Chapter 6 - The Attempts To Establish A Constitutional Monarchy Flashcards
What did the NA set to make between 1789-1791?
A new constitution
What was the first thing the assembly wanted to change?
The church
What made it the obvious thing to change?
It’s association with the AR
Privileges with the first estate
What did the writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier complain?
Paris was ‘full of priests and tonsured clerics who serve neither the Church nor the state’
Who were seen as ‘wasters’?
Nuns and monks
Contributed little to the community
Who disapproved of binding religious vows?
Philosophes
They were taken by those who barely mature enough to understand their full meaning
Who were in favour of church reform?
Clergymen
What did the clergymen want for the church?
The temporal power of the church removed allowing for it to concentrate on its spiritual function
What was a gain that could solve Frances financial position?
The wealth of the church
What was agreed in the August Decrees?
Give up the tithe
Allow the govt to take over church funding
What were the religious changes aug 1789 - Jun 1790?
Pluralism abolished
Annates ended
Taxes to the church gone
No don gratuit
Church property nationalised
Full citizenship granted to Protestants
Religious orders ended unless providing for poor and sick
What did these orders mean for the assembly?
Weakened the churches power
Relieved burden of debt
How did they keep the economy afloat?
Sold monastic wealth and property
What is pluralism?
Holding more than one ecclesial office
What are annates?
A years revenue paid to the pope on the appointment of a new Abbot
What did the Civil Constitution of the Clergy do?
Reorganised the administrative structure of the church
Clergymen were paid state officials
Bishops and priests elected
What did the civil constitution of the clergy make the church?
Subservient to the state
Why was the Pope Pius VI in no place to object to anything?
He was in delicate negotiations with the French state about his Papal territory in Avignon that he didn’t want to jepodise
Who were critical of the measure?
Conservative clerics
Higher ranking clergy
What did the NA dismiss?
A proposal by French bishops and clergy to hold a synod
What’s a Synod?
Meeting of the French Church
What did they want a synod for?
To discuss the grounds that synods had been abolished
What was Louis forced to accept in Dec 1790?
The Civil Constitution
What was made from doubts about the Church’s support for the CC?
A decree that all clergy should ‘be faithful to the nation, the law and the King and to maintain with all their power the constitution decreed by the National Assembly’
What happened to clerics if they didn’t swear to this oath?
Deprived of their offices and salaries
What was the oath good at showing?
Which clerics were loyal to the revolution
What percentage of the parish clergy took the oath?
55%
What was the effect of the Pope finally going against the CC?
Some who formerly were supportive retracted their oath
What did the Assembly do to respond to the retractions?
Occupied Avignon annexing it to France
Declared that non-juring or refractory priests were ‘counter-revolutionaries’
What also happened to the non-juring and refractory priests?
Income stopped
Forbidden from using religious buildings
Religious dress banned - emphasise priests were no more than ‘citizens’
RP could be deported
What did the clergy do in response to these reforms?
Many fled abroad joining others who avoided rev change in foreign countries
Why were more conservative catholics alarmed?
They thought that the Assembly wanted to change their faith - made them turn against the measure
What were 50% of the population more scared of than their commitment to the revolution?
Eternal damnation
What did the Civil Constitution of the Clergy do overall?
Destroyed national unity
Led to counter-revolution and civil war
What did historian J.F Bosher say about the CCofC?
It ‘was fated to divide the nation more than any other single measure’
What Philosophes ideas had influence in the new political system?
Montesquieu
Locke