The Abbé Morin says further: "We have not, it is true, an entirely complete chronology of the bishops who governed the Church in Gaul, but the names of the great and noble army of bishops and clergy, who for eighteen hundred years have succeeded closely one upon another, are assuredly the most beautiful jewels in the crown of France. Their virtues were many and great, – eloquence, love of la patrie, indomitable courage in time of trial, mastery of difficult situation, prudence, energy, patience, and charity." All these grand virtues were practised incessantly, with some regrettable eclipses, attributable not only to misfortune, but occasionally to fault. A churchman even is but human.
With the accession of the third dynasty of kings, – the Capetians, in 987, – the history of the French really began, and that of the Franks, with their Germanic tendencies and elements, became absorbed by those of the Romanic language and character, with the attendant habits and customs.
Only the Aquitanians, south of the Loire, and the Burgundians on the Rhône, still preserved their distinct nationalities.
The feudal ties which bound Aquitaine to France were indeed so slight that, when Hugh Capet, in 990, asked of Count Adelbert of Périgueux, before the walls of the besieged city of Tours: "Who made thee count?" he was met with the prompt and significant rejoinder, "Who made thee king?"
At the close of the tenth century, France was ruled by close upon sixty princes, virtually independent, and yet a still greater number of prelates, – as powerful as any feudal lord, – who considered Hugh Capet of Paris only as one who was first among his peers. Yet he was able to extend his territory to such a degree that his hereditary dynasty ultimately assured the unification of the French nation. Less than a century later Duke William of Normandy conquered England (1066); when began that protracted struggle between France and England which lasted for three hundred years.
Immediately after the return of the pious Louis VII. from his disastrous crusade, his queen, Eleanor, the heiress of Poitou and Guienne, married the young count Henry Plantagenet of Maine and Anjou; who, when he came to the English throne in 1153, "inherited and acquired by marriage" – as historians subtly put it – " the better half of all France."
Until 1322 the Church in France was divided into the following dioceses:
Provincia Remensis (Reims)
Provincia Rotomagensis (All Normandy)
Provincia Turonensis (Touraine, Maine, Anjou, and Brittany)
Provincia Burdegalensis (Poitou, Saintonge, Angumois, Périgord, and Bordelais)
Provincia Auxitana (In Gascoigne)
Provincia Bituricensis (Berri, Bourbonnais, Limosin, and Auvergne)
Provincia Senonensis (Sens)
Provincia Lugdunensis (Bourgogne and Lyonnais)
Provincia Viennensis (Vienne on the Rhône)
Provincia Narbonensis (Septimania)
Provincia Arelatensis (Arles)
Provincia Aquensis (Aix-en-Provence)
Provincia Ebredunensis (The Alpine Valleys)
The stormy days of the reign of Charles V. (late fourteenth century) throughout France were no less stringent in Languedoc than elsewhere.
Here the people rose against the asserted domination of the Duke of Anjou, who, "proud and greedy," was for both qualities abhorred by the Languedocians.
He sought to restrain civic liberty with a permanent military force, and at Nîmes levied heavy taxes, which were promptly resented by rebellion. At Montpellier the people no less actively protested, and slew the chancellor and seneschal.
By the end of the thirteenth century, social, political, and ecclesiastical changes had wrought a wonderful magic with the map of France. John Lackland (sans terre) had been compelled by Philippe-Auguste to relinquish his feudal possessions in France, with the exception of Guienne. At this time also the internal crusades against the Waldenses and Albigenses in southern France had powerfully extended the royal flag. Again, history tells us that it was from the impulse and after influences of the crusading armies to the East that France was welded, under Philippe-le-Bel, into a united whole. The shifting fortunes of France under English rule were, however, such as to put little stop to the progress of church-building in the provinces; though it is to be feared that matters in that line, as most others of the time, went rather by favour than by right of sword.
Territorial changes brought about, in due course, modified plans of the ecclesiastical control and government, which in the first years of the fourteenth century caused certain administrative regulations to be put into effect by Pope John XXII. (who lies buried beneath a gorgeous Gothic monument at Avignon) regarding the Church in the southern provinces.
So well planned were these details that the Church remained practically under the same administrative laws until the Revolution.
Albi was separated from Bourges (1317), and raised to the rank of a metropolitan see; to which were added as suffragans Cahors, Rodez, and Mende, with the newly founded bishoprics of Castres and Vabres added. Toulouse was formed into an archbishopric in 1327; while St. Pons and Alet, as newly founded bishoprics, were given to the ancient see of Narbonne in indemnification for its having been robbed of Toulouse. The ancient diocese of Poitiers was divided into three, and that of Agen into two by the erection of suffragans at Maillezais, Luçon, Sarlat, and Condom. By a later papal bull, issued shortly after their establishment, these bishoprics appear to have been abolished, as no record shows that they entered into the general scheme of the revolutionary suppression.
On August 4, 1790, all chapters of cathedral churches, other than those of the metropoles (the mother sees), their bishops, and in turn their respective curés, were suppressed. This ruling applied as well to all collegiate churches, secular bodies, and abbeys and priories generally.
Many were, of course, reëstablished at a subsequent time, or, at least, were permitted to resume their beneficent work. But it was this general suppression, in the latter years of the eighteenth century, which led up to the general reapportioning of dioceses in that composition of Church and State thereafter known as the Concordat.
Many causes deflected the growth of the Church from its natural progressive pathway. The Protestant fury went nearly to fanaticism, as did the equally fervent attempts to suppress it. The "Temples of Reason" of the Terrorists were of short endurance, but they indicated an unrest that has only in a measure moderated, if one is to take later political events as an indication of anything more than a mere uncontrolled emotion.
Whether a great future awaits Protestantism in France, or not, the power of the Roman Church is undoubtedly waning, in attracting congregations, at least.
Should a Wesley or a Whitfield arise, he might gain followers, as strong men do, and they would draw unto them others, until congregations might abound. But the faith could hardly become the avowed religion of or for the French people. It has, however, a great champion in the powerful newspaper, Le Temps, which has done, and will do, much to popularize the movement.
The Protestantism of Lot and Lot et Garonne is considerable, and it is of very long standing. It is recorded, too, that as late as October, 1901, the Commune of Murat went over en masse to Protestantism because the Catholic bishop at Cahors desired his communicants to rise from their beds at what they considered an inconveniently early hour, in order to hear mass.
This movement in Languedoc was not wholly due to the tyranny of the Duke of Anjou; it was caused in part by the confiscation or assumption of the papal authority by France. This caused not only an internal unrest in Italy, but a turbulence which spread throughout all the western Mediterranean, and even unto the Rhine and Flanders. The danger which threatened the establishment of the Church, by making the papacy a dependence of France, aroused the Italian prelates and people alike, and gave rise to the simultaneous existence of both a French and an Italian Pope.
Charles V. supported the French pontiff, as was but natural, thus fermenting a great schism; with its attendant controversies and horrors.
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