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<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: France</title><script src="https://dtyry4ejybx0.cloudfront.net/js/cmp/cleanmediacmp.js?ver=0104" async="true"></script><script defer data-domain="newadvent.org" src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"></script><link rel="canonical" href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06166a.htm"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <meta name="description" content="Geography, statistics, and history"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://feeds.newadvent.org/bestoftheweb?format=xml"><link rel="icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><link rel="shortcut icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><meta name="robots" content="noodp"><link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="../utility/screen6.css" media="screen"></head> <body class="cathen" id="06166a.htm">   <div id="capitalcity"><table summary="Logo" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width="100%"><tr valign="bottom"><td align="left"><a href="../"><img height=36 width=153 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></td><td align="right"> <form id="searchbox_000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0" action="../utility/search.htm">  <input type="hidden" name="safe" value="active"> <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0"/> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:9"/>  <label for="searchQuery" id="searchQueryLabel">Search:</label> <input id="searchQuery" name="q" type="text" size="25" aria-labelledby="searchQueryLabel"/>  <label for="submitButton" id="submitButtonLabel" class="visually-hidden">Submit Search</label> <input id="submitButton" type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" aria-labelledby="submitButtonLabel"/> </form> <table summary="Spacer" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td height="2"></td></tr></table> <table summary="Tabs" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../"> Home </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_white_on_color" href="../cathen/index.html"> Encyclopedia </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../summa/index.html"> Summa </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../fathers/index.html"> Fathers </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../bible/gen001.htm"> Bible </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../library/index.html"> Library </a></td> </tr></table> </td> </tr></table><table summary="Alphabetical index" width="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td class="bar_white_on_color"> <a href="../cathen/a.htm"> A </a><a href="../cathen/b.htm"> B </a><a href="../cathen/c.htm"> C </a><a href="../cathen/d.htm"> D </a><a href="../cathen/e.htm"> E </a><a href="../cathen/f.htm"> F </a><a href="../cathen/g.htm"> G </a><a href="../cathen/h.htm"> H </a><a href="../cathen/i.htm"> I </a><a href="../cathen/j.htm"> J </a><a href="../cathen/k.htm"> K </a><a href="../cathen/l.htm"> L </a><a href="../cathen/m.htm"> M </a><a href="../cathen/n.htm"> N </a><a href="../cathen/o.htm"> O </a><a href="../cathen/p.htm"> P </a><a href="../cathen/q.htm"> Q </a><a href="../cathen/r.htm"> R </a><a href="../cathen/s.htm"> S </a><a href="../cathen/t.htm"> T </a><a href="../cathen/u.htm"> U </a><a href="../cathen/v.htm"> V </a><a href="../cathen/w.htm"> W </a><a href="../cathen/x.htm"> X </a><a href="../cathen/y.htm"> Y </a><a href="../cathen/z.htm"> Z </a> </td></tr></table></div> <div id="mobilecity" style="text-align: center; "><a href="../"><img height=24 width=102 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></div>  <div id="mi5"><a href="../">Home</a> > <a href="../cathen">Catholic Encyclopedia</a> > <a href="../cathen/f.htm">F</a> > France</div> <div id="springfield2"> <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='cathen-728x90-top' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <h1>France</h1> <a href="https://gumroad.com/l/na2">Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99...</a> The fifth in size (usually reckoned the fourth) of the great divisions of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a>. <h2>Descriptive geography</h2> The area of France is 207,107 square miles; it has a coastline 1560 miles and a land frontier 1525 miles in length. In shape it resembles a hexagon of which the sides are: (1) From Dunkirk to Point St-Matthieu (sands and dunes from Dunkirk to the mouth of the Somme; cliffs, called falaises, extending from the Somme to the Orne, except where their wall is broken by the estuary of the Seine; granite boulders intersected by deep inlets from the Orne to Point St-Matthieu. (2) From Point St-Matthieu to the mouth of the Bidassoa (alternate granite cliffs and river inlets as far as the River Loire; sandy stretches and arid moors from the Loire to the Garonne; sands, lagoons, and dunes from the Garonne to the Pyrenees). (3) From the Bidassoa to Point Cerbére (a formation known as Pyrenean chalk). (4) From Point Cerbére to the mouth of the Roya (a steep, rocky frontier from the Pyrenees to the Tech; sands and lagoons between the Tech and the Rhone, and an unbroken wall of pointed rocks stretching from the Rhone to the Roya). (5) From the Roya to Mount Donon (running along the Maritime, the Cottain, and the Graian Alps, as well as the mountains of Jura and the Vosges). (6) From Mount Donon to Dunkirk (an artificial frontier differentiated by few marked physical peculiarities). <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> France is the only country in <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> having a coast line both on the Atlantic and on the Mediterranean; moreover, the passes of Belfort. Côte d'Or and Naurouse open up ready channels of communication between the Rhine, the English Channel, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean. Furthermore, it is noteworthy, that wherever the French frontier is defended by lofty mountains (as, for instance, the Alps, the Pyrenees), the border people are akin to the French either in race, speech, or customs (the Latin races), while on the other hand, the Teutonic races, differing so widely from the French in <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">ideas</a> and sentiment, are physically divided from them only by the low-lying hills and plains of the North-East. Hence it follows that France has always lent itself with peculiar facility to the spread of any great <a href="../cathen/08066a.htm">intellectual</a> movement, coming from the shores of the Mediterranean, as was the case with <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a>. France was the natural high road between <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a> and <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, between <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a> and the Iberian peninsula. On French soil, the races of the North mingled with those of the South; and the very geographical configuration of the country accounts in a certain sense for the <a href="../cathen/08050b.htm">instinct</a> of expansion, the gift of assimilation and of diffusion, thanks to which France has been able to play the part of general distributor of <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">ideas</a>. In fact, two widely different worlds meet in France. A journey from north to south leads through three distinct zones: the grain country reaching from the northern coast to a line drawn from Mézières to <a href="../cathen/10681a.htm">Nantes</a>; the vine country and the region of berries, southward from this to the latitude of <a href="../cathen/07026b.htm">Grenoble</a> and Perpignan; the land of olive-garths and orange groves, extending to the southern boundary of the country. Its climate ranges from the foggy promontories of Brittany to the sunny shores of Provence; from the even temperature of the Atlantic to the sudden changes which are characteristic of the Mediterranean. Its people vary from the fair-haired races of <a href="../cathen/06094b.htm">Flanders</a> and Lorraine, with a mixture of German blood in their veins, to the olive-skinned dwellers of the south, who are essentially Latin and Mediterranean in their extraction. Again Nature has formed, in the physiography of this country, a multitude of regions, each with its own characteristics its own <a href="../cathen/11727b.htm">personality</a>, so to speak which, in former times, popular <a href="../cathen/08050b.htm">instinct</a> called separate countries. The tendency to abstraction, however, which carried away the leaders of the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a>, is responsible for the present purely arbitrary divisions of the soil, known as "departments". Contemporary geography is glad to avail itself of the old names and the old divisions into "countries" and "provinces" which more nearly correspond to the geographical formations as well as the natural peculiarities of the various regions. "Massif Central" (the Central Plateau), a rugged land inhabited by a stubborn race that is often glad to leave its fastness, and those lands of comfort that lie along the great Northern Plain, the valley of the Loire, and the fertile basin in which <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> stands. But in spite of this variety, France is a unit. These regions, so unlike and so diversified, balance and complete each other like the limbs of a living body. As Michelet puts it, "France is a <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a>." <h2>Statistics</h2> In 1901, France had 31,031,000 inhabitants. The census no longer inquires as to the religion of French citizens, and it is only by way of approximation that we can compute the number of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> at 38 millions; <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a>, 600,000; <a href="../cathen/08399a.htm">Jews</a> 68,000. The population of the French colonies amounts to 47,680,000 inhabitants, and in consequence France stands second to <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> as a colonizing power; but the difference between them is very great, the colonies of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> having more than 356 millions of inhabitants. There are two points to be noted in the study of French statistics. The annual mean excess of births over deaths for each 10,000 inhabitants during the period 1901-1905 in France was 18, while in <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a> it was 106, in <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a> 113, in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> 121, in <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a> 149, in <a href="../cathen/02395a.htm">Belgium</a> 155. In 1907, the deaths were more numerous than the births, the number of deaths being 70,455, while that of births was only 50,535 an excess of 19,920 deaths and this is notwithstanding the fact that in 1907 there were nearly 45,000 more marriages than in 1890. Official investigations attributed this phenomenon to sterile marriages. In 1907, in only 29 of 86 departments, the number of births exceeded the number of deaths. It may perhaps be legitimately inferred that the sterility of marriages coincides with the decay of religious <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">belief</a>. Again it is important to note the increase in population of the larger cities between the years 1789 and 1901: <a href="../cathen/09715b.htm">Marseilles</a>, from 106,000 to 491,000; Lyons, from 139,000 to 459,000; <a href="../cathen/02682a.htm">Bordeaux</a>, from 83,000 to 256,000; Lille, from 13,000 to 210,000; <a href="../cathen/14795b.htm">Toulouse</a>, from 55,000 to 149,000; Saint-Etienne, from 9000 to 146,000. <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, which in 1817 had 714,000 inhabitants, had 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 multiplication of <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parishes</a> has not always been proportionate to the increase in the population, and this is one of the causes of the indifference into which so many of the working people have fallen. In should be remembered that in former days nine-tenths of the people in France lived in the country; that while 556 of every 1000 Frenchmen lived by agriculture in 1856, 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 <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a> from the country developed the faithless dweller in the town. <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h2>History to the Third Republic</h2> The treaty of <a href="../cathen/15350c.htm">Verdun</a> (843) definitely established the partition of <a href="../cathen/03610c.htm">Charlemagne's</a> empire into three independent kingdoms, and one of these was France. A great churchman, <a href="../cathen/07356b.htm">Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims</a> (806-82), was the deviser of the new arrangement. He strongly supported the kingship of Charles the Bald, under whose scepter he would have placed Lorraine also. To <a href="../cathen/07356b.htm">Hincmar</a>, the dream of a united <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a> 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 <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> of which France was one member. Under Charles the Fat (880-88) it looked for a moment as though <a href="../cathen/03610c.htm">Charlemagne's</a> empire was about to come to life again; but the illusion was temporary, and in its stead were quickly formed seven kingdoms: France, <a href="../cathen/10721a.htm">Navarre</a>, Provence, <a href="../cathen/03068a.htm">Burgundy</a> beyond the Jura, <a href="../cathen/09362a.htm">Lorraine</a>, <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a>, and <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>. <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">Feudalism</a> was the seething-pot, and the imperial edifice was crumbling to dust. Towards the close of the tenth century, in the <a href="../cathen/06238a.htm">Frankish</a> 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 lesser importance. As early as the tenth century one of the <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">families</a> had begun to take the lead, that of the Dukes of Francia, descendants of Robert the Strong, and lords of all the country between the Seine and the Loire. From 887 to 987 they successfully defended French soil against the invading <a href="../cathen/11115b.htm">Northmen</a>, and the Eudes, or Odo, Duke of Francia (887-98), Robert his brother (922-23), and Raoul, or Rudolph, Robert's son-in-law (923-36), occupied the throne for a brief interval. The weakness of the later <a href="../cathen/03610c.htm">Carlovingian</a> kings was evident to all, and in 987, on the death of Louis V, Adalberon, <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/12725a.htm">Reims</a>, at a meeting of the chief men held at Senlis, contrasted the incapacity of the <a href="../cathen/03610c.htm">Carlovingian</a> Charles of Lorraine, the heir to the throne, with the merits of Hugh, Duke of Francia. Gerbert, who afterwards became Sylvester II, adviser and secretary to Adalberon, and Arnoul, <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/11318b.htm">Orléans</a>, also spoke in support of Hugh, with the result that he was proclaimed king. Thus the Capetian dynasty had its rise in the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> of <a href="../cathen/07515c.htm">Hugh Capet</a>. It was the work of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, brought to pass by the influence of the <a href="../cathen/07356b.htm">See of Reims</a>, renowned throughout France since the episcopate of <a href="../cathen/07356b.htm">Hincmar</a>, renowned since the days of <a href="../cathen/04070a.htm">Clovis</a> for the privilege of anointing the <a href="../cathen/06238a.htm">Frankish</a> kings conferred on its titular, and renowned so opportunely at this time for the learning of its episcopal <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> presided over by Gerbert himself. The <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, which had set up the new dynasty, 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 <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">piety</a> of the people resorted, has been recently <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proved</a> by the literary efforts of M. Bédier. And military <a href="../cathen/06147a.htm">courage</a> and physical heroism were schooled and blessed by the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, which in the early part of the eleventh century transformed <a href="../cathen/03691a.htm">chivalry</a> from a lay institution of German origin into a religious one, by placing among its <a href="../cathen/09306a.htm">liturgical</a> rites the <a href="../cathen/03538b.htm">ceremony</a> of knighthood, in which the candidate promised to defend <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a>, <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a>, and the oppressed. The <a href="../cathen/04073a.htm">Congregation of Cluny</a>, founded in 910, which made rapid progress in the eleventh century, prepared France to play an important part in the reformation of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> undertaken in the second half of the eleventh century by a <a href="../cathen/10487b.htm">monk</a> of Cluny, <a href="../cathen/06791c.htm">Gregory VII</a>, and gave the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> two other <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a> after him, <a href="../cathen/15210a.htm">Urban II</a> and <a href="../cathen/11514b.htm">Pascal II</a>. It was a Frenchman, <a href="../cathen/15210a.htm">Urban II</a>, who at the Council of Claremont (1095), started the glorious movement of the <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">Crusades</a>, a <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> taken up by <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a> when France had led the way. The reign of Louis VI (1108-37) is of note in the <a href="../cathen/07365a.htm">history of the Church</a>, and in that of France; in the one because the solemn adhesion of Louis VI to <a href="../cathen/08012a.htm">Innocent II</a> assured the <a href="../cathen/15179a.htm">unity of the Church</a>, which at the time was seriously menaced by the <a href="../cathen/01447a.htm">Antipope Antecletus</a>; in the other because for the first time Capetian kings took a stand as champions of <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> and order against the <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> system and as the protectors of public <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a>. A churchman, <a href="../cathen/14326a.htm">Suger</a>, <a href="../cathen/01015c.htm">abbot</a> of St-Denis, a friend of Louis VI and minister of Louis VII (1137-80), developed and realized this ideal of kingly <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a>. Louis VI, seconded by <a href="../cathen/14326a.htm">Suger</a>, and counting on the support of the towns the "communes" they were called when they had <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> the <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> lords to grant them charters of freedom fulfilled to the letter the rôle of prince as it was conceived by the <a href="../cathen/14580a.htm">theology</a> of the <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">Middle Ages</a>. "Kings have long arms", wrote <a href="../cathen/14326a.htm">Suger</a>, "and it is their <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a> to repress with all their might, and by right of their office, the daring of those who rend the State by endless <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a>, who rejoice in pillage, and who destroy homesteads and churches." Another French Churchman, <a href="../cathen/02498d.htm">St. Bernard</a>, won Louis VII for the <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">Crusades</a>; and it was not his fault that Palestine, where the <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm#section1">first crusade</a> had set up a Latin kingdom, did not remain a French colony in the service of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. The <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorce</a> of Louis VII and Eleanor of Acquitain (1152) marred the ascendancy of French influence by paving the way for the growth of Anglo-Normal pretensions on the soil of France from the Channel to the Pyrenees. Soon, however, by virtue of <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> the French king, <a href="../cathen/12001a.htm">Philip Augustus</a> (1180-1223), proclaimed himself suzerain over <a href="../cathen/13041b.htm">Richard Coeur de Lion</a> and John Lackland, and the victory of Bouvines which he gained over the Emperor <a href="../cathen/11357a.htm">Otto IV</a>, backed by a coalition of <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> nobles (1214), was the first even in French history which called forth a movement of national solidarity around a French king. The <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> against the <a href="../cathen/01267e.htm">Albigensians</a> under Louis VIII (1223-26) brought in its train the establishment of the influence and authority of the French monarchy in the south of France. <a href="../cathen/09368a.htm">St. Louis IX</a> (1226-1270), "ruisselant de piété, et enflammé de charité", as a contemporary describes him, made kings so beloved that from that time dates that royal cult, so to speak, which was one of the moral forces in olden France, and which existed in no other country of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> to the same degree. Piety had been for the kings of France, set on their thrones, set on their thrones by the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church of God</a>, as it were a <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a> belonging to their charge or office; but in the <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">piety</a> of St. Louis there was a note all his own, the note of <a href="../cathen/07386a.htm">sanctity</a>. With him ended the <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">Crusades</a>, but not their spirit. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, project after project attempting to set on foot a <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusade</a> was made, and we refer to them merely to point out that the spirit of a militant apostolate continued to ferment in the <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">soul</a> of France. The project of Charles Valois (1308-09), the French expedition under Peter I of <a href="../cathen/04589a.htm">Cyprus</a> against Alexandria and the <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> coasts (1365-1367), sung of by the French trouvère, Guillaume Machault, the <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusade</a> of John of <a href="../cathen/10778a.htm">Nevers</a>, which ended in the bloody battle of Nicopolis (1396) in all these enterprises, the spirit of St. Louis lived, just as in the heart of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a> of the east, whom France was thus trying to protect, there has survived a lasting gratitude toward the nation of St. Louis. If the feeble nation of the Marionites cries out today to France for help, it is because of a letter written by St. Louis to the nation of St. Maroun in May, 1250. In the days of St. Louis the influence of the French epic literature in <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> was supreme. Brunetto Latini, as early as the middle of the thirteenth century wrote that, "of all speech [parlures] that of the French was the most charming, and the most in favour with everyone." French held sway in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> until the middle of the fourteenth century; it was fluently spoken at the Court of Constantinople at the time of the <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm#section4">Fourth Crusade</a>; and in Greece in the dukedoms, principalities and baronies found there by the House of <a href="../cathen/03068a.htm">Burgundy</a> and Champagne. And it was in French that Rusticiano of <a href="../cathen/12110a.htm">Pisa</a>, about 1300, wrote down from <a href="../cathen/12217a.htm">Marco Polo's</a> lips the story of his wonderful travels. The <a href="../cathen/11495a.htm">University of Paris</a>, founded by favour of <a href="../cathen/08013a.htm">Innocent III</a> between 1280 and 1213, was saved from a spirit of exclusiveness by the <a href="../cathen/07131b.htm">happy</a> intervention of <a href="../cathen/01287b.htm">Alexander IV</a>, who <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> it to open its chairs to the <a href="../cathen/10183c.htm">mendicant friars</a>. Among its professors were <a href="../cathen/05194a.htm">Duns Scotus</a>; the <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italians</a>, <a href="../cathen/14663b.htm">St. Thomas</a> and <a href="../cathen/02648c.htm">St. Bonaventure</a>; <a href="../cathen/01264a.htm">Albert the Great</a>, a German; <a href="../cathen/01298a.htm">Alexander of Hales</a>, an Englishman. Among its pupils it counted <a href="../cathen/13111b.htm">Roger Bacon</a>, <a href="../cathen/04628a.htm">Dante</a>, <a href="../cathen/12670c.htm">Raimundus Lullus</a>, Popes <a href="../cathen/06796a.htm">Gregory IX</a>, <a href="../cathen/15212a.htm">Urban IV</a>, <a href="../cathen/04019a.htm">Clement IV</a>, and <a href="../cathen/02662a.htm">Boniface VIII</a>. <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> France was also the birthplace of Gothic art, which was carried by French architects into <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a>. The method employed in the building of many Gothic <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedrals</a> i.e., by the actual assistance of the faithful bears witness to the fact that at this period the lives of the French people were deeply penetrated with <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a>. An <a href="../cathen/05257a.htm">architectural</a> wonder such as the <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedral</a> of <a href="../cathen/03635a.htm">Chartres</a> was in reality the work of popular art born of the <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> of the people who worshipped there. Under <a href="../cathen/12004a.htm">Philip IV, the Fair</a> (1285-1314), the royal house of France became very powerful. By means of alliances he extended his prestige as far as the Orient. His brother Charles of Valois married Catherine de Courtney, an heiress of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The Kings of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> and Minorca were his vassals, the King of <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a> his ally, the Kings of <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a> and <a href="../cathen/07547a.htm">Hungary</a> connections by marriage. He aimed at a sort of supremacy over the body politic of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a>. Pierre Dubois, his jurisconsult, dreamed that the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> would hand over all his domains to Philip and receive in exchange an annual income, while Philip would thus have the spiritual head of <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a> under his influence. <a href="../cathen/12004a.htm">Philip IV</a> laboured to increase the royal prerogative and thereby the national unity of France. By sending magistrates in <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> territories, by defining certain cases (cas royaux) as reserved to the king's competency, he dealt a heavy blow to the <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudalism</a> of the <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">Middle Ages</a>. But on the other hand, under his rule many anti-Christian maxims began to creep into law and politics. <a href="../cathen/09079a.htm">Roman law</a> was slowly re-introduced into social organization, and gradually the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of a united <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a> disappeared from the national policy. <a href="../cathen/12004a.htm">Philip the Fair</a>, pretending to rule by Divine right, gave it to be understood that he rendered an account of his kingship to no one under <a href="../cathen/07170a.htm">heaven</a>. He denied the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> right to represent, as the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> had always done in the past, the claims of morality and <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a> where kings were concerned. Hence arose in 1294-1303, his struggle with <a href="../cathen/02662a.htm">Pope Boniface VIII</a>, but in that struggle he was cunning enough to secure the support of the States-General, which represented public opinion in France. In later times, after centuries of monarchical government, this same public opinion rose against the abuse of power committed by its kings in the name of their pretended divine right, and thus made an implicit amende honorable to what the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> had taught concerning the origin, the limits, and the responsibility of all power, which had been forgotten or misinterpreted by the lawyers of <a href="../cathen/12004a.htm">Philip IV</a> when they set up their <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">pagan</a> State as the absolute source of power. The election of <a href="../cathen/04020a.htm">Pope Clement V</a> (1305) under Philip's influence, the removal of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> to <a href="../cathen/02158a.htm">Avignon</a>, the <a href="../cathen/11093a.htm">nomination</a> of seven French <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a> in succession, weakened the influence of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> in <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a>, though it has recently come to light that the <a href="../cathen/02158a.htm">Avignon</a> <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a> did not always allow the independence of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> to waver or disappear in the game of politics. <a href="../cathen/12004a.htm">Philip IV</a> and his successors may have had the illusion that they were taking the place of the German emperors in <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">European</a> affairs. The <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> was <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisoned</a> on their territory; the German empire was passing through a crisis, was, in fact, decaying, and the kings of France might well imagine themselves temporal vicars of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, side by side with, or even in opposition to, the spiritual vicar who lived at <a href="../cathen/02158a.htm">Avignon</a>. But at this juncture the Hundred Years War broke out, and the French kingdom, which aspired to be the arbiter of <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a>, was menaced in its very existence by <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. English kings aimed at the French crown, and the two nations fought for the possession of Guienne. Twice during the <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> was the independence of France imperilled. Defeated on the Ecluse (1340), at Crécy (1346), at <a href="../cathen/12178c.htm">Poitiers</a> (1356), France was saved by <a href="../cathen/03625a.htm">Charles V</a> (1364-80) and by Duguesclin, only to suffer French defeat under Charles VI at Agincourt (1415) and to be ceded by the Treaty of Troyes to Henry V, King of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. At this darkest hour of the monarchy, the nation itself was stirred. The revolutionary attempt by Etienne Marcel (1358), and the revolt which gave rise to the Ordonnace Cabochienne (1418) were the earliest signs of popular impatience at the absolutism of the French kings, but internal dissensions hindered an effective patriotic defence of the country. When Charles VII came to the throne, France had almost ceased to be French. The king and court lived beyond the Loire, and <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> was the seat of an English government. <a href="../cathen/08409c.htm">Blessed Joan of Arc</a> was the saviour of French nationality as well as French royalty, and at the end of Charles' reign (1422-61) Calais was the only spot in France in the hands of the English. The ideal of a united <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a> continued to haunt the <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">soul</a> of France in spite of the predominating influence gradually assumed in French politics by purely national aspirations. From the reign of Charles VI, or even the last years of <a href="../cathen/03625a.htm">Charles V</a>, dates the custom of giving to French kings the exclusive title of Rex Christianissimus. Pepin the Short and <a href="../cathen/03610c.htm">Charlemagne</a> had been proclaimed "Most Christian" by the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a> of their day: <a href="../cathen/01287a.htm">Alexander III</a> had conferred the same title on Louis VII; but from Charles VI onwards the title comes into constant use as the special prerogative of the kings of France. "Because of the vigour with which <a href="../cathen/03610c.htm">Charlemagne</a>, St. Louis, and other <a href="../cathen/06147a.htm">brave</a> French kings, more than the other kings of <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a>, have upheld the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">Faith</a>, the kings of France are known among the kings of <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a> as 'Most Christian'." Thus wrote Philippe de Mézières, a contemporary of Charles VI. In later times, the Emperor Frederick III, addressing Charles VII, wrote "Your ancestors have won for your name the title Most Christian, as a heritage not to be separated from it." From the pontificate of <a href="../cathen/11578a.htm">Paul II</a> (1464), the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a>, in addressing bulls to the kings of France, always use the style and title Rex Christianissimus. Furthermore, <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">European</a> public opinion always looked upon <a href="../cathen/08409c.htm">Bl. Joan of Arc</a>, who saved the French monarchy, as the heroine of <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a>, and believed that the <a href="../cathen/08409c.htm">Maid of Orléans</a> meant to lead the king of France on another <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusade</a> when she had secured him in the peaceful possession of his own country. France's national heroine was thus heralded by the fancy of her contemporaries, by Christine de Pisan, and by that <a href="../cathen/15333a.htm">Venetian</a> merchant whose letters have been preserved for us in the Morosini Chronicle, as a heroine whose aims were as wide as <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a> itself. The fifteenth century, during which France was growing in national spirit, and while men's minds were still conscious of the claims of <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a> on their country, was also the century during which, on the morrow of the Great Schism and of the Councils of Basle and of <a href="../cathen/04288a.htm">Constance</a>, there began a movement among the powerful <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> against <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> and king, and which aimed at the emancipation of the Gallican Church. The propositions upheld by <a href="../cathen/06530c.htm">Gerson</a>, and forced by him, as representing the <a href="../cathen/11495a.htm">University of Paris</a>, on the <a href="../cathen/04288a.htm">Council of Constance</a>, would have set up in the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> an aristocratic regime analogous to what the <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> lords. profiting by the weakness of Charles VI, had dreamed of establishing in the State. A royal proclamation in 1518, issued after the election of <a href="../cathen/09725a.htm">Martin V</a> maintained in opposition to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> "all the privileges and franchises of the kingdom," put an end to the custom of annates, limited the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of the Roman court in collecting <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">benefices</a>, and forbade the sending to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> of articles of gold or silver. This proposition was assented to by the young King Charles VII in 1423, but at the same time he sent <a href="../cathen/09725a.htm">Pope Martin V</a> an embassy asking to be absolved from the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> he had taken to uphold the principles of the Gallican Church and seeking to arrange a concordat which would give the French king a right of patronage over 500 <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">benefices</a> in his kingdom. This was the beginning of the practice adopted by French kings of arranging the government of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> directly with the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a> over the heads of the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>. Charles VII, whose struggle with <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> had left his authority still very precarious, was constrained, in 1438, during the Council of Basle, in order to appease the powerful <a href="../cathen/12386b.htm">prelates</a> of the Assembly of <a href="../cathen/02720b.htm">Bourges</a>, to <a href="../cathen/12454b.htm">promulgate</a> the <a href="../cathen/12333a.htm">Pragmatic Sanction</a>, thereby asserting in France those maxims of the Council of Basle which <a href="../cathen/05598a.htm">Pope Eugene</a> had condemned. But straightway he bethought him of a concordat, and overtures in this sense were made to <a href="../cathen/05601a.htm">Eugene IV</a>. Eugene replied that he well <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knew</a> the <a href="../cathen/12333a.htm">Pragmatic Sanction</a> "that odious act" was not the king's own free doing and a concordat was discussed between them. Louis XI (1461-83), whose domestic policy aimed at ending or weakening the new <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudalism</a> which had grown up during two centuries through the custom of presenting appanages to the brothers of the king, extended to the <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> the ill will he professed toward the <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> lords. He detested the <a href="../cathen/12333a.htm">Pragmatic Sanction</a> as an act that strengthened <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudalism</a>, and on 27 November, 1461, he announced to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> its suppression. At the same time he pleaded, as the demand of his Parliament, that for the future the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> should permit the collation of <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">ecclesiastical benefices</a> to be made either wholly or in part through the <a href="../cathen/02137c.htm">civil power</a>. The Concordat of 1472 obtained from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> very material concessions in this respect. At this time, besides "episcopal Gallicanism", against which <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> and king were working together, we may trace, in the writings of the lawyers of the closing years of the fifteenth century, the beginnings of a "royal Gallicanism" which taught that in France the State should govern the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. The <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italian</a> <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">wars</a> undertaken by Charles VIII (1493-98), and continued by Louis XII (1498-1515), aided by an excellent corps of artillery, and all the resources of French furia, to assert certain French claims over <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a> and <a href="../cathen/10298a.htm">Milan</a>, did not quite fulfill the dreams of the French kings. They had, however, a threefold result in the worlds of politics, religion, and art. Politically, they led foreign powers to believe that France was a menace to the balance of power, and hence arouse alliances to maintain that balance, such, for instance, as the League of <a href="../cathen/15333a.htm">Venice</a> (1495), and the Holy League (1511-12). From the point of view of art, their carried a breath of the <a href="../cathen/12765b.htm">Renaissance</a> across the Alps. And in the religious world they furnished France an opportunity on Italian soil of asserting for the first time the principles of royal Gallicanism. Louis XII, and the emperor Maximilian, supported by the opponents of <a href="../cathen/08562a.htm">Pope Julius II</a>, convened in <a href="../cathen/12110a.htm">Pisa</a> a council that threatened the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>. Matters looked very serious. The understanding between the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> and the French kings hung in the balance. <a href="../cathen/09162a.htm">Leo X</a> understood the danger when the victory of Marignano opened to <a href="../cathen/06207a.htm">Francis I</a> the road to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. The <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> in alarm retired to Bologna, and the Concordat of 1516, negotiated between the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> and Duprat, the chancellor, and afterwards approved of by the Ecumenical Council of the Lateran, recognized the right of the King of France to nominate not only to 500 <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">ecclesiastical benefices</a>, as Charles VII had requested, but to all the <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">benefices</a> in his kingdom. It was a fair gift indeed. But if in matters temporal the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> were thus in the king's hands, their institution in matters spiritual was reserved to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>. Pope and king by common agreement thus put an end to an episcopal aristocracy such as the Gallicans of the great councils had dreamed of. The concordat between <a href="../cathen/09162a.htm">Leo X</a> and <a href="../cathen/06207a.htm">Francis I</a> was tantamount to a solemn repudiation of all the anti-Roman work of the great councils of the fifteenth century. The conclusion of this concordat was one of the reasons why France escaped the <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Reformation</a>. From the moment that the disposal of <a href="../cathen/12466a.htm">church property</a>, as laid down by the concordat, belonged to the <a href="../cathen/02137c.htm">civil power</a>, royalty had nothing to gain from the <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Reformation</a>. Whereas the kings of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> and the German princelings saw in the reformation a chance to gain possession of <a href="../cathen/12466a.htm">ecclesiastical property</a>, the kings of France, thanks to the concordat, were already in legal possession of those much-envied goods. When <a href="../cathen/03625a.htm">Charles V</a> became King of <a href="../cathen/14169b.htm">Spain</a> (1516) and emperor (1519), thus uniting in his <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> the hereditary possessions of the House of <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a> and German, as well as the old domains of the House of <a href="../cathen/03068a.htm">Burgundy</a> in the Low Countries uniting moreover the Spanish monarchy with <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a>, <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a>, <a href="../cathen/13473b.htm">Sardinia</a>, the northern part of <a href="../cathen/01181a.htm">Africa</a>, and certain lands in America, <a href="../cathen/06207a.htm">Francis I</a> inaugurated a struggle between France and the House of <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a>. After forty-four years of <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a>, from the victory of Marignano to the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1515-59), France relinquished hopes of retaining possession of <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>, but wrested the <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">Bishoprics</a> of <a href="../cathen/10247a.htm">Metz</a>, Toul, and Verdun from the empire and had won back possession of Calais. The <a href="../cathen/14169b.htm">Spaniards</a> were left in possession of <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a> and the country around <a href="../cathen/10298a.htm">Milan</a>, and their influence predominated throughout the Italian Peninsula. But the dream which <a href="../cathen/03625a.htm">Charles V</a> had for a brief moment entertained of a world-wide empire had been shattered. During this struggle against the House of <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a>, France, for motives of political and military exigency, had been <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> to lean in the <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutherans</a> of <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a>, and even on the sultan. The foreign policy of France since the time of <a href="../cathen/06207a.htm">Francis I</a> had been to seek exclusively the good of the nation and no longer to be guided by the interests of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> at large. The France of the <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">Crusades</a> even became the ally of the sultan. But, by a strange anomaly, this new political grouping allowed France to continue its protection to the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a> of the East. In the <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">Middle Ages</a> it protected them by force of arms; but since the sixteenth centuries, by treaties called capitulations, the first of which was drawn up in 1535. The spirit of French policy had changed, but it is always on France that the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> communities of the East rely, and this protectorate continues to exist under the Third Republic, and has never failed them. The early part of the sixteenth century was marked by the growth of <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a> in France, under the forms of <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutheranism</a> and of <a href="../cathen/03198a.htm">Calvinism</a>. <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutheranism</a> was the first to make its entry. The minds of some in France were already prepared to receive it. Six years before <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Luther's</a> time, the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishop</a> <a href="../cathen/09114b.htm">Lefebvre of Etaples (Faber Stapulensis)</a>, a protégé of Louis XII and of <a href="../cathen/06207a.htm">Francis I</a>, had preached the necessity of reading the scriptures and of "bringing back religion to its primitive purity". A certain number of tradesmen, some of whom, for business reasons, had travelled in <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a>, and a few <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, were infatuated with <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutheran</a> <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">ideas</a>. Until 1634, <a href="../cathen/06207a.htm">Francis I</a> was almost favorable to the <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutherans</a>, and he even proposed to make <a href="../cathen/10151a.htm">Melanchthon</a> President of the Collège de France. But on learning, in 1534, that violent placards against the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> had been posted on the same day in many of the large towns, and even near the king's own room in the Château d'Amboise, he feared a <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutheran</a> plot; an inquiry was ordered, and seven <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutherans</a> were condemned to <a href="../cathen/12565a.htm">death</a> and burned at the stake in <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>. Eminent <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> like du Bellay, <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, and Sadolet, <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of Carpentras, deplored these executions, and the Valdois massacre ordered by d'Oppède, President of the Parliament of <a href="../cathen/01237e.htm">Aix</a>, in 1545. Laymen, on the other hand, who ill understood the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> gentleness of these <a href="../cathen/12386b.htm">prelates</a>, reproached them with being slow and remiss in putting down <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresy</a>; and when, under Henry II, <a href="../cathen/03198a.htm">Calvinism</a> crept in from <a href="../cathen/09040a.htm">Geneva</a>, a policy of <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a> was inaugurated. From 1547 to 1550, in less than three years, the chambre ardente, a committee of the Parliament of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, condemned more than 500 <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a> to retract their <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">beliefs</a>, to <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a>, or to death at the stake. Notwithstanding this, the <a href="../cathen/07527b.htm">Calvinists</a>, in 1555, were able to organize themselves into Churches on the plan of that at <a href="../cathen/09040a.htm">Geneva</a>; and, in order to bind these Churches more closely together, they held a synod in <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> in 1559. There were in France at that time seventy-two Reformed Churches; two years later, in 1561, the number had increased to 2000. The methods, too, of the <a href="../cathen/03198a.htm">Calvinist</a> propaganda had changed. The earlier <a href="../cathen/03198a.htm">Calvinists</a>, like the <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutherans</a>, had been artists and workingmen, but in the course of <a href="../cathen/14726a.htm">time</a>, in the South and in the West, a number of princes and noblemen joined their ranks. Among these were two princes of the blood, descendants of St. Louis: Anthony of Bourbon, who became King of Navarre through his marriage with Jeanne d'Albret, and his brother the Prince de Condé. Another name of note is that of Admiral de Coligny, nephew of that duke of Montmorency who was the Premier Baron of <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a>. Thus it came to pass that in France <a href="../cathen/07527b.htm">Calvinism</a> was not longer a religious force, but had become a political and military cabal; and the French kings in opposing it were but defending their own <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a>. <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> Such was the beginning of the Wars of Religion. They had for their starting-point the conspiracy of Amboise (1560) by which the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> leaders aimed at seizing the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> of Francis II, in order to remove him from the influence of Francis of <a href="../cathen/07074a.htm">Guise</a>. During the reigns of Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III, a powerful influence was exercised by the queen-mother, who made use of the conflicts between the opposing religious factions to establish more securely the power of her sons. In 1561, <a href="../cathen/03443a.htm">Catharine de' Medici</a> arranged for the Poissy discussion to try and bring about an understanding between the two creeds, but during the Wars of religion she ever maintained an equivocal attitude between both parties, favouring now the one and now the other, until the time came when, fearing that Charles IX would shake himself free of her influence, she took a large share of responsibility in the odious massacre of St. Bartholomew. There were eight of these <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">wars</a> in the space of thirty years. The first was started by a massacre of <a href="../cathen/07527b.htm">Calvinists</a> at Vassy by the troopers of <a href="../cathen/07074a.htm">Guise</a> (1 March, 1562), and straightway both parties appealed for foreign aid. Catharine, who was at this time working in the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> cause, turned to <a href="../cathen/14169b.htm">Spain</a>; Coligny and Condé turned to Elizabeth of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> and turned over to her the port of Havre. Thus from the beginning were foreshadowed the lines which the Wars of religion would follow. They opened up France to the interference of such foreign princes as Elizabeth and Philip II, and to the plunder of foreign soldiers, such as those of the Duke of Alba and the German troopers (Reiter) called in by the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a>. One after another, these <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">wars</a> ended in weak provisional treaties which did not last. Under the banners of the <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Reformation</a> party or those of the League organized by the <a href="../cathen/07074a.htm">House of Guise</a> to defend <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a>, political opinions ranged themselves, and during these thirty years of civil disorder monarchical centralization was often in trouble of overthrow. Had the <a href="../cathen/07074a.htm">Guise</a> party prevailed, the trend of policy adopted by the French monarchy towards <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> after the Concordat of <a href="../cathen/06207a.htm">Francis I</a> would have been assuredly less Gallican. That concordat had placed the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> of France and its episcopate in the hands of the king. The old episcopal Gallicanism which held that the authority of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> was not above that of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> assembled in council and the royal Gallicanism which held that the king had no superior on the earth, not even the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, were now allied against the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> monarchy strengthened by the <a href="../cathen/15030c.htm">Council of Trent</a>. The consequence of all this was that the French kings refused to allow the decisions of that council to be published in France, and this refusal has never been withdrawn. At the end of the sixteenth century it seemed for an instant as though the home party of France was to shake off the yoke of Gallican opinions. <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">Feudalism</a> had been broken; the people were eager for liberty; the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, disheartened by the corruption of the Valois court, contemplated elevating to the throne, in succession to Henry II, who was childless, a member of the powerful <a href="../cathen/07074a.htm">House of Guise</a>. In fact, the League had asked the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> to grant the wish of the people, and give France a <a href="../cathen/07074a.htm">Guise</a> as king. <a href="../cathen/07225a.htm">Henry of Navarre</a>, the heir presumptive to the throne, was a <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a>; <a href="../cathen/14033a.htm">Sixtus V</a> had given him the choice of remaining a <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a>, and never reigning in France, or of <a href="../cathen/01044d.htm">abjuring</a> his <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresy</a>, receiving <a href="../cathen/01061a.htm">absolution</a> from the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> himself, and, together with it, the throne of France. But there was third solution possible, and the French episcopate foresaw it, namely that the <a href="../cathen/01044d.htm">abjuration</a> should be made not to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> but to the French <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>. Gallican susceptibilities would thus be satisfied, dogmatic <a href="../cathen/11330a.htm">orthodoxy</a> would be maintained on the French throne, and moreover it would do away with the danger to which the unity of France was exposed by the proneness of a certain number of Leaguers to encourage the intervention of Spanish armies and the ambitions of the Spanish king, Philip II, who cherished the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of setting his own daughter in the throne of France. The <a href="../cathen/01044d.htm">abjuration</a> of <a href="../cathen/07225a.htm">Henry IV</a> made to the French <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> (25 July, 1593) was a victory of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> over <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a>, but none the less it was the victory of episcopal Gallicanism over the spirit of the League. Canonically, the <a href="../cathen/01061a.htm">absolution</a> given by the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> to <a href="../cathen/07225a.htm">Henry IV</a> was unavailing, since the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> alone could lawfully give it; but politically that <a href="../cathen/01061a.htm">absolution</a> was bound to have a decisive effect. From the day that <a href="../cathen/07225a.htm">Henry IV</a> became a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, the League was beaten. Two French <a href="../cathen/12386b.htm">prelates</a> went to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> to crave <a href="../cathen/01061a.htm">absolution</a> for <a href="../cathen/07225a.htm">Henry</a>. <a href="../cathen/12018b.htm">St. Philip Neri</a> ordered <a href="../cathen/02304b.htm">Baronius</a> smiling, no doubt, as he did so to tell the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, whose confessor he, <a href="../cathen/02304b.htm">Baronius</a> was, that he himself could not have <a href="../cathen/01061a.htm">absolution</a> until he had absolved the King of France. And on 17 September, 1595, the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> solemnly absolved <a href="../cathen/07225a.htm">Henry IV</a>, thereby sealing the reconciliation between the French monarchy and the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. The accession of the Bourbon royal family was a defeat for <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a>, but at the same time half a victory for Gallicanism. Ever since the year 1598 the dealing of the Bourbons with <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a> were regulated by the Edict of Nantes. This instrument not only accorded the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> the liberty of practicing their religion in their own homes, in the towns and villages where it had been established before 1597, and in two localities in each bailliage, but also opened to them all employments and created mixed tribunals in which judges were chosen equally from among <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> and Calvinists; it furthermore made them a political power by recognizing them for eight years as master of about one hundred towns which were known as "places of surety" (places de sûreté). Under favour of the political causes of the Edict <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> rapidly became an imperium in imperio, and in 1627, at <a href="../cathen/09006a.htm">La Rochelle</a>, they formed an alliance with <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> to defend, against the government of Louis XIII (1610-43), the privileges of which <a href="../cathen/13047a.htm">Cardinal Richelieu</a>, the king's minister, wished to deprive them. The taking of <a href="../cathen/09006a.htm">La Rochelle</a> by the king's troops (November, 1628), after a siege of fourteen months, and the submission of the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> rebels in the Cévenes, resulted in a royal decision which <a href="../cathen/13047a.htm">Richelieu</a> called the Grâce d'Alais: the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> lost all their political privileges and all their "places of surety" but on the other hand freedom of worship and absolute equality with <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> were guaranteed them. Both <a href="../cathen/13047a.htm">Cardinal Richelieu</a>, and his successor, <a href="../cathen/10092a.htm">Cardinal Mazarin</a>, scrupulously observed this guarantee, but under <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a> a new policy was inaugurated. For twenty-five years the king forbade the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> everything that the edict of <a href="../cathen/10681a.htm">Nantes</a> did not expressly guarantee them, and then, foolishly imagining that <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a> was on the wane, and that there remained in France only a few hundred obstinate <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretics</a>, he revoked the Edict of Nantes (1685) and began an oppressive policy against <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a>, which provoked the rising of the <a href="../cathen/03218a.htm">Camisards</a> in 1703-05, and which lasted with alternations of severity and kindness until 1784, when Louis XVI was <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> to give <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> their civil <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> once more. The very manner in which <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a>, who imagined himself the religious head of his kingdom, set about the Revocation, was only an application of the religious maxims of Gallicanism. In the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> of <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a>, indeed, Gallicanism was on the throne. At the States-General in 1614, the tiers état had endeavoured to make the assembly commit itself to certain decidedly Gallican declarations, but the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, thanks to Cardinal Duperron, had succeeded in shelving the question; then <a href="../cathen/13047a.htm">Richelieu</a> careful; not to embroil himself with the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, had taken up the mitigated and very reserved form of Gallicanism represented by the <a href="../cathen/14580a.htm">theologian</a> Duval. As for <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a>, he considers himself a <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> on earth his religion is the State's; every subject who does not hold that religion is outside of the State. Hence the <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a> of <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> and of <a href="../cathen/08285a.htm">Jansenists</a>. But at the same time he would never allow a <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">papal Bull</a> to be published in France until his Parliament decided whether it interfered with the "liberties" of the French Church or the authority of the king. And in 1682 he invited the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> of France to proclaim the independence of the Gallican Church in a manifesto of four articles, at least two of which relating to the respective powers of a <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> and a council broached questions which only an <a href="../cathen/04423f.htm">ecumenical council</a> could decide. In consequence of this a crisis arose between the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> and <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a> which led to thirty-five sees being left vacant in 1689. The policy of <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a> in religious matters was adopted also by Louis XV. His way of striking at the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> in 1763 was in principal the same as that taken by <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a> to impose Gallicanism on the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> the royal power pretending to mastery over the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. The domestic policy of the seventeenth-century Bourbons, aided by Scully, <a href="../cathen/13047a.htm">Richelieu</a>, <a href="../cathen/10092a.htm">Mazarin</a>, and Louvois, completed the centralization of the kingly power. Abroad, the fundamental maxim of their policy was to keep up the struggle against the House of <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a>. The result of the diplomacy of <a href="../cathen/13047a.htm">Richelieu</a> (1624-42) and of <a href="../cathen/10092a.htm">Mazarin</a> (1643-61) was a fresh defeat for the House of <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a>; French arms were victorious at Rocroi, Fribourg, Nördlingen, Lens, Sommershausen (1643-48), and by the Peace of <a href="../cathen/15601b.htm">Westphalia</a> (1648) and that of the Pyrenees (1659), Alsace, Artois, and Roussillion were annexed to French territory. In the struggle <a href="../cathen/13047a.htm">Richelieu</a> and <a href="../cathen/10092a.htm">Mazarin</a> had the support of the <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutheran</a> prince of <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a> and of <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> countries such as the Sweden of Gustavus Adolphus. In fact in may be laid down that during the <a href="../cathen/14648b.htm">Thirty Years War</a>, France upheld <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a>. <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a>, on the contrary, who for many years was arbiter of the destinies of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a>, was actuated by purely religious motives in some of his <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">wars</a>. Thus the <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> against <a href="../cathen/10759a.htm">Holland</a>, and that against the League of <a href="../cathen/02073b.htm">Augsburg</a>, and his intervention in the affairs of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> were in some respects the result of religious policy and of a desire to uphold <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> in <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a>. The expeditions in the Mediterranean against the pirates of Barbary have all the halo of the old ideals of <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a> ideals which in the days of Louis XIII had haunted the mind of Father Joseph, the famous confidant of <a href="../cathen/13047a.htm">Richelieu</a>, and had inspired him with the dream of <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusades</a> led by France, once the House of <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a> should have been defeated. The long and complex reign of <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a>, in spite of the disasters which mark its close, gained for France the possession of <a href="../cathen/06094b.htm">Flanders</a>, and of Franche-Comté, and saw a Bourbon, Philip V, grandson of <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a>, seated on the throne of <a href="../cathen/14169b.htm">Spain</a>. The seventeenth century in France was par excellence a century of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> awakening. A number of <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> set about reforming their diocese according to the rules laid down by the <a href="../cathen/15030c.htm">Council of Trent</a>, though its decrees did not run officially in France. The example of <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a> bore fruit all over the country. Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of Claremont and afterwards of Senlis, had made the acquaintance of <a href="../cathen/03619a.htm">St. Charles Borromeo</a>. Francis Taurugi, a companion of <a href="../cathen/12018b.htm">St. Philip Neri</a>, was <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/02158a.htm">Avignon</a>. <a href="../cathen/06220a.htm">St. Francis de Sales</a> <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianized</a> lay <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">society</a> by his "Introduction to the Devout Life", which he wrote at the request of <a href="../cathen/07225a.htm">Henry IV</a>. <a href="../cathen/02524b.htm">Cardinal de Bérulle</a> and his disciple de Condren founded the Oratory. <a href="../cathen/15434c.htm">St. Vincent de Paul</a>, in founding the Priests of the Mission, and <a href="../cathen/11240d.htm">M. Olier</a>, in founding the <a href="../cathen/13378a.htm">Sulpicians</a>, prepared the uplifting of the <a href="../cathen/13675a.htm">secular clergy</a>, and the development of the grands séminaires. It was the period, too, when France began to build up her colonial empire, when <a href="../cathen/03567a.htm">Samuel de Champlain</a> was founding prosperous settlements in <a href="../cathen/01090a.htm">Acadia</a> and <a href="../cathen/03227a.htm">Canada</a>. At the suggestion of Père Coton, confessor to <a href="../cathen/07225a.htm">Henry IV</a>, the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> followed in the wake of the colonists; they made Quebec the capital of all that country, and gave it a Frenchman, Mgr. de Montmorency-Laval as its first <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a>. The first apostles to the <a href="../cathen/08168b.htm">Iroquois</a> were the French <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a>, Lallemant and <a href="../cathen/02751b.htm">de Brébeuf</a>; and it was the French missionaries, as much as the traders who opened postal communication over 500 leagues of countries between the French colonies in <a href="../cathen/09378a.htm">Louisiana</a> and <a href="../cathen/03227a.htm">Canada</a>. In <a href="../cathen/03663b.htm">China</a>, the French <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a>, by their scientific labours, gained a real influence at court and converted at least one Chinese prince. Lastly, from the beginning of this same seventeenth century, under the protection of Gontaut-Biron, Marquis de Salignac, Ambassador of France, dates the establishment of the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> at <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a>, in the Archipelago, in <a href="../cathen/14399a.htm">Syria</a>, and at Cairo. A <a href="../cathen/03320b.htm">Capuchin</a>, Père Joseph du Tremblay, <a href="../cathen/13047a.htm">Richelieu's</a> confessor, established many <a href="../cathen/03320b.htm">Capuchin</a> foundations in the East. A <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">pious</a> <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Parisian</a> lady, Madame Ricouard, gave a sum of money for the erection of a <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">bishopric</a> at Babylon, and its first <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a> was a French <a href="../cathen/03354a.htm">Carmelite</a>, Jean Duval. St. Vincent De Paul sent the <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a> into the galleys and <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prisons</a> of Barbary, and among the islands of <a href="../cathen/09509e.htm">Madagascar</a>, Bourbon, Mauritius, and the Mascarenes, to take possession of them in the name of France. On the advice of <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuit Father</a> <a href="../cathen/13024a.htm">de Rhodes</a>, <a href="../cathen/12456a.htm">Propaganda</a> and France decided to erect <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">bishoprics</a> in Annam, and in 1660 and 1661 three French <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, François Pallu, Pierre Lambert de Lamothe, and Cotrolendi, set out for the East. It was the activities of the French missionaries that paved the way for the visit of the Siamese envoys to the court of <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a>. In 1663 the Seminary for Foreign Missions was founded, and in 1700 the Société de Missions Etrangères, received its approved constitution, which has never been altered. To repeat a saying of <a href="../cathen/03010a.htm">Ferdinand Brunetière</a>, the eighteenth century was the least <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> and least French century in the history of France. Religiously speaking, the alliance of parliamentary Gallicanism and <a href="../cathen/08285a.htm">Jansenism</a> weakened the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of religion in an atmosphere already threatened by <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosophers</a>, and although the monarchy continued to keep the style and title of "Most Christian", unbelief and libertinage were harboured, and at times defended, at the court of Louis XV (1715-74), in the salons, and among the aristocracy. Politically, the tradition strife between France and the House of <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a> ended, about the middle of the eighteenth century, with the famous Renversement des Alliances (see <a href="../cathen/03694a.htm">ETIENNE-FRANÇOIS, DUC DE CHOISEUL</a>; Fleury, Andre-Hercule de). This century is filled with that struggle between France and <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> which may be called the second Hundred Years War, during which <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> had for an ally <a href="../cathen/06255a.htm">Frederick II</a>, King of <a href="../cathen/12519c.htm">Prussia</a>, a country which was then rapidly rising in importance. The command of the sea was at stake. In spite of men like Dupliex, Lally-Tollendal, and Montcalm, France lightly abandoned its colonies by successive treaties, the most important of which was the Treaty of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> (1763). The acquisition of <a href="../cathen/09362a.htm">Lorraine</a> (1766), and the purchase of <a href="../cathen/04396b.htm">Corsica</a> from the <a href="../cathen/06419a.htm">Genoese</a> (1768) were poor compensations for these losses; and when, under Louis XVI, the French navy once more raised its head, it helped in the revolt of the English colonies in America, and thus seconded the emancipation of the <a href="../cathen/15156a.htm">United States</a> (1778-83). The movement of thought of which Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, each in his own fashion, had been protagonists, an impatience provoked by the abuses incident to a too centralized monarchy, and the yearning for equality which was deeply agitating the French people, all prepared the explosion of the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">French Revolution</a>, That upheaval has been too long regarded as a break in the history of France. The researches of Albert Sorel have <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proved</a> that the diplomatic traditions of the old regime were perpetuated under the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a>; the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of the State's ascendancy over the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, which had actuated the <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a> of <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a> and the adherents of Parliament the parliamentaires in the days of Louis XV reappears with the authors of the "Civil Constitution of the Clergy", even as the centralizing spirit of the old monarchy reappears with the administrative officials and the commissaries of the Convention. It is easier to cut off a king's head than to change the <a href="../cathen/10321a.htm">mental</a> constitution of a people. The Constituent Assembly (5 May, 1789-30 September, 1791) rejected the motion of the Abbé d'Eymar declaring the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> religion to be the religion of the State, but it did not thereby mean to place the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> religion on the same level as other <a href="../cathen/12738a.htm">religions</a>. Voulland, addressing the Assembly on the seemliness of having one dominant religion, declared that the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> religion was founded on too pure a moral basis not to be given the first place. Article 10 of the "Declarations of the Rights of Man" (August, 1789) proclaimed toleration, stipulating "that no one ought to be interfered with because of his opinions, even religious, provided that their manifestation does not disturb public order" (pourvu que leur manifestation ne trouble pas l'ordre public établi par là). It was by virtue of the suppression of <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> privileges, and in accordance with the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">ideas</a> professed by the lawyers of the old regime where <a href="../cathen/12466a.htm">church property</a> was in question that the Constituent Assembly abolished <a href="../cathen/14741b.htm">tithes</a> and confiscated the possessions of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, replacing them by an annuity grant from the treasury. The "Civil Constitution of the Clergy" was a more serious interference with the life of French <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a>, and it was drawn up at the instigation of <a href="../cathen/08285a.htm">Jansenist</a> lawyers. Without referring to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, it set up a new division into diocese, gave the voters, no matter who they might be, a <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> to nominate <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> and <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, ordered <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitans</a> to take charge of the <a href="../cathen/08065a.htm">canonical institution</a> of their suffragans, and forbade the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> to seek a <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> of confirmation in office from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. The Constituent Assembly required all <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> to swear to obey this constitution, which received the unwilling sanction of Louis XVI, 26 December, 1790, and was condemned by <a href="../cathen/12131a.htm">Pius VI</a>. By Briefs <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 10 March and 13 April, <a href="../cathen/12131a.htm">Pius VI</a> forbade the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> to take the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a>, and the majority obeyed him. Against these "unsworn" (insermentés) or "refractory" <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> a period of <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a> soon began. The Legislative Assembly (1 October, 1791-21 September, 1792), while it prepared the way for the republic which both the great parties (the Mountain and the Girondists) equally wished, only aggravated the religious difficulty. On 19 November, 1791, it decreed that those <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> who had not accepted the "Civil Constitution" would be required with a week to swear allegiance to the nation, to the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, and to the king, under pain of having their allowances stopped and of being held as suspects. The king refused to approve this, and (26 August, 1792) it declared that all refractory <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> show leave France under pain of ten years' <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a> or transportation to Guiana. The Convention (21 September, 1792-26 October, 1795) which proclaimed the republic and caused Louis XVI to be executed (21 January, 1793), followed a very tortuous policy toward religion. As early as 13 November, 1792, Cambon, in the name of the Financial Committee, announced to the Convention that he would speedily submit a scheme of general reform including a suppression of the appropriation for religious worship, which, he asserted, cost the republic "100,000,000 livres annually". The Jacobins opposed this scheme as premature, and Robespierre declared it derogatory to public morality. During the first eight months of its existence the policy of the Convention was to maintain the "Civil Constitution" and to increase the penalties against "refractory" <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> who were suspected of complicity on the Vendée rising. A <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a> <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 18 March, 1793, <a href="../cathen/12565a.htm">punished with death</a> all compromised <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>. It no longer aimed at refractory <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> only, but any ecclesiastic accused of disloyalty (incivisme) by any six citizens became liable to transportation. In the eyes of the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">revolution</a>, there were no longer good <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> and bad priests; for the sans-culottes every <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> was suspect. Then, from the provinces, stirred up by the propaganda of André Dumont, Chaumette, and Fouché, there began a movement of dechristianization. The constitutional <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a>, Gobrel, abdicated in November, 1793, together with his vicars-general. At the feast of Liberty which took place in Notre-Dame on 10 November an altar was set up to the Goddess of Reason, and the church of Our Lady became the temple of that goddess. Some days after this a deputation attired in <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priestly</a> vestments, in mockery of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> worship, paraded before the Convention. The Commune of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, on 24 November, 1793, with Chaumette as its spokesman, demanded the closing of all churches. But the Committee of Public Safety was in favour of temporizing, to avoid frightening the populace and <a href="../cathen/13506d.htm">scandalizing</a> <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a>. On 21 November, 1793, Robespierre, speaking from the Jacobin tribune of the Convention, protested against the <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a> of the dechristianizing party, and in December the Committee of Public Safety induced the Convention to pass a <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a> ensuring freedom of worship, and forbidding the closing of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> churches. Everywhere throughout the provinces civil <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> was breaking out between the peasants, who clung to their religion and <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a>, and the fanatics of the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a>, who, in the name of patriotism threatened, as they said, by the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, were overturning the altars. According to the locality in which they happened to be, the propagandists either encouraged or hindered this <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a> against religion; but even in the every bitterest days of the terror, there was never a moment when <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> worship was suppressed throughout France. When Robespierre had sent the partisans of Hébert and of Danton to the scaffold, he attempted to set up in France what he called la religion de l'Etre Suprême. Liberty of <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a> was suppressed, but <a href="../cathen/02040a.htm">atheism</a> was also a crime. Quoting the words of Rousseau about the indispensable <a href="../cathen/05089a.htm">dogmas</a>, Robespierre had himself proclaimed a religious leader, a pontiff, and a dictator; and the worship of the Etre Suprême was held up by his supporters as the religious embodiment of patriotism. But after the 9th of Thermidor, Cambon proposed once more the principle of separation between <a href="../cathen/14250c.htm">Church and State</a>, and it was decided that henceforth the Republic would not pay the expenses of any form of worship (18 September, 1794). The Convention next voted the laicization of the primary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, and the establishment, at intervals of ten days, of feasts called fêtes décadaires. When Bishop Grégoire in a speech ventured to hope that <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> would some day spring up anew, the Convention protested. Nevertheless the people in the provinces were anxious that the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> should resume their functions, and "constitutional" <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, less in danger than the others, rebuilt the altars here and there throughout the country. In February, 1795, Boissy-d'Anglas carried a measure of religious liberty, and the very next day Mass was said in all the <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapels</a> of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>. On <a href="../cathen/05224d.htm">Easter Sunday</a>, 1795, in the same city which, a few months before, had applauded the worship of Reason, almost every shop closed its doors. In May, 1795, the Convention restored the churches for worship, on condition that the <a href="../cathen/11537b.htm">pastors</a> should submit to the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> of the State; in September, 1795, less than a month before its dissolution, it regulated liberty of worship by a police law, and enacted severe penalties against <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> liable to transportation or <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a> who should venture back on French soil. The Directory (27 October, 1795 9 November, 1799), which succeeded the Convention, imposed on all religious <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a> (Fructidor, Year V) the <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a> of swearing <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hatred</a> to royalty and <a href="../cathen/01452a.htm">anarchy</a>. A certain number of "papist" <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> took the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a>, and the "papist" religion was thus established here and there, though it continued to be disturbed by the incessant arbitrary acts of interference on the part of the administrative staff of the Directory, who by individual warrants deported <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> charged with inciting to disturbance. In this way, 1657 French and 8235 <a href="../cathen/02395a.htm">Belgian</a>, <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> were driven into exile. The aim of the Directory was to substitute for <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> the culte décadaire, and for Sunday observance the rest on the décadis, or tenth days. In <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, fifteen churches were given over to this cult. The Directory also favored an 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 <a href="../cathen/14624a.htm">Theophilanthropy</a> and the culte décadaire, while they disturbed the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, did not satisfy the needs of the people for <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, altars, and the traditional festivals. All these were restored by the <a href="../cathen/04204a.htm">Concordat of Napoleon Bonaparte</a>, who became Consul for ten years on 4 November, 1799. The Concordat assured to French <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a>, in spite of the interpolation of the articles organiques, a hundred years of peace. The conduct of <a href="../cathen/10687a.htm">Napoleon I</a>, when he became emperor (18 May, 1804) towards <a href="../cathen/12132a.htm">Pius VII</a> was most offensive to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a>; but even during those years when <a href="../cathen/10687a.htm">Napoleon</a> was ill-treating <a href="../cathen/12132a.htm">Pius VII</a> and keeping him a <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prisoner</a>, <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> 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 <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> or <a href="../cathen/07543b.htm">humble</a> <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>. The Sisters of Christian Schools of Mercy, who work in <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospitals</a> and <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, date from 1802, as do the Sisters of Providence of <a href="../cathen/08789c.htm">Langres</a>; the <a href="../cathen/10199a.htm">Sisters of Mercy</a> of <a href="../cathen/10524a.htm">Montauban</a> 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 Abbé Dujarie; the Sisters of St. Regis at Aubenis, founded by the Abbé Therne; the Sisters of Notre Dame de Bon Secours at Charly; the <a href="../cathen/10199a.htm">Sisters of Mercy</a> of Billom. the Sisters of Wisdom founded by Blessed Grignon de Montfort, remodeled their institutions at this time in La Vendée, and Madame Dupleix was founding at <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a> and at Durat the Confraternity of Mary and Joseph for visiting the <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prisons</a>. The year 1807 saw the coming of the Sisters of Christian Teaching and Nursing (de l'Instruction chrétienne et des malades) of St-Gildas-des-Bois founded by the Abbé Deshayes and the great teaching order of the Sisters of Ste-Chrétienne of <a href="../cathen/10247a.htm">Metz</a>. In 1809 there appeared in Aveyron the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary; in 1810, the sisters of St. Joseph of Vaur (Ardéche), the Sister <a href="../cathen/07476a.htm">Hospitallers</a> of <a href="../cathen/12771b.htm">Rennes</a>, and the <a href="../cathen/08511a.htm">Sisters of St. Joseph</a> of Cluny. Such was the fruit of eight years of religious revival, and the list could easily be continued through the years that followed. In the Wars of the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a>, which began 20 April, 1792, the French missionary qualities which, under the old regime, had been employed in the service of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> ideal were <a href="../cathen/04276a.htm">consecrated</a> 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 the 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 <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a> had in the end a disastrous reaction on the very country where its ideals originated. During the nineteenth century France was destined to undertake several <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">wars</a> for the emancipation of nationalities the Greek War (1827-28) under the Restoration; the Italian War (1859) under the second Empire and it was in the name of the principle of nationality that the Second Empire to grow until, in 1870, it had reached its full growth at the expense of France. Under the Restoration parliamentary government was introduced into France. The revolution of July, 1830, the "liberal" and "bourgeois" revolution asserted against the absolutism of Charles X those <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> which had been guaranteed to Frenchmen by the Constitution the "Charte" as it was called and brought to the throne of Louis Phillipe, Duke of <a href="../cathen/11318b.htm">Orléans</a>, during whose reign as "King of the French", the establishment of French rule in Algeria was finally completed. One of the most admirable <a href="../cathen/03592a.htm">charitable institutions</a> of French origin dates from the July Monarchy, namely the <a href="../cathen/12248a.htm">Little Sisters of the Poor</a> begun (1840) by Jeanne Jugan, Franchon Aubert, Marie Jamet, and Virginie Trédaniel, poor working-women who formed themselves into an association to take care of one blind old <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">woman</a>. In 1900 the congregation thus begun counted 3000 Little Sisters distributed among 250 to 260 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 <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, in May, 1883, by <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">pious</a> <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a> under the prompting of <a href="../cathen/11378a.htm">Ozanam</a>, for the material and moral assistance of poor <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">families</a>; in 1900 there were in France alone 1224 of these conferences, and in the whole world 5000. In 1895 the city of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> had 208 conferences caring for 7908 <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">families</a>. The mean annual receipts of the conferences of St. Vincent De Paul in the whole of France amount to 2,198,566 francs ($440,000.00 or £88,000). In 1906 the receipts from 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 exceeds the annual amount received. As Cardinal Regnier was fond of saying, "The conferences have taken the <a href="../cathen/15511a.htm">vow</a> of poverty." The Revolution of February, 1848, against Louis Philippe and Guizot, his minister, who wished to maintain a <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> qualification 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 <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> to assist <a href="../cathen/12134b.htm">Pius IX</a>, it earned the gratitude of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. At this point in history, when so many social and democratic aspirations were being agitated, the social efficaciousness of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> thought was demonstrated by Vicomte de Melun, who developed the "Société Charitable" and the "Annales de la Charité" and carried a law on old-age pensions and mutual benefit <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">societies</a>; and by Le Prévost, founder of the Congregation of the Brothers of St. Vincent De Paul, who, leading a <a href="../cathen/12748b.htm">religious life</a> in the garb of <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>, visited among the <a href="../cathen/08719a.htm">working</a> classes. The Second Empire, the issue of <a href="../cathen/10699a.htm">Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's</a> coup d'êtat (2 December, 1851), affirmed universal sufferage and this secured the victory of French democracy; but it reduced parlementarisme to an insignificant rôle, the Plébescite being employed as an ordinary means of ascertaining the will of the people. It was the second empire, too, that gave Nizza, <a href="../cathen/13492a.htm">Savoy</a>, and Cochin-China to France. <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h2>The Third Republic</h2> The Third Republic tumultuously proclaimed, 4 September, 1870, on the ruins of the empire overthrown at Sedan was victorious, thanks to <a href="../cathen/14635b.htm">Thiers</a> and the army of <a href="../cathen/15366a.htm">Versailles</a>, over the <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Parisian</a> 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 <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a>. On the other hand, it enriched the colonial possessions, or the sphere of influence, of France by the acquisition of Tongking, <a href="../cathen/15088a.htm">Tunis</a>, and Madagascar. Under the Third Republic, a parliamentary system with two chambers was established on the double principle of a responsible ministry and a president above all responsibility, the latter elected by the two chambers for a period of seven years. <a href="../cathen/14635b.htm">Thiers</a>, <a href="../cathen/09504c.htm">MacMahon</a>, Jules Grévy, Sadi-Carnot, Félix Faure, Emile Loubet, Armand Falliérres have been successively at the head of the French state since 1870. Through all these changes in government, French foreign policy, either knowingly or by force of habit and precedent, has been of service to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, service amply repaid by the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> by perpetuating in some measure the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> ideal of earlier times. The Crimean War, undertaken (1855) by <a href="../cathen/10699a.htm">Napoleon III</a>, originated in the desire to protect <a href="../cathen/09022a.htm">Latin Christians</a> in Palestine, the clients of France, against Russian encroachments. During the course of the nineteenth century French diplomacy at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> and in the East has aimed at safeguarding the prerogatives of France as patron of <a href="../cathen/05230a.htm">Oriental Christendom</a>, and of thus justifying the traditional trust of the Orientals in the "Franks" as the natural champions of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a> in the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Ottoman Empire</a>. French influence in this field was threatened by <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a>, <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>, and German in turn; the first of these powers alleged certain treaties with the sultan, daring from the eighteenth century as giving it the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> to defend <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> interests at the Sublime Porte; the other two made repeated efforts to induce Italian and German missionaries to seek protection from their own consuls rather than those of France. But on 22 May, 1888, the circular "Aspera rerum conditio", signed by Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect of the <a href="../cathen/12456a.htm">Propaganda</a>, commanded all missionaries to respect the prerogatives of France as their protecting power. Even at the present time, in spite of the separation of <a href="../cathen/14250c.htm">Church and State</a>, the diplomacy of the Third Republic in the East enjoys the prestige acquired by the France of St. Louis and <a href="../cathen/06207a.htm">Francis I</a>. And amid all the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">ideas</a> and tendencies of "laicization" this protectorate continues to exist as relic and a right of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> France "Anticlericalism is not an article for exportation" says Gambetta, and up to recent years this has always been the motto of Republican France. In spite of constant threats under which the congregations have lived during the Third Republic, it is unquestionable that certain important institutes have seen the number of its members increase notably. This is illustrated by the following table: <blockquote>Institute Members (1879) Members (1900) Socitété des Missions Estrangères 480 1200 Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny 2067 4000+ Daughters of Wisdom 3600 4650 <a href="../cathen/11587c.htm">Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres</a> 1119 1732 <a href="../cathen/06330b.htm">Brothers of St. Gabriel</a> 791 1350 Little Brothers of Mary 3600 4850 <a href="../cathen/12248a.htm">Little Sisters of the Poor</a> 2683 3073 Brothers of the Holy Spirit 515 902 </blockquote> Taine has <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proved</a> that vocations to the <a href="../cathen/12748b.htm">religious life</a> increased remarkably in the France of the nineteenth century, when they were entirely spontaneous, as compared with the France of the eighteenth century, when many <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">families</a>, for worldly reasons, placed their daughters in <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">convents</a>. <h2>Missionary France in the nineteenth century</h2> The reawakening of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">British</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> at the beginning of the nineteenth century was in some measure due to the influence of the French refugee <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> whom the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a> had driven into exile. And when, in 1789, in the <a href="../cathen/15156a.htm">United States of America</a>, John Carroll was named <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/02228a.htm">Baltimore</a>, it was to the Sulpician Fathers that he appealed to establish his <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a>, thus preparing for the part which that splendid institute of French <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> was to take, and still continues to play, in building up the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in America. The discussion between Monsignor Duborg, <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/11005b.htm">New Orleans</a>, and Madame Petit, a <a href="../cathen/15617c.htm">widow</a> of <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a>, on the spiritual needs of <a href="../cathen/09378a.htm">Louisiana</a> (1815), and the letter written by Abbé Jaricot to his sister Pauline, who also lived at <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a>, on the poverty of the foreign missions (1819), led these two ladies to organize, each independently of the other, <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">societies</a> for the collection of <a href="../cathen/01328f.htm">alms</a> from the faithful for the propagation of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a>, and from these first feeble beginnings was born, 3 May, 1822, the great work known to English-speaking <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> as the "Propagation of <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a>". In 1898, this <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">society</a> collected from one country or another 7,700,921 francs ($1,140,180.00 or £228,000) for missionary purposes. Of this sum, no less than 4, 077, 085 francs was contributed by France alone, while, in 1908, owing to the many needs of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> at home, France's contribution fell from 6,402,586 francs to 3,082,131 francs. In 1898, the work of the Sainte-Enfance (The Holy Childhood), also of French origin, which aspires to save both the bodies and the <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">souls</a> of Chinese children, collected 3,615,845 francs (about $723,000.00 or £145,000), of which 1,094,092 francs came from France alone, while in 1908-09, for the reason referred to above, French generosity could only contribute 813,952 francs to this work, the general receipts of which amounted to 3,761,954 francs. That work in 1907-08 helped 236 missions, 1171 <a href="../cathen/11322b.htm">orphanages</a>, 7372 <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, and 2480 manual-training establishments. In 1898, again, L'Oeuvre des Ecoles d'Orient, an association for supplying <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> in the East, collected in France 584,056 francs, and in other countries only 27,596 francs. In 1898 the Society of African Missions collected 50,000 francs, the Anti-Slavery Society 120,000 francs, while the Good-Friday <a href="../cathen/01328f.htm">alms</a> for the maintenance of the Holy Land amounted to 122,000 francs, making in all, for the year 1898, a total of 6,047,231 francs contributed by France to the foreign missionaries without distinction of nationality. But France furnishes not only money but men and <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a> to these missions. On the eve of the Law of 1901 Abbé Kannengieser compiled the following estimations of the religious, men and <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>, of French nationality engaged in mission work: <div class="bulletlist"><ul><li>Socitété des Missions Estrangères 1200</li><li><a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Society of Jesus</a> 750</li><li><a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a> 500</li><li><a href="../cathen/02104a.htm">Augustinians of the Assumption</a> 216</li><li><a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Brothers of the Christian Schools</a> 813</li><li>Capuchins 160</li><li>Dominicans 80</li><li>Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales 60</li><li>Carmelites 14</li><li>Marianists 80</li><li>Little Brothers of Mary 359</li><li>Oblates of St. Francis de Sales 25</li><li>Franciscans 95</li><li>Fathers of the Holy Spirit 429</li><li><a href="../cathen/15613d.htm">White Fathers</a> 500</li><li>African Missions 123</li><li><a href="../cathen/11184b.htm">Oblates of Mary Immaculate</a> 400</li><li>Marists 320</li><li>Picpus Fathers 80</li><li>Missionaries of Mary 46</li><li>Brothers of St. Gabriel 53</li><li><a href="../cathen/12683a.htm">Redemptorists</a> 100</li><li>Priests of Bétharram 80</li><li><a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Christian Brothers</a> of Ploërmel 272</li><li><a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Christian Brothers</a> of the Sacred Heart 346</li><li>Missionaries of the Sacred Heart 27</li><li>Sulpician Fathers 30</li><li>Congregation of the Holy Cross 40</li><li>Fathers of Mercy 21</li><li>Children of Mary Immaculate 15</li><li>Brothers of Our Lady of the Annunciation 60</li><li>Brothers of the Holy Family 40</li><li><a href="../cathen/02443a.htm">Benedictines</a> of La-Pierre-qui-Vivre 25</li><li>Fathers of La Salette 5</li><li>Trappists 21</li></ul></div> A similar list of the <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a> engaged in religious work on the missions, drawn up on the eve of the Law of 1901, gave a grand total of 7745 religious men and 9150 religious <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a> supplied by France alone for this work. The Missions Estrangères in 1908 had in its missions 37 <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, 1371 missionaries, 778 native <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, 3050 catechists, 45 <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminaries</a>, 2081 <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a> students, 305 religious men, 4075 religious <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>, 2000 Chinese virgins, 5700 <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">churches</a> and <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapels</a>, 347 crèches and <a href="../cathen/11322b.htm">orphanages</a>, sheltering 20,409 children, 484 pharmacies and dispensaries, 108 <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospitals</a> and <a href="../cathen/09182a.htm">lepers</a> asylums. Within the same year (1908) it brought about the <a href="../cathen/02258b.htm">baptism</a> of 33,169 adults, and 139,956 infants. At <a href="../cathen/08344a.htm">Jerusalem</a> <a href="../cathen/09050d.htm">Cardinal Lavigerie</a> founded in 1855 the <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a> of St. Anne for Oriental rites; the French <a href="../cathen/12354c.htm">Dominicans</a> founded in 1890, at <a href="../cathen/08344a.htm">Jerusalem</a>, a <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> for Biblical study, and on the northwest coast of <a href="../cathen/01782a.htm">Asia Minor</a>, near Constantinople, the French <a href="../cathen/02104a.htm">Assumptionists</a> reorganized the <a href="../cathen/05230a.htm#catholic">Uniat</a> <a href="../cathen/06752a.htm">Greek Church</a>, and prepared the way for the success of the Eucharistic Congress of 1893, presided over by the French Cardinal Langénieux, as <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">legate</a> of <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Pope Leo XIII</a>, at which <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a> of the may oriental rites were assembled. For the Lebanon district, French <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> have a <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> a Beirut with 520 students, for the most part medical, and a printing press unrivalled for its Arabic printing. Besides this they have 125 elementary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> about their <a href="../cathen/15188a.htm">university</a>. At Smyrna French <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a> have a congregation of 16,000 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> where, in 1800, there were only 3000. In Smyrna alone, the French <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, or <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> under French influence, have upwards of 19,000 pupils, and in the vilayet of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a> nearly 3000 pupils. The <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> of the French <a href="../cathen/03320b.htm">Capuchins</a> in Palestine have 1000 pupils, those of the French <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> in <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">European</a> Turkey, 7000 pupils. In 1860, France intervened on behalf of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a> of the East, who were menaced by the fanaticism of <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a>, <a href="../cathen/01663a.htm">Arabs</a>, and Druses. It is on this occasion that Faud Pasha is reported to have said, pointing to some religious who were present, "I do not fear the 40,000 bayonets you have at <a href="../cathen/04611a.htm">Damascus</a>, but I do fear those sixty robes there". At Mosul some French <a href="../cathen/12354c.htm">Dominicans</a>, assisted by Sisters of the Presentation of <a href="../cathen/15002a.htm">Tours</a>, have had a residence since 1856; they have established <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospitals</a>, workshops, and dispensaries all over Mesopotamia, as well as a Syro-Chaldean <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a>. These missionaries won back to <a href="../cathen/15132a.htm">Christian unity</a>, under the pontificate of <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a>, 50,000 <a href="../cathen/10755a.htm">Nestorians</a>, and 30,000 <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> Gregorians. In like manner, 26 <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> of the province of <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a> have been building <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> throughout <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> during the past thirty years. The old See of Babylon was replaced in 1844 by the <a href="../cathen/02202c.htm">See of Bagdad</a> where a French <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a> rules over 90,000 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of various rites. In <a href="../cathen/11712a.htm">Persia</a>, the French <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a> have a congregation of 80,000 faithful where, in 1840, there were only 400. The French <a href="../cathen/03320b.htm">Capuchins</a> established at Aden are breaking ground in <a href="../cathen/01663a.htm">Arabia</a>. French <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> are evangelizing Ceylon. Under the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> of the Missions Etrangères, who are assisted by five communities of religious <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>, the number of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> in Pondicherry increased tenfold during the nineteenth century. Priests of St. Francis de Sales of <a href="../cathen/01540a.htm">Annecy</a> have had charge of the vicariate of <a href="../cathen/15496a.htm">Vizagapatam</a> since 1849. The city of <a href="../cathen/02644a.htm">Bombay</a> alone has no fewer than twenty-seven conferences of ST. Vincent de Paul. In Burma the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> of the Missions Etrangères minister to 40,000 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> were they were only 5000 in 1800. The mission of <a href="../cathen/13765a.htm">Siam</a>, made famous by Fenélon, and ruined at the beginning of the nineteenth century, numbers today more than 20,000 <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">souls</a>. And at the Penang <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a>, French <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> are forming a native <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>. The nine French mission of Tongking and Cochin-China have 650,000 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. It was a missionary, Mgr. Puginier, who, from 1880 to 1892, did so much to open up those regions to French exploration. "Where it not for the missionaries and the Christians", a Malay pirate once said, "The French in Tongking would be as helpless as crabs without legs." China is the mission-field of <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a>, <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a>, and French <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> of the Missions Etrangères. The French-Corean dictionary published by the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> of the Missions Etrangères; the works on Chinese philosophy, begin in the eighteenth century by the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuit</a> <a href="../cathen/01430a.htm">Amiot</a>, and carried on in the nineteenth century by the French <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> in their Chinese printing establishment at Zi-ka-wei; the researches in natural <a href="../cathen/13598b.htm">sciences</a> made in <a href="../cathen/03663b.htm">China</a> by the <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarist</a> David and the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> <a href="../cathen/07308a.htm">Heude</a>, Desgodins, Dechevrens; the works accomplished in the fields of <a href="../cathen/02025a.htm">astronomy</a> and meteorology by the French <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> Zi-ka-wei all these achievements of French missionaries have won the applause of the learned world. In the nineteenth century the recovery of <a href="../cathen/08297a.htm">Japan</a> to the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> was begun by Mgr Forcade, afterwards <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/01237e.htm">Aix</a>, and French Marianists are labouring to build up a native <a href="../cathen/08297a.htm">Japanese</a> <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>. In Oceanica, since the year 1836, when Chanel, Bataillion, and a few other <a href="../cathen/09750b.htm">Marists</a> came to take possession of the thousands of islands scattered between <a href="../cathen/08297a.htm">Japan</a> and New Zealand, the work of evangelizing has gone through Australia, <a href="../cathen/11040a.htm">New Zealand</a>, the Wallace Islands, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and Sydney Island. The Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Issoudun are in the Gilbert Isles; the Fathers of Picpus are working in the <a href="../cathen/13438a.htm">Hawaiian Islands</a>, Tahiti, and the Marquesas. The fame of <a href="../cathen/04615a.htm">Father Damien</a> (Joseph Damien de Veuster), one of the Picpus Fathers, the apostle of the <a href="../cathen/09182a.htm">lepers</a> at <a href="../cathen/10444a.htm">Molokai</a>, has spread throughout the world. In Africa <a href="../cathen/09223a.htm">Father Libermann</a> (a converted Alsacian <a href="../cathen/08399a.htm">Jew</a>) and his <a href="../cathen/07416a.htm">Congregation of the Holy Ghost</a> and the Immaculate Heart of Mary undertook, in 1840, the evangelization of the black race. It has now spread over the whole of that <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">pagan</a> continent; and the missionaries established by Mgr Augouard in Ubangi are in the very heart of the cannibal districts. <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a>, Holy Ghost Fathers, and <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a> are working in Madagascar; <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> are established along the Zambesi River, and the African Missionaries of <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a> have settlements around the Gulf of Guinea, at the Cape of Good Hope, and at Dahomey, while the Oblates of Mary are in Natal. In Senegal <a href="../cathen/08326a.htm">Mother Anne-Marie Javouhey</a>, foundress of the <a href="../cathen/08511a.htm">Sisters of St. Joseph</a> of Cluny she of whom Louis Phillipe said "Madame Javouhey c'est un grand homme" opened the first French <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> in 1820, and set on foot the first attempts at agriculture in that region. In <a href="../cathen/05329b.htm">Egypt</a>, French <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> have two colleges; the Lyons missionaries, one; the <a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Brothers of the Christian Schools</a> teach more than 1000 pupils; and 60 <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, with more than 3000 children, are under the care of French sisterhoods. French <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a> minister to 13,000 <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">souls</a> in <a href="../cathen/01075e.htm">Abyssinia</a>. The <a href="../cathen/12514a.htm">ecclesiastical province</a> of Algeria, which in 1800 reckoned 4000 <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">souls</a>, had at the time of <a href="../cathen/09050d.htm">Cardinal Lavigerie's</a> death 400,000, with 500 <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, 260 <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">churches</a>, and 230 <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, while <a href="../cathen/15088a.htm">Tunis</a>, which in 1800 contained but 2000 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> numbered 27,000 ministered to by 153 religious in 22 <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parishes</a>. The <a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Brothers of the Christian Schools</a> were pioneers of the <a href="../cathen/06190a.htm">French language</a> in <a href="../cathen/15088a.htm">Tunis</a>, as they had been throughout the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Ottoman Empire</a> from Constantinople to Cairo, and the Congregation of the <a href="../cathen/15613d.htm">White Fathers</a>, who sent out their first ten missionaries from <a href="../cathen/01311a.htm">Algiers</a> on the 17th of April, 1878, towards equatorial Africa, founded, in Uganda and along Lake Tanganyika, <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> communities, one of which, in May, 1886, gave to the Faith 150 <a href="../cathen/09736b.htm">martyrs</a>. Side by side with this peaceful conquest of the African continent by the initiative of a French <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinal</a>, a place of <a href="../cathen/07462a.htm">honour</a> must be given to the wonderful part played in the colonization and development of French Guiana, since the year 1828, by <a href="../cathen/08326a.htm">Mother Javouhey</a>, of whose efforts in Senegal we have already spoken. It was she, who under the July monarch, and at the request of the government, undertook in Guiana the work of civilizing the unfortunate <a href="../cathen/12627a.htm">negroes</a> taken by the men-of-war from captured slave ships, and whom she eventually employed as free workmen. Her example alone would suffice to refute the <a href="../cathen/14035b.htm">slander</a> so often repeated that the French are not a colonizing race. Only in one part of the world the East is this vast missionary movement aided, however slightly, by the French Treasury. In the Levant a certain number of church <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> received state aid as a help to the spreading of the <a href="../cathen/06190a.htm">French language</a>, but of late years these subventions have been opposed and diminished. On 12 December, 1906, M. Dubief, in moving the Budget of Foreign Affairs, proposed to suppressed the sums voted to aid the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> conducted by religious congregations in the East. M. Pichon, minister of Foreign Affairs, promised to hasten the work of laicization, and by means of this promise he secured the continuation of the credit of 92,000 francs. It is a matter of regret that the aim of the Chambers for some years past has been to cut down the assistance given by France to these <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, and to create in the East French <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">educational institutions</a> of a purely secular character. M. Marcel Charlot, in 1906, and M. Aulard, in 1907, the one in the name of the State, the other in the interest of la Mission Laïque, made a critical study of our religious <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> in the east, and contributed to the laicizing movement which, if successful, would mean the dissolution of France's religious clientèle in the East and a lessening of French political influence. <h2>France at Rome</h2> Side by side with the part France has played in the missionary field, the diplomatic activity at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> of the Third Republic, in its character as a protector of <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">pious</a> institutions, is worth noting. It tends to prove the depth, the reality, the force which underlay the old saying: Gallia Ecclesiæ Primogenita Filia. In 1890, on the occasion of the French workingmen's <a href="../cathen/12085a.htm">pilgrimage</a>, Count Lefebvre de Béhaine, the French ambassador, formally renewed the claims of the French Republic over the <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapel</a> of <a href="../cathen/11781b.htm">St. Petronilla</a>, founded by Pepin the Short in the <a href="../cathen/13369b.htm">basilica of St. Peter</a>. The principal religious establishments over which certain prerogatives were exercised by the French embassy at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, until its suppression in 1903, were: the church and community of <a href="../cathen/03579b.htm">chaplains</a> of St. Louis the French, the French national church in <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, dating back to a confraternity instituted in 1454; the <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">pious</a> foundation of St. Yves of the Bretons, which dates from 1455; the <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">church</a> of St. Nicholas of the Lorrainers, which dates from 1622; the <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">church</a> of St. Claudius of the <a href="../cathen/03068a.htm">Burgundians</a>, which dates from 1652; the <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">convent</a> of Trinità on the Pincian Hill, which was founded by Charles VIII, in 1494, for the <a href="../cathen/06281a.htm">Friars Minor</a>, and became, in 1828, a boarding <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> under the care of the French ladies of the Sacred Heart. There has also been an ancient bond between France and the Lateran Chapter, by reason of the donations made to the chapter by Louis XI and <a href="../cathen/07225a.htm">Henry IV</a>, and the annual grant apportioned to it by Charles X, in 1845, and by <a href="../cathen/10699a.htm">Napoleon III</a>, in 1863. Although this grant was discontinued by the republic in 1871, the Lateran Chapter until the suppression of the Embassy of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> (1904) always kept up official relations with the French ambassador whom, on the 1st of January of each year, it charged with a special message of greeting to the President of the Republic. Lastly, since 1230 there has always been a French auditor of the <a href="../cathen/13205c.htm">Rota</a>. In 1472 <a href="../cathen/14032b.htm">Sixtus IV</a> formally recognized this to be the right of the French nation. The allowance made by France to the auditor was discontinued in 1882, but the office has survived, and the reorganization of the tribunal of the <a href="../cathen/13205c.htm">Rota</a> made by <a href="../cathen/12137a.htm">Pope Pius X</a> (September and October 1908) was followed by the appointment of a French auditor. <h2>Ecclesiastical divisions</h2> In 1780 France, with the exception of Venaissin, which belonged immediately to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, was divided into 135 <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">dioceses</a>; eighteen archbishoprics or ecclesiastical provinces with 106 suffragan <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">sees</a> and eleven sees depending on foreign <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitans</a>. The latter eleven sees were: Strasburg, suffragan of <a href="../cathen/09550a.htm">Mainz</a>; St-Dié, <a href="../cathen/10680a.htm">Nancy</a>, <a href="../cathen/10247a.htm">Metz</a>, Toul, <a href="../cathen/15350c.htm">Verdun</a>, suffragans of <a href="../cathen/15042a.htm">Trier</a>; and five in <a href="../cathen/04396b.htm">Corsica</a>, suffragans of <a href="../cathen/06419a.htm">Genoa</a> or of <a href="../cathen/12110a.htm">Pisa</a>. The eighteen <a href="../cathen/01694b.htm">archiepiscopal sees</a> were: Aix, Albe, Arles, <a href="../cathen/02067c.htm">Auch</a>, Besonçon, Bourdeaux, <a href="../cathen/02720b.htm">Bourges</a>, <a href="../cathen/03209c.htm">Cambrai</a>, Embrun, <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a>, Narbonne, Paris, <a href="../cathen/12725a.htm">Reims</a>, <a href="../cathen/13208b.htm">Rouen</a>, <a href="../cathen/13716a.htm">Sens</a>, <a href="../cathen/14795b.htm">Toulouse</a>, <a href="../cathen/15002a.htm">Tours</a>, Vienne. In 1791 the constituent assembly suppressed the 135 <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">dioceses</a>, and created ten <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan sees</a> with one suffragan <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocese</a> in each department. The Concordat of 1851 set up fifty <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">bishoprics</a> and ten archbishoprics; the Concordat of 1817 made a fresh arrangement, which was realized in 1822 and 1823 by the creation of new <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">bishoprics</a>. France and its colonies are presently divided in to ninety <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">dioceses</a>, of which eighteen are <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan</a> and seventy-two suffragan, as follows: <div class="bulletlist"><ul><li>Marseilles (Metropolitan) Fréjus, <a href="../cathen/04793a.htm">Digne</a>, <a href="../cathen/06378a.htm">Gap</a>, <a href="../cathen/11048a.htm">Nice</a>, Ajaccio. (Suffragans)</li><li>Albi Rodez, <a href="../cathen/03141a.htm">Cahors</a>, <a href="../cathen/10180a.htm">Mende</a>, Perpignan.</li><li>Algiers Constantine, Oran.</li><li>Auch Aire, <a href="../cathen/14453a.htm">Tarbes</a>, <a href="../cathen/02360b.htm">Bayonne</a>.</li><li>Avignon <a href="../cathen/11083a.htm">Nîmes</a>, <a href="../cathen/15250a.htm">Valence</a>, <a href="../cathen/15493a.htm">Viviers</a>, Montpellier.</li><li><a href="../cathen/02525b.htm">Besançon</a> Verdun, <a href="../cathen/02415a.htm">Belley</a>, St-Dié, Nancy.</li><li>Bordeaux Agen, <a href="../cathen/01513b.htm">Angoulême</a>, <a href="../cathen/12178c.htm">Poitiers</a>, <a href="../cathen/11668a.htm">Périgueux</a>, <a href="../cathen/09006a.htm">La Rochelle</a>, <a href="../cathen/09413a.htm">Luçon</a>, La Basse-Terre (Guadaloupe, W. I.), Réunion (Indian Ocean), Fort-de-France, <a href="../cathen/09731a.htm">Martinique</a>, W. I.).</li><li>Bourges Clermont, <a href="../cathen/09263a.htm">Limoges</a>, <a href="../cathen/09185b.htm">Le Puy</a>, <a href="../cathen/15086c.htm">Tulle</a>, St-Flour.</li><li>Cambrai Arras.</li><li>Chambér <a href="../cathen/01540a.htm">Annecy</a>, <a href="../cathen/14454a.htm">Tarentaise</a>, Maurienne.</li><li>Lyons Autun, <a href="../cathen/08789c.htm">Langres</a>, <a href="../cathen/04794b.htm">Dijon</a>, St-Claude, Grenoble.</li><li>Paris Chartres, Meaux, <a href="../cathen/11318b.htm">Orléans</a>, <a href="../cathen/02602b.htm">Blois</a>, Versailles.</li><li>Reims <a href="../cathen/14130c.htm">Soissons</a>, <a href="../cathen/03566a.htm">Châlons-sur-Marne</a>, <a href="../cathen/02377c.htm">Beauvais</a>, Amiens.</li><li>Rennes Quimper, <a href="../cathen/15271b.htm">Vannes</a>, St-Brieuc.</li><li>Rouen Bayeux, âvreux, <a href="../cathen/13681d.htm">Séez</a>, Coutances.</li><li>Sens Troyes, <a href="../cathen/10778a.htm">Nevers</a>, Moulins.</li><li>Toulouse Montauban, <a href="../cathen/11435b.htm">Pamiers</a>, Carcassonne.</li><li>Tours <a href="../cathen/09143b.htm">Le Mans</a>, <a href="../cathen/01489b.htm">Angers</a>, <a href="../cathen/10681a.htm">Nantes</a>, Laval. </li></ul></div> <h2>The Third Republic and the Church in France</h2> The policy known as anticlerical, inaugurated by Gambetta in his speech at Romans, 18 September, 1878, containing the famous catchword "Le cléricalisme, c'est l'ennemi", was due to the influence of the <a href="../cathen/09771a.htm">Masonic</a> lodges, which ever since that <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">date</a> have shown their <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hatred</a> even of the very <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. If one carefully follows up the series of aspirations uttered at the <a href="../cathen/09771a.htm">Masonic</a> meetings, there will surely be found the first germ of the successive <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> which have been framed against the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. To justify its action before the people, the Government has asserted that the sympathies of a great number of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, including the many of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, were for the monarchical parties. This policy also presented itself as a retaliation for the attempt of the 16th of May, 1877, by which the monarchists had tried to impede in France the progressive actions of the liberals (la Gauche) and of the democratic spirit. Its first embodiments were, in 1879, the exclusion of the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> from the administrative committees of <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospitals</a> and of boards of charity; in 1880, certain measures directed against the religious congregations; from 1880 to 1890, the substitution of lay <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a> for <a href="../cathen/11164a.htm">nuns</a> in many <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospitals</a>; and, in 1882 and 1886, the "School Laws" (lois scolaires) which will later on be discussed in detail. The Concordat continued to govern the relations of <a href="../cathen/14250c.htm">Church and State</a>, but in 1881, the method of stoppage of salary (suppression de traitement) began to be employed against <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> whose political attitude was unsatisfactory to the Government, and the Law of 1893, which subjected the financial administration of <a href="../cathen/12466a.htm">church property</a> to the same rules as civil establishments, occasioned lively concern among the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>. As early as March, 1888, <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a> had written to President Grévy, complaining of the anti-religious bitterness, and expressing a hope that the eldest daughter of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> would find it possible to abandon this struggle if she would not forfeit that unity and homogeneity among her citizens which had been the source of her own peculiar greatness, and thus <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">oblige</a> history to proclaim that one inconsiderate day's work had destroyed in France the magnificent achievement of the ages. Jules Grévy replied that the religious feeling complained of way the outcome mainly of the hostile attitude of a section of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> to the Republic. Some years later (12 November, 1890), <a href="../cathen/09050d.htm">Cardinal Lavigerie</a>, returning from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, and inspired by <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a>, delivered a speech in the presence of all the authorities, military and civil, of Algeria, in which he said: "When the will of a people as to the form of its government has been clearly affirmed, and when, to snatch a people from the abysses which threatens it, unreserved adhesion to this political form is <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a>, then the moment has come to declare the test completed, and it only remains to make all those <a href="../cathen/13309a.htm">sacrifices</a> which <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a> and <a href="../cathen/07462a.htm">honour</a> permit us, and command us, to make for the good of our country." This speech, which caused a great commotion, was followed by a letter of Cardinal Rampolla, Secretary of State to <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a>, addressed to the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of St-Flour, in which the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinal</a> exhorted <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> to come forward and take part in public affairs, thus entering upon the readiest and surest path to the attainment of that noble aim, the good of religion and the <a href="../cathen/13407a.htm">salvation</a> of <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">souls</a>. Lastly, a <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Brief</a> of <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a> to <a href="../cathen/09050d.htm">Cardinal Lavigerie</a>, in the early part of the year 1891, assured him that his <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zeal</a> and activity answered perfectly to the needs of the age and the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> expectations. From these utterances dates in France the policy known as "Raillement", and as "Leo's Republican Policy". At once the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishops</a> of <a href="../cathen/15002a.htm">Tours</a>, <a href="../cathen/03209c.htm">Cambrai</a>, the Bishops of <a href="../cathen/02358b.htm">Bayeux</a>, <a href="../cathen/08789c.htm">Langres</a>, <a href="../cathen/04793a.htm">Digne</a>, <a href="../cathen/02360b.htm">Bayonne</a>, and Grenoble declared their adhesion to the "Algiers Programme", and the Monarchical press accused them of "kissing the Republic feet of their executioners". On 16 January, 1892, a collective letter was published by the five French <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a>, enumerating all the acts of oppression sanctioned by the Republic against the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, and concluding, in conformity with the wish of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, by announcing the following programme: Frank and loyal acceptance of political institutions; respect for the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> of the country whenever they do not clash with conscientious <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a>; respect for the representatives of authority, combined with steady resistance to all encroachments on the spiritual domain. Within a month the seventy-five <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> subscribed to the above programme, and in the atmosphere thus prepared, the voice of Pope Leo once more spoke out. In the <a href="../cathen/05413a.htm">Encyclical</a> "Inter innumeras sollicitudines", <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 10 February, 1892, <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a> besought <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> not to judge the Republic by the irreligious character of its government, and explained that a distinction must be drawn between the form of government, which ought to be accepted, and its <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> which ought to be improved. Thus was the policy of rallying to the Republic precisely stated, as recommended to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of France, and expounded in the brochures, in <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, of Cardinal Perraud, and at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, of Fr. Brandi, editor of the "Civiltà Cattolica". Anticlericalists and Monarchists were alarmed. The Monarchists protested against the interference of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> in French politics, and the anticlericals declared that the Republic had not room for "Roman Republicans". Both parties asserted that it was impossible to distinguish between the Republican form of government and the Republican <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a>. A trifling incident, arising out of a visit paid by some French <a href="../cathen/12085a.htm">pilgrims</a> to the Parthenon in <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, which contains the <a href="../cathen/14773b.htm">tomb</a> of Victor Emmanuel, called forth from M. Falliéres, Minister of Justice, a circular against <a href="../cathen/12085a.htm">pilgrimages</a> (October, 1891), and occasioned a lively debate in the French Chamber on the separation of <a href="../cathen/14250c.htm">Church and State</a>. But in spite of these outbreaks of Anticlericalism, the political horizons, especially after the <a href="../cathen/05413a.htm">Encyclical</a> of February, 1892, became more serene. The policy of combining Republican forces by a fusion of Moderates and Radicals to support a common programme of Republican concentration, which programme was incessantly developing new anticlerical measures as concessions to the Radicals gradually went out of fashion. After the October elections, in 1893, for the first time in many long years, a homogeneous ministry was formed, one ministry composed exclusively of Moderate Republicans, and known as the Casimir Périer-Spuller Ministry. On 3 March, 1894, in a discussion in the Chamber on the prohibition of religious emblems by the socialist Mayor of Saint-Denis, Spuller, the minister of Public Worship, declared that it was time to take a stand against all fanaticisms whatsoever against all sectaries, regardless of the particular <a href="../cathen/13674a.htm">sect</a> to which they might belong and that the Chamber could rely at once of the vigilance of the Government to uphold the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of the State, and on the new spirit (esprit nouveau) which animated the Government, and tended to reconcile all citizens and bring back all Frenchmen to the principles of common sense and <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a>, and of the charity <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> for every <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">society</a> that wishes to survive. Thus it seemed that there would be developing, side by side with the policy of ralliement practised by the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, a similar conciliatory policy on the part of the State. <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> A letter from Cardinal Rampolla, <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 30 January, 1895, to M. Auguste Roussel, formerly an editor of the "Univers", but who had become editor-in-chief of the "Vérité", found fault with the latter periodical for stirring up feeling against the Republic, fostering in the mind of its readers the conviction that it was idle to hope for religious peace from such a form of government, creating an atmosphere of distrust and discouragement, and thwarting the movement toward general good-feeling which the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> desired, especially in light of the elections. This letter created a great sensation, and the newspaper polemics contrasted the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of the "Univers" and the "Croix", docile toward <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a>, with the refractory <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of the "Vérité". On 5 February, 1896, Félix Faure wrote as follows to Pope Leo: "The President of the Republic cannot forget the generous motives which prompted the advice given by Your Holiness to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of France, encouraging them to accept loyally the government of their country. Your Holiness regrets that these appeals for harmony and peace have not been everywhere listened to; and we join in those regrets. That enlightened advice given to the opponents of the Republic, for whose consciences the head of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> is 'all-powerful', ought to have been followed by all. Nevertheless, we note at the present time, with regret, that there are men who, under the cloak of religion, foment a policy of discord and of strife. It would, however, be <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">unjust</a> not to recognize that, while the salutary instructions of Your Holiness have not produced all the effects that might have been expected of them, very many loyal <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> have bowed before them. At the same time, this manifestation of goodwill produced among those Republicans who were most firmly attached to the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of the <a href="../cathen/02137c.htm">civil power</a> a spirit of conciliation which has largely contributed to mitigate the conflict of passions which saddened us." This letter, published for the first time at the end of the year 1905, in the "White Book" of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>, places in clear relief the relations existing between the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> and the Republic four years after the encyclical of February, 1892, and three months before the formation of the Méline Ministry, which was to lead the Republic towards even greater moderation. The Méline Ministry (1896-98) secured for <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> for two years a certain amelioration of their lot. But the division among <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> persisted, and this division, which arose from their indocility to <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a>, was the principal cause of their defeat in the elections of 1898, when the Méline Ministry came to an end. The old Anticlerical Republican party came once more into power; the Dreyfus affair, a purely judicial matter around which political factions grew up, was made the pretext on the morrow of the death of President Faure (16 February, 1899) for beginning a formidable antimilitarist, and anticlerical agitation, which led to the formation of the Waldeck-Rousseau and the Combes Ministries. The Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry (1899-1902) passed fresh legislation against the congregations (it will be found in detail at the end of this article) and brought France to the verge of a breach with <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> over the question of the Nobis nominavit. These two words, which occurred in episcopal <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bulls</a>, signified that the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> chosen by the State to fill a <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">bishopric</a> had been designated and presented to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>. On 13 June, 1901, when <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bulls</a> were required for the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> of <a href="../cathen/03331b.htm">Carcassonne</a> and Annecy, the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry proposed that the word Nobis should be omitted, in order to affirm more clearly the State's right of <a href="../cathen/11093a.htm">nomination</a>. The Combes Ministry (1902-05) continued the dispute over this matter, and on 22 November, 1903, the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>, in order to avoid a breach with France, agreed to omit the obnoxious word, on condition that, in future, the President of the Republic should demand the <a href="../cathen/08065a.htm">canonical institution</a> of <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> by letters patent, containing the words, We name him, and present him to Your Holiness. In spite of this concession by the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>, M. Combs set himself the task of planning the separation of <a href="../cathen/14250c.htm">Church and State</a>. He felt that public opinion was not yet ripe for this stroke, and all his efforts were directed to making separation inevitable. The laicization of the naval and military <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospitals</a> (1903-04), the order prohibiting soldiers to frequent <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> clubs (9 February, 1904); the vote of the Chamber (14 February, 1904) in favour of the motion to repeal the Falloux Law were episodes less serious than the succession of calculated acts by which the breach with <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> was being approached. Three quarrels succeeded one another. <div class="bulletlist"><ol><li>In regard to vacant sees, Combe's policy was to demand <a href="../cathen/08065a.htm">canonical institution</a> for the candidate of his choice without previously consulting <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. The <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> refused its consent in the cases of the <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">bishoprics</a> of Maurienne, <a href="../cathen/02360b.htm">Bayonne</a>, <a href="../cathen/01238b.htm">Ajaccio</a>, and Vannes, and accepted M. Combe's candidate for Nevers. "All or none", replied M. Combes, on 19 March, 1904, to the <a href="../cathen/11160a.htm">nuncio</a>, Mgr Lorenzelli; and all the sees remained <a href="../cathen/15248b.htm">vacant</a>.</li><li>On 25 March, 1904, the chamber agreed, by 502 votes against 12, to allocate a sum of money to defray the expenses of a visit by M. Loubet, President of the Republic, to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. M. Loubet was thus the first head of a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> State to pay a visit to the King of <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a> in <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. A note from Cardinal Rampolla to M. Nisard, the French Ambassador, <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 1 June, 1903, and a dispatch from the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinal</a> to the <a href="../cathen/11160a.htm">nuncio</a>, Lorenzelli, <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 8 June, had explained the reasons why such a visit would be considered a grave affront to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>. On 28 April, 1904, Cardinal Merry del Val sent a protest to M. Nisard against M. Loubet's visit to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. On 6 May, M. Nisard handed to Cardinal Merry del Val a diplomatic note in which the French government objected to the reasons given by the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> and to the manner in which they were presented. At the same time, to prevent the heads of other <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> counties from following M. Loubet's example, the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> sent a diplomatic note to all the powers in which it was explained that if, in spite of this visit, the <a href="../cathen/11160a.htm">nuncio</a> to France had not been recalled, it was only for very grave reasons of an order and nature altogether special. By an indiscretion, which has been attributed to the Government of the Principalityof Monaco, "L'Humanité", a newspaper belonging to the socialist deputy, Jaurès, published this note on 17 May. On 20 May, M. Nisard sought an explanation from Cardinal Merry del Val; on 21 May was granted leave of absence by his Government; and on 28 May, in the Chamber, the Government gave it to be understood that M. Nisard's departure from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> had a significance much more serious than that of a simple leave of absence.</li><li>Having learned of a letter from Cardinal Serafino Vannutelli (17 May, 1904) inviting Monsignor Geay, <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of Laval, in the name of the Holy Office, to resign his <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">see</a>, and of a letter in which Monsignor Lorenzelli, the <a href="../cathen/11160a.htm">papal nuncio</a>, requested Monsignor Le Nordez, <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/04794b.htm">Dijon</a>, to desist from holding ordinations until further orders, the French Government caused its chargé d'affaires at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, M. Robert de Courcel, to inquire into the matter. When on 9 July, 1904, Cardinal Merry del Val cited Mgr Le Nordez to appear at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> within fifteen days, under pain of suspension, M. Robert de Courcel announced to the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinal</a> that, unless this letter to Mgr Le Nordez was withdrawn, diplomatic relations between France and the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> would cease; and on 30 July, 1904, a note handed by M. Robert de Courcel to Cardinal Merry del Val announced that France had decided to put an end to these relations.</li></ol></div> In this way the breach was effected without any formal denunciation of the Concordat. On 10 February, 1905, the Chamber declared that "the attitude of the Vatican" had rendered the separation of <a href="../cathen/14250c.htm">Church and State</a> inevitable. The "Osservatore Romano" replied that this was an "historical lie". The discussions in the chamber lasted from 21 March to 3 July, and in the Senate from 9 November to 6 December, and on 11 December 1905, the separation Law was gazetted in the "Journal Officiel". <h3>Laws affecting the congregations</h3> The Monarchy had taken fiscal measures against <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> held in <a href="../cathen/10579a.htm">mortmain</a> ("the dead hand") but the first rigorous enactments against religious congregations date from the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a>. The Law of 13 February, 1790, declared that <a href="../cathen/10459a.htm">monastic</a> <a href="../cathen/15511a.htm">vows</a> were no longer recognized, and that the orders and congregations in which such <a href="../cathen/15511a.htm">vows</a> were made were forever suppressed. The Concordat itself was silent as to congregations; but the Eleventh of the Organic articles implicitly prohibited them, declaring that all <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> establishments except chapters and <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminaries</a> were suppressed. Two years later a <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a>, <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 3 Messidor, Year XII, suppressing certain congregations which had come into existence in spite of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, added a provision that the <a href="../cathen/02137c.htm">civil authority</a> could, by <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a>, formally authorize such associations after having taken cognizance of their <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">statutes</a>. The <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a>, the Missions Estrangères, the Friars of the Holy Ghost, and the <a href="../cathen/13378a.htm">Sulpicians</a> were, in virtue of this <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, authorized by <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a> in 1804; the <a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Brothers of the Christian Schools</a>, in 1808. Under the restoration, the Chamber of Peers refused the king the right of creating congregations by royal warrant (par ordonnace), asserting that for each particular re-establishment of a congregation a law was <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a>. Such was the principle which ruled until the year 1901; but the applications of that principle varied with the changes of government. Under the Second Empire it was admitted in practice that a simple administrative authorization was sufficient to legalize a congregation of <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>, provided that such congregation adopted the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">statutes</a> of a congregation previously authorized. Under the Third Republic, it was under the pretext of a strict enforcement of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> that, in 1880, the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Society of Jesus</a> was dissolved, and the other congregations were ordered to apply for authorization with three months. The protests of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, and the criticisms which became general on the archaic character of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> upon which these decrees were based had this much effect, that, after a brutal application of the decrees to most of the congregations of men, the government dare not apply them to the unauthorized congregations of <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>; they gradually became a dead letter; and little by little the congregations of men were re-formed in the name of individual liberty. But in this condition of affairs, only the formally authorized congregations could be considered as "moral <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a>" before the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>. Since 1849 the religious congregations had been paying into the treasury a "mortmain tax" (taxe des biens de mainmorte) in lieu of the succession <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duties</a> which the properties of a "moral <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a>" escapes. On the twofold consideration that this tax did not touch personal estate and that <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> held in unacknowledged <a href="../cathen/10579a.htm">mortmain</a> evaded it, the Third republic passed the following enactments. <div class="bulletlist"><ul><li>A law of increment (droit d'accroissement) so called because it was intended to reach that increase in the individual interest of each surviving member in the common estate which should accrue upon the decease of a fellow-member. This <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a> is represented by a composition tax (taxe abonnement) assessed at the rate of 0.3 percent on the market value of the real and <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> estate held by the association. On real estate held by associations not subject to the <a href="../cathen/10579a.htm">mortmain</a> law, the rate is 0.4 percent.</li><li>A tax of four percent on the revenue of <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> owned or occupied by congregations, this revenue being assumed equal to one-twentieth of the gross value of the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a>.</li></ul></div> On 1 January, 1901, France numbered 19,424 establishments of religious congregations, with 159,628 members. Of these establishments, 3126 belonged to congregations of men; 16,298 to congregations of <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a> (2870 of the latter being regularly authorized, and 13,428 unrecognized). The members of the male congregations number 30,136, of whom 23,327 belonged to teaching institutes, 552 served in <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospitals</a>, and 7277 followed the contemplative vocation [sic]. The value of real <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> being taxed as held by congregations amounted to 463,715,146 francs (about $92,000,000 or between £18,000,000 and £19,000,000) and in this estimate was included all <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> devoted by the religious to benevolent and <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">educational</a> purposes. But the Department of Domains, in drawing up its statistical report (which statistics were with <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a> questioned), explained that, in addition to the real <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> taxed as belonging to congregations, account should be taken of the real <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> occupied by them through the complaisance of lay corporations or proprietors whom the State declared to be mere intermediaries (personnes interposées), and the department placed the combined value of these two classes of <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> at 1,071,775,260 francs. To this unfair estimate may be traced the popular notion which was cleverly exploited by certain political parties about le milliard des congrégations. The <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> of associations, as of 1 July, 1901, provided that no congregation, whether of men or of <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>, could be formed without a legislative authorizing act, which act should determine the function of such congregation. Thus ended the regime of tolerance to congregations of <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a> which had been inaugurated by the Empire. Congregations previously authorized and those which should subsequently obtain authorization had, according to this <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, the status of "moral persons", but this status held them to an <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a> and kept them perpetually under a threat. On the one hand, it was enacted that they must each year draw up a list of their members, an inventory of their possessions, and a statement of their receipts and expenses, and must present these documents to the prefectoral authority upon demand. On the other hand, it was provided that, to deprive any congregation of its authorization, nothing more was required than an ordinary <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a> of the Council of Ministers. And lastly, these authorized congregations could found "new establishments" only in virtue of a <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a> of the Council of State, and the Council of State, in interpreting the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, considers that there is a "new establishment" when <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a> in cooperation with one or more members of a congregation set up a <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> or a <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospital</a>. If the master of an industrial enterprise rewards a sister for teaching or caring for the children of this workmen, the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> considers that there is a new establishment, for which an authorization of the Council of State is <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a>. As for the unauthorized Congregations, the Law of 1901 declared them dissolved, allowing them three months to apply for authorization. Congregations which should re-form after dissolution, or which should in the future be formed without authorization were, by the same law, made liable to pains and penalties (fines of from 16 to 5000 francs; terms of <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a> of from 6 days to one year); double penalties were to be inflicted on founders and administrators, and the act of providing premises for, and thus abetting, the operation of such congregations was, in 1902, declared an offense entailing the same penalties. Moreover, the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> made every member of an unauthorized religious congregation incapable of directing any teaching establishment, or of teaching in one, under pain of fine or <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a>, and this offense might entail the closing of the establishment. The Government found itself face-to-face with 17,000 unauthorized congregations; it decided to dissolve all of them without exception <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">educational establishments</a>, industrial establishments, contemplative establishments though charitable establishments were tolerated provisionally. From another point of view the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> was singularly arbitrary and juridically defective; it struck at every member of a religious congregation who was not secularized, but it did not precisely state what constitutes secularization. Is it sufficient, for secularization to be effective and sincere, that the religious or, to employ the current French term, the congréganiste should be absolved from his <a href="../cathen/15511a.htm">vows</a> and should re-enter the diocese from which he originally came? The prevalent legal opinion does not admit this; it admits the right of the courts to ascertain whether other elements of fact do not result in a virtual persistence of the congregation. Thus the courts may regard as religious <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a> who, in the eyes of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, are no longer such; and the fact of being a congréganiste, which fact constitutes an offense, is not a precise, material fact defined and limited by the letter of the enactment; it is a point upon which the interpretation of the courts remains the sovereign authority. The principles of liquidation were as follows: <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> belonging to congréganistes before their entrance to the congregation, or acquired since that time, whether by succession independent of testamentary provision (ab intestat) or by legacy in direct line, was to be restored to them. Gifts and bequests made otherwise than in direct line could not legally be claimed by the former congréganistes unless they established the point that they had not been intermediaries (personnes interposées). Benefactions to congregations could be reclaimed by benefactors or their heirs within a term of six months. After these deductions made by the congréganistes and their benefactors, the residue of the estate of the congregation was to be subject to the disposition of the courts. The law refused to recognize that <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> created by the labour or thrift of the congréganistes necessarily ought to be distributed among them, and it was held sufficient that, by an administrative ruling of 16 August, 1901, provision was made for allowances to former congréganistes who had no means of subsistence or who should establish the fact of having by their labour contributed to the acquisition of the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> under liquidation. The juridical liquidation of the congregational estates had some serious consequences. The Chamber soon perceived that too often the liquidators intentionally complicated the business with which they were charged (it being in their interest to multiple lawsuits the expense of which could not in any case fall upon them) and that the personal profits derived by the liquidators from these operations were exorbitant. In confiding so delicate a business to irresponsible functionaries, the framer of the Law of 1901 had committed a grave <a href="../cathen/05525a.htm">error</a> of judgment. On 31 December, 1907, the Senate resolved to nominate a commission of inquiry to examine the accounts of the liquidators, and the report of this commission, published in early September, 1908, revealed enormous irregularities. It was to satisfy these belated misgivings, that the Government, in February, 1908, introduced a bill substituting for the irresponsible judicial liquidation an administrative liquidation under the control of the prefects. But this provision is to apply only to the congregations which shall be dissolved hereafter; what has happened in the past seven years is irreparable, and when <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> publicists speak of "the evaporation of the famous milliard of the congregations" the champions of the Law of 1901 are painfully embarrassed. <h3>The laicization of primary instruction</h3> (a) As to the Matter of Instruction The Law of 28 March, 1882, which made primary instruction <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligatory</a>, gratuitous, and secular (laïque), intentionally omitted religious instruction from the curriculum of the public <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a>, and provided one free day every week, besides Sunday, to allow the children, if their <a href="../cathen/11478c.htm">parents</a> saw fit, to receive religious instruction; but this instruction was to be given outside of the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> buildings. Thus the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> had no <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> to enter the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, even outside of class hours, to hold <a href="../cathen/05075b.htm">catechism</a>. The <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> regulations of 18 January, 1887, laid it down that the children could be sent to church for <a href="../cathen/05075b.htm">catechism</a> or religious exercises only outside of class hours, and that teachers were not bound either to take them to church or to watch over their behaviour while there. It was added that during the week preceding the First Communion teachers were to allow pupils to leave the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> when their religious <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duties</a> called them to church. The spirit of the Law of 1882 implied that religious emblems should be excluded from the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, but out of regard for the religious feelings of the people in those neighbourhoods, the prefects allowed the crucifixes to remain in a certain number of <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>; they took care, however, that no religious emblems should be placed in any of the newly erected <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> buildings. This temporizing policy was continued by the ministerial order or 9 April, 1903, but in 1906 and 1907 the administration at last called for the definitive disappearance of the crucifix from all public <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>. The Law of 1882 is silent as to the teaching, in the public <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, of the students' <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duties</a> toward <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. The Senate, after a speech by Jules Ferry, refused to entertain the proposal of Jules Simon, that these <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duties</a> should be mentioned in the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>; but the Board of Education (Conseil Supérieur de l'Instruction Publique), acting on a recommendation of Paul Janet, the Spiritualist <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosopher</a>, inserted in the executive instructions, with which it supplemented the text of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, a recommendation that the teacher should admonish the pupils not to use the name of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> lightly, to respect the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and to obey the <a href="../cathen/09071a.htm">laws of God</a> as revealed by <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a> and reason. However, in the public <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> dependent on the municipality of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, the antispiritualist tendency became so violent that, after 1882, the new edition of certain <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> books expunged, even where they occurred in selected specimens of literature, the words God, <a href="../cathen/12509a.htm">Providence</a>, Creator. These early manifestations led <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> to declare that the laic and neutral <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> was really a Godless <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a>. In the controversy which arose, some quotations from the public <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> textbooks became famous. For instance, la Fontaine's lines <blockquote>Petit poisson deviendra grand, Pourvu que Dieu lui prêtre vie </blockquote> were made to read "que l'on lui prêtre vie". And while politicians were deprecating the assertion that the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> were Godless, the <a href="../cathen/09771a.htm">Masonic</a> conventicles and the professional articles written by certain state pedagogues were explaining that the notion of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> must eventually disappear in the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a>. In practice, the chapter of <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duties</a> toward <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> was one which very few teachers touched upon. In 1894, M. Divinat, afterwards director of the normal <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> of the department of the Seine, wrote: "To teach <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, it is <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> to <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believe</a> in <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. Now how are we to find in these days teachers whose <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">souls</a> are sincerely and profoundly religious? It may be affirmed without any exaggeration that, since 1882, the lay public <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> has been very nearly the Godless <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a>." This frank and unimpeachable testimony, justifying, as it does, all the sad predictions of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, has been corroborated by the experience of the last fifteen years. With the cry, Laïciser la laïque, a certain number of teachers have carried on an active campaign for the formal elimination of the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, as a remnant of "Clericalism", from the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> programme. The powerful organization known as the "Ligue de l'Enseignement", whose <a href="../cathen/09771a.htm">Masonic</a> affinities are indisputable, has supported this movement. For the exponents of the tendency, to be laïque, one must be the enemy of all rational <a href="../cathen/10226a.htm">metaphysics</a> to be laïque, one must be an <a href="../cathen/02040a.htm">atheist</a>. The very <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of neutrality in <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>, to which anti-religious teachers have not always consistently adhered, is nowadays out of favour with many members of the pedagogical profession. In 1904, the teachers of the Department of the Seine advocated, almost unanimously, in place of "denominational neutrality" (neutralité confessionelle), which they said was a lie (un mensonge), the establishment of a "critical teaching" (enseignement critique), which, in the name of <a href="../cathen/13598b.htm">science</a>, should abandon all reserves in regard to denominational susceptibilities. But that neutrality was something very closely resembling a lie, is just what <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> orators were saying in 1882, and thus the evolution of the primary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a>, and these fits of candour in which the very <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a> of the matter is confessed, justify, after a quarter of a century, the fears expressed by <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> at the very outset. It is to be feared, moreover, that this substitution of critical for neutral teaching will very soon issue in the introduction, even in the primary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, of lessons on the history of <a href="../cathen/12738a.htm">religions</a> which shall serve as weapons against <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> revelation; such a step is already being advocated by the <a href="../cathen/09771a.htm">Freemasons</a> and by certain groups of unbelieving savants, and herein lies one of the greatest perils of to-morrow. Bills introduced by MM. Briand and Doumergue impose heavy penalties on fathers whose children refuse to make use of the irreligious books given them by their teachers, and render it impossible for <a href="../cathen/11478c.htm">parents</a> to prosecute teachers whose immoral and irreligious instruction may give them reason for complaint. These bills, which are soon to be discussed, are now (June, 1909) producing a very painful impression. (b) Laicization of the Teaching Staff The Law of 30 October, 1886, drawn and advocated by Renè Goblet, called for the laicization of the teaching staff in the public <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>. In the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> for boys this laicization has been an accomplished fact since 1891, since which date no <a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Brother of the Christian Schools</a> has acted either as principal or as teacher in public primary instruction. The difficulty of forming a body of <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">female</a> lay teachers impeded the process of laicizing the public <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> for girls, but this, too, has been complete since 1906, except in some few communes, where it is to be effected before the year 1913. <h3>Denominational primary instruction</h3> From the eleventh century onwards, history shows unmistakable traces, in most provinces of France, of small <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> founded by the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, such as were recommended by <a href="../cathen/03610c.htm">Charlemagne's</a> capitulary in the year 789. The ever-increasing number of <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, writes Guibert de Nogent in the twelfth century, makes access to them easy for the humblest. The seventeenth century saw the foundation of a certain number of teaching institutes; the <a href="../cathen/15228b.htm">Ursulines</a>, who between the year 1602 and the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a>, founded 289 houses, and who numbered 9000 members in 1792; the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul founded in 1630, recognized in 1657; the Congregation of Notre-Dame, founded by <a href="../cathen/11767b.htm">St. Peter Fourier</a>, recognized in 1622; the <a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Brothers of the Christian Schools</a>, called, in the eighteenth century, Brothers of Saint-Yon, founded by <a href="../cathen/08444a.htm">St. John the Baptist de la Salle</a>, and who had 123 classes in 1719, when their founder died, and 550 classes in 1789. In the last twenty years a large number of monographs which have been given restricted publication in the provinces, have presented historical evidence of the care which the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> was devoting to primary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> during the period immediately preceding the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a>. At the beginning of the Consulate, Fourcroy, anti-religious as he was, alarmed, to use his own words, at the "almost total ineffectiveness of the primary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>" (nullité presque totale), recommended it as a useful expedient, to confide a portion of the primary teaching to the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> and to revive "the Institute of the Brothers, which had formerly been of the greatest service". In 1805, the Brothers, having re-established a mother-house at <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a>, were solicited to furnish teachers in thirty-six towns. The Government of the First Empire authorized in ten years 880 communities or establishments of teaching sisters; the Restoration, less generous, authorized only 599; the Monarchy of July only 389. Until 1833 these congregations could exercise their functions only in <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> controlled by the State, for the University would allow no infringement of its monopoly. The magnificent tribute to the <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">educational</a> activity of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> which Guizot uttered during the debates on the Law of 1833 was endorsed by the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> itself which, partially suppressing the monopoly of the University, established the principal of free primary teaching. The Law of 25 March, 1850, held "letters of obedience" given by religious associations to their members, to be equivalent to the diplomas given by the State, which legally qualified their recipients to be teachers. Between 1852 and 1860 the Empire issued 884 decrees recognizing congregations or local establishments of teaching sisters; from 1861 to 1869 the period of change which followed the <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italian</a> <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> while Duruy was Minister of Public Instruction, only 77 of these decrees were issued. The Law of 28 March, 1882, deprived the "letters of obedience" of all their value by providing that every teacher must hold a diploma (brevet) from one of the government jurys, or examining boards. The congrégationistes (see above) submitted to this formality. With this exception, the Law upheld the liberty of private teaching. The Law of 1886 authorized mayors and <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> inspectors (inspecteurs d'académie) to oppose the opening of any private <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> on moral or hygienic grounds; in such cases the litigation was taken before one of the <a href="../cathen/15188a.htm">university</a> councils (conseils universitaires), in which the private <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">educational establishments</a> were represented by elected delegates, and the council gave a decision. These councils could also take disciplinary action against private teachers, in the form of censure or suspension of teaching licence. The masters and mistresses of private <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> might give religious instruction in their <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, and were left free in the choice of methods, programs, and books, but the state authority, after consultation with the Council of Public Instruction (Conseil Supérieur de l'Instruction Publique), might prohibit the introduction and use of books judged contrary to morality, the Constitution, of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>. An order of the Council of State, <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 29 July, 1888, declared that neither departments nor communes had a legal right to grant appropriations, on their respective local budgets, to private <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>; thus the establishment and support of these <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> has fallen on <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> charity exclusively. The communes can only give assistance to poor pupils in private <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> as <a href="../cathen/07762a.htm">individuals</a>. A first, very serious, attack on the principal of freedom of teaching was made by the Law of 7 July, 1904, which formally declared that "teaching of every grade and every kind is forbidden in France to the congregations". The members of the authorized congregations, equally with the rest, fell under the disability thus created. Every Brother, every religious <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">woman</a>, who wished to continue the work of teaching was forthwith compelled to be secularized, and the courts remained, and still remain, competent to contest the legal value of such secularizations. A clause, the legal effect of which was transitory, was introduced empowering the Government, according to the needs of particular localities, to authorize for one or more years the continuance of congréganiste <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>; but M. Combes immediately closed 14,404 out of 16,904 such <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, and it is decreed that in 1910 the last of the congréganiste <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> shall have disappeared. From time to time the Ministry publishes a list of congréganiste <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> which must be closed definitely by the end of the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> year, and thus the Government in power is the sole arbiter to accord or to refuse them a few last years of existence. The <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> are seeking to maintain primary <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> or to reorganize it with secular or lay teachers. In some diocese a movement is on foot for the acquisition of teaching diplomas for the seminarists. Already in twenty-four diocese there are <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocesan</a> organizations for free teaching <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocesan</a> committees composed of <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> and <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>, which maintain a strict control of all the private <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> in their diocese. These measures have been imperatively demanded in order to repair the losses suffered by free primary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>, the number of pupils having fallen, according to statistics complied in 1907 by M. Keller, from 1,600,000 to 1,000,000. <h3>Denominational secondary education</h3> <a href="../cathen/14269a.htm">Statistics</a> published by the Education Commission (Commission d'Enseignement) show that, out of a total of 162,110 pupils in the secondary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> for the year 1898, 50,793 belonged to the lycées, 33,949 to the colleges, 9725 to private establishments taught by <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>, and 67,643 to private establishments taught by <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a>. To these figures must be added 23,497 boys in the petits séminaires. Thus, in the aggregate, the State was giving primary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> to 84,742 pupils; the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> to 91,140. The fundamental law on secondary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> is still the Falloux Law of 15 March, 1850. Any Frenchman over twenty-five years of age, having the degree of Bachelor, or a special diploma of qualification (brevet de capacité), may, after passing a term of five years in a teaching establishment, open a house of secondary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>, subject to objections on moral or hygienic grounds, of which grounds the <a href="../cathen/15188a.htm">university</a> councils are the judges. In contrast with the case of private primary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>, <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> establishments of secondary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> may be subsidized by the communes or the departments. <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> A first serious stroke at the liberty of secondary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> was delivered by the Law of 7 July, 1904, depriving the congréganistes of the right of teaching. Other projects, which the Government has already induced the Senate to accept, are now pending and these would exact much more rigorous conditions as to pedagogic qualifications on the part of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> secondary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> teachers of either sex; the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> establishments would be subject to a compulsory inspection, bearing, as in the case of primary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>, upon the conformity of the teaching with the Constitution and the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>; the Government would reserve the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> to close the establishment by <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a>. It may be foreseen in the course of the year 1909 all or part of these proposals will become law, and the effects will be disastrous, first, to <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> girls' <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, where many of the teachers, whether laywomen or secularized congréganistes, will not immediately be in possession of the requisite diplomas. Such <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> will thus be placed at a further disadvantage with the lycées, colleges, and courses for young <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a> organized by the State under the Law of 21 December, 1880, numbering as many as 104, with 8300 pupils, in 1883, and in 1906, numbering 171, with 32,500 pupils. Secondly, for the petits séminaires the results will be still more disastrous. These institutions have hitherto existed under a particular statute, which it will be <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> here to consider. "Secondary ecclesiastical schools", as the petits séminaires were then called, were made by the decrees of 9 April, 1809, and 15 November, 1811, dependent on the University. There was to be only one secondary <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> in each department, and its course was to be that of the lycée, or college of the state. A warrant of Louis XVIII, <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 5 October, 1814, allowed a second petit séminaires in each department, subject to the authorization of the head (grand maître) of the University of France; it also gave permission for these institutions to be established in country districts, that the pupils should be <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> to assume the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> habit after two years of study, and that the teachers should be directly dependent in the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>. The circular of 4 July, 1816, forbade the petits séminaires to receive externs, and this prohibition was confirmed by the ordinance of June, 1828, which limited the number of their pupils to 20,000. In this way the Government wished the petits séminaires to be reserved exclusively for the <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> of future <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, and to be kept from competing with the University in any sense whatever, and upon these conditions it exempted them from taxation and from the control of the University, and granted them the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of legal <a href="../cathen/11727b.htm">personality</a>. The ordinances of 1828 were never formally abrogated, but in practice, since 1850, a certain number of petits séminaires, retaining certain privileges and <a href="../cathen/07690a.htm">immunities</a> in recognition of their special mission, have received pupils in preparation not only for the <a href="../cathen/12409a.htm">priesthood</a>, but also for a great variety of careers. Legislative projects, the passage of which is now imminent, will be a source of at least temporary embarrassment to the petits séminaires, a certain number of which those, namely, which were <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocesan</a> institutions have disappeared in consequence of the Law of Separation. Statistics show that in 1906, <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> secondary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> possessed 104 fewer colleges, and 22,223 fewer pupils than in 1898, and that the number of pupils in petits séminaires had in eight years decreased by 8711. <h3>Denominational higher education</h3> Until 1882 the State supported five faculties of <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theology</a>: at <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, <a href="../cathen/02684a.htm">Bordeaux</a>, <a href="../cathen/01237e.htm">Aix</a>, <a href="../cathen/13208b.htm">Rouen</a>, and <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a>. These faculties had no regular pupils, but only attendants at the lectures delivered by their professors; the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> attached no canonical value to the degrees; the state did not make these decrees a condition for any <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> appointment. The faculties themselves were suppressed by the Ferry Ministry. The <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> still had two faculties of <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theology</a> maintained by the State; that of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, for Calvinists and <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutherans</a>, and that of <a href="../cathen/10524a.htm">Montauban</a>, for Calvinists exclusively. The separation Law of 1905 left these two faculties to be supported by the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a>, and once detached from the University organizations, they have become free <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theological</a> <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>. The <a href="../cathen/15188a.htm">university</a> monopoly, abolished as to primary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> by the Law of 1833, and as to secondary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> by the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> of 1850, was also abolished for higher <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> by the Law of 12 July, 1875, which permitted any Frenchman, subject to certain conditions, to create establishments of higher <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>. In the period between 1875 and 1907 the Institut Catholique de Paris admitted twenty-nine <a href="../cathen/05072b.htm">doctors</a> of <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theology</a>, thirteen of canon law, eight of scholastic philosophy, one hundred and ninety-two of law, thirty-two of literature, ten of <a href="../cathen/13598b.htm">science</a>. The first three of these degrees have been gained by candidates under tests of the institute itself; the others from state boards (jurys). The institute is preparing to set up a medical course and one in the history of religion. The Institut Catholique de Lille has connected itself with a <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> of higher industrial and commercial instruction (see <a href="../cathen/02352a.htm">LOUIS BAUNARD</a>); the Institut Catholique d'Angers, one of agriculture. The Institut Catholique de <a href="../cathen/14795b.htm">Toulouse</a> has but one faculty, that of <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theology</a>; it is organizing lectures for students of literature and of <a href="../cathen/13598b.htm">sciences</a> who are following the courses of the state faculties. <h3>Laws affecting the applications and effects of religion in civil life</h3> (a) The Sunday Rest The <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a> had abolished all institutions which formerly existed in connection with the Sunday rest and had substituted the décadi (see above) for the Sunday. Under the Restoration the Law of 18 November, 1814, forbade all "exterior" labour on Sunday; a tradesman might not open his shop; by the letter of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, he might work and cause others to work in his closed shop. What the Restoration really aimed at was a public token of obedience to the <a href="../cathen/12372b.htm">precepts</a> of religion. The Law of 12 July, 1880, on the contrary, permitted work on Sunday. The <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> social effects of this <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> were soon perceived. Subtle discussions arose in the Chambers: should the weekly rest, which the labour organizations demanded, be a day fixed by legislation, or should it be Sunday? It was for some time feared that such a legislative prescription would look like a concession to denominationalism, but the decision of the Committee on Labour (conseil supêrieur du travail) and of many labour unions was explicit in favour of Sunday. On 10 July, 1906, a law was passed finally establishing Sunday as the weekly day of rest, and providing, moreover, numerous restrictions and exceptions, the details of which were to be arranged by administrative regulations. An unconscious homage to the <a href="../cathen/09071a.htm">Divine law</a>, rendered by an unbelieving Parliamentary majority, this enactment, on account of a certain temporary disturbance which it occasioned in the country's industry and commerce, and in the supply of commodities, was the object of unfortunate aminadversions on the part of certain journals which were in other respects defenders of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> interests. The hostility manifested by a certain number of prominent <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> towards the Sunday rest, and their cooperation with every attempt to restrict the application of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, produced a regrettable effect on public opinion. (b) Oaths The form of <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> administered in courts of <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a> is not peculiar to any creed. It supposes a <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">belief</a> in <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. The images of Christ have disappeared from the courtrooms. Proposals are being considered by the Chambers to suppress the words "devant Dieu et devant hommes" (before <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> and man) in the legal form of <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a>, or to authorize a demand on the part of any <a href="../cathen/02040a.htm">atheist</a> to have the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> administered to him in a different form. (c) Immunities Since the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> made military service a universal <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a> in France, three enactments have followed one another: that of 27 July 1872, dispensing <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> from the <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a>; that of 15 July, 1889, which fixed the term of active service for ordinary citizens at three years, and for <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> at one; that of 21 March, 1905, fixing the term of active service at two years for <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> as for others, and imposing upon them, up to the age of forty-five, all the series of <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a> to which members of the reserves and of the territorial army are subject. (d) Marriage Under the old regime, <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> officially registered births, deaths, and marriages for the State. In 1787, Louis XVI accorded to the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> the same privilege which, indeed, they had enjoyed under the Edict of Nantes, from 1595 to 1685. The <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolutionary</a> law and the code Napoléon deprived the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> of this status. Civil marriage was instituted, and the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> was forbidden to solemnize any marriage not previously contracted in the presence of a civil functionary. Immediately after the separation of church and State (1905), the question was raised, whether this prohibition was still to be maintained; the Supreme Court of Appeals (Cour de Cassation) replied in the affirmative, and punished a <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> who had blessed a marriage not contracted before the mayor. Certain courts have admitted that if, after a <a href="../cathen/09691b.htm">civil marriage</a>, one of the two parties, contrary to previous engagements, should refuse to go to church, this would constitute an injury to the other party so grave as to justify a suit for <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorce</a>; but this opinion is not unanimous. <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, for that matter, wish to abolish the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> requiring the previous <a href="../cathen/09691b.htm">civil marriage</a>. Some of the impediments <a href="../cathen/04675b.htm">defined</a> by the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> are not recognized by the State, such as, e.g., the impediment of spiritual relationship. One impediment recognized by the civil code (articles 148-150), but which the <a href="../cathen/15030c.htm">Council of Trent</a> refused to make a <a href="../cathen/07695a.htm">canonical impediment</a>, in spite of the solicitation of Charles IX's ambassadors, is that which results from the refusal of <a href="../cathen/11478c.htm">parents'</a> consent. The Law of 21 June 1907, the chief advocate of which was the Abbé Lamier, considerably loosened the <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a> imposed on adults with regard to <a href="../cathen/11478c.htm">parental</a> consent, and the discrepancies in this respect between the state law and the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> law have, in consequence, become less serious. The Law of 20 September, 1792, admitted <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorce</a>, even by mutual consent, and abolished that form of separation which, while terminating cohabitation and community possessions, maintains the indissolubility of the civil bond. The Civil Code of 1804, though imposing conditions more rigorous than those of the Law of 1792, maintained <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorce</a>, and at the same time re-established legal separation (séparation de corps). The Law of 8 May, 1816, abolished <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorce</a> and maintained separation. The Law of 27 July, 1884, re-established <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorce</a> on the grounds of the condemnation of one party to an afflicting and <a href="../cathen/08001a.htm">infamous</a> punishment, of <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a>, cruelty, and grave injuries, of <a href="../cathen/01163a.htm">adultery</a> on the part of either husband or wife; it did not admit <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorce</a> by mutual consent; it maintained separation and authorized the courts to transform into a <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorce</a>, upon the demand of either party and cause shown, at the end of three years, a separation which had been granted at the suit of either. This law has recently been aggravated by two enactments which permit the adulterous husband to contract marriage with his accomplice and, instead of merely permitting the courts to convert separation into <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorce</a> at the end of three years, declare this conversion to be of right upon the demand of either party. The annual proportion of <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">divorces</a> to population has increased, from 3,68 per 10,000 inhabitants in 1900, to 5.57 per 10,000 inhabitants in 1907. (e) Interments and Cemeteries The <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">Decree</a> of 23 Prairial, Year XII, ordered that there should be distinctions of religious <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">beliefs</a> in regard to cemeteries. This <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a> was abrogated by the Law of 14 November, 1881, and since then a <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> or a <a href="../cathen/08399a.htm">Jew</a> may be buried in that part of the cemetery which had until then been reserved for <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. The Law of 15 November, 1887, on free interments, forbids any proceedings which may contravene the wishes of a deceased <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> who has, by "an authentic act", expressed a desire to be buried without religious ceremonies. To annul such an "act", the same normal conditions are required as for the revocation of a will, and as a consequence of this <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, certain death-bed conversions, when the deceased has not had time to comply with the legal conditions of revocation, have been followed by non-religious burial. The <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">society</a> founded in 1880 to promote <a href="../cathen/04481c.htm">cremation</a> brought about, in 1886, the insertion of the word incinération in the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> of free interments and, in 1889, the issue of an administrative order defining the conditions in which <a href="../cathen/04481c.htm">cremation</a> might be practised. Between 1889 and 1904 the number of incinerations performed in the cemetery of Père Lachaise amounted to 3484. The Decrees of 23 Prairial, Year XII, and of 18 May, 1806, assigned to the public establishments which had been constituted to administer the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> and resources devoted to public worship (fabriques and consistoires) a monopoly of all undertaking, that is to say, all monies received on account of funeral processions, burial or exhumations, draperies, and other objects used to enhance the solemnity of funeral processions. Most of the fabriques, in the important towns, exploited this monopoly through middlemen. Some years ago attention was called in the Chambers to the fact that the profits derived from non-religious interments, as well as from religious, were being taken by the fabriques, and upon this pretext, the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> of 28 December, 1904, laicized the business of funeral-management, assigning the monopoly of it to the communes. Only the furniture used for the exterior or interior decoration of <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">religious edifices</a> could thenceforward be provided by the fabriques. But the separation law of 1905 intervened, and all such decorative furniture became the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> of the associations cultuelles (see below). As no association cultuelle was formed for the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> religion, the material fell into the hands of sequestrators of the fabrique <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a>. <h3>The Law of Separation</h3> "The Law of Separation of the Churches and the State" (Loi de Séparation des Eglises et de l'Etat) of 1905 proceeded from the principle that the state professes no religious <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">belief</a>. Regarded from the viewpoint of the life of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, it completely dissociated the State from the appointment of <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> and <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>. Soon after the passage of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> all the vacant sees received titulars by the direct <a href="../cathen/11093a.htm">nomination</a> of <a href="../cathen/12137a.htm">Pius X</a>. As to the annual revenue of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, the appropriation for public worship (budget des cultes), which in 1905 amounted to 42,324,933 francs, was suppressed. The departments and communes were forbidden to vote appropriations for public worship. The law grants, first, life pensions equivalent in each case to three-fourths of former salary to <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a> of religion who were not less than sixty years of age when the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> was <a href="../cathen/12454b.htm">promulgated</a> and had spent thirty years in <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> services remunerated by the State. Secondly, it grants life pensions equivalent to one-half the salary to <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a> of religion who were not less than forty-five years of age and had passed more than twenty years in <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> services remunerated by the State. It makes grants for periods of from four to eight years for <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> less than forty-five years of age who shall continue to discharge their functions. The law resulted, in the budget of 1907, in the elimination of the item of 37,441,800 francs ($7,488,360) for salaries to <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a> of religion and the inclusion of 29,563,871 francs ($5,912,774) for the pensions and allowances of the first year, making a savings of about eight millions. As the allowances are to diminish progressively until the savings are complete, at the end of eight years, and as the pensions are to cease with the lives of the pensioners, the appropriations on account of religious worship will decrease notably as year follows year. With respect to the buildings which the Concordat had placed at the disposal of the church, the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> provides that the episcopal residences, for two years, the presbyteries and <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminaries</a> (grands séminaires), for five years, the churches, for an indefinite period, should be left at the disposal of the associations cultuelles, which will be discussed later on in this article. In regard to <a href="../cathen/12466a.htm">Church property</a>, this consisted of (a) the mensæ episcopales and mensæ curiales (see Mensa), which were composed of the possessions restored to the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> after the concordat, together with the sum total of the donations made to <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">bishoprics</a> or <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parishes</a> in the course of the intervening century; (b) the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> of the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> fabriques, intended to meet all the expenses of public worship, and derived either from possessions restored to the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> after the Concordat or from gifts and legacies, and augmented by pew-rents, collections, and funeral fees. The Law of Separation divided the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> of the mensæ and the fabriques into three classes. The first of these classes consisted of <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> received from the State, and this the State resumed; as to the second, consisting of <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> not received from the State, and on the other hand burdened with eleemosynary or <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">educational</a> <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a>, it was ruled that the representatives of the fabriques could give it to public establishments or to establishments of public utility with eleemosynary or <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">educational</a> character, subject to the <a href="../cathen/01656b.htm">approbation</a> of the prefect. Lastly, there was a third category which comprised <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> not derived from state grants and not burdened with any <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a> or only with <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a> connected with public worship. It was ruled that such <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> should pass into the hands of the associations cultuelles, and that if no such body appeared to receive it it should be assigned by <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a> to communal benevolent institutions within the territorial limits of the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> or diocese. This brings us to the subject of the associations cultuelles. Under the Concordat, the episcopal mensa and the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parochial</a> fabrique were public institutions. When religious worship ceased to be a department of the public service, the Chambers, in order to replace the institutions which had been suppressed, wished to call into existence certain private "moral persons", or associations. Without any previous understanding with the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>, the rupture with which was already complete, the Chambers decided that in each <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocese</a> and each <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> associations for religious worship (associations cultuelles) could be created to receive as proprietors the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> of the mensa, with the responsibility of taking care of it. The transfer of the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> was to be effected by decisions of the former fabriques in favor of these new associations. The law imposed a certain minimum number of administrators on each association, the number varying from seven to twenty-five, according to the importance of the commune, and the administrators might be French or foreign, men or <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>, <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> or <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>. The preparation of <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">statutes</a> for the associations was left entirely free. Very lively controversies arose. It was suggested that the application of this <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> would be followed by an influx of lay <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, members of the associations cultuelles, into the government of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. Some thought this anxiety excessive; for, as the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> allowed a number of adjacent <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parishes</a> to be to be administered by a single association cultuelle, it seems that it would have been, strictly speaking, possible for one association, composed of the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a> and twenty-four <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> chosen by him, to receive both the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> of the mensa and that of all the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parishes</a> of the <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocese</a>. But other reasons for anxiety appeared when Articles 4 and 8 of the Law were carefully compared. Article 4 provided that these associations must, in their constitutions, "conform to the general rules of organization of public worship", and as a matter of fact, at Riom, in 1907, the court refused the use of the church to a <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatical</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> who was supported by a <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatical</a> association cultuelle. But Article 8 provided for the case by which several associations cultuelles, each with its own <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a>, should lay claim to the same church, and gave the Council of State the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> to decide between them, "taking account of the circumstances of fact". Thus, while, according to Article 4, it appeared that the cultuelle recognized by, and in communion with, the <a href="../cathen/07322c.htm">hierarchy</a> must naturally be the owner of the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> of the fabrique, Article 8 left to the Council of State, a purely lay authority, the settlement of any dispute which might arise between a cultuelle faithful to the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a> and a <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatic</a> cultuelle. Thus it belonged to the Council of State to pronounce upon the <a href="../cathen/11330a.htm">orthodoxy</a> of any association cultuelle and its conformity with the "general rules of public worship" as provided by Article 4. A general assembly of the episcopate, held 30 May, 1906, considered the question of the association cultuelles, but the decisions reached were not divulged. Should such associations be formed according to the Law, or must they refuse to form any? In the month of March, twenty-three <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> writers and members of the Chambers had expressed, in a confidential letter to the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, a hope that cultuelles might be given a trial. The publication of this letter had stirred up a bitter controversy, and for some months the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of France were seriously divided. <a href="../cathen/12137a.htm">Pius X</a>, in the <a href="../cathen/05413a.htm">Encyclical</a> "Gravissimo oficii" (10 August, 1906), gave it as his judgment that this <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, made without his assent, and which even purported to be made against him, threatened to intrude lay authority into the natural operation of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> organization; the <a href="../cathen/05413a.htm">Encyclical</a> prohibited the formation, not only of associations cultuelles, but of any form of association whatsoever "so long as it should not be certainly and legally evident that the divine constitution of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, the immutable <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">Roman pontiff</a> and the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, such as their <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> authority over the <a href="../cathen/12466a.htm">property of the Church</a>, particularly over the sacred edifices would, in the said association, be irrevocable and fully secure". The half-contradiction between Article 4 and Article 8 was not the only serious contradiction which the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> could allege. The author of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> had further restricted in a singularly parsimonious fashion the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of the future associations cultuelles. They were permitted to establish unlimited reserve funds, but they were to have the free disposal of only a portion equivalent to six times the mean annual expenditure, and the surplus was to be kept in the Caisse des Déspôts et Consignations, and employed exclusively in the acquisition or conservation of real and personal <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> for the use of religious worship. Moreover, the business transactions of all the cultuelles were to be under state inspection and control. Thus the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> on the one hand did not leave to the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, legally represented by the associations cultuelles, the right of freely possessing the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> parsimony, of increasing it at will, of disposing of it at will; and on the other hand it left to the <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> of the State the right, in any case of conflicting claims, to accept or to reject the claims of any cultuelle which might be in communion with the <a href="../cathen/07322c.htm">hierarchy</a>. The <a href="../cathen/08073a.htm">interdict</a> laid upon the associations cultuelles had several juridical consequences. First, the third of the classes of fabriques <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> described above was placed under sequestration, to be assigned by the State to communal benevolent institutions, of which every commune possesses at least one the free <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospital</a> and dispensary. Secondly, the suppressed fabriques were under regular legal <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a>, e.g., Masses to be said as consideration for <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">pious</a> foundations. In the intention of the author of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, the <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a> of causing these Masses to be said would have fallen upon the associations cultuelles; as these have not been founded, are the communal institutions, which enjoy the revenue of the foundations, bound to fulfil these <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a>? For two years the responses given to this question by the <a href="../cathen/02137c.htm">civil authority</a> were hesitating. The Law of 15 April, 1908, laid it down that these institutions shall in nowise be bound to cause Masses to be said in prospective consideration of which the foundations were established; that only the founders themselves or their heirs in direct line, shall have the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> to claim, within a period of six months, restitution of the capital of the said foundation, but that certain <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clerical</a> benefit <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">societies</a> (the mutualités <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">sacerdotal</a>, organized to received the funds of the old <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocesan</a> caisses for the support of superannuated priests) could receive income from these foundations and, in return, accept the <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a> of the Masses. It appeared to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>, however, that the constitutions of these benefit <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">societies</a> did not adequately safeguard the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, and the French <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> were thenceforward forbidden to avail themselves of this <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>. As the right of recovery on account of nonfulfillment of the conditions has been allowed only to heirs in the direct line, the numberless <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">pious</a> foundations established by <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> or other <a href="../cathen/03481a.htm">celibates</a> are forever lost. And at the present writing no <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">pious</a> foundation is legally feasible in France, because there is in the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> no <a href="../cathen/11727b.htm">personality</a> legally qualified to receive such a bequest. Hence the absolute impossibility, for any French <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, for securing to himself in perpetuity the celebration in his own <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> church of a Mass for the repose of his <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">soul</a>. Thirdly, the use of the churches was to be assigned to the associations cultuelles, on the condition that the later should keep up the buildings. The cultuelles not having been formed, would the State take possession of the churches? It dared not; or rather it did not wish to drive home upon the popular mind the effect of the separation. After a brief period of transition, during which ridiculous procés-verbaux were drawn up against the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> who said <a href="../cathen/10006a.htm">Mass</a>, the State left the <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">religious edifices</a> at the disposal of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> and people, officially placing assemblies for religious worship in the same official category as ordinary public gatherings; it was sufficient for the religious authority to make, at the beginning of each year, a declaration in advance for all the gatherings of public worship to be held during the year. <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> forbade the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> of France to comply with this formality of an annual declaration, thus once more endeavouring to make the State understand that legislation regulating the life of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> could not depend on the mere will of the State, and that <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> authority could not, even by a simple declaration, actively concur in any such legislation. Once more it was thought that the closing of the churches was imminent. Then came two new <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a>. The Law of 2 January, 1907, permits the exercise of religious worship in the churches purely on sufferance and without any legal title. According to this new law, the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> have only the actual use of the edifices, the maintenance of which is an <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a> incumbent upon the proprietor the State or the commune. But grave complications are to be expected. If the proprietor refuses the needful repairs, the church may be closed for the sake of public safety unless, that is, the faithful tax themselves to pay for repairs. The <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, tolerated in her own buildings, has no recourse against any mayor who might order the bells to be tolled for a nonreligious funeral. At one time it was believed that the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> would be able to rent the churches on lease, but, owing to the demands of ministerial orders, this last hope had to be abandoned. At last assemblages for religious worship were juridically classified as public meetings, and, as the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> refused to make the anticipatory declaration required by the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> of 1881, on public meetings, a law passed of 28 March, 1907, abolished this requirement in respect of all public meetings, those for religious worship included. Such was the patchwork of expedients by which the Government, embarrassed by its own law of 1905, and still refusing to negotiate with <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, contrived what looked like a modus vivendi. The voter sees that the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> is still in the church, and that Mass is still being said there, and this is all that is needed by the Government to convince the shallow multitude that the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> is not <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecuted</a>, and that if the conditions of its existence are not prosperous, the blame must be laid on the successive refusals of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> the refusal to permit the formation of cultuelles, the refusal to permit compliance with the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> in the matter of declaring assemblies for public worship, the refusal to let <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> to form mutualités approved by the State. All the evils of the situation are due to the fundamental <a href="../cathen/05525a.htm">error</a> committed by the State at the very outset when, wishing to reorganize the life of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in France, it broke with the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> instead of opening negotiations. Hence the impossibility of the church actively co-operating in the execution of <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> enacted by the <a href="../cathen/02137c.htm">civil authority</a> in a purely one-sided fashion--laws which took the place of a concordat never regularly annulled. (See <a href="../cathen/04204a.htm">CONCORDAT OF 1801</a>.) <h3>Civil regulation of public worship</h3> (a) Rules Relating to Religious Ceremonies While, under the Concordat, an administrative regulation was <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> for the opening of even a private <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapel</a>, it is now lawful to open places of worship without any previous authorization. A mayor can prohibit processions in his commune simply on the pretext of avoiding public disorder; as a matter of fact, in most of the great cities of France, processions do not take place. Mayors can even prohibit the presence in funeral processions of <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> wearing their vestments, but very few mayors have ever issued such an order. Both the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> and the mayor have authority to cause the bells to be rung. A ministerial circular <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 27 January, 1907, withholds from the mayor the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> to have the bells rung for "civil <a href="../cathen/02258b.htm">baptisms</a>" or for non-religious marriages or burials, but there is no penal sanction for the transgression of this order. It is now forbidden to erect or affix any religious sign or emblem in public places or upon public monuments; but the existing emblems remain, and private <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> may be decorated, even externally, with religious emblems. (b) Repression of Interference with Religious Worship The law punishes with a fine of from 16 to 200 francs and <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a> of from six days to two months anyone who by <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a>, threats, or an act which may be construed as pressure (pression) has attempted to influence an individual to exercise or abstain from exercising any religious worship, or who, by disorderly conduct, interferes with exercise of any such worship. It punishes, with a fine of from 500 to 3000 francs or <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a> of from two months to one year, outrages or <a href="../cathen/14035b.htm">slanders</a> against functionaries, if committed publicly in places of religious worship, and of three months to two years any preacher who shall incite his hearers to resist the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a>. <h3>The Law of Separation and the Protestants and Jews</h3> The Law of 1905 suppressed the special organic articles which regulated <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> worship and the <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">Decree</a> of 1844 which had organized Jewish worship, recognized since 1806, and provided, since 1831, with state-paid rabbis. Before 1905 there had been a Reformed Church which was administered in each <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> by a presbyterial council elected by the members of the denomination, and at the capital by a consistory to which all the councils sent delegates, and which nominated <a href="../cathen/11537b.htm">pastors</a> with the consent of the Government. The <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> was very much divided in <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theology</a>. It included: the Orthodox, who had carried, in the general synod of 1872, by 61 votes to 45, a declaration of <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> involving as of necessity the acceptance of certain <a href="../cathen/05089a.htm">dogmas</a>; the <a href="../cathen/09212a.htm">Liberals</a>, who, in spite of their defeat in 1872, continued to claim for the <a href="../cathen/11537b.htm">pastor</a> an unlimited freedom of teaching in his own church; a midway party (centre droit) who were nearer to the <a href="../cathen/09212a.htm">Liberals</a> than to the Orthodox. The Law of 1905, in terminating the official existence of a reformed Church, had this interesting result, that the <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theological</a> divisions of the various groups openly expressed themselves in the formation of three distinct great organizations for the reformed religion: (1) the Union Nationale des Eglises Réformées Evangéliques, formed by the Orthodox at the Synod of <a href="../cathen/11318b.htm">Orléans</a> (6 February, 1906), and requiring as a condition the acceptance of the Declaration of Faith of 1872; in this body, the regional <a href="../cathen/14388a.htm">synods</a>, in which the delegates of the presbyterial associations meet, and the <a href="../cathen/14389a.htm">national synods</a> hold spiritual authority; (2) the Union des Eglises Réformées de France, formed by the centre droit at the synod of Jarnac (June, 1907), with the like synodal organizations, and with the hope, hardly justified so far, of receiving the adhesion of both the extreme parties; (3) the United Reformed Churches (Eglises Réformées Unies), a very vague grouping of independent presbyterial associations, leaving to each Church its autonomy, restricting the functions of the <a href="../cathen/14388a.htm">synods</a>, and representing, in place of <a href="../cathen/05089a.htm">dogma</a>, the negative tendencies called "liberal". In this new threefold organization one feature, the consistory, disappeared. <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> The <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutheran Church</a> has but sixty-seven <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parishes</a> in France. It has grouped its cultuelles into one general association. The Jewish denomination has formed the Union des Associations Cultuelles Israélites en France. The central consistory is composed of the grand rabbi, certain rabbis elected by the graduates of the Rabbinical School of France who are employed in <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">educational</a> or religious functions, and lay members elected for a term of eight years by the associations cultuelles. The rabbis are elected, subject to the approval of the consistory. <h3>Chaplaincies</h3> The law authorizes the State, the departments, and the communes to pay salaries to <a href="../cathen/03579b.htm">chaplains</a> in public institutions such a lycées, colleges, <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospitals</a>, asylums, and <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prisons</a>. In the Army the office of <a href="../cathen/03579b.htm">chaplain</a> has not been abolished, but it remains unoccupied. Since 1 January, 1906, no minister of religion has been a member of the staff of any military <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospital</a>; the local <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a> of religion may enter these <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospitals</a> at the request if sick soldiers. A <a href="../cathen/04670a.htm">decree</a> <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 6 February, 1907, abolished the naval chaplaincies, but certain <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> who formerly filled these posts will continue to discharge the functions proper to them. The State does not allow appropriations for the maintenance of chaplaincies in <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> were there are no boarders. It is a curious fact that, while the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> forbid <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> to enter primary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, they have, up to the present, admitted to the secondary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> chaplains paid out of the public purse; the Government feared that if this guarantee of religious training were wanting <a href="../cathen/11478c.htm">parents</a> would send their children to private <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>. But a practice recently established in a certain number of lycées tend to relieve the State of the expense of chaplaincies by compelling <a href="../cathen/11478c.htm">parents</a> who wish their children to receive religious instruction to pay an additional sum. <h3>Political groups, the press, and intellectual and social organizations</h3> Politically speaking, the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> group which receives the active sympathies of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> press is that known as the Action Libérale Populaire, founded by M. Jacques Piou, a Member of the Chambers, on the basis indicated for <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> by the instructions of <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a>. This association, which was legally incorporated 17 May, 1902, comprises 14,000 committees and more than 200,000 adherents. It acts by means of lectures, publications, and congresses. In the Chamber elected in 1906 there were 77 deputies belonging to this association. <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> daily journalism is represented chiefly by "L'Univers", "La Croix", and the "People Français." The former of these papers, founded 3 November 1833, by the Abbé <a href="../cathen/10290a.htm">Migne</a>, had Eugène Veuillot for its editor from 1839 on, and <a href="../cathen/15394b.htm">Louis Veuillot</a> after 1844. Its adhesion to the political directions given by <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a> detached from the "Univers", in 1893, a group of editors who founded "La Vérité Français": this split ended with the amalgamation of the "Univers" and the Vérité", 19 January, 1907. In October, 1908, under the management of M. François Veuillot, acquired greater importance with an enlarged form. "The Good Press" (Maison de la Bonne Presse), founded in 1873 by the <a href="../cathen/02104a.htm">Augustinians of the Assumption</a>, immediately after issued the "Pèlerin", a bulletin of <a href="../cathen/12748a.htm">pious</a> enterprises and <a href="../cathen/12085a.htm">pilgrimages</a>, and after 1883 a daily paper, "La Croix", which has been edited since 1 April, 1900, by M. Féron Vrau. About a hundred local "Croix" are connected with the <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> "Croix". "The Good Press" publishes "Questions Actuelles", "Cosmos", "Mois Littéraire", and many other periodicals, and with it is connected the "Presse Régionale", which maintains a certain number of provincial papers defending <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> interests. Many independent papers, either conservative or nominally liberal, are reckoned as <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, although a certain number of them have misled <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> opinion by their opposition to the programme of <a href="../cathen/09169a.htm">Leo XIII</a>. The leading <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> review is "Le Correspondant", founded in 1829, formerly the organ of the Liberal <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> such as <a href="../cathen/10513b.htm">Montalembert</a> and Falloux. Its policy is "to rally all defenders of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> cause, whatever their origin, on the broad ground of liberty for all; to afford them a common centre where, laying aside difficulties which must be secondary in the view of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a>, each one can do his part, in letters, in <a href="../cathen/13598b.htm">science</a>, in historical and <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosophical</a> <a href="../cathen/13598b.htm">science</a>, in social life, to win the victory for <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">ideas</a>." Monarchist by its antecedents, with a public in which Monarchists form a large proportion, the "Correspondant" has had for its editor, since May, 1904, M. Etienne Lamy, of the Académie Française, who was a Republican member of the national Assembly in 1871, and who, in 1881, brought down upon himself the displeasure of the republican electors by his sturdy opposition to the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> suppressing religious congregations. The chief enterprises for the benefit of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> students in <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> are the Cercle Catholique du Luxembourg, which was founded in 1847, and in 1902 became the Association Générale des Etudiants Catholiques de Paris; the <a href="../cathen/11243b.htm">Olivaint</a> and the <a href="../cathen/08737b.htm">Laennec</a> lectures, established in 1875, the former for students in law and letters, the latter for medical students, by fathers of the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Society of Jesus</a>; the Réunion des Etudiants founded in 1895 by the <a href="../cathen/09750b.htm">Marist Fathers</a>, and of which <a href="../cathen/03010a.htm">Ferdinand Brunetière</a> was president of the board of directors until his death. Besides these, the Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Française, founded in 1886, now (June, 1909) unites in one group nearly 100,000 young men, students, peasants, employees of various kinds, and labourers; it has 2400 groups in the provinces, and holds annual congresses in which, for some years past, social questions have been actively discussed. It was at the congregation held by this association at <a href="../cathen/02525b.htm">Besançon</a> in 1898, that the conversion of <a href="../cathen/03010a.htm">Ferdinand Brunetière</a> was made known in a very remarkable speech of the famous academician. Since 1905 it has been publishing its "Annales", and since 1907 a journal, "La Vie Nouvelle." The extremely original association of the "Sillon" (furrow), attractive to some, disquieting to others, was founded in 1894 in the <a href="../cathen/04558a.htm">crypt</a> of the Stanislaus college and became, in 1898, under the direction of M. Marc Sangnier, a focus of social, popular, and democratic action. M. Sangnier and his friends develop, in their Cercles d'études, and propagate, in public meetings of the most enthusiastic character, the twofold <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> that democracy is the type of social organization which tends to the highest development of <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a> and of civic responsibility in the individual, and that this organization needs <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a> for its realization. To be a sillonniste. according to the adherents of the Sillon, it is not enough merely to profess a <a href="../cathen/05075b.htm">doctrine</a>, but one must live a life more fully <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> and fraternal. The Sillon has held a national congress every year since 1902; that of 1909 brought together more than 3000 members. The character of the organization has exposed it to lively criticisms; its reception has not been the same in all <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">dioceses</a>. But in spite of obstacles, the sillonistes continue their activity, often independent of, but never in opposition to, the <a href="../cathen/07322c.htm">hierarchy</a>, carrying on their work of penetration in indifferent or hostile surroundings. They have a review, "Le Sillon", and a newspaper, "L'Eveil Démocratique", which in two years has gained 50,000. <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> undertakings for the benefit of the young people of the poorer classes have developed mightily of late years. In 1900 the "Commission des Patronages" drew up statistics according to which the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> had charge of 3588 protectories (patronages) and 32,574 institutions of various kinds giving <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> care to the young. In the city of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> alone there were at that <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">date</a>, 176 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> protectories, with 26,000 young girls under their care. The Gymnastic Federation of the Protectories of France, formed after the gymnastic festival which was held at the Vatican on 5 to 8 October, 1905, numbers today (June, 1909) 549 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> gymnastic <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">societies</a> and 60,000 young people. The State carries on its fight against the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in the field of post-academic <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>; in 1894 there were in France only 34 non-religious (laïques) protectories, 1366 for boys, and 998 for girls. To the political groups, the journalistic work, the <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> <a href="../cathen/01115a.htm">works</a> for the benefit of the young, must be added to the "Catholic social" undertakings, the earliest of which was the Oeuvre dyes Cercles Catholiques d'Ouviers, funded in 1871 by Count Albert de Mun, the chief result of which was the introduction by <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> in the Legislature of a number of legislative projects on social questions. The last five years have seen in France the birth and development, through the initiative of M. Henri Lorin and the Lyons journal, the "Chronique de Sud-Est", of the institution known as the semaines sociales, a series of social courses which bring together a great many <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> and <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> lay people. This <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> has been imitated in <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/14169b.htm">Spain</a> and <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>. Lastly a body of <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> have begun a valuable collection of brochures and tracts, under the title "L'Action populaire", which forms a veritable reference <a href="../cathen/09227b.htm">library</a> for those who wish to study social <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> and an inestimable source of information for those who wish to join actively in the movement. <h3>The Church in France during the first three years after the Law of Separation</h3> On 16 December, 1905, a large number of <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> issued a request to the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> and members of the fabric committees (fabriques see above) not to be present at the taking of inventories of church furniture prescribed by the Law of Separation except as mere witnesses and after making all reserves. A circular, <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 10 January, 1906, ordering the agents of the Department of Public Domains to open the tabernacles, intensified the feeling of indignation and, in consequences of an appellation, was implicitly disavowed, by M. Merlou, the Minister of France. But the feeling lasted and, from the end of January to the end of March, expressed itself, in a certain number of churches, in violent outbreaks against the agents who came to take the inventories. The breaking open of locked doors, the cashiering of military officers who refused to lend the aid of their troops to these proceedings, the arrest and prosecution of people taking part in <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> demonstrations, and the mortal wounds inflicted on some of them in the departments of Nord, and of Haute-Loire aggravated the public irritation. There was some hope among <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> that the general elections, which would take place in May, would result in defeat for the Government; but these hopes were not realized; the opposition lost fifty seats in the balloting of 6-20 May. The first general gathering of the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> was held on 30 May, 1906. The <a href="../cathen/05413a.htm">Encyclical</a> "Gravissiomo officii" (10 August, 1906), which rejected the cultuelles, received the absolute obedience of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. The attempt to form <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatic</a> cultuelles, made by some <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> and <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a> in eight localities, met with derision and contempt, and these isolated bodies of schismatics failed to obtain possession of the <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">religious edifices</a> even by appealing to the courts. The second and third general gatherings of the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> (4-7 September, 1906, and 15 January, 1907), thanked <a href="../cathen/12137a.htm">Pius X</a> for the encyclical and discussed the organization of public worship, in accordance with a very definite programme for deliberation which the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> had sent to Cardinal Richard, <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>. On 12 December, 1906, Mgr. Montagnini, who had remained in <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> as guardian of the pontifical archives, was expelled from France after a minute domiciliary search and the seizures of his papers. The Vatican protested in a circular <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">dated</a> 19 December. Various incidents in the application of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> the expulsion of Cardinal Richard from his <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archiepiscopal</a> residence (15 December, 1906), expulsions of seminarists from the <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminaries</a>, the employment of troops at Beaupréau and at Auray to enforce such an expulsion called forth lively protests from the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> press which saw, in all these episodes, the realization of the settled policy thus expounded by M. Viviani, Minister of Labour, in the Chamber of Deputies, 8 November, 1906: "Through our fathers, through our elders, through ourselves all of us together-- we have bound ourselves to a work of anticlericalism, to a work of irreligion. . . . We have extinguished in the <a href="../cathen/06079b.htm">firmament</a> lights which shall not be rekindled. We have shown the toilers that <a href="../cathen/07170a.htm">heaven</a> contained only chimeras." Successive meetings of the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> have organized the work of the Denier du Clergé. The organization is <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocesan</a>, not <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parochial</a>. No individual is taxed; the subscriptions are entirely <a href="../cathen/15506a.htm">voluntary</a>; but in many diocese the <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocesan</a> budget fixes, without, however, imposing, the contribution which each <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> ought to furnish. A commission of control, composed of <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> and <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>, in many diocese takes charge of the disbursement of the Denier du Clergé, If a <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> contributes insufficiently, and that not from lack of means but from lack of goodwill, the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a> can withdraw its <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a>. Two penalties can be inflicted on <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> who culpably refuse to contribute to the support of religious worship: a diminution of pomp in the administration of the <a href="../cathen/13295a.htm">sacraments</a>, and an increase, as affecting such <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a>, of incidental burdens. The first results of the Denier du Clergé in the various <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">dioceses</a> are not as yet well ascertained; they seem to justify neither over-enthusiastic hopes nor over-pessimistic fears. An inter-diocesan fund (caisse) is beginning to do its work in aiding the poorer <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">dioceses</a>. In many communities, the communal authority, having taken possession of the presbytery, has rented it to the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> for a certain sum, but the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> declares that the lease, to be valid, must have been ratified by the prefect. By this means the State has sought to prevent the communes from renting presbyteries too cheap. Of 32,093 presbyteries existing in France, 3643 were still occupied rent-free by the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> at the beginning of October, 1908. A circular of M, Briand, Minister of Justice, has aminadverted on this fact as an abuse. It appears that in most of the <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">dioceses</a> a central committee, or a <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocesan</a> bureau, composed of <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> and <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>, is to be formed, with the episcopal authority for its centre, to combine the direction of all the organized work of the <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocese</a>. Subject to this committee there will be committees in the several arrondissements, cantons, and <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parishes</a>. When consulted in May, 1907, <a href="../cathen/12137a.htm">Pius X</a> preferred small <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parochial</a> committees under the curés to the formation of <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parochial</a> associations (which might be interpreted as an acceptance of the Law of 1901 on associations), with an unlimited number of members. The <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">ecclesiastical seminaries</a>, which the Law of Separation drove out of the buildings they were occupying, have been reconstituted in other homes under the title "Ecoles Supérieures de Théologie." At present one of the most serious preoccupations of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in France is the supply of <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>. In 1878, when <a href="../cathen/02710c.htm">Mgr. Bougaud</a> wrote his book, "Le grand péril de l'Église de France," there was a deficiency of 2467 <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> in France. Père Dudon, who has studied the question of the supply of <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> very profoundly, computes that in 1906, at the breaking of the Concordat, there was a deficiency of 3109, and the very insecurity of the position of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> before the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> furnishes ground for the fear that vocations will go on decreasing in frequency. <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='cathen-728x90-bottom' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <div class="cenotes"><h2>Sources</h2>Geography. Reclus, La France in Géographie universelle (Paris, 1876), II; Vidal de la Blanche, La France (Paris, 1903); Michelet, Tableau de la France in vol. II of the Histoire mentioned below; Dumazet, Voyage en France (47 vols., Paris, 1894-1907); Marshall, Cathedral Cities of France (London, 1907). General History. Michelet, Histoire de France (new edition, 17 vols., Paris, 1871-74 recommended by the truthfulness of its historical colouring rather than exactness of detail, a picture rather than a narrative); Martin, Histoire de France (19 vols., Paris, 1855-60 conscientious research with anti-Catholic tendencies and somewhat out of date); Dareste, Histoire de France, (8 vols., Paris, 1864-73 clear and judicious); Bodley, France (2nd. ed., London, 1899); Galton, Church and State in France, 1300-1900 (London, 1907); Kitchen, A History of France (Oxford, 1892-94). A group of specialists under the direction of Lavisse have undertaken the publication of a Histoire of France of which the published volumes bring their subject down to the end of Louis XIV; this work the contributors to which are men of learning, each following his own bent, though never violently gives the last word of science at the present time. Louis Batiffol, La Renaissance (Paris, 1905), is the only volume which has yet appeared of a collection now being prepared under the title Histoire de France pour tous. Adams, The Growth of the French Nation (London, 1897). No General History of the Church of France is really worthy to be recommended. The principal documents to consult are: Gallia Chistiana (q. v.); Jean, Les archevéques et évéques de France de 1682 à 1801 (Paris, 1891); Hanotaux ed., Instructions des ambassadeurs de France auprès du Saint-Siège (Paris, 1888); Imbart de la Tour, Archives de l'histoire religieuse de la France (4 vols. have appeared); Baunard, Un siècle de l'église de France (Tours, 1901 dealing with the nineteenth century); L'episcopat français au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1907). On the Sources of the History of France the chief repertories are: Monod, Bibliographie de l'histoire de France (Paris, 1888); Catalogue del l'histoire de France de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1855-82); Langlois and Stein, Les archives de l'histoire de France (Paris, 1891); Monlinier, Les sources de l'histoire de France (4 vols., Paris, 1901-04). For bibliography of the French Revolution, see FRENCH REVOLUTION. For France in the Nineteenth Century see <a href="../cathen/10687a.htm">NAPOLEON</a>. Also Currier, Constitutional and Organic Laws of France, 1875-1889 (Philadelphia, 1891); Viel-Castel, Histoire de la Restauration (20 vols., Paris, and trans., London, 1888); Thureau-Dangin, Histoire de la monarchie de Julliet (Paris); de la Gorce, Histoire du second Empire (7 vols., Paris); Ollivier, L'Empire libéral (Paris, 1904-06 13 vols. have appeared); Lamy, Etudes sur le second Empire (Paris); Hanotaux, Histoire de la France contemporaine, 1870-1883 (4 vols., Paris, 1902-09); Zévort, Histoire de la troisième République (4 vols., Paris, 1900-05); Coubertin, L'Evolution française sous la troisième République (tr., London, 1898); Parmele, The Evolution of an Empire (New York, 1897). On the Religious History of France under the Third Republic: Deridour, L'Église catholique et l'Etat sous la troisième République (2 vols., Paris, 1906-08 very anti-Catholic); Lecannet, L'Église de France sous la troisième République (Paris, 1907 Catholic; brings the subject down to 1878); Du toast à l'encyclique (Paris, 1893). For parochial statistics see the annuals Le clergé Français and le France ecclésiastique. On the Law against Congregations and the Law of Separation: Briand, La séparation (2 vols., Paris, 1907 and 1909); Speeches of Waldeck-Rousseau and Ribot; De Mund, La loi des suspects (2 vols., Paris, 1902) Combes, Une campagne laïque (2 vols, Paris, 1902 and 1906). The Law on Associations has been discussed by Troulliot and Chapsal; that on Separation by Réville, with radical tendencies, and by Taudiére and Lamarzelle, with Catholic tendencies. La Revue d'orgainisation et la défense réligieuse, publishjed by the Good Press since 1906, gives every day the state of the law in relation to Catholic interests. On the Marriage Laws: Sermet, La loi du 21 Jun 1907 sur le Mariage (Toulouse, 1908). On the influence of Freemasonry: Prache, La pétition contra la maçonnerie; rapport parlementaire (Paris, 1905); Goyau, La Franc-Maçonnerie en France (Paris, 1899). On the Religious Orders: Mémoire pour la défense des congrégations religieuses (Paris, 1880); Kannengeiser, France et Allemagne (Paris, 1900). On the Missions and the Protectorate: Piolet, Les missions catholiques françaises (six vols., Paris, 1900-03); Bouvier, Loin du pays (Paris, 1808); Rey, La protection diplomatique et consulaire dans les échelles du Levant (Paris, 1899); Goyau, Les nations apôtres. Vieille France, jeune Allemagne (Paris, 1903); Kannengeiser, Les missions catholiques, France et Allemagne (Paris, 1900). On France at Rome: Lacroix, Mémoire historique sur les institutions de la France à Rome (2nd. ed., Rome, 1892). On the School Situation: Speeches of Jules Ferry; Pichard, Nouveau code de l'instruction primaire (18th ed., Paris, 1905); Goyau, L'ecole d'aujourd'hui (2 vols., Paris, 1899 and 1906); Lescoeur, La mentalité laïque à l'école (Paris, 1906); des Alleuls, Histoire de l'enseignement secondaire, 2 vols., Paris, 1900 official); Lamarzelle, La crise universitaire (Paris, 1900). On Charitable Institutions: Paris charitable (3rd ed. Paris, 1904); La France charitable (Paris, 1899) two collections of monographs published by the office central des institutions charitables. On Social Organizations the chief sources are collective reports on Catholic enterprises published at the Exposition of 1900, the Guide annuaire social (annual since 1905) and the Manual social pratique (1909) published by the Action populaire of Reims, with brochures issued by this last association. On the Grouping of Religious Movements: Fraenzel, Vers l'union des catholiques (Paris, 1907); Guide d'action religieuse (Paris, 1908).</div> <div class="pub"><h2>About this page</h2>APA citation. Goyau, G. (1909). France. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06166a.htmMLA citation. Goyau, Georges. "France." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06166a.htm>.Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by M. Donahue. Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. September 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is webmaster at newadvent.org. 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