and ecclesiastical properties were nationalized. The number of bishops was reduced. Priests and bishops were elected by districts and departments respectively and both became civil servants remunerated by the State. Pope Pius VI (1717–1799) condemned this action and priests were divided between those who swore loyalty to the Republic and those who looked to Rome for guidance. Persecution and division followed.177 Walker explains,
When the tremendous storm of the French Revolution broke, it swept away many of the privileges of the church, the nobility, the throne, and kindred ancient institutions. The revolutionary leaders were filled with rationalistic zeal. They viewed the [Catholic] churches as religious clubs. In 1789, church lands were declared national property. . . . The constitution of 1791 pledged religious liberty. Then in 1793 came a royalist and Catholic uprising in the Vendée, and in retaliation the Jacobin leaders sought to wipe out Christianity. Hundreds of ecclesiastics were beheaded.178
The Revolution would not remain unopposed by the Catholic Church. The Church had its defenders even if they are not as well remembered by posterity. The Counter-Revolution continued the battle for ideas and divided France into two camps reminiscent of the Wars of Religion. The battles were not only ideological but bloody and divided France into two parts.179 The counter-revolutionaries, many of whom had lost privileges, whose lands were confiscated and titles revoked, sought the restoration of the monarchy. In Magraw’s opinion, “Religion was the most divisive issue in French society. The counter-revolution’s fervour stemmed less from loyalty to King or seigneurs than from villagers’ determination to defend local religious cultures against a dechristianising Revolution.”180
Louis XVI himself was executed after being found guilty of treason by the Convention on January 21, 1793. Two groups, la Gironde and la Montagne, disputed his fate. The former group, a political entity formed in 1791 by several deputies from the region by the same name, argued for clemency.181 The latter group, among whom was Robespierre, referred to elevated places at the Convention where the political left sat led by Robespierre and Danton.182 They demanded the king’s death for public salvation and the necessities of the Revolution.183 According to Robespierre, the Revolution required virtue and terror, “virtue, without which terror is harmful; and terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice. It is an emanation of virtue.”184 The death of the king prepared the way for further changes in the Church-State relationship. In 1795, the separation of Church and State was introduced for the first time constitutionally in France in terms close to the future law of 1905. The arrival of Napoleon would throw these separatist initiatives into confusion when he seized the initiative to bring religion into his service. Yet the future would reveal that many people freed from obligatory religious duties and rituals would soon fall away from an organized religion which no longer wielded political power. Over the next one hundred years the work of the Revolution was constantly threatened with the successive rise and fall of republics and empires. The battle for Republican values intensified while the Church fought vigorously to reverse the losses suffered under the Revolution.
Napoleon and Concordat of 1801
A religious crisis occupied France for ten years before Napoleon came to power to reverse many of the gains of the Revolution. By all accounts, Napoleon was a man without strong religious leanings. However, he recognized that the majority of French people were Roman Catholic and sought to bring the Church under his control for political purposes. An alliance with the Church became a political necessity since many French were still attached to the Church. The State needed the Church to assume tasks, such as education, that the State did not wish to administer. Pope Pius VII (1742–1823) was elected in 1800 and desired to restore the unity of the Church in a nation that was the most powerful Catholic nation at the time. As seen earlier, in 1789 the Church had been forced to relinquish its possessions and land holdings and in 1790 the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had provoked a schism. The Church had been nationalized and its ministers were elected by church members without any consultation with or approval of the Church. In 1794, all exterior manifestations of worship were forbidden and the Church was confined to the private sphere.185
The Concordat was signed in 1801 between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII and “was to rule the relations between France and the papacy for more than a century.”186 The Concordat recognized that Catholicism was not the religion of the State but the majority religion of French citizens (la grande majorité des citoyens français).187 Three other confessions—Lutheran, Reformed, and later Jewish—were recognized and also brought into the service of the State.188 Although the Concordat offered a level of religious pluralism, Napoleon’s objective was the control of religion for societal submission. Religions were considered a public service and on equal footing. The head of State appointed bishops while those bishops previously loyal to Rome (réfractaires) were forced to resign. The State retained possession of Catholic property seized after the Revolution and assured the upkeep of certain properties. In December 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned as emperor in Notre-Dame Cathedral in the presence of Pope Pius VII.189
After one hundred years of struggle and persecution, it was not surprising that many Protestants welcomed the Concordat imposed by Napoleon. According to French historians, Protestantism had lost half its population and it appeared that its spiritual forces were spent. Believers seemed to have conserved little of the Reformers’ teaching and were marked by the rationalism of the eighteenth century. The Concordat gave Protestants access to most public positions. Pastors became paid employees of the State with an oath of loyalty to the State. Churches were reorganized into consistories which called pastors requiring government confirmation.190
A revival (Réveil), originating in Geneva, took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century with an emphasis on the evangelization of Catholics and in favor of the separation of church and State. Concordataire Protestants were divided in their views of the Concordat with the more conservative leaders coming to believe that it was no longer possible to defend it.191 There were also efforts to unite the two concordataire Protestant churches, Lutheran and Reformed.192 The revival was not welcomed by all Reformed churches. From 1820 to 1848, independent churches of professing believers were founded and existed alongside Lutheran and Reformed churches who themselves were divided into orthodox and liberal. The most contentious issue concerned the necessity of a confession of faith which liberals rejected. The orthodox wanted a confession of faith but did not want to divide the Reformed church. Several leaders, among them Pastor Fréderic Monod and Agénor de Gasparin, maintained the necessity of a confession of faith. After failing in their attempts to persuade others of their conviction, they resigned from their positions, and called on others to follow them in organizing an evangelical Reformed church.193 Few followed Monod and de Gasparin in their resolve which led to their association with independent evangelical churches and the founding in 1849 of the Union of Evangelical Churches of France (l’Union des Églises évangéliques de France) for which a confession of faith was adopted in 1849. The two articles were clear in their affirmation that their churches would be composed of members who made an explicit and personal profession of faith.194
Conservative monarchists and Catholics desired that France return to her status as elder daughter of the Catholic Church. The Republicans wanted to make France the daughter of the Revolution of 1789. The resolution to this struggle began in 1879 when Republicans gained a parliamentary majority and worked to remove the influence of religion and the Church from the Republic and from public school teaching. The Republicans abrogated the 1850 Law Falloux which was a major setback for the Church in its influence on education. This conflict between the two Frances of the monarchists and Republican anticlericalists would reach its summit with the arrival to power of Émile Combes in 1902 and continue until the Law of Separation in December 1905.
Despite these tensions, the Concordat survived for over one hundred years. “The Church believed in an alliance with the State on principle, and the anticlerical and many other Frenchmen were glad to see the ecclesiastics bridled by specific agreements.”195 Owing to historical factors which will be discussed later, the Concordat survives today in the region of Alsace-Moselle. These departments were annexed by Germany in 1871 after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and were returned to France following World War I and Germany’s
