De-Christianization
The de-Christianization (from the French: Déchristianization ; also dechristianization , rarely de-Christianization ) during the French Revolution was a complex, often violent process for the suppression of Christianity and all traditional creeds in general. The Catholicism that had dominated until then was to be replaced by an ensemble of revolutionary festivals and revolutionary cults. These new forms of cult differentiated the de-Christianization from the actual secularization , as expressed, for example, in the nationalization of church property. The term de-Christianization is only applied in the narrower sense to the Jacobean revolution phase from 1793 to 1794. The Concordat of 1801 between France and the Holy See ended the de-Christianization, even partially reversed it and established the relationship between state and church in France until the beginning of the 20th century.
Abolition of professional privileges
The de-Christianization arose from both religious and socio-political criticism of the conditions of the Ancien Régime . In pre-revolutionary France, a trend critical of the church and even hostile to the church developed within the nobility and the bourgeois third class , which - not entirely, but essentially - was rooted in the scientifically founded skepticism of the Enlightenment towards the traditional creeds. The advocacy of rational thought and action produced a worldview which, if it did not completely deny the existence of God, saw God as the immanent principle of the omnipresent order established and functioning according to natural laws. The spectrum of intellectual beliefs ranged from atheism to a rationalist worldview. The elliptical motto of Voltaire's Écrasez l'infâme ("Crush the wicked!") Was already known throughout Europe during his lifetime, which is usually related to the church as an institution. According to another reading, l'infâme meant the superstition ( l'infâme superstition ) that Voltaire often scourged .
Although the Catholic clergy (along with the nobility) enjoyed considerable legal and fiscal privileges prior to 1789 , there was also revolutionary potential within the clergy. Due to the very different economic situation and the rigid church order, there were serious differences between the high and the lower clergy, and the latter, along with the bourgeoisie and the nobility oriented towards the Enlightenment, who shared the criticism of the ruling property structure, communicated the beginnings of the revolution in the National Assembly . The best known of these clerics was Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand , who had a decisive influence on French politics over the next decades.
The early religious political measures of the revolution aimed at equality of religions and the abolition of the church's class privileges , but were not essentially directed against the Catholic faith and its institutions: in a night session of the National Assembly on August 4 and 5, 1789, it was abolished the feudal system , which also included the church tithing ; the decree of November 2, 1789 was supposed to transfer all church goods into state property, for which the authorities took over to pay for the maintenance of the churches, the salaries of the priests and the church welfare. In the meantime, with the declaration of human and civil rights on August 26, 1789, which introduced the term Être suprême (supreme being), Catholicism had been abolished as the state religion; Article X of the Declaration stated:
«Nul ne doit être inquiété pour ses opinions, même religieuses, pourvu que leur manifestation ne trouble pas l'ordre public établi par la loi. »
"Nobody should be prosecuted because of their beliefs, even religious ones, as long as their expression does not disturb the public order established by the law."
Civil constitution and national church
From 1790 the measures against the church intensified. The revolution had already put an end to the old order of estates and thus the previous priority of the clergy as the first class; its expropriation effectively destroyed its previous social power and suggested a new regulation of the clerical legal position. The religious orders were the first ecclesiastical institutions to become the focus of legislation; In view of the central role that the citoyen was now accorded as the bearer of the state, monastic life was criticized as “civil suicide” and the usefulness of the now dispossessed orders, which therefore no longer had any income, was fundamentally questioned. On October 28, 1789, a decree prohibited the taking of religious vows , and on February 13, 1790, the National Assembly abolished religious clergy. Women's monasteries, which were active in nursing and education, were allowed to continue to exist.
On June 12, 1790, the legislature passed the most important legislative act, the civil constitution of the clergy , which made the clergy into officials of their parishes and dioceses, elected by the people and paid by the state. The Pope was deprived of all legal authority over the French clergy, even if he continued to be its "visible head". Last but not least, the clergy had to take an oath on the constitution from November 27, 1790, or they lost their office. On February 5, 1791, the sworn clergy were forbidden to preach publicly, and from March the elections for the vacant positions in the dioceses and parishes began (only seven out of 125 bishops and around half of all pastors had taken the oath).
The establishment of his own national church in France motivated Pope Pius VI. , in two letters from 10./13. April 1791 not only the civil constitution, but also the human rights and the Revolution itself to condemn and priests to revoke access to their already made Eide (representing about 22,000 of 28,000 pastors did), failing which they the excommunication would suffer. The break between the old church and the revolutionary state was thus completed, the sworn clergy formed the so-called Église constitutionnelle , those loyal to the Pope in the underground formed the Église réfractaire . French troops occupied the papal enclaves of Avignon and Comtat Venaissin . The abolition of the previous church competencies continued. In August 1792 the last monasteries were closed; in September 1792 the birth, marriage and death registers came under state sovereignty, and divorce was allowed; Church processions and the wearing of clerical clothing and habit were made a punishable offense. As a result of the coalition war that had broken out , public sentiment against the church intensified massively, as the Pope had called on the European monarchs to take vigorous action against the revolution and was thus in league with the counterrevolution. During the September murders from September 2-4, 1792, two to three hundred clergymen were also murdered in Parisian prisons. Tens of thousands of clergymen went into exile, around two thousand were deported or imprisoned.
Jacobean de-Christianization
The actual de-Christianization took place in 1793 and 1794. In the summer of 1793 there were again militant appearances against the church, the festival of the unity and indivisibility of the republic on August 10, 1793 was the first without the participation of the clergy. From autumn onwards, de-Christianization turned into a mass movement mainly supported by the petty bourgeoisie; it first found its supporters in the provincial cities south of Paris and in Lyon and often expressed itself in carnival-like processions with church utensils , desecration of churches, iconoclasms or ceremonies for revolutionary martyrs organized by ambassadors from the National Convention . The movement quickly spread to the center and in October the Paris parish banned all public religious ceremonies.
The intellectual and political elite were skeptical or even negative about uncontrolled de-Christianization, as the popular movement was also associated with a peculiar “transfer of the sacred”, which was most impressively expressed in the popular veneration of the revolutionary martyrs. Two intellectual cults wanted to counteract this “quasi-Catholic” cult, which, however, competed with one another for religious and political reasons. The atheistic to deistisch embossed cult of reason , of the radical anti-clerical Hébertists was born, initially had some success and mingled increasingly with the cult of martyrdom. On November 23, 1793, the National Convention passed a law that withdrew all churches in Paris from denominations and made them “temples of reason” and required that the “festival of reason” should be celebrated on every decadi (tenth day) of the new revolutionary calendar . The purpose of the calendar reform, which was extremely important for de-Christianization, was to change the entire previous, Christian life rhythm of people. These measures spread from Paris over large parts of France via state and semi-state organs and newspapers such as Père Duchesne . Places and streets whose names had a Christian content were renamed. In the Indre-et-Loire department, for example, the word Dimanche (Sunday) was abolished and the city of Saint-Tropez became Héraclée . The cult of reason and the continued attack on traditional habits met with widespread opposition from the population and eventually, because of their atheistic content, clashed with the theistic beliefs of the revolutionary leader Maximilien de Robespierre . At his instigation, the National Convention already warned on December 6, 1793, that people should practice their religion freely, which it promised to uphold. However, nothing changed in the measures taken, and the churches remained civil religious temples. The status quo did not end until the end of March 1794; after the persecution and execution of the Hébertists, the cult of reason was suppressed.
The spring and summer of 1794 brought the turning point in de-Christianization. The cult of the Supreme Being was instituted by decree on May 7, 1794 and included as a celebration in the series of national festivals. The opening article of the decree clarified the theistic approach of the cult and the proximity to piety :
«Le peuple français reconnaît l'existence de l'Etre suprême, et l'immortalité de l'âme. »
"The French people recognize the existence of a supreme being and the immortality of the soul."
On June 8, 1794, a festival of the Supreme Being in Paris inaugurated the new cult. However, this civil religion and especially the ceremony met with considerable rejection; after all, parts of the provincial population, especially in the south-east and west of France, also accepted the new cult. Not surprisingly, the National Convention led the cult after the fall of Robespierre on 27/28. July 1794 and decided on September 18 to separate church and state including the abolition of all support services for any clergy.
Development up to the Concordat
The end of the revolutionary high phase also meant that of the systematic oppression and hindrance of the church. At the beginning of 1795 the churches were given a certain amount of leeway again. A law of February 21, 1795 stated that the practice of religion should not be disturbed and allowed general worship. The ringing of bells , processions and public carrying of the cross were prohibited. A law of May 30, 1795 allowed the churches to be reopened if they had not been used for another purpose. Another law of September 29, 1795 required religious officials to swear submission and obedience to the laws, and the repression of "refractory" priests ("who are not influenced") was maintained.
The state's religious policy remained unsteadily repressive during the Directoire , and the revolutionary festivals in particular continued to compete with the old faith - albeit with decreasing success, as abstract civil religiosity could not, in the long run, meet people's spiritual needs. In view of the increasing visibility of the old faith, the law of April 11, 1796 renewed the ban on ringing bells and public gatherings for religious practice. The official reintroduction of the cult décadaire ( i.e. the celebration of revolutionary values such as freedom or equality in every décadi ) in October 1795 proved to be ineffective; it only lasted until 1800. Several attempts to create new intellectual cults remained mere suggestions , only the committed deism theophilanthropy gained some distribution.
There were still arrests and deportations of priests after 1795 , but the emigrated clergy began to return and in 1797 the Catholic Church was able to reconstitute itself . However, their situation worsened again from 1798 when France came to war with the Papal States, in the place of which a short-lived French subsidiary republic , the first Repubblica Romana of modern times, was set. Pope Pius VI died in French captivity.
Concordat of 1801
The new Pope Pius VII. Closed after several months of negotiations finally Napoleon Bonaparte on 15 July 1801 Concordat, which the existence of the Papal States secured what he approved of the state church order of France in return. In the preamble, the Catholic faith was referred to as that of "the great majority of French citizens" without any mention of a "state religion". The Concordat recognized the plurality of religious denominations, the freedom of worship and the republic as such.
The new balance of power was consolidated in Napoleon I's coronation as emperor in 1804; the ruler was not appointed by the church (in this case: by the pope), as was previously the case, but crowned himself.
Even after Napoleon's fall in 1814/15, the Concordat remained the basis for French religious policy until the law on the separation of church and state of December 9, 1905 , on the basis of which France has since defined itself as the République laïque ( secular republic). During the second modern Roman republic in the Papal States, which was proclaimed by radical democratic revolutionaries in 1849 , France formed the protective power of the Pope and defeated this republic together with Spanish troops after just under five months of existence.
literature
- Nigel Aston: Religion and Revolution in France, 1780–1804. Macmillan, 2000, ISBN 0-333-58326-4 .
- Roger Aubert , Johannes Beckmann, Patrick J. Corish, Rudolf Lill (eds.): The Church in the Present. The Church between Revolution and Restoration. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau / Basel / Vienna 1971, ISBN 3-451-14016-0 (= Hubert Jedin (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte. Volume 6.)
- Jean-Paul Bertaud: Everyday Life During the French Revolution. Freiburg / Würzburg 1989, pp. 66–97 (Chapter Church and Religion under the Sign of the Revolution ).
- Rodney J. Dean: Eglise constitutionnelle, Napoléon et le Concordat de 1801. Paris 2004, ISBN 2-7084-0719-8 .
- Hans Maier : Revolution and Church. On the early history of Christian democracy. 5th, revised and expanded edition, Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-451-21278-1 ; CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-55016-4 (= collected writings , volume 1).
- Eva Schleich: Church, clergy and religion. In: Rolf Reichardt (Ed.): The French Revolution. Freiburg / Würzburg 1988, pp. 172-185, ISBN 3-87640-193-3 .
- Michel Vovelle : Religion et Révolution. La déchristianisation de l'an II. Paris 1976.
- Michel Vovelle: La Révolution against l'Eglise: 1793 de la raison à l'Etre suprême. Editions Complexe, Bruxelles 1988, ISBN 2-87027-254-5 .
Web links
- Catholic Encyclopedia: French Revolution , 1912. (March 18, 2006)
- Doris Gretzel: French Revolution and Religion. From persecution to de-Christianization. (March 18, 2006)
- Sabine Büttner: The French Revolution - an online introduction: Areas of Effect, IV. Church and Religion. (March 18, 2006)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Voltaire signed numerous letters with the phrase Écrasez l'infâme or Écrlinf since 1761 .
