Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/207

 FRANCE

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FRANCE

period 1901-1905 in France was IS, while in Italy it was 106, in Austria 113, in England 121, in Germany 149, in Belgium 155. In 1907 the deaths were more numerous than the births, the number of deaths being 70,455, while that of the births was only 50,535 — an excess of 19,920 deaths — and this notwithstanding the fact that in 1907 there were nearly 45,000 more niurriiit;('s than in 1S90. Official investigators attri- bute this |ihenomenon to sterile marriages. In 1907, in only 29 out of 86 departments, the number of births exceeded the number of deaths. It may perhaps be legitimately inferred that the sterility of marriages coincitles with the decay of religious belief. Again, it is important to note the increase in population of the larger cities between the years 1789 and 1901: Mar- seilles, from 100,000 to 491,000; Lyons, from 139,- 000 to 459,000; Bordeaux, from 83,000 to 250,000; Lille, from 13,000 to 210,000; Toulouse, from 55,000 to 149,000; Saint- Etienne, from 9000 to 146,000. Paris, which in 1817 had 714,000 inhal)itants, hatl 2,714,000 in 1901 ; Havre and Roubaix, which in 1821 had 17,000 and 9000 respectively, now have 130,000 and 142,000. In these great increases the multiplica- tion of parishes has not always been proportionate to the increase of the population, and this is one of the causes of the religious indifference into which so many of the working people have fallen. It should be re- membered that in former days nine-tenths of the peo- ple of France lived in the country; that while 550 out of every 1000 Frenchmen lived by agriculture in 1850, that number had fallen to 419 in 1891. The emigrants from the country hurried into the industrial towns, many of which multiplied their population by fifteen, and there, accustomed as they had been to the village bell, they found no church in the neighbourhood, and after a few brief generations the once faithful family from the country developed the faithless dweller in the town.

History, to the Third Republic. — The Treaty of Verdun (843) definitely established the partition of Charlemagne's empire into three independent king- doms, and one of these was France. A great church- man, Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims (806-82), was the deviser of the new arrangement. He strongly sup- ported the kingship of Charles the Bald, under whose sceptre he would have placed Lorraine also. To Hincmar the dream of a united Christendom did not appear under the guise of an empire, however ideal, but under the concrete form of a number of unit States, each being a member of one mighty body, the great Republic of Christendom. He would replace the empire by a Europe of which France was one member. Lender Charles the Fat (880-88) it looked for a moment as if Charlemagne's empire was about to come to life again ; but the illusion was temporary, and in its stead were quickly formed seven kingdoms: Francia, Navarre, Provence, Burgundy beyond the Jura, Lorraine, Germany, and Italy. Feudalism was in the seething-pot, and the imperial edifice was crumbling to dust. Towards the close of the tenth century, m the Prankish kingdom alone, twenty-nine provinces or fragments of provinces, under the sway of dukes, counts, or viscounts, constituted veritable sovereignties, and at the end of the eleventh century there were as many as fifty-five of these minor States, of greater or less importance. As early as the tenth century one of these feudal families had begun to take the lead, that of the Dukes of Francia, descendants of Robert the Strong, and lords of all the country be- tween the Seine and the Loire. From 887 to 987 they successfully defended French soil against the invading Northmen, and Eudes, or Odo, Duke of Francia (887- 898), Robert, his brother (922-923), and Raoul, or Rutlolph, Robert's son-in-law (923-936), occupied the throne for a brief interval. The weakness of the later Carlovingian kings was evident to all, and in 987, on the death of Louis V, Adalberon, Archbishop of Reims, at

a meeting of the chief men held at Senlis, contrasted the incapacity of the Carlovingian (Charles of Lorraine, the heir to the throne, with the merits of Hugh, Duke of Francia. Gerbert, who afterwards became Syl- vester II, adviser and secretary to Adalberon, and Arnoul, Bishop of Orleans, also spoke in support of Hugh, with the result that he was proclaimed king. Thus the Capetian dynasty had its rise in the person of Hugh Capet. It was the work of the Church, brought to pass by the influence of the See of Reims, renowned throughout France since the episcopate of Hincmar, renowned since the days of Clovis for the privilege of anointing the Prankish kings conferred on its titular, and renowned so opportunely at this time for the learning of its episcopal school presided over by Gerbert himself.

The Church, which had set up the new djTiasty, exercised a very salutary influence over French social life. That the origin and growth of the " Chansons de geste", i. e. of early epic literature, are closely bound up with the famous pilgrim shrines, whither the piety of the people resorted, has been recently proved by the literary labours of M. Bedier. And military courage and physical heroism were schooled and blessed by the Church, which in the early part of the eleventh cen- tury transformed chivalry from a lay institution of German origin into a religious one, by placing among its liturgical rites the ceremony of knighthooil, in which the candidate promised to defend truth, justice, and the oppressed. The Congregation of Cluny, foimdetl in 910, which made rapid progress in the eleventh century, prepared France to play an important part in the reformation of the Church undertaken in the second half of the eleventh century by a monk of Cluny, Greg- ory VII, and gave the Church two other popes after him. Urban II and Paschal II. It was a Frenchman, Urban II, who at the Council of Clermont (1095) started the glorious movement of the Crusades, a war taken up by Christendom when France had led the way.

The reign of Louis VI (1108-37) is of note in the history of the Church, and in that of France; in the one, because the solemn adhesion of Louis VI to Pope Innocent II assured the unity of the Church, which at the time was seriously menaced by the Antipope Ana- cletus; in the other, becaase for the first time Capetian kings took a stand as the champions of law and order agamst the feudal system and as the protectors of public rights. A churchman, Suger, Abbot of St- Denis, a friend of Louis VI and minister under Louis VII (1137-80), developed and realized this ideal of kingly duty. Louis VI, seconded by Suger, and counting on the support of the towns — the "com- munes", as they were called when they had obliged the feudal lords to grant them charters of freedom — fulfilled to the letter the role of prince as it was con- ceived by tlie theology of the Middle Ages. _ " Kings have long arms", wrote Suger, " and it is their duty to repress with all their might, and by right of their office, the daring of those who rend the State by endless wars, who rejoice in pillage, and who destroy homesteads and churches." Another French church- man, St. Bernard, won Louis VII for the Crusades; and it was not his fault that Palestine, where the First Crusade had set up a Latin kingdom, tlid not remain a French colony in the service of the Church. The divorce of Louis VII and Eleanor of .^quitaine (1152) marred the ascendancy of French influence by paving the way for the growth of Anglo-Norman pretensions on the soil of France from the Channel to the Pyrenees. Soon, however, by virtue of feudal laws the French king, Philip Augustus (1180-1223), proclaimed him- self suzerain over Richard Cceur de Lion and John Lackland, and the victory of Bouvines which he gained over the Emperor Otto IV, backed by a coali- tion of feudal nobles (1214), was the first event in French history which called forth a movement of national solidarity aroimd a French king. The war