Transcript Document
July, 1791 The Civil Constitution of the Clergy 1789 THE PEASANT CARRIES THE CLERGY AND THE NOBILITY ‘We ‘ope this ain’t going to last forever’ THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION • August 1789: Decree of August 4 abolishes the tithe; nobility and clergy to pay taxes to the state like other citizens. • The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the citizen grants freedom of religion, limited only by ‘the law’ • December 1789: full citizenship to Protestants and by January 1790 to most Jews. THE CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION • November 1789: Church lands were nationalised. • April 1790: the National Assembly refuses to declare Catholicism the state religion: violence erupts between Catholics and Protestants at Nimes,with 300 left dead. • State ownership of church lands used to back the issue of paper currency, the assignat - as money comes in from the sale of lands, these are to be redeemed. • November 1790: Church lands sold at auction The Civil Constitution: why did faithful Catholics reject it? • ‘They shall swear … to be faithful to the nation, the law and the King and to maintain with all their power the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly.’(July 1790) • Unless the Oath was sworn, clerics ‘shall be deemed to have renounced their office.’ • Priests and bishops were to be elected by the popular vote of ‘active’ citizens. The Papal Bull Charitas 13 April, 1791 • We …urge you not to abandon your religion, inasmuch as it is the one and only true religion which bestows life eternal … shun all invaders, whether they be called archbishops, bishops or parish priests, in such wise that there be no relations between you and them … no one can be in the Church of Christ unless he is one with its visible head and established in the Chair of Peter. THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY • McPhee:Many historians have seen the Civil Constitution of the Clergy as the moment which fatally fractured the revolution … in the end, it proved impossible to reconcile a church based on divinely ordained hierarchy … with a revolution based on popular sovereignty (76) THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY • Bosher: This was fated to divide the nation more than any other single measure … the clergy in general objected to a reorganisation on which the Church had not been consulted. • Tackett: the formal suppression of the nobility on 20 June and the …Civil Constitution of the Clergy … fostered a deep sense of fatalism and demoralisation on the part of many of the deputies of the Clergy and Nobles. Cobban • The anti-clericalism of Voltaire and the philosophes had bitten so deeply into the minds of those who represented the Third Estate at Paris that the extent of opposition that their reorganisation of the Church was to provoke was hidden from them. Unknowingly, they added religious schism to other causes of political and social unrest. Doyle • The real difficulties came with the provisions on appointment. All clerics were to be chosen by the laity, just like other public officials …the whole complex of issues raised by religion was soon polarising opinion … the conservative press … came together for the first time to denounce the Civil Constitution with one voice as an attack on the Catholic faith. Doyle • The French Revolution had many turning points; but the oath of the clergy was, if not the greatest, unquestionably one of them. It was certainly the constituent Assembly’s most serious mistake. For the first time it forced fellow citizens to choose: to declare themselves publicly for or against the new order. The Civil Constitution • In the Assembly, of the clerical deputies, only two bishops and 109 clergy took the oath. • Doyle: 54% of the parish clergy took the oath; 36% would not. M & F: ‘some two thirds of clergy refused to take the oath’. McPhee: ‘only a handful of bishops and perhaps half the parish clergy took the oath.’ Consequences of the Civil Constitution and the flight to Varennes. • The King’s Flight to Varennes, 21 June 1791. • The massacre at the Champ de Mars July 17, 1791: the first open conflict within the third estate, between the Assembly and the sans-culottes; Lafayette and Bailly are now seen as enemies of the people. • April 1792: war with Austria and Prussia • 1793: the Vendee rebellion.