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 REVOLUTION

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REVOLUTION

bishop, Thomas Lindet, a member of the Convention, who won the applause of the .\ssembly by announcing his marriage, despite the scandal given by Gobel, Bishop of Paris, in appointing 2, married priest to a post in Paris, the majority of constitutional bishops remained hostile to the marriage of priests. The conflict between them and the Convention became notorious when, on 19 July, 1793, a decree of the Con- vention decided that the bishops who directly or indirectlv offered any obstacle to the marriage of priests should be deported and replaced. In October the Convention declared that the constitutional priests themselves should be deported if they were found wanting in citizenship. The measures taken by the Convention to substitute the Revolutionary calendar for the old Christian calendar, and the decrees ordering the municipalities to seize and melt down the bells and treasures of the churches, proved that certain currents prevailed tending to the de- christianization of France. On the one hand the rest of dccadi, every tenth day, replaced the Sunday rest; on the other the Convention commissioned Leonard Bourdon (19 Sept., 1793) to compile a collection of the heroic actions of Republicans to replace the lives of the saints in the schools. The "missionary repre- sentatives", sent to the provinces, closed churches, hunted down citizens suspected of religious practices, endeavoured to constrain priests to marry, and threatened with deportation for lack of citizenship priests who refused to abandon their posts. Persecu- tion of all religious ideas began. At the request of the Paris Commune, Gobel, Bishop of Paris, and thirteen of his vicars resigned at the bar of the Con- vention (7 November) and their example was followed by several constitutional bishops.

The Montagnards who considered worship neces- sary replaced the Catholic Sunday Mass by the civil mass of decadi. Having failed to reform and na- tionalize Catholicism they endeavoured to form a sort of civil cult, a development of the worship of the fatherland which had been inaugurated at the feast of the Federation. The Church of Notre-Dame-de- Paris became a temple of Reason, and the feast of Reason was celebrated on 10 November. The Goddesses of Reason and Liberty were not always the daughters of low people; they frequently came of the middle classes. Recent research has thrown new light on the history of these cults. M. Aulard was the first to recognize that the idea of honouring the fatherland, which had its origin in the festival of the Federation in 1790, gave rise to successive cults. Going deeper M. Mathicz developed the theory, that confronted by the blocking of the Civil Constitution, the Conventionals, who had witnessed in the successive feasts of the Federation the power of formulas on the minds of the ma.sses, wanted to create a real culle de la palrie, a sanction of faith in the fatherland. On 23 November, 1793, Chaumette pasftfKl a law alienating all churches in the capital. This example was followed in the provinces, where all city churches and a number of tnose in the country were closed to Catholic worship. The Convention offered a prize for the abjuration of priests by passing a decree which assured a pension to priests who abjurwl, and the most painful day of that sad periorl was 20 Novr-mber, 1793, when men, women, and childrf-n drfssfd in priostly garments taken from the Church of St. Gfrmain df-s Pr<'-H marched through the hall of the Convention. Laloi, who presiflorl, con- (5ratulaf/'d them, sayint? thcv ha/1 " wiper] out eigh- teen centiirifrs of frror". Despite the part played bv Chaumftt/^- and thf Commune of Paris in the work of violont dechriptianization, M. Mathiez h.'is proved that it is not correct fo lav on the 0^)mmune and the Exagf'Tf'H fui fhf-y were called. the entire responnibility, and that a Moflerate, an Indulgent, namely Tlmriot, \h{t friend of Danton, was one of the most violent

instigators. It is thus clear why Robespierre who desired a reaction against these excesses, should at- tack both Exageres and Indulgents.

Indeed a reactionary movement was soon evident. As early as 21 November, 1793, Robespierre com- plained of the "madmen who could only revive fanaticism". On 5 December, he caused the Con- vention to adopt the text of a manifesto to the na- tions of Europe in which the members declared that they sought to protect the liberty of all creeds; on 7 December, he supported the motion of the Com- mittee of Public Safety which reported the bad effect in the provinces of the intolerant violence of the missionary representatives, and which forbade in future all threats or violence contrary to liberty of worship. These decrees were the cause of warfare between Robespierre and enthusiasts such as Hubert and Clootz. At first Robespierre sent his enemies to the scaffold; Hcbert and Clootz were beheaded in March, 1794, Chaumette and Bishop Gobel in April. But in this same month of April Robes- pierre sent to the scaffold the Moderates, Des- moulins and Danton, who wanted to stop the Terror, and became the master of France with his lieutenants Couthon and Saint-Just. M. Aulard regards Robespierre as having been hostile to the dechristianization for religious and political motives; he explains that Robespierre shared the admiration for Christ felt by Rousseau's Vicar Savoyard, and that he feared the evil effect on the powers of Eu- rope of the Convention's anti-religious policy. M. Mathiez on the other hand considers that Robespierre did not condemn the dechristianization in principle; that he knew the common hostility to the Committee of Public Safety of Moderates such as Thuriot and enthusiasts like Hcbert; and that on the in- formation of Basire and Chabot he suspected both parties of having furthered the fanatical measures of dechristianization only to discredit the Conven- tion abroad and thus more easily to plot with the powers hostile to France. Robespierre's true in- tentions are still an historical problem. On 6 April, 1794, he commissioned Couthon to propose in the name of the Committee of Public Safety that a feast be instituted in honour of the Supreme Being, and on 7 May Robespierre himself outlined in a long speech the plan of the new religion. He explained that from the religious and Republican standpoint the idea of a Supreme Being was advantageous to the State, that religion should dispense with a priesthood, and that priests were to religion what charlatans were to medicine, and that the true priest of the Supreme Being was Nature. The Convention desired to have this speech translated into all languages and adopted a decree of which the first article was: "The French people recognize the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul". The same decree stat(>s that freedom of worship is maintained but adds that in the case of disturbances caused by the exerci.se of a religion tho.s(> who "ex- cite them by fanatical preaching or by counter- Revolutionary innovations", shall be puni.shed ac- cording to the rigour of the law. Thus the condition of the Catholic Church remained equally precarious and the first festival of the Supreme Being was cele- brated throughout France on 8 June, 1794, with aggressive splendour. Whereas the Exagir^s wished simply to destroy Catholicism, and in the temples of Reason political rather than moral doctrines were taught, RobeHi)ierre desired that the civic religion should have a moral code which he based on the two dogm.'is of God and the immortality of the soul. He w;is of the opinion that the idea of God had a social value, that public morality depended on it, and that Catholics would more readily support the republic under the auspices of a Supreme Being.

The victories of the Republican armies, especially