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Henri Grégoire arrived at Versailles in 1789 as the First Estate delegate from the bailliage of Nancy, already known as pastorally, intellectually, and politically engaged. His youthful preoccupation with poetry was an exploration of the religious sentiment that he straightaway, but with delicacy, labeled specifically Christian. Two years before the opening of the Estates General, he had already begun to meditate on a specifically Catholic Christian program for cultural transformation, because a transformed French Catholic Church could and should bring about the regeneration of the Jews of France and the rest of Europe. His election to the Estates General was an indication of his reputation for this engagement in church and society, although his first pastoral letters of the new decade and his later memoirs of the era are clearer indications of his specifically priestly qualities than anything he wrote before the opening of the Estates General. As fate would have it, however, the abbé Grégoire, priest and revolutionary, was taking his brief turn as secretary of the Constituent Assembly at Versailles when the Bastille was stormed and taken in Paris.
Catholic priests across the revolutionary years could strip down to the pure political secularism of Sieyès, or enliven their politics with Catholic Christian faith and experience, like Henri Grégoire. Preoccupied with their parish work, the curés’ engagement with political change began during the months of preparing the cahiers de doléances locally, and, for a limited few, participation in the Estates General and subsequent Constituent Assembly.
From Estates General to National Assembly
No one was ready for the convocation of the Estates General, so far beyond living memory was the activity of a parliament. When elections were held in all the electoral districts in the first months of 1789, the bailliages and sénéchaussées1 of France, the clergy had to work out their own problems of power and politics, which were further complicated by theology and religious sentiment. Strong reformist priests were able to dominate from the beginning, although individual bishops were occasionally astute enough to maintain their control over clergy meetings within their own dioceses.2 At the opening of the Estates General there was an unexpectedly high percentage of curés, even given the ground rules set in place by Finance Minister Jacques Necker in order to ensure a high priest-to-bishop ratio. Curé words and deeds are recorded in the cahiers de doléances, those official lists of complaints and hopes, in the diaries kept during the meetings of the First (clergy) Estate, and in the records kept by the Comité ecclésiastique after the Estates General became the Constituent Assembly. After many months of work in 1790, the members of the Comité ecclésiastique produced the founding document of church reform, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
Reform Within the Church: The Cahiers de Doléances
Very few revolutionary demands or complaints are in the clergy cahiers, according to Timothy Tackett, who scanned them to establish the frequency of such demands and complaints. There was some minor concern for the rights of the poor and antagonism toward the systems of rich and noble bishops, but no straightforward expression of bona fide revolutionary ideas.3 Tackett says that “grievances anticipating the most radical measures of the Civil Constitution were scarcely to be found anywhere.”4 Still and all, Philippe Grateau, in his “cultural rereading” of the cahiers, highlights a tradition of contempt for luxury and a clerical caste, and Nigel Aston notes a pervasive desire that the state might possibly “order matters thought formerly to be the preserve of the Church.”5 Ever stricter rules were required for the celebration of religious festivals, fasting, and control of immoral behavior in its usual forms of sex, drinking, and blasphemy. There was much demand for press censorship and little thought about toleration of non-Catholicism.6 There was little clarity about the distribution of powers needed to accomplish the reforms, with only a small minority of the cahiers suggesting that the decisions of the Estates General should be handled and ratified by the bishops or a national council or diocesan synods. At times the Estates General were considered the final authority. To highlight regional differences, Tackett recalculated his figures to apply geographically to departments instead of the old electoral districts. The highest level of demand for curé rights was found in western Normandy, Maine, the Touraine, then between the Massif Central and the Pyrénées. In these regions, the north looked more to “honorific” rights; the south, to political rights—but rights in any case. It is striking that these regions did not, on the one hand, end up with a high percentage of constitutional clergy or successful dechristianization, or, on the other hand, with high levels of revolutionary demands.7
There were, to be sure, expressions of resentment and rebellion, recorded by Charles Chassin in his book on the clergy cahiers.8 Class differences always counted for something. The cahier from Arles indicates that “the diverse classes of ecclesiastics put forward their individual doléances in contradiction to one another.”9 In Aix and several other towns, little opposition to the bishop was recorded; but, even so, a simple village curé was chosen to accompany him to the Estates General.10 The curé, Father Cousin, helped prepare the parish cahier that was sent to the Third Estate—with provisions for the election of curés. In Marseilles, a supplementary cahier was sent in because the bishops would not sign some of the formulations that had been crafted by the lower clergy. From Puy-en-Velay came the strange cahier that was episcopal in tone, but noted the complaints of curés demanding that bishops and others who were rewarded for their services should actually provide those services.11 From time to time, a group of clergy would produce a very moderate document but choose a strongly political curé to represent them. Antagonism to the bishop is evident in the cahier that expects, not from the higher clergy, but “from the nation the concern to improve the lot of curés and assistants.”12 In Périgord the curés of Libourne also look to the nation “to remedy the abuses that have made their way into the church administration.”13
From the Auvergne came the plea that the bishops be well chosen: “Since bishops must be the lights and model of the clergy, the king should be begged right away to take effective measures, so that in choosing [these] first pastors, the minister charged with this task experience no coercion or fear, due