THE GALLIGAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION

 

BY THE REV. W.HENLEY JERVIS

 

 

PREFACE.

 

The present volume is a continuation of my former work on the same subject, which extended only to the threshold of the Great Revolution. The succeeding period of twenty-five years, between the meeting of the States-General in 1789 and the second Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, abounds with exceptional, yet very obvious, difficulties in the path of the ecclesiastical student. The Gallican Church, during the earlier part of it, was emphatically “a house divided against itself;” split into two sections diametrically opposed to each other in religious thought, principle, and action. The ancient historical Church had lost its prestige as a National Establishment. Its corporate property had been confiscated. Its bishops were still bishops, its priests still priests; but the National Assembly had stripped them of territorial jurisdiction. If they continued to minister, it was by stealth, in defiance of the law, and at the risk of the gravest penalties. The Revolution had created, in their place, a body of “ecclesiastical public functionaries,” who were exclusively recognised by the State, exclusively salaried by law, and exclusively charged with the spiritual guidance of the people. But their position was anomalous. The supreme authority of the Church regarded them as schismatics; at Rome they were disowned and anathematised. The reason was, that they had not received “canonical institution” at the hands of the Pope or his representatives.

According to the traditional theology of Rome, the Pope is (under Christ) the sole source and dispenser of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. This principle lay at the root of the Concordat then existing (that of Bologna) between France and Rome. But with the legislators of the Revolution it was a primary object to subvert and extinguish that tradition, which in their eyes was the most dangerous of mediaeval usurpations.

This state of things was strongly adverse to historical impartiality and accuracy. As a natural consequence, the ecclesiastical literature of that day is more or less deeply steeped in the spirit of partisanship, jealousy, and prejudice. More than the usual amount of discrepancy prevails in the original documents representing the contending parties. For instance, one of the principal authorities for the transactions of the time is the journal entitled “Annales de la Religion,” which for many years was conducted, with conspicuous ability, zeal, and learning, by Bishop Gregoire and his associates. Its avowed object was to defend the Revolutionary changes in religion, and the practical working of the “Constitution Civile.” It abounds with information of the highest interest as to the proceedings of the Constitutional clergy; recounting at length their strenuous exertions in the cause of religious liberty, and their wonderful success in re-establishing Catholic ordinances after the fearful impieties of the Terreur. But when they have occasion to notice their rivals of the dispossessed episcopate, the authors of the “Annales” fail to observe the most ordinary rules of moderation and charity. Even at a moment when union among Christians was indispensable, if France was to be rescued from the abyss of national apostasy, the organ of the Constitutionals could not refrain from language of the bitterest hostility. “Ye who are rending the bosom of your country, are these, then, the maxims of the Gospel? What! to harass families, to subvert the State, to raise the standard of rebellion, is that your religion? Surely, if the devil could have a religion, such is the religion he would choose. For four years past the refractory clergy have been postponing the counter-revolution from fortnight to fortnight. After having bed so often, how is it that they still find men accessible to credulity? No! the citizens cannot possibly shut their eyes to the criminal manoeuvres by which it is attempted to wrest from them the fruit of six years of courage, and to bring back all the abuses of despotism.”

And this besetting sin of exaggeration and false colouring is by no means peculiar to the partisans of the Revolution. Controversialists of the opposite school, lay and clerical —Proyart, Guillon, Barruel, D’Auribeau, and especially the learned Abbé Hulot, editor of the “Collection of the Briefs of Pius VI”— were not exempt from similar failings, and their statements must be received with habitual caution.

If, amid the Babel of tongues, we were to specify any two individuals as worthy to represent the interests of their respective camps, the choice would fall, probably, upon the Abbé Barruel and Bishop Gregoire. The works of Barruel, making allowance for a certain narrowness and captiousness too natural under his circumstances, form a sterling contribution to the Church history of his time; his Histoire du Clergé pendant la Revolution is constantly cited as an authority. It was written, however, at a disadvantage, during the author’s residence among the Émigrés in England, and is open, in consequence, to the charge of occasional inaccuracy, though there is no cause to suspect it of wilful misrepresentation. Barruel published likewise an important treatise on the Concordat of 1801, which procured him the patronage of the great Napoleon. He assisted largely in the compilation of the well-known “Ami de la Religion,” and was for several years editor of the “Journal Ecclesiastique,” a celebrated organ of his party.

The Memoires of Bishop Gregoire are specially valuable as offering an original portraiture both of the character and career of the prelate himself and of the Republican society in which he lived. No man can read them without feeling how completely his adherence to the Revolution was a matter not only of political but of religious conviction. Gregoire believed that the “principles of 1789” were essentially those of the Gospel; and that in promoting to the utmost of his power measures of radical reform, both in the administration of the Church and in the civil economy, he was strictly discharging the duties of his office as a Christian minister. But with all his impetuous enthusiasm in the Revolutionary cause, Gregoire was, in practice, the most tolerant and charitable of men. All sects and all classes —Jews, Protestants, Negroes, prisoners, criminals— were alike the objects of his indiscriminate philanthropy. In the midst of the fierce struggle between the two denominations of French clergy, he studiously preserved the relations of private friendship with both. When the persecution was at its height, he frequently employed himself in planning and executing deeds of benevolence towards his separated brethren; and if they sometimes proved ungrateful, “What does that signify to me?” he would exclaim: “the only thing I care for is the fact that I have been useful to them; and may I be able to find many more opportunities of doing the same thing!”

It was a melancholy contrast to this truly Christian example when, at the death of Gregoire in 1831, the Archbishop of Paris prohibited his clergy from administering to him the last rites of religion. The government of Louis Philippe resented this insult to one who, whatever his faults and errors, had maintained and adorned, in times of extraordinary trial, the profession of a Catholic priest. A positive order of the authorities opened the doors of the parish church to the funeral procession; and a few ecclesiastics, strangers to the diocese, performed the usual ceremonies.

The more recent French writers who have so ably interpreted the secular history of the Revolution touch but briefly and superficially on the concerns of the Church at that momentous epoch. They seem to have no just estimation of the character and claims of the only Church of modern days which has undergone the scathing ordeal of persecution.

They misconstrue the real drift of the ecclesiastical legislation of the Constituent Assembly; imagining that it involved no interference with the doctrinal teaching or the constitution of the Church; that nothing was contemplated beyond a searching measure of disciplinary and financial reform. “The Assembly,” says M. Thiers, “in reforming abuses, made no aggression upon ecclesiastical dogmas, nor did it attack the authority of the Pope. With regard to its rights, it is clear to every candid mind that the Assembly did not exceed them by legislating as to the temporalities of the Church.” This misrepresentation was industriously propagated by the “patriots” throughout the Revolutionary struggle. But there is no doubt, in point of fact, that the changes then effected involved, to say the least, important doctrine; and, among other things, materially altered the ancient relationships of the Gallican Church with the Chair of St. Peter. The schism would never have taken place, had the questions at issue affected nothing more than the temporal fortunes of the Church, or improvements in its practical administration. But it must be borne in mind that M. Thiers and the other historians of his school are avowedly, and as it were by profession, apologists of the Revolution. In order to justify the famous ecclesiastical programme of 1790, its authors found it necessary to announce from the beginning that they had no intention to attack institutions of a spiritual nature: their proposals were confined to matters of practical reform. And this line of self-defence has been carefully perpetuated by their successors ever since. But the argument is inconsistent with historical fact. For what purpose was that elaborate and anxious series of negotiations undertaken in 1801 and the following year, if the misfortunes of the Church of France extended only to the loss of worldly honours, political power, and temporal emolument? Why was it treated throughout as the primary, indispensable object, to establish terms of reconciliation with the Apostolic See?

The work published in 1857 by Father Theiner, Documents inedits relatifs aux Affaires Religieuses de la France, 1790 a 1800, is a rich store of authentic ecclesiastical records extracted from the Secret Archives of the Vatican. It consists, in the first volume, of a selection of the briefs and other decisions of the Holy See concerning the Church of France, from the year 1790 to the death of Pope Pius VI; which the learned editor has reproduced with the most scrupulous care from the originals, in order to preclude for all future time the fable once so popular with the Revolutionists, that those utterances were spurious.

Theiner has reprinted the celebrated Constitution Civile du Clergé from the official copy made by order of the National Assembly, and transmitted to the Sovereign Pontiff by Louis XVI. Annexed to it is the letter of Louis himself to the Pope on that occasion; and likewise an extremely curious memorial to the Holy Rather by Cardinal de Bernis, specifying the concessions which it was hoped by the French Government that the Court of Rome might be induced to make at that perilous moment, with a view to avert the schism which was every day becoming more gravely imminent.

The second volume of F. Theiner’s Documents is devoted to the correspondence of the exiled Gallican bishops and clergy with Pius VI, with his ministers, and with each other. This unique collection is mainly occupied, as might be expected, with details of the privations and sufferings endured by the clerical victims of the Revolution, and the history of the noble “Opera pia della ospitalità Francese,” the institution founded at Rome, and administered by the Pontifical Government, for their relief. It forms a series of more than sixty large folio volumes in the Vatican Library, each lettered appropriately “De charitate Sanctae Sedis erga Gallos.” During the occupation of Rome by the French army, Pius VI consigned these records to a secret hiding place known only to one or two Cardinals, where they remained till the French Church was restored to freedom and security by the Concordat of 1801.

Of that act of wise reparative policy the same accomplished Archivist has given us an admirable account in his work Les deux Concordats, published in 1869. I have chiefly relied on his authority; carefully collating his statements, however, with those contained in the Memoirs of Cardinal Consalvi, and with the highly finished narrative of the Comte de Haussonville, L’Église Romaine et le Premier Empire” F. Theiner’s action on this occasion was hastened, he tells us, by the sudden appearance of Consalvi’s Memoirs, which had been kept concealed for nearly forty years in the custody of his literary executors. On the approach of the Italian war in 1859 it was judged advisable that they should see the light; and M. Cretineau-Joly was commissioned to act as editor of these precious manuscripts, which were destined, in his own words, “to reveal combinations, actions, and circumstances of which history had up to that moment neither trace nor suspicion.” They were given to the world in 1864; and this step made it necessary, in Theiner’s opinion, to put forth a correction of various mistakes and contradictions into which the Cardinal had fallen through the stress of adverse circumstances under which he had written. That such was the case Consalvi himself, indeed, had ingenuously confessed, and referred his readers to his official despatches, preserved in the Roman Archives, as the only indisputable records of his eventful ministry. These are quoted throughout F. Theiner’s pages. The chief point upon which he considers that the common view of that portion of Napoleon’s reign requires rectification is that of the true animus by which he was governed in negotiating the Concordat. Consalvi, he says, writing ab irato from his prison at Reims, confounds together two distinct epochs of Napoleon’s career, and imputes to him in his character as First Consul the fatal faults which were developed subsequently in his conflict with the Church. But, as he proceeds to observe, there are moments and acts in the lives of the greatest of men which are not logically consistent with each other. It would be manifestly unjust if aberrations of the latter years of the Empire were held to efface, or even to diminish, the merits of the generous initiative taken under the Consulate. Why should we pass a severer sentence on Napoleon than that pro­nounced by Pius VH. himself, who had more to complain of at his hands than anyone else, and who yet never failed to testify to the end of his days that the Church owed him a debt of everlasting gratitude for having raised the fallen altars and restored Catholic worship in France?

Whether the particular form under which Napoleon reorganised the religious edifice was the best possible in itself, and the most desirable under the existing circumstances of the French nation, is a question upon which there will always be differences of opinion. M. de Pressense, in his remarkable volume L’Église et la Revolution Français, argues powerfully that it would have been wiser had the Consular Government maintained the system of the Directory, and declined all official connection with religion. But it is to be remembered that the moment was one of strong reaction; and the reaction, so far as religion was concerned, was almost inevitably a return to Catholicism in the shape which had prevailed in former ages; popular feeling would not have comprehended any other. We may well believe, then, that although self-interest and worldly ambition were doubtless the mainsprings of Napoleon’s policy in seeking reconciliation with the Church of Rome, he was not insensible to the nobler purpose of restoring the ancient elements of social order and stability. The two motives, indeed, were in his mind inseparable. He desired to secure his own ascendency by replacing in its immemorial position an institution which the French had ever looked upon as the safe­guard of their highest national privileges.

The Life of the Abbé Emery, Superior of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, is a work which I have found of the greatest value in describing the difficulties with which the French Clergy had to cope under the despotism of Napoleon. The Life of Cardinal d’Astros, Archbishop of Toulouse, by F. Caussette, is another biography of the same character, and of almost equal importance.

It is scarcely necessary to say that I have drawn materials largely from the almost inexhaustible treasures of the British Museum. Many years ago my attention was directed, by the kindness of Mr. Garnett, to the Bibliothèque Historique de la Révolution, there preserved; which is probably the most remarkable collection of contemporary publications in existence. I have likewise made researches among the MSS. of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris; and have profited by examining the very curious and significant records of the Comité Ecclésiastique, which have been placed among the National Archives.

I beg to offer my grateful acknowledgments to Lord Acton for the privilege of access to his magnificent Library at Aldenham. Nor can I forget to record my obligations to the late Rev. G. H. Forbes, whose friendly criticisms and suggestions were of great service to me during what was unhappily his last visit to Paris, in the autumn of 1875.

28 Holland Park, W.

January 20, 1882.

 

 

 

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

 

The traditional estimate of the condition of society in France towards the close of the eighteenth century has been amply confirmed by the result of fresh researches in our own time. So far as regards the political difficulties and social disorders of that period, the mass of evidence now in our hands is abundantly conclusive. It would appear, however, that less attention has been paid to the history and details of the Ecclesiastical complications which were destined to press so heavily upon the issues of the great struggle then impending.

The Ecclesiastical Economy suffered scarcely less than the civil from the decrepitude and derangement which had overspread the whole machinery of government during the latter days of the Ancien Régime. The Gallican Church, identified as it was with the Feudal organisation of the Middle Ages, had “grown with its growth, and strengthened with its strength until it had reached a marvellous and inordinate pitch of wealth and grandeur of territorial dominion and political ascendency. But Feudalism, at the date to which we refer, had long since passed its zenith, and was rapidly on the decline; and the Church in like measure, though still apparently secure in its prescriptive position, was involved in the inevitable penalties of past errors and chronic maladministration. The oppressiveness of aristocratic privilege, the unequal distribution of fiscal burdens, the jealousies of rival classes, and other kindred grievances under which France laboured as a secular community, had their counterpart in the spiritual domain; and the evils thus engendered contributed seriously to swell the rising tide of popular agitation.

Before investigating the special causes which had brought about a state of things so damaging to the welfare of the Church, it is important to observe that, notwithstanding all grounds of discontent and disaffection, the heart of the nation was not as yet consciously alienated either from doctrinal Christianity or from the Church as a national Establishment. Unbelief, indeed, under the euphemism of “philosophy,” had made vast ravages among the upper and educated classes; nor can it be denied that a latitudinarian spirit was widely rife among the clergy, especially of the superior ranks. But there had been no general abandonment of the principle of religious faith; no positive divorce between the traditions of antiquity and the affections of the mass of the people. Catholicism was a plant almost indigenous in France. Louis XVI possessed multitudes of subjects in every walk of life, and in every part of his dominions from Picardy to Provence, who were neither atheists, nor separatists, nor anarchists; but who (independently, it may be, of any definite process of reasoning on such matters) were in the main honestly attached to the immemorial institutions of the country: to the Altar and the Throne. Such men were essentially Conservatives; but they were not therefore blind to the dangers of the age and the peculiar necessities of France. All intelligent observers saw that the ancient system was about to take its trial at the bar of public opinion, and that grave changes were imminent; but there were those (and among them must be reckoned the wisest and truest patriots of the day) who hoped and believed that such changes might be effected without any wide or violent departure from the lines of the existing constitution. They hailed with intense satisfaction the royal decree convoking the States-General. They looked upon that step as the precursor of a second “golden age” fraught with inestimable blessings, not only for France, but for the whole civilised world. According to their fond anticipations, the new era was to witness a cordial recognition of the rights and liberties of the people, in just harmony with the inalienable prerogatives of hereditary monarchy. All remnants of mediaeval tyranny were to disappear under a generous appreciation of the dignity of free manhood, guaranteed by a truly representative legislature. Inveterate abuses were to be sternly extirpated in every department of the public service. The administrative government of France was to become an object of envy and emulation to all other nations. And above all, the “religion of St. Louis” was to be purified from the foul stains which had so long defaced it, and restored to its pristine lustre. The Gallican Church, rejuvenescent in sound doctrine and exemplary discipline, was once more to flourish as a model to the Catholic world to be the acknowledged palladium of the original laws and franchises of Christendom.

The details of this somewhat Utopian reformation may be gathered from a collection of official documents of the highest authority—namely, the Cahiers drawn up by the three Estates of the realm on the occasion of the general elections of 1789. The following are some of the important changes then demanded by the constituencies throughout France;—The total abolition of pluralities, and of the practice of granting benefices in commendam; the suppression of the mendicant Orders; the repeal of the Concordat of Bologna; the appointment, if not of bishops, at least of parochial incumbents, by way of popular suffrage; a reduction and redistribution of episcopal revenues; an augmentation of the “portions congrues,” or pittance allotted to the inferior clergy; the commutation or redemption of the tithes; and the residence of all pastors among their flocks for at least nine months in the year.

Such requirements, though sufficiently trenchant, were, at any rate, not subversive of the ancient constitutional status of the Church. It is clear that those who framed the Cahiers contemplated no policy of wholesale demolition, no violent organic revolution, either in Church or State. While insisting on a more efficient administration of the Church —on a more equal distribution of its revenues, a more strict enforcement of its canonical discipline, a just limitation of its temporal power— they were by no means prepared to repudiate its authority as a teacher, or to apostatise from the inherited faith of their forefathers.

A conservative reformation of the character thus indicated by the electoral bodies of 1789 was perhaps at that moment practicable. But its advocates were not sufficiently alive to the existence of special difficulties and factious machinations which threatened to obstruct and mar the enterprise. The great danger to be apprehended was this;—that the admitted necessity of these ecclesiastical changes should be seized upon as a pretext and a handle by reformers of a different stamp by men whose purposes were simply destructive; who designed not only to break down the external barriers of an enormously wealthy Church Establishment, but also to level with the ground the inner citadel of Catholicism, and even of Christianity itself. That a deliberate plot for that end had long since been formed is a fact unhappily too clear to all who have examined with moderate attention the writings of the eighteenth century philosophers particularly the correspondence of Voltaire. No such purpose, indeed, was from the first openly avowed; on the contrary, throughout the early stages of the movement it was studiously disguised. Voltaire, the arch-propagandist of the infidel system, while urging his disciples to unwearied energy and perseverance in their attacks upon religion, inculcates no less earnestly the necessity of caution and secrecy in dealing with the world at large. “The mysteries of Mithras,” he writes (meaning the antichristian conspiracy), “are not to be divulged. The monster (religion) must fall pierced by a hundred invisible hands; yes, it must fall beneath a thousand repeated blows.” “Strike,” is his favourite precept; “strike, but conceal your hand. The Nile is said to spread around its fertilising waters, while it conceals its head; do you the same, and you will secretly enjoy your triumph.” Mirabeau, at a later period, partially raised the mask, when he instructed his followers that “if they wished to have a revolution, they must begin by decatholicising France”; yet that accomplished agitator, in his place as a member of the legislature, took care to affect the utmost reverence for the national religion, and congratulated his colleagues on having expressed the attachment of the French people to the true faith and the best interests of the Church.

It was by these and other such-like hypocritical artifices that unsuspecting Catholics were hoodwinked as to the real drift of various plausible projects emanating from the revolutionary camp;—projects which (as is now too manifest) tended to the overthrow at once of civil and religious liberty, and issued at last in a disastrous collapse of authority both in Church and State.

The earlier wrongs inflicted on the Church were so many steps towards those ulterior excesses which culminated in the suppression of Christianity in France. The first blow was aimed against ecclesiastical property. The Church, when once plundered of its long-descended temporal possessions, sank into a degraded position in the eyes of the nation, and lost all power of corporate action. Next followed, what indeed was an almost necessary corollary, the so-called “Constitution Civile du Clergé”; which produced, as its immediate fruit, a calamitous schism among the clergy, and eventually a cruel persecution of those courageous pastors who refused to purchase worldly ease and advantage at the expense of a perjured conscience. Those who usurped their places found themselves at once in conflict with the Roman See; they were branded by the highest Church authority as intruders and schismatics; and in consequence they utterly failed to acquire the confidence and sympathy of the Catholic community. Their ministrations were slighted, their churches deserted; and by degrees religion lost its hold upon the national mind, and became an object of indifference and contempt. The strife between two rival types of Catholicism opened the door to the wildest and most monstrous aberrations; a desperate revolt arose, not only against revealed truth, but against the authority of the moral lawgiver; and this developed with appalling rapidity into social disintegration and semi-heathen barbarism.

It was a closely linked chain of events, the cohesion of which is distinctly traceable from first to last;—from the memorable attack upon Church property by Talleyrand in October 1789, to the impious installation of the “Goddess Reason” at Notre Dame, the scandalous abjurations of the “constitutional” bishops and clergy, and the dismal proclamation of national apostacy, in November 1793.

That melancholy catastrophe left results which have never yet wholly disappeared from the history of modern France. Its lessons are imperishable; the lapse of time detracts nothing from their thrilling interest and their vast practical import. Too much attention cannot be bestowed upon the causes of the sudden fate which overwhelmed that stately edifice, the ancient Church of France; which undermined the influence and ruined the hopes of men like Malouet and Cazales, Mounier and Lally-Tolendal, Mathieu Dumas and Bertrand de Moleville; which extinguished the high-souled enthusiasm of 1789 in the desolations and chaos of 1793.

I.

SECRET PERILS OF THE CHURCH.

 

Some of these causes do not lie upon the surface. The Church, though to all outward appearance powerfully constituted, and enjoying an unprecedented measure of worldly prosperity, was suffering from various elements of internal weakness, which disabled it from opposing a firm and united front to the common enemy. Among these it has been usual to place in the first line the vices, the worldliness of life, and the scarcely concealed infidelity, which unquestionably prevailed among the bishops and superior clergy. This had long been a source of anxious peril to French society. The evidence as to the extent of the evil, however, is conflicting. It would be difficult to prove that there was more of moral degeneracy among the clergy of 1789 than among their brethren of any earlier date. There were, no doubt, among the heads of the Church men of equivocal orthodoxy, luxurious lives, and licentious morals; but these by no means fairly represented their order. As a rule, the hierarchy were at least outwardly decorous and correct. Many prelates were of irreproachable conduct; not a few were men of high attainments in learning, piety, and pastoral efficiency. As to the parochial clergy, they are acknowledged on all hands to have been respectable in character, sedulous in their duties, and beloved by their flocks. “I do not know,” says Alexis de Tocqueville, “whether, all things considered, and in spite of the scandalous vices of some of its members, there ever was a body of clergy in the world more remarkable than the Catholic clergy of France at the moment when they were surprised by the Revolution;—more enlightened, more national, less wrapped up in the mere practice of private virtue, better furnished with public virtues, and at the same time eminent for religious faith. I entered on the study of the ancient society full of prejudices against it: I left off full of respect for it.” Such, too, is the testimony of more recent inquirers. “The virtues of the great majority,” says Mortimer Ternaux, “were unknown to the multitude; while the vices of some few offended the eyes of all.” “Taken as a whole,” observes M. Jean Wallon, “the clergy of the eighteenth century, the monks excepted, were neither better nor worse than they had been in the age preceding. The unfairness was, that malicious critics suppressed all mention of the hundred and twenty bishops whose lives were unimpeachable, while they made the whole body responsible for the scandals occasioned by some few of its members.”

It must be admitted, nevertheless, that there was ample ground for the universally prevalent complaints against the great possessors of Church property. The idiosyncrasy of the feudal system encouraged and almost compelled the higher clergy to immerse themselves in the concerns of secular life; since the position of temporal grandees was inseparable from their rank in the spiritual hierarchy. Bishops, being ex officio territorial magnates —counts, barons, seigneurs possessed of the right of “haute et basse justice” —were burdened by a multiplicity of worldly avocations, scarcely compatible with the duties of the pastoral care. They lived on equal terms with the lay nobility, from which caste they were almost exclusively chosen, and with whom they had the closest community of interest. Hence it followed naturally that the episcopal palace rivalled, if it did not outshine, in the splendour of its appointments and the sumptuousness of its hospitality, even the most brilliant of the neighbouring aristocratic chateaux. “The episcopate,” says the Abbé Guillon, “had become nothing more than a secular dignity. It was necessary to be a count or a marquis in order to be a successor of the Apostles, unless some extraordinary chance snatched out of the hands of the minister of the feuille des bénéfices some small bishopric in favour of a lucky parvenu.” Nor were the scandals of these high-born prelates confined to the extravagance of their households, their equipages, and their festal entertainments. Too often their establishments presented spectacles still more glaringly at variance with their profession.

The example of the conventual bodies was equally if not more unedifying. All the more richly endowed abbeys were held by “abbés commendataires.” These were ecclesiastics nominated by the Crown or the minister of the day, who, being bound by no monastic vows, lived in the world, enjoying high rank and ample revenues, and were scarcely known to the cloistered societies which they nominally governed. The active duties of superior were discharged by one of the monks entitled the ' prieur claustral', appointed by the abbot, and revocable at his pleasure. This practice inevitably engendered serious evils. The pious endowments of past ages were squandered in dissipation and sensuality. Discipline was universally relaxed, and the true spirit of monasticism declined to the lowest ebb. The religious Orders so dwindled in numbers, that in many once flourishing and celebrated houses there remained no more than seven or eight inmates, whose lives, though not perhaps scandalous, were lethargic and useless.

The state of the monasteries became one of the most fruitful themes of popular clamour against the whole practical economy of the Church. It is obvious to remark that it lay in the power of the civil government to suppress the most prominent of the abuses prevailing on this head, by abandoning the pernicious habit of granting abbeys in commendam. But this was a course which no government could adopt without sacrificing its own interest. The system added immensely to the patronage of the Crown, and formed an easy and convenient means of advancing favourites, attaching influential personages, and providing for the younger branches of royal and noble houses. So long as the ancient monarchy lasted, it was vain to expect that it would ever willingly surrender such a lucrative part of its prerogative.

Meanwhile the parochial clergy —the fifty thousand ill-requited labourers who bore the burden and heat of the day—were separated by a broad and impassable chasm from their more fortunate brethren. They belonged, with scarcely an exception, to the roturier class; their birth and lineage, their connections and interests, were those of the common people. From the great prizes of the profession they were systematically excluded. In theory they were provided for by the tithes; but in point of fact the tithe was in most cases appropriated by the gros décimateur who bestowed on his subordinate a stipend (called the “portion congrue”) barely sufficient to maintain him decently. Moreover, they were subjected to gross injustice with regard to the representative Assemblies of the clergy, in which they very rarely obtained a seat, the members being habitually chosen from among the bishops, abbots, and cathedral chapters. By this arrangement the power of taxing the ecclesiastical body was monopolised by the dignitaries; and in consequence that burden was made to fall with disproportionate weight upon the part of the order which was least able to support it. Under such circumstances, deprived of their fair share of political importance, and harassed by a multitude of vexatious and humiliating grievances, it is not wonderful that the lower clergy should have contracted feelings of deep-seated jealousy and distrust towards their superiors. To these sentiments they gave utterance in a profusion of cynical strictures which inundated Paris on the eve of the meeting of the States-General; and the effect thus produced upon the ecclesiastical electors at large may be estimated by the fact that no fewer than two hundred and five parish priests were returned to the forthcoming legislature, while the successful candidates from the “haut clergé” fell short of one hundred. Intrigues and pressure of various kinds were employed to secure this result.

In a petition presented by the curés to the throne at the moment of the elections, we find them claiming, as they were well entitled to do, the character of the true friends and protectors of the suffering poor, in contrast to the superciliousness and indifference which they met with too commonly from the governing classes of the Church. “Sire,” said they, “the curés who now approach your Majesty’s throne as suppliants are the guardians of nine millions of the most unfortunate of your subjects”. They ought therefore to act as their advocates in the great Council of the nation, for they alone can defend their cause with success. The poor inhabitants of towns do not invade the solitude of the conventual cloister to explain the causes of their distress, nor do the rural poor besiege the episcopal palace to make known to the prelate their afflicting secrets. It is to the parish priest that they open their hearts in his frequent visits to their lowly abodes. “It is important, Sire, under present circumstances, to revive the confidence of a desponding people; and the presence of the curés in the States-General may contribute largely to inspire them with returning hope.” In another pamphlet, the “Petition des Curés,” they set forth their views in the following language: “Who are they who come to the relief of these unhappy people? Is it the seigneurs of parishes? We are compelled to state that some of them scarcely ever visit their domains, while others come only for the purpose of receiving their rents. If great men are sometimes liberal in their charities, it is generally from ostentation. The poor then have no one to appeal to but ourselves. But all that we possess for the relief both of their necessities and our own is 750 livres per annum. Is it desirable that an abbot, a prior, a monk, should hold several benefices at once, and enjoy a revenue of fifty, eighty, a hundred thousand livres, when a parish priest has but 750? Is the pluralist more useful? does he do more good? All the world knows that most of the holders of rich benefices are only illustrious do-nothings, and that they consume the patrimony of the poor in luxury; it is their scandalous conduct that gives rise to all these satirical publications. We urgently demand that the clerical deputies shall be chosen one half from the superior and the other half from the inferior clergy. Our representatives will make known the extreme disproportion which exists between our revenues and our necessities, between our resources and those of the high clergy; they will set forth the injustice of the present distribution of the décimes. Our complaints will be heard. But while we defend our interests against the private interests of others who oppose us, we will never defend them against the public interest; we will carry into the assembly of the nation an unbounded devotion to duty, and perfect resignation to all the sacrifices which public safety and the prosperity of our country may demand.”

The bitter antagonism which thus reigned between the two great sections of the clergy had a sinister and ruinous bearing upon the prospects of the Church at that eventful moment. The cures, irritated by the haughty reserve of their episcopal fellow-deputies, cast in their lot for the most part with the cote gauche, and identified themselves with the Revolution. In process of time, when it became clear that the National Assembly was bent upon a destructive policy, and that the doctrine of the Church was imperilled as well as its temporalities, they recognised their mistake, and attempted to repair it. But it was then too late. An unnatural coalition of declared enemies with misguided friends had enacted the ill-starred “Constitution Civile”;— the true character of which was not fully apprehended till the last moment. The false step was irretrievable; and it seems plain that the cause of the Church was ruined, in great measure, by the deplorable lack of mutual confidence, vigilance, and clearsightedness among its chosen representatives

 

II.

FRUITS OF JANSENIST CONTROVERSY.

 

Other causes are clearly discernible in the scroll of his­tory, which contributed to embarrass and enfeeble the action of the Gallican Church at this threatening crisis. Besides the organic division already adverted to, there were maladies which resulted from controversial strife and party rivalries; antiquated feuds which, though long since extinct in outward appearance, had never yet been prosecuted to their final issues. The Jansenistic controversy, which in its successive developments had distracted France for upwards of a century, left behind it seeds of animosity which were so widely ramified through all the strata of society that it was impossible to ignore their agency. Jansenism was no mere transient wave of agitation raised by the collision of two rival schools of religious thought. In its origin, doubtless, it was a purely theological dispute; but it is no less certain that in course of time it almost entirely lost that character, and took the shape of a struggle in the domain of civil politics, closely affecting the whole constitutional organism of the empire. Those who wish, to master in detail the steps which led to this alarming state of things must not shrink from the task of exploring the intricacies of Church history in France from the beginning of the seventeenth century downwards. For the purposes of the present investigation, however, it may be sufficient to recapitulate certain facts connected with the famous Constitution “Unigenitus,” promulgated by Pope Clement XI in the year 1713.

That proceeding on the part of the Vatican, designed as it was to crush for ever all vestige of resistance to the decrees against the “Five Propositions” of Jansenius, stirred up, on the contrary, a more furious storm of opposition than had hitherto been witnessed. Whatever may be thought of the doctrinal contents of the “Unigenitus,” there is no doubt that practically it was an act of vengeance directed by the Jesuit Le Tellier and his Order against those who were bold enough to dispute their mischievous ascendency in Church and State. As long as Cardinal de Noailles lived, the opponents of the Bull maintained their ground with considerable success, and at one time bade fair to achieve a decided victory. But subsequently the Curialists acquired the mastery, and abused their triumph by a merciless persecution. The majority of the bishops, backed by the Crown, insisted on the acceptance of the Bull with no less rigour than if it had been part and parcel of the Catholic faith —a necessary condition of Church communion. A saintly and much-venerated prelate, Soanen, bishop of Senez, who had steadily refused submission, was arraigned before a packed provincial Council under the presidency of the infamous Tencin, condemned, stripped of the episcopal office, and driven into a remote imprisonment. But this culminating act of iniquity roused the spirit of Nemesis in a quarter where it was not to be easily appeased. The deprived bishop appealed comme d’abus to the Parliament of Paris. The government (then in the hands of Cardinal Fleury) interfered, and evoked the cause to the cognizance of the Council of State; in other words, summarily suppressed it. This served only to intensify the counter-agitation, which speedily assumed wider dimensions. At a great gathering of the Advocates of Paris a manifesto was drawn up and published condemning in no measured terms the unrighteous sentence of the Council of Embrun, and denouncing, moreover, the entire policy of the executive both ecclesiastical and civil with regard to the Papal Constitution and those who dissented from it. A bold protest was added against the recent arbitrary interference with the functions and practice of the courts of law. The reply of Louis XV was a rash edict requiring that the Unigenitus should be forthwith registered and obeyed as a law not only of the Church but of the State. But on attempting to enforce this by the despotic expedient of a “bed of justice,” the monarch found himself foiled by an adverse vote of the Parliament, passed by the decisive majority of two-thirds of the councillors present, an event altogether unprecedented in its annals.

War was now openly declared between the Crown and the judicial corporations throughout the kingdom, and the strength of the absolute monarchy was put to the test in a series of desperate encounters with the traditional guardians of the rights of the subject. The Parliament energetically espoused the cause of the “Appellants,” which was in substance that of the Jansenists; and hence arose a close alliance between the legal authorities and the disaffected party in the Church, while both combined in an attitude of stubborn opposition to the court and the dominant section of the episcopate. Ever since its first appearance, Jansenism had counted zealous friends upon the benches of the Parisian magistracy; the families of some of the leaders of the party —Arnauld, Le Maitre, Pascal, Domat, and others— having been long and honourably connected with that distinguished body. But in addition to the ties of blood and of professional esprit de corps, they were now associated in defence of a great national cause; in vindicating the majesty of the law, the independence of the judicial bench, the sacred principle of religious freedom, against the unconstitutional encroachments of the royal will.

It was an arduous and memorable struggle. The conduct of the remonstrants was often reprehensible the law-courts widely overstepped their province, and indulged in a tone of peremptory dictation in matters of Church discipline which was wholly unwarrantable. On the other hand, the Council of State annulled their judgments without scruple; refractory magistrates were exiled, imprisoned, deprived of office, interdicted from taking cognisance of the questions at issue ; and at length, in 1772, the Government took the extreme step of suppressing the ancient Parliaments of France, and replacing them by new tribunals under the name of “conseils superieurs.” But in the end the Crown was signally worsted; none the less so because it superciliously ignored the vast advantage acquired by the popular party. Under such circumstances it became impracticable to carry on the government upon the principles of unqualified absolutism characteristic of the old régime. With the utmost difficulty the traditional system was maintained till the close of the ignominious reign of Louis XV. But when the sceptre had passed into the feeble hands of his successor, the vessel of the State was seen to be fast drifting from its accustomed moorings, and venturing on a strange course, to the manifest bewilderment and dismay of those at the helm. Public opinion clamoured for a radical change of policy; and accordingly a series of experiments was undertaken by various statesmen more or less well qualified — Turgot, Necker, Calonne, Lomenie de Brienne, Lamoignon de Malesherbes— each of whom in turn exhausted his resources without solving a problem for which, in the precarious predicament in which affairs then stood, no solution perhaps existed short of a disruption both in the temporal and spiritual spheres.

But the false policy pursued in the case of the Bull Unigenitus produced one ulterior consequence which requires to be particularly noticed. The successors of that intrepid race of magistrates and advocates who fought the battle of the persecuted “appellants” in the earlier part of the century were returned in large numbers to the States-General of 1789. Thither they carried with them, naturally and inevitably, the prejudices, the antipathies, the grievances, the heart-burnings, which they inherited from a former generation. Indeed many of them, and those by no means men far advanced in life, might have witnessed with their own eyes some of the most scandalous scenes which marked the later years of the Jansenistic strife. They might have attended deathbeds where the sick man was heartlessly debarred the last consolations of religion, and sent to his account “unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,” simply because he could not produce a “billet de confession,” or certificate of having submitted to the late extravagant test imposed by Rome. They might have been shocked and exasperated by the fierce denunciations of Archbishop de Beaumont. They might have listened to the indignant remonstrances of the parliaments, and the caustic sarcasms of contemptuous “philosophers.” They might have watched the whole train of odious severities by which a tyrannical court had striven to crush out the nascent germs of popular liberty.

Now it was not in the nature of things that men with such antecedents should forget the heavy outstanding account which they had to settle with the sovereign authority and with the heads of the Established Church; and beyond doubt they looked upon the dawning of the Revolution as a great opportunity to be utilised with all possible zeal in wiping out the score. Nor, perhaps, could they be expected to show much discretion or moderation in forming any political combination which might promise to be serviceable in accomplishing that object.

The result was that the interests of the Church were betrayed and sacrificed beforehand by the rancour of chronic intestine division. There is good reason to believe that if religious partisanship could have been suspended or relinquished, it might have been possible to combat with substantial success the most tempestuous assaults of the Revolution. The destructive faction was not in itself preponderant; it became so by virtue of a strange confederacy with other parties, whose principles, had they been rightly understood and consistently pursued, would have led them in the opposite direction. The côté gauche of the Constituent Assembly was composed of heterogeneous materials. The sneering sceptic, the fanatical Jansenist, the extravagant Gallican, the bigoted Protestant, the discontented curé de campagne, the visionary theorist, the flippant shallow-brained journalist— all were combined in this anomalous league for overturning the prescriptive government of France. Empirics of many conflicting schools, sinking their differences, made common cause against a system which, after a reign of unexampled duration, was now denounced on all sides as having prostrated the nation on the brink of ruin.

The subversion of the feudal status of the Church was aimed at from different quarters with a considerable variety of ultimate purpose. By agitators of the Parliamentary, ultra-Gallican, Jansenist complexion it was promoted as a means of enslaving the Church to the civil power, and facilitating fundamental changes in its relations with the see of Rome. Voltairian philosophers concurred in the same policy because they knew that to deprive the Church of temporal preeminence was to prepare the way for a direct attack upon the main bulwarks of Christianity; and that thus it would become an easier task to “decatholicise” France. But the latter class of politicians had the tact to put forward their allies as instruments in commencing the work of aggression, while they themselves remained for the present in the background, carefully concealing their more dangerous projects. The affections of the mass of the people were still so far from being alienated from the faith of their fathers, that it would have been grossly impolitic to hazard any premature demonstration. The proceedings of the Assembly, therefore, were marked in the first stages by much show of moderation; and the task of digesting plans for the organisation of the “Church of the future” was intrusted to men of high respectability, whom none could justly accuse of irreligious tendencies. The “Ecclesiastical Committee” was a body which played a part so serious in the legislation of the day, that its composition and history demand the special attention of the reader.

The “Comité Ecclésiastique” of the National Assembly was appointed on the 20th of August, 1789. It consisted originally of fifteen members, of whom five only were ecclesiastics; viz., the Bishops of Clermont and Luçon, and three cures, Grandin, Vaneau, and Lalande. On an occasion of such vital moment, this was obviously a very inadequate proportion to assign to the representatives of the Established Church. In fairness, the Committee ought to have included at least all the prelates who had seats in the Assembly. The persons chosen, however, were men of considerable distinction, both intellectually and morally. The name which claims the first mention is that of François de Bonal, Bishop of Clermont; a prelate of remarkable ability and force of character, universally respected and beloved for his learning and virtues. He was born in the year 1734, at the Château de Bonal in the diocese of Agen; was appointed Bishop of Clermont in 1776; and sat in the States-General as member for the bailliage of Clermont. Though zealous for the reform of abuses, Bishop de Bonal was deeply attached to the ancient constitution; and from the outset he resisted, firmly but temperately, the march of reckless innovation. But in the proceedings of the Committee, although he was named its first president, his voice was overborne and neutralised by his lay colleagues, many of whom were devoted to the cause of liberalism. Another prominent member was Louis d’Ormesson de Noiseau, a ci-devant President of the Parliament of Paris, and librarian to the King; of the highest repute as a lawyer and a scholar, of strong monarchical principles, and one of the most influential members of the côté droit. Durand de Maillane, again, was one whose equal as an accomplished jurisconsult was scarcely to be found in France. For years past he had concentrated his studies on the various branches of ecclesiastical law, and his published works upon that subject enjoyed high celebrity. Of the same stamp, and of equally established reputation, was Jean Denis Lanjuinais, at this time professor of canon law in the University of Rennes. Lanjuinais, besides being an erudite canonist, possessed some of the most shining gifts and acquirements of the legislator and the statesman. An ardent friend of the people, he had been entrusted by the commons of the States of Brittany (his native province) with the task of drawing up their cahier for the States-General; and had produced a document of rare merit for moderation and wisdom. Another member who actively shared the labours of the Committee was Jean Baptiste Treilhard, a pleader at the bar of Paris. Treilhard was a man of vigorous understanding, a powerful reasoner, a persuasive orator. He began by professing Conservative principles; and it was his eloquent speech in favour of granting the “suspensive veto” to the Crown that first brought him into notice in the Constituent Assembly. But subsequently he was gained over by the “patriots,” and became a thorough-paced partisan of the democratic school. In that capacity Treilhard exercised a commanding influence over his colleagues upon most of the “burning questions” of the day. The remaining six names were not of remarkable eminence. But there were three deputies who, although not placed on the list of the Committee originally appointed, were deeply engaged from the first in shaping and controlling its proceedings; and to them must be assigned, par excellence, the responsibility of the unfortunate results which followed. One of them, Armand Gaston Camus, is usually credited with the chief authorship of the famous scheme of reform which was forced upon the Church under the auspices of the Revolution. Camus was widely known for intellectual culture, especially for his profound acquaintance with ecclesiastical law, which had procured for him the appointment of “avocat,” or counsel, to the clergy of France. On being elected one of the representatives of the city of Paris, he threw himself with energy into all the great party movements which contributed to the success of the Revolution; and in all controverted questions bearing upon religion his opinion was accepted by the cote gauche as oracular and conclusive. Camus was a strongly pronounced and bigoted Jansenist. Professedly a Catholic, he was withal a determined enemy of Ultramontanism and the absolutist maxims of the Roman Curia; and to abolish the direct jurisdiction which the Pope had exercised for ages in the government of particular or national churches was the foremost object for which he was prepared to agitate. His personal piety was formed upon the stern pattern of St. Cyran and other Port-Royalist celebrities, and was undoubtedly sincere.

Camus possessed two coadjutors whose earnestness and ardour in the cause were not inferior to his own; namely, Emanuel Freteau de Saint-Just, a member of the noblesse, and lately a councillor of the Parliament of Paris; and the celebrated Henri Gregoire, curé of Embermesnil in Lorraine, afterwards constitutional Bishop of Blois.

Now it must be acknowledged that the individuals just mentioned were in many respects well qualified to conduct the preliminary labours necessary to the great ecclesiastical changes contemplated by the National Assembly. They could not be complained of on the score of character, or ability, or experience in the peculiar departments of learning required by their position. Yet it was evident from the first moment that they could never work harmoniously together; for they were not agreed among themselves either as to matters of doctrinal theory, or as to the practical direction of their measures. The wide discrepancy between the theology of such a man as Bishop de Bonal, which had its standard in the latest developments of mediaeval Romanism, and that of Camus, Grégoire, Treilhard, Martineau, and their friends, was fatal to all prospect of united action. It must be remembered, however, that the orthodox members of the Committee were not aware, at this early date, of the real purposes of their more advanced colleagues; nor, indeed, is it to be supposed that the latter foresaw all the lengths to which they were ultimately to be driven by the inexorable logic of events.

The Assembly, while making a show of impartiality by placing on the Committee some few names which commanded the confidence of the Church, undoubtedly designed that the preponderance should rest in the hands of men more or less pledged to the Revolution; and we have already seen how it came to pass that one particular form of religious thought prevailed so largely in that section of the house.

 

RELIGIOUS VIEWS OF THE CÔTÉ GAUCHE

 

There is no need to suppose that this class of politicians were deeply imbued with Jansenism as a theological system; that they were familiar with all the polemical subtleties of St. Cyran, Arnauld, and Quesnel. Speaking generally, however, they were agreed upon certain characteristic principles and tenets, and those of no small importance. They asserted the independent nationality and autonomy of the Church of France. They insisted that the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff must be circumscribed within what they considered its legitimate and canonical dimensions. They contended that bishops have no need of institution by the Pope;—a practice which, it will be remembered, had been legalised in express terms by the Concordat of 1516. On the other hand, they were inclined to magnify the prerogatives of the clergy of the second order at the expense of their superiors. They taught, particularly, that priests receive all necessary “mission” in the act of ordination; and are therefore at liberty to exercise their ministry wherever and whenever they think fit, without further sanction from the diocesan.

Lastly, they were prepared to sweep away that vast congeries of mediaeval donations, endowments, and immunities, in virtue of which the Church had reached its present extreme pitch of aggrandisement. The clergy were to be shorn of their corporate revenues. Henceforth they were to content themselves with a humbler grade in the social scale, more in accordance with the simplicity, the austerity, the unworldliness of life, which adorned the primitive ages of the Gospel.

It was thus that, by a singular chain of occurrences, almost amounting to fatality, the chief influence in the reorganisation of the Church of France devolved upon men profoundly hostile to the pretensions of the Roman Curia, and resolved on a reformation which should finally suppress them. Unfortunately they failed to perceive that if, while emancipating the Church from the dominion of the Pope, they should reduce it to a state of slavish dependence on the civil power, the substitution of the latter yoke for the former would be no less pernicious to its real interests.

For several months after its appointment nothing transpired concerning the operations of the Ecclesiastical Committee. During that interval, however, the growing animosity against the Church, and the determination to attack its enormous revenues, found fatal expression in the National Assembly, and decrees were passed which amounted to a sentence of wholesale spoliation.

It must always remain a question whether these destructive measures would have been sanctioned by the Legislature had it been left to the exercise of its own discretion. As a matter of fact, they were forced upon it by an irresistible impulse from without. The lawless brigandage which broke out in the provinces gave rise to the events of the famous 4th of August; and these, again, prepared the way for the ruthless confiscation of Church property which followed. The proletarian revolt drove the Assembly, in a fit of frantic enthusiasm, to vote an unconditional holocaust of seigneurial privileges and serf-like obligations; and it was then that the clergy —either from sheer helplessness, or secret fear, or thoughtless sympathy with the contagious delirium around them— were induced to surrender their tithes. The droits de mainmorte, among which tithes were included, were declared at first to be redeemable at a just valuation; but subsequently, by the decision of a committee, they were extinguished without compensation.

On this eventful occasion, while the excitement of the house was at its height, De Bethisy, Bishop of Usez, let fall incidentally the sentiment that “the property of the clergy, and the rights attached to it, had been received from the nation, and that the nation alone had authority to cancel them.” This unguarded admission was instantly caught up by the côté gauche, who argued from it that tithes could not be redeemable, since, by the confession of churchmen themselves, they were not the property of the holders, but granted in trust by the nation. From this there was but a step —an easy and natural step— to a further inference, namely, that the nation might appropriate not only tithes, but other Church property of whatever description. And such was the conclusion announced in plain terms a few days later by the Marquis La Coste. “The State,” he said, “is burdened with an immense debt; and the people, overwhelmed with taxes, have clearly designated those which have become intolerable. The people and the public creditor must be satisfied. Already a great truth has been proclaimed in this Assembly, namely, that ecclesiastical property belongs to the nation. The time has arrived when the nation must vindicate that principle; for at this moment it is entering upon the full exercise of all its rights.”

 

DISCUSSION ON THE "RIGHTS OF MAN.

 

As the debates proceeded, it became more and more manifest that the religious notions of the majority were hopelessly confused and heterodox. The proposed Declaration of the Rights of Man gave rise to vehement discussion. The first question was whether that document should com­mence with any recognition of the existence and providence of God. Some speakers pronounced this superfluous, inasmuch as the presence of the Deity is universal, and cannot be disputed. Others held that some mention of that great elementary truth in the preamble was indispensable. “What!” exclaimed the Bishop of Nimes, “are we to be told that it is a trite idea that man’s being is derived from God? Would to God it were more trite than it is, so trite as never to have been contested! But when we are making laws for our country, it is fitting that they should be placed under the guardianship (sous l’égide) of the Divinity.” The Abbé Grégoire declared that a clause to this effect was required by public opinion, and that to omit it would be to expose France to the reprobation of civilised Europe. The Vicomte de Mirabeau proposed that the Decalogue, “that work of the greatest of legislators,” should be inserted entire at the head of the new Constitution; and pointed out the uselessness of enunciating abstract metaphysical dogmas, which failed to convey any distinct idea to ordinary minds. In the end the phrase originally suggested was adopted, and the clause was worded thus: “The National Assembly acknowledges and declares, under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights as belonging to men and citizens”.

The rights referred to were defined to consist in liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. But no sooner was it attempted to proceed from theoretical axioms to practical detail, than the Assembly found itself involved in a maze of perplexity which threatened to be fatal to all rational legislation. For instance, the general principle of liberty was naturally held to include religious liberty; but how could any satisfactory interpretation of that term be arrived at in the midst of the violent conflict of parties then prevailing? The bishops and clergy desired, of course, that (if proclaimed at all) it should be proclaimed in such a sense as to protect the ascendency of the Established Church. But this by no means squared with the notions of the côté gauche. They contended for unlimited toleration, so unlimited as to amount in fact to indifferentism. They abhorred the idea of a dominant Church. According to them, all sects ought to be on a footing of absolute equality; the civil power was to respect all alike; no form of religion was to be supported by aught except its intrinsic purity of doctrine and morals. “Liberty the most boundless in religion,” cried Mirabeau, “is in my eyes a right so sacred, that even the word toleration, by which it is sought to explain it, seems to me in some sort tyrannical. The existence of an authority which can grant toleration infringes freedom by the very fact of tolerating; for this implies that it might refuse to tolerate.”  The subsequent course of the debate grew agitated and tumultuous. The real struggle (though not acknowledged in words) lay between the Catholics and their opponents of various schools: rationalistic philosophers, Protestants, infidels, and Revolutionists. The latter party urged that religious freedom is a right by which it was meant to fix a stigma on the ancien régime, notorious as it had been for its intolerant spirit. The Conservatives retorted that respect for religion is a duty, designing thereby to pledge the Assembly to guarantee the actual position of national Catholicism, with its traditional system of administration. An ingenious speech by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, whose brilliant talents were already conspicuous, had the effect of putting an end for the time to this acrimonious dispute;— which result, however, amounted to a defeat for the Church party.

Talleyrand urged that the proper opportunity had not yet arrived for legislating on the respect due to religion; these matters would doubtless come before the house in due course, in the debates on the new code of constitutional law. Upon this the house postponed the consideration of the article on religious liberty till a later date; and the discussion closed by affirming that “no man ought to be molested on account of his religious opinions, provided they cause no violation of public order as established by law.”

The decisive assault upon the Church Establishment, which issued in the total sequestration of its landed property, was preceded, and indeed prompted, like the former, by external pressure, by outbreaks of democratic violence. A mid the general terror inspired by the events of the 5th and 6th of October, nothing was more marked than the determination of the popular leaders to heap odium upon the clergy; and to such a pitch was this carried, that the deputies of that order were no longer safe in attending the Assembly. The Abbé Grégoire complained bitterly of the injustice done to his brethren. “What,” he demanded, “is the offence of the ecclesiastics of this Assembly? Most of them a respectable pastors, well known for their patriotic zeal and devotion. It was an ecclesiastic who obtained from the Assembly a committee for providing means of sustenance for the starving people. The curés were the first to relinquish, with courageous unanimity, the absurd prejudices of their caste. The tithes have been abandoned. They have sacrificed the casuel. They eagerly supported the law for abolishing the plurality of benefices. They have made donations to the public treasury proportioned rather to their zeal than to their means. And what is their reward? Day after day they are insulted and outraged by the populace in the streets of Paris.” He besought the house, for the honour of the nation, and the success of the Revolution, to take fresh measures for protecting the clerical members, whose persons had been declared inviolable.

But the appeal met with little or no response. The clergy were more and more persistently held up to obloquy as enemies of the people; and every means of intimidation was practised to force upon the Assembly a course of unmitigated Church spoliation.

Many ecclesiastics, panic-stricken and despairing, resolved at this trying moment to abandon their posts and to retire from France. Among the earliest emigrants were De Juigné, Archbishop of Paris, the Bishop of Nantes, and several other prelates. This exhibition of weakness threw a manifest advantage into the hands of the ultrademocrats, of which they took care to avail themselves to the utmost.

 

CHAPTER II.

 

Confiscation was a foregone conclusion, in defiance of reason, argument, justice, and expediency, on one side or the other. The main principle on which Talleyrand insisted in his memorable speech on the 10th of October was this: that the tenure of ecclesiastical property differs from that upon which other property is held; since it belongs, not to private individuals, but to public institutions, establishments, or corporations. The State has authority over all corporate bodies existing within it, over the clergy among the rest. It cannot destroy the clergy, for they are necessary to the maintenance of public worship; but it can suppress particular aggregations of clergy which it may consider useless or injurious; and by consequence it may appropriate the revenues of such bodies, after providing for the wants of individual members. He contended, therefore, that the nation had a right to claim (1) the property of such religious houses as it seemed desirable to suppress; (2) the emoluments of sinecure benefices; and (3) a proportion of the incomes enjoyed by bishops and parochial incumbents; an engage­ment being made to meet the obligations with which that species of property was originally charged.

 

TALLEYRAND, BISHOP OF AUTUN.

 

It was a strange phenomenon; a prelate of the Church, a man born in the highest ranks of the aristocracy, the possessor of rich preferment and enviable worldly position, standing up in the Legislature to propose a measure for disinheriting his own order, destroying their independence, and degrading them to the level of mere hirelings of the State. The case was not that of a persecuted Jansenist, with deep wrongs to avenge. It was not that of a hitherto obscure country curé, whom his admiring brethren had sent up to Versailles to denounce the corruptions of the episcopate, and to be the apostle of a regenerated Church. Nor was it that of a hot-headed revolutionist, who had nothing to lose, but everything to gain, by a general wreck of ancient institutions. Talleyrand was none of these. He was a shrewd, intriguing, unprincipled man of the world, gifted with extraordinary sagacity and foresight, which enabled him to discern, as if by instinct, the tendencies and probable results of events as they passed before him. From an early date he had divined the course of the revolutionary movement; and thenceforward, whether as to the principles which he professed, the objects which he sought to realise, or the parties and personages to whom he attached himself, he consulted simply the dictates of his own interest and the visions of his own ambition. His hopes of advancement lay, not in the career which belonged to him as an ecclesiastic, but in the field of political action. He detested the clerical profession, into which he had been thrust against his will to suit the arrangements of his family, and in consequence of an infirmity which precluded him from ordinary pursuits. He saw the antique edifice of ecclesiastical grandeur nodding to its fall; he resolved to abandon it betimes, and to secure for himself a post of influence and a sphere of congenial action among those who were to be the ruling spirits of the future. Talleyrand, however, avoided committing himself to extreme projects; he stopped short of republicanism, and advocated a limited constitutional monarchy; reserving himself for a reaction which he knew to be inevitable, and which could scarcely fail to advance him to the front rank of public importance.

Such was Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, Bishop of Autun; who doubtless was put forward on this occasion as the mouthpiece of the Revolution for the very reason that his position would lend an air of disinterestedness to the project in hand, and make it difficult for those of his brethren who were not prepared for ruinous sacrifices to gain an impartial hearing in self-defence.

At the sitting of Tuesday, October 13, 1789, the following resolutions were proposed on the motion of the Comte de Mirabeau : “That it be declared, (1) that all the property of the clergy is the property of the nation, upon condition of providing in a suitable manner for the celebration of Divine worship, and the maintenance of the ministers of the altar; (2) that the stipend of parish priests shall in no case be less than 1,200 livres, exclusive of residence.”

One of the first speakers was the Jansenist Camus. From his prepossessions he might have been expected to embrace without reserve the policy of disendowment; but to the general surprise he threw his weight into the opposite scale. “The clergy,” he said, “are a society existing in the State because the State thinks fit to profess and maintain a certain form of religion. The State has a right to take cognisance of this society, and of the manner in which it fulfils its duties, but it cannot change its constitution; it cannot seize its revenues, except by destroying at the same time its existence as a society; and that society cannot be destroyed. The endowments of the Church were annexed to a regular system of practical obligations; the law can exercise supervision over the discharge of those duties, but it cannot alienate the property which was granted on such conditions. If corporate bodies neglect their duties, they ought to be reformed, but they must not be suppressed.”

 

SPEECH OF ABBÉ MAURY.

 

The Abbé Maury, who had already established a brilliant reputation as the champion par excellence of the Church, followed with one of his most impassioned, though not one of his most cogently reasoned speeches. It was a masterly specimen of incisive declamation; but his tone was bitterly resentful and sarcastic, and the impression left upon his hearers was rather that of heightened irritation than of sympathy or conviction. Maury inveighed against the greedy capitalists, contractors, stock-jobbers, and other adventurers, whose enormous fortunes, amassed by fraud and oppression, were the real cause of the financial difficulties of the day. “It was by their means,” he cried, “that France was induced to undertake so many costly wars, which devoured the substance of successive generations, and have wellnigh destroyed the national credit. And now, in order to restore that credit, you propose to confiscate the possessions of the clergy. What would you say to some ruined country squire who should call his creditors together, and make over to them the lands and emoluments with which he had formerly endowed his parish church? Such an example would shock you; yet you are about to set a precisely similar example in 45,000 parishes. At the first financial crisis that comes (for what is taking place now may take place again) your own policy will be quoted against you, and you will be despoiled in your turn. Your principle leads straight to an agrarian law. However far you may go back in tracing the origin of property, the nation will go back with you. It will point to the epoch when it issued from the forests of Germany, and will demand a fresh division of territory. Our possessions guarantee yours. We are attacked today; but be not deceived, if we are victimised now, it will not be long before you become the prey of the spoiler.”

For a practical comment on these prophetic words we have only to turn to the record of what France has suffered from the Socialism and Communism of our own day.

If the Assembly had been capable of listening to the voice of moderation and justice, the speech of Malouet, delivered on the same evening, could scarcely have failed to arrest its predetermined decision. Malouet, a zealous Catholic, and a loyal, conscientious servant of the Crown, possessed a well-balanced, discriminating judgment, which rendered him invaluable to the cause of order and legitimate government. His speech was universally admired; but such was the temper of the Assembly that the effect vanished with the last words of the orator, and the plan which he propounded failed even to find a seconder. He advised the appointment of an Ecclesiastical Commission, which was to determine, after careful consideration, what number of bishoprics, cathedral chapters, monasteries, seminaries, and parochial benefices should be retained for the future; and to regulate the proportion of landed property, houses, and annual income, which it might be desirable to assign to each. All that might not be required for the sustentation of Divine worship, and the religious education of the people, was to be suppressed, and the proceeds paid over to the civil administration of the provinces where the property was situate. Pending the report of such commission, no further nominations were to be made to abbeys, capitular preferments, and sinecure benefices; and the religious Orders of both sexes were to be restrained from receiving- novices until the provinces should make known how many conventual houses they desired to preserve.

This elaborate and weighty speech brought the sitting to a close, and the discussion was not resumed until October 23. On that day the questions at issue were again debated with undiminished vigour. The bishops of Clermont and Usez stoutly defended the doctrine of ecclesiastical proprietorship. Treilhard contested it, on the ground that the clerical holder had no power to alienate his property;—an inconclusive argument, since it might be urged against every other species of property held in trust, and would thus endanger some of the wisest provisions of common and statute law. The Abbé Grégoire maintained that the clergy are not proprietors, but stewards or administrators, of Church property; and that if they should take for themselves more than is strictly necessary, they would be guilty of sacrilege according to the canons. He did not admit that Church property belongs to the nation, but only that the nation has the right to superintend its management, to make changes in the mode of its administration, and to secure its application to the purposes for which it was originally destined.

 

DECREE AGAINST MONASTIC VOWS

 

The first overt step towards the long-foreseen conclusion was taken on the 28th of October, when the Assembly decreed, on the motion of the lawyer Target, that “religious vows should be provisionally suspended in convents of both sexes.” This was carried (contrary to the rule of the house) at the same sitting in which it was proposed, and in spite of vehement remonstrances. The king, now virtually a prisoner at the Tuileries, accepted it on the 1st of November. It was manifestly a prelude to the violent secularisation of the vast revenues of monastic houses throughout France. “The most terrible despotism,” cried Maury, “is that which assumes the mask of Liberty!”

On the 30th of October, Mirabeau rose to reply upon the whole question. His arguments, urged with even more than his wonted ability and force, may thus be summarised. “Public utility is the supreme law; and we have no right to weigh in the balance against it either a superstitious respect for what is called the intention of founders (as if it were in the power of a few ignorant, narrow-minded individuals to bind by their private caprice generations not yet in existence), or the fear of violating the rights of certain bodies corporate, as if such bodies were capable of possessing any rights at all in opposition to the State. Private bodies exist neither by themselves nor for themselves; they were created by society in general, and they must cease to exist as soon as they cease to be useful. No institution framed by man is destined to be immortal. Ancient foundations, continually added to through human vanity, would in the end absorb and consume all private property; and it is plain, therefore, that there must be some means of finally suppressing them. If all the generations of mankind who ever lived had monu­ments erected to them, it would be necessary to destroy these useless memorials in order to find ground to cultivate; and the ashes of the dead must be disturbed in order to provide food for the living.”

The orator next entered upon a somewhat different line of reasoning, drawn from the abstract origin and nature of property. “What is property? Property is the right given by the community to an individual to enjoy exclusively what in the state of nature would belong equally to all. Property is a possession acquired by virtue of law; the law alone can constitute property, because nothing but the public will could cause men in general to forego an advantage which primarily belongs to all, and to guarantee its enjoyment by a single owner.” Mirabeau proceeded to affirm (what was extremely questionable) that no law had ever constituted the clergy a permanent body in the State. No law had deprived the nation of its right to examine whether the clergy ought to form a political corporation, existing independently, and capable of purchasing and possessing. This being so, the clergy, when they accepted these foundations, must have anticipated that the day might come when the nation would terminate their existence as a body corporate, without which they could not hold common property. And every founder, in like manner, must have foreseen that he could not prejudice the rights of the nation; that the clergy might one day cease to be a corporation recognised by the State, and that consequently there was nothing to perpetuate the existence of religious foundations in the precise form which they had originally.

But might not this reasoning be applied to property in the hands of the laity no less than to that held by the Church? If property rests solely upon law, which law may be abrogated at any moment by the will of the Legislature, did it not follow that property of whatever description is revocable and precarious? This inference by no means suited the purposes of Mirabeau; and accordingly he found it necessary to make an exception in his theory, and to declare that in the case of property held by private individuals no distinct legal guarantee is requisite, inasmuch as it depends on the original constitution of society. “But it is otherwise with the possessions of a corporate body like the clergy. Such bodies are not, like individuals, primaeval elements of society; they are not anterior to its existence; they cannot lay claim to any essential rights at the very moment of its first foundation.”

 

SUMMARY OF MIRABEAU'S SPEECH.

“Private proprietors hold their estates in the character of absolute masters, just as a man is master of his own will or his own limbs. But with the clergy this is not so; they cannot alienate their estates, they cannot transmit them to their successors; they are not even, strictly speaking, tenants for life; they are merely stewards or dispensers of the yearly proceeds.” Having thus reassured those classes of his hearers who, though indifferent to the interests of the clergy, were jealous of the inviolable sanctity of property as concerned themselves, Mirabeau concluded in language of studied moderation. He protested that he by no means wished to maintain that the clergy ought to be dispossessed of their property, or that other classes of citizens ought to be put in their place, or that the creditors of the State ought to be paid with the proceeds of ecclesiastical endowments, or that the clergy should be deprived of the administration of the estates of which the annual income undoubtedly belonged to them. He simply designed to lay down, as a general principle, apart from any consequences that might follow from it, that every nation is the sole and true proprietor of the property of its clergy. “I ask nothing more of you than to sanction this great principle; for it is through the influence of error and of truth that nations are either saved or lost.”

On the sixth night of the debate, the 31st of October, the leaders of the Church party attempted, as a last resource, to compromise the question; hoping that by sacrificing a certain portion of their property they might preserve the rest. The Archbishop of Aix, while maintaining at great length that the patrimony of the Church belongs to the clergy, and that it is the interest of the State itself that the rights of property should be respected, proffered, on behalf of his order, the sum of 400,000,000 livres towards supplying the deficit in the national finances. He intimated, moreover, that the clergy were prepared to accept measures of reform in various important particulars; and concluded by stating that in his opinion the minimum stipend of curés ought to be 1,500 livres, and that of vicaires 600 livres. The bishop of Nimes followed, and suggested that the State should in future exercise a general control over the management of Church estates; and that a diocesan caisse or treasury should be established in each diocese, from which, under the direction of proper officers, all sums should be dispensed for ecclesiastical purposes of whatever kind, including the efficient relief of the poor. But these overtures were treated with, utter disregard, as indications of conscious weakness and of approaching surrender.

After a vigorous appeal to the great principles of justice and constitutional right from the Abbé de Montesquiou, one of the agents-general of the clergy, the house was about to proceed to a division. But Mirabeau, who detected symptoms of indecision among the members, contrived to have it postponed for two days; and meanwhile arrangements were made, as on other critical occasions, for intimidating the waverers, and securing, by violence if necessary, the triumph of the popular will. On the 2nd of November the archbishop’s palace, where the Assembly then sat, was surrounded by an armed band of lawless miscreants, who, by dint of abuse, threats, and personal insults, made it clear to the terrified legislators that the decree of confiscation must be passed without further delay. But even in this extremity it seems to have been doubtful whether the majority could be brought to vote that the property of the Church belonged absolutely to the nation. Mirabeau, in consequence, made, at the last moment, a slight, but not insignificant, amendment in the terms of his resolution: which, as finally put to the vote, ran as follows: “That it be declared in the first place, that all ecclesiastical property is at the disposal of the nation, on condition of its undertaking to provide in a becoming manner for the expenses of public worship, for the maintenance of the clergy, and for the relief of the poor, under the superintendence and according to the instructions of the provincial authorities. In the second place, that in the provision to be made for the maintenance of the ministers of religion, no less sum than 1,200 livres be assigned to parish priests, without including their residence and the garden annexed to it.” On a division the resolution was carried by a majority of 568 against 346. Forty members present abstained from voting; and as the Assembly con­sisted of nearly 1,200, upwards of 200 must have been absent from various causes. By this time, indeed, many had abandoned their seats in disgust; many had become exiles from France.

Mirabeau’s manoeuvre doubtless gained him a con­siderable number of uncertain votes. Some members took the amended resolution to imply nothing more than a guarantee on the part of the clergy for the repayment of the loans about to be contracted by the Government. Others in­terpreted it as pointing towards a more equal distribution of the revenues of the Church among its ministers;—a policy which naturally possessed strong attractions for the inferior classes of the clergy. Few comparatively of the côté droit seem to have realized the full scope of this momentous measure. “The sitting closed,” says the Moniteur, “amid the loud applause of the audience.”

 

SALE OF CHURCH DOMAINS.

But whatever illusions may have been cherished as to the ultimate intentions of the majority, the truth became abundantly clear when the Bishop of Autun moved, a few days afterwards, that, in order to prevent fraudulent tampering with the title-deeds or removal of the household effects of ecclesiastical establishments, seals should be placed upon the muniment rooms, and exact inventories made of all the furniture. The Jansenist Martineau proposed, at the same sitting, that sinecure benefices should be at once suppressed; that holders of pluralities, if the income exceeded 3,000 livres, should be compelled to make their option for one benefice and resign the others; that religious houses containing fewer than twenty professed members should be extinguished; and that notice should be given to beneficed ecclesiastics absent from the kingdom to return within two months, under pain of confiscation of their preferments to the national treasury. After much discussion, the Assembly decreed on the 7th of November that Church property of all kinds should be placed under the safeguard of the Crown, the courts of justice, the magistrates and administrative bodies throughout the kingdom; and that any injury done to it should be punished in due course of law. It was further resolved to request the king to suspend nominations to Church preferments of every kind, except those charged with the cure of souls. A third decree ordered the beneficed clergy to furnish to the Assembly, within two months, a certified statement of all property, movable and immovable, belonging to their several establishments; they were to be personally responsible for its safe keeping, and for the accuracy of their returns.

On the motion of Camus, a separate clause was added to ensure the preservation of conventual libraries; notwithstanding which it appears that many valuable books and manuscripts were lost or purloined from those collections.

Urged forward in its remorseless enterprise by the gaunt spectre of impending national bankruptcy, the Assembly determined, on the 17th of December, that a sum of 400,000,000 francs (16,000,000Z. sterling) should be raised forthwith by the sale of portions of the domains of the Crown and of the property of the Church. The scheme, as developed by M. de Canteleu in the name of the finance committee, was somewhat complicated. It embraced, as one of its principal features, the creation of the famous “Assignate”; which were bonds or promissory notes, issued on security of the property to be disposed of, bearing interest at five per cent., and accepted by way of payment on the part of those who thus became creditors of the State. This is not the place to enter upon a description of the manifold embarrassments to which this expedient eventually gave rise; such details belonging more properly to the secular history of the Revolution.

The first attack was made upon the property of the monasteries; both on account of its immense extent, and because greater facilities existed for realizing its estimated value. It was in this same sitting, the 17th of December, that the Ecclesiastical Committee, of whose proceedings nothing had been heard since it was appointed four months previously, suddenly presented its first report by the hands of Treilhard. This document begins by stating that the work of regeneration to which the Assembly was called must embrace all the institutions of the kingdom, inasmuch as all alike had suffered from the laxity and abuses which invariably result from the lapse of time. The clergy were not exempt from that fatal influence. The unjust distribution of their revenues, the faulty organisation of many establishments, the negligence shown in filling up important appointments, the excessive and galling pretensions advanced by ecclesiastics of a certain class, all this had provoked wide discontent and bitter remonstrances. The nation was impatiently anticipating the happy day when merit would be the sole title to preferment, when stipends would be duly proportioned to services performed, when wise and permanent boundaries would be established between the two jurisdictions, and those scandalous disputes would be for ever silenced, which had been so offensive to sound reason and so mischievous to France. Treilhard went on to say that the committee purposed to express its views successively upon all these topics; but thought it advisable to call attention in the first place to that large section of the clergy which gloried in tracing its origin to the love of perfection; in whose annals were enrolled the names of so many virtuous and illustrious personages, and which had rendered such memorable services to religion, to literature, and to agriculture—namely, the Regular Clergy. “All human institutions carry within them the seeds of their own destruction. The rural districts, which were first fertilised by the toil of self­denying Solitaries, are now overspread by vast cities; and the commercial traffic connected with them has insensibly had a deteriorating effect upon the character of their foun­ders. Humility and spirituality of mind have given way to indolence, lukewarmness, and negligence; and hence the veneration in which the people once held these institutions has been exchanged for coldness and indifference, to use no stronger term. The wide manifestation of public opinion has produced disgust in the cloister itself; and the sighs of those pious recluses who still retain the fervour of their pro­fession are stifled by the groans of those of their brethren who bewail the loss of their liberty; a loss which is not now counterbalanced by any enjoyments derived from other sources.” The time was come, then, to effect a reformation; but was it necessary to proclaim a general abolition of religious vows? While relief was offered to those who were weary of seclusion, ought not those to be protected who might desire to practise it still?

The Committee proposed that no constraint should be exercised for the future by public authority to maintain the external obligation of monastic vows; but, at the same time, that certain foundations should be kept up as retreats for those religious of both sexes who might feel conscientiously bound to live and die in the observance of their rule. For those who might take advantage of the option of returning to the world, a modest maintenance was to be provided by the State, varying slightly according to the age of the recipients. The annuities assigned to ci-devant abbots were to be somewhat larger. With regard to those who might prefer to continue in the cloistered state the Committee advised that they should be united in sufficient numbers to, ensure the exact observance of their chosen rule, and that their abode should be fixed either in the country or in small towns, as being most in accordance with the original spirit of monasticism.

“If your decision could be influenced by any considera­tion of temporal interest,” continued Treilhard, “your Committee would observe that such an arrangement will be beneficial in a twofold point of view; the presence of the religious communities will awaken new life in the rural districts, and you will obtain, besides, the free disposal of their property in the cities—an immense resource, specially valuable in our present critical position.” Nevertheless it was not proposed that conventual establishments should be altogether excluded from the larger towns. Houses devoted to the care of the sick, to education, and to scientific pursuits were to be favourably dealt with, especially in localities where such institutions were much needed. They were to be encouraged upon motives of public utility; yet “at a moment when all eyes were turned towards the attainment of liberty, it was not desirable to sanction vows of perpetual obligation, which might become intolerable through natural inconstancy or the vicissitudes of events.” With regard to the endowment of the religious houses which might thus be retained, the Committee recommended that funds should be allotted to them at the rate of 800 francs per annum for each member of the community. But how these funds were to be raised was a point upon which the Committee had hitherto been unable to agree; and it was therefore ad­journed till the final settlement of the entire subject of ecclesiastical property.

The report having been read, the bishop of Clermont, president of the Committee, rose and declared, amid general astonishment, that he now heard for the first time of the plan proposed; and that he owed it to his position and his sense of propriety to protest against a measure to which he was an entire stranger, having taken no part, directly or indirectly, in drawing up the report. The accuracy of this statement was never questioned, and it is therefore clear that the proceedings of the Committee must have been so conducted, by secret and fraudulent manoeuvre, as to exclude the president and other like-minded members from any share in their control.

Treilhard and his friends felt it necessary, however, to secure a preponderance which might always be relied upon in the further prosecution of their labours; and in consequence the Committee was forthwith remodelled. Fifteen new members were appointed on February 7, 1790. Among them were seven ecclesiastics, all, with one exception, be­longing to the ranks of the extreme liberals. The exception was the Abbé de Montesquieu, one of the representatives of the clergy of Paris, and lately agent-general of the clergy. He soon resigned his seat, in company with the bishops of Clermont and Luçon, and the other members of the board who shared their sentiments; so that no further obstacle remained to the success of those whose counsels, though possibly honest and well-intentioned, were destined to bring disaster and ruin on the Church.

 

MONASTERIES SUPPRESSED.

Ecclesiastical legislation was now pressed forward at a rapid rate. The existence of monasticism was denounced as injurious to religion, and incompatible with the good order of society. “Its suppression” cried one orator, “will be an immense benefit; everything will gain by it: religion, morals, education, the poor, the public finances, and, above all, the rights of humanity, which have been scandalously violated by this institution. I cannot conceive that it is lawful for man to alienate what he has received from nature, to commit civil suicide, and rob society of his personal services. I cannot conceive that God could ever design to debar men from fulfilling obligations which He Himself has imposed, and withdraw from him the greatest privilege that He has bestowed, that of liberty”.

The bishop of Nancy, shocked by this profane tirade, rose excitedly, and implored the house to declare on the instant that the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman religion was that of the State and of the nation. “I make this motion,” he exclaimed, “under circumstances of imperious necessity. When religion is outraged at every moment in this Assembly, when blasphemies are uttered against it in this very sitting, are we not to protest? Are we to leave it doubtful whether Catholicism is or is not the national religion? Are we to permit philosophical ideas to take root in the legislature, and overthrow the faith of our fathers?” The appeal was perhaps ill-timed, for no one as yet had questioned the attachment of the French people to the ancient faith; and to attempt at such a moment, in the exasperated state of parties, to impose as it were a general religious test upon the Assembly, was scarcely a wise construction of the signs of the times. The motion was evaded by passing to the order of the day; the majority, however, and many members well known for their advanced opinions, took care to assert that they were no less zealous for the interests of Catholicism than the most eager partisans of the côté droit.

The Abbé de Montesquiou made an effort to mitigate the decree of suppression, by providing that the sanction of the spiritual authority should be necessary to any renunciation of the cloistered state. But this was quickly overruled; and the decree finally passed by the Assembly (February 13, 1790) was expressed as follows:

“I. The National Assembly decrees, as a law of the Constitution, that the law will not henceforth recognise solemn monastic vows, either of one sex or the other; and declares, in consequence, that the Orders in which such vows are made are and will remain suppressed in France, and that none such can be established for the future.

II. All inmates of religious houses may quit them on making a declaration to the local municipal officers; and a suitable pension will be immediately provided for them. Certain houses will be assigned for the residence of those who may not wish to take advantage of the present decree. No changes will be made with regard to houses which are devoted to public education and works of charity, until the Assembly shall determine otherwise.

III. Female communities are expressly exempted from the article which ordains that several religious houses shall be amalgamated into one.”

“Of all the wounds inflicted on religion,” says the histo­rian Picot, “this was one of the most painful. Monks who were already seduced by the attractions of the world hastened to shake off their bonds. They were seen making their exit with ardour from their cloisters, and swelling the ranks of the new clerical body which the Assembly was about to create. A considerable number, however, remained faithful to their vocation, and did not consider themselves to be absolved from their vows because they were no longer to be recognised by law. They continued, to observe their rule as far as they could, and assembled for that purpose in the houses which for the present were preserved to them. The female communities, more particularly, offered an example of sincere attachment to their profession, and refuted in the most positive manner the calumnies of those who affected to pity them as the victims of prejudice, bemoaning their hard fate under the yoke of grievous tyranny. Very few among them took advantage of the new decrees. The rest persevered in their calling, and gave by their firmness a testimony alike honourable to religion and to themselves.”

An incident occurred during the final debate on the disposal of ecclesiastical property, which demonstrated too clearly the hostile animus of the majority in the Assembly, not only against the wealth and power of the Church as an establishment, but against the Catholic religion itself. The Abbé de Montesquiou, finding it impossible to gain a patient hearing, abruptly cut short his speech and left the tribune, exclaiming, “It only remains for me to implore the God of our fathers to preserve to you the religion of St. Louis, and grant you His protection!”. Upon this a Carthusian monk, Dom Gerles, rose and attempted to defend the late proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Committee, of which he was a member. “You have been told that the Committees acted from prejudice and unjust bias; I can affirm that this was not the case in the Ecclesiastical Committee. In order to stop the mouths of those who calumniously assert that the Assembly is adverse to religion, and designs to put all sects upon an equal footing throughout France, let us decree that the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion is and will for ever remain the religion of the nation, and that its worship is the only one legally authorised.” A tumultuous scene followed. The Right rose as one man to applaud and support the motion, which, as coming from the side of the majority, they imagined to be certain of success. But they were quickly undeceived. Dom Gerles had acted upon sudden impulse, and without clear apprehension of the real objects of his party; but the men of the Left were not likely to permit such an important advantage to fall into the hands of their opponents. They pretended that it was superfluous to pass any resolution upon a truth so obvious. “What need is there,” exclaimed Goupil de Prefeln, “of any such declaration? The religion of Clovis, of Charlemagne, of St. Louis, will always be that of the nation.” “The Assembly,” cried Charles de Lameth, “need not be afraid of being charged with hostility to religion, while it is well known to base its decrees upon justice, morality, and the precepts of the Gospel. Has it not founded the Constitution upon that consoling principle of equality which is so essentially characteristic of Christianity? Has it not proclaimed universal brotherhood and charity? In the very words of Scripture, it has put down the mighty from their seat, and has exalted the humble and meek. It has realised, for the happiness of mankind, those words of Jesus Christ himself, ‘The last shall be first, and the first last!’.” He observed, too, that this was the second time that the clergy had tried to extort a profession of faith from the Assembly, and that on both occasions the question under discussion was one that threatened their temporal intrests.

The agitation on both sides became extreme. The Right demanded that a vote should be taken immediately; the Left insisted on an adjournment; and this was at length carried, after two doubtful divisions. The minority vented their disappointment in prolonged murmurings, and were with difficulty persuaded to quit the Chamber. The night was spent by both parties in anxious preparations for the struggle of the morrow. At the Jacobin Club in the Rue St. Honoré, Dom Gerles was sharply rebuked by his colleagues for his inconsiderate motion, and hastened to make his peace by promising to withdraw it. At the convent of the Capuchins, on the opposite side of the street, the assembled politicians of the Right indulged in mutual congratulations on the certain prospect of victory. “This time” cried Maury, “they cannot escape us; this motion is a match lighted under a barrel of gunpowder.” Next day the baron de Menou opened the debate by proclaiming himself devotedly attached to the Catholic religion, while deprecating at the same time any public declaration on that point by the legislature, which would tend to bind or offend the consciences of others. “Why should I seek to make my opinions dominant opinions? Another man might insist with as much justice that his opinions should be dominant; and if we were equally obstinate in maintaining our views, this might result in the death of one of us, perhaps of both. Now the quarrels of individuals may become national quarrels; and you know what terrible consequences might then ensue. Remember the miseries that were engendered by the Wars of religion. Would you wish the National Assembly to become the instrument of bringing like misfortunes on your country? Has not God Himself declared that Christianity shall embrace the most distant limits of the earth, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it? And can you suppose that by passing this miserable decree you would add aught of strength or certainty to the will of the Creator? Your respect for religion is proved by the zeal which you exhibit in providing for its interests and for the expenses of its worship. I shall submit to this decree if the Assembly should think proper to adopt it; but I must hold all those who vote for it responsible for the calamities which it is calculated to produce.” Dom Gerles now announced that he withdrew his motion; but the Right clamoured vehemently for the continuance of the debate, and the President was compelled to divide the house on the question whether their partisans should be heard. This was decided in the negative, but the minority refused to submit; and amid general confusion a motion was then made in the following terms by the Duc de la Rochefoucauld. “The National Assembly, considering that it neither has nor can have any authority over the conscience or over opinion in matters of religion; that the majesty of religion, and the respect due to it, will not permit that it should be made the subject of public debate; considering that the attachment of the National Assembly to the worship of the Catholic Church cannot be called in question at the very moment when that worship alone is about to be placed in the first class of the expenses of the State, and when, by an unanimous act, it has proved its respect in the only way that was con­sistent with the character of the Assembly; decrees that it cannot and ought not to deliberate upon the motion proposed, and that it will now resume the order of the day upon the disposal of ecclesiastical property.”

This stirred up a renewal of the contest; and M. de Virieu, on the part of the Right, proposed a counter-resolution. In vain the President declared that the discussion was closed; the strife of tongues continued notwithstanding, with ever-increasing acrimony. M. d’Epresmenil complained of the equivocal language of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld’s proposition, which, he said, would never satisfy the Catholics of France; and referred to a declaration which had been made by Louis XIV at Cambrai, to the effect that he would always maintain the Catholic religion in that city, without permitting the practice of a rival worship or the erection of Protestant conventicles. Count Mirabeau instantly retorted that, no doubt, intolerant acts of all sorts had been perpetrated during a reign which was signalised by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and reminded the House that their place of meeting was within view of the very window from which a French monarch had fired his arquebus upon his innocent subjects as the signal for the frightful massacre of St. Bartholomew. After hours of passionate altercation, the order of the day was at last carried in the terms proposed by the Duc de la Rochefoucauld; the greater part of the Right refusing to vote at all.

Such, however, was the unabated zeal of the dissentients, that they held a second separate meeting, and drew up the following protest against the decision of the Assembly, which was signed by thirty-three bishops, twenty-six abbots and canons, and seventy-nine curés: —

“Inviolably attached to the faith of our fathers, we came to Versailles in accordance with the express direction, or the well-known purpose, of our respective bailliages, to obtain, as an article of the French Constitution, a declaration that the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion is the religion of the State, and the only one which ought in this kingdom to enjoy the solemnity of public worship. This was a fact consecrated by the will of the nation, which could not be mistaken or contested. We therefore looked forward with confidence to the moment when it should be solemnly acknowledged by the national representatives. We made fruitless attempts to procure this recognition in the month of September 1789, and on the 13th of February and the 15th of April in the present year. Despairing of success, and after having been refused even the right of speech in the National Assembly, we have come to the resolution of publishing our unanimous adhesion to the words of the bishop of Usez, when, on the 13th of April, in the name of his constituents, in the name of religion, of his diocese, and of the Church of France, he protested against the order of the day adopted by the Assembly. In order to proclaim these sentiments, and to make them known to our constituents, we have drawn up and signed at Paris, April 19, 1790, the present declaration, which will be printed and forwarded to our constituents.”

“It is alleged,” says the author of the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques, that those who signed this protest, especially the bishops, have no one but themselves to blame for the ill-success of the motion it refers to. There was an obvious prejudice against it, as being broached unseasonably, at a moment when the question in hand concerned only the worldly interests of the higher clergy, which are very different from, and independent of, the interests of religion. It was feared that the motion covered some secret stratagem; that under pretext of maintaining religion in the possession of its sacred rights, there was a design to extend this protection to the abuses which serve the interests of its ministers to the system of tyranny and persecution which they have so long pursued.”

 

DECREE ON DISENDOWMENT.

 

The bishop of Lydda (Gobel) declined to join the protest of his colleagues, and explained his reasons in a letter to his constituents. It was contrary to all rule, he thought, in an Assembly deciding by numerical votes, for the minority to protest against the majority, particularly after refusing to take part in the previous debate. The result ought to be respected by every member, whatever his private opinion. He doubted whether the publication of the Protest would be advantageous or injurious to the cause of religion, by reason of the different interpretations which might be affixed to it, and the questionable motives which might be imputed to its authors. Moreover, since the Assembly had already formally asserted its attachment to Catholicism, he felt warranted in believing that the recent decision could hardly prove hurtful to religion, in contradiction to the declared sentiments of the legislature.

The prelates and clergy who had signed the Protest, having thus satisfied their consciences, took little or no further part in the deliberations on the pending question of disendowment. A last effort was made to procure acceptance for the compromise suggested by Archbishop Boisgelin (by which the clergy were to advance 400,000,000 livres to the State on condition of retaining control over the rest of their property), but the House refused even to take it into consideration; and the definitive decree was adopted on the 14th of April, in four articles.

The administration of the property declared on November 2, 1789, to be at the disposal of the nation, was assigned to the civil authorities of the different departments, subject to regulations and exceptions to be hereafter specified. The collection of tithes was to cease for ever on January 1, 1791; and the salaries of all ecclesiastics were to be thenceforth paid in money, according to a scale to be forthwith fixed. A certain sum was to be charged every year in the budget of public expenses, by which provision was to be made for maintaining the worship of the Catholic Church, for the support of its ministers, for the relief of the poor, and for defraying the pensions of ci-devant members of the suppressed conventual houses. In this way the property of the nation, being released from all liabilities, was to be applied by its representatives to the gravest and most pressing necessities of the State.

Immediately afterwards the Assembly passed the law establishing the Assignats, or paper money which was to represent the landed property thus confiscated by the nation. The assignats were to be put in circulation with a forced currency, and were made a legal tender in liquidation of the debts of the State. The Abbe Maury protested, in a vigorous and well-reasoned speech, against this unfortunate measure; pointing out that the assignats would inevitably deteriorate in value, and that the result would be a virtual sanctioning of public dishonesty, the ruin of thousands of citizens, and a general degradation of the national credit of France.

 

CHAPTER III.

THE "CONSTITUTION CIVILE DU CLERGÉ."

 

The Church had now thoroughly taken the alarm; and the persuasion became general that, in spite of all plausible assurances to the contrary, the ruin of the Catholic religion was a thing fully resolved upon by the predominant faction at Paris. Protests against the late decision poured in from all quarters. The metropolitical Chapter of Notre Dame took the lead, and was followed by a multitude of similar bodies in the provinces. They declared that “the Catholic religion, since it had always been that of the French monarchy, to which it was, indeed, anterior in its establishment in Gaul, ought alone to have the right of exercising public worship in that kingdom, inasmuch as it alone teaches the doctrine, inspires the sentiments, and inculcates the principles of conduct, which are essential to public order, and which alone can conduct those who observe them to eternal salvation. For the maintenance and defence of that religion they were prepared, with the help of Divine grace, to shed their blood.”

Nor were such demonstrations confined to the clergy. In the south, especially, they were shared by thousands of the faithful laity; and the act of protest drawn up at Nimes demanded that no changes should be made in the Church without the concurrence of national Councils and canonical regulations. Serious popular commotions now broke out at Nimes, Montauban, and other towns of Languedoc. The Catholics, burning with enthusiasm, mounted the white cockade, and were soon in armed collision with the Protestants, the Revolutionists, and the municipal and military authorities. Martial law was proclaimed; many lives were sacrificed; murder, devastation, pillage, sacrilege, prevailed for weeks throughout the district. Similar scenes occurred in other parts of the country; and the reports transmitted to the Assembly excited considerable anxiety and alarm.

The ecclesiastical reformers, however, were not deterred from their perilous course by these significant presages of that worst of national calamities: a civil war enkindled by religious dissension. In May 1790 they produced their too-famous scheme for remodelling the external constitution and administrative system of the Church. This step was almost an inevitable consequence of the recent decrees of disendowment ; and it was now that the fatal magnitude of those changes first appeared in their true proportions. The act of spoliation involved much more than a mere loss of pecuniary income. It amounted to a violent disruption of the ancient constitution of France; for the loss of their property deprived the clergy ipso facto of their existence as a body corporate; it destroyed their immemorial position as the first of the three Estates of the realm. Thenceforth they were no longer independent proprietors, but stipendiaries of the civil government, paid for their services like other functionaries, out of the national funds. The Assembly next proceeded, logically enough, to regulate their action in that capacity, and reduce it into harmony with the rest of the new political organisation. Such was the ostensible object of the so-called “Constitution civile du Clergé.”

The title assigned to this memorable measure by its authors was in point of fact a misnomer. It affected other interests besides those of a civil nature. It was a high­handed invasion of the traditional discipline, and even of the constitution, of the Church, under the specious pretext of recalling it to the standard of primitive antiquity. In consequence, this rash enterprise was soon found to have started a train of difficulties which the Ecclesiastical Committee and the National Assembly had never anticipated, and which they were utterly at a loss to solve. The “Constitution civile” became the source of some of the most terrible calamities of revolutionised France.

How far the Committee from which it officially proceeded acted in this case with conscientious zeal for what they believed to be the real welfare of the Church, it is impossible to determine. It would be harsh to question the good faith of such a man as Camus, the principal framer of the plan; yet Camus, well versed as he was in ecclesiastical jurisprudence, must have been perfectly well aware that its chief features were diametrically opposed to the established system, and had little or no chance of acceptance either with the episcopate or with the mass of the clergy. Its very first article —that by which the episcopal sees were made to coincide in number and extent with the newly constituted Departments— was manifestly contrary to the existing order of the Church, and an offence to its authority. This arrangement suppressed fifty bishoprics at a stroke. The boundaries of provinces, dioceses, and parishes were rearranged; the ancient titles of the hierarchy were abolished, and new ones imposed; cathedral and collegiate Chapters, with all the dignities attached to them, were dissolved. But the most significant provision of the new constitution was that which forbade French subjects to acknowledge, in any case or under whatever pretext, the jurisdiction of “any bishop or metropolitan whose see was within the dominions of a foreign power, and likewise that of his delegates residing in France or elsewhere.”

For the sanction of these grave organic changes no reference was made to the judgment of the existing Church. The sole appeal was to primitive usage. “Religion,” said M. Martineau, addressing the Assembly on behalf of the Ecclesiastical Committee, “cannot admit of alteration with regard to its faith or moral teaching. If it resorts to the reforming hand of the legislature, this can only be in respect of its external discipline; and even in that department your Committee will be careful to make no recommendation of its own devising, and to avoid indulging any preconceived theory. The plan of regeneration which it has the honour to propose to you will consist simply in a return to the discipline of the primitive Church.”

 

M. MARTINEAU ON CHURCH REFORM.

The most important particular in which it was proposed to recur to the standard of antiquity was that of the election of bishops and incumbents by the whole body of the people. “Of all the abuses,” continued M. Martineau, “which have corrupted the disciplinary system of the Church, none are more absurd and more numerous than those connected with the choice of its ministers. Ever since the institution of what we now call benefices, —that is, from the moment when the different ministers of religion, incited by the example of the first possessors of fiefs, contrived to annex to their office a portion more or less considerable of the property which the piety of the faithful had placed in the hands of the Church,— they have seemed to lose sight of the true nature of ecclesiastical employments; to take no account of the formidable obligations which they impose, and to consider only the temporal revenues of which they convey the disposal. It has almost been forgotten that they are offices. That term is no longer found except in ancient documents and the works of jurisconsults. In common parlance they are known by the name of benefices, that is, favours, profits. Every one claimed a licence to distribute them at his own pleasure. Hence arose the rights of lay and ecclesiastical patronage, the right of royal and seigneurial nominations; hence the practices of resignations and exchanges; hence the “indults,” the ambitious procedures at the court of Rome, and a multitude of strange inventions by which the possession of a certain domain, the holding a certain office, or even the mere swiftness of a horse, conferred the right to provide the people with pastors and the Church with ministers. Alas, what grievous evils have followed from these abuses! Private interest, family connection, and other considerations equally contrary to public advantage, have determined the choice of patrons; talent and virtue have been overlooked; passion has directed everything, and too often ignorant or unprincipled men have been placed in the charge of souls. Commissioned as you are, gentlemen, to regenerate the State in all its departments, you will not permit such abuses to subsist longer; you will extirpate them down to the very smallest vestige, and you will restore things to the condition of their primitive institution. 'Every high-priest chosen from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God';—such is the idea which the Apostle of the Gentiles gives us of the Christian priesthood; and reason, as well as religion, teaches that the object of all government is the advantage of those who are governed, not that of him who governs; that the pastor is appointed for the benefit of the flock, not the flock for the benefit of the pastor.

“But if bishops, parish priests, and other ministers of religion are appointed for the sake of the people, to whom should the selecting of them be assigned but to the people? The discipline of the primitive Church recognised no other method than this for conferring ecclesiastical offices. It was held as a maxim that a ministry which rests altogether upon the confidence of mankind cannot be worthily and usefully discharged by one who does not know those whom he is to govern, and is not known to them. They were persuaded that he whom all were to obey ought to be chosen by all, and that it is preposterous to name as pastor to a church a person whom that church has never asked for, and whom not seldom it rejects. The Apostles taught this by their example. They did not conceive that they had the right of providing themselves with colleagues and fellow-labourers, still less that they were to receive them from the hands of an individual. When it was necessary to fill up the place of the deposed traitor Judas, we are told that the whole assemblage of the faithful selected two candidates, and it was decided by lot which of the two was to succeed to the vacant office. The example of the Apostles was followed by their successors. No man was raised to the episcopate, nor even promoted to the priesthood, save by the suffrage of the people. The memory of this is still retained in our pontificals. A bishop is never consecrated except upon the demand of the senior of the assisting prelates, in the name of the whole Church. A bishop never confers Holy Orders without demanding the consent of the people. It is this ancient discipline, gentlemen, that we propose to you to re-establish in vigour. The Gallican Church practised it longer than any other, and the nation can never have been divested of the right of choosing those who are to speak to God in its name, to speak to it in the name of God, to instruct and to console it. The people cannot be forced to give their confidence to one whom they have not chosen, to one who comes to them sometimes from a suspected quarter, and sometimes from the hand of an enemy.”

Treilhard, another influential member of the Committee, expressed himself in like terms in his speech on the 30th of May. “Can you possibly hesitate to adopt a discipline which was the glory of the Church for so many ages? Can you fail to appreciate the advantages of a system by which every man who brings with him talent, good conduct, and, above all, eminent virtues, into the ecclesiastical profession, will be almost certain to attain the highest dignities?

“It is said that the elections will give rise to intrigues and cabals. Perhaps that may be so. Everything has its disadvantages; a perfect system is simply a chimera. But the system which the Apostles laid down and practised, the system which has adorned the Church with so many saintly personages, must undoubtedly possess some great superiority over every other.”

Such, again, were the sentiments delivered by Camus in the same debate. “The Apostles and their successors,” he remarked, “knew nothing of territorial circumscriptions; the whole world was their territory. Ecclesiastical divisions, then, were not instituted by Jesus Christ; nevertheless they were necessary, and we find from St. Paul’s Epistle to Titus that bishops were established in the cities, in the great centres of population. These cities derived their rank from the civil organisation; and the Church of Apostolic times conformed to the civil order. It was the State that conferred the title of Metropolitan upon the bishops of cities distinguished by that name. At the end of the eighth century an unworthy forger, a vile sycophant, invented the False Decretals, in order to place the institution of bishops in the hands of the Pope. Hence arose the authority which the Popes usurped; hence came the abuses which have dishonoured the Church, and will dishonour it as long as they exist. When the Pope founds an episcopal see, he says: We erect such a place into a city. Am I not justified in concluding from this formula that there cannot be a bishopric except in those places which the civil power has deemed proper to possess that dignity? When therefore the State thinks it right to diminish the number of sees, it has the power to do so. The ecclesiastical power ought to guide itself in accordance with the civil power. And what is true as to bishoprics holds good also with respect to parochial curés; from the same principles, therefore, I deduce the same consequences.” Passing then to the mode of appointing to the pastoral office, Camus urged that according to the ancient canons and historical monuments of the Church there is but one method, namely, that of election. “I find in St. Cyprian these words, De clericorum testimoniis, de plebis suffragiis; from which it appears that the clergy were consulted on these occasions, and testified to their knowledge of the candidates, and that they deemed them worthy to exercise episcopal or pastoral functions; but the election was made by the votes of the people. I quote as an example the case of St. Martin of Tours, who was rejected by the bishop because his manner was too humble and not sufficiently dignified; but the people carried his election. Subsequently it was maintained that the electors were too numerous; kings asserted that they represented the people, and in that capacity they usurped the right of patronage. In course of time the same right was assumed by the cathedral Chapters. The exercise of seigneurial patronage is but one form of election by the people; for the seigneurs claimed it because they pretended to represent the people. Now that seigneurs no longer exist, the people resume possession of their rights. Thus nothing is more clearly in accordance with the Christian religion than the free election of bishops and parish priests.” In like manner Camus denounced the gross abuses arising from the practice of appeals to Rome. The primacy of the Pope, he said, was doubtless to be acknowledged; St. Peter had invested him with the right to counsel his colleagues, but had never granted him universal jurisdiction. This being so, it was right that ecclesiastical causes should be heard and adjudicated within the kingdom to which they belonged.

The reader will be inclined to smile at the almost puerile naïveté of the Assembly in thus attempting to reconstruct the Church, after all the vicissitudes, conflicts, and convulsions of seventeen hundred years, according to the precise pattern of its original foundation. Few subjects of inquiry are more obscure than that of the successive laws which have regulated the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the mode of appointment to ecclesiastical offices. It is very doubtful, notwithstanding the peremptory assertions of Camus and his friends, whether the choice of pastors was determined, even in the earliest times, solely by the promiscuous vote of the people. But were that fact ever so clearly demonstrated, it would not follow that it is either desirable or practicable to bring back the Church, by one abrupt and precipitate rebound, to the simple usages of its infancy. In an age when Christianity was merely sporadic in the midst of a bitterly hostile world, when its adherents occupied a position of little social importance, when no civil pre-eminence, no large possessions or emoluments, were attached to the profession of its ministers, it might be expedient that the faithful laity should act collectively in the selection of pastors, and that their personal testimony should be necessary to all appointments. But with altered circum­stances some modification of primitive discipline became almost indispensable. No Divine command existed on the subject, of perpetual obligation for all ages. The Church had exercised her judgment upon this as upon other points of administrative policy; and different rules had prevailed in different centuries. The existing practice dated from the beginning of the reign of Francis I, and had consequently a prescription of some two hundred and seventy years in its favour. The compact between that sovereign and Pope Leo X, known as the “Concordat of Bologna” was indeed an unconstitutional act, and was resisted as such at the time by the parliaments, the Universities, and the clergy of all ranks. But the system which it replaced —that of election by the cathedral chapters— was itself an innovation and a compromise. The prerogative in question had been long and hotly contested by various claimants, who represented, more or less accurately, two great rival powers or principles: the Regale and the Pontificate, the priesthood and the laity, the “Ecclesia docens” and the “Ecclesia discerns”. And such was the state of scandalous confusion to which this state of protracted strife had reduced the Church, that, in the end, anything in the shape of reasonable accommodation was welcomed as a means of escape from evils still more formidable.

Now by the Concordat, the civil and the spiritual powers were brought, at least theoretically, into concurrent and harmonious action. The sovereign, typifying the lay element, was to nominate to the dignities and chief preferments of the Church, with all secular advantages annexed to them. The Pope, as supreme administrator in things spiritual, was to grant “canonical institution”; an act by which he con­ferred, not any temporal distinction, but the cure of souls, that portion of the jurisdiction of the Church Catholic which qualifies the pastor to execute his office. This arrangement, stubbornly opposed at first, and never synodically accepted, had won in course of time a large share of confidence among the clergy, especially inasmuch as they had found it to act in many a trying crisis as a powerful bond of union between the Gallican Church and the Apostolic See. The agitation raised against it in the National Assembly was a manoeuvre of the Jansenists; who, under colour of restoring primitive institutions, purposed in reality to deal a damaging blow to Rome, and to overthrow the received principles of Catholic unity.

That provision of the Concordat by which French prelates (and through them inferior pastors) were to receive institution from the hands of the Roman Pontiff was abrogated in set terms by the “Constitution Civile.” The Pope was no longer to enjoy jurisdiction over the Church of France. He was to be acknowledged as the centre of unity, but not as the source of spiritual power, not as the dispenser of ecclesiastical “mission.” It is laid down in Article XX that “the new bishop may not (ne pourra point) address himself to the Bishop of Rome to obtain from him any confirmation. He can do no more than write to him (il ne pourra que lui ecrire) as to the visible head of the Church, in testimony of the unity of faith and communion which he purposes to maintain with him.” Confirmation, or institution, was to be given by the metropolitan; who could not refuse to give it without consulting the clergy of his cathedral, and stating his reasons in writing. No declaration or oath was to be required of the bishop-elect, except that he professed the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion. At his consecration, however, he was to take a special oath before the municipality and the people, to be “vigilant in the care of the flock committed to him, to be faithful to the nation, the law, and the king, and to maintain to the utmost of his power the constitution decreed by the National Assembly, and accepted by the king.”

It was mere sophistry —it was simply disingenuous— to pretend that changes such as these were not important; that they were mere external details which the civil power had a right to regulate at its pleasure. Rightly or wrongly, the vast majority of Catholics were convinced that spiritual authority, spiritual jurisdiction, spiritual mission, reside in the person and office of the Pope. In their view this was a primary article of faith; and none knew better than the Ecclesiastical Commissioners that, in attempting to abolish that belief, they were doing what must deeply wound the consciences, not only of the bishops and clergy, but of all the more religiously minded laity throughout France. But it was precisely in this point that they resolved to take summary and signal vengeance for the bull Unigenitus, and all the miseries which had resulted from it for seventy years past.

The real drift of this insidious measure was exposed at the earliest opportunity, and with fearless courage, by the prelates and other leading Catholics of the Assembly. There was in their minds a preliminary objection, antecedent to any proposed legislation on the subject. They denied that the National Assembly was competent to undertake such a work as the reformation of the Church. They disallowed its authority to originate changes of that nature. They contended that its enactments would not be binding on the faithful without the sanction of the Sovereign Pontiff and of a national Gallican Synod. The fact that a certain number of bishops and other ecclesiastics sat in the existing legislature did not, in their opinion, make its voice a true exponent of the mind of the Church; and consequently, the proposals of a so-called Ecclesiastical Committee of that body, even supposing them to be commendable in themselves, were unwarranted.

The reader will not fail to observe that this was the crucial-point, upon which, the Gallican Church joined issue with the leaders of the Revolution. It was no mere question of disciplinary detail—whether the number of bishops was to be larger or smaller, whether they were to be elected by the people or nominated by the Crown, whether the clergy were to be independent proprietors or stipendiaries of the State. Weighty as such questions were, they were eclipsed and overborne by one still weightier—whether the civil power was to impose laws upon the Spiritual without the concurrence of its legitimate rulers, without appeal to the authority of its representative Assemblies.

 

DEBATE ON CONSTITUTION CIVILE.

 

”The debate was opened on the 29th of May, 1790, by De Boisgelin, archbishop of Aix. “The Committee,” he observed, “desires to recall the clergy to the purity of the primitive Church. Such an object cannot be impugned by bishops, or any who hold the Apostolic Commission; but since the Committee admonish us of our duty, we must take leave to remind them of our rights, and of the sacred principles of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Jesus Christ conferred Divine mission upon the Apostles and their successors; He did not intrust it to sovereigns, or magistrates, or any civil functionaries. The mission which we have received by Ordination and Consecration dates back to the Apostles; no human power has any right to touch it. Observe, I am speaking of a jurisdiction purely spiritual. Abuses may have crept in, I do not for a moment deny it, I lament it as much as any man; but the spirit of the primitive Church is always at hand to correct them. We are not here to defend abuses, but we appeal to the canons and the tradition of the Church. The dismemberment of provinces cannot be effected but by the legislation of a Council. The Church may have to submit to sacrifices, but it ought to be consulted; and to destroy its faculty of internal administration would be sacrilege. We propose to you, therefore, to consult the Gallican Church by a National Council. There the power resides which is bound to watch over the Deposit of faith; there we shall obtain such knowledge of our duties as will enable us to conciliate the interests of the nation with those of religion. In the event of your not accepting this proposal, we beg to announce that we cannot participate further in your deliberations.”

Next day the discussion was taken up by two country cures, Leclerc and Goulard. The former reminded the house that the Church possesses all the rights and powers which belong to ecclesiastical government. Such power must obviously proceed from Christ Himself, and is of necessity independent of all human institutions. To invade that jurisdiction is to contravene the purposes both of the Church and its Founder. Princes are the protectors of the canons, “but God forbid,” cried the speaker, quoting the words of Fenelon—“God forbid that the protector should likewise be the governor! Princes cannot legislate for the Church; their protection should consist in making arrangements for the due execution of the laws of the Church; in passing such laws as are solicited by the Church, and which she adopts either by tacit or express consent. The creation of episcopal sees has been the prerogative of the Church from the earliest times. The case is the same as to their suppression; for the power which creates is the only one which can destroy.”

Goulard insisted that the effect of the proposed scheme would be to sever the Gallican Church from its lawful head; that it would thereupon become schismatical, and eventually heretical. He attacked the clause compelling the bishop to consult his synod in case of his objecting to institute a pastor. “Priests would thus be sitting in judgment on their superior, and correcting his decisions; which would be virtually to establish Presbyterianism. If there were a sincere desire to reform the Church, let the reform be based upon the authority of the episcopate. Let Provincial Councils be convoked. Civil power and spiritual jurisdiction could not be confounded together without peril to both. It was never intended by the nation that the Assembly should be transformed into a Council of the Church.”

The Assembly then proceeded to consider the clauses of the new Constitution seriatim.

Upon the first article, fixing the number and extent of the dioceses, Camus descanted at some length, reiterating his two favourite theological fallacies: first, that the clergy receive at ordination the right to exercise their ministry without territorial limitation; secondly, that the arrangement of ecclesiastical districts, being simply a matter of order and expediency, is within the competence of the civil government, and involves no encroachment on spiritual jurisdiction. “We are a National Convention,” said Camus, “and have power, unquestionably, to change the national religion. But we have no thought of doing so.- We intend to preserve the Catholic religion; we intend to have bishops and parish priests; but we have only eighty-three episcopal cities, and we can only assign to the bishops a territory limited in accordance with that fact. There is nothing spiritual in settling the question whether a bishop shall have jurisdiction over nineteen parishes or over twenty.” M. d’Espremesnil attacked this reasoning, and moved as an amendment that the king should be requested to consult the spiritual power, in order that the redistribution of episcopal sees might be carried out in accordance with the laws ecclesiastical. The amendment was rejected without being put to the vote, and the clause passed in the terms proposed by the Committee.

A vehement dispute next arose upon the article abolish­ing the institution of ecclesiastics by the Pope. It was now that the Abbe Gregoire, in reply to a question from D’Espremesnil, made the celebrated announcement that “it was the intention of the Assembly to reduce the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff to its just proportions; but at the same time it was equally resolved to avoid falling into schism.” Thereupon the Bishop of Clermont rose and informed the House, in his own name and that of his brethren, that they declined to take any further part in the proceedings.

The debate grew desultory and confused. Opinions were broached which sounded strangely in Catholic ears. Treilhard affirmed that St. Peter possessed no superiority over the rest of the Apostles; and challenged any member to produce a case in primitive times of jurisdiction exercised by one bishop over another. The Bishop of Clermont, in spite of his recent intimation, interposed again, and protested against the manifold heresies which had been obtruded on the House with so much ignorant assurance. “What Christian is there who does not know that the Pope possesses primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church? The contrary has been asserted; I repudiate that assertion. You declare that you will treat with respect everything relating to religion; beware lest by impugning its doctrines you cause that profession to be disbelieved.”

The principle of election of bishops and pastors by popular suffrage was carried with slight opposition, though attempts were made, even by Liberals, to modify it in detail. One proposed to entrust the choice to the clergy of the diocese concurrently with the lay council of the Department. The Abbé Grégoire moved that non-Catholics should be excluded from the electoral body. The original arrangement was, however, maintained. The bishop elect was to present himself to the Metropolitan, or the senior bishop, for institution. The metropolitan was to have power to examine him as to doctrine and morals. If he deemed him well qualified, he was to grant him institution; if he thought proper to refuse it, he was to state in writing the grounds of his refusal, signed by himself and his council; the parties interested being at liberty to dispute the decision by means of an appel commo d’abus.

Upon Clause XLI, providing that curés might name their own vicaires, but restraining them to priests ordained for the diocese and approved by the bishop, Camus made a characteristic speech, exhibiting all the pertinacity of his sectarian prejudices. He insisted on the omission of the words “approved by the bishop.” “The powers of the sacred ministry are conferred by ordination; when a man is once ordained, he has no need of any further approbation. It was not till the sixteenth century that the clergy were subjected to any additional test. The practice of episcopal approbations dates from the Council of Trent. The discipline of that Council is not in force in France; but in this particular it was found convenient, and as such was introduced into the kingdom. Events which occurred at Agen formed a pretext for this proceeding; the Royal Council then decided that priests should not be at liberty to preach without the consent of the bishop of the diocese. At length, in 1695, all priests, regular and secular, were forbidden to preach without the permission of the bishop; the latter being empowered withal to limit their licences to a certain place, or for a certain time, or to suspend them at pleasure, without specifying his reasons, and with the single check of an appel comme d’abus.

“It is easy”, continued Camus, “to see the absurdity of this edict, both in principle and in detail. By what means was it procured? We find from the procés-verbal of the Assembly of 1695 that a considerable subsidy was voted on that occasion. It is not stated that the grant was made with a view to obtain the edict; but that the fact was so may be fairly presumed from the circumstances.

“A law so purchased could hardly fail to produce mis­chievous effects. I shall not enumerate them, for they are only too well known. But this law, so absurd, so contrary to religion, must be abolished. The expression in the article must be priests established in the diocese, without employing the word approbation.”

The whole speech curiously illustrates the leading features of the system inculcated by the framers of the Constitution Civile. That system aimed, in the first place, at detaching National Churches from their union with the Roman See; while, on the other hand, it encouraged an insubordinate spirit in the clergy of the second order towards their diocesans. Such teaching evidently tended to derange and disintegrate the framework of the Church.

The article in question passed finally in the following terms: “Every incumbent shall have the right to choose his own curates, but he cannot choose them except from among priests ordained for the diocese, or who have been duly incorporated into it. If he desires to take a curate from another diocese, he cannot do so without the consent of the bishop.”

A lengthened discussion followed as to the amount of the emoluments to be assigned to the bishops and clergy under the new system. These were calculated upon a wretchedly parsimonious scale. The revenue of the metropolitan bishop of Paris was fixed at 50,000 francs. Other prelates were to receive from 12,000 to 20,000 francs, according to the size and importance of their sees. An attempt made by Cazales to raise the minimum stipend to 20,000 francs was unsuccessful, as was likewise a counter-proposal by Robespierre to reduce it to 10,000 francs. The Abbé Gouttes proposed to restore to the clergy a certain portion of their confiscated landed estates; it would be advantageous, he argued, both to them and to the State that their incomes should be derived in part from that source. This suggestion met with considerable support, and was only rejected by a very small majority after three divisions.

On the 12th of July M. Martineau recapitulated all the articles of the Constitution Civile, which was thereupon formally approved and adopted by the Assembly.

An interval of several weeks followed, during which it seemed doubtful whether the king would sanction it or oppose his veto. On the 20th of August a member rose and expressed his surprise that the decree of the house accepting the Constitution Civile had not yet been officially notified; upon which Lanjuinais replied that the Government “was waiting for a letter from the head of the Church, for the purpose of reassuring apprehensive consciences.”

 

LOUIS XVI AND POPE PIUS VI.

Louis XVI had indeed been for months past in anxious communication with the court of Rome upon this question, and was still uncertain what course to pursue. Pope Pius VI, on his part, had been no inattentive spectator of the startling events of the past year in France. Prudential reasons had induced him to abstain from intervention during the earlier stage of the Revolutionary outbreak; but at length, lest this reticence should be imputed to timidity or want of energy, he broke silence in an allocution to the Secret Consistory, on the 29th of March, 1790. On this occasion the Pope thus enumerated the causes which made it necessary that he should interpose the authority inherent in his office. “One of the first decrees of the Assembly was that which asserted that every mail is at liberty to think about religion as he pleases, and to publish his opinions with impunity; and further that no man is bound by any other laws besides those to which he has personally consented. Religion itself soon became a matter of public deliberation; and it was debated whether Catholicism should be retained, or not, as the dominant religion within the realm of France. Non-Catholics were declared eligible to all employments, municipal, civil, and military. It was decreed that solemn monastic vows should be no longer recognised; and the doors of convents of both sexes were thrown open for the exit of their inmates. Ecclesiastical property has been declared to belong to the nation, and tithes have been abolished. Can we decline to raise our Apostolic voice against such iniquitous decrees, by which religion is brought into peril, and the communications of this Holy See with that kingdom are well-nigh intercepted and cut off? But in what way, or to whom, should we speak? To the bishops, who are deprived of their authority, and forced to desert their dioceses in dismay? To the clergy, dispersed and humbled as they are, and unable to meet in their lawful assemblies? To the most Christian king himself, stripped of regal power, and in subjection to the Assembly, to whose decrees he is compelled to give the sanction of his name? Almost the whole nation seems to be miserably seduced by an empty phantom of liberty, and enslaved by a band of philosophers who contradict and abuse each other, not perceiving that the safety of kingdoms reposes mainly upon the doctrines of Christianity, and that their happiness is best secured when sovereigns are obeyed with unanimous consent, according to the express teaching of St. Augustine.”

Under such circumstances his Holiness judged it expedient to watch for a favourable opportunity of making known his sentiments to the world; implying that he would declare himself as soon as he could do so without risk of doing harm instead of good. Meanwhile his silence was not to be ascribed to negligence, much less to an approval of the events referred to; and he expressed a hope that it might shortly be in his power to open his mind with such frank­ness as might tend to the advantage and edification of the Church.

Such language left no room for misapprehension as to the views of the sovereign Pontiff; and the state of the case must have been perfectly known to Cardinal de Bernis, the ambassador of France at Rome. But the unhappy Louis, torn by the conflicting embarrassments of a cruel dilemma, had conceived a hope that by means of some temporary compromise he might at least stave off the calamities which he foresaw too clearly in the distance. The Constitution Civile was offensive to his conscience; he shrank from accepting it, both as repugnant to his own principles and because he felt that it must prove the source of grave dissension in the Church; yet on the other hand to reject it abruptly would be to expose himself, his family, and his kingdom to consequences equally if not more disastrous. Would it be possible to induce the holy Father to tolerate for a time, under the pressure of unexampled difficulty, a series of measures which in the abstract he could not be expected to approve?

Some of the king’s advisers encouraged this idea; and it was resolved to draw up and submit to the Pope certain propositions which might serve as a tentative basis for a conciliatory transaction. But in the meantime a document reached the Tuileries which must have convinced the distressed monarch that the head of the Church had already formed his judgment as to the acts of the French legislature, and was by no means likely to reverse it. On the 10th of July, 1790 —two days before the new Constitution had been finally voted— Pius addressed a brief to his “dearest son in Christ, Louis, the most Christian king of the French,” warning him against artifices and arguments by which he might be misled into a false policy, based on the plausible plea that it would restore public order and secure the happiness of his people. “We,” proceeds the Pontiff, “who represent Jesus Christ upon earth, and to whom He has committed the deposit of the Faith, feel it specially incumbent upon us, out of the paternal love we bear you, to declare and announce to your Majesty in the most positive terms, that if you should approve the late decrees concerning the clergy, you will thereby involve your whole nation in error; you will precipitate your kingdom into schism, and perhaps into a calamitous religious war. We have hitherto exercised scrupulous precaution, lest a movement of this kind should be excited in consequence of any act of ours; but if religion should continue to be exposed to danger in France, the head of the Church will speak in tones which cannot fail to be heard, though without any violation of the rules of charity. Do not suppose, dearest son, that the doctrine and discipline of the universal Church can be altered by a merely political and secular body; that the judgments of Fathers and Councils may be set at nought and abrogated, the hierarchy over­thrown, and, in a word, that the whole fabric of the Church Catholic may be undermined and disorganised, at its plea­sure.

“Your Majesty possesses in your Royal Council two archbishops, one of whom has been throughout his episcopate the champion of religion against the aggressions of infidelity, while the other is profoundly versed in all that relates to ecclesiastical law and jurisprudence. Consult them, together with other prelates and doctors eminent for piety and learning; lest the eternal salvation both of yourself and your people should be imperilled by a hasty act of approval, which would cause offence and scandal to all Catholics. You have already sacrificed many of your own prerogatives for the good of the nation; but, if you were justified in making concessions in regard to rights inherent in your kingly crown, you have no authority whatever to alienate or surrender those which belong to God and to His Church, of which you are the eldest son?’

The two prelates referred to by the Pope were Lefranc de Pompignan, archbishop of Vienne, and Champion de Cice, archbishop of Bordeaux. Archbishop de Pompignan held the “feuille des bénéfices”; the archbishop of Bordeaux was Keeper of the Seals. They were men of considerable capacity and merit, but not gifted with sufficient vigour of character to cope with the tempestuous agitation and contending passions of the time. Instead of counselling their master to stand firm, and deal faithfully with conscience at all hazards, they hesitated and temporized, and wasted their time in timid projects of accommodation, for which they could scarcely have expected a favourable issue. Both had received autograph letters from the Pope, under the same date with that addressed to the king, exhorting them to employ all their influence to dissuade Louis from sanctioning the fatal Constitution, and warning them that it is not allowable, in point of religious principle, to practise dissimulation for any reason whatsoever, even with the purpose of returning to the paths of truth when circumstances shall have altered. These communications, together with the brief addressed to the king, they thought proper to conceal, not only from the Assembly and the general public, but even from their episcopal brethren, and those most interested in the welfare of the Church. The consequence was that, although it was known that an attempt was being made to negotiate with Rome, contradictory rumours were circulated as to its purport; Catholic susceptibilities were excited, and grave apprehension spread through the provinces.

It is an open question, and one that may at least be plausibly argued on the affirmative side, whether, if Louis and his ministers had acted differently in this emergency, they might not have improved their chance of making head against the impetuous tide of revolution. Had it been distinctly announced that the Constitution Civile was disapproved by the Pope on the score both of doctrine and of discipline, and that on that account the sovereign felt bound in conscience to withhold his sanction, this would doubtless have had a stirring effect upon all the loyal-hearted classes of the nation, especially in the south and west of Prance. Enthusiasm would have been kindled instantaneously. A clear light would have been thrown on many doubtful points; subterfuges, evasions, fallacies, would have been swept away; and the faithful would have seen at once that the only way to deal with the new theology was to repudiate it root and branch. But in the absence of any such announcement the Catholic mind was sorely perplexed. The Revolutionists confidently asserted that the Pope was by no means opposed to the Constitution, and would in the end sanction it, with certain explanations; and this report, by dint of diligent repetition, obtained some credence even among the orthodox ranks. The king, hoping against hope, clung to the same delusion; and instructed Cardinal de Bernis to lay before his Holiness a series of articles which amounted to an acceptance of the Constitution, with the single exception of the clause which virtually denied his supreme jurisdiction, by forbidding bishops to resort to him for canonical institution. “Your Holiness,” wrote Louis on the 28th of July, “knows better than any one how important it is to preserve the ties which unite France to the Holy See. You will never permit it to be questioned that the most pressing interest of religion, in the present situation of affairs, is to prevent a deplorable division, which could not be inflicted on the Church of France without rending at the same time the bosom of the Church Universal.” The Pope, out of consideration for the ill-fated prince, refrained from returning a direct negative, and contented himself with referring the case to a commission of Cardinals. This encouraged Louis to believe that some arrangement might ultimately be effected; and without waiting for a definite answer, he resigned himself to an act of which he afterwards bitterly repented. Yielding to the impatient demands of the Assembly, he signified, on the 24th of August, his assent to the Constitution Civile.

It is easy to perceive, now that the question has long been determined by the events of history, that this was the most injudicious course which could have been taken. It perplexed and disheartened all true friends of the Church; while it encouraged the Revolutionists to push their aggressions to the most violent extreme. If Louis had been able to accept the proposed changes with a clear conscience, believing them to be upon the whole beneficial to his kingdom, and boldly risking a rupture with the Holy See upon grounds satisfactory to himself and his chief councillors, it is possible that means might have been found eventually for settling the reformation of the Church upon a basis acceptable to the nation. On the other hand, if he had at once made public his insuperable aversion to the whole scheme, refused to sanction it, and appealed vigorously to the Catholic traditions and convictions of his people, there is reason to believe that the response would have been such as to bring about a modification or relinquishment of the more exceptionable articles. But the middle course —the trimming, half-hearted, disingenuous mode of procedure— was the most unpromising of all. Louis was fully persuaded that the Constitution Civile was incompatible with some of the first principles of Catholicism as then universally received; but he had not the courage to act consistently on that conviction. He determined, therefore, to make a compromise with conscience; to accept the decree of the Assembly, while at the same time he sheltered himself from the responsibility of the step by seeking a quasi-sanction of it by the authority of Rome.

More than two months elapsed before further action was taken with respect to the late ecclesiastical legislation. During this interval the French bishops exerted themselves to set before their flocks in plain and forcible language the real character of the changes which it was sought to introduce into the economy of the Church, and to fortify them against any temptations to swerve from the ancient faith. One of the most remarkable of these utterances was an “Instruction Pastorale” by Mgr. Asseline, bishop of Boulogne, bearing date October 24, 1790. This obtained such high estimation among his colleagues that more than forty of them, including the archbishop of Paris, adopted and republished it for the guidance of their own dioceses. It may thus be regarded as a collective manifesto on the part of the orthodox clergy, and a fair synoptical statement of their case; and for this reason it maybe desirable to give a sketch of its contents.

The prelate begins by establishing the distinct existence and independent authority of the two Divinely-ordained powers, the Temporal and the Spiritual;—a doctrine which struck at the root of the pretensions of the National Assembly in the matter of Church reformation. “The Spiritual authority exists upon earth, equally sovereign, equally absolute, equally independent within its own sphere, with the civil power; and as it is not the business of the spiritual ruler to administer the State, so neither has the temporal ruler any power or right to govern the Church. Up to that memorable epoch when Constantine submitted to the Gospel, the civil power never thought of occupying itself with the administration of the Church; yet, amid the horrors of persecution, the spiritual authority had developed itself in its entire extent, and with perfect independence; the chief Pastors had regulated everything, and the Church, from the moment when she obtained her liberty, showed herself to the world as a society completely organised, solely by the exercise of the power which its chief officers had received from Him whose kingdom is not of this world. Now the Church cannot have lost, through the conversion of temporal princes to the faith, that authority which she exercised in the days of persecution. The world, when it submitted to the Church, did not acquire the right to enslave it; princes, on becoming children of the Church, did not become its masters. It is true that, since that happy revolution which made the cross of Christ the brightest ornament of the royal crown, the civil ruler has been styled the external bishop, and that one of his noblest prerogatives is to protect the Church; but he cannot merit that honour except by first setting an example of obedience. The external bishop must not assume the functions of the internal; he stands, sword in hand, at the door of the sanctuary, but he takes care not to enter it; he protects the decisions of the Church, but he does not make them. His office is to maintain the Church in full liberty against enemies from without, in order that she may freely pronounce, decide, approve, correct, and cast down every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. But the protector of liberty must not diminish it. If he should attempt to direct the Church, instead of being directed by her, his protection would no longer be an advantage, but a yoke in disguise.

“Again, people repeat continually that the Church is in the State. This is true; but the maxim must be taken in its proper sense, and not misconstrued. The Church is in the State; that is, the civil power is always and absolutely sovereign as to temporal administration; and all members of the Church, whether clergy or laity, are bound to submit to that power in everything that concerns temporal and political government. But the Church is not thereby divested in any measure of her own sovereign authority in things spiritual. If every National Church is in the State, every Catholic State is likewise in the Church; and just as each Catholic State preserves in the Church its absolute independence in political concerns, so does each National Church enjoy in the State a similar independence in spiritual concerns. Divine wisdom did not establish the two powers to oppose each other, but for the purpose of affording mutual assistance and support; which support is to be given in the way of correspondence and co-operation, not in the way of subordination and dependence.”

The bishop proceeds to point out that the National Assembly had palpably usurped the functions and violated the independence of the spiritual power by its late action in the Constitution Civile. The suppression, creation, and delimitation of metropolitical sees, dioceses, and parishes, the adoption of a code of laws for the election and institution of pastors, and for regulating the exercise of jurisdiction among the several grades of the hierarchy, these are essentially acts of spiritual authority. The ancient boundaries of a province or a diocese cannot be altered either in the way of extension or reduction, without thereby enlarging or diminishing the jurisdiction of the lawful ordinary, by placing under his charge a number of clergy and laity who before were not subject to him, or by withdrawing from him those who had been expressly committed to his care. But it is clear that these are spiritual functions. Whence, then, did the National Assembly obtain the right to undertake them?

 

CHARGE OF BISHOP ASSELINE.

 

Bishop Asseline goes on to observe that these proceedings cannot be justified upon the plea that bishops receive at their consecration an unlimited power of jurisdiction, which may from time to time be regulated by the State, according as it may think fit to change the circumscription of ecclesiastical districts. This is contrary to the rule of the Church. The Church, when she consecrates a bishop, assigns to him jurisdiction within a definite territory; his see is established in a particular spot, and is granted to him individually and exclusively. It is for this reason that bishops are forbidden, under heavy penalties, to perform any episcopal function within the diocese of another bishop without his permission.

So, again, with respect to the proposed arrangements for the election and institution of bishops and parish priests, including the conditions upon which they are to be eligible, and the precautions to be taken to ascertain their orthodoxy. “Will any man pretend” asks the bishop, “that these are not matters of a spiritual nature? Manifestly they are such; and upon what principle, then, can they be proper subjects for the legislation of the civil power?

“But it is alleged in justification, that it is necessary to re-establish primitive discipline. It might be sufficient to reply that a return to primitive discipline can be enacted only by the same authority that prescribed it in the beginning. But was such a thing ever seen in the early ages as the election of a bishop without previously convoking the clergy to take part in it? The learned historian of the Church (Fleury) gives a very different idea of the ancient practice. The choice of bishops was made by the neighbouring bishops, with the advice of the clergy and the faithful of the vacant diocese. The metropolitan was present, together with his comprovincials. The clergy were consulted, not only those of the cathedral, but of the whole diocese; in like manner the regular clergy, the magistrates, and the people; but the actual election was made by the bishops. Such was the practice during the first six centuries; and it continued nearly the same during the four following ages”.

The bishop adverts in the last place to that which in his eyes was a fundamental principle of Catholicism, the primacy, not only of honour but of jurisdiction, belonging of Divine right to the Roman Pontiff as successor of St. Peter;—a principle repudiated implicitly, if not in so many words, by the Constitution Civile. He deduces it from the well-known passages of Scripture which in the Western Church have been usually held to establish it, and further enforces it by copious quotations from Bossuet’s celebrated Sermon on the Unity of the Church, preached before the Assembly of the clergy in 1681.

This was, in fact, in the view of the Gallican episcopate at this crisis of its history, the “articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiae”; and it was this, more directly than any other difficulty arising out of the projected changes, that led to the disastrous schism which was soon to convulse the Church. Other innovations might possibly have been tolerated on the part of Rome, or modified or withdrawn on the part of the Assembly; but upon the dogma of the Papal Supremacy no transaction was possible. It was a test which could not be trifled with it must either be accepted or rejected; and the consequences of each alternative were patent and unavoidable.

The dispute was no new one. At what a lavish expenditure of intellectual energy, with what depth and variety of learned research, with how much ingenious distortion of historical truth, and with what disheartening results as regards the sacred cause of Christian unity and concord, this controversy has been agitated in successive ages, the annals of the Church bear ample testimony. Nor is this surprising; for if it be true that no bishops are rightly qualified for their functions save those who have been instituted by the Pope, it follows, without further argument, that the claims of the Roman see to supreme jurisdiction are absolutely irresistible.

The dogma that the prerogative of institution belongs exclusively to the Roman Pontiff is the very key-stone of the (so-called) Ultramontane fabric; and no further proof is needed that the Church reformers of the Revolution were opposed in essential principle to the theology of Rome, than the fact that that dogma was expressly eliminated from their creed. When this principle was distinctly admitted by the Concordat of Bologna, Rome acquired an advantage in comparison of which other points of ecclesiastical polity become secondary, if not insignificant. The reader scarcely needs to be reminded of the many instances in history in which that treaty led to keen conflict between the French Govern­ment and the Apostolic See. The prerogative of institution, like every other prerogative, was capable of being abused; and on some occasions the degree and character of the pressure exercised by the Papacy upon the State were excessive and indefensible. But, on the other hand, it was a weapon of singular potency when used with wisdom for the legitimate defence of the Church. It was a standing witness to the real existence of Spiritual Power, independently of all secular and civil authority. It was a wholesome check upon royal absolutism; a protest against the encroachments of temporal legislators and temporal tribunals; a safeguard against the inroads of Erastianism. Hence arose the instinctive and determined hostility with which it was regarded by the authors of the Constitution Civile.

The bishops belonging to the Assembly put forth, almost at the same moment with the charge of Bishop Asseline, a manifesto which became widely celebrated, under the title of “Exposition des Principes des Évêques de l’Assemblée sur la Constitution Civile du Clergé.” It had been previously submitted to the Pope by Boisgelin, archbishop of Aix, who drew it up at the instance of his brethren. This able document bore the signatures of thirty prelates, and was adopted afterwards by more than one hundred of their colleagues in different parts of the kingdom; so that it was justly characterised by the Pope in his reply as “expressing the doctrine of the collective Church of France.”

The style is clear, simple, temperate, and dignified. The principles enunciated are identical with those laid down in the “Instruction” of Bishop Asseline; but the author enlarges with peculiar force and emphasis upon the delicate question of conciliation and compromise between the French legislature and the court of Rome. “Much has been said about conciliation. The sole method of conciliation consists in recognising the rights of the spiritual power, which rights are ignored by the late decree. It has been attempted to set aside the ecclesiastical power; but that power reappears inevitably. The reason is that the question (whatever may be said to the contrary) is purely spiritual. It is proposed to suppress not only bishops, but churches, and to create new episcopal sees; but this cannot be done without the consent and co-operation of the spiritual power. The Church herself never divides by arbitrary action a diocese of ancient foundation. She affords a hearing previously to the parties interested. From the sixth century downwards these invariable rules have been observed in the erection of new sees;—the consent of the sovereign and of the bishop of the diocese, the appeal to the metropolitan and to the Pope. The multiplied records of the Church of France attest in every age the indispensable co-agency of the Priesthood and the Empire.”

“For more than two centuries past French bishops have received canonical institution at the hands of the Pope; and the same practice obtained in times anterior. By what fatality does it happen that the head of the Church has never been consulted as to the rights assigned to him by laws more than two hundred years old, and upon a part of his jurisdiction which he has exercised in all ages with the perpetual sanction of the Church?

“We desire to be made acquainted with the mind of the Church, in order to establish the necessary concert between the civil and the ecclesiastical authority, and to preserve, through their union, the peace of consciences and public tranquillity. For this purpose we have demanded the convocation of a National Council, and we have claimed, according to the ancient forms of the Gallican Church, the right of appeal to the head of the Church universal. We have requested the National Assembly to suspend the execution of its decrees in the departments until the Church shall have declared itself by the voice of its visible head, or until the canonical forms have been fulfilled in accordance with that wisdom and charity which direct the exercise of its power. There are no legitimate methods of examination, of conciliation, and of decision, which we have not propounded; and we shall at least have the comfort of having striven to maintain our principles in that spirit of concord and peace which becomes our ministry.

“It would appear that such were the dispositions of the Ecclesiastical Committee itself, when it petitioned the king to take the necessary measures for the execution of the decrees? For these necessary measures depended upon the action of another power besides that of the nation and the king. His Majesty considered it his duty to communi­cate with the head of the Church, to consult the Church through him, and to solicit his reply. In desiring, therefore, to wait for that reply, we are not contravening any decree pronounced by the National Assembly; the Assembly never intended to exclude the concurrence of the Church. No law has ever revoked the laws either of the Church or of the State with respect to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The Assembly does not profess to regulate the ecclesiastical constitution; it has only legislated on the civil constitution of the clergy, in a State which has adopted this Catholic religion as the religion of the State. We cannot, then, be charged with any offence to the civil power if we decline to recognise its rights over a spiritual jurisdiction which it has never assumed for itself. We desire to avoid a schism ; to make use of every expedient of wisdom and charity in order to prevent the troubles which such a distressing event would occasion. We consider, therefore, that our first duty is to wait with confidence for the reply of the successor of St. Peter; who, placed as he is at the centre of Catholic unity and communion, is by his office the interpreter and organ of the mind of the universal Church.”

This Exposition des Principes was the last appeal made to the world by the Church of France in its corporate capacity before it was laid low by the sacrilegious hand of the spoiler. Its voice was re-echoed with enthusiastic eagerness by cathedral chapters, religious bodies, and vast numbers of parish priests from one end to the other of the kingdom. The demonstration was one of immense importance, as testifying the determination of the majority of the French clergy to remain faithful at all risks to their engagements with the see of Rome; while, on the other hand, it must have inspired no small misgiving in the opposite camp as to the ultimate success of their new-fledged Constitution.

That the orthodox clergy by no means looked upon their cause as desperate, and that the future fortunes of the Gallican Church were considered to depend mainly upon the character of the policy which might be announced at this moment by the supreme authority of the Vatican, is clearly apparent from the following letter addressed by the Archbishop of Embrun to Cardinal de Bernis, French am­bassador at Rome, dated October 30, 1790.

Monseigneur,—Your Eminence is aware of the deplorable situation of France.... The new ecclesiastical Constitution places the kingdom in a state of schism and of heresy. That is the unanimous opinion of the clergy of France. The bishops of the Assembly have protested; those out of doors will follow them with all the energy that the circumstances require. They have kept silence till now out of respect for the Holy See. They know that his Majesty has consulted the Sovereign Pontiff, and they wait for his decision with that filial submission from which the clergy of France have never swerved. If, through considerations which no doubt have been suggested to the Pontifical court, his Holiness by any lenient concession should permit the present system to subsist either in whole or in part, I see no further means of redress; religion is banished for ever from the French empire. We shall fall short of candidates for the ministry; we shall be regarded as vile stipendiaries, whom the people will deem very much below them, inasmuch as they pay their salaries; and you know that the amount of good that one can do depends upon the consideration one enjoys. But if, on the contrary, the Sovereign Pontiff should decide, with all the solemnity that surrounds the Holy See, that this unhappy Constitution is inadmissible in principle; that it is contrary to the order established by Jesus Christ Himself, and recognised by the whole Catholic Church,—then courage will revive. Parish priests who have lost everything through ignorance or motives of self-interest will no longer have any excuse to plead. They are beginning to perceive that they have been duped; they are seeking a pretext to renounce their apostasy. They would in that case proceed to instruct their flocks, supported by the imposing authority of a bull solemnly pronounced; and I think I can assure your Eminence that their endeavours would be successful. Public opinion begins to change; enthusiasm is subsiding. We have no longer either aristocrats or democrats; the class of the malcontents absorbs every other. The bull of the Supreme Pontiff, the assignats, the taxes, and, above all, the pressure of trouble and misfortune, will do the rest. Tran­quillity will be re-established. Such are the reflections which I have thought it my duty to submit to your zeal and intelligence. I beg you to regard them as a proof of confidence, and of the respect with which I am &c. &c.

P. L. Archbishop of Embrun.

But notwithstanding this and many similar appeals from ecclesiastics in high position, the Vatican still clung to its system of reserve; and several months elapsed before any notification was made to the world that the Constitution Civile was condemned by the Apostolic See. It was during this suspense that those ruinous acts were perpetrated at Paris which for a time divorced the Gallican Church from the centre of unity to which it had adhered for nearly fifteen centuries; which divided the clergy into two antagonist factions, whose mutual jealousies and anathemas profaned the innermost sanctuaries of religion; which kindled the flames of an unnatural and inhuman persecution; which inflicted upon France the scourge of a civil war, the effects and memories of which cannot be said even now to be finally extinct.

 

 

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