The War Upon Religion Part 6

_THE REIGN OF TERROR._

During the latter part of 1793 the country had virtually delivered itself up to the will of its tyrants. The war against religion had a.s.sumed an open and defiant character, under the influence of the guillotine; churches had already lost their sacred significance, and the names of the saints or holy mysteries which they had hitherto borne gave place to profane and often impious t.i.tles; the Republican calendar had been formally adopted and enforced upon the nation; everywhere priests were called upon to burn their letters of ordination and to bring to the Convention their crosses, chalices, ciboriums and other objects destined for the Holy Sacrifice. The Archbishop of Paris, the infamous Gobel, entered the hall of the Convention at the head of other const.i.tutional clergy, and there despoiled himself of all insignia of episcopal or priestly office, declaring at the same time that he renounced forever all his rights and duties as a minister of Catholic worship.

_THE G.o.dDESS OF REASON._

It was at this time, November 10th, 1793, that the Convention proclaimed the worship of reason, and deified that abstract idea by a sacrilegious ceremony in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris. An actress was placed upon a throne within the sanctuary of that ancient temple, and received amidst the hymns and maudlin praises of the mult.i.tude the adoration of a fallen nation. The example of Paris was imitated in all parts of the country, until the strange spectacle was observed of a whole nation gone mad.

The new worship brought with it renewed hostility to Christianity.

Almost every day the Convention was called upon to review processions whose object was to ridicule and cast odium upon the things of G.o.d.

Bands of _Sans-Culottes_ defiled through the streets, or pa.s.sed through the a.s.sembly halls, attired in copes, chasubles and dalmatics which they had pillaged from the churches. No limit was put to these exhibitions of horrible sacrilege. In many cases the processions were headed by an a.s.s bearing a mitre upon his head, a chalice upon his back, with a cross hanging from his tail. It seemed as if the Revolution could go no further in its impiety, though men still held their breath waiting anxiously for the next move in the horrible nightmare.

In the midst of the general madness the Revolution turned against its own creatures and denied its own religion. The people had already begun to mock at the absurdity of the worship of reason, and tired of one false G.o.d, looked to their leaders to supply them with another. It was at this juncture that Robespierre, the man of blood and crime, suddenly became the apostle of a new cult, which was baptized in the blood of the adorers of reason. The guillotine reaped rich harvests, numbering that year among its victims the apostates, Gobel, Lamourette, Clootz, together with Hebert, Danton, Desmoulins and others.

In the beginning of the year 1794, Robespierre caused the Convention to pa.s.s a decree proclaiming the existence of a Supreme Being, and const.i.tuting feast days "to recall mankind to the consideration of the divinity and to the dignity of his being." On June 8th, he presided personally as high priest, at the first solemn feast of the new worship.

The latter, however, proved even less popular as a religion than its predecessor, and served only to demonstrate how the human heart craves for the worship of G.o.d, and will not be satisfied with the human imitations of a religion whose origin is divine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WORSHIP OF SUPREME BEING.]

In its proscriptive decrees the Convention hitherto had not included the aged and infirm priests; by a decree of Floreal 22, these also were subjected to all exactions imposed upon others. Another decree demanded the accusation of all enemies of the people, and p.r.o.nounced the penalty of death, without trial or witnesses, upon simple verbal denunciations.

The Terror was now in its blindest spasm of madness, and in Paris alone, during three months, more than two thousand victims laid their heads upon the block, including many const.i.tutional priests, who had the good fortune, through the pious offices of the Abbe Emery, to retract their errors and become reconciled to G.o.d.

A pall of moral darkness hung over the nation from end to end, a deep silence, full of anxiety and terror, was broken only by the shrieks of the dying and the insane laughter of the murderers. The silence and holiness of the Lord's Day was desecrated by labor and unseemly orgies; the _decadi_ was observed instead of Sunday, and peasants or others daring to work on that day, or daring to rest on Sunday, were treated as suspects and punished with all the violence of irreligious hatred.

Throughout the land every symbol and remembrance of religion had vanished: the church steeples had been torn down, the bells no longer called the faithful to divine service, the cross was treated as an object of public shame. Everywhere men and women suspected of fanaticism or denounced as enemies of the Revolution were condemned to death and executed. In the city of Lyons the guillotine severed thirty heads a day; but its work proving too slow for the blood-thirst of the a.s.sa.s.sins, the victims were ranged in rows, and mowed down by storms of bullets. In this way fully one thousand seven hundred fell in a short period of a few months.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBESPIERRE (1758-1794).]

In the departments of the Ain and the Saone-et-Loire, liberty was decreed to priests who should agree to marry within a month; the aged were exempted from this law upon the condition of adopting a child of Revolutionary parents, to care for as their own. In Savoy, one thousand two hundred livres was offered as a reward for the arrest of a non-juring priest; all who refused to apostatize, whether faithful or const.i.tutional, were arrested and condemned. At Ma.r.s.eilles and at Avignon, the infamous Maignet emulated his predecessor, Jourdan Coupetete, with the guillotine and fusillade of bullets. In the South, a young girl was arrested and put to death for having crossed over into Spain to confess to a legitimate priest. An aged official was sentenced to imprisonment and a heavy fine for having a.s.sisted at the "Feast of Reason" with an air of sadness and arrogance. Six women were guillotined for having a.s.sisted at the Ma.s.s of a non-juring priest.

In the Vendee one thousand eight hundred persons were murdered within a period of three months. And so the list went on through all the first half of 1794, which has left a record of millions murdered, deported, exiled, imprisoned, or tortured in a thousand and one ways. They were red letter days in the Revolutionary calendar, but the red color was made from the blood of Frenchmen. A mitigation of the horrors of those days came at last when the head of the arch-a.s.sa.s.sin, Robespierre, rolled away from the block on July 27th, 1794.

_SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE._

Among the oppressive laws enacted by the Convention, before its final dissolution in 1795, were those concerning education and the separation of Church and State. The decree of October 21st, 1793, decided that primary schools should form the first degree of instruction; therein should be taught all that was rigorously necessary for a citizen to know. Persons charged with instruction in such schools should be known as inst.i.tutors. The decree determined the number of schools to be founded in each commune, according to the number of its inhabitants, and fixed the programme of instruction.

The children shall receive in these schools the first physical, moral, and intellectual education, the better to develop in them republican ways, the love of country, and a taste for work. They shall learn to speak, read and write the French language. They shall be taught those virtues which do most to honor free men, and particularly the ideas of the French Revolution, which shall serve to elevate their souls and render them worthy of liberty and equality. They shall acquire some notions of French geography. The knowledge of the rights and duties of man and citizen shall be taught them by example and experience. They shall be taught the first notions of the natural objects that surround them, and the natural action of the elements. They shall be exercised in the use of numbers, the compa.s.s, weights, measures, etc.

Another decree, of October 28th, 1793, declared that "no ci-devant n.o.ble, no ecclesiastic or minister of any worship whatsoever, can be a member of the commission of instruction, or be elected a national inst.i.tutor. No women of the ci-devant n.o.bility, no ci-devant religious women, canonesses, nuns, who have been placed in the old schools by ecclesiastics or ci-devant n.o.bles, can be nominated as inst.i.tutors in the national schools."

A decree of February 21st, 1795, read as follows:

Art. 1. Conformable to Art. 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and to Art. 22 of the Const.i.tution, the exercise of no worship shall be troubled. Art. 2. The Republic shall pay salary to no minister of worship. Art. 3.

It shall furnish no locality either for the exercise of worship or for the residence of its ministers. Art. 4. The ceremonies of every kind of worship are interdicted outside the enclosures chosen for such exercise. Art. 5. The law does not recognize any minister of worship; no such minister may appear in public with the habit, ornaments, or costume affected in religious ceremonies. Art. 6. All a.s.semblages of citizens for the exercise of any worship whatsoever shall be subject to the surveillance of the const.i.tuted authorities.

This surveillance shall be fortified by measures of police guard and public security. Art. 7. No particular symbol of any worship may be erected in any public place, neither exteriorly, nor in any manner whatsoever. No inscription can be put up to designate such place of worship. No public proclamation or convocation can be made to draw the citizens thither. Art. 8. The communes or sections of communes may not hire or purchase, in their collective name, any locality for the exercise of worship. Art. 9. No donation, perpetual or temporary, may be formed, and no tax imposed to pay the expenses of such worship. Art. 10. Whosoever shall, by violence, disturb the ceremonies of any worship whatsoever, or who offers outrage to its objects, shall be punished, according to the law of July 19-22, 1791, in regard to correctional police. Art. 11. The law (of 2 des sans-culottides, an II.) with regard to ecclesiastical pensions, is not hereby abrogated, and its dispositions shall be executed according to their form and tenor. Art. 12. Every decree whose dispositions are contrary to the present law formulated by the representatives of the people in the departments is annulled.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIE ANTOINETTE AND HER CHILDREN.]

A decree of May 30th, 1795, decided that "no one shall fulfill the ministry of any worship in the said edifices, unless he shall have given legal declaration before the munic.i.p.ality of the place in which he desires to exercise such functions, of his submission to the laws of the Republic. The ministers of worship who shall contravene the present article, and the citizens who shall invite or admit them, shall each be punished by a fine of 1,000 livres."

A law of September 30th, 1795, decreed:

It is forbidden to all judges, administrators, and public officials whomsoever, to have any regard for the attestations which ministers of worship, or individuals calling themselves such, shall give relative to the civil condition of citizens.

All officials charged with registering the civil state of citizens, who shall make mention in their records of any religious ceremonies, or who shall exact proof that they have been observed, shall also be condemned to the penalties contained in Article 18.

The Convention concluded its sanguinary existence on October 26th, 1795, after the conclusion of the Const.i.tution of the year III.

_THE DIRECTORY._

The Convention was immediately followed by the government of the Directory, which lasted until the end of the Revolutionary period, in 1799. It was composed of a Council of Five Hundred, whose duty it was to propose laws, a Council of two hundred and fifty Ancients to approve or reject the laws thus proposed, and a supreme body consisting of five members--all regicides--which was called the Directory.

The new government was less bold in its persecutions than its predecessor, though the spirit that had actuated the Convention still lived in both houses of the Directory. The pursuit of priests was still continued, and the laws against them and their protectors enforced with the greatest rigor. In the year 1796 eighteen priests were executed under the orders of the government. Nevertheless a sentiment of hostility to the oppressive measures of the law was beginning to manifest itself in a number of the departments; churches were again being opened and the practice of religion renewed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEATH OF ROBESPIERRE.]

The rigors of the Terror, however, were not yet extinct; the worship of the Revolution was enforced, the sound of the church bells was forbidden, and the Revolutionary calendar still held its place in the ordering of the life of the people. An effort was made in 1796 to bring back into full force all the proscriptive laws of the Convention, but through the efforts of Portalis the Council of Five Hundred refused to vote the bill.

In the meantime the exiled and deported priests began to return in great numbers. In Paris more than three hundred were exercising their ministry openly; the diocesan administration was reorganized; and a general interest in the unhappy lot of imprisoned priests began to manifest itself among the people. In 1797, June 17th, a motion was placed before the Council of Five Hundred, demanding liberty of worship, the suppression of the oath, and the abrogation of the laws of deportation.

These reforms were voted--after a few weeks of discussion--and in place of the obnoxious oath the Directory subst.i.tuted the words: "I swear to be submissive to the government of the French Republic." Everything thus seemed to hold out promise of peace and security to the Church, and might have thus continued but for the _coup-d'-Etat_ of the 10 Fructidor, which brought with it the renewal, for two years, of the horrors of the Terror.

The new government inst.i.tuted under the three Directors, Rewbel, la Reveillere and Barras, brought back the Revolutionary forces into the Councils, and the old laws of proscription were renewed. Priests who had obtained their liberty were again arrested and imprisoned or deported; the oath of the Const.i.tution was re-established; the persecution became more rabid than ever in its last struggle for supremacy. To gather greater numbers to the Revolutionary ceremonies, it was decreed that marriages could take place only on the "decadi" or tenth day, whereon no manual labor might be performed, or merchandise bought or sold. It became a crime to print or hold in one's possession copies of the Christian calendar, and on Fridays and Sat.u.r.days of the old order the very sale of fish was forbidden, that the citizens might be compelled to eat meat. The deported priests suffered intolerable torments through the cruel treatment dealt out to them. Out of three hundred transported to Conamana, only thirty-nine were alive after a month's detention. In other places many died through famine, sickness and misery.

In the midst of these discouraging afflictions of the Church, the const.i.tutional bishops, in a council held on August 15th, 1797, had the hardihood to plan a reconciliation between the schismatic church of France and the orthodox church, and went so far as to send their decrees to the Pope for ratification; Pius VI., however, refused to honor the communication with an answer.

_PERSECUTION OF POPE PIUS VI._

In the incessant struggle of French anti-Christianism against the Church, its leaders had not neglected early in the period to turn their attacks against the head and centre of Christianity, in the person of the Holy Pontiff, Pius VI. Rome, "the mother of nations," was the sanctuary towards which many French students turned their steps to acquire a knowledge of art and literature; these young men, imbued with the false spirit of their unhappy country, made use of the hospitality of the Eternal City to betray her. In the Academy of France, in the midst of obscene orgies and ribald speeches, the statues and busts of kings, cardinals and popes were overthrown, and sentiments of revolution and irreligion openly p.r.o.nounced. Ba.s.seville and Laflotte, bearing an insulting message to Pope Pius VI., utilized their time in Rome in an attempt to arouse the populace to accept Republican ideas; but the Roman people, infuriated at the insulting bravado of these couriers of the French Government, attacked them in the Corso, giving a death blow to Ba.s.seville, and causing his companion to fly for his life. This was in 1793. The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly at Paris took up the death of its messenger as a pretext for hostilities against the government of the Holy See.

It was at this time also, that there began to appear in Paris certain _Letters_ to the Pope, which displayed openly the intention of the new liberty with regard to the Papacy. The _Moniteur_ of October 1st, 1792, put forth the following grandiloquent address:

Holy Father, gather your people together, and rising in the midst of them, declare fearlessly: Descendants of the grandest people of the world, imposture has too long been desolating your country. The hour of truth has come; come and enjoy the rights that nature gave you; be free, be sovereign; be your own lawmakers; bring back once more the Roman Republic. But guard well against the abuses and vices which were the ruin of the ancient republic; drive out from you all patricians, cavaliers, prelates, cardinals, bishops, priests, monks and nuns; be citizens all. See, I give you my tiara, and I hope that my example will be followed by my clergy.

It was only a month after these words had been printed that General Kellerman declared from the tribune: "Citizen legislators, to liberate ancient Rome from the yoke of the priests, command our soldiers to pa.s.s the Alps, and we shall pa.s.s them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAFAYETTE.]

It was, however, during the administration of the Directory that the first actual a.s.saults upon the Holy See were made by the forces of France. Under an appearance of good will, which only served to conceal its weakness, the Directory stultified itself in the face of Europe; the army alone by its victories sustained the honor of the nation.

After conquering the Rhine countries the Republic turned its eyes upon Italy. In the beginning of 1796, General Bonaparte, with an army of 30,000 men, crossed the Alps. Despite the snows of the winter and the continual blizzards they encountered, the French soldiers continued to descend into Piedmont, while the Italians still believed them to be on the borders of the Rhine.

Mantua fell, the Austrians were driven beyond the Adige, and Bonaparte hastened to besiege and take Bologna. It was the desire of the Directory that the conqueror should proceed on his way to Rome and annihilate forever the power of the Papacy. Bonaparte himself proved less greedy than his masters; he would be satisfied with one or two provinces from the revenues of which he might draw funds to defray the expenses of his campaign. His victories, nevertheless, were rapid and decisive, and in a few days made him master of all Northern Italy. The King of Sardinia and the dukes of Parma and Modena made their act of submission, while the Court of Naples manifested a desire to frame a treaty of peace.

Admonished by the fate of the neighboring nations, Pius VI. began to frame terms of negotiation with the conqueror. Towards the end of 1796, the Chevalier d'Azara, Amba.s.sador of Spain to the Holy See, was charged with the duty of arranging a convention with the French Government. The Directory had looked to Rome as the repository of immense riches, the plunder of which might help to bolster up the enfeebled finances of France. The first condition imposed upon the Pope, in order to gain an armistice, was to turn over to Saliceti and Garrau, the representatives of France, the sum of 50,000,000 livres. D'Azara rejected the exorbitant terms, and seeing that he could effect nothing with the Directory, he opened up negotiations with Bonaparte directly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPTURE OF LOUIS XVI.]

His demands in this part met at first with the usual hauteur of the General, who required that His Holiness should first drive from Rome all French emigres, and that he should expedite a Bull approving of the revolutionary government. To these first terms the amba.s.sador answered: "If you imagine that you can compel the Pope to do the least thing contrary to dogma, and whatever is intimately connected with dogma, you are much mistaken, for he will never do so! You can take revenge by sacking, burning and destroying Rome and St. Peter's, but religion shall remain in spite of you. If, on the other hand, you desire the Pope to exhort all in a general way to good behavior and obedience to legitimate authority, he will do that willingly."