But even if, according to the maxims of the Assembly, faith and worship are free, as far as the sovereign State is concerned, the churches are subjects.—For these are societies, administrations, and hierarchies, and no society, administration, or hierarchy may exist in the State without entering into its—departments under the title of subordinate, delegate, or employee. A priest is now essentially a salaried officer like the rest, a functionary[2271] presiding over matters pertaining to worship and morality. If the State is disposed to change the number, the mode of nomination, the duties and the posts of its engineers, it is not bound to assemble its engineers and ask their permission, least of all that of a foreign engineer established at Rome. If it wishes to change the condition of "its ecclesiastical officers," its right to do so is the same, and therefore unquestioned. There is no need of asking anybody's consent in the exercise of this right, and it allows no interference between it and its clerks. The Assembly refuses to call a Gallican council; it refuses to negotiate with the Pope, and, on its own authority alone, it recasts the whole Constitution of the Church. Henceforth this branch of the public administration is to be organized on the model of the others.—In the first place[2272] the diocese is to be in extent and limits the same as the French department; consequently, all ecclesiastical districts are marked out anew, and forty-eight episcopal sees disappear.—In the second place, the appointed bishop is forbidden "to refer to the Pope to obtain any confirmation whatever." All he can do is to write to him "in testimony of the unity of faith and of the communion which he is to maintain with him." The bishop is thus no longer installed by his canonical chief, and the Church of France becomes schismatic.—In the third place, the metropolitan or bishop is forbidden to exact from the new bishops or curés "any oath other than that they profess the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion." Assisted by his council he may examine them on their doctrine and morals, and refuse them canonical installation, but in this case his reasons must be given in writing, and he signed by himself and his council. His authority, in other respects, does not extend beyond this for it is the civil tribunal which decides between contending parties. Thus is the catholic hierarchy broken up; the ecclesiastical superior has his hands tied; if he still delegates sacerdotal functions it is only as a matter of form. Between the curé and the bishop subordination ceases to exist just as it has ceased to exist between the bishop and the Pope, and the Church of France becomes Presbyterian.—The people now, in effect, choose their own ministers, as they do in the Presbyterian church; the bishop is appointed by the electors of the department, the cure by the district electors, and, what is an extraordinary aggravation, these need not be of his communion. It is of no consequence whether the electoral Assembly contains, as at Nîmes, Montauban, Strasbourg, and Metz, a notable proportion of Calvinists, Lutherans, and Jews, or whether its majority, furnished by the club, is notoriously hostile to Catholicism, and even to Christianity itself. The bishop and the curé must be chosen by the electoral body; the Holy Ghost dwells with it, and with the civil tribunals, and these may install its elect in spite of any resistance.—To complete the dependence of the clergy, every bishop is forbidden to absent himself more than fifteen days without permission from the department; every curé the same length of time without the permission of the district, even to attend upon a dying father or to undergo the operation of lithotomy. In default of this permission his salary is suspended: as a functionary under salary, he owes all his time to his bureau, and if he desires a leave of absence he must ask for it from his chiefs in the Hôtel-de-Ville.[2273]—He must assent to all these innovations, not only with passive obedience, but by a solemn oath. All old or new ecclesiastics, archbishops, bishops, curés, vicars, preachers, hospital and prison chaplains, superiors and directors of seminaries, professors of seminaries and colleges, are to state in writing that they are ready to take this oath: moreover, they must take it publicly, in church, "in the presence of the general council, the commune, and the faithful," and promise "to maintain with all their power" a schismatic and Presbyterian Church.—For there can be no doubt about the sense and bearing of the prescribed oath. It was all very well to incorporate it with a broader one, that of maintaining the Constitution. But the Constitution of the clergy is too clearly comprised in the general Constitution, like a chapter in a book, and to sign the book is to sign the chapter. Besides, in the formula to which the ecclesiastics in the Assembly are obliged to swear in the tribune, the chapter is precisely indicated, and no exception or reservation is allowed.[2274] The Bishop of Clermont, with all those who have accepted the Constitution in full, save the decrees affecting spiritual matters, are silenced. Where the spiritual begins and where it ends the Assembly knows better than they, for it has defined this, and it imposes its definition on canonist and theologian; it is, in its turn, the Pope, and all consciences must bow to its decision. Let them take the "oath, pure and simple," or if they do not they are 'refractory." The fiat goes forth, and the effect of it is immense, for, along with the clergy, the law reaches to laymen. On the one hand, all the ecclesiastics who refuse the oath are dismissed. If they continue "to interfere with public functions which they have personally or corporately exercised" they "shall be prosecuted as disturbers of the peace, and condemned as rebels against the law," deprived of all rights as active citizens, and declared incompetent to hold any public office. This is the penalty already inflicted on the nonjuring bishop who persists in considering himself a bishop, who ordains priests and who issues a pastoral letter. Such is soon to be the penalty inflicted on the nonjuring curé who presumes to hear confession or officiate at a mass.[2275] On the other hand, all citizens who refuse to take the prescribed oath, all electors, municipal officers, judges and administrative agents, shall lose their right of suffrage, have their functions revoked, and be declared incompetent for all public duties.[2276] The result is that scrupulous Catholics are excluded from every administrative post, from all elections, and especially from ecclesiastical elections; from which it follows that, the stronger one's faith the less one's share in the choice of a priest.[2277]—What an admirable law, that which, under the pretext of doing away with ecclesiastical abuses, places the faithful, lay or clerical, outside the pale of the law!
This soon becomes apparent. One hundred and thirty four archbishops, bishops, and coadjutors refuse to take the oath; there are only four of them who do so, three of whom, MM. de Talleyrand, de Jarente, and de Brienne, are unbelievers and notorious for their licentiousness; the others are influenced by their consciences, above all, by their esprit de corps and a point of honor. Most of the curés rally around this staff of officers. In the diocese of Besançon,[2278] out of fourteen hundred priests, three hundred take the oath, a thousand refuse it, and eighty retract. In the department of Doubs, only four consent to swear. In the department of Lozère, there are only "ten out of two hundred and fifty." It is stated positively," writes the best informed of all observers that everywhere in France two-thirds of the ecclesiastics have refused the oath, or have only taken it with the same reservations as the Bishop of Clermont."
Thus, out of seventy thousand priests, forty-six thousand are turned out of office, and the majority of their parishioners are on their side. This is apparent in the absence of electors convoked to replace them: at Bordeaux only four hundred and fifty came to the poll out of nine hundred, while elsewhere the summons brings together only "a third or a quarter" In many places there are no candidates, or those elected decline to accept. They are obliged, in order to supply their places, to hunt up unfrocked monks of a questionable character. There are two parties, after this, in each parish; two faiths, two systems of worship, and permanent discord. Even when the new and the old curés are accommodating, their situations bring them into conflict. To the former the latter are "intruders." To the latter the former are "refractories." By virtue of his being a guardian of souls, the former cannot dispense with telling his parishioners that the intruder is excommunicated, that his sacraments are null or sacrilegious, and that it is a sin to attend his mass. By virtue of his being a public functionary, the latter does not fail to write to the authorities that the "refractory" entraps the faithful, excites their consciences, saps the Constitution, and that he ought to be put down by force. In other words, the former draws everybody away from the latter, while the latter sends the gendarmes against the former, and persecution begins.—In a strange reversal, it is the majority which undergoes persecution, and the minority which carries it out. The mass of the constitutional curé is, everywhere, deserted.[2279] In La Vendée there are ten or twelve present in the church out of five or six hundred parishioners; on Sundays and holidays whole villages and market-towns travel from one to two leagues off to attend the orthodox mass, the villagers declaring that "if the old curé can only be restored to them, they will gladly pay a double tax." In Alsace, "nine tenths, at least, of the Catholics refuse to recognize the legally sworn priests." The same spectacle presents itself in Franche-Comté, Artois, and in ten of the other provinces.—Finally, as in a chemical composition, the analysis is complete. Those who believe, or who recover their belief, are ranged around the old curé; all who, through conviction or tradition, hold to the sacraments, all who, through faith or habit, wish or feel a need to attend the mass. The auditors of the new curé consist of unbelievers, deists, the indifferent members of the clubs and of the administration, who resort to the church as to the Hôtel-de-ville or to a popular meeting, not through religious but through political zeal, and who support the "intruder" in order to sustain the Constitution. All this does not secure to him very fervent followers, but it provides him with very zealous defenders; and, in default of the faith which they do not possess, they give the force which is at their disposal. All means are proper against an intractable bishop or curé; not only the law which they aggravate through their forced interpretation of it and through their arbitrary verdicts, but also the riots which they stir up by their instigation and which they sanction by their toleration.[2280] He is driven out of his parish, consigned to the county town, and kept in a safe place. The Directory of Aisne denounces him as a disturber of the public peace, and forbids him, under severe penalties, from administering the sacraments. The municipality of Cahors shuts up particular churches and orders the nonjuring ecclesiastics to leave the town in twenty-four hours. The electoral corps of Lot denounces them publicly as "ferocious brutes," incendiaries, and provokers of civil war. The Directory of the Bas-Rhin banishes them to Strasbourg or to fifteen leagues from the frontier. At Saint-Leon the bishop is forced to fly. At Auch the archbishop is imprisoned; at Lyons M. de Boisboissel, grand vicar, is confined in Pierre-Encize, for having preserved an archiepiscopal mandate in his house; brutality is everywhere the minister of intolerance. A certain cure of Aisne who, in 1789, had fed two thousand poor, having presumed to read from his pulpit a pastoral charge concerning the observance of Lent, the mayor seizes him by the collar and prevents him from going to the altar; "two of the National Yeomanry" draw their sabers on him, and forthwith lead him away bareheaded, not allowing him to return to his house, and drive him to a distance of two leagues by beat of drum and under escort. At Paris, in the church of Saint-Eustache, the curé is greeted with outcries, a pistol is pointed at his head, he is seized by the hair, struck with fists, and only reaches the sacristy through the intervention of the National Guard. In the church of the Théatins, rented by the orthodox with all legal formality, a furious band disperses the priests and their assistants, upsets the altar and profanes the sacred vessels. A placard, posted up by the department, calls upon the people to respect the law, "I saw it," says an eye-witness, "torn down amidst imprecations against the department, the priests, and the devout. One of the chief haranguers, standing on the steps terminated his speech by stating that schism ought to be stopped at any cost, that no worship but his should be allowed, that women should be whipped and priests knocked on the head." And, in fact, "a young lady accompanied by her mother is whipped on the steps of the church." Elsewhere nuns are the sufferers, even the sisters of Saint-Vincent de Paul; and, from April, 1793, onward; the same outrages on modesty and against life are propagated from town to town. At Dijon, rods are nailed fast to the gates of all the convents; at Montpellier, two or three hundred ruffians, armed with large iron—bound sticks, murder the men and outrage the women.—Nothing remains but to put the gangsters under the shelter of an amnesty, which is done by the Constituent Assembly, and to legally sanction the animosity of local administrations, which is done by the Legislative Assembly.[2281] Henceforth the nonjuring ecclesiastics are deprived of their sustenance; they are declared "suspected of revolt against the law and of evil intentions against the country."—Thus, says a contemporary Protestant, "on the strength of these suspicions and these intentions, a Directory, to which the law interdicts judicial functions, may arbitrarily drive out of his house the minister of a God of peace and charity, grown gray in the shadow of the altar" Thus, "everywhere, where disturbances occur on account of religious opinions, and whether these troubles are due to the frantic scourgers of the virtuous sisters of charity or to the ruffians armed with cow-hides who, at Nîmes and Montpellier, outrage all the laws of decorum and of liberty for six whole months, the non-juring priests are to be punished with banishment. Torn from their families whose means of living they share, they are sent away to wander on the highways, abandoned to public pity or ferocity the moment any scoundrel chooses to excite a disturbance that he can impute to them."—Thus we see approaching the revolt of the peasantry, the insurrections of Nîmes, Franche-Comté, la Vendée and Brittany, emigration, transportation; imprisonment, the guillotine or drowning for two thirds of the clergy of France, and likewise for myriads of the loyal, for husbandmen, artisans, day-laborers, seamstresses, and servants, and the humblest among the lower class of the people. This is what the laws of the Constituent Assembly are leading to.—In the institution of the clergy, as in that of the nobles and the King, it demolished a solid wall in order to dig through it an open door, and it is nothing strange if the whole structure tumbles down on the heads of its inmates. The true course was to respect, to reform, to utilize rank and corporations: all that the Assembly thought of was the abolition of these in the name of abstract equality and of national sovereignty. In order to abolish these it executed, tolerated, or initiated all the attacks on persons and on property. Those it is about to commit are the inevitable result of those which it has already committed; for, through its Constitution, bad is changed to worse, and the social edifice, already half in ruins through the clumsy havoc that is effected in it, will fall in completely under the weight of the incongruous or extravagant constructions which it proceeds to extemporize.
2201 ([return])
[ Cf. "The Ancient Régime," books I. and V.]
2202 ([return])
[ Perhaps we are here at the core of why all regimes end up becoming corrupt, inefficient and sick; their leaders take their privileges for granted and become more and more inattentive to the work which must be done if the people are to be kept at work and possible adversaries kept under control. (SR.)]
2203 ([return])
[ A special tax paid the king by a plebeian owning a fief. (TR)]