Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (39 page)

Both jurors and nonjurors were applauded and inveighed against, though most Parisians, reportedly, wanted the curates to swear. The Paris theaters at this juncture staged deliberately provocative plays like
Calas, ou le fanatisme
, the
Rigueurs du cloître
, and
L’Autodafé, ou le tribunal de l’Inquisition
. These performances were frequently watched by audiences provided with free tickets. In this way, an already considerable popular antichurch constituency was extended. Emotions ran high,
but in parishes where the curate refused the oath, he was allowed to explain his objections and protected from demonstrators. At the large Church of the Madeleine, nearly all the attached clergy refused, declaring colleagues acquiescing to be “false priests.”
⁷⁴
At one point, bent on smashing the presses of
L’Ami du Roi
, a hostile crowd gathered to assail the Abbé Royou’s home but was prevented by the National Guard. On 27 January, the republican-led Paris assembly of “electeurs” was summoned for 30 January to decide how to replace curates refusing the oath.
⁷⁵

Altogether, the number of ecclesiastics in France refusing the oath was probably correctly estimated by Malouet in July 1791 at between 20,000 and 30,000, or slightly under half the 60,000 or so ecclesiastics in France.
⁷⁶
Of a total of 23,093 priests, in forty-two departments, comprising around half the area of France, 13,118 took the oath while 9,975 refused. While overall approximately 55 percent of preaching clergy in France took the oath, the picture varied markedly from region to region.
⁷⁷
At Bordeaux, more than half the clergy acquiesced, while at Limoges only five out of twenty-three priests did so, and at Rennes only one.
⁷⁸
In the Paris basin outside the capital, and in the Dauphiné, jurors slightly predominated, while in Paris itself, nonjurors were a slight majority. Among professors and directors of the Paris seminaries, all but two refused. Besides Alsace-Lorraine, Brittany, and the West, nonjuring clergy heavily dominated in Artois and French Flanders, the high incidence here reflecting the already prevailing antagonism toward the Revolution rife among the less educated in these areas.
⁷⁹
In Provence, by contrast, some 80 percent of the clergy complied, and in Basses-Alpes and Loiret more than 90 percent. However, in May 1791, the balance shifted back somewhat against the
constitutionnels
due to the pope’s explicit condemnation, which prompted many reluctant jurors to retract, a reversal vigorously encouraged by Royou and the ultraroyalist press.
⁸⁰
Approximately 10 percent of clergy who had sworn the oath retracted again following the pope’s intervention.

While the bishops of Blois, Chartres, and Besançon backed the Assembly, accepting the new diocesan and parish boundaries and the oath, most sitting bishops, including those of Soissons, Quimper, and Amiens, condemned the Civil Constitution outright. Bishop Machault of Amiens had publicly repudiated the Rights of Man since August and, since October, boycotted the Assembly.
⁸¹
The first two new constitutional bishops were inaugurated in Paris on 24 February.
⁸²
In the eyes of the revolutionary leadership, bishops should no longer be figures
of splendor and rank but candidates of merit and talent, a respected elite embodying popular sovereignty and the Rights of Man. “Where the former bishop of Rouen was the product of the nobility and the court,” explained
La Feuille villageoise
, “the new one is a product of liberty and virtue.”
⁸³
These 1791 episcopal elections were undeniably real contests, and the gap between the old and new bishops reflected a striking contrast of social background and qualifications, despite some vigorous canvassing. In the contest for the new bishop of Lyon (Rhone-et-Loire), in March, Mirabeau and the Paris Jacobins urged the affiliated Lyon club to broadcast the merits of their ally, Adrien Lamourette (1742–94).
⁸⁴
Like Fauchet in Calvados and Grégoire in Loir-et-Cher, Lamourette cut an impressive figure among those elected to the new episcopate. Fauchet’s election to the diocese of Calvados, after a fierce contest against two other worthy contenders, caused a “véritable scandale” among the devout. Compared to this apostle of “fanaticisme révolutionnaire” and “soiler of religion with impious doctrine” whose “seditious and blasphemous harangues” maintained that Jesus Christ had been crucified by “the aristocrats,” the Jacobin Club, according to Royou’s
Ami du Roi
, was an academy of wise men.
⁸⁵

The old aristocratic episcopate either emigrated or was expelled. By late April 1791, some sixty new “constitutional bishops” had been installed, each election memorably celebrated with considerable pomp. The new bishop of Troyes was inaugurated on 16 April before vast crowds, departmental National Guard contingents, and deputations from regional administrative bodies, besides local Jacobin clubs.
⁸⁶
Most new bishops elected during these months
were
indeed well-qualified, conscientious men, drawn from parish clergy or teaching orders, whose upward mobility had been blocked before 1789 by the prevailing aristocratic system.
⁸⁷
However, the position of the new constitutional episcopate was seriously weakened by Pius VI’s Brief
Quod aliquantum
on 10 March 1791, which condemned the constitutional bishops and fulminated against the Revolution in every respect. The further papal condemnation on 13 April and conclusive Brief
Caritas quae
on 4 May removed any lingering doubt: the pope repudiated the French church reforms unreservedly, proclaiming the Civil Constitution of the Clergy altogether “schismatic and heretical.” Lay bodies could not pronounce on spiritual matters. Only the nonjuring, anticonstitutional episcopate was recognized by the pope. All elections of “constitutional bishops,” past and future, were declared annulled. Priests complying with the imposed oath of loyalty must retract within forty days or face suspension
by the Vatican. The previously in camera papal condemnation of the Rights of Man on 29 March 1790 was finally published.

In remoter provinces, oath-swearing and transfers of dioceses and parishes dragged on for months amid mounting resistance. In the far southwest, the bishops of Tarbes, Dax, and Bayonne all departed during May 1791, the last setting up a focus of opposition in Spanish Pamplona.
⁸⁸
In the Var department, though most clergy eventually complied, all four bishops, those of Toulon, Fréjus, Grasse, and Vence, refused and departed for Italy.
⁸⁹
Likewise in Corsica where the bishoprics were reduced from five to one (Bastia), no prelate would take the oath. The new constitutional bishop, Ignace-François Guasco, elected by 105 out of 215 electeurs on 8 May, was previously provost of Bastia cathedral. His installation provoked some of the ugliest rioting resulting from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy witnessed anywhere in France, culminating on 2 and 3 June 1791 in the sacking of the bishop’s palace. In response, Corsica’s presiding revolutionary hero, Pascal Paoli (1725–1807), ordered a heavy-handed repression known as the
cocagna di Bastia
. Paoli could not, however, prevent Guasco from being subsequently firmly boycotted as a “détestable schismatique” by most of the island’s womenfolk. Later, stranded by Paoli’s defection from the Revolution, on 23 December 1794, a beaten and dejected Guasco underwent the humiliation of public retraction and implored the pope’s forgiveness.
⁹⁰

With the royalist insurrections of late 1790 at Aix, Lyon, and Toulon, religious strife spread across France. The Revolution had made France a “véritable république,” observed the
Chronique de Paris
in July 1791,
⁹¹
engulfing the country in a struggle pitting ultraroyalists against anticlerical liberal monarchists, and both these against republicans and authoritarian populists; and in this vast, complex, and escalating ideological conflict, religion inevitably played a central part. The first of the Assembly’s special commissions to recalcitrant regions, to accelerate implementation of revolutionary decrees, was commissioned in January 1791 to stabilize Alsace, one of the most agitated border areas. Three commissaires, including the young judge Hérault de Sechelles, later a prominent figure in the Revolution, were assigned broad powers in both Alsatian departments (Haut and Bas-Rhin) to deal with a dire situation. At that point, numerous officers from Alsatian garrisons were defecting, and Strasbourg’s many refractory priests were deliberately fomenting Catholic resistance to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Rioting in Strasbourg on 3 January, partly aimed against Protestants,
followed rumors that holy relics were being removed from one of the city’s most venerated chapels.
⁹²
The commissaires’ arrival in Colmar on 3 February, a town where most people reportedly opposed the Revolution, precipitated a furious popular outbreak that was dispersed only with difficulty.
⁹³

To add to the commissaires’ difficulties, Cardinal Louis de Rohan, the former archbishop of Strasbourg, strongly backed by the Strasbourg cathedral chapter canons (all princes of the German Empire and even richer and more aristocratic than the canons of other regional capitals) colluded with the émigré armed force under the princes of the blood encamped across the Rhine.
⁹⁴
The cardinal-archbishop had officially been dispossessed of his former extensive jurisdiction and “rights” either side of the Rhine, but devout Catholics remained unshakably loyal to him despite his immense revenues and princely status, luxurious lifestyle, uninhibited gambling, and overt incitement of Catholic resistance to the Revolution.
⁹⁵
Against Rohan’s wishes, the commissaires aimed to enforce the constitutional oath and ensure orderly elections and the inauguration of the resulting two new bishops of the departments of Haut and Bas-Rhin, though most Alsatian priests remained loyal to Rohan and refused to acknowledge the new prelates. Nonjurors did not scruple to mobilize popular bigotry against Protestants, Jews, and Anabaptists as a way of opposing the Revolution.
⁹⁶
On 26 March, there was a riot inside Strasbourg cathedral, beginning with a violent quarrel in the sacristy between a former curate, loyal to Rohan, and his replacement, installed by the new constitutional bishop, François-Alfred Brendel, who had assumed office the day before. Rohan had issued a circular commanding Catholics not to obey the “schismatic” bishop elected by Strasbourg’s primary assembly, a “vicious and scandalous election” in which local Lutherans participated. Refractory clergy, dominant in the seminary and local monasteries as well as the cathedral chapter, helped Rohan retain his authority from a distance and generally incite “fanaticisme.”
⁹⁷
By late May 1791, the situation in Alsace had scarcely improved. Services conducted by constitutional clergy were widely boycotted in favor of refractory clergy. The opposition of those believing they “are defending religion when they are merely being blindly subservient to refractory ecclesiastics” remained so extensive the departmental directoire in Strasbourg requested five thousand National Guard militia from the interior of France to help secure the lesser Alsatian towns, especially Colmar, where the bons citoyens were losing out to Catholic militants.
⁹⁸

In terms of tradition, canon law, and papal authority, the recalcitrant parish clergy were justified. In February 1791, the
Feuille villageoise
published the views of a village priest—styled by Cérutti an
ignorant
and fanatic—who had refused the
sermon civique
. But from a purely Catholic standpoint, the priest was surely correct. The quarrel concerned the very existence and status of separate spiritual authority. The republican press pursued its quarrel with the réfractoires throughout France, denouncing “fanaticism” and broadcasting the sermons of pro-Revolution priests, assuring Catholics the Church’s true traditions and teachings
were
being respected. In its issue of 10 February 1791,
La Feuille villageoise
printed the sermon of the curé of Aujargues, reminding parishioners that Jesus urged submission to worldly powers and that “our dogmas are still what they have always been,” the mysteries the same “mysteries” as before: “our faith has suffered no infringement; the belief of our fathers remains our belief today.”
⁹⁹
The difficulty with this insistent message was that it was untrue.

Furthermore, constitutional clergy and réfractoires alike found themselves in an extremely weak position from which to defend the Church’s remaining interests, because centrist liberal monarchists and democratic republicans, despite disagreeing about virtually everything else, largely converged on church affairs. Over the winter of 1790–91, the Assembly, dominated by “moderates” led by Barnave and the Lameths, goaded a reluctant monarch into embracing their secular, liberal monarchist ideology while the Church further fragmented politically and theologically: jurors opposed nonjurors, the latter comprising approximately 45 percent of the total French clergy.
¹⁰⁰
The constitutional clergy in turn divided between a small faction backing Fauchet, Lamourette, and Grégoire, aligned with the Left republican democrats, while the rest backed the constitutional royalist moderates. Yet by embracing the Civil Constitution, jurors at the same time opened the door wider to the new radical Christian ideology propagated by Fauchet, Grégoire, and Lamourette, who equated Christianity with democracy. Those on the Left, viewing the Civil Constitution as just a half measure, often openly cast doubt on the loyalty of the constitutional clergy. “What we know of their morality and past conduct, through so many unfortunate experiences,” affirmed the
Chronique
de Paris
, induced hard-core republicans to consider the loyalty to the Revolution of practically all the Catholic and Protestant clergy as distinctly dubious.
¹⁰¹