Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution

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The Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution is a conventional description of the results of a number of separate policies, conducted by various governments of France between the start of the French Revolution in 1789 and the Concordat of 1801.

1 Policies
2 The Church under the Ancien Régime
3 The Revolution and the Church
4 Effects in Québec
5 References
6 See also
7 External link

[edit] Policies

The multiple policies supported by different parties, at different times, at different levels of government include:

The traditional Gallican policy that the Church of France should be subject to the French government rather than a foreign pontiff.
That there should be no privileges in the new Revolutionary France. The abolition of the Church's feudal privileges was of a piece with the abolition of the feudal privileges of the nobility.
That all classes and orders should contribute to straightening out the financial disaster which had initially caused Louis XVI to convene the Estates-General of 1789.
Adoption and enforcement of a policy of religious toleration.
Creation of a common patriotic ceremonial and symbolism.
Anti-clericalism.
War with the Pope, as a temporal sovereign whose troops had killed a French officer on the grounds of the French Embassy in Rome.
Support of an alternate religion, especially the Cult of the Supreme Being. (The Cult of Reason was the opposing program of the Hébertists, who never took power.) This was limited to November 1793 and some months of 1794.

Only the support of an alternate religion has been unanimously called de-Christianization by everybody, then and since.

[edit] The Church under the Ancien Régime

In 18th century France, ninety-five percent of the population were adherents to the Roman Catholic faith and, under the Ancien Régime, the authority of the Church was institutionalized in its status as the First Estate, foremost among the three estates of the realm. The power of the Roman Catholic Church came from many sources: it was the largest landowner in the country whose properties provided massive revenues from its tenants plus enormous income from the collection of tithes, a Church-levied tax on all crops produced anywhere in the country. The Church in France controlled the registry of births, deaths, and marriages, held a monopoly over primary and secondary education, and ran the hospital service. No citizen in France could live his or her life without the involvement of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church's justified its power through the teaching of extra ecclesiam nulla salus - a doctrine which held that only through the Roman Catholic Church could someone receive permission to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Withholding such permission was a weapon in the hands of the clergy that brought everyone from peasants to kings to their knees, begging for the church's forgiveness on their deathbeds. But the hospitals were grossly inadequate and poorly run and by the time of the Revolution, the Church was widely seen as a body less interested in the spiritual well-being of its followers than in preserving its own privileges and wealth. The Church's difficulties were greatly added to by a deep dissatisfaction within its own ranks. A wide gap in living standards existed between members of the clergy. Senior positions in the Church were occupied by members of noble families, giving them the benefit of the Church's wealth base and enormous annual revenues. In stark contrast, the majority of priests in small communities lived in perpetual poverty.

[edit] The Revolution and the Church

In an attempt to stem the growing unrest, in August of 1789 the State cancelled the hated taxing power of the Church. The issue of church property became central to the policies of the new revolutionary government. Declaring that all church property in France belonged to the nation, confiscations were ordered and church properties were sold at public auction. In July of 1790, the National Constituent Assembly published the Civil Constitution of the Clergy that stripped clerics of their special rights — the clergy were to be made employees of the state, elected by their parish or bishopric, and the number of bishoprics was to be reduced — and required all priests and bishops to swear an oath of fidelity to the new order or face dismissal. French priests had to receive Papal approval to sign such an oath, and Pius VI spent almost eight months deliberating on the issue. On April 13, 1791, the Pope denounced the Constitution resulting in a split in the French Catholic church. Those who accepted were known as the constitutional clergy, and those who obeyed the Pope, the refractory priests or "non-jurors".

In September of 1792, the National Assembly legalized divorce, contrary to Catholic doctrine. At the same time, the State took control of the birth, death, and marriage registers away from the Church. An ever increasing view that the Church was a counter-revolutionary force exacerbated the social and economic grievances and violence erupted in towns and cities across France. In Paris, over a forty-eight hour period beginning on September 2, 1792, as the Legislative Assembly (successor to the National Constituent Assembly) dissolved into chaos, three Church bishops and more than two hundred priests were massacred by angry mobs; this constituted part of what would become known as the September Massacres. Priests were among those drowned in the Noyades for treason under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Carrier; priests and nuns were among the mass executions at Lyon, for separatism, on the orders of Joseph Fouché and Collot d'Herbois. Hundreds more priests were imprisoned and made to suffer in abominable conditions in the port of Rochefort.

Anti-church laws were passed by the Legislative Assembly and its successor, the National Convention, and by département councils throughout the country such as in Indre-et-Loire, where in November of 1793 the very word dimanche ("Sunday") was abolished. The Gregorian calendar, an instrument decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, was replaced by the French Republican Calendar which abolished the sabbath, Saints' days and any references to the Church. Anti-clerical parades were held, and the Archbishop of Paris was forced to resign his duties and made to replace his mitre with the red "Cap of Liberty." Street and place names with any sort of religious connotation were changed, such as the town of St. Tropez which became Héraclée. Religious holidays were banned and replaced with holidays to celebrate the harvest and other non-religious symbols. Robespierre and his colleagues decided to supplant both Catholicism and the rival, atheistic Cult of Reason with the Cult of the Supreme Being. Just six weeks before his arrest, on June 8, 1794 the still-powerful Robespierre personally led a vast procession through Paris to the Tuileries garden in a ceremony to inaugurate the new faith.

The dechristianisation of France reached its zenith around the middle of 1794 with the fall of Robespierre. By early 1795 a return to some form of religion-based faith was beginning to take shape and a law passed on February 21, 1795 legalized public worship, albeit with strict limitations. The ringing of church bells, religious processions and displays of the Christian cross were still forbidden. As late as 1799, priests were still being imprisoned or deported to penal colonies and persecution only worsened after the French army led by General Louis Alexandre Berthier captured Rome and imprisoned Pope Pius VI, who would die in captivity in Valence, France in August of 1799. Ultimately, with Napoleon now in ascendancy in France, year-long negotiations between government officials and the new Pope, Pius VII, led to the Concordat of 1801, formally ending the dechristianisation period and establishing the rules for a relationship between the Roman Church and the French State.

While persecution of certain Roman Catholic clerics and monastic orders occurred during the Third Republic, the Concordat of 1801 endured for more than a century until it was abrogated by the government of the Third Republic, which established a policy of laïcité on December 11, 1905.

[edit] Effects in Québec

This dechristianisation period in France had far-reaching effects, particularly in Canada where the Roman Catholic Church in the province of Québec tightened its grip on the overwhelmingly Catholic population.