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somber interpretation of church history may appear one-sided in ignoring the contributions of the Catholic Church throughout history. It is undeniable that the Church has had great influence over the centuries, has done good works, has provided relief to the suffering, and has contributed to advances in knowledge and civilization. However, no good works done can ever justify the fact that the Christian Church as it was known in France often failed to live Christianly and that opposition to the Church in many quarters arose against the evil done in the name of God. It was not for the good the Church had done that led to the separation of Church and State. It was the Church’s intolerance, oppression, and complicity with political power and its refusal to allow dissent or competing belief systems that contributed to her undoing.

It may also be helpful to distinguish between Christendom (chrétienté) and Christianity (christianisme). The former refers to people and places where Christianity dominates; the latter refers to the religion founded on the teaching, the person, and the life of Jesus Christ.29 Douglas Hall affirms that although “the Christian faith entered the world as a movement containing provocative and anti-institutional elements, it eventually expressed itself in well-defined institutional forms.”30 On one hand, Christendom dominated for centuries in European history and its institutions developed and expanded in their exercise of political control. On the other hand, Christianity was never meant to be an earthly political power. Many of the objections to the Christian faith should be seen more as reactions to Christendom rather than reactions to Christianity.

The beginning of official Christianity in Europe is dated to the conversion of Constantine (272–337) in the fourth century AD. The distinction between Church and State was erased with privileges accorded to the Church and the intervention of the emperor in the affairs of the Church. Early on, other religions were tolerated. Later under other emperors, such as Theodosius (347–395) who created a state religion, other religions were persecuted. In AD 498, following victory in the battle of Tolbiac, Frankish King Clovis (466–511) received Christian baptism on Christmas Day from the bishop of Reims along with three thousand followers.31 According to De Monclos, the exact date of Clovis’s baptism remains controversial.32 In any case, this event is regarded as the beginning of Christian France, or Christendom, a fusion of the political and religious spheres, and “the first of the Germanic nations to espouse the orthodox Christianity of the empire.”33 McCrea notes,

The first time medieval chroniclers described an event as “European” was the victory of Christian Frankish forces over a Muslim army at Poitiers in 732 . . . [then] with the crusades of the eleventh century, Western Christianity became synonymous with a European identity which defined itself against the Islamic and Byzantine Orthodox Christian civilizations to its south and east.34

After the fall of Rome in AD 476, “the absence of Roman hegemony increased the power of the church in medieval Europe. With the church’s ascendancy, ‘Christendom’ appeared—a single society with two expressions of power. The coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III in 800 made the question of who governed Christendom less clear.”35 The rule of the Carolingians, in particular the reign of Charlemagne (742–814), inaugurated a royal theocracy under the Holy Roman Empire, in “an attempt to refound the old Roman Empire of the West, but on a strictly Christian basis.”36 In other words, the monarchy by divine right (droit divin) was installed in power through the coronation and by the consecration of the Church. The king supported the Church in establishing pontifical states with financial and military participation.

At the death of Charlemagne in AD 814 the feudal period began during which time the Church represented the only organized power. This was the beginning of a pontifical theocracy where the spiritual power of the Church displaced political power as primary in governing the affairs of the people. A movement known as Gallicanism emerged in France to encourage the autonomy of the French Church from papal power. As a result of schism, a French pope was installed in Avignon in 1309 by Philippe Le Bel (1268–1314). Historically, there were two forms of Gallicanism. The ecclesiastic form affirmed the autonomy of the French Church from Rome. The political form emphasized the authority of the French king over the temporal organization of the French Church. This latter form will be prominent in the 1801 Concordat promulgated by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) of which more will be said later.37

During these early periods of Christian France there was no religious pluralism. “In the medieval West one had no choice but to be born into the (essentially unique and indivisible) Church. . . . In the Middle Ages the Church’s affairs were matters of State, but only for the elite who made the decisions.”38 In the seventeenth century, Louis XIV (1638–1715) would combat Protestantism according to the principle “one law, one faith, one king.”39 The absence of the modern concept of religious pluralism was true in most of recorded history. According to Newbigin, “Although the world has been a religiously plural place for as long as we know anything of the history of religions, most people for most of history have lived in societies where one religion was dominant and others were marginal.”40 France was unexceptional in her imposition of a State religion. Her exceptionalism lies more in the degree she has been emancipated from religion and in the history behind her present religious condition.

There were attempts throughout French history to provide religious rights for Protestants and other faiths and relief from the control of the dominant Church. Much of the success was short-lived and the freedoms obtained were lost at the whims of monarchs, revolutionaries, or Republicans. For example, in 1598 the Edict of Nantes was enacted under King Henry IV (1553–1610) who had converted from Protestantism to Catholicism. Under the terms of the Edict, Protestants were granted substantial religious rights and a measure of religious liberty. From a religious point of view, the edict granted considerable concessions to the Protestants, notably in the institution of the principle of liberty of conscience in all the kingdom and the complete liberty of worship in all the regions where Protestantism was established before 1597. From a political point of view, full amnesty was granted for all acts of war. Civil equality with Catholics was guaranteed and there was a provision for the right of access to public employment. Protestants retained territorial possession of places of safety in more than one hundred cities in France, including La Rochelle, Saumur, Montpellier and Montauban.41 The Edict was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685 and followed one hundred years later by the Edict of Tolerance promulgated in 1787 in favor of the Protestants. They would again be granted limited rights but not allowed to meet publicly for worship.42 We learn through these events that at these times in French history, the State held the authority to grant religious freedom without grounding these rights in anything but the power of the State. There was little recognition of any divine right to freely worship the God of one’s understanding or recognition of the freedom of conscience to not worship any God.

      1. Gauchet, La religion dans la démocratie, 41.

      2. Davis, History of France, 2.

      3. Gildea, French History, 15–17.

      4. Cesari, Islam and Democracy, 76.

      5. Barzun, Dawn to Decadence, 378.

      6. Gaillard, “L’invention de la laïcité,” 9.

      7. Delumeau, Le christianisme, 21–22.

      8. Greely, Religion in Europe, 208–11.

      9. Delumeau, Le christianisme, 190.

      10. Bowen, Headscarves, 21.

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