The War Upon Religion / Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-Christianism in Europe

by Francis A. Cunningham

A test of the new decrees developed an unexpected resistance, so bitter and decisive in many quarters as to awaken newer outbursts of harshness from the enemies of the Church. On November 27, 1790, after a violent diatribe delivered by Mirabeau against the independent bishops a law was voted in the Assembly declaring that all clergy "shall take the oath within eight days" under the penalty of being debarred from the exercise of their functions. It stipulated, moreover, that in case of resistance the offending clergy should be treated as disturbers of the public peace, and deprived of their civic rights. This law received the royal sanction on December 26, and went into execution from that date. In the Assembly itself were many bishops and priests who were called upon to give the example of subservience. Only a few, encouraged by such notorious characters as Talleyrand, Gregoire, Camus, and Gobel, and tempted by the hope of preferment under the new order, yielded to the demands of the revolutionaries. Of the one hundred and thirty-five bishops of France, only four, including Talleyrand and Cardinal de Brienne, took the oath. During the following year the latter prelate was degraded from the honor of the Roman purple, for his unworthy act.

When the question was put to the priests of the country it met with a like reception. One should not be deceived, in reading the anti-Christian records of this time, by the long lists of names purporting to be the official register of priests who had subscribed to the oath. An examination of these lists reveals the usual duplicity of irreligious hatred, for in many cases, notably in the lists of Paris, they contain the names of church employees, sacristans, choir-singers, bell-ringers, and other ordinary laymen. In other cases we find the names of young men just preparing for the seminary, and school teachers who taught the catechism. Often, too, country pastors were deceived into believing that the taking of such oath was an act demanded by their bishop; these, however, were only too anxious to retract as soon as the true state of the case was made evident to them. Of the real pastors of the Church the number who proved unfaithful to their duty was inconsiderable; the loyalty of the vast body, both of bishops and clergy, forms one of the brightest pages in the dark history of those unhappy years.

CARDINAL DOMENIE D. BRIENNE.

In the midst of the general anxiety there came to Paris on April 13, 1791, the Bull of Pope Pius VI., formally condemning the Civil Constitution and calling upon the bishops and priests of France to stand firmly to the principles of their faith. This act of the Holy Father was the signal for outbursts of fury in the hostile camp. The Papal Bull was publicly burned amidst outcries of hatred and execration; women coming from Mass were whipped through the streets; ruffians interrupted the divine services and threw disorder into congregations of the faithful, while in many places disorderly mobs invaded the convents and dragging the nuns out to the public squares inflicted upon them the degrading punishment of the scourge. It was in vain that the Directory of Paris, frightened at the prospect of civil war, permitted Catholics to hire places for the use of divine worship; the very appearance of leniency only drew forth greater exhibitions of hatred and persecution. The king himself was compelled to attend at Mass celebrated by a Constitutional priest, as a pledge of his adherence to the principles of the Civil Constitution. Throughout the departments the persecution had already gone to great lengths; priests were everywhere imprisoned, and the Catholic laity who had dared to assist at the Catholic Mass, or who had refused to take part in the election of schismatical priests, were declared incapable of all civil functions. On June 9, 1790, the Constituent decreed that no bulls or briefs of the Pope might be published or propagated in the kingdom without the authorization of the Legislative Corps and of the king.

In the meantime, the apostate bishop of Autun, Talleyrand, had consecrated two constitutional bishops, who in their turn proceeded to ordain to the priesthood a list of unworthy, illiterate, immoral, and dishonest rascals. The legitimate clergy, shut out from their churches, and driven to the homes of their friends, had nevertheless the consolation of knowing that the faithful were refusing everywhere to acknowledge the authority of the unlawful priests, and demanding in quiet, but significant ways, the services of those who alone had been called to the sanctuary.

THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY.

The Constituent Assembly was dissolved on Sept. 30, 1791, and was succeeded on the following day, by the Legislative Assembly. The new government, in the hands of men more impious than those of the Constituent, began their proceedings with the passage of new laws of persecution, to which, however, the king had the courage to refuse his sanction. In spite, however, of the royal opposition new decrees continued to be published. On the twenty-ninth of November, a law was voted declaring that all ecclesiastics, other than those who had conformed to the decree of November 29 last would be obliged to present themselves before the municipality of the place in which they lived, and there take the civic oath, in the terms of Art. 5, title II. of the Constitution, and sign a legal attestation of the same. Such as should refuse would be held as suspects in revolt against the law, and with evil intent against their country, and as such particularly subjected and recommended to the surveillance of all constituted authorities. If trouble should arise in the place of their residence they could be evicted from their domicile, arrested by the directory of the department, and, in case of disobedience, condemned to prison.

On May 27, 1792, the Legislative Assembly published another decree, stating that the deportation of non-juring ecclesiastics would take place as a measure of public safety and police regulation. Ecclesiastics were considered as non-juring who, being subject to the law of December 26, 1790, had not taken the oath; those also who, though not subject to that law had not taken the oath posterior to September 3rd, preceding, the day on which the French constitution was considered as completed; those also, who had retracted their oath. The deportation could be pronounced by the local authorities upon the denunciation of twenty citizens.

A law of August 26, 1792, prescribed that "all those ecclesiastics who have not taken the oath, or who having taken it have retracted and persist in their retraction, shall be compelled to leave within eight days, the limits of the district or department in which they reside, and within fifteen days they must leave the country. After fifteen days such ecclesiastics as shall not have obeyed the preceding dispositions should be deported to French Guyenne. Every ecclesiastic, who should dare to remain in the country after such procedures, should be condemned to ten years of imprisonment." This law was applicable to all priests—both secular and regular. About 50,000 priests became victims of these violent proscriptions.