At Séez, when constitutional priests are in disfavor, the bishop is compelled to resign on the instant, while Abbé Langlois, his principal counsellor, taken by the gendarmes, led to Paris from police station to police station, is shut up in La Force, in secret confinement, with straw for a bed, during fourteen days, then imprisoned in Vincennes for nine months, so that, finally, seized with paralysis, he is transferred to an insane retreat, where he remains a prisoner up to the end of the reign.
Let us provide for the future as well as for the present, and, beyond the present clergy, let us train the future clergy. The seminaries will answer this purpose: "Public ones must be organized[5183] so that there may be no clandestine seminaries, such as formerly existed in the departments of Calvados, Morbihan and many others;... the formation of young priests must not be left to ignorance and fanaticism."—"Catholic schools need the surveillance of the government."—There is to be one of these in each metropolitan district, and "this special school must be in the hands of the authorities."—"The directors and teachers shall be appointed by the First Consul"; men will be placed there who are "cultivated, devoted to the government and friendly to toleration; they will not confine themselves to teaching theology, but will add to this a sort of philosophy and correct worldliness."—A future curé, a priest who controls laymen and belongs to his century, must not be a monk belonging to the other world, but a man of this world, able to adapt himself to it, do his duty in it with propriety and discretion, accept the legal establishment of which he is a part, not damn his Protestant neighbors, Jews or freethinkers too openly, be a useful member of temporal society and a loyal subject of the civil power; let him be a Catholic and pious, but within just limits; he shall not be an ultramontanist or a bigot.—Precautions are taken to this effect. No seminarist may become subdeacon without the consent of the government, and the list of ordinations each year, sent to him at Paris by the bishop, is returned, cut down to the strictly necessary.[5184] From the very beginning, and in express terms,[5185] Napoleon has reserved all curacies and vicarages for "ecclesiastics pensioned by virtue of the laws of the Constituent Assembly." Not only, through this confusion between pension and salary, does he lighten a pecuniary burden, but he greatly prefers old priests to young ones; many of them have been constitutionnels, and all are imbued with Gallicanism; it is he who has brought them back from exile or saved them from oppression, and they are grateful for it; having suffered long and patiently, they are weary, they must have grown wiser, and they will be manageable. Moreover, he has precise information about each one; their past conduct is a guarantee of their future conduct; he never chooses one of them with his eyes shut. On the contrary, the candidates for ordination are strangers, the government which accepts them knows nothing about them except that, at the age when the fever of growth or of the imagination takes a fixed form, they have been subject for five years to a theological education and to a cloistral life. The chances are that, with them, the feverishness of youth will end in the heat of conviction and in the prejudices of inexperience; in this event, the government which exempts them from the conscription to admit them in the Church exchanges a good military recruit for a bad ecclesiastical recruit; in place of a servant it creates an opponent. Hence, during the fifteen years of his reign, Napoleon authorizes only six thousand new ordinations,[5186] in all four hundred per annum, one hundred for each diocese or six or seven per annum. Meanwhile, by his university decrees, he lets lay daylight into clerical enclosures[5187] and shuts the door of all ecclesiastical dignities to suspicious priests.[5188] For more security, in every diocese in which "the principles of the bishop" do not give him full satisfaction, he prohibits all ordination, nomination, promotion, or favor whatever. "I have stricken off[5189] all demands relating to the bishoprics of Saint-Brieuc, Bordeaux, Ghent, Tournay, Troyes and the Maritime Alps.... My intention is that you do not, for these dioceses, propose to me any exemption of service for conscripts, no nominations for scholarships, for curacies, or for canonries. You will send in a report on the dioceses which it would be well to strike with this ban." Towards the end, the Gallicism of Bossuet no longer suffices for him; he allowed it to be taught at Saint-Sulpice, and M. Emery, director of this institution, was the priest in France whom he esteemed the most and most willingly consulted; but a pupil's imprudent letter had been just intercepted, and, accordingly, the spirit of that association is a bad one. An order of expulsion of the director is issued and the installation in his place of a new one "day after to-morrow," as well as new administrators of whom none shall be Sulpician.[5190] "Take measures to have this congregation dissolved. I will have no Sulpicians in the seminary of Paris.[5191] Let me know the seminaries that are served by Sulpicians in order that they too may be sent away from these seminaries."[5192]—And let the seminarists who have been badly taught by their masters take heed not to practice in their own behalf the false doctrines which the State proscribes; especially, let them never undertake, as they do in Belgium, to disobey the civil power in deference to the Pope and their bishop. At Tournay,[5193] all those over eighteen years of age are sent to Magdebourg; at Ghent, the very young or those not fit for military service are put in Saint-Pelagie; the rest, two hundred and thirty-six in number, including forty deacons or sub-deacons, incorporated in an artillery brigade, set out for Wesel, a country of marshes and fevers, where fifty of them soon die of epidemics and contagion.—There is ever the same terminal procedure; to Abbé d'Astros, suspected of having received and kept a letter of the Pope, Napoleon, with threats, gave him this ecclesiastical watchword:
"I have heard that the liberties of the Gallican Church are being taught: but for all that, I wear the sword, so watch out!"
So behind all his institutions one discovers the military sanction, the arbitrary punishment, physical constraint, the sword ready to strike; involuntarily, the eyes anticipates the flash of the blade, and the flesh is feels in advance the rigid incision of the steel.
VIII. Administrative Control.
Changes in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.—Motives for
subordinating the lesser clergy.—The displacement of
assistant priests.—Increase of episcopal authority.—Hold
of Napoleon over the bishops.
Thus is a conquered country treated. He is, in relation to the Church, as in a conquered country.[5194] Like Westphalia or Holland, she is a naturally independent country which he has annexed by treaty, which he has been able to include but not absorb in his empire, and which remains invincibly distinct. The temporal sovereign, in a spiritual society, especially such a sovereign as he is,—nominally Catholic, scarcely Christian, at best a deist and from time to time as it suits,—will never be other than an external suzerain and a foreign prince. To become and remain master in such an annexed country it is always advisable to exhibit the sword. Nevertheless, it would not be wise to strike incessantly; the blade, used too often, would wear out; it is better to utilize the constitution of the annex, rule over it indirectly, not by an administrative bureau (régie), but by a protectorate, in which all indigenous authorities can be employed and be made responsible for the necessary rigors. Now, by virtue of the indigenous constitution, the governors of the Catholic annex—all designated beforehand by their suitable and indelible character, all tonsured, robed in black, celibates and speaking Latin—form two orders, unequal in dignity and in number; one inferior, comprising myriads of curés and vicars, and the other superior, comprising some dozens of prelates.
Let us turn this ready-made hierarchy to account; and, the better to use it, let us tighten the strings. In agreement with the upper clergy and the Pope, we will increase the subjection of the lower clergy; we will govern the inferiors through the superiors; whoever has the head has the body; it is much easier to handle sixty bishops and archbishops than forty thousand vicars and curés; in this particular we need not undertake to restore primitive discipline; we must not be either antiquaries or Gallicans. Let us be careful not to give back to the second-class clergy the independence and stability they enjoyed before 1789, the canonical guarantees which protected them against episcopal despotism, the institution of competition, the rights conferred by theological grades, the bestowal of the best places on the wisest, the appeal to the diocesan court in case of disgrace, the opposing plea before the officialité, the permanent tie by which the titular curé, once planted in his parish, took root there for life, and believed himself bound to his local community like Jesus Christ to the universal Church, indissolubly, through a sort of mystic marriage. "The number of curés," says Napoleon,[5195] "must be reduced as much as possible, and the number of assistants (desservans) multiplied who can be changed at will," not only transferable to another parish, but revocable from day to day, without formalities or delay, without appeal or pleading in any court whatsoever. Henceforth, the sole irremovable curés are the four thousand; the rest, under the name of succursalists, numbering thirty thousand,[5196] are ecclesiastical clerks, surrendered to the discretionary power of the bishop. The bishop alone appoints, places and displaces all belonging to his diocese at his pleasure, and with a nod, he transfers the most competent from the best to the worst post, from the large borough or small town, where he was born and has lived at ease near his family, to some wretched parish in this or that village buried in the woods or lost on a mountain, without income or presbytery; and still better, he cuts down his wages, he withdraws the State salary of five hundred francs, he turns him out of the lodgings allowed him by the commune, on foot on the highway, with no viaticum, even temporary, excluded from ecclesiastical ministries, without respect, demeaned, a vagabond in the great lay world whose ways are unknown to him and whose careers are closed to him. Henceforth, and forever, bread is taken out of his mouth; if he has it to-day, it is lacking on the morrow. Now, every three months, the list of succursalists at five hundred francs drawn up by the bishop, must be countersigned by the prefect. In his upper cabinet, near the mantelpiece on which the visiting-cards of every considerable personage in the department are displayed, facing the emperor's bust, the two delegates of the emperor, his two responsible and judicial managers, the two superintended overseers of the conscription, confer together on the ecclesiastical staff of the department. In this as in other matters, they are and feel themselves kept in check from on high, curbed and forced, willingly or not, to come to some agreement. Compulsory collaborators by institution, each an auxiliary of the other in the maintenance of public order, they read over article by article the list of appointments of their common subordinates; should any name have bad notes, should any succursalist be marked as noisy, undesirable, or suspect, should there be any unfavorable report by the mayor, gendarmerie or upper police, the prefect, about to sign, lays down his pen, quotes his instructions and demands of the bishop against the delinquent some repressive measure, either destitution, suspension or displacement, removal to an inferior parish, or, at least, a comminatory reprimand, while the bishop, whom the prefect may denounce to the minister, does not refuse to the prefect this act of complacency.
Some months after the publication of the Concordat,[5197] Mademoiselle Chameron, an opera-dancer, dies, and her friends bear her remains to the church of Saint-Roch for internment. They are refused admittance, and the curé, very rigid, "in a fit of ill-humor," orders the doors of the church to be shut; a crowd gathers around, shouts and launches threats at the curé; an actor makes a speech to appease the tumult, and finally the coffin is borne off to the church of Les Filles-Saint-Thomas, where the assistant priest, "familiar with the moral of the gospel," performs the funeral service. Incidents of this kind disturb the tranquility of the streets and denote a relaxation of administrative discipline. Consequently the government, doctor in theology and canon law, intervenes and calls the ecclesiastical superior to account. The first Consul, in an article in the Moniteur, haughtily gives the clergy their instructions and explains the course that will be pursued against them by his prelates. "The Archbishop of Paris orders the curé of Saint-Roch into retirement for three months, in order that he may bear in mind the injunction of Jesus Christ to pray for one's enemies, and, made sensible of his duties by meditation, may become aware that these superstitious customs..., which degrade religion by their absurdities, have been done away with by the Concordat and the law of Germinal 18." From now on all priests and curés are prudent, circumspect, obedient, and reserved,[5198] because their spiritual superiors are so as well, and could not be otherwise. Each prelate, posted in his diocese, is maintained there in isolation; a watch is kept on his correspondence; he may communicate with the Pope only through the Minister of Worship; he has no right to act in concert with his colleagues; all the general assemblies of the clergy, all metropolitan councils, all annual synods are suppressed. The Church of France has ceased to exist as one corps, while its members, carefully detached from each other and from their Roman head, are no longer united, but juxtaposed. Confined to a circumscription, like the prefect, the bishop himself is simply an ecclesiastical prefect, a little less uncertain of his tenure of office; undoubtedly, his removal will not be effected by order, but he can be forced to send in his resignation. Thus, in his case, as well as for the prefect, his first care will be not to excite displeasure, and the next one, to please. To stand well at court, with the minister and with the sovereign, is a positive command, not only on personal grounds, but for the sake of Catholic interests. To obtain scholarships for the pupils of his seminary,[5199] to appoint the teachers and the director that suits him, to insure the acceptance of his canons, cantonal curés, and candidates for the priesthood, to exempt his sub-deacons from military service, to establish and to defray the expenses of the chapels of his diocese, to provide parishes with the indispensable priest, with regular services and the sacraments, requires favors, which favors cannot be enjoyed without an affectation of obedience and zeal and, more important still, devotion. Moreover, he is only a human being. If Napoleon has selected him, it is on account of his intelligence, knowing what he is about, open to human motives, not too rigid and of too easy conscience; in the eyes of the master, the first quality is an obedient personality attached to his system and person.[51100] Moreover, with his candidates, he has always taken into consideration the hold they give him through their weaknesses, vanity and needs, their ostentatious ways and expenditure, their love of money, titles and precedence, their ambition, desire for promotion, enjoyment of credit, and right of obtaining places for protégés and relations. He avails himself of all these advantages and finds that they answer his purpose. With the exception of three or four saints, like Monsignor d'Aviau[51101] or Monsignor Dessolles, who he has inadvertently put into the episcopate, the bishops are content to be barons, and the archbishops counts. They are glad to rank higher and higher in the Legion of Honor; they loudly assert, in praise of the new order of things, the honors and dignities it confers on these or those prelates who have become members of the legislative corps or been made senators.[51102] Many of them receive secret pay for secret services, pecuniary incentives in the shape of this or that amount in ready money. In sum, Napoleon has judged accurately; with hesitation and remorse, nearly the whole of his episcopal staff, Italian and French, 66 prelates out of 80, are open to "temporal influences". They yield to seductions and threats; they accept or submit, even in spiritual matters, to his positive ascendancy.[51103]