Priests and Bishops in 1789
By the end of the Old Regime, the object of seminary education, in conformity with the decrees of the Council of Trent, was to make of the priest, a being separate from the world, the “religious [as if in a religious order] of God according to the priestly spirituality of the French school of the seventeenth century.”15 Sulpicians, Spiritains (Congregation of the Holy Spirit), Lazarists (Vincentians), and Doctrinaires (Fathers of Christian Doctrine, disbanded during the Revolution) ran the 130 to 140 French seminaries in place in 1789. This does not take into account the minor seminaries, earnestly promoted after 1750.16 But education for priesthood did not mean years in a seminary; there were other means of acquiring the requisite knowledge and getting experience necessary for the métier. The obligation to spend time in the seminary dated from 1696, at least for Paris; by 1789, the average amount of time spent in a Parisian seminary was sixteen months.17 Boys could not be tonsured before their fourteenth year. Later they received the four minor orders, then subdiaconate with the obligation to continue on to diaconate and priesthood. Even the great central Paris seminary of Saint-Sulpice was often little more than a career opportunity for young men, concerned more about intellectual and cultural development. In this setting, wigs and musical studies often weighed more heavily than did prayer and theology. Priesthood was conferred, in principle, at twenty-four years of age. And the majority of the ordinands came from the middle classes, which gave importance to recruitment in an urban setting.18
Priests attracted both criticism and praise. The bon curé of eighteenth-century France was praised by both Catholic reformers and Enlightenment rationalists. John McManners cites Edmé-Nicholas Restif de la Bretonne, brother of the notorious revolutionary-era writer and erotic roustabout Restif de la Bretonne.19 As curé of Courgis, he prayed for hours, was totally and constantly available to his parishioners, lived abstemiously, and did everything to improve the physical and spiritual lives of his flock. The country curé was an idyllic hero and the city curé was a man of substance. On the other hand, there are records of all kinds of tipsiness, dishonesty, and vulgarity. Where there were local aristocrats to serve, receive, or otherwise appease, the curé who was on his toes had a number of proprieties to learn and observe. Generosity with parishioners and kindness to the poor stood high on the list of qualities attributed to the bon curé. Even the peasant cahiers of 1789, for all their complaints, could praise the simple, good pastor of souls.20 Looking more closely at priests of the era, we note that they tended to be local, though some regions could not generate enough vocations for their needs and needed to look elsewhere, even to foreign lands. But the majority came from the town bourgeoisie and the well-off farming class. Depending on the size of the parish and its location, there could be great variations in income, with some of the clergy terribly underpaid. The Traité des devoirs d’un pasteur (1758) included a suggested list of books that every curé should have.21 In fact, a curé could have everything from a minimal four or five books through the library necessary to do his own research and writing in history and theology.22
The bishops did indeed, virtually all of them, come from the aristocracy at the end of the Old Regime. By 1789, only one commoner priest had been elevated to the episcopacy, and in 1790 the brilliant Jean-René Asseline was consecrated a bishop, just in time to refuse the constitutional clergy oath, and so lose the bishopric.23 The same pecking order of greater and lesser aristocratic dignity obtained for the noble bishops as for nobles in general: the older the pedigree and the closer connection to military service to the kings of old, the more highly honored the family name. An aristocratic family could try to obtain a good church position for a family member by appeal to the aristocratic bishop, and naturally bishops helped their own. Riches and affluence often translated into worldliness, but the ideal was a bishop who was generous to his people, protective of his clergy, and charitable across the board in his last will and testament. Stories of episcopal scoundrels are better known: Cardinal Louis de Rohan hoping for a secret tryst with Marie Antoinette, or the ethical chameleon and shameless (if brilliant) diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand. John McManners retells the story of this young, clubfooted aristocrat taking over the see of Autun with a great show of piety, earnest preaching, and commitment to service, only to pack up and leave forever, right after his hold on the position was assured.24 Yet, it did make sense to have a bishop who could stand up for the diocese at the highest levels of political, economic, and social life—and all the trappings of the episcopacy cost plenty of money. The problem was that many of the bishops were seldom if ever back in their dioceses, being off in Paris or elsewhere—post–Council of Trent rules for residency, parish visitations, and confirmation be damned. Of course, even dedicated bishops maintained a clear distinction between themselves and their commoner clergy.
And so, now, to the saints and renegades of the French Revolution, the priests and bishops who played an ecclesiastical and sometimes political game of constitutional or republican reform at some point in their careers regardless of their status in the Constitutional Church. I feature the star performers (often constitutional bishops) and the dramatically important priestly activities in the government or in high-profile church work. Readers will find in these chapters the personalities, writings, and activities of national leaders, local mavericks, and whole sections of the clergy that rebelled, resigned, retracted, or totally dedicated themselves to an apostolate that was at once revolutionary and priestly. It is a drama divided into three acts, or sections—each section furnished with a general orientation, chapter introductions, and a selective chronology of state–church events25—which I characterize simply as engagement, survival, and revival.
Bad harvests and the high cost of food staples pushed King Louis XVI and his advisers to convoke the Estates General, France’s first parliamentary assembly in 175 years, obviously a dramatic bid for help in resolving chronic financial crises. Few in the clerical First Estate, the aristocratic Second Estate, or the commoner Third Estate were aware of the revolutionary risks they were courting. Well before the first session, scheduled for the beginning of May 1789, meetings were held all over France, not only to elect delegates but to draw up lists of complaints and goals for the Estates to consider: the famous cahiers de doléances. The clergy of the First Estate expressed very few deep political or social anxieties that could result in political upheaval, and no real hints that a transformed church should go hand-in-hand with a transformed government. The actual opening of the Estates General was first of all a church event, with a procession to the church of Saint-Louis in Versailles. The Third Estate marched first, followed by the other two Estates; King Louis walked at the end of the procession, preceded by the Blessed Sacrament, which was carried under a canopy by the archbishop of Paris.
Successful power bids by the Third Estate at Versailles in June, violent manifestations in Paris with the attack on the Bastille in July, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August overshadowed the first legislative moves toward church reform. Before this Declaration of Rights, the clergy had abandoned the tithe, and several months later, church properties and lands were nationalized—to be used as collateral for the new bonds (eventually used as currency), the assignats. The church reform was one of the surprises of the early Revolution, its causes residing in the personal and religious orientations of the priests and the experts in church law who dominated the Estates General and the Constituent Assembly.
With the new year, 1790, random but radical church-reform proposals of different stripes continued apace: to withdraw recognition of monastic vows, to recognize Catholicism as the official religion of France, and to attach Avignon, the papal enclave, to France. The new Civil Constitution of the Clergy was approved, to be rejected soon enough by a substantial minority of priests. Even so, most priests, whether of revolutionary or counterrevolutionary orientation, supported a festival celebration of the first anniversary of the fall