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

by Francis A. Cunningham

The Convention was immediately followed by the government of the Directory, which lasted until the end of the Revolutionary period, in 1799. It was composed of a Council of Five Hundred, whose duty it was to propose laws, a Council of two hundred and fifty Ancients to approve or reject the laws thus proposed, and a supreme body consisting of five members—all regicides—which was called the Directory.

The new government was less bold in its persecutions than its predecessor, though the spirit that had actuated the Convention still lived in both houses of the Directory. The pursuit of priests was still continued, and the laws against them and their protectors enforced with the greatest rigor. In the year 1796 eighteen priests were executed under the orders of the government. Nevertheless a sentiment of hostility to the oppressive measures of the law was beginning to manifest itself in a number of the departments; churches were again being opened and the practice of religion renewed.

DEATH OF ROBESPIERRE.

The rigors of the Terror, however, were not yet extinct; the worship of the Revolution was enforced, the sound of the church bells was forbidden, and the Revolutionary calendar still held its place in the ordering of the life of the people. An effort was made in 1796 to bring back into full force all the proscriptive laws of the Convention, but through the efforts of Portalis the Council of Five Hundred refused to vote the bill.

In the meantime the exiled and deported priests began to return in great numbers. In Paris more than three hundred were exercising their ministry openly; the diocesan administration was reorganized; and a general interest in the unhappy lot of imprisoned priests began to manifest itself among the people. In 1797, June 17th, a motion was placed before the Council of Five Hundred, demanding liberty of worship, the suppression of the oath, and the abrogation of the laws of deportation. These reforms were voted—after a few weeks of discussion—and in place of the obnoxious oath the Directory substituted the words: "I swear to be submissive to the government of the French Republic." Everything thus seemed to hold out promise of peace and security to the Church, and might have thus continued but for the coup-d'-Etat of the 10 Fructidor, which brought with it the renewal, for two years, of the horrors of the Terror.

The new government instituted under the three Directors, Rewbel, la Reveillère and Barras, brought back the Revolutionary forces into the Councils, and the old laws of proscription were renewed. Priests who had obtained their liberty were again arrested and imprisoned or deported; the oath of the Constitution was re-established; the persecution became more rabid than ever in its last struggle for supremacy. To gather greater numbers to the Revolutionary ceremonies, it was decreed that marriages could take place only on the "decadi" or tenth day, whereon no manual labor might be performed, or merchandise bought or sold. It became a crime to print or hold in one's possession copies of the Christian calendar, and on Fridays and Saturdays of the old order the very sale of fish was forbidden, that the citizens might be compelled to eat meat. The deported priests suffered intolerable torments through the cruel treatment dealt out to them. Out of three hundred transported to Conamana, only thirty-nine were alive after a month's detention. In other places many died through famine, sickness and misery.

In the midst of these discouraging afflictions of the Church, the constitutional bishops, in a council held on August 15th, 1797, had the hardihood to plan a reconciliation between the schismatic church of France and the orthodox church, and went so far as to send their decrees to the Pope for ratification; Pius VI., however, refused to honor the communication with an answer.

PERSECUTION OF POPE PIUS VI.

In the incessant struggle of French anti-Christianism against the Church, its leaders had not neglected early in the period to turn their attacks against the head and centre of Christianity, in the person of the Holy Pontiff, Pius VI. Rome, "the mother of nations," was the sanctuary towards which many French students turned their steps to acquire a knowledge of art and literature; these young men, imbued with the false spirit of their unhappy country, made use of the hospitality of the Eternal City to betray her. In the Academy of France, in the midst of obscene orgies and ribald speeches, the statues and busts of kings, cardinals and popes were overthrown, and sentiments of revolution and irreligion openly pronounced. Basseville and Laflotte, bearing an insulting message to Pope Pius VI., utilized their time in Rome in an attempt to arouse the populace to accept Republican ideas; but the Roman people, infuriated at the insulting bravado of these couriers of the French Government, attacked them in the Corso, giving a death blow to Basseville, and causing his companion to fly for his life. This was in 1793. The Constituent Assembly at Paris took up the death of its messenger as a pretext for hostilities against the government of the Holy See.