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Part One

ENGAGEMENT, 1789–1791

Bad harvests and the high cost of food staples pushed King Louis XVI and his advisers to convoke the Estates General, France’s first parliamentary assembly in 175 years, obviously a dramatic bid for help in resolving chronic financial crises. Few in the clerical First Estate, the aristocratic Second Estate, or the commoner Third Estate were aware of the revolutionary risks they were courting. Well before the first session, scheduled for the beginning of May 1789, meetings were held all over France, not only to elect delegates but to draw up lists of complaints and goals for the Estates to consider: the famous cahiers de doléances. The clergy of the First Estate expressed very few deep political or social anxieties that could result in political upheaval, and no real hints that a transformed church should go hand-in-hand with a transformed government. The actual opening of the Estates General was first of all a church event, with a procession to the church of Saint-Louis in Versailles. The Third Estate marched first, followed by the other two Estates; King Louis walked at the end of the procession, preceded by the Blessed Sacrament, which was carried under a canopy by the archbishop of Paris.

Successful power bids by the Third Estate at Versailles in June, violent manifestations in Paris with the attack on the Bastille in July, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August overshadowed the first legislative moves toward church reform. Before this Declaration of Rights, the clergy had abandoned the tithe, and several months later, church properties and lands were nationalized—to be used as collateral for the new bonds (eventually used as currency), the assignats. The church reform was one of the surprises of the early Revolution, its causes residing in the personal and religious orientations of the priests and the experts in church law who dominated the Estates General and the Constituent Assembly.

With the new year, 1790, random but radical church-reform proposals of different stripes continued apace: to withdraw recognition of monastic vows, to recognize Catholicism as the official religion of France, and to attach Avignon, the papal enclave, to France. The new Civil Constitution of the Clergy was approved, to be rejected soon enough by a substantial minority of priests. Even so, most priests, whether of revolutionary or counterrevolutionary orientation, supported a festival celebration of the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, and Archbishop Boisgelin of Aix tried to reconcile all sides—really Rome and the French government—with a compromise document. Dialogue, if it ever existed, certainly ended when an oath of allegiance to the nation, the law, and the king was imposed on all priests engaged in active apostolates; swearing the oath meant acceptance of the Civil Constitution at the Clergy. Anticipating resistance, the government, at the beginning of January 1791, ordered the clergy to take the oath of allegiance on the next day. The French Catholic Church as envisaged by the authors of the Civil Constitution was now a reality, albeit with a major problem: only a small handful of French bishops agreed to be part of this reformed Catholicism. Finally, the minimally religious maverick bishop of Autun, Charles Talleyrand, along with two auxiliary bishops, agreed to consecrate new bishops, and followed conscientiously the time-honored church ritual for these consecrations. Roman authorities rejected these consecrations as illegitimate (but valid), with the pope finally and officially condemning the Civil Constitution.

Whether in response or on their own, legislators passed laws proclaiming religious liberty—hitherto limited in Catholic France—and restricting professional organizations in a way that could neutralize the efforts of the French clergy who refused to take the oath.

Priests and Bishops

Chapter 1. Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès and Henri Grégoire, two priests with strong and visible personalities, worked for government reform in the months of preparation for the Estates General, France’s first parliamentary assembly since 1614. Their personal orientations reveal the polarities of revolutionary priesthood in 1789: the cranky and secular Sieyès, in fact minimally a priest, trying to bracket religion to bring about a new political era; and the imposing and pastoral Grégoire trying to reform religion to bring about a new political era as well. As a seminarian, Sieyès had developed a distinct philosophy, or rhetoric, of religion, as well as a refined musical taste. His tract Sur Dieu ultramètre et sur la fibre religieuse de l’homme (On God beyond Measure and on Man’s Religious Fiber) is a suggestive dialogue on religion that bears comparison with later German philosophy. Grégoire, three years before ordination, produced an essay on poetry as a way to beauty, truth, and, through scripture, to God. Their early lives and seminary educations gave both of them the opportunity to develop the roles they played as members of the Estates General and thereafter.

Chapter 2. The political efforts of Sieyès and Grégoire were abetted by the great numbers of priests in France who demanded reforms in the clerical cahiers de doléances, collected and submitted as part of the national program to inform the deputies to the Estates General of the complaints and demands of their constituencies. When the priests who were actual deputies to the Estates General began their own official discussions of religious and political change, they took sides, for and against this change, in weeks of clerical haggling recorded best by the abbé Jacques Jallet but also by other priests who were present at the Assembly meetings. The decision of these members of the First Estate, the clergy, to join the Third Estate, the commoners, in a new National (Constituent) Assembly was a confused affair: a wide range of assumptions and misunderstandings was behind the actual move. Subsequently, priests and bishops on the Ecclesiastical Committee, appointed by the National Assembly, were dominated by lay canon lawyers. Together, they were responsible for the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the founding document for the July 1790 revolutionary reorganization of French Catholicism in the Constituent Assembly.

Chapter 3. Henri Grégoire’s highly influential colleagues were Claude Fauchet, the most visible of the revolutionary priests in Paris, and Adrien Lamourette, mentor to Grégoire across the years and a theological adviser to key members of the Constituent Assembly. The derring-do of Fauchet as he scampered about in a rain of gunfire during the taking of the Bastille can be partly explained by his theology, but more from his personal and political engagement in the new political era. His major book, De la religion nationale, had been published a month and a half before the attack on the Bastille. In the very first years of the Revolution, he was at the center of radical political dialogue and journalism. But he was above all a constitutional bishop, high profile of course, given his earlier deeds and publications, and creative in his response to opponents of the Constitutional Church with its new bishops.

Chapter 4. Lamourette’s work alongside a leading figure of the early Revolution, the comte de Mirabeau, is displayed both by his theology and by his day-to-day practical ministry. He articulated both the role of the church for a new political era and a more-or-less systematic theology—“ecclesiology” is the technical label—for a renewed and enlightened church. Lamourette should be situated between Mirabeau, whom he advised, and Camus, the lay canon lawyer, whose work was one of the bases of his own theology. Elected as constitutional bishop of the primatial see (first in dignity of the French dioceses) of Lyon, he is best known for his intervention as a delegate to the successor to the Constituent Assembly, the so-called Legislative Assembly; it was a passing moment of reconciliation in 1792, and so, a flash forward in this part of the narrative (see Chronology, Part II: Survival, 1791–1795) on behalf of a constitutional monarchy, only a month before both assembly and monarchy disappeared.

Chronology

1789

24 January	Modalities of election to the Estates General officially set up.
February	Publication of Sieyès’s What Is the Third Estate?
4 May	Procession and Mass for opening of Estates General.
30 May	Publication of Fauchet’s De la religion nationale.
13 June	Three curés led by Jallet join the Third Estate.
17 June	The Third Estate led by Sieyès proclaims itself the National Assembly.
19 June	Vote of the clergy to join the National Assembly.
20 June	Tennis Court Oath, with Grégoire and Sieyès in attendance.
9 July	The National Assembly proclaims itself the Constituent Assembly.
14 July	Fall of the Bastille.
4 August	Renunciation of aristocratic privileges by members of the former Second Estate.
11 August	Clergy abandon the tithe, which was paradoxically defended by Sieyès.
26 August	Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
2 November	Nationalization of church lands.

1790

5 February	The Assembly adds new members to its Ecclesiastical Committee.
13 February	Law proposed by Jean-Baptiste Treilhard, a delegate especially engaged in church reform, withdrawing official recognition of monastic vows.
12 April	Motion of the Carthusian Dom Gerle to recognize Catholicism as the religion of the French.
12 June	Avignon, the papal enclave, asks to be attached to France.
13 June	Counterrevolutionary insurrection at Nîmes with massacre of Protestants.
12 July	Text of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy approved.
14 July	First revolutionary festival, supported by both revolutionary and conservative clergy.
30 October	Archbishop Boisgelin’s Exposition des principes attempts to bridge gap between Rome and the Constituent Assembly.
27 November	Decree imposing clerical oath of allegiance to the nation, the law, and the king, implying acceptance of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
26 December	King sanctions the decree of 27 November.

1791

3 January	Clergy ordered to take the oath of allegiance to the nation, the law, and the king within twenty-four hours.
February	Beginning of election and consecration of the constitutional bishops (through May), the first consecration performed by Talleyrand of Autun with two auxiliary bishops.
10 March	Pius VI condemns the Civil Constitution.
2 April	Death of Mirabeau.
13 April	Pope reiterates his condemnation of the Civil Constitution.
7 May	Proclamation of religious liberty.
14 June	Le Chapelier Law forbidding worker/professional organizations and strikes is invoked by constitutional bishops to control refractory clergy.