The Revolution was in reality quite as much of a religious as of a political nature. Regarded from one standpoint, it was the practical result of the labours of the great free-thinking philosophers of the eighteenth century. It is to the Revolution of 1789 that we owe the greatest conquest wrested by the human intellect from prejudice and power—liberty of conscience, religious toleration. It is certainly not to the Christian church that humanity is indebted for this inestimable blessing, for the church opposed to the utmost every demand suggestive of it.
At the moment when the Revolution begins, all the preparations for the great encounter between the principle of authority on the one side and the principles of individuality and solidarity on the other are complete. All the leaders, all the knights and squires who are to fight in the great joust, are already at their posts, unknown to each other, unknown to the world, which is soon to ring with their names. They are men with very varied pedigrees and pasts. There are noblemen like Mirabeau, priests like Mauret, Fauchet, and Talleyrand, physicians like Marat, lawyers like Robespierre, poets, philosophers, orators, authors like M. J. Chénier, Condorcet, Danton, and Desmoulins—a whole host of men of talent and men of character. The church rallies all its forces for a desperate struggle, in which it is doomed to be worsted; the Revolution progresses, first hesitatingly, then threateningly, then irresistibly, finally in the intoxication of victory. With the summoning of the Estates the lists are opened; challenges are exchanged; and the great umpire, history, gives the signal for the fray.
As soon as the Estates are assembled the first and unanimous demand of the clergy is that "the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion" shall be recognised as the national religion, with the exclusive monopoly of public worship. And yet among the lower orders of the clergy were to be found many republicans; but of the liberty demanded by these, religious liberty did not form a part. The liberal-minded abbés might declaim against the Inquisition, and bestow on it such epithets as cannibal and tiger-like, but they were all opposed to toleration. The revolutionary abbé, Fauchet—he who, after the capture of the Bastille, blessed the tricoloured uniforms of the citizen soldiers, and made of the tricolour the national flag—now jeered at the idea of toleration, and prophesied general and complete demoralisation as its only possible result. He went so far as to maintain that those who belonged to no church ought not to have the right to marry, "since one could not consider such persons bound by their word."
When the Estates met as the National Assembly, the clergy were soon compelled to make concessions; but even when the feeling against them found expression, it always in the end assumed the mildest, most deferential form. When, for example, in February 1790, incensed by Garat's declaring consecration to the priesthood to be civic suicide, a number of priests, amongst them Abbé Maury and the Bishops of Nancy and Clermont, started up, accused Garat of blasphemy, and moved that the Catholic religion should be proclaimed as the national religion, the motion was rejected, but in such a manner as clearly evinced the timidity and hesitation of its opponents. It would, they declared, be an insult to religion, and to the feelings of the whole Assembly, to act as if there could be any doubt in such a matter. Men did not yet dare to say what they thought; and so an Assembly, the majority of which were free-thinkers, took part in church processions and attended Catholic public worship. Only two months later the motion that Catholicism should be proclaimed the state religion was again brought forward, this time after Maury's angry tirade against the proposal to secularise the property of the church. The proposer of the motion on this occasion was a priest, Dom Gerle, who afterwards, as a Jacobin, did his utmost to blot out the remembrance of his first public appearance. Mirabeau answered with a reference to a window in the Louvre which he could see from the place where he stood; "the very window," he shouted, "from which a French autocrat, who combined secular aims with the spiritual aims of religion, fired the shot which gave the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew." But once again the Assembly avoided the settling of the question by declaring that the majesty of religion and the reverence due to it forbade their making it the subject of debate. The Left with one accord refrained from voting and a protest was signed by 297 members, of whom 144 were ecclesiastics. Vacillation and self-contradiction were the order of the day.
The aristocracy, who a hundred years before had joyfully acclaimed Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had been influenced to such an extent by the literature of the eighteenth century that, in their capacity as an Estate, they in a genuinely Voltairean spirit expressed themselves in favour of universal toleration; but they at the same time gave hesitating expression to the opinion that the Catholic church ought to be the national church. The Third Estate, the citizens, a considerable proportion of whom were Jansenists, and consequently in reality less liberal-minded, had expressed itself in a similarly evasive manner. But once the National Assembly was constituted, there was no longer any real uncertainty. As we all know, one of the first acts of that Assembly was the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and liberty of thought and speech in matters of religion was specified as one of these rights. Article 10 of the Declaration runs as follows: "No one may be harassed on account of his opinions, not even of his religious opinions, provided his expression of the same be not subversive of lawful order." The Pope replied by declaring this liberty to be "an unnatural and foolish right, subversive of reason" (sic). This was a sufficient indication of the relative positions of the two camps.
When toleration becomes the subject of debate in the Constituent Assembly we perceive the direction things are taking. One of the clauses in the first draught of the Declaration of the Rights of Man ran thus: "Public worship being a matter of public import, it is the prerogative of society to control it, to permit the rites of one church and forbid those of another." Upon this clause Mirabeau made a violent attack.
"It is not toleration that I champion," he said. "In the matter of religion, unrestricted liberty is in my eyes such a sacred right that the employment of the word toleration to express it savours to me of tyranny; for the very existence of an authority which has the power to tolerate, and, consequently, the power not to do so, is an infringement on freedom of thought." In a subsequent debate he went still farther. "A ruling religion has been spoken of. What is meant in this case by 'ruling'? I do not understand the word, and must request a definition of it. Does it mean a religion which suppresses other religions? Has not the Assembly interdicted the word suppression? Or does it mean the religion of the sovereign? The sovereign has not the right to rule over men's consciences or to direct their opinions. Or does it apply to the religion of the majority? Religion is a matter of opinion. This or that religion is the outcome of this or that opinion. An opinion is not formed by counting votes. Thought is a man's own, is independent, and cannot be restricted."
It is evident that men were beginning to have the courage of their opinions in religious matters.
I adduce another example of the rapidity with which, both in the Assembly and in society in general, they were advancing from a timid first apprehension to certainty of the great spiritual revolution which was taking place.
In October 1789 there stood at the bar of the National Assembly a deputation of curiously dressed men with oriental features. They were Jews from Alsace and Lorraine, who had been deputed by their fellow-believers to appeal for mercy.
"Most noble Assembly," they said, "we come in the name of the Eternal, who is the source of all justice and truth, in the name of God, who has given to all men the same rights and the same duties, in the name of humanity, which has been outraged for centuries by the infamous treatment to which the unfortunate descendants of the oldest of nations have been subjected in almost every country, to beseech you humbly to take our unhappy fate into consideration. Those Jews who are everywhere persecuted, everywhere humiliated, and yet are always submissive, never rebellious; those Jews who are despised and harassed by all nations, whereas they ought to be pitied and tolerated, cast themselves at your feet, and venture to hope that, even in the midst of the important tasks which engross you, you will not neglect and despise their complaint, but will listen compassionately to the timid protests which they venture to offer from the depth of degradation in which they are sunk. … May an improvement in our position, which we have hitherto desired in vain, and which we now tearfully implore, be your work, your benefaction!"
Clermont-Tonnerre