Daily Life During the French Revolution (28 page)

Barbotin also wrote that after long hours in heat and dust,
he and his colleagues arrived at Versailles on May 8, 1789. After a good dinner
that cost one louis for the four of them, they looked for lodging, eventually
finding clean and convenient but somewhat cramped quarters near the palace at a
cost of 60 livres a month. As food was expensive, they ate lightly in the
evenings and drank a few glasses of beer. The luncheon meals were huge,
however, more than they could eat, but the worst wine at home was much better
than what they had to drink at Versailles. He complained that bedbugs prevented
him from enjoying sound sleep, and the incessant rain confined him indoors.
When the sun did briefly appear, they went sightseeing. He remarked that
everything was going smoothly there as long as one had plenty of money.

The transfer to Paris of the Assembly found the abbot less
cheerful. Not only was the move bothersome, but the noise and din of the
immense city annoyed him. His lodgings were surrounded by streets on all sides
in which vehicles (presumably wagons and carts with iron wheels) did not stop
clattering over cobblestones from six in the morning until three the following
morning. Sleep was difficult for a man accustomed to the quiet countryside.

CHURCH INCOME AND THE PARISH PRIEST

In spite of its wealth (much of it in land), the church,
like the nobility, was not required to pay taxes. It did, however, under
coercion, make “voluntary” payments of about 5 percent of its income. The
archbishop of Strasbourg made about 400,000 livres per annum and the archbishop
of Paris more than half a million. A village priest was lucky if he made 750
livres a year. Many bishops, once having secured their diocese, seldom visited
it, preferring to spend their time at court or in their mansions.

The
dîme
(or tithe) was a tax collected by the
church in cash or kind (crops or animals). Amounts varied throughout the country,
from practically nothing in some regions to 25 percent of income in others. The
church was the largest land-owning corporation, counting among its rich
possessions about one-fifth of Paris, as well as properties in towns and
villages, from all of which it collected rents. Rural church land, which was
farmed by peasants, has been estimated to have brought into church coffers some
100 million livres annually. By 1789, there were 1,700 monastic houses that
operated schools and hospitals (the latter mostly homes for the poor).

Within the church hierarchy there was an enormous gap
between the generally noble archbishops, bishops, abbots, and other high-placed
functionaries and the lowly, poor, sometimes barely literate village priests.
Living in cottages beside the church, priests often relied on a small vegetable
patch to help supply their alimentary needs. The poorer the parish, the poorer
the curate, since donations for his welfare were meager. Some parish priests
resented this financial discrepancy; despite the enormous wealth of the church,
they, the vast majority, lived no better than their peasant parishioners.

The relationship between the church and the rural
communities was intimate and complex. The power of the priest’s blessing,
religious rituals, and sacraments was of great importance to ward off evil, bad
weather, and poor harvests. Generally considered the indispensable member of
the village or locality, the priest heard confessions and absolved the sinner,
performed baptisms and marriages, and gave the last sacraments to the dying.
From the pulpit he was also the conduit for government decrees, which he read
and explained, being, in many cases, the only literate person in the village.
The priest also worked in collaboration with the village inhabitants on
communal business, with Sundays, after Mass, the traditional time for meetings
that took place, usually in the church. In larger communities, the meeting of
townsmen in taverns was often seen by the clergy as a threat to church
influence, taverns being the gathering site for those least prepared to accept
priestly authority and places where alcohol brought out anticlericalism.
Sometimes priests attempted to have the taverns closed or at least restricted
in their hours of opening. Furthermore, there was competition for the attention
of the people when itinerant healers and soothsayers appeared with love
potions, prophecies, and cures for sick people or animals, which the rural
population took with great seriousness.

“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to the
Nation, that which is the Nation’s.” The priest is reluctant to give his bag of
money to the tax collector. Behind is a man from the Third Estate who is
insisting that the cleric part with his money. In the background is a church.

SUPERSTITION

From the southwestern town of Agen, in 1791, a report noted
that country priests had once been heard demanding that sorcerers and
sorceresses leave the church before Mass. Many areas abounded in tales of
bogeymen, werewolves, and vampires. Peasants walking home on dark nights were
constantly alert to the idea that they might meet some supernatural being on
the dark, lonely road. Some enlightened priests tried to disabuse their
parishioners of such superstitions, but to little avail. The pagan past was
still present, and communities lived in fear of the mysterious and
impenetrable. To offset the unnatural forces of this shrouded world, they
relied on the priest’s blessings, prayer, and religious rituals such as
Communion. Only the holy church had power over the dark world of the devil.
Crops and livestock were blessed on a regular basis; prayers went out for a
good harvest; church bells, themselves holy objects, were rung to ward off
storms, rain, and hail, especially around the time of harvest; and the Host
might be brought to a fire to prevent it from spreading. If the supplications
were of no avail, then the unwelcome event was accepted as God’s will.

The tithe on the land collected by the church was reputedly
used for upkeep of the ecclesiastical buildings, the priest’s living expenses,
and charity to the needy. The right to collect the tithe was owned by religious
institutions often far removed from the parish where it was paid. Thus, it
became simply another burden on the peasants, with no direct connection to the
performance of the priest. If he was good, bad, or indifferent, the tithe was
still collected, and the money disappeared into church coffers. The parish
priest still charged fees for weddings, baptisms, and funerals. There were further
complexities when the church was the landowner as well as the seigneur,
collecting rents and feudal dues; although the church responded to complaints
with a network of charities, often there was resentment over its economic
interests and prosperity. To some, the church seemed less interested in saving
souls than in maintaining its property and privileges. In spite of this, the
majority of the peasants were closely attached to their local priests.

THE REVOLUTION

The dissatisfaction of the lower clergy had dramatic
results when the Estates-General began meeting in Versailles. On June 13, 1789,
during the debates and the formation of the National Assembly, a number of the
elected parish priests defected from the First Estate and joined the Third Estate.
They, like others in their position, wanted a more democratic church—one in
which talent and work would be more important to advancement than the accident
of noble birth. Along with a few noblemen, they broke ranks, and the Third
Estate declared itself the National Assembly on June 17. On June 27, by the
king’s order, the three estates united. Their first task was to nullify all
feudal rights and privileges, and on August 11, the church was deprived of its
rights to the
dîme.
In the last weeks of that month, the men who drafted
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen refused to make Catholicism
the state religion, opening the door for Protestants, who had enjoyed few civil
rights for more than a century, and for Jews, who had been oppressed much
longer than that.

There was much more in store for the ecclesiastic community
than anyone thought possible, however. On November 2, the government
nationalized church property, and in December the first 400 million livres
worth of these lands were placed for sale on the open market. Desperate for
money, the government paid off its creditors with the new paper
currency—assignats—with which church property could be purchased. Ownership of
these vast lands then changed from the hands of the church to mostly those of
bourgeois or wealthy peasants, the general practice being to sell the land by
auction, which benefited the more wealthy buyers.

On February 13, 1790, all monasteries and convents not
dedicated to charitable or educational work were closed and new religious vows
were forbidden. This policy reflected the view of many deputies, even some
clerics, that contemplative orders of monks and nuns were parasites on society.
It seemed that this niche in the daily life of the nation was on the verge of
extinction.

CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY

The church was now no longer an independent order in France,
and the loss of the tithe, the sale of its lands, and the assault on the
monastic orders were followed by the Assembly’s publication, on July 12, 1790,
of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Salaries were to be paid by the state,
and residence requirements were strict at every level: there were to be only 83
bishops, instead of the previous 136, one for each department, and only one
parish in all towns of fewer than 6,000 inhabitants. The clergy existed to
minister to the faithful and had no other justification for being tolerated as
far as many deputies were concerned. Chapters not involved in the caring for
souls were abolished. Many of the lower priesthood found they would be better
off financially under the new rules and felt the provisions so far satisfactory.
However, a major problem arose with the matter of appointment, as all clerics
were now to be elected by the people in the same manner as other public
officials—bishops by departmental assemblies and parish priests by district
voters. Among the voters, it could be argued, might be Protestants, Jews, and
even atheists, which displeased many. The pope, who had hitherto sanctioned
episcopal appointments, would now simply be informed that they had been made.

Many prelates sought the advice of Rome on this matter, but
the pope procrastinated, and no word came. The debate in the Assembly and among
the populace turned acrimonious. The deputies were annoyed by the lack of
response from Rome, and the religious situation grew worse as pious country
people blamed the government and the city dwellers (especially in Paris) for
wanting to eliminate God from their lives. Catholics and Protestants renewed
hostilities with bloody battles, especially in the south, where Protestants
were more numerous. Rumors were started whenever possible to implicate the few
Jews living in the country. Opinions became polarized, and the conservative
press denounced the Civil Constitution as an attack on the Catholic Church.
Naturally, the patriotic press responded with anticlerical vehemence.

The situation seemed to be heading toward religious chaos
as all but a few of the bishops refused to accept the Civil Constitution; tired
of waiting for a response from the pope, the deputies decided to have the
clergy take an oath of allegiance to the new constitution. Those who refused
(it was thought) would be dismissed. The king reluctantly sanctioned the decree
at the end of 1790, and on January 2, 1791, priests were told to swear their
oath before their parishioners to be faithful to the nation, the king, and the
constitution. Unexpectedly, about 40 percent of the clergy and the vast
majority of bishops refused. It was not practicable to dismiss the thousands,
especially in the west of the country, who denounced the Civil Constitution.
Those who refused were referred to as nonjuring or refractory priests. The
country was now split along religious lines in support of or against refractory
priests, some of whom were murdered while others fled.

On April 13, 1791, the pope finally condemned the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy, and many priests renounced their oath. Opinion in
the church and among the people was about evenly divided. During the summer,
some departments took it into their own hands to exile or imprison refractory
priests. In September, the government annexed Avignon, a papal enclave in
southern France. On November 29, the Assembly decreed that all refractory
priests were antirevolutionary suspects.