History of the Protestants of France, from the commencement of the Reformation to the present time

by G. de Félice

But if the philosophers could consign the condition of the Protestants to oblivion, they compelled the attention of the legists, the parliament men and statesmen. The fiction of the new converts had become untenable. Not a single honest magistrate persisted in believing, according to the letter of the law, that there were none but (Roman) Catholics in France; and the expectation of bringing the children to (Roman) Catholicism by the constraint exercised upon the parents, had been too completely deceived for any to appeal to this course again.

As the century advanced, the baptisms and marriages of the desert multiplied. Whether the priests were exacting or not in their proofs, this question, so grave in the first fifty years of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had lost all its importance. The Protestants rejected at any price the intrusion of the (Roman) Catholic clergy into their religious duties.

What course then was to be taken? Births, marriages, burials, were all without rule, and without guarantee, for a considerable part of the nation, whilst a shocking contradiction of jurisprudence prevailed in these matters. One Parliament accepted the pastor’s certificate, and treated the marriages contracted in the desert as valid; another Parliament nullified them; and shameless collateral relations disgraced the tribunals by claiming a succession to possessions, to which, according to eternal justice, that spoke with a louder voice than iniquitous ordinances, they had no right. The confusion was intolerable.

Yet an issue must be found. It is true that the problem was more difficult than might be thought or even imagined in our days. Only complete and absolute principles can resolve questions with trenchant conciseness. Full religious liberty, and perfect equality of sects, would have cleared away every difficulty: but no politician before 1789, would have dared to make the proposition. The efforts of the times, then, were exhausted in devising middle measures and laborious compromises, which, without granting to the Protestants rights common to their fellow-citizens, should restore to them their civil condition.

The magistracy, the hierarchy of the Romish church, the superior public administrative authority, and royalty itself interposed, each distinctly and apart in this matter, until the promulgation of the Edict of 1787.

XVI.

The magistrates, as we have elsewhere seen, took a different view of the measure relating to the new converts, and also of the nature of the proofs, to which they were submitted. This misunderstanding increased with the growing struggle between the judicial and the sacerdotal orders upon other subjects. When the Parliaments commanded the burning of the bishops’ mandates, directed their temporalities to be seized, and decreed the imprisonment of curates, who molested the (Roman) Catholics by their fanatical exactions, it is clear that they would be less severe towards the Protestants, who defended the sacred rights of their domestic hearth.

It has been thought that the disputes between the Parliament and the clergy had produced a contrary effect, because the magistrates desired to establish, by the rigour of their sentences against the Protestants, the sincerity of their (Roman) Catholic faith, which had been compromised by their contests with the priests. This view is correct, if confined to certain limits, and a certain period. The general fact, however, is different. The magistracy, in their war with the clergy, were constrained to reflect upon the boundaries of ecclesiastical power, to define them, to circumscribe them in a manner constantly more precise, and from that time to fix them also in regard to dissentient creeds. Tactics sometimes prevailed over the idea of right; but right ended in obtaining the mastery.

The procurator-general, Joly de Fleury, addressed a memorial to the Council in 1752, in which he constituted himself the organ of the Parliamentary spirit, all the while that he was subordinating his thoughts to the fiction of the ordinances. “Let the priest,” said this illustrious magistrate, “be simply an officer of the civil state for the registration of baptisms and marriages; let him add no injurious qualifications to the information furnished to him; let him in respect of the nuptial benediction be content with a simple exhortation, without exacting any verbal or written abjuration, or any act specially applying to the religionists. All Frenchmen are Catholics according to law; all should be treated as such, and in the same manner.”

In 1755, another procurator-general, whom we have already named, Rippert de Monclar, went farther. Shaking off the legal fiction, he confessed that there still were Protestants in the realm, and shuddered at the idea that a hundred and fifty thousand greedy collaterals might claim the inheritance of these families, whose marriages had been blessed in the desert. He proposed, as a remedy, the publication of bans by a tribunal of justice, and the celebration of marriages before a magistrate, “according to the practice in Holland,” says he, “with regard to Catholics.” This was tantamount to asking for a separation of the civil and the spiritual authority in respect of the Protestants. Rippert de Monclar could not foresee that, thirty-five years subsequently, the measure would be applied to all citizens without distinction of creed.