The sufferings of the church in Brittany during the great revolution

Preface

The history of the Revolution in France which by the length of its duration and the magnitude of its results obtained for itself the title of Great — subsequent convulsions being but its product and outcome' — has been written repeatedly and in abundant detail. Its salient features are well known, comprising in particular the hideous atrocities which have made the Reign of Terror infamous for all time — the daily holocausts of victims to the guillotine at Paris, the horrors perpetrated by Carrier at Nantes, by Le Bon at Amiens, by Couthon at Lyons — and including also the memorable Vendean War, to which Mme. de La Rochejacquelein's narrative has given so personal an interest. No reader of that history can be ignorant of the fact that the Church was cruelly persecuted, and that for a certain period, at least, the public worship of God was abolished throughout the land. For if the massacre of the Cannes testified to the intensity of the hatred with which a bloodthirsty faction was inflamed against men whose only crime was their sacred profession, the continued influx of emigrant clergy into this country gave evident proof that the proscription of the priesthood was due to no mere temporary ebullition of revolutionary fuiy. And yet it may be doubted

Vlll

Preface.

whether there is any general or adequate recognition of the length of time during which the persecution lasted, and that, too, in its most sanguinary form; the subject being often so vaguely and partially treated as to convey the impression that after the fall of Robespierre the guillotine became comparatively inactive in the provinces, as in the capital, and that, although religion was not legally restored until after the accession of the First Consul, the lives of clergy and religious were no longer in jeopardy, and that the open profession and practice of their faith no longer exposed Catholics to grievous molestation. This, however, was very far from being the case. For ten long years faithful Catholics, and priests in particular, had to endure untold privations and sufferings— untold we may truly say, since, if they were recorded at all, it was in a very fragmentary and imperfect manner, and the generation which witnessed them has now passed away.

In the case, however, of a single province of France a very full and circumstantial account has been given by one who, besides being a native of the country, was a contemporary, and, to a certain extent, an eye-witness of what he narrated. The Abbe' Tresvaux,1 who is our chief authority for the incidents related in these pages, was a most careful and painstaking writer, sparing no trouble to ascertain the correctness of all the facts he stated, and which he had the best opportunities of veri-

1 The title of his work, which occupies two octavo volumes, is Histoirc dc la Persecution Rivoliitionnaire en Brct,ignc d la fin du dix-huitttmc sicclc. Paris : Le Clerc, 1845.

Preface.

ix fying. He never puts himself forward, and says nothing of his own personal history, but we gather that he was quite a youth at the period of which he treats, and from one passage in his narrative we incidentally learn that his family practised the Christian virtue, which in those days involved no little peril, of hospitality to the servants of God ; in other words, the harbouring of priests, to which (as heretofore in England) was assigned the penalty of death. We are not aware that any one has undertaken for other provinces of France the work which Tresvaux has accomplished for Brittany. Writing in 1845, he says in his Preface, after enumerating the various sources from which his materials were derived, ' I may be allowed, in conclusion, to express a wish, which I have often entertained, that a work similar to mine should be undertaken for other parts of France. But no time should be lost. AVitnesses are disappearing, facts are being forgotten, and yet what a light they throw upon the past, and what lessons they furnish for the present, lessons which with them will be irretrievably lost.' 2

The other writer to whom we are indebted, and that principally when speaking of the causes which led to the Revolution and of its early stages, is the Abbe Jager, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Sorbonne, who delivered a course of lectures, on the subject of that

2 Mention may also here be made of the Life of Mgr. Brute, himself a Breton, published by Messrs. Burns and Oates in their Foreign Missionary Scries. His reminiscences of the revolutionary period are deeply interesting, abounding as they do in particulars of which he had direct personal knowledge or which were related to him by eye-witnesses.

X

Preface.

momentous event, which originally appeared in a series of papers in the University CatJwliquc (September, 1848, to June, 185 1), and were subsequently published in a separate form. These lectures, unfortunately, were left unfinished, the author not having proceeded much beyond the return of the King from Varennes. The papers, however, were continued by the Abbe Cordier, whose contribution is characterized by accuracy of detail and a devotional spirit, but lacks, in our opinion, the originality, philosophical insight, and general grasp of the subject which distinguish the work of the Sorbonne professor.

2. In estimating the causes of the Revolution and its successes, much stress has been laid by various writers on the scandalous lives of the clergy previous to its outbreak, and their obstinate adherence to absolute mom archy and the abuses of the old regime. But this latter accusation, as will be shown in the ensuing narrative, is wholly groundless. The clergy, as a body, so far from opposing, were forward in advocating needful and wholesome reforms and promoting the establishment of a more liberal constitution ; and as to the former allegation, it is equally far from the truth in the exaggerated form in which it is commonly made. It cannot, indeed, be denied that worldliness and laxity of morals were but too prevalent among those ecclesiastics who through secular interest or noble birth had attained to high places in the Church, and were thus in a position to exercise a deteriorating influence, not only on the clerical body, but on society at large. Such men as

Preface.

XI

Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, and in the early part of Louis XVI.'s reign prime minister of France, a favourer of the Encyclopedists, and a personal friend of D'Alembert ; the Prince de Rohan, Bishop of Strasbourg and Cardinal, notorious for his licentious life and in particular for the shameful affair of the diamond necklace, so injurious to the reputation of the calumniated Queen ; and the famous Abbe de Talleyrand- Pe'rigord, afterwards Bishop of Autun, who, if not a positive infidel, was practically little better, were sufficient in themselves to dishonour and degrade the ecclesiastical order in popular estimation. But these men, we may be sure, did not stand alone ; and the very fact that a person like Lomenie de Brienne, who was reputed to be an actual unbeliever, should have been able to get himself nominated by the clergy as reformer of abuses in the religious orders — a work urgently needed, but one which ought never to have been committed to such hands — and that the Abbe de Talleyrand-Perigord should have been selected to fill the post of Promoter of the Clergy of France, speaks volumes (to use a familiar phrase) as to the corruption which existed in high and influential quarters.

To these unworthy representatives of the clerical body must be added the numerous Abbes, frequenters of the Parisian salons, whose idle, frivolous habits were a discredit to their order; and, as the Church was wealthy and lay patronage very powerful, there were also many priests who had adopted the ecclesiastical profession simply as a means of subsistence and with a view to temporal xii

Preface.

advancement. The lives and manners of such men must have been calculated only to bring contempt on the sacerdotal character and on religion itself ; and indeed, it was chiefly from among persons of the latter class that the Revolution gathered recruits for the schism which it sought to force upon the nation.

But in the face of all these acknowledged scandals, which, moreover, had been aggravated and, indeed, mainly caused by the arbitrary conduct of the civil power in impeding the action of the Holy See, promoting unworthy men to high offices in the Church, and denying to the Episcopate its rightful liberty of holding synods and exercising discipline, one patent fact there is which the writers in question are prone to overlook or lightly estimate, but which ought to be regarded as affording conclusive evidence in favour of the clergy of France at that day. If, unhappily, there were many apostates and prevaricators among their ranks when the Revolution set society loose from every shackle of restraint, moral and religious, it is undeniable that they constituted, comparatively, a very small minority. The Bishops, with four' notorious exceptions, remained faithful to their sacred trust, and the parochial clergy, as a body, presented a noble example of constancy and fervour. Hundreds freely gave their lives in sacrifice for the faith, or abandoned country and all that they possessed for conscience' sake, while those who remained in the land

:J Five, if the Bishop of Lydda in partitas, coadjutor to the Bishop of Bale, be reckoned (see page 37). The number of sees in France at that time was a hundred and thirty-four.

Preface.

xni continued to minister to their flocks, under circumstances of the greatest peril and privation, with a courage and a fortitude which has never been surpassed. Thus, the multitude of martyrs and confessors which the Church of France produced during the terrible ordeal through which it passed is of itself sufficient to disprove the sweeping charge which has been brought against its clergy, and which has been too frequently accepted merely on the assertion of their accusers. True, a man may suffer martyrdom for the Christian faith without having previously led a saintly or even a very pious life, but only those on whom religion had a deep and vital hold, and who were animated by an ardent zeal for souls, would have endured, day after day, such extreme hardships and misery as the outlawed priests were content to undergo for the one sole purpose of ministering to the spiritual necessities of their people. The facts recorded in these pages will serve to show what manner of men the objects of the persecution were. Brittany, it is true, was a very religious province, and enjoyed the advantage of not possessing many rich benefices, which were temptations to the cupidity of worldly-minded families, but there is every reason to believe that the lives of the clergy were equally exemplary in many other parts of France, and it may safely be asserted that everywhere worthy priests formed the large majority. In the touching recitals which the Abbe Tresvaux gives, and some of which have been reproduced in this volume, will be found beautiful examples of the way in which these Breton priests, so barbarously ill-treated, comported xiv

Preface.

themselves before their judges and at the scaffold. Their modest dignity, their pious resignation, their firmness in confessing the faith, their sweet and tender charity towards their persecutors, the tranquil joy with which they met their doom, make the patience and courage they exhibited quite different in kind from any mere natural heroism, however exalted. They proved themselves true soldiers of Jesus Christ, and their death was a veritable martyrdom. Moreover, it is impossible to read the brief references which the Abbe makes to the antecedents of these men without being struck with the fact that, in the quiet, ordinary times which preceded the Revolution, they had been most assiduous in the discharge of their sacred duties, and often eminently conspicuous for their holy lives and charitable labours ; to which, indeed, the love and veneration manifested towards them by their parishioners when the hour of trial came rendered an additional and a most convincing testimony. For, if the priests risked their lives for the spiritual welfare of their people, the people encountered a like peril in sheltering and succouring their priests.

We should be travelling far beyond our province if we attempted to depict, even in briefest outline, the moral and religious condition of France previous to the year 1789, but we believe that it will be found on an impartial examination of facts that, although scepticism and immorality had pervaded, more or less, the upper and middle strata of society — including especially the professional classes — and had even begun to infect the

Preface.

xv general population of the towns, accompanied by a restless spirit of dissatisfaction which the pressure of real grievances had served to foster, an intense disgust with the abuses which still existed, and a passionate longing for any change which might introduce a new order of things, nevertheless the rural gentry,' and the country 1 people generally, who composed the main bulk of the French nation, had remained, comparatively, uncontaminated, and that the lower classes, as a body, were still profoundly Catholic. Anyhow, this, at least, is certain, that the condition of the people was, both morally and religiously, far superior to what it subsequently became. Torrents and rushing floods do not fertilize the lands over which they sweep. The Revolution left more corruption than it found. Needless to say, it left also a large mass of infidelity and, what is as hard, perhaps harder, to deal with, a rank crop of indifferentism. A generation grew up that knew not God and did not care to know Him ; and well would it be for France at the present day if the Apostolic men who, year after year, have been engaged in the work of evangelization had found ready to their hand a population so piously disposed, so docile to instruction, and so submissive to authority, as that which existed throughout its provinces previous to the terrible convulsion which may be said to have torn society up from its very roots.

4 Mgr. Brute has given in his autobiographical notes a very pleasing picture of the routine of daily life observed in his own family and of the example set by his admirable mother. She was a matron of the genuine Catholic type, and such appear to have abounded in the France of those days.

xvi

Preface.

3. No one who is acquainted with the tactics which the men of the last century pursued towards the Church, and which issued, as they were intended to issue, in its open persecution, but must have observed how similar they are in all essential respects to the measures adopted by its enemies at the present day — with one notable exception, the shedding of blood ; an exception which is certainly not due to diminished hatred of Catholicism, but to the change which has come over public opinion in the matter of judicial murder : however, we have not yet seen the end. The aim of modern Revolution, or of Liberalism — for the terms are, in effect, convertible — is still the same : that of substituting the tyranny of force for the reign of truth and justice. It is the counterpart in practice of the Protestant doctrine of the freedom of private judgment. This spurious freedom, which is so loudly claimed for mankind is, in fact, their enslavement ; since it is the emancipation of the will, which in man may be said to represent blind force, from the control and dominion of truth : man being declared free henceforth to accept, not what is true, but what he wills to consider as true and acceptable. Even so it is the aim of the Revolution to render a godless State, which it affects to regard as the organ and embodiment of the popular will, absolute sovereign in all t1 ings, religious no less than political and social, and t impose its laws upon mankind as the ultimate rule c right and wrong, to the utter corruption of their mor . sense. Protestantism, as denoting a doctrinal system, is daily dying out, but its essential heresy remains in vigorous activity,

Preface.

xvn and is bearing fruit in that deification of the State and its hateful despotism over consciences which the Revolution is everywhere labouring to accomplish.'1

The fabrication of a State-Church or, rather, of State- Churches, which shall supersede the one true Church of Christ, is still the pet project of Liberal politicians, who hope to be able to use these schismatic creations of theirs for the degradation of the priesthood and the secularization of society in all its ramifications; and if the measures employed as yet are not as immediately sharp and decisive as were those which the revolutionists of the last century were not slow to adopt, they are as surely calculated to effect the object proposed : not to add, that behind these astute politicians, whose aim, it may be, is only to dethrone and destroy the Church, stand the agents of the Masonic conspiracy, who will be satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of Christianity and the substitution of the religion, or, as it may be more rightly called, the worship, of Humanity. For the present, the work of disintegration is to be conducted by milder methods. Thus, candidates for the sacred ministry are to be emancipated from the trammels of ecclesiastical discipline and trained in the school of free thought ; that is to say, they are to be indoctrinated with rationalistic and infidel principles

5 It is a significant fact that the organs of English Protestant opinion, with scarcely an exception, either systematically ignore the iniquitous persecution w hich has been been going on for several years in Germany and Switzerland, and has now avowedly begun in Italy, or, if they record any isolated facts, do so without a word of reprobation ; while some by openly advocating State-absolutism in causes ecclesiastical, including dogma and worship, declare, at least by implication, their sympathy with the persecutors and approval of their acts.

Preface.

before they can be eligible to serve at the altar of God. Theology is no longer to be reckoned among the sciences, and as for vocation, the very idea is absolutely disallowed:1' the sacerdotal spirit is to be totally eliminated, and the secular spirit, in other words, the spirit of this world, is to be introduced in its stead. I The laity, again, are to elect their own pastors, and that without regard to the authority either of bishop or of Pope. The Eccksia Disccns, is in fact, to occupy the place of the Ecrfcsia Docens : for, in choosing their own teachers, the people will necessarily also determine what doctrines shall be taught in their respective localities. Religion being thus put to the popular vote, its degradation will be complete. A clergy educated by laics, and elected' by laics, none of whom need to be Christian, even in profession, will certainly not teach Catholic doctrine, or any doctrine whatever as infallibly true, and thus the wished-for consummation will have been attained. There will be neither Church to teach nor creed to be taught as of necessity to be believed ; neither faith nor the obedience of faith : Christianity, as a Divine revelation, will have ceased to exist.

This system of lay-election, irrespective of Episcopal

H Accordingly in Germany, as also in Italy, ecclesiastical students, parish priests, and even bishops are forced to serve in the army ; and indeed in Italy, at the present time, members of religious orders, priests and others, are compelled to assist in repairing the highways, in other words, to break stones on the road ; because, having been reduced by their rulers to a state of abject destitution, they are unable to pay the sum which would have exempted them from this manual labour.

Preface.

xix or Papal authority, is the boon which is being offered to the populations of to-day, as it was to the Catholic people of France in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy ; and now, as then, it has been rejected by the faithful with scorn. The same woeful farce is again enacted : the schismatics are elected by a discreditable minority, including Protestants, Jews, and men of no religion ; they are installed by the civil power; and the 'refractory' priests are ejected from their cures. So, too, if we compare the character and conduct of the apostates who figured in the Constitutional Church of France with those of the self-styled ' Old-Catholics ' of Germany and Switzerland, we cannot fail to recognize the strong family likeness between the two : the same mean and ungenerous spirit, as shown in their combining with the civil power to oppress and persecute the rightful pastors and their flocks, the same secularity and selfassertion, the same moral degradation, the same unblushing violation of religious and sacredotal vows ; and again, as before, we see a faithful people holding steadfastly aloof from the usurpers and refusing to take part in their sacrilegious ministrations.

Many other points of resemblance might be mentioned, but, as they will appear in the course of the narrative, it is superfluous to enumerate them here, and, indeed, they are too palpable to escape observation. The parallel is exact throughout, with such only difference as comports with the state of the times and the temper of men's minds ; so that it may be truly said that the events which we see passing before our eyes are but a repeti-

XX

Preface.

tion of what befell the Church of France at the outset of the Revolution. The same principles are at stake now, as then ; the same conflict is once more renewed ; on the one part is cruel, unprovoked wrong, on the other, patient suffering : religious are driven from their schools, their hospitals, their homes; the religious life is itself proscribed ; bishops and priests are despoiled of their goods, thrown into prison, interned, expatriated, outlawed, returning only to be hunted from hiding-place to hiding-place ; seminaries are closed, churches and altars profaned, delivered over to heretical intruders ; the people are cruelly harassed and distressed, fined, imprisoned, robbed of their pastors, of the holy sacraments, of all freedom of worship, of everything they hold dearest on earth — denied even the liberty of sheltering their ejected clergy or supplying them with the common necessaries of life ; 7 the young are deprived of Catholic

" For having said Mass three times and baptized a child, the Rev. Herr Cieslinski, of the provence of Posen, was sentenced on October 31, 1877, to pay a fine of 1,200 marks [£6o) or suffer 120 days' imprisonment. Being unable to pay the fine, he was sent to gaol. Not content with having the priest thus punished, the Government also prosecuted several gentlemen because they gave him something to eat when he was hungry and a shelter for the night when he was homeless. The district court that tried the case condemned Herr Gomerski, a landowner, and Herr von Swiniarski, a manufacturer, to pay each 400 marks or suffer forty days' imprisonment — the former for having given Herr Cieslinski a dinner gratis and lent him a carriage — and the Herr Rabbow, also a local landowner, to pay 600 marks or suffer 60 days' imprisonment because he let the hunted priest have a room in his house for the night. The inn -keeper Dobierznski, who is also the village mayor, was fined 100 marks, with the option of 10 days' imprisonment, and another inn-keeper, Okupiniak, 150 marks, with the option of 15 days' imprisonment. All these were further adjudged to pay the costs of the prosecution.

Preface.

xxi and Christian instruction ; the poor and sick bereaved of nurses, teachers, benefactors : and all this because they will not defile their souls with the guilt of schism, will not sever themselves from Catholic unity — the people from their priests, the priests from their bishops, the bishops from the Vicar of their common Lord — will not accept the jurisdiction of the secular power in matters ecclesiastical and spiritual ; in short, will not give to Csesar the things of God. And if the conflict is the same, so also, we are confident, will its issue be : save that we hope and trust that it will end in a far more perfect triumph of the Church than awaited it at the beginning of this nineteenth century. It may be that, in the inscrutable counsels of God, the sufferings of His people are still to be prolonged, but even so the glory of the present hour is all their own, and what the world counts disaster and defeat is to the eye of faith, which is ever fixed upon the Cross, but the presage and the assurance of future victory.

Cheltenham, Feast of St. Francis Xavier, iSjj.

CONT

E NTS

PAGE

Chapter I. Causes of the Revolution

Scope of the present work . i The Revolution due to the

propagandist™ of false and

infidel principles ... 2 Voltaire and Rousseau . . 4 The sovereignty of the people 5 Rousseau's theory of power . 6 Its pernicious effects . . .7 His principles identical with

those of modern Liberalism 8 Jansenism the ally of infidel

philosophy . . -9

Chapter II

State of Brittany at the commencement of tiie Revolution.

The Breton people eminently Catholic . . . .10

Their faith and devotion . 11

Religious monuments . . 12

Beginnings of corruption. Arts employed to pervert the upper classes . . -13

The Government party and the country party . . 14

Riots at Rennes . . -15

Deputation of the two higher orders to the King . . 16

Attempts to excite the clergy against their prelates . -17

Convocation of the States- General . . . .18

Clerical elections . . • 19

PAGE

The clergy favourable to reform . . . . .20

Character of the third estate . 21

Impending conflict between the bourgeois and the nobles . 22

Wild projects of the third estate . . . . -23.

Chapter III

Spoliation of the Church. Civil Constitution of the Clergy.

Meeting of the States-General 24 Clerical defections . . -25 Spoliation of the Church decreed . . . . . 26 Suppression of religious orders 27 The Civil Constitution of the

Clergy . . . .28 Abolition of ancient sees . 29 Lay election of Bishops and

Cures . . . . * 30 The Pope's letter to the King 31 The King's episcopal advisers ;

their failure in duty . . 32 Prevalence of Gallicanism . 33 Excitement among clergy and

people . . . .34 Weakness of the King . . 35 Conduct of the Breton duputies 36 The ' Exposition of Principles.'

Its effects . . . -37 Calumnies propagated against

the clergy . . . -39 Vigour displayed by the

Bishops . . . .40

CONT

ENTS

PAGE

Chapter I. Causes of the Revolution

Scope of the present work . i The Revolution due to the

propagandists of false and

infidel principles. . . 2

Voltaire and Rousseau . . 4

The sovereignty of the people 5

Rousseau's theory of pow er . 6 Its pernicious effects . . .7 His principles identical with

those of modern Liberalism 8 Jansenism the ally of infidel

philosophy .... 9

Chapter II

State of Brittany at the commencement of the Revolution.

The Breton people eminently Catholic . . . .10

Their faith and devotion . n

Religious monuments . . 12

Beginnings of corruption. Arts employed to pervert the upper classes . . 13

The Government party and the country party . . 14

Riots at Rennes . . -15

Deputation of the two higher orders to the King . . 16

Attempts to excite the clergy against their prelates . . 17

Convocation of the States- General . . . .18

Clerical elections . . 19

PAGE

The clergy favourable to reform . . . . .20

Character of the third estate . 21

Impending conflict between the bourgeois and the nobles . 22

Wild projects of the third estate . . . . -23.

Chapter III

Spoliation of the Church. Civil Constitution of the Clergy.

Meeting of the States-General 24 Clerical defections . . -25 Spoliation of the Church decreed . . . . . 2& Suppression of religious orders 27 The Civil Constitution of the

Clergy . . . .28 Abolition of ancient sees . 29 Lay election of Bishops and

Cures . . . . * 30 The Pope's letter to the King 31 The King's episcopal advisers ;

their failure in duty . . 32 Prevalence of Gallicanism . 33 Excitement among clergy and

people .... 34 Weakness of the King . . 35 Conduct of the Breton duputies 36 The ' Exposition of Principles.'

Its effects . . . -37 Calumnies propagated against

the clergy . . . -39 Vigour displayed by the

Bishops . . . .40

XXIV

Contents

l'AGE

Chapter IV

Enactment of the Oath to be imposed on the Clergy.

Designs of the Assembly . 41 State absolutism . . -42 Municipal tyranny . . -43 Charge against the Bishop of

Nantes . . . 44

Committee of Inquests . . 46 Voidel's report to the Assembly 47 His project of law . . .48 Enactment of schismatical oath 49 The Abbe Maury . . 50 Hesitation of the King . . 51 Menances employed to move

him . . . . -52 He signs the decree . . 53 Defections and Retractations . 54 Efforts at conciliation . . 55 Threatening attitude of the

mob . . . . -56 Schismatical oath tendered to

clerical deputies . . -57 Attempted compromise . . 58 Admirable behaviour of bishops and clergy . . 59 Their sentiments misrepresented . . . .60 Revolutionary tactics . . 61