Confiscating the common good: Small towns and religious politics in the French Revolution

By Edward J. Woell

Comprising five microhistories, this book proposes that the French Revolution’s religious politics in small towns weakened democratic society to such an extent that it precluded political democracy. It details two revolutionary dynamics that damaged the civic life of small towns: social polarisation and the loss of local institutions that had been a source of social capital as well as a common good. Detailed narratives about Pont-à-Mousson, Gournay-en-Bray, Vienne, Haguenau and Is-sur-Tille also reveal that contrary to the view upheld by many scholars, small-town religious politics extended far beyond the pivotal Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791. Other developments — the nationalisation of Church property, the dissolution of religious orders, and the elimination of bishoprics, chapters, parishes and collegial churches — also adversely affected the wellbeing of these small urban communities not only in the Revolution but also in the two centuries that followed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Aug 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781526159120

Book preview

Confiscating the common good

Studies in

Modern French and

Francophone History

Edited by

Julie Kalman, Jennifer Sessions and Jessica Wardhaugh

This series is published in collaboration with the Society for the Study of French History (UK) and the French Colonial Historical Society. It aims to showcase innovative monographs and edited collections on the history of France, its colonies and imperial undertakings, and the francophone world more generally since c. 1750. Authors demonstrate how sources and interpretations are being opened to historical investigation in new and interesting ways, and how unfamiliar subjects have the capacity to tell us more about France and the French colonial empire, their relationships in the world, and their legacies in the present. The series is particularly receptive to studies that break down traditional boundaries and conventional disciplinary divisions.

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Confiscating the common

good

Small towns and religious politics

in the French Revolution

Edward J. Woell

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © Edward J. Woell 2022

The right of Edward J. Woell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 5913 7 hardback

First published 2022

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Front cover: Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, Vue de la ville de Salins, en Franche-Comté.

Bibliothèque nationale de France

Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Acknowledgments

List of abbreviations

Introduction

1Hidden in plain sight

2A new story

3Two tribes

4Out of many, one

5Myth and realpolitik

6A forgotten fight

Conclusion

Appendices

Bibliography

Index

Figures

1.1France in 1793 and the location of towns considered in this book. Flappiefh / Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified by the author.

2.1Pont-à-Mousson in 1827. Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.

3.1Gournay-en-Bray in 1842. Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.

3.2Parish circumscription by department, 1790–1793. Created by the author.

3.3The Ecclesiastical Oath by department, 1791–1792. Created by the author.

4.1Vienne in 1846. Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.

5.1Haguenau in 1763. Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.

6.1Denis Chauchot’s written verse to a song protesting state confiscation of a metal crucifix in the parish church of Is-sur-Tille, 9 November 1792, ADCO Q 778. Photograph of document from the Archives départementales de la Côte d’Or, taken by author on 9 June 2006. Archival file code: Q 778.

Tables

1.1The approximate urban and rural populations of France, 1789–1791

4.1The estimated value of biens nationaux in the municipality of Vienne (Isère), 17 February 1791

Acknowledgments

If it is true that authors cannot help but write themselves into the stories they create, that so much of this book considers small, isolated, and often unremarkable institutions is a testament to how important they have been in my life. Accordingly, for having written this book I am most indebted to the establishment where I have been a history professor for almost two decades, Western Illinois University (WIU). Much like the many institutions discussed in this book, recently my own community of scholars has been buffeted by a series of crises related to matters both within and beyond its control. In spite of such adversity, what became the genesis of this book is owed to WIU’s University Research Council and its Foundation (in the form of its Summer Stipend funding), which provided the seed money that enabled me to conduct research at multiple archives in France over many years. Additional funding provided by the Provost (through the Faculty Travel Award) and the College of Arts and Sciences allowed me to present several papers at professional conferences, which became the initial sounding boards for what follows. On a more personal note, I thank two of my former departmental chairs, Dr. Simon Cordery, who kindly read some of what appears in these pages, and Dr. Keith Boeckelman, who pointed me toward the work of Robert Putnam and thus helped me find a lynchpin for the book’s argument. My institutional gratitude also extends to WIU’s Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Susan Martinelli-Fernandez, who was a source of personal support and encouragement over the many years it took for my research and writing to bear fruit.

I am no less obliged to some of the professional organizations to which I belong as well as colleagues long supporting them. Perhaps the most important of these is the Society for French Historical Studies (SFHS), whose annual meetings I occasionally attended and at which I presented several papers that then became integral parts of this book. As much as I appreciate the insight, advice, and criticism provided by my SFHS commentators and panel audiences, I am also thankful for colleagues who formed the backbone of such an organization, and as such provided key stepping stones for those fortunate enough to make careers out of studying the French past.

Among the unsung heroes behind the scenes of this book are those in France who may not even remember me, but whose assistance was often indispensable: the dedicated professionals plying their expertise at the archives where I did research between 2004 and 2019. Among these often-overlooked facilities, the most helpful for my work proved to be the last two I had visited: the archives départementales du Bas-Rhin in Strasbourg and the archives municipales de Haguenau. The hours I spent at the former became the key moment when my idea for the book congealed and began to take shape. As for the latter, I am especially grateful to Haguenau’s archivist, Madame Suzanne Muller, who understood how limited my time in France would be and therefore opened the municipal archives early (only on my behalf) on many days over the academic year of 2018–2019.

As I worked to the finish the manuscript, I received much assistance from Dr. Sterling J. Kernek, a Cambridge University Ph.D. and history professor emeritus who graciously agreed to read every word I wrote and offered me invaluable scholarly advice and writing correctives. Similarly, the anonymous readers who examined the manuscript for Manchester University Press (MUP) personified an uncommon degree of professionalism and expertise through the many constructive comments and suggestions they made. The editor of MUP’s Studies in French and Francophone History Series, Alun Richards, was essential in directing me as I faced the many twists and turns of completing the book and launching it into the scholarly sphere. As much as Manchester University Press has assisted me with the book’s publication, I alone remain responsible for every error found here—including any committed in my translation of sources from the original French into English.

Although he may not be fully aware of it, the imprint left upon this book by my one-time dissertation advisor, Dr. Julius Ruff, is both considerable and one for which I am deeply indebted. About thirty years ago Julius introduced me not only to the historiography of Old-Regime and Revolutionary France but also to one of the most intrepid and lucid scholars of the subject, Alexis de Tocqueville. Julius helped me appreciate Tocqueville’s insight, but just as important he personified an intellectual honesty that enabled me to acknowledge, for example, when The Ancien Régime and the Revolution was in error. In other words, he taught me to value what the past really was far above what I prefer it to have been.

Finally, I thank my partner of over fifteen years, Lisa Kernek, and the daughter who has bloomed in our presence, Julia Woell. Lisa and Julia not only put up with my absences from home due to research trips to France and professional conferences in the United States; they also accompanied me on a year-long sabbatical in Strasbourg, France. Through the many perks and perils that befall a family living overseas, they showed undue patience and mercy—most notably for one too often preoccupied with his work and therefore too neglectful of his most important relationships. In spite of my personal failings, Julia and Lisa mean the world to me.

In the second volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville credited American women, despite a social inferiority imposed on them, with raising their own intellectual and moral level above and beyond that of American men. In his view, the superiority of women in the United States accounted for not only their deft perception of the true concept of democratic progress but also more broadly the unusual prosperity and growing strength of America. Recognizing how well this insight by Tocqueville corresponds to my own experience, I dedicate this book to the most resilient, courageous, and steadfast individuals I have known in my life: Lisa, Julia, and my sisters Catherine, Mary, and Ann.

November 2021

Abbreviations

Introduction

A law should be written not for private profit, but for the common benefit of the citizens.

Isidore of Seville, c. 600¹

Town institutions are to freedom what primary schools are to knowledge: they bring it within people’s reach and give men the enjoyment and habit of using it for peaceful ends. Without town institutions a nation can establish a free government but has not the spirit of freedom itself. Brief enthusiasms, passing interests, the instability of circumstances may grant the external forms of independence but that despotism which has been forced back into the depths of the social fabric resurfaces sooner or later.

Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835²

On 4 April 1790, in a small town near the Garonne River and the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains, a council of local leaders met in a fit of fear. Rumors had been spreading through their community, Saint-Gaudens, about a proposal at the Constituent Assembly in Paris that would expunge many Catholic bishoprics throughout France—including that of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, the nearby episcopal see. The hearsay shocked many of the town’s four thousand citizens because less than a year of revolution had already seen the demise of many local institutions. Among such losses were three houses belonging to Catholic religious orders and several layers of representative and judicial bodies; all were quickly felled by the French Revolution’s initial administrative and religious reforms. To add insult to injury, several months earlier it seemed as if the Constituent Assembly was poised to make the town the capital of a new department in the central Pyrenees.³ Instead, last-minute political maneuvering led to the creation of a new departmental capital at Tarbes, a slightly larger town farther to the west. Rather than becoming one of eighty-three new departmental chef-lieux, Saint-Gaudens was relegated to the status of a district seat in the Haute-Garonne Department, whose capital was the distant city of Toulouse.⁴

The town’s General Council that day took up a petition, composed and signed by the town’s active citizens, which was to be relayed to Paris in an effort to dissuade deputies from approving a proposal for fewer bishoprics. The petition’s authors at first held nothing back about how they felt. They asked, Are we counted for nothing within the reaches of the Empire? Are we destined for such degradation, of being denied privileges that we have only used to show our love and fidelity to the rulers who have reigned over this territory? Thinking aloud, they pondered whether we might feel the need, in light of our patriotic gift, to have our sacrifices validated, or to draw attention to the privations still being felt. Despite declaring that they would not groan in their heart, if ever an injustice was done to them, they went on to lament not only their losses but also the practical effects of having even more of their religious establishments close:

If the alarming rumors now spreading are true, we are threatened with the loss of our bishopric and its dependent establishments. If this destructive project takes place, the temporal and spiritual administrations will suffer for it. Feeling far inferior to everything, and subjected to a wholly foreign regime, we will permanently lose institutions here that remain the most solid resource for the poor and contribute to the happiness and glory of our territory! While others thus enriched by our losses will be able to applaud the regeneration of France, we alone will have to regret being trampled upon, all the result of having joined the French crown under the laws of this Empire.

The citizens then placed the possible erasure of their bishopric in a wider context that included institutions in Saint-Gaudens that the Revolution had already eliminated, as well as the new burdens that reforms had added to an already cumbersome load carried by most townspeople. The ill effects they listed were legion: ending the authority wielded by local leaders in more than eight hundred parishes within a jurisdiction called the Nébouzan; terminating a royal judicial system that had enabled local justices to administer civil and criminal law in fifty-eight communities; suspending secondary judges who worked with the town’s business leaders in facilitating commerce and accommodating non-natives seeking trade networks in the region; eliminating the local estates, whose representatives determined the tax levies for all the town’s inhabitants; annulling the salt-tax that, although dreaded in many parts of France, yielded local revenue given how the mineral’s abundance in the Comminges was sold to other provinces; assessing the tax—euphemistically called the patriotic gift—that the Constituent Assembly expected from all citizens; and accelerating the collapse of the local wool trade through the sudden tax increase.

Yet as harmful as all these developments were, the town’s active citizens held that they would pale in comparison to the loss of the Comminges bishopric. Part of their reasoning lay in how the bishopric had developed a web of several interdependent institutions that not only generated local revenue but also met the needs of many citizens in Saint-Gaudens. The petition thus spoke collectively of these establishments, stating for example that "we could not consent to the total ruin of the territory and town, principally by sacrificing the bishopric, the chapter’s church, the seminary, and the Nébouzan collège." All these institutions, moreover, were said to enrich the town with spiritual assistance that mere political institutions could not provide. Much like its material equivalent, this form of sustenance derived from the realization, in the words of the petitioners,

that these establishments still belong to us and, in the hope that survives everything in desolate souls, have helped us bear misfortunes that we have experienced, including the near extinction of three religious houses, one of which provided a means of education for young ladies, and all of which through their income generated and supported the industry of citizens.

Another source of dread over the potential loss of the local bishopric involved the town’s dream of becoming a departmental capital. The petitioners regarded the capital status awarded to Tarbes as a temporary setback, an injustice that would soon be corrected after the Constituent Assembly gave way to its Legislative successor. Their hope was that the latter assembly would recognize how much the town had been wronged in the original administrative circumscription and therefore make it the capital of a new department. Yet the proposal for allowing only one diocese per department was construed as the death knell of their dream. As the authors put it, the looming privation of these establishments would lead us to believe that we will be devoured by ruin, for if the bishopric is abolished we can give up all hope of becoming a departmental capital, even by the next legislature.

Throughout the petition, the active citizens of Saint-Gaudens cited not just the short-term implications of losing their religious institutions; they also grieved the potentially detrimental effects of such losses over successive generations. This was especially the case for the chapter of canons that, unlike the cathedral found in a village farther up the road, resided in the town itself. The authors argued that

the spirit of religion would only weaken and die among us by taking away the splendor of divine worship, which would be the result of destroying a chapter that just as much has given aid to this town’s inhabitants and relief for the unfortunate people who come to, or surround it.

The long-term consequences of losing the collège—the secondary school in the town led by a religious order—were not lost on petitioners either. The obligation to send away our youth, they wrote, destined either to the sciences or ecclesiastical life, aside from increasing the expenses of this destination that would be incompatible with our means, would also have the disadvantage of turning away our children from native manners, and thus dissuade them from wanting to return to their homeland.⁵

Following the reading of the entire petition at the meeting, members of Saint-Gaudens’ General Council not only approved it but also resolved to compose their own deliberation no shorter than the original plea. Much of what they wrote echoed the active citizens’ arguments. Like the petition itself, for example, town officials bemoaned how close their community had come to being named a departmental capital, only to be turned away at the last minute. When the townspeople learned that Tarbes and not their own community had been named a departmental chef-lieu, municipal officials recalled,

What consternation followed this disastrous news! What agitation and tumult among so many people, frustrated by so legitimate a hope! What efforts we made to calm the spirits, the murmurs, we might say, the threats that openly fed the fear of an impending misery felt to be certain and inevitable!

Council members also agreed with petitioners on how the new religious legislation would affect Saint-Gaudens. If the reforms were adopted, the General Council concurred, it would completely defeat our hopes and produce our ruin, since we could no longer demand a department: indeed, our loss would be incalculable in all respects. It later added that "we will see, with the fall of the bishopric, the demise of our seminary, our chapter, and our collège; and to follow this would be real evils all the more impossible to remedy, since [the town] would no longer be able to obtain any department." Yet these officials also derived some hope from the way that the petition had united the town in an effort to prevent the potential demise of the Comminges bishopric:

We should not be surprised either by the general consternation erupting in our commune from the news of such a sinister project or the petition that its active citizens have composed, with its fears voiced by the entire commune’s body and the whole diocese, and with the common wish to gather all our efforts to remove a danger, whose potential reality is so shocking.

From there the General Council tried to explain why the town’s support for local religious institutions was so strong and unwavering. Similar to how the petition underscored the spiritual sustenance provided by these institutions, council members argued that the seminary of Saint-Gaudens was always intended to impart instruction and edification, with the example of good morals, which was why the townspeople could not fathom how religion could take from the diocese an institution always so dear to us, a sentiment that by necessity is now more than ever realized. Projecting the seminary’s loss into the future, they asserted that

if the young priests of the High-Comminges were summoned by their studies to a large, rich, and well-placed city like Toulouse, they would just bring back to their country an obvious disgust for mountains often covered with snow, whereupon they would see their service as extremely painful, and would soon leave local inhabitants without spiritual help, thus deserting a rugged and savage land that can only be occupied through prolonged habit.

Upon finishing their remarks, members of the General Council ordered that their deliberation as well as the petition from active citizens be sent to a printing shop, after which copies of both entreaties were sent to the Constituent Assembly.⁶

As for what became of these documents, in one sense Saint-Gaudens made its mark. The petition and the deliberation were not only received by the assembly; both pleas, in fact, were later included in the legislature’s records for 2 June 1790, as later memorialized in a printed volume of the Parliamentary Archives—where they remain to this day.⁷ Nonetheless, just as many in the town had feared, two deputies in the assembly representing the region failed to convince their colleagues that the institutions affiliated with the Comminges bishopric should be saved. These establishments soon closed on account of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which was decreed less than six weeks after the two documents had been brought to the assembly’s attention.⁸ Despite the earnest efforts by the people and politicians of this small town, the documents they had written received but a passing national glance; the spectacle over religious reform subsequently performed throughout France made sure of it.

One act of that ensuing drama took the stage at Saint-Gaudens, where Catholics quickly grew divided over the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791. Though most priests in and around the town took the 1791 Oath, in October of that same year the local prosecuting attorney observed that "fanaticism increases every day in this district. In many places, the children are no longer carried to the church for baptism. Constitutional curés neither hear confessions of the dying nor do they confer nuptial blessings on married couples."⁹ The town became so fraught with unrest that departmental authorities sent an entire company of line troops there in April of 1792, presumably to maintain civil and religious peace.¹⁰ Several months later, the town became a popular stopover for clerics who had refused to take the 1791 Oath and were on their way to forced exile in Spain—likely because these priests had heard about many potential allies in the area. The flow of refractory priests through the region seemingly pushed the town’s political and religious tensions to a breaking point by the autumn of 1792, when the local political club accused district and municipal officials of being tainted with incivility for allegedly interfering in public rites led by the constitutional clergy.¹¹ The acute chasm in and around the town persisted well into the Directory period, as was documented by a lieutenant of the gendarmerie. In October of 1798 he reported to his superiors that public spirit is lost not only in Saint-Gaudens but also in the mountain chain that surrounds it.¹² So stubborn was the town’s religious schism that not even the Concordat of 1801 could convince some local refractory Catholics to reconcile with their constitutional brethren; the result was a "petite église" within the town, whose faithful defied the wills of both Pope Pius VII and Napoleon Bonaparte.¹³

Given the decade-long tumult at Saint-Gaudens, we might understand why two documents written shortly before the crisis have long been overlooked.¹⁴ Yet the bad historical timing of these pleas fails to excuse the persistence of such a slight. Nor should we forget that this town was far from the only one in France that lost many local institutions due to a series of religious reforms adopted between 1789 and 1793. Indeed, of the 139 Catholic bishoprics that stood in France in 1789 or in territories it absorbed soon thereafter, more than two out of every five no longer existed in 1793. By the same year, moreover, not merely this town’s chapter but well over one hundred others in France had been suppressed, and every one of the five hundred or so Catholic churches that had been prestigiously designated as "collégiale" (including the church of Saint-Pierre in Saint-Gaudens) no longer had that title.¹⁵ In addition, the vast majority of churches or chapels once used by Catholic religious orders were closed and many had already been sold off or repurposed by the start of 1793. Roughly about 5 percent of the 30,000 or so active Catholic parishes in France that had stood in 1789 were already expunged by that time, and probably a larger number without pastors ceased to function. With the suppression of all Catholic religious orders by 1792, many primary and secondary schools likewise folded.¹⁶ The closures at Saint-Gaudens, in other words, were far from aberrations in the French Revolution’s religious politics. If anything, they were its essence.

By underscoring major themes found in the six chapters that follow, the 1790 petition and deliberation from Saint-Gaudens provide readers with a fitting port of entry for this book. Among these documents’ most striking features is the popular sentiment that they convey—a vexing concoction of anger, anxiety, and dread over what seemed like an impending death. Triggered by the potential loss of religious institutions, these feelings raise an obvious question: why did the people in this town care so much about these small and fragile establishments?¹⁷ The answer given in this book—and one demonstrated not just by this community but also many others that faced a similar fate throughout France—is quite simple: by 1789 these institutions had become their communities’ heart and soul. As such closures compounded in small towns over the several years that followed, the revolutionary promise to build a more democratic polity must have come across to many of their citizens as a bait-and-switch; while the state assured small towns that they would soon enjoy the fruits of self-rule, in many enclaves the religious establishments that had prepared communities for greater autonomy and the duties of democratic citizenship were no longer there. Simply put, the French Revolution’s religious politics tattered the social fabric of small towns to such an extent that it unraveled their democratic character.¹⁸ This, in effect, is the book’s argument as well as its contribution to the many accounts that have already been written about this event.

Connecting the religious institutions of just one small town to the more encompassing matter of democratic society in revolutionary France requires further explanation, including a sketch of both the civic reality and mental outlook implicit in the petition and deliberation from Saint-Gaudens. One striking revelation in these documents is how their authors framed these religious institutions within a broader context of politics in and beyond the town. Even though these facilities were religious in character, many in the town realized that these establishments had done much more than propagate religious beliefs and practices; they had long generated revenue, instilled complex skills and knowhow among the youth, and provided the poor, elderly, and infirm in the community with charitable relief. The petitioners and the General Council placed such institutions in a political context arguably because of these facilities’ proven ability to yield a kind of civic power within the town.

Even more to the point, the documents imply that the town had come to depend on these institutions, especially in light of how they had allocated opportunities and resources that often stood beyond the reach of any one individual. The establishments were therefore critical to the interests of the town—to such a degree that they were considered among its few collective possessions. As indicated by a statement like, these establishments still belong to us, religious institutions were more than just a vehicle for advancing the common good; in the eyes of this community such establishments were the common good.¹⁹ In a recent book bearing the same name, one of Robert Reich’s characterizations of the common good applies just as much to eighteenth-century Saint-Gaudens as it does to us today: The common good is a pool of trust built up over generations, a trust [in which] most people share the same basic ideals…. This pool of trust has great value. It makes everyone’s lives simpler and more secure.²⁰

For some, the notion that Saint-Gaudens’ citizens conceived of local religious institutions as its commonweal may come as a surprise. A considerable amount of recent historiography has shown that by the late eighteenth century, Catholic beliefs and practices were losing adherence in France, and there is little evidence suggesting that the people of this community were any more devout than typical citizens in other French small towns. What explains the seeming discrepancy? To a degree, this question represents a broader problem that scholars studying this time and place continue to confront.²¹ As much literature from the Enlightenment and the prolonged struggle over Jansenism suggests, Catholic clerics had made many enemies by the middle of the eighteenth century. While to some French they were implacable villains, to others they were merely the butt of well-deserved slurs and ridicule. Instead of being viewed as virtuous and self-sacrificing, celibacy increasingly was taken as a sign of hypocrisy and a sin against nature.²² Moreover, the rituals that stood at the center of Catholic identity had the look in some eyes of superstitious holdovers from a less rational age. Even if the sentiment behind the revolutionary anticlericalism and dechristianization that exploded