The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (French: Constitution civile du clergé) was a law passed on 12 July 1790 during the French Revolution, that sought the complete control over the Catholic Church in France by the French government. As a result, a schism was created, resulting in an illegal and underground French Catholic Church loyal to the Papacy, and a "constitutional church" that was subservient to the State. The schism was not fully resolved until 1801. King Louis XVI ultimately granted Royal Assent to the measure after originally opposing it, but later expressed regret for having done so.
Earlier legislation had already arranged the confiscation of the Catholic Church's land holdings and banned monastic vows. This new law completed the destruction of the monastic orders, outlawing "all regular and secular chapters for either sex, abbacies and priorships, both regular and in commendam, for either sex". It also sought to settle the chaos caused by the earlier confiscation of Church lands and the abolition of tithes. Additionally, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy regulated the current dioceses so that they could become more uniform and aligned with the administrative districts that had recently been created. It emphasised that officials of the Church could not give their loyalty to anyone outside the French First Republic, specifically meaning the Papacy. Lastly, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy made bishops and priests elected. By having members of the clergy elected, those clergy within who accepted the State's terms lost their independence and were now subject to the State, since their parishioners would vote on the priest and bishops as opposed to these individuals being appointed by the Church hierarchy.
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was passed and some of the support for this came from figures that were within the Church, such as the priest and parliamentarian Pierre Claude François Daunou, and, above all, the revolutionary priest Henri Grégoire, who was the first French Catholic priest to take the Obligatory Oath. However, almost all bishops opposed the law and refused to take the loyalty oath it required. Over half of lower clergy also refused.
The law was extremely divisive and proved to be a turning point in the French Revolution. Historian Hilaire Belloc described it as a failure that "lit the civil war" that would occur in the following years.
Document outline
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy has four titles with different articles.
- The document begins with an introduction on why the document was written.
- Title I focuses on the dioceses and how they were to be administered.
- Title II focuses on the administration of the dioceses and how elections were to take place.
- Title III focuses on payment because the Clergy was a salaried employee of the State.
- Title IV focuses on the living requirements for bishops, parish priests, and the curates.
Status of the Church in France before the Civil Constitution
Even before the Revolution and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the Catholic Church in France (the Gallican Church) had a status that tended to subordinate the Church to the State. Under the Declaration of the Clergy of France (1682) privileges of the French monarch included the right to assemble church councils in their dominions and to make laws and regulations touching ecclesiastical matters of the Church or to have recourse to the "appeal as from an abuse" ("appel comme d'abus") against acts of the ecclesiastical power.
Even prior to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy:
- On 11 August 1789 tithes were abolished.
- On 2 November 1789, Catholic Church property that was held for purposes of church revenue was nationalized, and was used as the backing for the assignats.
- On 13 February 1790, monastic vows were forbidden and all ecclesiastical orders and congregations were dissolved, excepting those devoted to teaching children and nursing the sick.
- On 19 April 1790, administration of all remaining church property was transferred to the State.
Motivation of the Civil Constitution
The following interlinked factors appear to have been the causes of agitation for the confiscation of church lands and for the adoption of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy:
- The French government in 1790 was nearly bankrupt; this fiscal crisis had been the original reason for the king's calling the Estates General in 1789.
- The Church owned about six percent of the land in France. In addition the Church collected tithes.
- The Church used the six percent of the land they owned for a multitude of purposes which included churches, monasteries, convents, schools, hospitals, and other establishments which served the people of France.
- Owing, in part, to abuses of this system (especially for patronage), there was enormous resentment of the Church, taking the various forms of atheism, anticlericalism, and anti-Catholicism.
- Many of the revolutionaries viewed the Catholic Church as a retrograde force.
- At the same time, there was enough support for a basically Catholic form of Christianity that some means had to be found to fund the Church in France.
Debate over the Civil Constitution
On 6 February 1790, one week before banning monastic vows, the National Constituent Assembly asked its ecclesiastical committee to prepare the reorganization of the clergy. No doubt, those who hoped to reach a solution amenable to the papacy were discouraged by the consistorial address of 22 March in which Pius VI spoke out against measures already passed by the Assembly; also, the election of the Protestant Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne to the presidency of the Assembly brought about "commotions" at Toulouse and Nîmes, suggesting that at least some Catholics would accept nothing less than a return to the ancien régime practice under which only Catholics could hold office.
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy came before the Assembly on 29 May 1790. François de Bonal, Bishop of Clermont, and some members of the Right requested that the project should be submitted to a national council or to the Pope, but did not carry the day. Joining them in their opposition to the legislation was Abbé Sieyès, one of the chief political theorists of the French Revolution and author of the 1789 pamphlet "What Is the Third Estate?"
Conversely, the Jansenist theologian Armand-Gaston Camus argued that the plan was in perfect harmony with the New Testament and the councils of the fourth century.
The Assembly passed the Civil Constitution on 12 July 1790, two days before the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. On that anniversary, the Fête de la Fédération, Talleyrand and three hundred priests officiated at the "altar of the nation" erected on the Champ de Mars, wearing tricolor waistbands over their priestly vestments and calling down God's blessing upon the Revolution.
In 1793, the War in the Vendée was influenced by the Constitution passing due to the devout population toward the Church among other social factors.
Legal status of the Church in France under the Civil Constitution
As noted above, even prior to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, church property was nationalized and monastic vows were forbidden. Under the Civil Constitution of the Clergy:
- There were 83 bishops, one per department, rather than the previous 135 bishops.
- Bishops (known as constitutional bishops) and priests were elected locally; electors had to sign a loyalty oath to the constitution. There was no requirement that the electors be Catholics, creating the ironic situation that Protestants and even Jews could help elect the Catholic priests and bishops. Their proportion in the French population was however very small.
- The authority of the Pope over the appointment of clergy was reduced to the right to be informed of election results, "as to the visible head of the universal Church, as a testimony to the unity of faith and communion maintained with him."
The tone of the Civil Constitution can be gleaned from Title II, Article XXI:
In short, new bishops were required to swear loyalty to the State in far stronger terms than to any religious doctrine. Even in this revolutionary legislation, there are strong remnants of Gallican royalism.
The law also included some reforms supported even by many within the Church. For example, Title IV, Article I states, "The law requiring the residence of ecclesiastics in the districts under their charge shall be strictly observed. All vested with an ecclesiastical office or function shall be subject to this, without distinction or exception." In effect, this banned the practice by which younger sons of noble families would be appointed to a bishopric or other high church position and live off its revenues without ever moving to the region in question and taking up the duties of the office. The abuse of bishoprics by the nobility was further reduced in Title II, Article XI: "Bishoprics and cures shall be looked upon as vacant until those elected to fill them shall have taken the oath above mentioned." This unified state control over both the nobility and the Church through the use of elected bishops and the oath of loyalty.
Additionally, the constitution did not deny the role of the Pope as the head of the universal Church:
No church or parish of France nor any French citizen may acknowledge upon any occasion, or upon any pretext whatsoever, the authority of an ordinary bishop or of an archbishop whose see shall be under the supremacy of a foreign power, nor that of his representatives residing in France or elsewhere; without prejudice, however, to the unity of the faith and the intercourse which shall be maintained with the visible head of the universal Church, as hereafter provided.
Delay in implementation
For some time, Louis XVI delayed signing the Civil Constitution, saying that he needed "official word from Rome" before doing so. Pope Pius VI broke the logjam on 9 July 1790, writing a letter to Louis rejecting the arrangement. On 28 July, 6 September, and 16 December 1790, Louis XVI wrote letters to Pius VI, complaining that the National Assembly was forcing him to publicly accept the Civil Constitution, and suggesting that Pius VI compromise with them by accepting a few selected articles. On 10 July, Pius VI wrote to Louis XVI, indicating to the king that the Church could not accept any of the provisions of the Constitution; insofar as the church could not tolerate a national legislature, much less one of such secularist and revolutionary inclinations, dictating the internal organization of the church. On 17 August, Pius VI wrote to Louis XVI of his intent to consult with the cardinals about this, but on 10 October Cardinal Rochefoucauld, the Archbishop of Aix, and 30 of France's 131 bishops sent their negative evaluation of the main points of the Civil Constitution to the Pope. Only four sitting bishops actively supported the Constitution. On 30 October, the same 30 bishops restated their view to the public, signing a document known as the Exposition of Principles ("Exposition des principes sur la constitution civile du clergé"), written by Jean de Dieu-Raymond de Cucé de Boisgelin
On 27 November 1790, still lacking the king's signature on the law of the Civil Constitution, the National Assembly voted to require the clergy to sign an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. During the debate on that matter, on 25 November, Cardinal de Lomenie wrote a letter claiming that the clergy could be excused from taking the Oath if they lacked mental assent; that stance was to be rejected by the Pope on 23 February 1791. On 26 December 1790, Louis XVI finally granted his public assent to the Civil Constitution, allowing the process of administering the oaths to proceed in January and February 1791.
Pope Pius VI's 23 February rejection of Cardinal de Lomenie's position of withholding "mental assent" guaranteed that this would become a schism. The Pope's subsequent condemnation of the revolutionary regime and repudiation of all clergy who had complied with the oath completed the schism.
Oath controversy
Within the Civil Constitution of the Clergy there was a clause that required the Clergy to take an oath stating the individual's allegiance to France. The oath was basically an oath of fidelity and it required every priest in France to publicly declare whether or not they believed the French state or the Pope had supreme authority in ecclesiastical matters. This oath was very controversial because many priests believed that they could not put their loyalty towards France before their loyalty towards God. Conversely, refusal to make the oath signaled a rejection of the Constitution and, implicitly, the legitimacy of the French government (at the time, still including the King).
On 16 January 1791 approximately half of those the law required to take the oath did so, with the remainder awaiting the decision of Pope Pius VI on what exactly swearing it signified and the appropriate response. Among the higher ranks of the church the response was much more negative; only 7 of the 135 sitting bishops took the oath.
In March 1791 Pope Pius VI announced that the oath was against the beliefs of the Church. In doing so, he divided the church into "juring" and "nonjuring" clergy, with jurors being those who took the oath and nonjurors those who refused. The Pope condemned those who took the oath and went as far as saying that they were absolutely separated from the church. Additionally, the Pope expressed disapproval of the Constitution of the Clergy in general and chastised Louis XVI for assenting to it. The law's domestic opponents protested that the Revolution was destroying their "true" faith and this was also seen in the two groups of individuals that were formed because of the oath. Those who believed that the Revolution was causing their "true" faith to be destroyed sided with the "non-jurors" and those who believed that the French government should have a say in religion sided with the "jurors".