Turning from one privileged order to the other, the assembly continued the attacks on the fabric of the Church which had been begun by the churchmen themselves in August and October 1789. The surrender of the tithes, (101) 70,000,000 francs annually, had told most heavily against the poor country priest and in favour of the landowner, who bore the burden of his salary. The taking over of the Church lands by the State had been most felt by the higher ecclesiastics and the monastic orders. In February 1790 the latter were suppressed, and their members were relieved of their vows by the assembly, which had now frankly embarked on an anti-clerical policy. It would not recognise of itself that it was less representative of France in the matter of religion than in any other; for it was the intellectual and professional class only, to which nearly all the deputies belonged, that was Voltairian or anti-Catholic, the mass of the people of France were still attached to their ancient faith. During the protracted debates that took place on the Church question in the spring of 1790, the assembly attempted several times to evade the question of the Catholic members as to whether or not it would recognise the existence of the Church. At last, with great reluctance, in June, the assembly voted that the Catholic religion was that of France; but it followed this up by passing what was known as the Constitution civile du clergé. This decree provided that all priests should receive their {102} salaries from the State; that the old dioceses of France should be broken up and made to fit the new departmental division that had supplanted the old provincial one; that the bishop should be created by the vote of the electors of his department; and that the Pope should exercise no authority over bishops or priests.
It needs but little acquaintance with history to realize how wilfully subversive this plan was. The maintenance of the clergy by the tithes, placed it outside the sphere of Government control, and helped to maintain the ancient Roman internationalism; whereas the breaking off of the Pope's direct connection with the bishops was Gallicanism of the most pronounced character. Pope Pius VI unequivocally declared that the carrying through of any such law in France would amount to a schism, and transmitted that opinion to Louis XVI.
The falseness of the King's position was made intolerable by the dilemma in which he was now placed. There was as yet no formal Constitution, only a revolutionary situation in which the assembly had usurped a large part of the King's prerogative. It was, however, virtually accepted by both sides that under the {103} constitution when passed, the King should have the power of veto, and by tacit accord that arrangement had been from the first put into force. The assembly voted decrees and sent them to the King for his signature. But in reality the veto, even before its strict constitutional existence, was little more than a sham. The situation was revolutionary. Both parties were hostile, and almost without exception every signature of the King was an act of moral compulsion. Hitherto, however, his acceptance of the situation had not involved more than bowing before a political storm; now the matter was graver, the question was of schism, and therefore of heresy.
Louis was a faithful believer in the Roman theology, as well as in the divine right of kings, and he struggled hard to withhold his signature from the civil constitution of the clergy. And when, after some weeks, he finally gave in, it was under protest. From that moment he adopted the attitude of the man acting under restraint who ascribes no binding force to acts and deeds resulting from compulsion.
The acceptance of the civil constitution of the clergy by the King did not conclude the matter. Furious protests arose. In the south {104} of France, bishops, priests and national guards for some weeks threatened an outbreak of religious war. The assembly met this disorder more firmly than that proceeding from economic and political reasons. Towards the close of the year it imposed on the clergy an oath of adhesion to the civil constitution, and this only four bishops were found to accept. In January 1791 elections were ordered for filling the places of those members of the Church who had refused the oath, and presently France found herself with two bodies of clergy, official and non-official, constitutional and anti-constitutional.
To close a chapter dealing so largely with the destructive efforts of the middle-class assembly against the prerogatives of the King and of the two privileged orders, it may be noted that on the 19th of June, 1790, on the proposal of members of the nobility, all titles were abolished. Hereafter Mirabeau is Honoré Riquetti, the ci-devant Comte de Mirabeau; and Camille Desmoulins, prompt, picturesque and impertinent, logically applies the process to the King himself and rechristens Louis, Mr. Capet l'aîné.
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