THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION.
The defenders of the Revolution take great pains to demonstrate that the object of the earlier laws was not anti-Christian or subversive of religion, alleging that the spirit of demolition appeared only after and because of the hostile attitude of the Church. One has only to read the speeches in the National Assembly, and the early laws emanating therefrom, to perceive the hypocritical nature of such assurances. The spirit of Voltaire is evident from the first day of the States General, and its tactics of falsehood and deception mark every stage of revolutionary progress until the end. The pretext of establishing a national church is a fact in evidence, whereby under the pretence of safeguarding the liberties of Catholics in France, an effort was made to uproot all idea of religion from the minds of the people. The signal for the opening of such a perversive campaign was the passing of that iniquitous law to which was given the name of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
On August 20, 1789, an ecclesiastical committee was formed for the regulation of all affairs pending between Church and State. It was composed of thirty members, chosen with great care from among the most violent sectaries of the Assembly. Out of the thirty only ninewere able to approach the discussion of ecclesiastical subjects with any appearance of justice, and this small minority soon found it impossible to advance their views in the face of the twenty-one radicals sworn to enslave and degrade the Church; they were consequently compelled to resign from the commission, leaving the great work of Church affairs in the hands of an impious cabal. The result of the deliberations of this diminished committee is found in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which was voted in the Constituent Assembly, from July 12 to July 24, 1790.
The adversaries of religion betray a naive surprise that the Church should refuse to accept a law so worded as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Yet to anyone acquainted with the spirit of Christianity the reasons for such hostility are sufficiently evident. The Abbe Hubert Mailfait in his comprehensive little work upon the subject thus sums up the most objectionable features of the wholly iniquitous law:
First. It destroys the religious hierarchy and annihilates the pontifical supremacy when it stipulates: (a) that the new bishops can no longer address the Pope to obtain from him the bulls of confirmation (tit. II., art. 19): (b) that the canonical institution shall no longer be given by the Pope, but by the metropolitan (tit. II., art. 16 and 17): (c) that the old division of France into dioceses and parishes shall be substituted by a new repartition, decreed without the advice of ecclesiastical authority, and without the approbation of the head of Christianity (tit. I.).Second. It destroys ecclesiastical discipline: (a) by attributing the election of bishops and pastors to the laity, by way of the ballot and the absolute plurality of votes (tit. II., art. 2) and in decreeing the conditions of eligibility which should be found in candidates to a bishopric or parish (tit. II.): (b) in determining the number of foundations, prebends, abbeys,priories, etc. (tit. I., art. 20-24 and 25); in restricting to the point of annihilation the power of the bishops in the nomination to ecclesiastical employments (tit. II., art. 22, 24, 25, 43).Third. It sanctions an inadmissible domination of the temporal over the spiritual power, in subordinating the exercise of ecclesiastical functions to the taking of an oath of fidelity to the Constitution decreed by the Assembly (tit. II., art. 21 and 38).
First. It destroys the religious hierarchy and annihilates the pontifical supremacy when it stipulates: (a) that the new bishops can no longer address the Pope to obtain from him the bulls of confirmation (tit. II., art. 19): (b) that the canonical institution shall no longer be given by the Pope, but by the metropolitan (tit. II., art. 16 and 17): (c) that the old division of France into dioceses and parishes shall be substituted by a new repartition, decreed without the advice of ecclesiastical authority, and without the approbation of the head of Christianity (tit. I.).
Second. It destroys ecclesiastical discipline: (a) by attributing the election of bishops and pastors to the laity, by way of the ballot and the absolute plurality of votes (tit. II., art. 2) and in decreeing the conditions of eligibility which should be found in candidates to a bishopric or parish (tit. II.): (b) in determining the number of foundations, prebends, abbeys,priories, etc. (tit. I., art. 20-24 and 25); in restricting to the point of annihilation the power of the bishops in the nomination to ecclesiastical employments (tit. II., art. 22, 24, 25, 43).
Third. It sanctions an inadmissible domination of the temporal over the spiritual power, in subordinating the exercise of ecclesiastical functions to the taking of an oath of fidelity to the Constitution decreed by the Assembly (tit. II., art. 21 and 38).
The Civic Constitution of the Clergy thus established in France not only a schism, by depriving the bishops of the right of recourse to the Pope, but heresy also in denying the effective primacy of the Pope and his sovereign power in the direction of the Church and the nomination of her ministers.
SORROW OF PIUS VI.
When the news was brought to Pope Pius VI. that the Assembly was actually engaged in voting the several articles of the Civil Constitution, his sorrow knew no bounds. Public prayers were at once ordered in the churches of Rome, while at the same time the Holy Father addressed an impressive appeal to Louis XVI., insisting on his refusing his sanction to the impious measures. Letters were also sent by the Pope to the Archbishops of Bordeaux and Vienne, requesting them to use their good offices in dissuading the king from sanctioning the law. Unhappily these two prelates betrayed the trust reposed in them and used their influence to the opposite end. It is to their credit that they soon perceived their error and repented bitterly for it.
In the meantime Louis XVI. wrote to the Pope beseeching him to approve, at least provisorily, of the first five articles to which he was in a manner forced to give his sanction. The Holy Father placed the matter in thehands of a commission of cardinals for examination. On October 30, of the same year, the thirty bishops who occupied seats in the Assembly subscribed their names to a carefully prepared memorial entitledExposition of Principles Concerning the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, wherein the new code of laws was unequivocably condemned. In this position the episcopal deputies were supported by the adherence of nearly all the French bishops. Their expression of disapproval, however, came too late, as the civil constitution had already received the royal sanction (August 24, 1790), and thereby became a law of the realm.
MIRABEAU.MIRABEAU.
A test of the new decrees developed an unexpected resistance, so bitter and decisive in many quarters as to awaken newer outbursts of harshness from the enemiesof the Church. On November 27, 1790, after a violent diatribe delivered by Mirabeau against the independent bishops a law was voted in the Assembly declaring that all clergy "shall take the oath within eight days" under the penalty of being debarred from the exercise of their functions. It stipulated, moreover, that in case of resistance the offending clergy should be treated as disturbers of the public peace, and deprived of their civic rights. This law received the royal sanction on December 26, and went into execution from that date. In the Assembly itself were many bishops and priests who were called upon to give the example of subservience. Only a few, encouraged by such notorious characters as Talleyrand, Gregoire, Camus, and Gobel, and tempted by the hope of preferment under the new order, yielded to the demands of the revolutionaries. Of the one hundred and thirty-five bishops of France, only four, including Talleyrand and Cardinal de Brienne, took the oath. During the following year the latter prelate was degraded from the honor of the Roman purple, for his unworthy act.
When the question was put to the priests of the country it met with a like reception. One should not be deceived, in reading the anti-Christian records of this time, by the long lists of names purporting to be the official register of priests who had subscribed to the oath. An examination of these lists reveals the usual duplicity of irreligious hatred, for in many cases, notably in the lists of Paris, they contain the names of church employees, sacristans, choir-singers, bell-ringers, and other ordinary laymen. In other cases we find the names of young men just preparing for the seminary, and school teachers who taught the catechism. Often, too, country pastors were deceived into believing that the taking of such oath was an act demanded by their bishop; these,however, were only too anxious to retract as soon as the true state of the case was made evident to them. Of the real pastors of the Church the number who proved unfaithful to their duty was inconsiderable; the loyalty of the vast body, both of bishops and clergy, forms one of the brightest pages in the dark history of those unhappy years.
CARDINAL DOMENIE D. BRIENNE.CARDINAL DOMENIE D. BRIENNE.
In the midst of the general anxiety there came to Paris on April 13, 1791, the Bull of Pope Pius VI., formally condemning the Civil Constitution and calling upon the bishops and priests of France to stand firmly to the principles of their faith. This act of the Holy Father was the signal for outbursts of fury in the hostile camp. The Papal Bull was publicly burned amidst outcries of hatred and execration; women coming from Mass were whipped through the streets; ruffians interrupted the divine services and threw disorder into congregations of the faithful, while in many places disorderly mobs invaded the convents and dragging the nuns out to the public squares inflicted upon them the degrading punishment of the scourge. It was in vain that the Directory of Paris, frightened at the prospect of civil war, permitted Catholics to hire places for the use of divine worship; the very appearance of leniency only drew forth greater exhibitions of hatred and persecution. The king himself was compelled to attend at Mass celebrated by a Constitutional priest, as a pledge of his adherence to the principles of the Civil Constitution. Throughout the departments the persecution had already gone to great lengths; priests were everywhere imprisoned, and the Catholic laity who had dared to assist at the Catholic Mass, or who had refused to take part in the election of schismatical priests, were declared incapable of all civil functions. On June 9, 1790, the Constituent decreed that no bulls or briefs of the Popemight be published or propagated in the kingdom without the authorization of the Legislative Corps and of the king.
In the meantime, the apostate bishop of Autun, Talleyrand, had consecrated two constitutional bishops, who in their turn proceeded to ordain to the priesthood a list of unworthy, illiterate, immoral, and dishonest rascals. The legitimate clergy, shut out from their churches, and driven to the homes of their friends, had nevertheless the consolation of knowing that the faithful were refusing everywhere to acknowledge the authority of the unlawful priests, and demanding in quiet, but significant ways, the services of those who alone had been called to the sanctuary.
THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY.
The Constituent Assembly was dissolved on Sept. 30, 1791, and was succeeded on the following day, by the Legislative Assembly. The new government, in the hands of men more impious than those of the Constituent, began their proceedings with the passage of new laws of persecution, to which, however, the king had the courage to refuse his sanction. In spite, however, of the royal opposition new decrees continued to be published. On the twenty-ninth of November, a law was voted declaring that all ecclesiastics, other than those who had conformed to the decree of November 29 last would be obliged to present themselves before the municipality of the place in which they lived, and there take the civic oath, in the terms of Art. 5, title II. of the Constitution, and sign a legal attestation of the same. Such as should refuse would be held as suspects in revolt against the law, and with evil intent against their country, and as such particularly subjected and recommendedto the surveillance of all constituted authorities. If trouble should arise in the place of their residence they could be evicted from their domicile, arrested by the directory of the department, and, in case of disobedience, condemned to prison.
On May 27, 1792, the Legislative Assembly published another decree, stating that the deportation of non-juring ecclesiastics would take place as a measure of public safety and police regulation. Ecclesiastics were considered as non-juring who, being subject to the law of December 26, 1790, had not taken the oath; those also who, though not subject to that law had not taken the oath posterior to September 3rd, preceding, the day on which the French constitution was considered as completed; those also, who had retracted their oath. The deportation could be pronounced by the local authorities upon the denunciation of twenty citizens.
A law of August 26, 1792, prescribed that "all those ecclesiastics who have not taken the oath, or who having taken it have retracted and persist in their retraction, shall be compelled to leave within eight days, the limits of the district or department in which they reside, and within fifteen days they must leave the country. After fifteen days such ecclesiastics as shall not have obeyed the preceding dispositions should be deported to French Guyenne. Every ecclesiastic, who should dare to remain in the country after such procedures, should be condemned to ten years of imprisonment." This law was applicable to all priests—both secular and regular. About 50,000 priests became victims of these violent proscriptions.
STORMING OF THE BASTILLE.STORMING OF THE BASTILLE.
THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER.
The passion of hatred for religion never abated during the sad days of 1792. Law followed law proscribing, persecuting, hunting down all who dared to oppose the evil suggestions of the revolutionary despots. On August 16, an order was issued appropriating all the sacred vessels of the churches, with the design of converting them into money or utensils of war. Another project of the government had for its purpose the banishment of all clergy within a fortnight. This method, however, of getting rid of the priesthood, seemed too slow to suit the ferocious lust of the tyrants—a quicker and surer plan suggested itself. To secure its execution, the leaders of the anti-Christian party sought to inflame the minds of the rabble with stories of plots and treason, perpetrated by the priests against the safety of the nation. Above all the threatened invasion of the Prussians was laid to their door, and the report of the same circulated through every street and alley of Paris. The populace, already made familiar with the sight of blood, seized upon the wild reports with the avidity of hungry animals, and needed only a suggestion to lead them on to acts of violence. This was not wanting. In the Assembly, Marat, Legendre and others openly demanded the slaughter of the priests, while Danton, the Minister of Justice, was appointed to see that the project was executed. In the meantime hundreds of priests, and thousands of Catholic laity, men, women and children, had been arrested, and filled the prisons of the country to overflowing. On August 31, the Commune of Paris put up everywhere placards containing a proclamation of Robespierre: "We have arrested the priestly disturbers; we hold them behind prison bars, and in a few days, the sun of liberty shall be purged of their presence."All was ready for a massacre of gigantic proportions. A signal was agreed upon, for the commencement of the bloody deed; it was to be the third discharge of the cannon on Point-Neuf. On the morning of September 2, the dreadful carnage began in the prison house of the Carmes, where 120 fell by the sword. Themassacre lasted four days, while bands of assassins went from prison to prison, and in that short space of time took the lives of 1,400 persons of every sex, age and condition, 300 of whom were priests.
MASSACRE OF PRINCESS LAMBELLE.MASSACRE OF PRINCESS LAMBELLE.
The Abbe Lecard, an eye-witness, describes the awful scene at the prison of the Abbey:
"The massacre took place under my window. The cries of the victims, the blows of the sabres as they fell upon the heads of the innocent victims, the shouts of the murderers, the applause of the witnesses, all resounded in my soul. I even distinguished the voices of my confreres, who were arrested and brought in the night before. I heard the questions put to them, and the responses they gave. They were asked if they had taken the civil oath, but none had done so. All could have escaped death by a lie; but all preferred death. All said when dying: 'We are subject to your law, we die faithful to your constitution, we except only what regards religion and what has reference to conscience.' They were immediately pierced by numerous swords, amid the most frightful vociferations. The spectators while applauding cried out: 'Long live the nation!'—at the same time executing abominable dances around the corpses."Towards three or four o'clock in the morning, similar cries, tumult and ribaldry were repeated. This was in consequence of their bringing into the court-yard, now strewn with corpses, two priests whom they had dragged from their beds. The executioners jested over the horrible scene. The two priests were asked to take the oath, but they refused with mildness and firmness.Seeing themselves on that account condemned to death, they demanded a few hours to prepare themselves, and they obtained their request. The assassins employed the interval in removing the bodies, in washing and sweeping the court-yard, red with blood—a work which caused them considerable difficulty. To avoid this in the case of others who were about to be massacred, they proposed various expedients and, finally, agreed upon employing a quantity of straw on which they would butcher their victims and whichwould absorb the blood and prevent the pavement from being stained. One of the assassins complained that the aristocrats died too quickly; that only those in the front row had the pleasure of striking them. It was accordingly determined that the victims should be struck only with the back of the sword, and that they should be made to run between two files of assassins. It was determined that around the place where the victims were to be immolated there should be benches for the ladies and gentlemen. All were free to enter. All this I have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears."
"The massacre took place under my window. The cries of the victims, the blows of the sabres as they fell upon the heads of the innocent victims, the shouts of the murderers, the applause of the witnesses, all resounded in my soul. I even distinguished the voices of my confreres, who were arrested and brought in the night before. I heard the questions put to them, and the responses they gave. They were asked if they had taken the civil oath, but none had done so. All could have escaped death by a lie; but all preferred death. All said when dying: 'We are subject to your law, we die faithful to your constitution, we except only what regards religion and what has reference to conscience.' They were immediately pierced by numerous swords, amid the most frightful vociferations. The spectators while applauding cried out: 'Long live the nation!'—at the same time executing abominable dances around the corpses.
"Towards three or four o'clock in the morning, similar cries, tumult and ribaldry were repeated. This was in consequence of their bringing into the court-yard, now strewn with corpses, two priests whom they had dragged from their beds. The executioners jested over the horrible scene. The two priests were asked to take the oath, but they refused with mildness and firmness.Seeing themselves on that account condemned to death, they demanded a few hours to prepare themselves, and they obtained their request. The assassins employed the interval in removing the bodies, in washing and sweeping the court-yard, red with blood—a work which caused them considerable difficulty. To avoid this in the case of others who were about to be massacred, they proposed various expedients and, finally, agreed upon employing a quantity of straw on which they would butcher their victims and whichwould absorb the blood and prevent the pavement from being stained. One of the assassins complained that the aristocrats died too quickly; that only those in the front row had the pleasure of striking them. It was accordingly determined that the victims should be struck only with the back of the sword, and that they should be made to run between two files of assassins. It was determined that around the place where the victims were to be immolated there should be benches for the ladies and gentlemen. All were free to enter. All this I have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears."
These frightful scenes of Paris were equalled if not surpassed by the terrorists of the provinces, and especially in the cities of Lyons, Rheims, Nantes, Bordeaux, and Avignon. It was but natural that the flight of priests from the insane fury of the Revolution should be hastened by the events of those days. Many succeeded in gaining the frontier and found refuge in the Papal States, in Spain, Portugal and in England where they were received with respect and welcome. Many returned secretly to France and bravely defied the dangers of martyrdom in the exercise of their sacred ministry.
MARAT.MARAT.
The Legislative Assembly, after a final law granting divorce upon mutual consent, or upon the demand of one of the parties, was dissolved on September 20, 1792.
THE CONVENTION.
On September 21st, 1792, a new government, entitled the Convention, began its sittings. It has been justly characterized as an organization the most bloody and atrocious in history. It was during its administration that that dark period occurred to which has been given the significant name of the "Reign of Terror." Composedas it was of the vilest and most unscrupulous element of the nation its inauguration gave little promise of peace or security to the country. Its sessions were dominated by the Jacobins, the Girondists, and the Mountaineers, parties sworn to oppose each other in all political matters, though uniting in all measures of oppression to religion and the Church.
Their methods of tyranny were conceived with system and precision worthy of a better cause, and were executed by a machinery whose organized efforts reached into every village and hamlet in the land. Its Committee of Public Safety, the supreme secret council of the Convention, included men like Danton, Marat, and Robespierre. There was a Committee of General Security for the detection of political crimes, and the punishment of all suspected or proscribed persons. The Revolutionary Tribunal condemned the victims indicated by the General Security, and condemned them to death without a hearing.
There were Revolutionary committees in every department and municipality throughout the country, whose office it was to imprison suspects, and to employ the guillotine regardless of trial. The Revolutionary Army—composed of only such as had proven themselves devoted to the anarchistic doctrines of the times—was employed in the guarding the prisons, arresting suspects, demolishing castles, pulling down belfries, ransacking churches for gold and silver vessels, and other like purposes. It had its regiments in every city of France. It was by means of such powerfully organized associations that the Convention was able to perpetrate the atrocities of the Reign of Terror.
The first act of the new Assembly was to declare the abolition of royalty, and to proclaim France a Republic. At the same time it began the attempt to inaugurate anew era, the first day of the first year of which was to be September 22nd, 1792.
THE CALENDAR.
In the new Revolutionary calendar the Christian order of months and weeks was set aside for an arbitrary arrangement whose awkward and frivolous character was evident, even independently of its sacrilegious intent. Instead of weeks of seven days, periods of ten days, or decades, were substituted. As there was to be no Sunday, the tenth or last day of the decade, called "Decadi," was to be observed as the day of rest, and have all the importance of the Lord's Day, the place of which it had taken. The months were twelve and consisted each of thirty days; to make up the necessary 365 days of the year, five intercalary days, calledsans culottes, were added.
The months were adorned with festive names taken from Nature; thus Vendemaire, the vintage month; Brumaire, the foggy; Frimaire, the frosty; Nivose, the snowy; Pluvoise, the rainy; Ventose, the windy; Germinal, the month of sprouting; Floréal, the month of flowers; Prairial, the haymaking; Messidor, the time of harvest; Thermidor, the month of heat; and Fructidor, the month of fruit. To obliterate, as far as possible, every Christian idea associated with the days of the year, the new calendar abolished the Christian festivals and substituted strange and uncouth denominations for each successive day. It was a bold stroke, and though the Convention succeeded a few months later in causing its execution throughout the country, nevertheless it was never heartily accepted even by the most radical, and only a favorable opportunity was wanting for its final abolition with the Revolution itself.
DANTON.DANTON.
On the twenty-seventh of September, the Convention reduced ecclesiastical pensions to 1000 livres, and on October 23rd, it decreed that all who had flown the country were to be considered as banished in perpetuity, and should they return they were to be punished with death. On November 27th, a decree was passed, declaring that if a priest should marry, and be therefore inquieted by the residents of the commune in which he resided, he might retire to any place he liked, and his salary should be paid by the commune which had persecuted him. It was an effort to render the marriage of priests popular, an attempt, however, which always met with failure.
It was during the month of December, 1792, and that of January, 1793, that the trial of Louis XVI. took place. The Convention voted the death sentence, and the crime of regicide against one of the mildest sovereigns of the century was perpetrated January 17th, of that year.
The prescriptive laws against the clergy and the Church went on apace. On January 22nd the constitutional clergy were ordered to disregard all canonical rules in regard to marriage, and to bless the marriages of divorced people as well as those of constitutional priests. On February 14th, a reward of one hundred livres was offered to whoever should cause the arrest of an émigré, or of a priest under sentence of deportation. On March 18th, it substituted for the penalty of ten years for such priests the sentence of death. April 23rd, it put forth the article: "The national Convention decrees that all ecclesiastics, regular and secular, brothers or laymen, who have not taken the oath to maintain liberty and equality conformable to the law of August 15th, 1792, shall be deported without delay to French Guiana."
Immediately on the appearance of this law the sea-ports of France began to witness thousands of captive priests who were placed on board the waiting vessels, ostensibly for transportation to America. As, however, such voyage was at the time impracticable because of danger from the English fleets then patrolling the seas, the victims of proscription were left in the miserable hulks, in some cases for as long as two years. Their sufferings in this regard were extreme. Huddled together in the holds like so many packages of dead merchandise, the bare floor for a bed, covered with rags and devoured by vermin, their torment was truly horrible. Many of them perished; others lost their reason; the survivors bore away with them many souvenirs of physical and moral torture which they carried to the grave. The story of the deportation of priests during the Reign of Terror is one of the ugliest records of the times.
The Convention next turned its attention to the constitutional clergy, whom it compelled by every means of proscription and exaction to dishonor the little remnant of sacred character that still remained within them. Hence the laws of 1793, decreeing deportation for any bishop who should directly or indirectly oppose an obstacle to the marriage of priests, or who should refuse to recognize divorce. It reduced the salaries of the bishops and limited the number of their curates. It, moreover, dismissed from the exercise of their functions all pastors who failed to display a pronounced enthusiasm for revolutionary principles, and put in their stead men whose ignorance was well known, and whose wives were willing to occupy a prominent position in the Church.
THE GODDESS OF REASON.THE GODDESS OF REASON.
THE REIGN OF TERROR.
During the latter part of 1793 the country had virtually delivered itself up to the will of its tyrants. The war against religion had assumed an open and defiant character, under the influence of the guillotine; churches had already lost their sacred significance, and the names of the saints or holy mysteries which they had hitherto borne gave place to profane and often impious titles; the Republican calendar had been formally adopted and enforced upon the nation; everywhere priests were called upon to burn their letters of ordination and to bring to the Convention their crosses, chalices, ciboriums and other objects destined for the Holy Sacrifice. The Archbishop of Paris, the infamous Gobel, entered the hall of the Convention at the head of other constitutional clergy, and there despoiled himself of all insignia of episcopal or priestly office, declaring at the same time that he renounced forever all his rights and duties as a minister of Catholic worship.
THE GODDESS OF REASON.
It was at this time, November 10th, 1793, that the Convention proclaimed the worship of reason, and deified that abstract idea by a sacrilegious ceremony in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris. An actress was placed upon a throne within the sanctuary of that ancient temple, and received amidst the hymns and maudlin praises of the multitude the adoration of a fallen nation. The example of Paris was imitated in all parts of the country, until the strange spectacle was observed of a whole nation gone mad.
The new worship brought with it renewed hostility to Christianity. Almost every day the Convention wascalled upon to review processions whose object was to ridicule and cast odium upon the things of God. Bands ofSans-Culottesdefiled through the streets, or passed through the Assembly halls, attired in copes, chasubles and dalmatics which they had pillaged from the churches. No limit was put to these exhibitions of horrible sacrilege. In many cases the processions were headed by an ass bearing a mitre upon his head, a chalice upon his back, with a cross hanging from his tail. It seemed as if the Revolution could go no further in its impiety, though men still held their breath waiting anxiously for the next move in the horrible nightmare.
In the midst of the general madness the Revolution turned against its own creatures and denied its own religion. The people had already begun to mock at the absurdity of the worship of reason, and tired of one false god, looked to their leaders to supply them with another. It was at this juncture that Robespierre, the man of blood and crime, suddenly became the apostle of a new cult, which was baptized in the blood of the adorers of reason. The guillotine reaped rich harvests, numbering that year among its victims the apostates, Gobel, Lamourette, Clootz, together with Hebert, Danton, Desmoulins and others.
In the beginning of the year 1794, Robespierre caused the Convention to pass a decree proclaiming the existence of a Supreme Being, and constituting feast days "to recall mankind to the consideration of the divinity and to the dignity of his being." On June 8th, he presided personally as high priest, at the first solemn feast of the new worship. The latter, however, proved even less popular as a religion than its predecessor, and served only to demonstrate how the human heart cravesfor the worship of God, and will not be satisfied with the human imitations of a religion whose origin is divine.
WORSHIP OF SUPREME BEING.WORSHIP OF SUPREME BEING.
In its proscriptive decrees the Convention hitherto had not included the aged and infirm priests; by a decree of Floréal 22, these also were subjected to all exactions imposed upon others. Another decree demanded the accusation of all enemies of the people, and pronounced the penalty of death, without trial or witnesses, upon simple verbal denunciations. The Terror was now in its blindest spasm of madness, and in Paris alone, during three months, more than two thousand victims laid their heads upon the block, including many constitutional priests, who had the good fortune, through the pious offices of the Abbe Emery, to retract their errors and become reconciled to God.
A pall of moral darkness hung over the nation from end to end, a deep silence, full of anxiety and terror, was broken only by the shrieks of the dying and the insane laughter of the murderers. The silence and holiness of the Lord's Day was desecrated by labor and unseemly orgies; thedecadiwas observed instead of Sunday, and peasants or others daring to work on that day, or daring to rest on Sunday, were treated as suspects and punished with all the violence of irreligious hatred. Throughout the land every symbol and remembrance of religion had vanished: the church steeples had been torn down, the bells no longer called the faithful to divine service, the cross was treated as an object of public shame. Everywhere men and women suspected of fanaticism or denounced as enemies of the Revolution were condemned to death and executed. In the city of Lyons the guillotine severed thirty heads a day; but its work proving too slow for the blood-thirst of the assassins, the victims were ranged in rows, and mowed downby storms of bullets. In this way fully one thousand seven hundred fell in a short period of a few months.
ROBESPIERRE (1758-1794).ROBESPIERRE (1758-1794).
In the departments of the Ain and the Saone-et-Loire, liberty was decreed to priests who should agree to marry within a month; the aged were exempted from this law upon the condition of adopting a child of Revolutionary parents, to care for as their own. In Savoy, one thousand two hundred livres was offered as a reward for the arrest of a non-juring priest; all who refused to apostatize, whether faithful or constitutional, were arrested and condemned. At Marseilles and at Avignon, the infamous Maignet emulated his predecessor, Jourdan Coupetete, with the guillotine and fusillade of bullets. In the South, a young girl was arrested and put to death for having crossed over into Spain to confess to a legitimate priest. An aged official was sentenced to imprisonment and a heavy fine for having assisted at the "Feast of Reason" with an air of sadness and arrogance. Six women were guillotined for having assisted at the Mass of a non-juring priest.
In the Vendee one thousand eight hundred persons were murdered within a period of three months. And so the list went on through all the first half of 1794, which has left a record of millions murdered, deported, exiled, imprisoned, or tortured in a thousand and one ways. They were red letter days in the Revolutionary calendar, but the red color was made from the blood of Frenchmen. A mitigation of the horrors of those days came at last when the head of the arch-assassin, Robespierre, rolled away from the block on July 27th, 1794.
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
Among the oppressive laws enacted by the Convention, before its final dissolution in 1795, were those concerning education and the separation of Church andState. The decree of October 21st, 1793, decided that primary schools should form the first degree of instruction; therein should be taught all that was rigorously necessary for a citizen to know. Persons charged with instruction in such schools should be known as institutors. The decree determined the number of schools to be founded in each commune, according to the number of its inhabitants, and fixed the programme of instruction.
The children shall receive in these schools the first physical, moral, and intellectual education, the better to develop in them republican ways, the love of country, and a taste for work. They shall learn to speak, read and write the French language. They shall be taught those virtues which do most to honor free men, and particularly the ideas of the French Revolution, which shall serve to elevate their souls and render them worthy of liberty and equality. They shall acquire some notions of French geography. The knowledge of the rights and duties of man and citizen shall be taught them by example and experience. They shall be taught the first notions of the natural objects that surround them, and the natural action of the elements. They shall be exercised in the use of numbers, the compass, weights, measures, etc.
The children shall receive in these schools the first physical, moral, and intellectual education, the better to develop in them republican ways, the love of country, and a taste for work. They shall learn to speak, read and write the French language. They shall be taught those virtues which do most to honor free men, and particularly the ideas of the French Revolution, which shall serve to elevate their souls and render them worthy of liberty and equality. They shall acquire some notions of French geography. The knowledge of the rights and duties of man and citizen shall be taught them by example and experience. They shall be taught the first notions of the natural objects that surround them, and the natural action of the elements. They shall be exercised in the use of numbers, the compass, weights, measures, etc.
Another decree, of October 28th, 1793, declared that "no ci-devant noble, no ecclesiastic or minister of any worship whatsoever, can be a member of the commission of instruction, or be elected a national institutor. No women of the ci-devant nobility, no ci-devant religious women, canonesses, nuns, who have been placed in the old schools by ecclesiastics or ci-devant nobles, can be nominated as institutors in the national schools."
A decree of February 21st, 1795, read as follows:
Art. 1. Conformable to Art. 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and to Art. 22 of the Constitution,the exercise of no worship shall be troubled. Art. 2. The Republic shall pay salary to no minister of worship. Art. 3. It shall furnish no locality either for the exercise of worship or for the residence of its ministers. Art. 4. The ceremonies of every kind of worship are interdicted outside the enclosures chosen for such exercise. Art. 5. The law does not recognize any minister of worship; no such minister may appear in public with the habit, ornaments, or costume affected in religious ceremonies. Art. 6. All assemblages of citizens for the exercise of any worship whatsoever shall be subject to the surveillance of the constituted authorities. This surveillance shall be fortified by measures of police guard and public security. Art. 7. No particular symbol of any worship may be erected in any public place, neither exteriorly, nor in any manner whatsoever. No inscription can be put up to designate such place of worship. No public proclamation or convocation can be made to draw the citizens thither. Art. 8. The communes or sections of communes may not hire or purchase, in their collective name, any locality for the exercise of worship. Art. 9. No donation, perpetual or temporary, may be formed, and no tax imposed to pay the expenses of such worship. Art. 10. Whosoever shall, by violence, disturb the ceremonies of any worship whatsoever, or who offers outrage to its objects, shall be punished, according to the law of July 19-22, 1791, in regard to correctional police. Art. 11. The law (of 2 des sans-culottides, an II.) with regard to ecclesiastical pensions, is not hereby abrogated, and its dispositions shall be executed according to their form and tenor. Art. 12. Every decree whose dispositions are contrary to the present law formulated by the representatives of the people in the departments is annulled.
Art. 1. Conformable to Art. 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and to Art. 22 of the Constitution,the exercise of no worship shall be troubled. Art. 2. The Republic shall pay salary to no minister of worship. Art. 3. It shall furnish no locality either for the exercise of worship or for the residence of its ministers. Art. 4. The ceremonies of every kind of worship are interdicted outside the enclosures chosen for such exercise. Art. 5. The law does not recognize any minister of worship; no such minister may appear in public with the habit, ornaments, or costume affected in religious ceremonies. Art. 6. All assemblages of citizens for the exercise of any worship whatsoever shall be subject to the surveillance of the constituted authorities. This surveillance shall be fortified by measures of police guard and public security. Art. 7. No particular symbol of any worship may be erected in any public place, neither exteriorly, nor in any manner whatsoever. No inscription can be put up to designate such place of worship. No public proclamation or convocation can be made to draw the citizens thither. Art. 8. The communes or sections of communes may not hire or purchase, in their collective name, any locality for the exercise of worship. Art. 9. No donation, perpetual or temporary, may be formed, and no tax imposed to pay the expenses of such worship. Art. 10. Whosoever shall, by violence, disturb the ceremonies of any worship whatsoever, or who offers outrage to its objects, shall be punished, according to the law of July 19-22, 1791, in regard to correctional police. Art. 11. The law (of 2 des sans-culottides, an II.) with regard to ecclesiastical pensions, is not hereby abrogated, and its dispositions shall be executed according to their form and tenor. Art. 12. Every decree whose dispositions are contrary to the present law formulated by the representatives of the people in the departments is annulled.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND HER CHILDREN.MARIE ANTOINETTE AND HER CHILDREN.
A decree of May 30th, 1795, decided that "no one shall fulfill the ministry of any worship in the said edifices,unless he shall have given legal declaration before the municipality of the place in which he desires to exercise such functions, of his submission to the laws of the Republic. The ministers of worship who shall contravene the present article, and the citizens who shall invite or admit them, shall each bepunished by a fine of 1,000 livres."
A law of September 30th, 1795, decreed:
It is forbidden to all judges, administrators, and public officials whomsoever, to have any regard for the attestations which ministers of worship, or individuals calling themselves such, shall give relative to the civil condition of citizens. All officials charged with registering the civil state of citizens, who shall make mention in their records of any religious ceremonies, or who shall exact proof that they have been observed, shall also be condemned to the penalties contained in Article 18.
It is forbidden to all judges, administrators, and public officials whomsoever, to have any regard for the attestations which ministers of worship, or individuals calling themselves such, shall give relative to the civil condition of citizens. All officials charged with registering the civil state of citizens, who shall make mention in their records of any religious ceremonies, or who shall exact proof that they have been observed, shall also be condemned to the penalties contained in Article 18.
The Convention concluded its sanguinary existence on October 26th, 1795, after the conclusion of the Constitution of the year III.
THE DIRECTORY.
The Convention was immediately followed by the government of the Directory, which lasted until the end of the Revolutionary period, in 1799. It was composed of a Council of Five Hundred, whose duty it was to propose laws, a Council of two hundred and fifty Ancients to approve or reject the laws thus proposed, and a supreme body consisting of five members—all regicides—which was called the Directory.
The new government was less bold in its persecutions than its predecessor, though the spirit that had actuated the Convention still lived in both houses of the Directory. The pursuit of priests was still continued, and thelaws against them and their protectors enforced with the greatest rigor. In the year 1796 eighteen priests were executed under the orders of the government. Nevertheless a sentiment of hostility to the oppressive measures of the law was beginning tomanifest itself in a number of the departments; churches were again being opened and the practice of religion renewed.
DEATH OF ROBESPIERRE.DEATH OF ROBESPIERRE.
The rigors of the Terror, however, were not yet extinct; the worship of the Revolution was enforced, the sound of the church bells was forbidden, and the Revolutionary calendar still held its place in the ordering of the life of the people. An effort was made in 1796 to bring back into full force all the proscriptive laws of the Convention, but through the efforts of Portalis the Council of Five Hundred refused to vote the bill.
In the meantime the exiled and deported priests began to return in great numbers. In Paris more than three hundred were exercising their ministry openly; the diocesan administration was reorganized; and a general interest in the unhappy lot of imprisoned priests began to manifest itself among the people. In 1797, June 17th, a motion was placed before the Council of Five Hundred, demanding liberty of worship, the suppression of the oath, and the abrogation of the laws of deportation. These reforms were voted—after a few weeks of discussion—and in place of the obnoxious oath the Directory substituted the words: "I swear to be submissive to the government of the French Republic." Everything thus seemed to hold out promise of peace and security to the Church, and might have thus continued but for thecoup-d'-Etatof the 10 Fructidor, which brought with it the renewal, for two years, of the horrors of the Terror.
The new government instituted under the three Directors, Rewbel, la Reveillère and Barras, brought back the Revolutionary forces into the Councils, and the old lawsof proscription were renewed. Priests who had obtained their liberty were again arrested and imprisoned or deported; the oath of the Constitution was re-established; the persecution became more rabid than ever in its last struggle for supremacy. To gather greater numbers to the Revolutionary ceremonies, it was decreed that marriages could take place only on the "decadi" or tenth day, whereon no manual labor might be performed, or merchandise bought or sold. It became a crime to print or hold in one's possession copies of the Christian calendar, and on Fridays and Saturdays of the old order the very sale of fish was forbidden, that the citizens might be compelled to eat meat. The deported priests suffered intolerable torments through the cruel treatment dealt out to them. Out of three hundred transported to Conamana, only thirty-nine were alive after a month's detention. In other places many died through famine, sickness and misery.
In the midst of these discouraging afflictions of the Church, the constitutional bishops, in a council held on August 15th, 1797, had the hardihood to plan a reconciliation between the schismatic church of France and the orthodox church, and went so far as to send their decrees to the Pope for ratification; Pius VI., however, refused to honor the communication with an answer.
PERSECUTION OF POPE PIUS VI.
In the incessant struggle of French anti-Christianism against the Church, its leaders had not neglected early in the period to turn their attacks against the head and centre of Christianity, in the person of the Holy Pontiff, Pius VI. Rome, "the mother of nations," was the sanctuary towards which many French students turned their steps to acquire a knowledge of art and literature; theseyoung men, imbued with the false spirit of their unhappy country, made use of the hospitality of the Eternal City to betray her. In the Academy of France, in the midst of obscene orgies and ribald speeches, the statues and busts of kings, cardinals and popes were overthrown, and sentiments of revolution and irreligion openly pronounced. Basseville and Laflotte, bearing an insulting message to Pope Pius VI., utilized their time in Rome in an attempt to arouse the populace to accept Republican ideas; but the Roman people, infuriated at the insulting bravado of these couriers of the French Government, attacked them in the Corso, giving a death blow to Basseville, and causing his companion to fly for his life. This was in 1793. The Constituent Assembly at Paris took up the death of its messenger as a pretext for hostilities against the government of the Holy See.
It was at this time also, that there began to appear in Paris certainLettersto the Pope, which displayed openly the intention of the new liberty with regard to the Papacy. TheMoniteurof October 1st, 1792, put forth the following grandiloquent address:
Holy Father, gather your people together, and rising in the midst of them, declare fearlessly: Descendants of the grandest people of the world, imposture has too long been desolating your country. The hour of truth has come; come and enjoy the rights that nature gave you; be free, be sovereign; be your own lawmakers; bring back once more the Roman Republic. But guard well against the abuses and vices which were the ruin of the ancient republic; drive out from you all patricians, cavaliers, prelates, cardinals, bishops, priests, monks and nuns; be citizens all. See, I give you my tiara, and I hope that my example will be followed by my clergy.
Holy Father, gather your people together, and rising in the midst of them, declare fearlessly: Descendants of the grandest people of the world, imposture has too long been desolating your country. The hour of truth has come; come and enjoy the rights that nature gave you; be free, be sovereign; be your own lawmakers; bring back once more the Roman Republic. But guard well against the abuses and vices which were the ruin of the ancient republic; drive out from you all patricians, cavaliers, prelates, cardinals, bishops, priests, monks and nuns; be citizens all. See, I give you my tiara, and I hope that my example will be followed by my clergy.
It was only a month after these words had been printed that General Kellerman declared from the tribune:"Citizen legislators, to liberate ancient Rome from the yoke of the priests, command our soldiers to pass the Alps, and we shall pass them."