Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in FranceBrandes, Georg
History
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in France
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Naturalism in literature; Romanticism
The priests, who, as the saying goes, have found what Archimedes
sought, a fulcrum in another world from which to move this one, now
began to stir up the spirit of fanaticism in the provinces. In the town
of Arras a picture of the crucifixion was paraded in the streets, in
which Maury and the royalists were represented standing on the right
side of the cross, and the revolutionists on the left side, below the
unrepentant thief. At Nîmes there was a regular riot when the news came
that a Protestant, Saint-Étienne, had been elected President of the
National Assembly.
The new ordering of the church's affairs was brought about by a
coalition of the Voltairean and Jansenist members of the Assembly.
The Jansenists had a religious hatred of earthly greatness, and, as
fatalists, unquestioningly accepted the existence of human misery.
Therefore it displeased them to see the church rich, and they took
no account of the manner in which the poor benefited by its wealth.
Moreover, the scandalous lives led by many of the high-placed
ecclesiastics aroused their moral indignation. Everyone, for instance,
knew that Bishop Jarante's mistress, Mademoiselle Guimard, distributed
ecclesiastical promotion behind the scenes of the opera, that the
Archbishop of Narbonne had a regular harem in one of his abbeys, and
that the monks of the Abbey of Granselve had quarters for their ladies
in a neighbouring village, where the tables were regularly spread for
nightly revels.
If the revolutionists had been content with secularising church
property, they could not well have been convicted of attacking
religion. But they interfered in the church's internal arrangements and
discipline, and even altered its ritual; and its dignitaries naturally
proclaimed that the foundations of religion were shaken. Therefore
the ordinary priest hardly ever dared take the oath of allegiance to
the constitution. The small yearly payment received from the state by
those who did so was likened to Judas Iscariot's blood-money, although
in times past it had been considered just that bishops should own
palaces and pleasure-grounds, and have luxuries of every kind at their
disposal, while the lower orders of the clergy were positively starving.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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