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.”