Civil Constitution of the Clergy

There had been many laws passed from the beginning of the Revolution which had affected the previously privileged position of the clergy.  The tithe that the church were reliant upon was removed in July 1790 and shortly afterwards church property that was used to support revenue were nationalised.  The natural extension of this was to make the clergy state employees and take a wage from their generous overlords.  By October 1790 monks and nuns were to be released from their bonds unless they could prove they were providing education or helping the poor and aiding the sick.

In exchange for their new salary the clergy were obliged after November 1790 to take an oath the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.  This was to prove their acceptance of the new order and loyalty to the constitution and the political assembly.  Those who swore the oath were known as constitutionals those who refused were refractories.  The constitutionals were elected across the Departments across France replacing their truculent, fractious refractory colleagues.

The King was slow to sign the bill into law seeking assurances from Pope Pius VI that this was acceptable to the wider Roman Catholic Church.  Assurances the Pope was utterly unwilling to give.  In total only seven bishops would take the oath amongst them Talleyrand who remain in the cloth only temporarily.   The Pope would call on all clergy to renounce their oaths and this perhaps explains why only around 54% ever took the oath.

The schism that this created in French society cannot be underestimated.  While anti clerical thoughts, dechristianisation, the cult of reason and of the Supreme Being might find a foothold or indeed flourish in Paris and in some urban centres this was not the case across all of a France.  In rural areas and in particular the Vendée.  People saw the imposition of priests as further evidence of an overly centralised government who had no interest in life outside of Paris.  This stoked resentment which would lead to open revolt in the Vendée where they would embrace monarchism and traditional Catholicism.

After the events of Thermidor the Convention repealed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.  There would still be tension between the Catholic Church and the French state.  These wounds would be scratched, healed and then rendered anew under Napoleon.

Edmund Burke on the church.  Taken from Reflections on the Revolution in France, Penguin Classics, London (2004) p252-253

When my occasions took me into France, towards the close of the late reign, the clergy, under all their forms, engaged a considerable part of my curiosity.  So far from finding…. The complaints and discontents against that body, which some publications have given me reason to expect, I perceived little or no public or private uneasiness on their account.  On further examination, I found the clergy in general, persons of moderate minds and decorous manners; I include the seculars, and the regulars of both sexes.

Germaine De Staël on Constituent Assembly and their creation of the Civic Oath for clergy.  Taken from Considerations on the Principle events of the French Revolution, Germaine De Staël, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis (2008) p239

A great error, and one which it seemed easier for the Constituent Assembly to avoid, was the unfortunate invention of a constitutional clergy.  To exact from the ecclesiasticals an oath at variance with their conscience, and, on their refusing it, to persecute them by the loss of a pension, and afterward even by transportation, was to degrade those who took the oath, to which temporal advantages were attached.

The Constituent Assembly ought not to have thought of forming a clerical body devoted to it, and thus affording the means, which were afterwards embraced, of distressing the ecclesiastics attached to their ancient creed.  This was putting political in the place of religious intolerance.  A single resolution, firm and just, ought to have been taken by statesmen under those circumstances; they ought to have imposed on each communion the duty of supporting their own clergy.  The Constituent Assembly thought that it acted with greater political depth by dividing the clergy, by establishing a schism, and by thus detaching from the court of Rome those who would enrol themselves under the banners of the Revolution.  But of what use were such priests?  The Catholics would not listen to them, and philosophers did not want them: they were a kind of militia, who had lost their character beforehand, and who could do not do otherwise than injure the government who they supported.  The establishment of a constitutional clergy was so revolting to the public mind that it was necessary to employ force to give it effect.

Wollstonecraft on the clergy in France.  Taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2008) p49

And what is this mighty revolution in property? The present incumbents only are injured, or the hierarchy of the clergy, an ideal part of the constitution, which you have personified, to render your affection more tender.  How has posterity been injured by a distribution of the property snatched, perhaps from innocent hands, but accumulated by the most abominable violation of every sentiment of justice and piety? Was the monument of former ignorance and iniquity to be held sacred, to enable the present possessors of enormous benefices to dissolve in indolent pleasures?  Was not their convenience, for they have been turned adrift on the world, to give place to just partition of the land belonging to the state? And did not the respect due to the natural equality of man require this triumph over monkish rapacity?  Were these monsters to be reverenced on account of their antiquity, and their unjust claims perpetuated to their ideal children, the clergy, merely to preserve the sacred majesty of Property inviolate, and to enable the Church to retain her pristine splendour?  Can prosperity be injured by individuals losing the chance of obtaining wealth, without meriting it, by its being diverted from a narrow channel, and disembogued into the sea that affords clouds to water all the land?  Besides, the clergy not brought up with the expectation of great revenues will not feel the loss; and if bishops should happen to be chosen on account of their personal merit, religion may be benefited by the vulgar nomination.

William Short the American chargé d'affaires discusses the sale of church land in November 1790.  Taken from Witnesses to the Revolution American and British Commentators in France 1788-1794, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London (1989) p118

The operation of the sale of ecclesiastical lands is going on with rapidity and success beyond their most sanguinary expectations…This is a rich mine and if properly managed might very soon enable them to put their immense debt on a very favourable footing.  It is to be feared however that with such a legislature and such administrative bodies as they have at present, the facility that these sales will give them with respect to the paper money system, will have an evil tendency.

Edmund Burke on the French Revolution and the church.  Taken from Reflections on the Revolution in France, Penguin Classics, London (2004) p204-205

The robbery of your church has proved a security to the possessions of ours.  It has roused the people. They see with horror and alarm that enormous and shameless act of proscription.  It has opened, and will more and more open their eyes upon the selfish enlargement of mind, and the narrow liberality of sentiment of insidious men, which commencing in close hypocrisy and fraud have ended in open violence and rapine.  At home we behold similar beginnings.  We are on guard against similar conclusions.

Gabriel Brute remembers seeing as a teenager the trial of the Priest and the three Sisters of La Chapelle in the Diocese of Rennes.  Taken from Memoirs of the Right Reverend Simon WM. Gabriel Brute, The Catholic Publication Society, New York (1876) p118-124

Mr. Raoul (the priest), and the three good Sisters of La Chapelle St. Aubert, have been seized and brought to the city yesterday ; to-day they are to be tried."  Such was the sad news of the morning, and about 8 or 9 o'clock. I saw them passing under our windows on their way to the Tribunal, followed by the mob, who accompanied them with the usual cry, "a la Guillotine." I immediately went after them, and, young as I was, crept along from place to place until I got so near that I stood immediately behind M. Raoul seated upon the bench, with my arms folded upon the railing, almost touching his back. The Sisters were seated upon a bench across the other side of the floor. The Judges elevated with their seats upon a higher floor, about upon a level with the heads of the Prisoners, and the Gendarmes. The President of the Court was Bouassier, who had been a reputable attorney of Rennes, esteemed before the Revolution as a good, moral man, but a philosopher, as our French Deists were called naturally kind-hearted, but gradually drawn on, or rather pushed on from one excess to another, and then fixed in his dreadful position by personal fear.  

"Thy name and age," said the President. "Raoul-Bodin " answered the Priest, aged 70 years, or perhaps more, I do not exactly remember, but I still see the worthy man, as he sat there, tall, very thin, with a bald forehead, hair quite gray, a placid, noble, and truly religious countenance. " Thy profession?" "A Priest Cure of La Chapelle St. Aubert." " Didst thou take the civic oath?" "No, citizen." " Why not?" was then asked; and he answered " because he could not, according to his conscientious views of the subject."

Two or three short questions and answers may then have taken place which I do not call to mind, but I remember distinctly that the good old man began to entreat in favour of the three Sisters in whose house he had been arrested speaking in a very calm but very affecting and impressive manner, to the President and the court, for two or three minutes, until he was repeatedly silenced. The tones of his voice are still sounding in my ears ; his words were to this effect: "Citizens, judges! will you put to death these poor ladies, for an act of hospitality so inoffensive to the public so natural, so worthy of their kind hearts, when I had been for twenty years (or more) their Pastor? Do spare them, citizens; it becomes so much better the Republic to show clemency," Silence ! They must speak for themselves. Silence ! It is none of thy office to address the Tribunal in their favour. Silence! citizen." He was compelled to stop, and sat down (he had stood up whilst speaking) and looked towards the poor Sisters, who were then, successively, called upon to give their names and age, and acknowledge that they knew the Priest and gave him asylum in contravention to the national decrees. They were three elderly Sisters, between 45 and 50 years of age, or more, of a most respectable and gentle appearance and dress a calm, simple deportment before the Tribunal. They lived on their estate at Chapelle St. Aubert. One of them had been expelled by the decrees of the Convention from her Convent, and obliged to return and live with her Sisters. She was now dressed like them, and seated the last in order upon the bench, and was the last called upon to answer. In addition to the replies made by her Sisters to the interrogatories of the Judges, she added, " That she had no home after her expulsion from her Convent, and was compelled to return to her Sisters and live upon their bounty, and that consequently she did not come under the severe terms of the law against those who gave protection to Priests." The plea seemed fair enough, but it gave occasion to no particular consultation amongst the Judges, but was immediately overruled, in a very harsh and abusive manner, as a preposterous and useless attempt to have her cause separated from that of the others. She then, if I am not mistaken, or one of the Sisters, began to entreat in favour of the good old man, as he had done for them, but in a more earnest and severe manner. "How cruel it would be to put to death so holy and innocent a man, who had committed no crime, but whose whole life -had been spent in doing good to all, and especially to those who were then called the Sans Culottes, so particularly dear to the Republic, to the poor, to the aged, to the little ones,". She was repeatedly ordered to be silent, but became only the more animated, until compelled to hold her peace, and let the matter take its course.

The examination of all four of them had occupied but a short time being, in fact, a mere formality, since, the Letter of the Law was most express, “the Priest and those who harbour him to be put to death within twenty-four hours after being seized." The President then proceeded, after scarcely a moment's conference with the other Judges, to apply this cruel enactment, and to pass sentence of death, in the name of the Republic, upon the Priest Raoul and the three Sisters who had given him asylum adding the usual order, that all the religious objects found in the house, and which in the language of the sentence were styled "les hochets du fanatisme," should be … burned at the side of the scaffold.  When the sentence had been pronounced the Nun could not restrain her feelings of indignation. She rose from her seat, snatched from her cap the national cockade, which even the women were obliged to wear during these days of delusion, and, trampling it under her feet, she addressed alternately the Judges and the people with two or three sentences of vehement reproach: " Barbarous people!" she exclaimed, "amongst what savage nations has hospitality ever been made a crime, punishable with death?" I cannot now call to mind her other expressions, except that she appealed to the higher tribunal of God, and denounced his judgment against them.  Her Sisters tried in the meanwhile to check her, and recall her to silence. The one who sat next to her pulled gently at her dress (I can see her now), as if urging her to stop.  All was soon hushed to silence, and the Judge addressed, as usual, an emphatic and opprobrious charge to the victims, and particularly the Priest, with bitter reproaches for their fanaticism, as he called it addressing himself also to the spectators

with energetic declarations of their determined resolution to free the Republic from all dangers, and have the Priests and their accomplices and dupes brought to the same punishment ; the whole a most shocking piece of outrage, and raving enthusiasm still more shocking, as coming from one who, like the unfortunate Bouassier, had enjoyed a character little fitted for such a horrid profanation of every best principle. During the whole time M. Raoul was engaged in prayer. Methinks I can still hear the sounds, and low, little swellings of his prayer some of the Psalms, it seemed from the Latin final or syllable, rising from time to time in a half-suppressed murmur whilst the Jailer or Executioner (for he was always present) was putting on the handcuffs, and securing them so tight that I remember the Priest gave signs of uneasiness, and looked at the man as if entreating him not to screw them so tight.

No further distinct recollections connected with the scene come to my mind. I cannot now recall the state of my feelings. I know only that they were generally a mixture of horror, and pity, and admiration, and exaltation religious views of Heaven, mixed with a detestation of Deism and Naturalism, which at such moments seemed destined to prevail over the Christian Religion in France.  The same day these four victims -were immolated upon the fatal Guillotine; they were taken, I think, as was often the case, from the Tribunal to the Scaffold, which stood permanently erected under the windows.

Gabriel Brute discusses his memories as a teenager on the state of religion in France.  Taken from Memoirs of the Right Reverend Simon WM. Gabriel Brute, The Catholic Publication Society, New York (1876) p111-115

During the progress of the persecution, the greater number of the Priests of the Diocese had been either guillotined or shot, or transported to the penal colonies. The more aged and infirm were imprisoned in the Castle of Mount Saint Michael (about 50 miles from Rennes). Of the few left, in deep concealment, some were almost daily discovered, and, according to the law, led, with those who had harboured them, to the guillotine within twenty-four hours. All the Churches of the Diocese had been seized upon and converted to profane uses.  Some were used as storehouses for forage, hay, etc. ; some were converted into barracks and stables or to make room for new streets: some, in short, were turned to the worst of purposes (yet under Providence, by this means, preserved); changed into temples for the decadi, the festivals of the national calendar, so curious a thing by itself, or for the clubs and political assemblies of the time.  All the old and best families, the most zealous for Religion, were not only deprived of all public exercise of it, but were scarcely able to practise their private and secret devotions in the interior of their houses. It was forbidden by law, and under penalties of line and imprisonment, to observe Sunday or to distinguish it in any way from common days, whilst the decadi, or every tenth day, which had been substituted for the Sunday and made the legal day of rest, was under the same penalties enforced, by ceasing from labour, keeping the shops closed. Such a state of things, which was the habitual condition of the whole population from the end of 1792 until 1795, had brought the minds of those who still remained attached to their Faith into a most desponding state in regard to the future prospects of religion in France.