VII.
This was the last great law against the Reformed, which was published on the 14th of May, 1724, in the form of a royal declaration. If it was never thoroughly executed to the letter, [although] it was often applied; and as it remained officially in force during sixty-three years, until the Edict of Toleration of Louis XVI., it is important that its origin, spirit, and principal articles should be made known.
The chief author of this law was Lavergne de Tressan, bishop of Nantes, almoner to the duke of Orleans, and a worthy acolyte of Cardinal Dubois, whom he had consecrated. Irreligious and immoral, and so avaricious as to have accumulated sixty-three benefices, he coveted the Roman purple, and thought that he could not prove his title to it better than by completing the extermination of the heretics. Lavergne de Tressan presented his project to Dubois and to the regent, each of whom refused to entertain it. He was more successful with the Duke de Bourbon, who had been appointed minister by Louis XV. This Duke de Bourbon was a severe and haughty man, of ignoble aspect, deficient at once both in convictions and intelligence, governed by shameless female favourites, and innocent of having ever passed any other than barbarous laws. He ordained, among other things, that all beggars should be branded with a hot iron.
Some magistrates, it is said, also had a hand in the declaration of 1724; they introduced certain modifications which were unfavourable to the domination of the clergy, as afterwards appeared.
The edict contained eighteen articles. It was a compilation of the most severe ordinances issued against the Reformed under the reign of Louis XIV., with, in general, aggravated penalties. The odious fiction was relied upon, that there were no longer any Protestants in France; and Louis XV., then fourteen years of age, was made to say in the preamble, that he had nothing so much at heart as to pursue the lofty designs of his right honoured lord and great-grandfather, and that he was desirous of enunciating his intentions explicitly.
For these reasons, he declared as follows—the punishment of perpetual imprisonment at the galleys for men, and seclusion during life for women, with confiscation of their property, if they attended any other worship than that of the (Roman) Catholic religion; punishment of death against all the preachers; of the galleys or imprisonment against those who sheltered or assisted them in any way whatever, and against those who omitted to denounce them; an order to parents to have their children baptized within twenty-four hours by the curate of the parish, to send them to the (Roman) Catholic schools and catechisms until the age of fourteen, and to the Sunday and feast-day teachings until the age of twenty; an order to midwives to report all births to the priests, and to physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries to give notice of every serious illness of the new converts, and authority for the priests to have interviews with the sick by themselves. If any one refused the sacraments or directed a member of his family to refuse it, he incurred the penalty of having relapsed. There was to be no legitimate marriage, except such as were celebrated according to the canons of the Church. Parents were not allowed to send their children out of the kingdom to be educated, nor to marry them there; but on the other hand, the minors of those parents who were abroad, might marry without the consent of their relations. The certificates of Catholicity were declared obligatory for all offices, all academic degrees, all admissions to trading corporations. Finally, the mulcts and confiscated property were to be appropriated for the relief of the re-united subjects who might be in want.
Never since the origin of human society, had the legislator more insolently disregarded the law of nature, the civil law, family, property, the liberty and sacredness of individual faith. This afforded another proof to what monstrous acts one is driven when, by confounding spiritual and temporal matters, the laws of the state are made subordinate to the maxims of the (Roman) Catholic church.
Historians unite in a common expression of horror at the Edict of 1724. Sismondi says, “It is with astonishment that we behold, in this infidel age, when the reins of power were held by a prince without belief or probity, and by a female courtier without modesty, the renewal of a persecution which the rigid faith of Louis XIV. could scarcely explain.... The clergy, who had not dared to ask for this inopportune law, accepted it with transport.”[114]
M. Charles Lecretelle also observes, “The first act of the government was as absurd as it was odious. It was even a more cruel edict against the Protestants than the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The most secret exercise of the Reformed religion was prohibited. Children were torn from their parents to be reared in the (Roman) Catholic religion.... In short, every kind of oppression that had been conceived by the ministers of Louis XIV., and that public horror had begun to render obsolete, was renewed. The Marchioness de Prie, whose impiety equalled that of Cardinal Dubois, persuaded her lover (the Duke de Bourbon) that he was acting upon the great principles of a statesman, by recommencing a new persecution. Everybody was disgusted by these efforts, which vice made to assume the appearance of zeal, and in this barbarous folly, regretted the regent’s toleration.”[115]
Rulhières and the Baron de Breteuil affirm that the council were surprised into sanctioning this edict. They prove that laws, inspired by two very opposite tendencies, had been strangely confounded in its compilation. The Molinist or Jesuitical spirit sought to employ universal outward constraint, consenting at the same time to a relaxation of all the interior conditions of Catholicity. The Jansenist spirit had, on the contrary, exacted rigorous conditions of Catholicity, but desired no constraint. Thus there was one of two things—either the employment of physical force, with a simple appearance of union with (Roman) Catholicism, or real union, without the employment of material force. But on the declaration of 1724, it was required, at one and the same time, that all people should be (Roman) Catholics under pain of the galleys and death, and that they should perform acts of Catholicity, which only good (Roman) Catholics could do. This was impracticable and absurdly impossible.
We should here observe the great change, which had begun to display itself in the conduct of the priests. On the eve and on the day of the Revocation, they widely extended their arms, as we have remarked before. They seemed to say to the Protestants, “Come, all of you, just as you are. We will be satisfied with the most vague and general abjuration. We will not interfere with you at the domestic hearth. It is enough if you only call yourselves Catholics and observe the principal forms of the Church.”
But subsequently, their language and their conduct sensibly changed, and their exactions increased from year to year, particularly when the law had declared that there were Protestants in the kingdom no longer. “Take heed,” the priests said; “we cannot administer the sacraments to false brethren; this would be an abominable profanation. We must have long and severe proofs, instructions of six months, a year’s, two years’ duration, solemn oaths; in short, a complete certainty that you are true and faithful Catholics. Otherwise, we will not celebrate your marriages, nor give you certificates of Catholicity, and you may maintain your civil rights as best you can.”
This alteration, continually more marked, is naturally explained by the disastrous defeats the priests had suffered since the Revocation. They imagined that the demolition of the places of worship, the banishment of the pastors, the deprivation of all regular instruction, the want of a religion, the legal duty of performing acts of Catholicity, would restore true believers to the Church, at least in the second generation. But their expectation had been deceived, particularly with regard to the country people and the industrial classes. Children and grandchildren hated the (Roman) Catholic church as much as their fathers; and they regarded the curates with no less detestation and contempt.
Tired of acting so miserable a part, they resolved to administer the sacraments to none but the most undoubted (Roman) Catholics, and they were perfectly right; but they should then have disavowed and rejected the intervention of physical constraint, which they did not. They persisted in calling for rigour, as if they were satisfied with appearances, and to exact positive proofs of religion, as if they employed rigour no longer! A more enormous and detestable contradiction has never been witnessed![116]
Then, having arrived at this degree of inconsequence, the clergy came into collision with the magistracy, and this is a new phase of the question, which it is important to understand; for all the remainder of this history until 1787 is involved in it.
If the councillors of the Parliaments, and the magistrates generally, exhibited severity against the Reformed, they always implied that the priests should administer the sacraments without exacting excessive proofs. From the reign of Louis XIV., their decrees might be interpreted in the following manner:—“We are absolutely determined that your marriages shall be blessed by a priest, and that your children shall be presented for Catholic baptism; otherwise, you shall have no civil status; your unions shall be illegal, and your children shall be attainted with illegitimacy; in certain cases, even, you shall forfeit your property and be condemned to the galleys. But reassure yourselves, we will require nothing but simple formalities. It is agreed that the clergy shall impose nothing else, and we will abide by it.”
Relying upon these maxims, the Protestants conceived that they were authorized in conceding to the priests as little as possible; but the latter replied,—“The opinion of the judges is nothing to us. The clergy alone have the light of deciding in sacramental matters. No human power can compel us to give them to those whom we think unworthy. Attend the mass and our instructions for years; confess yourselves regularly; show yourselves, in a word, to be faithful Catholics, and you shall participate in the favours of the Church; otherwise you shall not.”
Strange spectacle! The judge insisted upon the execution of the laws, because he interpreted them in one sense, and the priest applied them in another. The first was only solicitous for civil unity; the latter was anxious above all things for spiritual unity. One only obliged the Protestants to be (Roman) Catholics outwardly; the other used the sentence to force them to be so internally. To such an anomalous state of things had these edicts given birth, which had ceased to correspond with the general conscience of the epoch. Even the (Roman) Catholics themselves, it is well known, had analogous conflicts in respect of the refusal of the sacraments to the Jesuits, and the certificates of confession. The only solution of the problem lay in the mutual independence, that is now proclaimed in all the constitutions, of the civil and the religious state.
The Baron de Breteuil shows, in a memorial addressed to Louis XVI., the inextricable embarrassment that had arisen with regard to the Protestants. He says: “On one side, there is the absolute necessity of the certificate of Catholicity; on the other, a scrupulous and arbitrary examination before granting this certificate. What else than laws of impossible execution could result from all these confused ideas, from all these incoherent and contradictory dispositions?... These unfortunate people, alike rejected by our tribunals under one name, and repulsed by our churches under another name, unrecognised at the same time as Calvinists, and unrecognised as converts, wholly unable to obey laws which oppose each other, and thereby destitute of every means of proving, either before a priest or before a judge, the evidence of their births, their marriages, and their burials, are cut off, as it were, from the family of mankind.”[117]
The illustrious Chancellor d’Aguesseau has stated the dilemma in a very perfect manner. “Either the Church must relax its rigour by some modification, or if the Church does not think it ought to do so, it must cease to importune the king to use his authority to reduce his subjects to an impossibility, by commanding them to fulfil a religious duty, which the Church will not permit them to discharge.”
And, indeed, the declaration of 1724, while it repeatedly engendered frightful consequences, was never fully executed. It contained, moreover, dispositions revolting against the most sacred feelings of human nature, justice, and society. To punish with the galleys and confiscation of wealth a son, or a daughter, who addressed pious exhortations to a dying father; to inflict a similar punishment upon whoever should fail to denounce his pastor, or should open to him the door of his house; to load with a fine the physician who should refuse to discharge the infamous office of informer—all this, as M. de Sismondi remarks, bore the stamp of so barbarous and savage a fanaticism, that it may be doubted if the code of any other nation has approached it. Were it possible, again, in the eighteenth century, to write similar atrocities in the laws, it would be impossible to find judges and administrators to carry them out.
As it always happens, atrocity engendered ridicule. Some of the priests instituted a roll-call of children in the Church, after the example of serjeants at a military review, and noted those who were absent that their parents might be fined. But the children frequently refused to answer, mocked the curate, and disturbed his mass. What could be done? Where were the means of punishment, when it might be required to send a whole population, fathers, mothers, and children, to the galleys?
Cardinal Fleury, who governed the kingdom after the Duke de Bourbon, seems to have comprehended this difficulty. Having been engaged in his youth on a mission with Fénélon in Saintonge, and passed many years in Provence, he was acquainted with the invincible firmness of the Protestants. This, conjoined with the alliance of this priest with Great Britain and Holland, the mildness of his character, and his desire of sparing Louis XV. the anxieties of government, will explain his conduct towards the Protestants. He did not destroy the sword of intolerance, but he willingly let it remain in the scabbard.
The curates of Cevennes addressed several urgent remonstrances to him upon this subject. They bitterly complained of the increasing desertion of the Huguenots. The aged cardinal gave little heed to them; he was engrossed with other affairs, and feared disturbance more than heresy.
The persecution, therefore, was only local and momentary, according to the humour of the intendants. Some meetings were surprised and dispersed by the soldiery; some families were ruined, and other unfortunates were condemned to the galleys. The pastors, particularly, were tracked with implacable cruelty, in the hope that the terror of death would induce them to quit the kingdom.
Many of them were capitally executed. We will cite [the case of] the minister Alexander Roussel, who was hanged at Montpellier, on the 30th of November, 1728, respecting whose martyrdom a popular complaint has come down to us. He was sold for a bribe, and confessed without hesitation that he had preached in Cevennes. When he was asked where he lodged, he replied: “The heaven is my covering.” The Jesuits vainly solicited him to change his religion; his answer was: “I will ever keep the law of Jesus Christ: if I die for His sake, I shall dwell with angels.” He was dragged to the gallows with the rope about his neck, bareheaded and barefoot, singing the 51st psalm, and died uttering prayers to God for his judges and the executioner.
Another pastor, Pierre Durand, who, with Antoine Court, had signed the first deliberations of the synods of the wilderness, was also executed at Montpellier, on the 22nd of April, 1782. He was a man full of years, and noted for his faith and zeal. Five priests accompanied him to the scaffold, and endeavoured to wrench from him an abjuration at any price. Durand remained firm to the last.
These executions afflicted the Protestants of the wilderness, but did not cast them down. The very exactions of the clergy themselves conspired to drive them from the Church of Rome; for seeing that they would not be satisfied with simple forms of (Roman) Catholicism, they resolved upon renouncing the Church in their turn, and that completely. From this time the number of baptisms and marriages of the wilderness multiplied, in spite of the civil disabilities which attainted them.
Antoine Court strengthened and encouraged the faithful by his exhortations and his example. In 1728 he undertook a tour of nearly a hundred leagues, convoked thirty-two religious meetings in two months, and counted as many as three thousand hearers at the foot of his pulpit; even the most timid began to be emboldened.
The synods rapidly increased, and became more rigid against the parents, who allowed their children to be baptized in the (Roman) Catholic church, or to be married there. They also insisted upon the duty of taking part in the religious services. The synod of 1730 says: “Write to the Protestants under the Cross, that they may know the indispensable obligation they are under to attend the meetings of piety, whenever Providence shall furnish the opportunity. If after being sufficiently instructed in this duty, they refuse to fulfil it, it shall be declared that they are cut off from the Church of the Lord, and are no longer His children.”
It is interesting to observe that these men, who were denied all the rights of citizens, were so bent upon discharging all its duties, that they employed their authority in repressing contraband trade. They thus decided in 1730: “The members of our churches who, to escape paying the king’s dues, shall carry on or countenance smuggling, shall be first censured, and then, if they relapse, exposed to final excommunication. The assembly does not in this article comprise the contraband commerce in religious books, which do not anywise prejudice the king or the state.”
The re-awakening of Languedoc and Dauphiny excited a pious rivalry in other provinces. Rouergue, Guienne, Quercy, Saintonge, Aunis, and Poitou, held meetings again and demanded pastors. There were but few. Antoine Court sought the young men who appeared fitted for this holy vocation at the plough, in the trader’s warehouse, in the workman’s shop; but the instruction they derived from a wandering life was insufficient.
The restorer of French Protestantism began to reflect upon the necessity of a theological school. To open it in France was not to be dreamed of. The universities of England and Germany were too distant from the southern provinces, and did not speak their language. Geneva was too near, and its academy too severely watched. Antoine Court decided upon Lausanne. His long and urgent solicitations, his indefatigable endeavours, the liberality of Switzerland, England, and the other Protestant powers, contributed to found there a French theological seminary. Court went to establish it himself, in 1730, with the title of deputy-general of the churches, and directed this school during the thirty concluding years of his life. It was this college that sent forth all the Protestant pastors until the reign of Napoleon.