The French Revolution

French Revolution

When historians and others engage in discussion on the French Revolution, they begin with discussions about why the people of France became unhappy and began rioting, bringing about a violent end to France's royal family and many members of nobility on August10, 1789 (Gough 2007 373). A revolution is not just about deposing a ruler or a despot to replace with another whether that other is Church or State. The events that occurred following August 4, 1789, and the events that precipitated the night of August 4, 1789, are matters of religion and politics, and how the French Revolution went terribly wrong (Schwab 1995 221). At the heart of the problem, and the position taken here, is that the revolution collapsed from with inside itself, causing it to go bad, because of a document that represented a power play separating Church and State, which had previously acted in synchronicity as a Church-State government. The document is the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and it is the focus of this brief study in order to create a picture not of how the revolution began or how it proceeded or the famous moments in its history, but to paint the portrait of the document itself. It will be shown here that the Civil Constitution of the Clergy made it impossible to separate the Church and State, but that it did eventually happen at the end of the revolutionary government (Bernard 1910 152).

This study lends itself to understanding the that thought went into the document, the individuals whose thoughts it represented, and what it was intended to do. It is a discussion of politics and religion, when the two are so intricately woven together as they are in the events of 1790 are never easy to unravel. Nonetheless, that effort will be made here, and it is the goal of this study to analyze them in a way that makes them no less interesting and exciting than they were as the events were unfolding and the people involved were living and dying for their choice of ideology.

This study will rely on the existing body of study and historical analysis compiled by scholars and historians. While the Works Cited will inform the study, every effort will be made to perform independent analysis and add that perspective to this study.

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was drawn up in July, 1790 (Schwab 221). It was a document that came out of the National Assembly, its Ecclesiastical clerics, but would eventually serve as a divide between the National Assembly Ecclesiastical clerics and it's the non-cleric body of the membership (Aulard 1910 45). There were differences early on, which would become impossible to for both the ecclesiastics and the legislative members to reconcile between them (45) F.A. Aulard describes it thusly:

They differed from Robespierre in this: Robespierre accepted intact the "civil religion" of Rousseau, with all its dogmas, and was doubtless already dreaming of making it the national religion of France; the Girondists accepted only the dogma of the existence of God, and it is obvious that their deism was only a denial of the God of the Catholic Church. In this they differed from Robespierre only, and not from the Montagnards, among whom Couthon alone perhaps was addicted to dreams of a State religion, and the cult of the Supreme Being, which haunted the imagination of Robespierre (F.A. Aulard 1910 45)."

This is not to suggest that the other factions within the National Assembly were without religious ideology, because, of course, they had their own goals for the role of religion in post revolutionary France (Aulard 125). "The republic, once it was Montagnard, became a religion; it had its martyrs and its saints (Aulard 125).

The Constitution of the Clergy was intended to deal with what the revolutionaries perceived to be a dangerous situation that they were faced with (Thompson 1952 22). The Catholic Church was not just the wealthiest institution in France, it was also the most powerful (22) the revolutionaries were faced with a need to take that power away from the church, but in way in which the National Assembly would be able to absorb and make use of the power themselves (22). The holdings owned by the Church were rich and extensive in land, buildings and endowments (22). The wealth held by the Church was badly needed by the revolutionaries in order to continue moving towards their democracy, although that, too, remained precarious because in the first year of the revolution there was what anyone should have anticipated as chaos as people sought to bring to a violent end France's monarch and wealthy (22). In the second year, the year in which the Constitution of the Clergy was created, there was a need to create infrastructure within the revolutionary government; as well as the desire by the vying parties to gain leadership roles in the new government (22). To allow the Catholic Church to continue to hold greater wealth and power than the revolutionaries was contrary to their movement, and it could not be allowed to happen (22).

When the revolutionaries came together and created the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, on July 14, 179o, it was the Feast of the Federation, but this feast, Albert Mathiez (1927) says, was different because, just as the revolution had marked the end of France's monarchy, this occasion marked the end of constitutional Catholicism, the secularization of the churches, and the abdication of the priests (Mathiez 85).

On August 4, 1791, the new government abolished the tithe payments which along with taxes had created burdens on the population in France, there continued to be a need to pay the clergy (Thompson 22) but because the people had stopped paying taxes, and now the tithes were abolished, it was necessary for the state to take the Church's property and wealth in France and to be the payor of the clergy (Thompson 22). This requisitioning of the Church accomplished the goals of the new government by essentially bringing about an end to the Catholic Church in France. Later, this event would be used as cause to prosecute and execute Robespierre, serving as proof that he was attempting to position himself with as much power as possible and that he wanted a dictatorship (Schwab?

). However, for the present, the new government seized the opportunity to reorganize what they were then passing as the Catholic Church in France (Thompson 22).

In doing this it was natural enough to reorganize the Church as a national institution: to identify the dioceses with the new departments (departements), which now replaced the old generalites (districts supervised by an intendant); to reduce the number of town parishes; to extend to the appointment of parish clergy the democratic method of popular election; to enforce regulations against absenteeism; to standardise the payments both of bishops and clergy; and, as they were now salaried State servants, to demand of them all an oath of allegiance "to the nation, the law, and the King (Thompson 22-23)."

For at least some of the Catholic clergy, being paid by the State actually pleased some clergymen, Thompson says, but most of the bishops came from wealthy families, and since the wealthy were still being executed, regardless of being paid there would have been a lot of resentment among the bishops (23). In fact, most of the bishops went into exile (23). The remaining clergy were asked to take an oath of faith and loyalty, but many refused (23). Here there is a problem, because their refusal to swear a prescribed oath of loyalty to the new government caused a division that the government had actually hoped to avoid, and instead it drove the clerics either into hiding, out of the country, or they met with death (23).

Robespierre had been raised a Catholic, but his goal was, Thompson says, to unite the country in faith if not religion "freed from Catholic dogma and clerical fanaticism (24)." In dire need of cash, and on behalf of the state, Robespierre began to auction off confiscated church properties "bit by bit (25)." The state also devised a scheme that was innovative for its time, allowing people to buy in co-owners of national properties (25). The government program created a new class of landowner, and, more importantly, that their newfound status and land came out of the revolution meant that those people felt a loyalty to the government, to Robespierre. It meant, too, that they would fight to prevent the nobility and royalty from returning to France, because it would mean they would lose their newfound status and property (25). "

Thompson says that Robespierre was so inspired by the genius of selling the land certificates, and that he was credited with saving the country from bankruptcy, that they converted the certificates to paper money (25). Unfortunately, as Thompson points out, printing paper money in excess of the money or gold to back it with in the treasury would soon catch up to the new government.

The Analysis

However, it is the not past this point that this study needs to go, rather it is at this point that we need to stop and take into analyze the information that is cited here, and to see if that analysis takes us in other directions. There is really very little detailed information about the discussions and debate that might have surrounded the creation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. It is not like the American Constitution, where the thoughts of the singers are recorded, or renderings of the National Council showing the country's forefathers of freedom hard at work and debate. It is important to understand the complexities of society as they existed at the time of the revolution. Thompson describes the country as the wealthy, the middle "bourgeois" class, and the workers.

In the age-long constitution of French society, so soon to be dissolved by revolution, the privileged orders of Clergy and Nobility and the unprivileged but financially and professionally important bourgeoisie -- corresponding to our middle classes -- formed no more than a thin crust upon the surface of the workers: half a million privileged and a million bourgeois, or thereabouts, to twenty-five million workers, nine-tenths of them agricultural. But in the few great cities (Paris had a population of about 600,000, and some half a dozen ports or manufacturing centres approached six figures), and in the many county towns, as we should call them, the dignitaries of the cathedral, the parish priests, the members of the Town Council (municipalite), the magistrates, lawyers, and solicitors, and all the minor officials of civil and ecclesiastical government more than held their own. The sons of the petite bourgeoisie, if they found no vocation in the Church, and had no family business to inherit, cherished two ambitions: to own a plot of land and to secure a legal or official appointment. The first carried by custom the right to put de before one's name (in truth it was little more than the dubious transition from "Mr." To "Esq." which causes us so much embarrassment); the second stood for social consideration and a fixed income, however small (Thompson 6)."

When we look at the population of the country and the income distribution, knowing already that the working people were poor and starving, it is clear that they had only three groups of people to lead them out of their despair: the bourgeoisie, closest to them in class and, for that reason, understanding of their plight. For instance, as an example, Marie Antoinette is credited with having said, "Let them eat cake." It does not matter here whether or not she really said that. If she did say such a thing, it would not have been that she was heartless, but that when told they were out of bread, her response was that which she herself might have done rather than have eaten bread; to have eaten cake. In other words, the monarchy and wealthy class were so out of touch with who their citizens were that it was irreparable. But who would lead the people of France? It could only have been the bourgeois, one million strong, to lead the 25 million working class population.

In this leadership were the Jacobins, which is where Maximilien Robespierre is. The ideologies of the Jacobins, at least at that moment, were such that they convinced the people of France that their values, that which they held dear, and their behaviors, that they were ready to riot to end their starvation, were justified and factual. Robespierre was a man who could relate to them because he was near as poor as they, and his mother had died and his father had abandoned the family, which meant that he could easily relate to the conditions in which many of France's people suffered in (Thompson 6). Robespierre was also a man who had studied the philosophies of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Raynal (Thompson 7).

The Jacobins, then, were a mixture of the bourgeois and the working class, lead by Robespierre, who had educated and philosophical ideas about government and society. The Jacobins gained in popularity, and it is easy to understand why, because they were the group with whom the majority of the people, especially those people living in Paris, could relate to.

When the leaders of the revolution came together on July 14, 1790, then, creating the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, that document was created largely by France's bourgeois; mostly lawyers, and professional men whom, like the working class, were more restricted in their lives by religion than spiritually enlightened by it, because of the cost associated with the tithes, and because the Church was a mechanism of the State and the State a mechanism of the Church, equal in their dependency on the middle class and the working class to sustain life styles that, for the working class, were never attainable, and, for the middle class, excessive such that it kept them indebted. The working class, not having the education that would have lead them to respond otherwise, acted on emotions and physicality. The middle class could lead them because they were emotional, and acting on their physicality, and the middle class was educated in business, law, and philosophy and could appeal to the emotional working class.

When the National Assembly created the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, requiring the clergy to take an oath to the new government, and when the document abolished the tithes and essentially the Catholic orders of priests and bishops, and since the Church represented by way of the enforced tithes only hardship to the masses, it was not against the values or the morals of the masses that these things ceased to burden them. Therefore, they had no opinion and no had objection on the matter. They also benefited when the new government began auctioning away or issuing certificates of land that had been previously the property of the Church. The decree impacted their way in a positive way, and, therefore, they embraced it.

In the countryside the people held a different perspective. The population was less emotional, more practical in their reaction and behavior. They made their living off the land, and there was a system, a status quo, that facilitated their lives under the mobility even though they were working poor. At first, the Jacobin rhetoric might have made sense to them, and even satisfied their need for revolution initially. However, the people in the countryside had a different relationship with their faith and with the Church, and it appears that it was much more a significant part of their lives than a part of the lives of the people in the urban settings (Thompson 7).

A the People -- a word which meant in effect the opinion of Paris (for the provinces either had no opinion or echoed that of the capital); and Paris, though it disliked lawyers, regarded the legislative "veto" of the parlements as a bulwark of popular liberty. This public opposition took the form of a demand for the summoning of the States-general (etats-generaux), or Parliament of France, in its three Houses of Clergy, Nobility, and Commons (tiers etat), which had not met since the time of Henri IV, 175 years ago (Thompson 8)."

The political ideologies of the provinces were vastly different in perspective and in origin. The Jacobin Republic, says Alan Forrest, would not accept disinterest or excuses for being politically unaware or uninformed, and the division of the provinces into departments required that the cities of those areas provide leadership, where, in some instances, there were few individuals who had the educational training or background to provide the Jacobin style leadership (Forrest 92). Alan Forrest (1996) points this out in his book the Revolution in Provincial France.

By 1793 the revolutionaries would insist that individual citizens show positive commitment to revolutionary policies: the Jacobin Republic would not accept a lack of interest in politics as an excuse for inactivity. But even in 1789 passivity was discouraged. Ideas had to be discussed and debated, assimilated and digested, and new vectors of political expression were rapidly created, especially in urban centres. Paris might still be the fulcrum of political life, sending tracts and discussion papers down to the departments and inaugurating change which affected the lives of provincial Frenchmen. But participation was not limited to Paris. Provincial towns soon mobilized their own battalions of the National Guard and organized local federations. Intellectually, too, it was the towns -- with Bordeaux staking a claim to the regional intellectual leadership which it regarded as its right -- that took the most important initiatives. Bordeaux, it might seem, was well-prepared for its new role, since it had already enjoyed an active literary and intellectual life in the last years of the ancien regime. Leading figures from the merchant and legal communities, in particular, had long shown an interest in politics and had demanded the right to more active participation (92)."