Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/214

 FRANCE

174

FRANCE

administrative staff of the Directory, who by individ- ual warrants deported priests charged with inciting to disturbance. In this way 1657 French, and 8235 Bel- gian, priests were driven into exile. The aim of the Directory was to substitute for Catholicism the culte dicadaire, and for Sunday observance the rest on the d^cadis, or tenth days. In Paris fifteen churches were given over to this cult. The Directory also favoured the unofficial attempt of Chemin, the writer, and a few of his friends to set up a kind of national Church under the name of "Theophilanthropy "; but Theophilan- thropy and the culte dicadaire, while they disturbed the Church, did not satisfy the needs of the people for priests, altars, and the traditional festivals.

All these were restored by the Concordat of Napo- leon Bonaparte, who became Consul for ten years on 4 November, 1799. The Concordat assured to French Catholicism, in spite of the interpolation of the arlicles organiques, a hundred years of peace. The conduct of Napoleon I, when he became emperor (18 May, 1804), towards Pius VII was most offensive to the papacy; but even during those years when Napoleon was ill- treating Pius VII and keeping him a prisoner, Catholi- cism in France was reviving and expanding day by day. Numerous religious congregations came to life again or grew up rapidly, often under the guidance of simple priests or hmnble women. The Sisters of the Christian Schools of Mercy, who work in hospitals and schools, date from 1802, as do also the Sisters of Providence of Langres; the Sisters of Mercy of Mon- tauban from 1804; the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at St-Julien-du-Gua date from 1805. In 1806 we have the Sisters of Reuilly-sur-Loire, founded by the Abb6Dujarie; the Sisters of St. Regis at Aubenas, founded by the Abb6 Therne; the Sisters of Notre- Dame de Bon Secours at Charly ; the Sisters of Mercy of Billom. The Sisters of Wisdom founded by Blessed Grignon de Montfort remodelled their institutions at this time in La Vend<^e, and Madame Dupleix was founding at Lyons and at Dorat the Confraternity of Mary and Joseph for visiting the prisons. The year 1807 saw the coming of the Sisters of Christian Teach- ing and Nursing (de V Instruction chrHienne et des Malades) of St-Gildas-des-Bois founded by the Abb6 Deshayes, and the great teaching order of the Sisters of Ste-Chr6tienne of Metz. In 1809 there appeared in A veyron the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary ; in 1810, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Vaur (Ardeche), the Sisters Hospitallers of Rennes, and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny. — Such was the fruit of eight years of religious revival, and the list could easily be con- tinued through the years that followed.

In the Wars of the Revolution, which began 20 April, 1792, the French missionary qualities which, under the old regime, had been employed in the service of the Christian ideal were consecrated to " the Rights of Man" and to emancipating the people from "the tyrants"; but in the Napoleonic Wars which followed, these very peoples, fired with principles of liberty which had come to them from France, expressed their newly developed national consciousness in a struggle against French armies. In this way the propaganda of the Revolution had in the end a disastrous reac- tion on the very country where its ideals originated. During the nineteenth century France was destined to undertake several wars for the emancipation of na- tionalities—the Greek War (1827-28) under the Res- toration; the Italian War (1859) imder the Second Empire — and it was in the name of the principle of nationality that the Second Empire allowed German unity to grow until, in 1870, it had reached its full growth at the expen.se of France.

Under the Restoration parliamentary government was introduced into France. The Revolution of July, 1830, the "liberal" and "bourgeois" revolution, as- serted against the absolutism of Charles X those rights which had been guaranteed to Frenchmen by

the Constitution — the " Charte " as it was called — and brought to the throne Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, during whose reign, as "King of the French", the establishment of French rule in Algeria was finally completed. One of the most admirable charitable institutions of French origin dates from the July Monarchy, namely the Little Sisters of the Poor begun (1840) by Jeanne Jugan, Fanchon Aubert, Marie Jaraet, and Virginie Tredaniel, poor working-women who formed themselves into an association to take care of one blind old woman. In 1900 the congrega- tion thus begun counted more than .3000 Little Sisters distributed among 250 to 200 houses all over the world, and caring for 28,000 old people. Under the July Monarchy, also, the conferences of St. Vincent de Paul were founded, the first of them at Paris, in May, 1833, by pious laymen under the prompting of Ozanam, for the material and moral assistance of poor families; in 1900 there were in France alone 1224 of these conferences, and in the whole world 5000. In 1895 the city of Paris had 208 conferences caring for 7908 families. The mean animal receipts of the con- ferences of St. Vincent de Paul in the whole of France amount to 2,198,500 francs ($440,000.00 or £88,000), and the mean annual expenditure 2,221,035 francs (.1444,000.00 or £88,800). In 1906 the receipts of the conferences all over the world amounted to 13,453,228 francs ($2,690,645), and their expenditures to 13,541,- 504 francs ($2,708,300), while, to meet extraordinary demands, they had a reserve balance of 3,069,154 francs ($613,830). The annual expenditure always ex- ceeds the amount annually received. As Cardinal Regnier was fond of saying, "The conferences have taken the vow of poverty."

The Revolution of February, 1848, against Louis Philippe and Guizot, his minister, who wished to maintain a property ciualification for the suffrage, led to the establishment of the Second Republic and universal suffrage. By granting liberty of teaching {Loi Falloux), and by sending an army to Rome to assist Pius IX, it earned the gratitude of Catholics. At this point in history, when so many social and democratic aspirations were being agitateil, the social efficaciousness of Christian thought was dem- onstrated by the Vicomte de Melun, who developed the "SociiSt^ Charitable" and the "Annales de la Charit6" and carricil a law on okl-age pensions and mutual benefit societies; and by Le Provost, founder of the Congregation of the Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul, who, leading a religious life m the garb of lay- men, visited among the working classes.

The Second Empire, the issue of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'Hat (2 December, 1851), affirmed universal suff'rage and thus secured the victory of French democracy; but it reduced parlementarisme to an insignificant role, the Plebiscite being employed as an ordinary means of ascertaining the will of the people. It was the Second Empire, too, that gave Nizza, Savoy, and Cochin-China to France.

The Third Republic, tumultuously proclaimed, 4 September, 1870, on the rums of the Empire over- thrown at Sedan, was victorious, thanks to Thiers and to the Army of Versailles, over the Parisian outbreak called the Commune (March-May, 1871). Effectively defined by the Constitution of 1875, it had to acquiesce in the Treaty of Frankfort (1871) by which Alsace and Lorraine were ceded to Germany. On the other hand it enriched the colonial possessions, or the sphere of influence, of France by the acquisition of Tongking, Tunis, and Madagascar. Under the Third Republic a parliamentary system with two chambers was estab- lished (m the double princii>le of a responsible ministry and a president abnvc all rcsporisiljility, the latter electeil by the tworlKimliers fora period of seven years. Thiers. MacMali.iii, .lulcs (h-^-'vy, Sadi-Carnot, I'Y'lix Faurc, lunile Louliet, Armand Fall ieres have been suc- cessively at the head of the French State since 1870.