ON THE threshold of the nineteenth century the Catholic world was still far from having recovered its tranquillity. The new Government, it is true, had made a show of almost liberal intentions towards it; the day was past when refractory priests were regarded as fodder for the guillotine, and so was the morrow of Fructidor, when seventeen hundred of them were deported to Cayenne to die of fever. Theoretically, the freedom of religious observances was recognized, but under what strange conditions!
In the service of a Church of which unity had always been the main principle, there were now three different clergies hurling anathema at one another. First the refractory priests who, having never accepted any authority but that of Rome, were living as outlaws, hidden somewhere in the country, or as refugees abroad. This was the case with most of the bishops, who, having emigrated to London or Gex*many, had lost contact with their dioceses. Among the priests that had taken the oath, some had adhered from the first to the Civil Constitution of 1790, the others, five years later, to the Republic of the year III, which brought about differences of opinion on many points.
At last, after Brumaire, the Consulate replaced the oath by a more elastic formula: *I promise fidelity to the Constitution.' Some of the original refractory priests accepted this, and were called promissaires; but the orthodox church disavowed them, as it had disavowed the 'jurors'.
On the other hand the Government, faithful to the Republic, continued in principle to deny the refractory priests the right to exercise their ministry. For the sake of appeasement
it had gone so far as to reopen a certain number of religious edifices and hold them at the disposal of the faithful. As most of these wanted to recall their former pastors, a policy of wide tolerance was adopted towards the latter. Without authorizing their return, the Government looked the other way. And soon, in many districts, the non-juring cure settled in again opposite his Constitutional rival, contending with him for his parishioners, administering die sacraments to them, rebaptizing and remarrying them if necessary - because some articles are worthless if they do not bear the proper trade-mark.
When an inquiry was instituted into the feeling prevailing in the provinces, it showed that the refractory clergy were more successful than the others. In Eure-et-Loir, in Seine-et-Oise, a report by Lacuee tells us that 'the Roman Catholic religion is practised in nearly all the communes*. In the Vau-cluse and Provence, Franchise de Nantes found that 'one-tenth of the inhabitants follow the Constitutional priest, and the remainder those returned from emigration'. Finally, what Barbe-Marbois tells us of Brittany is conclusive. 'In Vannes/ he says, c on the day of the Epiphany, I went into a cathedral where the constitutional mass was being celebrated. There was only one priest and three or four poor people. A little further on I came upon such a crowd that I could not make my way through. These were people who had been unable to get into a chapel, already full, where the mass known as that of the Catholics was being said/
This competition between the two clergies inevitably started little battles in many parts of the country, worthy of the Lutrin. 1 Relying on the law, the submissive cure claimed the church for his alone. If the Prefect sided with him, he was execrated by those under his administration. If he tipped the balance the other way, as at Troyes, he was reproved by Fouch6. This duality of religions was a veritable nightmare. 'It is amply demonstrated now', said Beugnot, "that it made for trouble. Where there was only one priest, of no matter which persuasion, he was very badly paid, but he managed to satisfy everybody. If you introduced a second priest, of a different persuasion, you introduced discord at the same time/
*A comic poem on a quarrel between the treasurer and the precentor o£ a church as to the position of the lectern. ^Translator.]
In Paris itself and in many other towns the quarrel was complicated by the celebration, still persisting, of the cult of Theophilanthropes, a philosophical doctrine of which La-reveillere-Lepeaux had attempted to make a sort of official religion under the Directory. Its devotees were no longer very numerous, but they still had the right to assemble, every Decadi, in fifteen churches of the capital, renamed for their sake Temples of Concord, of Genius, of Hymen, of Commerce, and so forth, and to listen to fine discourses on morality and the civic virtues, pronounced by orators in surplices in front of the busts of great men.
If these practices were not to the taste of certain Roman Catholics, they could avenge themselves by smashing the noses of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or William Tell in the choir of Saint-Eustache or come to blows with the Theophilanthro-pists in Saint-Nicholas-des-Champs. But as a rule these little disturbances were avoided; religion had grown used to such strange rapprochementsl In the year IX, had not the Temple of Victory, alias Saint-Sulphice, been the scene of a festival in honour of Confucius, dedicated to the Chinese in Paris?
Among so many different cults, God himself must have lost his way.
Was Bonaparte driven to the Concordat by an irresistible wave of public opinion? The desire for an open resumption of the old religious observances was certainly unanimous in the provinces of the Quest, but in many other regions the reviving piety of the countryside seems to have been far less ardent.
On a visit to Lorraine and the Midi, a German remarks that the peasants treated the Mass as a mere amusement. Lacu^e says the same of the lie de France. 'The needs of the people', he says, 'seem confined for the present to an empty spectacle, to ceremonies. Going to mass to hear a sermon, or to vespers, all very well - but confession, communion, fasting, meatless days are not to their taste. They would rather have bells without a priest, than priests without bells/ And Beugnot, referring to Bar-sur-Aube, a region he knows well since it is
his own, paints it in even less mystic colours. 'My native region is gaily religious. The men get drunk. Their wives give them horns. The girls have babies fairly frequently. All these people go to mass, many of them even to confession Don't imagine there is any fanaticism in Bar-sur-Aube. There is a taste for theatrical display, for the old music of the In e%itu Israel and in addition to a devotion to the Republic on which you can rely/
With the Parisians too the interest shown in the churches was mainly compounded of curiosity. People wanted to see the chapels newly restored to religion, like those of Saint-Pierre de Chaillot, the Filles-Saint-Thomas or the Carmelites; to attend the ceremonies presided over by the Bishop of Saint-Papoul, one of the first prelates to return; to listen to the sermons of the Abbe Bossu, the fiery cure of Saint-Paul, soon to be cure of Saint-Eustache; to admire Mme Recamier taking up the collection at Saint-Koch, or to hear the last of the Couperins playing the organ in Saint-Gervais.
For many people the pageantry of the liturgy was a novelty, and they flocked to the Easter celebrations and to the midnight masses, the tradition of which had been revived. That at Saint-Merri, in the year X, was marked by a dramatic interruption, the noise of a detonation spreading panic throughout the congregation. Some took it for a pistol shot, others suspected some new infernal machine, and they were all making for the door when the beadle discovered that the disturbance had been caused by the bursting of a horse-chestnut in an old lady worshipper's foot-warmer. 'The crowd rushing out of the church turned back again, and sang thanks in chorus to the Child Jesus for letting them off with a fright/
Services with full orchestras, paid admission on certain days, reserved seats, all suggested fashionable curiosity rather than true piety. On serious occasions, such as the forty-hour adoration, the churches were always empty. Children were beginning, here and there, to make their first communion, but the great majority of adults stayed away from the sacraments. They paid no attention, either, to fasting or abstinence, and there had to be ecclesiastics among their guests for them to order meatless dishes.