National good
The terms national property (French bien national ) or church property denote the property of the church and the clergy (especially real estate ) in the France of the Revolution and their catchment area in the later French satellite states , which in the course of the revolutionary reorganization of the state and society "Nationalized" d. H. has been nationalized.
These nationalizations go back to an application by the Bishop of Autun in the National Assembly , later Minister Talleyrand , on October 10, 1789, who argued that the clergy were not the real owners of the church's property, but only for the maintenance of the church servants , the cult and need to care for the poor. Since the state, i.e. the nation, would perform these tasks in the future, the clergy would no longer need this high level of wealth.
The real motivation for these considerations was the high national debt , which revolutionary France had taken over from the Ancien Régime and which threatened to go bankrupt . The attempt was made to repay this debt by selling the church property, which was to be declared national property (French: nationalization ).
After a heated debate in the National Assembly, the entire property of the French Church, with 568 to 346 votes, became the property of the French nation on November 2, 1789, with up to 10% of the property in the whole country changing hands. The debt burden was met with the issuance of the so-called assignats , treasure bills, which were supposed to be covered by the profit from the later sale of the former church property.
Many of the former ecclesiastical national goods were subsequently sold to demolition contractors who reused the stones in the construction of newer houses, roads, bridges, etc. In the case of churches and monasteries, a large part of the unsaleable inventory (pictures, furniture, etc.) was looted and / or burned. Unlike the outbuildings, the church buildings themselves were often spared; they were converted into local parish churches or served as halls for all kinds of factories .
literature
- Albert Soboul : The Great French Revolution. DVA, Frankfurt 1973, pp. 141f, ISBN 3-434-00271-5 .
- Ernst Schulin : The French Revolution . CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3-406-51262-9 .
