Citizens by Simon Schama

Author:Simon Schama
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2004-01-21T22:00:00+00:00

une bonne vie bourgeoise, an excellent table; all the pleasures allowed to men of the world; all the delicacies afforded by opulence… you frequent the best company; you receive a wide circle of friends [in] immense houses, superb apartments, fashionable dress even beneath your habits; fine books and paintings… hunting, gambling, every kind of luxury and entertainment and the pretended paupers of Christ are now only known as the darlings of wealth and fortune.

By contrast, the writer went on, the curés’ poverty, solitude and weariness from their travail made them much more authentically the apostolic successors of the first Christians. It was by emphasizing the material gains for the rural clergy that Talleyrand hoped to recruit them as allies against the diocesan and monastic clergy, whom he knew would be his most serious enemies. One at least, Dominique Dillon, the curé of Vieux-Pouzanges who had been elected, however, for the Third of Poitiers, agreed that “if, in these difficult times, the sacrifice of the property of the clergy could prevent new taxes on the people,” it should be done forthwith.

If Talleyrand really expected near-unanimous support from within the Church, he was to be gravely disappointed. Many of the rural curates who had been instrumental in accomplishing the victory of the Third Estate in June had been incensed by the casualness with which the Assembly had abolished the tithe on August 4, even though it had provided for its continued collection until other arrangements were made for financial support. In reality, as they knew all too well from their parishes, the mere news of the abolition of the tithe had made it uncollectable. But there was even more unpredictable opposition. The Abbé Sieyès, who for a long time had been even less ecclesiastically inclined than his old friend Talleyrand, spoke against Mirabeau’s resolution on November 2, not on any grounds of piety but because he insisted it violated the Declaration of the Rights of Man’s commitment to hold property as inviolable. “You have declared that property said to belong to the church now belongs to the nation but I only know that this is to declare something to be fact which is untrue… I don’t see how a simple declaration can change the nature of rights… Why do you allow these petty hateful passions to lay siege to your soul and succeed in tainting with immorality and injustice the finest of all Revolutions? Why do you want to depart from the role of legislators and for what, to become anti-clerics?”

The unaccustomed note of passion that marked Sieyès’ speech suggested the emotional turbulence that Talleyrand and Mirabeau’s proposal had stirred. It was made worse, not better, by the fact that a considerable number of the parish clergy had been warm supporters of the Revolution and now for the most part felt betrayed and unjustly victimized. Their opposition to the Assembly’s program was not merely the defense of vested interests, as the orators claimed. It arose from sincerely held convictions about the nature of their pastoral role and resentment at being demoted to some sort of department of state.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.