Hey there, students! Here's the next installment of my French Revolution series. If you haven't seen the other ones, you might want to go back and look at those. This segment is on the civil constitution of the clergy. This one goes out to Dantini, who asked for more of these French Revolution lectures.
Glad you like them. The civil constitution of the clergy was an attempt to reform the church in the early years of the French Revolution. Now let's review real quick.
When we look back at the old regime, French society before the Revolution, we've got the French divided in three parts. The first estate being the church, the second the nobility, and the third everyone else. Now you can see that the first and second estate here are riding the third estate. The French Revolution is partly about getting these guys off the Third Estate, but as the Revolution becomes more radical, it's going to be more about the Third Estate doing a little bit more than that to the rest. Now keep in mind the civil constitution of the clergy is part of an overall effort to bring the privileged estates into this new French nation.
Remember the decrees of August fourth, which we've already addressed, these abolish the privileges of the nobility. Got rid of their feudal dues, nobles hunting rights, tax exemptions, all of that stuff gone. Now that was a very liberal reform aimed at taking away special privileges that were given to one group of people.
Now time for you clergy, all right, now it is time to bring you down to size. We already took care of the nobility in 1789 and now you're next. So first of all, in 1789, the National Assembly confiscated church property. And in 1790, they abolished religious orders.
Nuns, monks, all of that kind of stuff. Really kind of similar to what Henry VIII did during the English Reformation. And the National Assembly abolished mandatory tithes. So if people were going to tithe from here on out, they were going to do it because they want to. No longer is the government...
going to collect tithes. So the church is now at the mercy of the state. The church no longer has land. They no longer have these mandatory tithes or other privileges.
So the civil constitution of the clergy is next, and the point of the civil constitution of the clergy is to transform this French Catholic church into a civil religion, a state religion, not a religion that has privileges from the state, but a religion that functions as a part of the state. There are several key ingredients of this civil constitution. First of all, the election of bishops and priests. Now before that, you had to be some sort of noble to be a bishop, and the bishop was not accountable to the people.
So now, the priest and the bishops will be elected democratically. Then, once they're elected, they have to swear an oath of allegiance to the state to make sure that they are going to be loyal to France before they are going to be loyal to the Pope. There are gonna be standard pay scales. The bishops are gonna make this much, a priest will make this much depending on how big his congregation is, so on and so forth. There is going to be an attendance policy.
We're gonna make sure that everyone's here when it's time for church and all of that kind of stuff. And bishops and priests have to get permission to travel outside of their diocese, outside of their general area. Now, what abuses did this seek to curb? Okay, let's review these regulations real quick. The election of bishops and priests designed to bring the bishops and the priests in line with the people rather than these things just being handed out based on who they know that's connected.
the oath of allegiance to try to make sure these people are loyal to the French nation, the pay scales, we can assume that bishops and priests had been overpaid under the old regime, and finally that often these priests and bishops were absent. So all of those abuses are being remedied or there's an attempt to remedy these abuses in the civil constitution of the clergy. Now we have to ask though How would was this. Keep in mind we're talking about classical European liberalism. The French Revolution at first was seeking liberal reform, seeking less of a role for the government to create a more free, less regulated state.
Now all Although the civil constitution of the clergy is reforming the church in France, to the extent that it was liberal is up for debate because when you think about this, the church is accountable to the state rather than separate from the state as a liberal would want it. So really, the civil constitution of the clergy forms a bit of a bridge between the liberal revolution of 1789 and the more radical revolution of 1789. Revolution of 1793 and 94. So we see some liberal elements that they're trying to take away privileges but then the regulations that are put on the church are not liberal at all. Now among the French clergy there are two groups.
These two groups are first of all the swearing priest and second the refractory priest. Now who are these people? Now the swearing priest these are the guys that were totally on board with the civil constitution of the clergy.
Yeah! All right they're very excited so excited we can't even say what they were thinking but they're totally cool with this stuff. These swearing priests they had no problem swearing an oath of allegiance. I hope you see what I did there.
Now then there are the refractory priests who are not so crazy about this civil constitution. These are the more conservative priests and the priests that do not believe that they should have to take an oath of office. The ones who truly believe some of these we could describe as liberal who believe that the church should be set. from the state. Now refractory is a word that means stubborn or unmanageable.
The Google definition mentions someone's refractory pony. Okay if a pony is not behaving himself or herself that pony is refractory. Now as you can see there is some regionalism in the French Revolution.
We can look at this map and we can see the percentage of swearing priests differs depending on where you are. So if we look here closer to Paris, we see that over 83% of the priests were swearing oaths of allegiance. Then if we look in southeastern France, it's the same way. But the farther you get from Paris, and if you look... more in southern France, if you look at northeastern France and northwestern France, you can see that there are areas where less than half of the priests were swearing oaths of allegiance.
So keep that in mind that the French Revolution is something that's stronger in some places than others. This was heavily resisted by the clergy. Here is a cartoon that is from the point of view of someone who supports the civil constitution of the clergy. This is the procession of refractory clergy, showing these refractory clergy with long noses. This is actually an anti-Semitic gesture, making them out to look like Jews who were seen as being outside of the French nation.
Keep in mind that anti-Semitism appears throughout European history, didn't originate with Hitler. Here is another cartoon drawn by people who are sympathetic to the civil constitution of the clergy and other reforms. In this cartoon we see the nuns and the monks all running around celebrating, marrying each other, and all of that kind of stuff.
Now you could think of this as freedom, but at the same time you could also think about this as chaos because the French Revolution is starting to radicalize. These reforms are going from the modest reforms sought by the Estates General to some more radical reforms. So keep in mind that the Civil Constitution of the clergy builds that bridge between the liberal revolution of 1789 and the radical revolution of 1793-94.
We see a foreshadowing of the radicalism that is to come. and eventually during the reign of terror We are going to see not just the regulation of the church, but an attack on the church. As you can see in this picture of a nun who is stripping herself of her vestments.
This is kind of a graphic photo, and this is attacking. This is saying here, the caption is, and we too shall be mothers because. We are not going to be part of the church anymore.
We are forsaking the church. So keep in mind that sometimes the regulation of something can eventually lead to the attack on something. That the French Revolution starts off as liberal, then it gets into regulating things, and then it spins out of control and starts attacking these institutions that had been key institutions under the old regime. And this is what's going to result in criticism from people like Edmund Burke, who I'll talk about in another segment.
And that wraps us up on the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Hope you'll keep watching this series as it's filmed. And subscribe if you haven't already.
Check out my website, TomRidgey.net. Lots more videos coming up. So I'll be back. Hopefully you will too.
Until next time.