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good Masons, good men, and finally, all the truly good in nations, religions, viewpoints, and societies.”³⁶ There is truth everywhere and he cherishes the truth. He explains, too, why he is a constitutional bishop: “You will find me always ready to use my feeble talents to work with others for the well-being of men.”³⁷ Modestly, perhaps a little too modestly, he adds that others could do it better but that he will do his best.

      Praise of Voltaire and his work here is a striking example of Fauchet’s use of all that is good. Voltaire had great talent and worked for people, “despite his errors and pretensions.” Fauchet’s admiration was realistic: “As wonderful as he was, he was a man; and the men I admire the most I do not adore.”³⁸ He dares to label Voltaire an “aristocrat” (in society and literature), because it is a simple historical fact, and so the statement cannot be offensive in any way. Assuming that he and Cloots are in cahoots on this, Fauchet criticizes Enlightenment intellectuals (probably because they were so little concerned for the people) and praises the Freemasons: “I am at as much of a remove as you could be from the Illuminés of Germany, in Prussia and elsewhere, who live by such cruel illusions.”³⁹ If they are Freemasons, then they are disfiguring Freemasonry.

      Fauchet repeats for Cloots his conviction that Christianity is a religion of total love, found in the gospel and nowhere else. It is only theologians who merit the antagonism to religion: “It is not the small and barbaric religion of the theologians that I profess.”⁴⁰ He prefers the unbeliever to the theologian, because “the first can use natural rectitude in controlling sentiments, in a way different from the second who no longer listens to nature and sanctifies his fanaticism by his zeal.”⁴¹ This is why he can work things out with Cloots, a man of honest sentiment who goes by the natural law (“for lack of the gospel”), and who is incapable of any dissimulation. The fanatical theologian, however, twists the gospel for his own ends, and here Fauchet offers no explicit criticisms. Fauchet’s “universal religion” embraces all people of goodwill and hopes for the repentance of others. It is a religion of kindness and goodness, and Fauchet is happy to proclaim in conclusion, “Noble Cloots, you have it deep in your heart.”⁴²

      The Constitutional Bishop

      Biographer Charrier was always ready to decry Fauchet’s faults and see all opposition and dislike in a positive light. Thus his election as constitutional bishop was seen as a combination of default and self-promotion: others were not interested in the position, few people wanted Fauchet, but he pushed his candidacy just enough to get through. In fact, Claude Fauchet had a number of qualities (elsewhere noted by Charrier) that made him a proper candidate, even a very good one. He was one more constitutional intellectual who had a good preaching reputation and was politically engaged. Passing through Lisieux, Caen, and Bayeux in taking charge of the diocese of Calvados, he met with a much more positive reception than had some of his colleagues in the constitutional episcopacy. There were many receptions: the official departmental reception, the municipal reception, and especially receptions in the clubs. By this time, Fauchet had worked his way into the good graces of the Jacobins as well. His political position was probably more stable than his ecclesiastical position. True, given his competence, the refractory priests were not in a position to degrade him; but there was formal opposition, including condemnation by the Old Regime bishop of the region. Even Charrier admits that Fauchet cut a fine figure at that time: “Attractive in appearance, manners that, for all their exuberance, did not exclude dignity; with an open and generous heart, he exercised a great power of seduction over those around him.”⁴³ For all his intellectual and personal flash, Fauchet was still preoccupied with his image as a worker in the vineyard, dedicated to the improvement of everyday life for the simplest people.

      At the beginning of his first pastoral letter, Fauchet reminds his people that they have a special relationship with him because they elected him: “Your will brought me up to the top rank of your pastors; it will put me down if I do not fulfill your goals.” He claims to function at their beck and call and goes so far as to say that they represent for him “the voice of God”—in the elections.⁴⁴ Proper, then, to review the history of election in scripture and the early church. It was the election process that set St. Peter straight, and it would be the election process that would set straight the church of France. Fauchet gets a bit ahead of his argument here, because Peter, he has to admit, was appointed directly by Christ and mandated to strengthen others in the faith. But with a little spin, Fauchet gets a version of Peter, who is converting to the beliefs of the brethren and so strengthening them: “Brought back to the common faith of the brethren, did he not adhere to and confirm their beliefs?”⁴⁵ The role of the brethren in maintaining Peter in his high office is definitely clearer in later events (no spin needed here). The scripture story has Paul admonishing Peter for his insistence on observance of the Mosaic law. And, far from resisting, Peter had a special love and gratitude toward Paul from then on. “With what admiration, what modesty, what tenderness, he spoke of the teaching of his very dear brother Paul!” says Fauchet.⁴⁶ All this means, of course, that those exercising the Petrine Office—the popes—should be like Peter, who insisted that “pastors should form their minds and hearts at the good pleasure of their flock, and thereby become for all the faithful a model of wisdom!”⁴⁷

      Fauchet believes that the malaise in the church runs deep. But working with governments could keep churchmen more effective and honest: “Public order and common sense share the same space, and observation is necessary for any concerted and harmonious effort.”⁴⁸ Churchmen have true authority and should be consulted, to be sure, but consulting the church produces fewer good results when its organization is faulty. One must be wary of the bishops. It is one thing to accept their divinely guided teaching: there they had to monitor themselves, “because the entire church would have rejected them, and the Holy Spirit would have inspired the truth in people’s souls, to constrain the majority of pastors to the doctrinal infallibility they owe to the guidance of Jesus Christ.”⁴⁹ But their organizational programs have been utterly selfish and self-serving—and unsuccessful. And here Fauchet takes off on Trent, a council that was more interested in correcting Protestants than in correcting abuses in the church, all of this due to “papal despotism and the aristocratic rule of the bishops.”⁵⁰

      The National Assembly, then, is the means of correcting the chronic problems of overextended church authority: “The consent of the people, a consent always expressed in the old laws, is it lacking in the new decrees of the National Assembly, which is today bringing the clergy to its original form?”⁵¹ In fact, it belongs both to the “essence of the church” and to the “substance of the nation” to work together for the preservation of “gospel truths.”⁵² And Fauchet urges the people to keep bishops in line. The bishops would never do it on their own, most recently showing their intransigence by stubborn resistance and even flight from the country. He further proposes that the people must be assured that the new constitutional episcopacy never sink to the ways of the Old Regime. Their consecration secures divine authority, but “it is from you, dearest brethren, from you who are the family of Jesus Christ and his faithful people, that they receive the right orientation in the use of this divine power.”⁵³

      Claude Fauchet was elected to the new Legislative Assembly some months after the publication of his first pastoral letter. There, he took a strong stand against the refractories, although this antagonism may have been tied to a personal vendetta against the minister of the interior, Jean-Marie de Lessart, reputed to be sympathetic to the refractories.⁵⁴ He also praised the restraint of his Comité de surveillance (in Calvados) in contrast to a smaller comité in Marat’s commune (in Paris). A contemporary reporter, knowing that Fauchet could bring tough politics into church, was surprised to hear at Notre-Dame a “very mystical sermon that could as well have been preached in 1400 as in 1791.”⁵⁵ To the chagrin of constitutional colleagues, he was still in favor of a lavish episcopal guard.⁵⁶ His pastoral letter of 1792, written one year after his installation as bishop, began with a clever résumé of the church–state ideas he had come to espouse across the years, beginning with the supremacy of the gospel as “the only religion of holy liberty.”⁵⁷ It is true that the human passions have caused major harm, but they will never gain universal control, because they “will only make

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