Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in France

by Georg Brandes

Two years spent in the atmosphere of the Revolution had given to these pariahs not only self-esteem but pride. This time the measure was passed without debate.

In the Constituent Assembly the animosity towards positive religion and its priests with which the "philosophers" had inoculated their age did not find vent in words; as yet it only expressed itself in deeds. All church property was proclaimed to be state property. Voltaire had impressed upon his disciples that it was their mission "to annihilate the infamous thing" (écraser l'infame). In the decisions of the Assembly faithful Catholics saw an attempt to carry out this injunction. It seemed to them as if all the powers of hell had been let loose upon the church of Christ, "as if the philosophers were bent upon exterminating the Christian religion, not only in France, but throughout Europe, nay, throughout the whole world." (Conjuration contre la religion catholique et les souverains, 1792.) In order to attain this result the "philosophers" had addressed themselves to the sovereigns of the great countries, to Frederick of Prussia, Catherine of Russia, and others; but it was from the French middle class that the blow came.

The priests, who, as the saying goes, have found what Archimedes sought, a fulcrum in another world from which to move this one, now began to stir up the spirit of fanaticism in the provinces. In the town of Arras a picture of the crucifixion was paraded in the streets, in which Maury and the royalists were represented standing on the right side of the cross, and the revolutionists on the left side, below the unrepentant thief. At Nîmes there was a regular riot when the news came that a Protestant, Saint-Étienne, had been elected President of the National Assembly.

The new ordering of the church's affairs was brought about by a coalition of the Voltairean and Jansenist members of the Assembly. The Jansenists had a religious hatred of earthly greatness, and, as fatalists, unquestioningly accepted the existence of human misery. Therefore it displeased them to see the church rich, and they took no account of the manner in which the poor benefited by its wealth. Moreover, the scandalous lives led by many of the high-placed ecclesiastics aroused their moral indignation. Everyone, for instance, knew that Bishop Jarante's mistress, Mademoiselle Guimard, distributed ecclesiastical promotion behind the scenes of the opera, that the Archbishop of Narbonne had a regular harem in one of his abbeys, and that the monks of the Abbey of Granselve had quarters for their ladies in a neighbouring village, where the tables were regularly spread for nightly revels.

If the revolutionists had been content with secularising church property, they could not well have been convicted of attacking religion. But they interfered in the church's internal arrangements and discipline, and even altered its ritual; and its dignitaries naturally proclaimed that the foundations of religion were shaken. Therefore the ordinary priest hardly ever dared take the oath of allegiance to the constitution. The small yearly payment received from the state by those who did so was likened to Judas Iscariot's blood-money, although in times past it had been considered just that bishops should own palaces and pleasure-grounds, and have luxuries of every kind at their disposal, while the lower orders of the clergy were positively starving.

As a result of the new order of things many riotous and many comic scenes were witnessed in the provinces. In one of Camille Desmoulins' newspaper articles we find an amusing description of the compulsory parting between a village curé and his charge. Coming out at the church door one Sunday after mass, Monsieur le Curé is surprised by the sight of a coach loaded with all his belongings. On the top sits Javotte, his housekeeper, to whom the schoolmaster, with tears in his eyes, is saying farewell. The curé is handed into the carriage amidst cries of: "Good-bye, good-bye, your Reverence!" and off he has to go, though he rages and storms as long as his church steeple is in sight. In other places, however, the priest was forced to take the oath with the bayonet at his breast; and in one instance a recalcitrant was shot dead in his pulpit. But if dissident priests were occasionally maltreated, the treatment meted out by these priests to their opponents was infinitely worse. They taught the peasants that the new constitution, which did not in reality interfere with religion at all, was a work of the devil. They impressed upon their congregations that it was a mortal sin to take the sacrament from the hands of a priest who had sworn allegiance to the government, that the children of parents who had been married by such priests were illegitimate, nay, that the curse of God rested on them. One priest who had taken the oath was stoned in his church, another was hanged from the chancel lamp. The churches which had been closed by order of the National Assembly were broken open again. In certain departments murderous bands of devotees, led by priests, marched about armed with guns and spears. The situation was worst in Brittany. When the Breton peasant who had gone many miles to hear mass said by a true, i.e. non-juring priest, on his return met a dozen or so of his neighbours coming out of his own church, where they had been comfortably attending the ministrations of the new government curé, he was so infuriated that he felt justified in committing any of the outrages to which the church incited him.

By the time the Legislative Assembly met, there were no longer any Estates. The nobles had emigrated, and the exiled ecclesiastical dignitaries were imploring assistance at foreign courts. The lower ranks of the clergy, inspired by anti-revolutionary fanaticism, were inflaming the ignorant multitude. The debates now held in the Assembly were very different in tone from those of the old days. Now the standing grievance against religion was the naïvely formulated one that it did not harmonise with the constitution, and that against the clergy, that their one aim was to recover their property. The lies and violence of the priests had stirred up a feeling of great bitterness against them. A few conciliatory voices were heard, such as that of André Chénier, who maintained that the priests did not trouble the state when the state did not interfere with them, or Talleyrand, who insisted that, as no form of religion was prescribed by law, neither should any be prohibited by law; but Voltairean indignation was long the order of the day.

These were the halcyon days of the Girondists, and the Girondists were the practical expression of the ideas of Voltaire.

In a public declaration drawn up by their famous leader, Vergniaud, we read: "The rebellious priests are preparing a revolt against the constitution; these insolent myrmidons of absolutism are supplicating all the sovereigns of Europe for money and soldiers wherewith to reconquer the sceptre of France." Roland, as Minister of the Interior, said: "Mutinous and hypocritical priests, concealing their plans and their passions under the sacred veil of religion, do not hesitate to excite fanaticism and to arm their misguided fellow-citizens with the sword of intolerance." When the proposal to banish the priests was under discussion, Vergniaud spoke, half jestingly, half seriously, of the iniquity of bringing evil upon other countries by sending them such a gift. "Generally speaking," he maintained, "nothing can be more immoral than that one country should send into another the criminals of whom it desires to be rid." But he comforts himself with the idea that in Italy they will be received as saints, and that "in this gift of living saints which we are sending him, the Pope will recognise a humble attempt to express our gratitude for all the arms, legs, and other relics of dead saints with which he has favoured our pious credulity during the centuries gone by."

"Yes," cries Isnard, the future President of the Convention, "let us send these plague-stricken creatures to the hospitals of Italy." And he adds that when a priest is depraved, he is never partly, but always wholly depraved, that to forgive crimes is the same as to commit them, that an end must be put to the existing state of matters, and that the enemies of the Revolution are themselves compelling the Revolution to crush them. From his lips issue for the first time the terrible words which were to be echoed and re-echoed times without number in days to come: "There is no need of proofs." That is to say, all priests accused were at once to be banished.