as a powerful lever to disarm or overthrow the hostility of the church,
and also as a test of loyalty or disloyalty. Yet the steps by which
this conclusion was reached were very gradual. In the early stages of
the Revolution, while it was still fondly deemed that the existing
institutions of France could be purified and preserved, the National
Assembly was assailed with petitions asking that the privilege of
marriage should be extended to the clergy.[1566] These met with no
response, even after the suppression of the monastic orders. As late as
September, 1790, when the Abbé Professor Cournand, of the Collège de
France, made a motion in favor of sacerdotal marriage in the assembly
of the district of St. Etienne du Mont in Paris, the question, after
considerable debate, was laid aside as beyond the competence of that
body. It was not until September 3d, 1791, that Mirabeau introduced
into the Assembly a decree providing that no profession or vocation
should debar a citizen from marriage or be considered as incompatible
with marriage, and forbidding the public officials and notaries from
refusing to ratify any marriage contract on such pretext. Though no
allusion was made in this to ecclesiastics, its object was evident,
and was so admitted in the eloquent speech with which he urged
its adoption—a speech which contained a very telling résumé of the
arguments in favor of priestly marriage, but which, in its glowing
anticipations of the benefits to be expected from the measure,
affords a somewhat lamentable contrast to the meagreness of the
realization.[1567] The principle, when once established, was considered
of sufficient importance to deserve recognition in the Constitution
of September, 1791, a section in the preamble of which declares that
the law does not recognize religious vows or any engagements contrary
to the rights of nature or to the constitution,[1568] and this was
followed, as Mirabeau had proposed, by a decree of September 20, 1791,
which, in enumerating the obstacles to marriage, does not allude to
monastic vows or holy orders.
Professor Cournand was probably the first man of position and character
to take advantage of the privilege thus permitted, and his example was
followed by many ecclesiastics who had won an honorable place in the
church, in literature, and in science. Among them may be mentioned
the Abbé Gaudin of the Oratoire, the author of a work already alluded
to on the evils of celibacy, who in 1792 represented La Vendée in the
Legislative Assembly, and who in 1805 did not hesitate to publish a
little volume entitled “Avis à mon fils, âgé de sept ans”—although,
in the preface to his work in 1781, he had described himself as long
past the age of the passions. Even bishops yielded to the temptation.
Loménie, coadjutor of his uncle the Archbishop of Sens, Torné Bishop
of Bourges, Massieu of Beauvais, and Lindet of Evreux were publicly
married. Many nuptials of this kind were celebrated with an air of
defiance. Pastors announced their approaching weddings to their flocks
in florid rhetoric, as though assured of finding sympathy for the
assertion of the triumph of nature over the tyranny of man. Others
presented themselves with their brides at the bar of the National
Convention, as though to demonstrate that they were good citizens, who
had thrown off all reverence for the obsolete traditions of the past.
A nation maddened and torn by the extremes of hope, of rage, and of
terror, which met the triumphal march of three hundred and fifty
thousand hostile bayonets with the heads of its king and queen, which
blazoned forth to Europe its irrevocable breach with the past by
instituting festivals in honor of a new Supreme Being and parading a
courtesan through the streets of Paris as the Goddess of Reason, was
not likely to employ much tenderness in coercing its internal enemies;
and chief among these it finally numbered the ministers of religion. To
them it soon applied the marriage test. To marry was to acknowledge the
supremacy of the civil authority, and to sunder allegiance to foreign
domination; celibacy was at the least a tacit adherence to the enemy,
and a mute protest against the new régime. Matrimony, therefore, rose
into importance as at once a test and a pledge, and every effort was
made to encourage it. Among the records of the revolutionary tribunal
is the trial of Mahue, Curé of S. Sulpice, Aug. 13, 1793, accused of
having written a pamphlet against priestly marriage, and he was only
acquitted on the ground that his crime had been committed prior to
the adoption of the law of July 19, 1793.[1569] A decree of November
19, 1793, relieved from exile or imprisonment all priests who could
show that their banns had been published, and when, soon afterwards,
at the height of the popular frenzy, the Convention sent its deputies
throughout France with instructions to crush out every vestige of the
dreaded reaction, those emissaries made celibacy the object of their
especial attacks. Thus, in the Department of the Meuse, deputy De la
Croix announced that all priests who were not married should be placed
under surveillance; while in Savoy the harsh measures taken against the
clergy were modified in favor of those who married by permitting them
to remain under surveillance. One zealous deputy ordered a pastor to
be imprisoned until he could find a wife, and another released a canon
from jail on his pledging himself to marry. Many of those thus forced
into matrimony were decrepit with years, and chose brides whose age
secured them from all suspicions of yielding to the temptations of the
flesh. Such was the venerable Martin of Marseilles, who, after seeing
his bishop and two priests, his intimate friends, led to the scaffold,
took, at the age of 76, a wife nearly 60 years old. As an unfortunate
ecclesiastic, who had thus succeeded in weathering the storm, fairly
expressed it, in defending himself against the reproaches of a returned
emigré bishop, he took a wife to serve as a lightning rod. These
unwilling bridegrooms not infrequently deposited with a notary or a
trusty friend a protest against the violence to which they had yielded,
and a declaration that their relations with their wives should be
merely those of brother and sister.
Yet in this curious persecution the officials only obeyed the voice
of the excited people. The press, the stage, all the organs of public
opinion, were unanimous in warring with celibacy, ridiculing it as
a fanatical remnant of superstition, and denouncing it as a crime
against the state. The popular societies were especially vehement
in promulgating these ideas. The _Congrès fraternel_ of Ausch, in
September, 1793, ordered the local clubs to enlighten the benighted
minds of the populace on the subject, and to exclude from membership
all priests who should not marry within six months. A petition to the
National Assembly from the republicans of Auxerre demanded that all
ecclesiastics who persisted in remaining single should be banished;
while a more truculent address from Condom urged imperiously that
celibacy should be declared a capital crime, and that the death-penalty
should be enforced with relentless severity. In times so terrible, when
suspicion was conviction and conviction death, and when such were the
views of those who swayed public affairs, it is not to be wondered at
if many pious churchmen, unambitious of the crown of martyrdom, thought
matrimony preferable to the guillotine or the noyade.
Indeed, the only source of surprise is that so few were found to
betray their convictions. In the vast body of the Gallican church it
is estimated that only about 2000 marriages of men in orders took
place, after the reign of terror had rendered it a measure of safety.
In addition to this, about 500 nuns were also married; and though this
proportion is larger, it is still singularly small when we consider
that these poor creatures, utterly unfitted by habit or education to
take care of themselves, were suddenly ejected from their peaceful
retreats, and cast upon a world which was raging in convulsions so
terrible.[1570]
This is doubtless attributable to the steadfast resistance which the
better part of the clergy made to the innovation, in spite of the
danger of withstanding the popular frenzy, and in disregard of the
laws which denounced such opposition. Even the _assermentés_, who had
pledged themselves to the Revolution by taking the oath of allegiance,
were mostly unfavorable to the abrogation of celibacy, and the position
thus maintained by the clergy gave tone to such of the people as
retained enough of devout feeling still to frequent the churches and
partake of the mysteries of religion. The existence of an active and
determined opposition is revealed by an act of August 16th, 1792,
guaranteeing the salaries of all married priests, thus showing that, in
some places at least, their stipends had been withheld. Many pastors,
indeed, were driven from their parishes by their congregations, in
consequence of marriage, to put an end to which a decree of September
17th, 1793, ordered the communes to continue payment of salaries in all
such cases of ejection.
There were not wanting courageous ecclesiastics who opposed the
innovation by every means in their power. Although Gobel, Bishop of
Paris, a creature of the Revolution, favored the marriages of his
clergy, a portion of his curates openly and vigorously denounced them,
and Gratien, Archbishop of Rouen, addressed to him a severe reproach
for his criminal weakness. The same Gratien excommunicated one of his
priests for marrying, and published, July 24th, 1792, an instruction
directed especially against such unions. For this he was thrown into
prison, where he was long confined. Fauchet, of Bayeux, for the same
offence, was reported to the Convention, but was fortunate enough to
elude the consequences. Philibert, of Sedan, issued, January 20th,
1793, a pastoral in which he more cautiously argued against the
practice, and, after a long persecution, he was lucky to escape with
a decree of costs against him. Pastorals to the same effect were also
promulgated by Clément of Versailles, Héraudin of Châteauroux, Sanadon
of Oléron, Suzor of Tours, and others.
The Convention was not disposed to tolerate proceedings such as these.
To put a stop to them, it adopted, July 19th, 1793, a law punishing
with deprivation and exile all bishops who interfered in any way with
the marriage of their clergy. For a while this appears to have put a
stop to open opposition, but when the reign of terror was past, and the
Catholics saw a prospect of reorganizing the distracted church, one of
their earliest efforts was directed to the restoration of celibacy. On
the 15th of March, 1795, some _assermentés_ bishops, members of the
Convention, issued from Paris an encyclical letter to the faithful, in
which they denounced sacerdotal marriage in the strongest terms. Those
who entered into such unions were declared unworthy of confidence; the
fearful constraint under which they had sought refuge in matrimony
was pronounced to be no justification, and even renunciation of their
wives was not admitted as entitling them to absolution for the one
unpardonable sin.[1571] In a second letter, issued December 15th of the
same year, this denunciation was repeated in even stronger terms.
In these manifestoes the bishops did not speak by authority. They could
not threaten or command, for they were acting beyond or in opposition
to the law. With the progress of reaction they became bolder. In 1797
the church ventured to hold a national council, in which it forbade
the nuptial benediction to those who were in orders or were bound
by monastic vows, thus reducing their marriages to the mere civil
contract, and depriving them of all the sanction of religion. The local
synods which, encouraged by the fall of the Directory, were held in
1800, adopted these principles as a matter of course, and took measures
to enforce them. That of Bourges even prohibited the churching of women
who were wives of ecclesiastics.
This condemnation of the married clergy carried despair and desolation
into the households of those who had offended, and upon whom the door
of reconciliation was so sternly closed. Grégoire of Blois, a leading
actor in all these scenes, records the innumerable appeals received
from the unfortunates, who, torn by remorse and thus repudiated by the
church, begged in vain for the mercy which was incompatible with the
respect due to the ancient and inviolable canons.
All this, however, was merely local action. The Gallican church had
not yet been reunited to Rome. In reconstructing a system of social
order, Napoleon speedily recognized the necessity of religion in
the state, and, despite the opposition of those who still believed
in the Republic, the Concordat of 1801 restored France to its place
in the hierarchy of Latin Christianity. There is nothing in the
Concordat interfering with the right of the priest, as a citizen, to
contract marriage; but as, in all affairs purely ecclesiastical, the
internal regulation and discipline of the church were necessarily
left to itself, the rights of the priest, as a priest, became of
course subject to the received rules of the church, which could thus
refuse the nuptial benediction, and suspend the functions of any one
contravening its canons. In consequence of the power thus restored,
when the question soon after arose as to the legality of sacerdotal
marriages contracted during the troubles, the Cardinal-legate Caprara
issued rescripts to those whose unions were anterior to the Concordat,
depriving them of their priestly character, reducing them to the rank
of laymen, and empowering the proper officials to absolve them and
remarry them to the wives whom they had so irregularly wedded. This
created a strong feeling of indignation among the prelates who had
carried the tabernacle through the wilderness, and who, while opposing
such marriages most strenuously, regarded this intervention of papal
authority as a direct assault upon the liberties of the Gallican
church. Their time was past, however, and their denunciations of this
duplication of the sacrament were of no avail. Yet the legality of
such marriages, and the unimpaired right of priests to contract them,
were asserted and proved by Portalis, in his masterly speech of April
15th, 1802, before the Corps Législatif, advocating the adoption of
the Concordat as a law, although he admitted that the duties of the
priesthood and the feeling of the people rendered sacerdotal celibacy
desirable.[1572]
* * * * *
Notwithstanding the authority thus restored to the church, and the
certainty of ecclesiastical penalties following such infraction
of the Tridentine articles of faith, the practice which had been
introduced could not be immediately eradicated. Priests were constantly
contracting marriage, and the question gave considerable trouble to
the government, which hesitated for some time as to the policy to
be pursued. Portalis, in 1802, as we have seen, declared the full
legality of such marriages, and the unimpaired right of ecclesiastics
to contract them; and the provisions of the code respecting marriage,
adopted in 1803, make no allusions to vows or religious engagements
as causing incapacity.[1573] Yet in 1805, when Daviaux, Archbishop of
Bordeaux, opposed the application of a priest named Boisset to the
civil authorities for a marriage contract, Portalis, then minister of
religious affairs, on being appealed to, replied that the government
would not allow its officers to register such contracts. The local
administrations sometimes assented to such applications and sometimes
referred them to the central authority, until at length, in 1807,
a definite conclusion was promulgated. This was to the effect that
although the civil law was silent as regards such marriages, yet they
were condemned by public opinion. The government considered them
fraught with danger to the peace of families, as the powerful influence
of the pastor could be perverted to evil purposes, and, if seduction
could be followed by marriage, that influence would be liable to great
abuse. The emperor therefore declared that he could not tolerate
marriage on the part of those who had exercised priestly functions
since the date of the Concordat. As for those who had abandoned the
ministry previous to that period and had not since resumed it, he left
them to their own consciences. Thus, in practice, although marriage was
regarded as purely a civil institution, a limitation was introduced
which was not authorized by the code, which rested solely upon the
authority of the emperor, and which, far from indicating respect to
the church, was a flagrant insult. As Napoleon withdrew himself more
and more from the principles of the new order of things, we find him
disposed to take even stronger ground in opposition to the civil
privileges accorded to the priesthood by the Concordat. The question
of sacerdotal marriage continued to present itself under perplexing
shapes, and at length the emperor, on the eve of his downfall, perhaps
with a view to propitiate the sacerdotal power, proposed to apply to
married priests the penalty imposed by the law on bigamy.[1574] It
was too late, however; the empire was rapidly vanishing, and these
suggestions were soon forgotten in the hurrying march of events.[1575]
XXXI.
THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY.
The question of sacerdotal marriage was left in France, on the collapse
of the empire, in a curiously unsettled condition, giving rise to very
remarkable contradictions in the judicial decisions which since then
have from time to time been rendered by the tribunals as cases were
brought before them.
Under the Restoration, a priest named Martin, an old _réfractaire_ of
1792, committed the imprudence of marrying in 1815. Not long after
he died without issue. His relatives contested the succession with
the widow, and in 1817 the inferior court decided in her favor. The
next year the court of appeals reversed the judgment on the ground
that sacerdotal marriage had only been sanctioned indirectly by the
legislation of the Revolution, and that the Charter of 1814 (Art.
6) had restored Catholicism as the religion of the state. In 1821,
however, the final decision of the court of cassation settled the
question in favor of the widow, thus legalizing such unions, for the
incontrovertible reason that the code did not recognize vows or holy
orders as causes incapacitating for marriage.[1576]
Even yet, however, the matter was not held to be finally disposed of.
In 1828, Louis Thérèse Saturnin Dumonteil, a priest of Paris, who
desired to contract marriage, failed to obtain from the courts the
customary assistance required by the law to set aside the refusal of
his parents, who declined their assent to his projected union. The case
was argued in all its bearings on civil and ecclesiastical law, and
he found the tribunals resolutely opposed to him. When the Revolution
of July unsettled the public mind with visions of the revival of the
principles of ’89, Dumonteil endeavored to carry out his project. The
lower court decided in his favor, March 26, 1831, but the higher courts
reversed the decision and pronounced definitely that priests could
not contract civil marriage,[1577] and this in spite of the Charter
of 1830, which simply affirmed Catholicism to be the religion of the
majority of Frenchmen, while that of 1814 had declared it to be the
religion of the state.
This curiously vexed question seems incapable of positive solution.
The case of Dumonteil apparently discouraged aspirants for clerical
marriage during the next thirty years, for I have met with no allusions
to any attempt in that direction until 1861. In that year M. de
Brou-Laurière, a priest already debarred from his sacred functions,
engaged himself in marriage with Mdlle. Elizabeth Fressanges, of
Deuville near Périgueux. On calling upon the mayor of the village
to perform the ceremony and register the contract, that functionary
refused to act. He was supported by the public authorities, and the
expectant bridegroom was obliged to appeal to the tribunals to obtain
his rights. The question was warmly contested and thoroughly argued,
and it was not until a year had elapsed that the court of Périgueux
rendered a decision ordering the mayor to perform his functions and to
marry the patient couple. The case was then carried to the superior
court at Bordeaux, which reversed the previous decision.
Again, in 1864, in the case of the Abbé Chataigneu, the court of
Angoulême decided that a priest was, under the law of France, not
competent to contract civil marriage.[1578] On the other hand, in 1870,
the court of Algiers, in the case of a M. Q——, delivered an elaborate
decision to the effect that in France there is no law forbidding the
civil marriage of priests.[1579] Yet in 1878 the court of cassation
confirmed a decision of the court of Rennes, pronouncing null and
void the marriage of a priest, at the instance of his nephew and
niece, to whom he had bequeathed his property by a will anterior to
the marriage. When M. Loyson (Père Hyacinthe) married Mrs. Merriman,
in 1872, the ceremony was performed in London, at the office of the
Registrar of Marriages, and M. Loyson gave as the reason of his seeking
a foreign land the refusal of the French officials to confirm the
civil ceremony. So the Abbé Chavard, vicar at Marseilles, in 1874,
went to Geneva for the same purpose, where he continued his priestly
functions; and this leads me to regard as exceedingly improbable a
recent statement in the daily journals that priestly marriages occur
in France at the rate of twenty or thirty a year. In fact, so lately
as September, 1883, there was before the courts a case which shows
how uncertain is the question still in France. A certain Abbé Junqua
was expelled from the church and was condemned to three months’
imprisonment for continuing to wear the priestly robes. He subsequently
married and engaged in trade, when he failed, and his wife sought to
secure her dowry from the bankrupt assets, but was resisted on the
ground that her marriage was illegal under the Concordat, although the
church had itself deprived the husband of his ecclesiastical character.
In Switzerland I have met with two or three cases of such marriages,
but they have no special significance. In one of them, occurring in
Lucerne some thirty years ago, the priest left the church in order
to marry, and lived with his wife until her death, in 1880, when he
permitted her to be buried as a Catholic, and had the mortification of
seeing her name entered on the register, publicly exposed in the parish
church, as an unmarried woman.