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Curés projected their own key roles in church and society. The cahier from Caen was a pure Gallican document highlighting the importance of the curés and urging a separate but equal status for the French church relative to pope and king.18 The cahier from Beauvais provided for limited elections, Chassin says, in order to avoid the formula of the curé from Saventin demanding that gold and silver be taken from the churches in order to pay the national debt!19 In the cahier of the sénéchaussée of Anjou the curés call for the restoration of all Gallican liberties, including “freedom of election.”20 But seldom does one find a cahier such as the two brief articles from the Angoulême region, wherein the curés said nothing of church or clergy, dealing only with taxes and—in a surprising expression in these documents—“the legitimate liberty of the press.”21 In Lorraine, the curés of Toul offered to pay taxes, “considering themselves citizens and children of the fatherland.”22 In Lille, the curés demanded that all pastors of the city church “participate in the administration of the properties and revenues of the fabrique of the diocese.”23 In Metz, however, though favorable to a constitution, they wanted the rescinding of Protestant civil status, just granted in 1787.24 And opposition to the corruption of the religious orders was juxtaposed to the demand for curé rights. In the Southwest, curés wanted formal assemblies of their own resembling the religious-order assemblies, noting the “decline that threatens the religious orders with imminent dissolution,” and suggesting the convocation of a national council to work on the problem.25 In Bigorre, the curés claimed the right to be the “only genuine preachers, instead of monks and religious.”26
Curés highlighted the lot of their parishioners. The poor in their charge should benefit from the tithe, some of them said.27 The clergy of the bailliage of Mirecourt even demanded that the king himself listen to his people: “They will tell you for how long these children of the best of fathers [the king] groan under oppression. They will recount the rapport possessed by the church in the Vosges. It is a cruel stepmother that torments the inhabitants of the countryside and takes from them all the money it can.”28
In any case, the priests of France had yet to try their hand at revolution when they arrived at Versailles in May 1789 for the opening of the Estates General. The expression of opposition to domination by bishops allowed little room for other church and government reforms. Confrontations developed across the meetings of the Estates General, where the curés of the First Estate acquired most of their spirit of revolution in asserting their religious and social rights against the aristocratic bishops.
Clergy Journals: Jacques Jallet in Particular
Lively records of the clergy sessions of the Estates General and the common sessions of the Constituent Assembly, minutes and diaries in effect, were kept by the curés Sigisbert-Etienne Coster and Anne-Alexandre Thibault, and then Jacques Rangeard and Jacques Jallet.29 There were contrasts here. Coster feared the radicality of the group’s decisions and refused the oath; Thibault, despite his appreciation of revolution and reform, wrote a matter-of-fact journal. Rangeard, although keeping his editorializing to a minimum, complained of the unjust distribution of tithes—so much taken by the aristocratic bishops and so little received by the hardworking priests.30 Jacques Jallet’s journal was, from beginning to end, the work of a priest revolutionary. On 13 June 1789, he had led the first curés (there were two others) to the hall of the Menus-Plaisirs to join the Third Estate.
Jallet put much more of himself in his journal, noting with satisfaction that the head of the small Third Estate deputation addressed the gathered members of the First Estate as Messieurs; even though there were a number of aristocratic bishops present, he never once said Messeigneurs. It was May 1789 and some of the bishops were hoping for good relations with the two other Estates. The trouble began with those efforts to unite the clergy and noble Estates as an intermediary between the king and the Third Estate. This would have considerably strengthened the control of the aristocratic bishops over the commoner priests: “We easily saw the real goal of this writing. If the plan were adopted, the clergy of the second order [priests], overcome by the higher clergy and the nobles, would have not the least force, even for resistance, in the chamber.”31 The bishops were also unwilling to renounce their tax privileges; to Jallet they seemed to oppose the Third Estate and protect the old union of throne and altar. It was then that Jallet undertook to show the Assembly that “all the cahiers insisted on the preservation of the throne and of religion, but they insisted on the reform of abuses, of the intolerable and scandalous luxury of the bishops; on the amassing of benefices, nonresidency, the exclusion of commoners from the episcopate; it made clear that the clergy themselves should take on the honors of planning the reforms, but those who live off the abuses endeavor to defend them.”32
And it got rough at times, such as when a canon from Marseilles told the bishop of Langres, “I’ve forgotten more about this than you know now” (in fact, the canon was an aristocrat and conservative, whereas the bishop was open to change). This all took place in the confusing time between the first invitations to join the Third Estate and the dramatic unification of the First and Second Estates to the Third Estate; the memorable day was 19 May 1789. The indefatigably conservative abbé Maury, urging caution, “calumniated” (Jallet’s word) the intentions of the Third Estate. But Grégoire said that delays had already jeopardized the reform, and Lubersac of Chartres promoted a careful but rapid restructuring. The continued fussing of Maury and powerful logic of Lubersac took center stage until a weepy curé from Bordeaux drew some snickers as he warned of the dangers religion was facing.33 Jallet believed that the bishops were stonewalling the curés’ efforts to “reconcile” the First and Third Estates. He reported that “an episcopal curé was bold enough to treat the Assembly of the Third Estate as seditious; a bishop had said the previous day that it was a cave of robbers.”34 The radical curés won out, with the final vote 148 for union with the Third Estate and 136 against; “the bishops exited quickly before the news of the defeat could be reported.”35 The crowd did not know what had transpired, but they were still looking for a fight with the abbé Maury: he “could not get away from the boos of the crowd; he made a threat and they were ready to attack him; some spoke out saying that it would be better not to dirty one’s hands by touching such a despicable person.”36 But at least the forces for change had won the day: “Then the joy and the applause were universal; the archbishop of Vienne [Le Franc de Pompignon], that of Bordeaux [Champion de Cicé], and the bishop of Chartres [de Lubersac] we put at the head of the winners.”37 The aristocratic bishops who lost went to the king to protest that the vote had not been legal, but the archbishops of Vienne and Bordeaux and the bishop of Chartres held fast in their defense of the change.
The curés were anxious to finish the union project, and the bishop of Chartres suggested that all repair to the church of Saint-Louis for the official ceremony. And so it was, to Jallet’s clear joy: “The union of the clergy with the Third Estate will bring life and action to the National Assembly; and it is noteworthy that this union has been accomplished in a church that is under the patronage of good Saint Louis; a situation that no one has noticed, as far as we know.”38 The king then tried to stop the proceedings, ordering the three Estates to return to separate assemblies the next day. The Third Estate and a large number of clergy in favor of union remained. There was