Term Paper on "French Revolution When Historians and Others Engage"

Term Paper 12 pages (3839 words) Sources: 8 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

French Revolution

When historians and others engage in discussion on the French Revolution, they begin with discussions about why the people of France became unhappy and began rioting, bringing about a violent end to France's royal family and many members of nobility on August10, 1789 (Gough 2007 373). A revolution is not just about deposing a ruler or a despot to replace with another whether that other is Church or State. The events that occurred following August 4, 1789, and the events that precipitated the night of August 4, 1789, are matters of religion and politics, and how the French Revolution went terribly wrong (Schwab 1995 221). At the heart of the problem, and the position taken here, is that the revolution collapsed from with inside itself, causing it to go bad, because of a document that represented a power play separating Church and State, which had previously acted in synchronicity as a Church-State government. The document is the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and it is the focus of this brief study in order to create a picture not of how the revolution began or how it proceeded or the famous moments in its history, but to paint the portrait of the document itself. It will be shown here that the Civil Constitution of the Clergy made it impossible to separate the Church and State, but that it did eventually happen at the end of the revolutionary government (Bernard 1910 152).

This study lends itself to understanding the that thought went into the document, the individuals whose thoughts it represented, and what it was intended to do. It is a discussion of politics and religion, when the two are so intricately woven together as they are in the events of 1790 are never easy to unravel. Nonetheless, that effort will be made here, and it is the goal of this study to analyze them in a way that makes them no less interesting and exciting than they were as the events were unfolding and the people involved were living and dying for their choice of ideology.

This study will rely on the existing body of study and historical analysis compiled by scholars and historians. While the Works Cited will inform the study, every effort will be made to perform independent analysis and add that perspective to this study.

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was drawn up in July, 1790 (Schwab 221). It was a document that came out of the National Assembly, its Ecclesiastical clerics, but would eventually serve as a divide between the National Assembly Ecclesiastical clerics and it's the non-cleric body of the membership (Aulard 1910 45). There were differences early on, which would become impossible to for both the ecclesiastics and the legislative members to reconcile between them (45) F.A. Aulard describes it thusly:

They differed from Robespierre in this: Robespierre accepted intact the "civil religion" of Rousseau, with all its dogmas, and was doubtless already dreaming of making it the national religion of France; the Girondists accepted only the dogma of the existence of God, and it is obvious that their deism was only a denial of the God of the Catholic Church. In this they differed from Robespierre only, and not from the Montagnards, among whom Couthon alone perhaps was addicted to dreams of a State religion, and the cult of the Supreme Being, which haunted the imagination of Robespierre (F.A. Aulard 1910 45)."

This is not to suggest that the other factions within the National Assembly were without religious ideology, because, of course, they had their own goals for the role of religion in post revolutionary France (Aulard 125). "The republic, once it was Montagnard, became a religion; it had its martyrs and its saints (Aulard 125).

The Constitution of the Clergy was intended to deal with what the revolutionaries perceived to be a dangerous situation that they were faced with (Thompson 1952 22). The Catholic Church was not just the wealthiest institution in France, it was also the most powerful (22) the revolutionaries were faced with a need to take that power away from the church, but in way in which the National Assembly would be able to absorb and make use of the power themselves (22). The holdings owned by the Church were rich and extensive in land, buildings and endowments (22). The wealth held by the Church was badly needed by the revolutionaries in order to continue moving towards their democracy, although that, too, remained precarious because in the first year of the revolution there was what anyone should have anticipated as chaos as people sought to bring to a violent end France's monarch and wealthy (22). In the second year, the year in which the Constitution of the Clergy was created, there was a need to create infrastructure within the revolutionary government; as well as the desire by the vying parties to gain leadership roles in the new government (22). To allow the Catholic Church to continue to hold greater wealth and power than the revolutionaries was contrary to their movement, and it could not be allowed to happen (22).

When the revolutionaries came together and created the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, on July 14, 179o, it was the Feast of the Federation, but this feast, Albert Mathiez (1927) says, was different because, just as the revolution had marked the end of France's monarchy, this occasion marked the end of constitutional Catholicism, the secularization of the churches, and the abdication of the priests (Mathiez 85).

On August 4, 1791, the new government abolished the tithe payments which along with taxes had created burdens on the population in France, there continued to be a need to pay the clergy (Thompson 22) but because the people had stopped paying taxes, and now the tithes were abolished, it was necessary for the state to take the Church's property and wealth in France and to be the payor of the clergy (Thompson 22). This requisitioning of the Church accomplished the goals of the new government by essentially bringing about an end to the Catholic Church in France. Later, this event would be used as cause to prosecute and execute Robespierre, serving as proof that he was attempting to position himself with as much power as possible and that he wanted a dictatorship (Schwab?

). However, for the present, the new government seized the opportunity to reorganize what they were then passing as the Catholic Church in France (Thompson 22).

In doing this it was natural enough to reorganize the Church as a national institution: to identify the dioceses with the new departments (departements), which now replaced the old generalites (districts supervised by an intendant); to reduce the number of town parishes; to extend to the appointment of parish clergy the democratic method of popular election; to enforce regulations against absenteeism; to standardise the payments both of bishops and clergy; and, as they were now salaried State servants, to demand of them all an oath of allegiance "to the nation, the law, and the King (Thompson 22-23)."

For at least some of the Catholic clergy, being paid by the State actually pleased some clergymen, Thompson says, but most of the bishops came from wealthy families, and since the wealthy were still being executed, regardless of being paid there would have been a lot of resentment among the bishops (23). In fact, most of the bishops went into exile (23). The remaining clergy were asked to take an oath of faith and loyalty, but many refused (23). Here there is a problem, because their refusal to swear a prescribed oath of loyalty to the new government caused a division that the government had actually hoped to avoid, and instead it drove the clerics either into hiding, out of the country, or they met with death (23).

Robespierre had been raised a Catholic, but his goal was, Thompson says, to unite the country in faith if not religion "freed from Catholic dogma and clerical fanaticism (24)." In dire need of cash, and on behalf of the state, Robespierre began to auction off confiscated church properties "bit by bit (25)." The state also devised a scheme that was innovative for its time, allowing people to buy in co-owners of national properties (25). The government program created a new class of landowner, and, more importantly, that their newfound status and land came out of the revolution meant that those people felt a loyalty to the government, to Robespierre. It meant, too, that they would fight to prevent the nobility and royalty from returning to France, because it would mean they would lose their newfound status and property (25). "

Thompson says that Robespierre was so inspired by the genius of selling the land certificates, and that he was credited with saving the country from bankruptcy, that they converted the certificates to paper money (25). Unfortunately, as Thompson points out, printing paper money in excess of the money or gold to… READ MORE

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