The French Revolution and the Church
by John P. Philip
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158. The inscription below the engraving reads,
"Traitors, look at this and tremble. It will still be active while all of you have lost your lives." |
The growing cancerous heresies of Nationalism and Liberalism finally exploded inside "the Eldest Daughter of the Church," and turned France into the mother of the modern world.
Perhaps it was inevitable that it should happen in France. As the Roman province of Gaul, France first saw the Faith in the second, quite possibly even the first century. In 496, King Clovis of the Franks was baptized in Reims on Christmas, and France became the first Christian nation.
And so she remained—thoroughly Catholic for more than a thousand years. Oh, how many glorious saints she produced! And what can one say of the flood of Gothic cathedrals during the High Middle Ages—the spires reaching up to heaven itself! But France had her problems, too—and there was never another French king quite like St. Louis IX.
During the turbulent 16th century, Nationalism began to make its ominous appearance. And with Francis I, there began a line of worldly kings who sought, more than any during the Avignon Captivity of the 14th century, to use the Church for Nationalistic reasons. In 1516, Pope Leo X, seeking to persuade the king to end the Pragmatic Sanctions of Charles VII (1438) (the king crowned because of St. Joan of Arc) had to agree to a concordat which gave the king the right of nomination to all French sees and prelacies. (The Pragmatic Sanctions brought France almost to the point of schism.) Thus, the monarchy obtained domination of the Church until the explosion of the French Revolution. Gallicanism had arrived, although it had first appeared in 1303.
With the arrival of the Protestant Revolution in the next year, there would soon arise the Protestant notion of the Divine Right of Kings. King Henry VIII in England did it first. But soon, Catholic kings, such as those in France, realized that replacing the medieval notion of a monarch held in check with Divine Right may mean an increase in power for the crown. And, these new absolute monarchs also urged bishops to assert their independence from the Holy See.
The whole thing almost became a national church in France, and several other states.
With the rise of Calvinism, one third of the nobility became involved in the most powerful Protestant sect. The monarchy itself, in the closing years of the century, almost became Calvinist, but Catholics fought heroically enough to prevent that calamity.
But the fervent Calvinist minority was able to infect some Catholics during the 17th century with a heresy called Jansenism—a Calvinist Catholicism, if you will. These people were overly dour, and denied the Catholic view of grace. They denied that Christ died for all—only for the minority He was determined to save. And they believed one had to be completely worthy of receiving Penance and Holy Communion. They sometimes avoided Communion for two years at a time, and felt that absolution should not be allowed until severe penances had been completed. But, Our Lord answered them dramatically in His revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, wherein He made more manifest His unconditional love for us.
Even so, France continued to produce great saints. But a more ominous dark cloud appeared on the horizon at about the time of the revelations of the Sacred Heart. It really originated with the Renaissance view that "Man is the measure of all things." The Protestant belief in private judgment in religious matters only strengthened the notion. And sometime around 1660 there was born what has gone by various names: the "Enlightenment," Deism, skepticism, and rationalism—what French adherents would call "Philosophisme": Philosophy. Although born in Britain, this poison was spread by France. But then, France had become the most influential country in Europe. Whatever the intellectuals of France believed, would become the belief of others. And so it was. The intellectuals soon moved from any Christian belief to a denial of the supernatural. There is no truth so high that it cannot be dissected with a knife! God is no more than a "Supreme Being," a great engineer Who made the universe to run on its own, with no need for Him. No need for prayer, no miracles, no religious and moral absolutes. Soon, materialism, and even agnosticism and atheism made their appearance. It is all around us today, but was seen only among the educated then. If one had faith, he was sneered at. Rationalism was a mark of good breeding.
Indeed, the intellectual class soon had its great divine—Francois-Marie Arouet: Voltaire. His motto: "Crush out the infamous thing!" That is, the Church. And in 1773, a victory! A broken-hearted Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus. The Society was hated by Jansenists, absolute monarchs and rationalists alike (What a conglomerate!). The Jesuits had done their work for the popes all too well, and the absolute monarchs, who were hated by Voltaire and his ilk, suppressed the Society in Spain, Portugal, and Naples before squeezing the life out of the pope until he suppressed it everywhere.
The great vehicles for spreading Rationalism were the "Encyclopedia," published in 1751, and Freemasonry. The "Encyclopedia" became the bible of the Rationalists, and in Masonic lodges (the first in London in 1717) the intellectuals ate it up. Masonry was first condemned by Pope Clement XII in 1738, and again by Pope Benedict XIV in 1751, as a Deistic religion and a source of Rationalism. By 1789, the French nobility and the rising middle class were infected with Freemasonry and Rationalism.
France needed reform. But none of the ingredients for revolution were present. Taxation was heavily placed on the poorer class, with the nobility paying nothing, but so it also was in Britain and Prussia. No revolutions there. The centralized absolutist system created by Cardinal Richelieu, the prelate who placed his country above church and won for the Protestants the Thirty Years War, had been crying out for reform for more than a century. And Louis XVI was determined to do just that. He instituted a new tax system: taxes would raise more revenues, but would be lowered for the poor and levied against the nobility. It caused a storm. The king's enemies misrepresented what the king was doing. The king convened the Estates General for the first time since 1614. Two of the three Estates were infected with Rationalism, especially the Third, and they soon had their way—the Third Estate, that is. Its 621 delegates consisted of 360 lawyers, and they were most imbued with Rationalism. When the Estates General met on May 4, 1789 the Third Estate demanded that delegates from all three estates vote en masse, rather than each estate voting separately, which would check the Rationalists. The Third Estate broke away and called itself the National Assembly and convinced the majorities in the other two to join them. On June 27 the king gave in to their demands (they had already told him that they would do the reforming), and allowed the three estates to merge. The French Revolution was underway.
Musee de la Ville de Paris
FANNING THE FLAMES: Hubert Robert's depiction of the
demolition of the Bastille, from Simon Schama's 'Citizens.'
The Marquis de Sade was the most notorious pornographer in the world: so atrocious were his writings that any society would be repelled by him, perhaps even ours! He had been living in some luxury—certainly much comfort—in that "terrible prison", the Bastille. On July 4th or 5th, the governor of the prison had de Sade removed. The pornographer had become a revolutionary by shouting down to people below that prisoners were being massacred inside, and that the people of the Saint Antoine area of Paris should rescue them! When the Bastille was stormed on July 14th, de Sade was not there to be rescued from his luxurious room. But a grand total of seven others were!
Now: The Deluge! At first the Church was not bothered; but not for long. For, here at last, was the opportunity the Rationalists and company had waited for! They remembered the dead Voltaire's constant refrain: "Crush out the infamous thing!" And so they did—almost. As summer turned to fall, the proceedings were dominated by Rationalists, Gallicans, and a more extreme form—revolutionaries. These monsters the world had never seen; certainly not the Christian world.
In November, 1789 all Church property in France was declared property of the nation, and secular priests were placed on the state's payroll. From there it was downhill fast.
February, 1790: monastic vows of religious orders are declared a threat to liberty! The National Assembly declares them null and void, suppresses all such orders, and prohibits them from accepting novices. A pension was guaranteed for anyone who would return to the world. There were 37,000 nuns, but only 600 broke their vows. The breaking of vows was much more common among the 13,136 monks and friars (Women usually are more faithful to Our Lord: consider the foot of the Cross).
The body blow to the Church came on July 12, 1790—the approval, over much opposition, of the Civil Constitution of the clergy. These fanatical revolutionaries, the world's first terrorists, were mounting to supreme power by way of mob riots, sinister intrigues, and ruthless assassinations. Now they could establish the world's first materialistic and Godless state. With iconoclastic hatred they would destroy Catholicism. And they would obliterate every civil institution of the past, too.
More Gallican than the Gallicans, the Constitution sought to enslave the Church and refashion it along Presbyterian lines. The Constitution gutted Papal Primacy and the Episcopacy. Consider: each of the new civil departments of France would have only one bishop. That did away with 48 Sees and their seminaries. No prelate could hold the title of archbishop. A total of 83 bishoprics remained. "Without prejudice to the unity of the Faith(!)" No French priest, bishop, or religious was to recognize the authority of a bishop living outside the country, or of his delegates. No appeals to Rome were allowed.
And how would bishops then be appointed? They would be appointed by the Electoral Assemblies in each department. An oath would be required to the king, the nation, the law, and the Constitution. They could not seek confirmation from the pope.
Cathedral chapters were suppressed. Curés (pastors) were also chosen by the same Electoral Assemblies. Thus, all in France; even atheists—anyone could vote in naming bishops and curés! This was schism with a vengeance.
Louis XVI was in a tight squeeze. To refuse to sign the Constitution meant another powerful weapon in the hands of the terrorists. Yet the good and sincere Catholic king was sick at heart at the thought of Gallicanism finally taking the Church all the way to schism. Pope Pius VI, whom he consulted, was anxious over events in France. In his reply to the king on July 11th, he condemned the Constitution. But the condemnation was kept secret, for the Holy Father wanted the solution to come from the bishops of France. All but seven bishops, and most of the priests condemned the Constitution. The National Assembly then ordered all to either swear allegiance to the new law, or face expulsion from their offices. Of 131 bishops, only four, including the infamous Talleyrand, took the hated oath. Of 70,000 priests, nearly 50,000 refused. Many of these, some confused, some whose ideas indicated such a course, renounced the oath when they learned of the pope's condemnation.
So France had two clerical divisions; "non-jurors;" those refusing the oath, and "jurors," or "Constitutionalists." Non-juring bishops were soon replaced by priests hastily consecrated, who had taken the oath.
But the poison of Rationalism had not affected most Catholics in France. And so, the Church went underground just as in the days of the Catacombs, or during the long night of darkness in the British Isles. Churches with priests who took the oath were abandoned by the faithful. Masses in houses were crowded by non-juring priests and faithful alike. And during the coming terror, it was Mass in hidden barns and other places; where priests were guarded and concealed. And by the tens of thousands, in numbers not seen since early Christian times, the faithful died with their curés on the guillotine or in the massacres of the mad mobs.
In April, 1791 the papal condemnation was made public. Many juring priests renounced their oaths. But the 18 bishops who took the oath did not. The faithful bishops offered their resignations to the pope if it would bring peace, but Pius VI did not want that.
Unlike in England 250 years earlier, the French clergy held up in far greater numbers. They faced the worst: persecution, torture, execution. For these, the revolutionaries reserved their most bitter hatred. And for Pius VI? They would eventually kill him, too.
The Reign of Terror was next; an unprecedented slaughter. All over France it took place; in some areas worse than others, but bad everywhere. The mobs were all over the country; frequently led by the worst of criminals who had been freed from the prisons. There was no rule of law whatsoever. They dominated the National Assembly and all of the 21,500 revolutionary committees across the country. They poured lawless and bloodthirsty rioters into the streets of the cities. They obliterated forests and farmlands. They demolished castles and cabins, monasteries and convents. They left a trail of merciless brutality and murder in a sea of blood behind them. And when the slaughter was over, they had murdered 1,200,000 French men and women (In the Committee of Public Safety and the Commune of Paris they actually said that millions must die if the people were to be controlled. The first advocates of population control, as it were)! And how many were martyred for the Faith? Only God knows; at least 40,000 in Paris alone. They sacrilegiously desecrated city churches and rural chapels. They regularly desecrated the Blessed Sacrament, and stole precious chalices and sacred vessels to be sold to the highest bidder. The Reign of Terror ended in 1794—the worst of the Revolution—only when the leading terrorists (Georges Danton, Maximilian Robespierre, and Jean-Paul Marat) killed each other off.
They introduced a secular calendar that dated from September, 1792; a ten-day week with no Sunday, and strange names with no Christian trappings at all. In November, 1793 they turned the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris into a "Temple of Reason." After all, it was no longer a church, since all churches in France were ordered closed. Why not a Festival of Reason? In all this madness, it made sense. The pagans entered the revered cathedral with one of the blasphemers, an actress, as the 'Goddess of Reason.' It was done elsewhere—sacrilege on a grand scale. In Strasbourg the practice of the Faith was ordered halted. In Lyons, France's primatial See, a festival was held for its slain revolutionary leader at which a gospel and a crucifix were burned, a donkey drank out of a chalice, and consecrated Hosts were trampled. Other great cathedrals—at Chartres, Reims, Metz, Bordeaux, and Tours—were also turned into Temples of Reason.
There is too much to recount here. But here is something of more than passing interest: one week after the desecration of Notre Dame de Paris, most of the churches had been closed. Worshippers were expelled from the Church of Saint Gervais which was taken over by drunks and dancers far into the night. Soon after, that church became the Temple of Youth. But—at another church a priest (Fr. Brongniard) celebrated Mass time and again all through that day; November 17, 1793. It was one of the few churches still open although it would be closed by the local revolutionary committee later in the afternoon. There were immense crowds there for all those Masses. And 200 years later there are still immense crowds there, where priests of the Society of Saint Pius X carry on the great work of Father Brongniard. You may know of the church I speak of: Saint Nicolas-du-Chardonnet! Alas, on July 26, 1794; eight months later, he was guillotined—a martyr of the Revolution.
All that the Church suffered can be understood by remembering three events.
The Rising in the Vendee
The Vendee was a new department along the west central coast south of Nantes, entirely Catholic and untouched by the poison of Rationalism. The people loved their priests, few of whom took the oath. And on March 13, 1793 they rose up rather than fight for a Godless regime that had murdered the king (He died a holy death, receiving the Last Rites from a priest who was a convert from Anglicanism. Louis XVI offered himself on the guillotine saying, "I die innocent. I pardon my enemies. I hope that my blood will be useful to the French, that it will appease God's anger...") less than two months before the Rising from the Vendee.
They almost succeeded. Had they taken Nantes, or marched on Paris, the Revolution would most likely have ended, and history would have taken a different turn. They marched into battle as medieval knights; carrying sacred banners, and wearing the Sacred Heart of Jesus as an emblem (That caused the terrorists to try to obliterate the Sacred Heart wherever they could). But the Rising failed after some success. And the terrorists murdered 90,000 of the Faithful in the Vendee—their Catholic and Royal Army had numbered nearly 100,000. One of their leaders had said, "Our country is... our altars, our faith, our land, our king.... It is as old as the devil, the world that they call new, and that they wish to found in the absence of God.... We are the youth of God, the youth of fidelity..." But the slaughter for the general region in and around the Vendee was almost 250,000—executed by drowning, by being buried alive, gunned down... the guillotine was felt to be too slow! One third of the region was slaughtered.
The September Massacres
From September 2nd to the 7th, 1792, 1,400 were massacred in the prisons of Paris. The slaughter was the greatest for so short a period; carried out by the demonic madman who led the assault on the Bastille and the attacks on the royal residences at Versailles and the Tuileries. Included were 191 priests and religious who have since been beatified. They were quickly "tried" and hacked to death, along with an archbishop, and dumped in a monastery well where their bones were found under debris in 1862, 70 years later.
And what of Marie Antoinette? She died seven months after the king, affirming her Catholic faith at the last. She had truly tried to help the people before the Revolution, and never said that they should eat grass or any such thing.
"I die in the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion... which I have always professed. Having no expectation of spiritual solace and not even knowing if there are any priests here... I sincerely beg pardon of God for all the wrong I have done... I hope that He will receive my soul in His mercy and goodness. I forgive my enemies the harm that they have done me..."
Danton himself, after his first wife died, immediately married a teenage girl—a devout Catholic who insisted that he go to confession before they marry. This monstrous architect of the Terror had a genuine conversion and was reconciled to the Church by a priest who had managed to evade capture of Danton's brutal Terror. What a confession that must have been! He then tried to stop the slaughter, but was guillotined for his effort (revolutionaries always destroy one another). His wife had prayed constantly for his conversion, and although she lived until 1856, she never spoke of what Danton had related to her during his last months.
Danton, spokesman of the radicals
After Robespierre was guillotined in 1794, it stopped. True, the Revolution went on, with the Directory (established in 1795) continuing to fight the growing armies of Europe that were warring against France—not to help the Church, but to stop the spread of the threat to absolute monarchy. The wars went on for 23 years—1792 until 1815. A young revolutionary officer named Napoleon Bonaparte rose quickly through the ranks until he made himself dictator, and then emperor. He, too, sought to destroy the Church; especially the papacy. The French captured Rome, and an aged Pope Pius VI. He was taken away to imprisonment in Valence where he died from his sufferings in August, 1799. The Revolution proclaimed him the last pope, but a few months later the saintly Cardinal Chiaramonti was elected—Pius VII. For 23 years he ruled the Church, suffering nearly five years' imprisonment at the hands of Napoleon, who had used the pontiff as a decoration at his coronation. Napoleon sought to use the Church rather than crush it outright. He added outrageous terms to the Concordat of 1801, which Pius VII never agreed to. The reentry of the pope into Rome in 1814 was as our Lord entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And immediately, Pius VII resurrected the Society of Jesus.
Ever since that terrible Reign of Terror they have tried it again and again. The Liberals eventually overwhelmed the human race, and then got control of the Church. They all praise the Revolution. Both Lenin and Hitler imitated it; the Communists doing it to the last detail. They are living proof—the Liberals, Communists, Modernists—that Dostoyevski was right when he said, "Without God, anything is permitted." Just look around at the Godless world of today. The principles of 1789 are everywhere.
The Carmel of Compiegne
But there is one more picture of the three I mentioned earlier. It concerns 16 Carmelite nuns of the Carmel of Compiegne. Of all the martyrs of the Revolution, they were probably the most unbelievable. They died for the Faith with the greatest possible joy. Their Carmel had been founded in 1641, and they followed the reformed rule of St. Teresa of Avila and its spirit, to the letter. In August, 1790 the terrorists seized their Carmel in a raid, and they had to flee without their habits. In four different groups, each in a separate house near the same church, they lived until the "Great Terror" found them out in June, 1794. Their prioress had known what would happen when the monarchy was outlawed in August, 1792. The prioress, Madeleine Lidoine, said to them, "I have thought of making an act of consecration by which the community would offer itself as a sacrifice to appease the anger of God, so that the Divine Peace of His Dear Son would be brought into the world; returned to the Church and the state." With news of the September massacres, they all agreed to do it. Nearly two years later, it happened.
When their lodgings were invaded in June, 1794 their devotional objects were shattered and their tabernacle was trodden underfoot by a revolutionary. While held at the dreaded Concergerie Prison, they composed a canticle for their martyrdom. "The Canticle at the Guillotine," I have called it (a novelist in 1933 called it "The Song at the Scaffold"). The original still exists, in pencil, given to a lay woman who survived. When brought before the Terror on July 17th, they stood up like heroic Catholic women always have—but even more so. They pleaded guilty to possessing an altar cloth bearing symbols of the monarchy. They proclaimed their attachment to the dead king, and freely admitted writing to non-juring priests who had left the country. They were sentenced to be guillotined for "fanaticism," their "attachment to your childish beliefs, and your silly religious practices." To that, Sister Henriette replied, "Let us rejoice, my dear mother and sisters, that we shall die for our holy religion, our faith, our confidence in the holy Roman Catholic Church."
With that, they joyfully marched right out to the guillotine. All the way to the Place de la Revolution—today the Place de la Concorde—they sang; for an entire hour. They sang the "Miserere," "Salve Regina," "Te Deum". Always, the 30,000 in the Place behaved most noisily, as at a carnival. But for once a total silence fell on the crowd around "the national razor." Hardened and made brutal by so much slaughter, only the heavenly voices of those nuns could cause such a silence. At the foot of the death machine, they sang "Veni Creator Spiritus." Each of the 16 nuns, one by one, renewed her vows. They pardoned their demonic executioners. And one observer said it all: "Look at them, and see if they do not have the air of angels! By my faith, if these women did not all go straight to paradise, then no one is there!"
The killing of each martyr required two minutes—the youngest first. Each by herself, placed her head in the proper place. When the prioress went (the last) she held a small figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary. At 8 p.m. it was over. And during the entire execution no one in the crowd made a sound. The Cross had triumphed over the guillotine!
Today, a totally pagan France has produced one who walks in their footsteps: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. When French Catholics march on the Place de la Concorde on August 15th to protest this year's celebration of the slaughter that was the Revolution, let us remember all the martyrs; and especially Father Brongniard of St. Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, and the 16 Carmelite martyrs who sang "The Canticle at the Guillotine:"
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Give over our hearts to joy, O happiness ever desired Holy Virgin, our model, |
All ye holy martyrs of the French Revolution, pray for us.
Sources consulted:
The Catholic Church in the Modern World — E.E.Y. Hales — Image-Doubleday 1958, 1960
The Catholic Church Through the Ages — Fr. Martin P. Harney, S.J. — St. Paul Editions 1974
Christ the King: Lord of History — Anne W. Carroll — Trinity Communications 1986
The Guillotine and the Cross — Warren H. Carroll — Trinity Communications 1986
The French Revolution — Nesta H. Webster — Omni Publications 1919, 1969, 1983
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution — Simon Schama — Alfred A. Knopf 1989
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