Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (36 page)

Full freedom of thought, conscience, and expression, and the Rights of Man, were central to the Revolution but condemned by ecclesiastical authority. Even for Cérutti, mildest of the philosophique pamphleteers of 1788, la philosophie was inevitably at “war” with a too “opulent church” because the clergy, despite their unrivaled preeminence in society and resources, neither adequately supported the poor nor assisted the bankrupt French state. Rather, the clergy unhesitatingly defended what to the Left revolutionary leadership seemed barbaric, unjustified privileges, antisocial attitudes, and immunities. “If in the centuries of ignorance [the clergy] held sway over the ignorant, today when the brightest light enlightens the nations, they must,” held Cérutti, “yield to justice and virtue, becoming priests of the
patrie
, as they are priests of religion.” The Church’s personnel, property, revenues, and rents had to be made to serve the people to a far greater extent than in the past.
²

No part of French society enjoyed greater autonomy before 1789, commented Tocqueville later, or more special privileges than the Church. No other slice of society, apart from the army and navy, so completely reflected the social hierarchy; practically all archbishops and bishops were aristocrats.
³
Hence, it was central to the leading ré
volutionnaires
’
vision of the Revolution and democracy that the Church should be deprived of its autonomy, immunities, independent resources, privileged status, and solidly aristocratic leadership.
⁴
Nor was this all. There was also a more directly political aspect. A haven of privilege, immunities, and autonomy, the Church had for decades combated la philosophie moderne, and now offered France’s elites their best hope of mobilizing substantial backing among the common people for the ancien régime and conservatism in their fight against equality and democracy. In effect, the Church’s authority, doctrines, and preaching were conservatism’s most formidable weapon against the Revolution. “Nobility,” exclaimed the
Gazette de Paris
on 15 January 1791, “never forget this sublime idea: the clergy alone, through their heroic resistance, can rescue you from the Revolution.”
⁵
The Catholic Church, the “most powerful organization inside the kingdom,” did indeed lead the crusade against the Revolution, and especially against the philosophique revolutionary leadership’s ideology.

Equally, everyone steeped in the writings of Diderot, d’Holbach, Raynal, and Helvétius took it as axiomatic that a close alliance had long existed between the “two classes of civil and sacred tyrants” against the interests of the majority. The thesis that clergy, kings, and nobility collaborate to keep the people ignorant and unaware, first powerfully formulated by Meslier and Boulanger with their theories of how and why priests, nobles, and kings mutually support each other, pervaded the thought-world of Mirabeau, Brissot, Condorcet, Sieyès, Bonneville, Chamfort, Volney, Cérutti, Desmoulins, and journalists like Carra and Gorsas. Ignorance and church authority were deemed indispensable to kings if they were to succeed in misleading the people and getting them to submit to notions and institutions essentially detrimental to their own interests. Only through religion can kings blind men sufficiently to acquiesce in their own exploitation, abasement, and misery. “Les tyrants civils et sacrés des peuples,” affirmed Volney in his most important book (and commentary on the Revolution), published in 1791, “formèrent une ligue générale,” to exploit and oppress the vast multitude of the deluded.
⁶

The papacy and ecclesiastical hierarchy repudiated the Revolution’s core values altogether. Outright conflict between Revolution and Church was wholly certain from the outset.
⁷
If Robespierre consistently remained more moderate on this point (as on some others), and far more willing to defend religion and popular piety than his philosophique opponents,
⁸
this in no way alters the fact that the philosophique clique
that forged the Revolution of 1788–93 always intended to assail the Church as a property-owner, educator, social force, and moral, political, and cultural influence. The mounting, multifaceted assault on the Church, as Archbishop Puységur of Bourges noted in September 1789, followed directly from this “audacious and culpable philosophy which, in its fury, attacked heaven only to see things on earth overthrown.”
⁹

Conflict arose first over toleration, a central plank of the Enlightenment. A few clergy accepted comprehensive toleration for all churches, but most repudiated the principle. Leading royalist editors like Royou not only championed monarchy, nobility, and ecclesiastical authority, and excoriated philosophes, but rejected even a qualified formal toleration.
¹⁰
Protestants appeared in the 1789 Estates-General following a royal provision of January 1789 that extended the franchise to them, a change enabling Rabaut Saint-Étienne, Barnave, and thirteen other Protestants to be elected Estates-General deputies. These had then, for their own reasons, vigorously supported both general toleration and proposals to weaken the dominant Church. Protestant support for the Revolution, however, only intensified Catholic resistance. For months, from the summer of 1789, the clergy obstructed the comprehensive toleration urged by Mirabeau and the philosophique vanguard, but were finally defeated with a decree passed on Christmas Eve 1789, that for the first time in history in any country stipulated fully equal legal and political rights for minority churches.

Under this landmark decree, Calvinists, Lutherans, and other Protestants were placed on an equal footing with Catholics: henceforth, any Christian (and by implication non-Christian), every citizen swearing allegiance to the Constitution, became eligible to hold office irrespective of religion or ethnicity.
¹¹
The only legitimate creed in France now was “le patriotisme éclairé.” Even a “Negro, Turk, or idolater,” sneered the Venetian envoy, or “Salé corsairs, can become representatives of the nation or cabinet ministers of France!”
¹²
Opening up all professions, offices, and political functions to non-Catholics was decidedly a sensational step, even if the measure still (illogically) expressly excluded Jews. Furthermore, given the Declaration of Rights, how long could opponents defend the age-old principle that non-Christians, especially Jews, should be excluded from society?
¹³

Proposals to emancipate the Jewish population, insistent from October onward, encountered vehement opposition led by Maury and Bishop Lafare of Nancy. Religious toleration, conceded Maury, might possibly be extended also to the Jews, but not rights of citizenship.
Political rights for Protestants were one thing, but the Jews constituted a separate nation addicted to commerce and impervious to the responsibilities of citizenship, set apart from society for seventeen centuries. In Poland, Jewish “opulence” arose from the “sweat of Christian slaves.” Refusing Fontenelle’s thesis that the fathers’ sins should not be visited on the sons, he cited Voltaire’s anti-Semitism to “prove” the Enlightenment too recognized Jewish “perversity.” Besides, argued Maury, popular sentiment must be heeded. Ordinary people detested the Jews, and granting them citizenship would only make them more hated. In Nancy, declared the bishop, there was talk of Jews trying to appropriate the best parts of town for themseves; there was a constant threat of popular violence against them.
¹⁴
Yet the Assembly would contradict its own principles, noted the Venetian envoy, if it attempted to exclude Jews from the Rights of Man.
¹⁵
After an ill-tempered debate on 28 January 1790, the more affluent and integrated but small Sephardic community, and those Jews domiciled (for many centuries) at Avignon, were emancipated by 374 votes to 224, the main proposer being Mirabeau’s only ally among the old episcopate, the ambitious and cynical bishop of Autun, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand (1754–1838).
¹⁶

However, dividing Jews into two categories—Sephardim possessing full citizenship rights and a Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazic community in Alsace-Lorraine remaining excluded—was unsustainable, making no sense to anyone. It is a “monstrosity” in logic, concurred the Venetian envoy, defying all common sense: “a Jew of Bordeaux will enjoy the Rights of Man, but not a Jew of Lorraine or Alsace.”
¹⁷
Even so, so great was the reluctance of the Assembly majority, it took until September 1791 before the Ashkenazic community finally received equality of rights.
¹⁸
Last among France’s religious blocs rescued by the parti de philosophie from the disabilities imposed by the Church for centuries were the Anabaptists, who possessed a network of congregations in Alsace, on the upper Marne, and in the Vosges. Appearing before the Convention on 9 August 1793, an Anabaptist delegation, acclaiming the Revolution, received citizenship and exemption from bearing arms.
¹⁹

Toleration soon gave way to monasticism, and then church property, as the principal battlegrounds. The Rights of Man proclaimed not just freedom of thought and expression but individual liberty of lifestyle. On 28 October 1789, the Assembly ended government recognition of all religious vows in France. Exacting vows of celibacy, poverty, and submission infringed individuals’ natural rights and could no longer legitimately be imposed by any authority or organization. But the fight
over this was nothing compared to the war over church property. The 4 August legislation abolishing feudal rights had also envisaged suppressing the tithe, but did so without clarifying whether this would be with or without compensation. To most Frenchmen, this whole furor was a puzzling development, as the Revolution had made a point of guaranteeing property rights, and in the rural and urban cahiers of 1789, few among the provincial laity had questioned the Church’s right to its property.
²⁰
But on 10 October 1789, less than a week after the women’s march on Versailles, Talleyrand (virtually the only ecclesiastic in the Assembly proposing such a policy),
²¹
collaborating with Mirabeau, stunned the legislature by advocating a general confiscation and sale of church lands, benefices, and nonecclesiastical buildings, together with suppression of the tithe, all without compensation. To the episcopate, this was a catastrophic, breathtakingly vast, and cynical betrayal.

Philosophique demands for a general confiscation of church property provoked total uproar, with many (especially senior) churchmen protesting that religion and ecclesiastical authority were being annihilated. Religion and church dogma, replied the revolutionary leadership, were being left untouched; the clergy were merely being asked to reform their external organization for their own good. The Church, averred Charles Lameth in February 1790 (with unintended irony), was no more threatened by the Assembly’s plans than royalty.
²²
The October motion on church property lacked popular support but perfectly illustrated Chamfort’s thesis that the people would be led by “the shepherds” where they had no idea they were going.
²³
As yet, though, there was little attempt to interfere with doctrine or the clergy’s pastoral or educational roles. Thus far, curtailing the Church remained essentially economic and institutional. Even so, these early measures clearly also menaced the clergy’s general status, power, and independence, and more was certain to follow.

Were lands, benefices, and endowments donated over the centuries genuine church property? Ecclesiastical endowments had been made to support the clergy, help sustain the cult, education, and poor relief, functions society needed but could now better provide outside the Church. The change, from society’s point of view, would eliminate much waste and corruption. Hitherto, prelates had led an aristocratic existence. Bishops, vicars general, cathedral canons, priors, and abbots all dwelt in splendid luxury at the expense of others, a system socially and morally insidious and indefensible. Crown and lay donations to the Church really belonged to the people, maintained Mirabeau and his
allies (on this issue, especially Thouret and Volney). Volney, prominent among Mirabeau’s entourage over the winter of 1789–90, had loudly and publicly insisted since at least 1788 that church property belonged to the nation. Confiscation and sale of ecclesiastical property, he hoped, would convert thousands of presently impoverished peasant laborers and wage-earners into small property owners.
²⁴

The Church was rapidly worsted in this battle. Chamfort contributed behind the scenes, publishing article after article urging the Revolution’s need to weaken church authority.
²⁵
Together with Talleyrand, the leaders of this philosophique anti-Church campaign ceaselessly plied the distinction between property of individuals and property belonging to institutional bodies performing a social role. Church property, they claimed, belonged to a different category from other property because it had been donated by parishioners and held in trust for poor relief, education, and other social purposes. Such claims made it appear initially that ecclesiastical authority and religion as such were not in dispute, thereby enabling the revolutionaries to win over some lower clergy.

Preserving endowed benefices in ecclesiastical hands, moreover, would have the serious disadvantage, argued Mirabeau, of leaving intact the old method of choosing bishops and other higher clergy, and hence perpetuating ancien régime “corruption.” This argument also appealed to some lower clergy who rarely benefited from those assets. For the Assembly to acknowledge that lands and revenues possessed by the Church were its rightful property effectively meant respecting “and consolidating the distinction of orders.”