and monotonous speeches send him to sleep. Even diversions, such as the placing of a pair of tame doves on the altar during the celebration of a marriage, could not secure for the new religion any popularity. When Lareveillère-Lépeaux despondingly complained to Talleyrand of its small power to win its way, the former Bishop of Autun answered: "Jesus Christ died for His religion; you must do something similar for yours". After 1798, Theophilanthropism quietly disappears without leaving any visible traces behind it. It was, in fact, only a step on the ladder, by which the French nation worked itself up from the atheism of the worship of reason to the old faith.

To what degree the Church had revived in spite of the vexations and persecutions of the Directory, can be judged from the Council which met in Paris in August 1797,on the invitation of the united bishops who had taken the oath. In the circular letter, which gave the invitation to the meeting, and which was signed by Grégoire, Royer, and Saurine, with three other bishops, the writers expressed first their devotion to the Pope, but then went on to say that the old church custom of holding councils was the best means of maintaining unity in faith, morals, and discipline. When the Council was opened on 15th August, in Notre Dame, seventy-two representatives were present from the whole of France, and amongst them no fewer than twenty-six bishops, and a bishop-elect who was not yet consecrated—just as many therefore as at the opening of the Council of Trent. Bishop Lecoz opened the meeting with a sermon, in which he described the scenes which those present had witnessed. Simple peasants trembled for gladness merely at hearing the name of Jesus mentioned. The sight of the image of the Crucified made their countenances tremble for joy, after they had been sorrowful so long."

PROPOSALS FOR UNION

After having deliberated for three months, partly in Notre Dame, partly in the chapel in the Hotel de Pons, where lived Clément, the Bishop of Versailles, the meeting agreed upon a decree of peace (decret de pacification), which acknowledged; the Pope as the visible Head of the Church by divine right, but also demanded the maintenance of the principles and liberties of the Gallican Church (Articles I and V). If there were two bishops in one diocese, the one who was elected and consecrated before 1791 was to be the rightful bishop, but the other, elected and consecrated after that year, was to be the legitimate successor of the former. And the same rule was to obtain in parishes which had two priests (Article X). This Gallican Council broke up with great expectations of peace in the Church, and before the parting in the choir of Notre Dame Grégoire had the pleasure of handing over to the assembly 1,000 francs which sympathetic Spanish Catholics had contributed towards defraying the expenses of the meeting. He was also able to read several letters, which proved how great was the sympathy with which the Church south of the Pyrenees followed the deliberations of the Council.

But only a minority of the bishops and priests who had not taken the oath looked with sympathy upon the Council of 1797. Its Gallicanism repelled many; and most of those who had not taken the oath had thrown in their lot with the Bourbons to such an extent that they declined to stand on an equal footing with the bishops and priests of the Revolution, who had not only sworn fealty to the Republic, but also hatred to the monarchy. After the coup d’état on the 18th of Brumaire, in place of the former oath, so irksome to many, was substituted a simple promise of loyalty to the Constitution (je promets fidelité a la constitution) and the Moniteur explained that in this promise there lay no declaration whatever of determination to maintain the Constitution, but only a promise not to oppose it.

Those who had not taken the oath could make such a promise with a good conscience, and such a man as the Abbé Emery at Saint-Sulpice advised all to do so. Many, therefore, of those who had not taken the oath now returned to work in the Church. But the bishops who had emigrated would not acquiesce in even so slight a recognition of the Revolution as this; they hoped to work for the restoration of the old regime by resisting at all points the new order of things in France. This was, in the opinion of the Abbé Emery, the same as sacrificing religion for illusions, and many agreed with him in this. Accordingly, Bonaparte, when he took in hand the arrangement of ecclesiastical affairs, encountered not only the old tension between those who had taken the oath and those who had not, but within the ranks of these last an antagonism between those who dreamt of a restoration of the order of things which preceded the French Revolution, and those who were willing to make peace with the new order, provided only that the reconciliation were sanctioned by the successor of St Peter.